The Bill Simmons Podcast - NBA No-Man’s-Land, Brady’s Bleak Future, and a Sit Down with WWE CEO Nick Khan | With Justin Termine, Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Justin Termine of SiriusXM to discuss the Clippers roster not meshing, the Suns in no-man's-land, the Trail Blazers possibly being better off trading Damian Lillard, a bright future for the Thunder, and more (1:40). Then, Bill talks with Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz about Tom Brady’s playoff exit, potential landing spots for Brady next season, Super Bowl picks, and more (46:52). Finally, Bill is joined by the CEO of WWE, Nick Khan, to discuss Vince McMahon’s return, Nick’s role in the company, what the sale of WWE would look like, WWE’s trajectory, and more (1:16:55). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Justin Termine, Nora Princiotti, Steven Ruiz, and Nick Khan Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our old friend Ryan Russillo is still doing his podcast three times a week for The Ringer. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, talking hoops, football, life advice, everything else. And then after the NFL season, he comes on this podcast every Sunday night. We're talking hoops all the way through to the draft like we did the last couple of years. In the meantime, check it out, the Ryan Russillo podcast. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too.

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You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem called 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. It is one word movie month on the rewatchables and we dropped a little movie called Alive 30 years after it came out. That is up right now. Me, Chris Ryan and Craig Horlbeck. Two more to go. There's rumors Ryan Russillo might be involved in one word movie month.

We'll see. Coming up on this podcast, talking late night basketball with Justin Termini. Talking a little Tom Brady. What do we have to expect from him going forward? And should we be more cringy about how it ended this season? Talking about that with Norm Princiati and Steven Ruiz from The Ringer. And last but not least, WWE CEO Nick Khan. A long sit-down interview with him.

They have been in the news a lot lately. We're going to explain why. And we're going to dive into everything that has happened with that company, which has just been a crazy two-year ride. So this is a long podcast. Sorry. Moves three times. It's really good.

And I think we need to bring in our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, taping this 9.30 Pacific time Tuesday night. Just watched some basketball. Justin Termini is here. You can hear him with Eddie Johnson on the NBA station. What's the official title of that NBA station? Well, it's Sirius XM NBA Radio. And now we're on the NBA app too.

So you can actually get a visual of Eddie and myself, which I'm not sure is a good thing. He's a very ugly man. But yeah, you can get us on the app too. So go download that. Yeah, I saw there was one day last week or two weeks ago, you were by yourself solo on camera for like three hours on the app, which I would go nuts. I would start like playing with my hair and fidgeting and I would just lose my mind.

Oh, I prefer it. Uh, so I, it's like, I don't have any interrupted me. I get the whole, you know, scream to myself. I get, I can say like things that I wanted to say that, you know, he interrupts me and tries to cut me off and says, don't stop. I just get the whole time to myself. So I love it. This is great. You guys really are like the married couple that got married when you were 17 and now you're in your fifties and you just can't stand each other. It's great radio. We are coming off Clippers, Sixers and our hero, Nikola Jokic, once again, dismantling another Western team. But the Clippers thing got me thinking

because they're just not that good. And I don't think people realize it yet. I think the people that are in the mix every day talking about basketball, watching basketball kind of get it. But I think the general perception is, oh no, they'll turn it on. They'll be fine. Now they got Kawhi and Paul George. My take, I was watching it today and granted Philly is a weird team for anyone to play, especially when Embiid is as great as it was tonight. But they built this team that feels like it made so much more sense in like 2014 slash 15, right? This team built around wings and role players and it's a little slower pace. It's a little. And it's, it's a little slower pace. It's a little physical, but man, it's a guards league now. And if you don't have these dudes

in the backcourt that can slash and kick, that can get hot, can like, basically you want, you want to be like where Cleveland is, where Boston is, you want to be perimeter speed shooting. And I don't know where they fit in anymore. And we now have this, it's like a 43 game sample size. Where do you stand on this? Well, so I picked them to actually represent the Western Conference at the outset of the year in the, okay. I have now backed off of that. And it really doesn't have to do with what you're talking about, like roster construction. So I never had an issue with their roster construction. My issue is they don't know how to play together. And you and I have had the conversations in the past, right?

Where you like take maybe a team from the eighties, like the Lakers or Celtics, even if you put them up against some of these golden state teams, Bill, maybe they beat them just because of the continuity. Like they knew how to play together. They knew where each guy was going to be on the court. This team doesn't know how to play together. And I think we saw it a couple of weeks ago where Paul George and Kawhi were

actually playing in that Orlando game that they lost in overtime, where they're like minutes, even in overtime. And they had a couple of turnovers late, including a five second violation because they don't know how to play together. And I've yet to talk to a former player that thinks they can win if they don't have some continuity going into the postseason. That's why I didn't pick the Nets last year to have a shot against the Celtics. I wasn't concerned about them in the first round. And you saw that with the way that they executed down the stretch, whereas Boston was a fine-tuned machine at that point. So I don't think the Clippers can win because of that.

What do you make of the lack of continuity? I think that's their biggest issue. Well, I mean, George has missed over 100 games since he's played, since he joined the Clippers and I think I think that's maybe like 70 to 80 games less than Kawhi um they don't look physically like they were in their peaks which isn't surprising they're both in their early 30s but when you throw in the fact that I don't know if we're getting the best possible versions of either guy at this point in their careers and And they're not durable. And there's no third person.

Like at least, even Philly, like Embiid misses the three games and they can still find scoring other places. This Clippers team, they spent so much money. I mean, they have close to a $200 million payroll. And if they tried to make like a three for one for let's say Bradley Bill or whatever, nobody, it's like three nickels for, you know, a 50 cent piece.

So I don't know what they do. I don't know what the trade is. Because if you break up the Kawhi Paul thing, then who are you at that point? What's your identity? They also sunk so many picks and so many players into that twosome. And I just don't know what the move is. And I don't think they do either. And I think they know this is like really, really wrong. This isn't like, oh, we'll wait and see.

Like, I think we are now headed toward something. They're going to do something major and I don't know what it is. Yeah. Well, first of all, who would even trade for Kawhi at this point? Like knowing that you're not, you don't know what you're going to get on a day-to-day basis. Right. So I don't know how many teams that would give you even close to fair value. That's one. And then, like, with their front, like, the thing that shocks me is I've heard Ty Lewis is not happy with the minute restrictions and the fact guys are in and out of the lineup. And, of course, like, he carries, and I think he's one of the best coaches in the sport, right? So, and that reflects on his record.

Like, he's trying to get a good record during the regular season, not just winning the postseason. But I can't just envision that a front office that includes Jerry West is happy with the lack of continuity and the fact that these guys aren't working together. But, yeah, even if they wanted to make the move, what is it? I mean, I read earlier today in an article by Shams on The Athletic that they're looking to move John Wall. And that's one of those. Who? Yeah. I mean, what are you going to be able to get for John Wall?

And I guess they were like, look at maybe, you know, Mike Conley could be a guy. But the point is, is like Malcolm Brogdon in the offseason, right? Like that got less, a lot less fanfare than John Wall. That's been such a much better pickup. Even a guy like Goran Drogic, I would have preferred to have than John Wall. Yeah, I don't know what the move is and they don't have picks either. That's the other piece.

Like they already made their all-in trade. So to me, I would look at Paul George because I agree with you. I don't think Kawhi has the same value. When I was doing the home and home with Zach last week, I was talking about, could there be like a Harrison Barnes and Keegan Murray for Paul George? Who would actually say no to that? Is that where they should be thinking like a,

a two for one where they can get an asset that either they can keep or flip. But you know, there's a lot of pressure on this team because they have this new stadium that Baltimore spent a few billion bucks on. And I don't know who I'm going to see in that stadium in two years or whether I want to have tickets for it. Well, even if the guys are on the roster, I'm not sure if you know who you're going to see because they might not be playing at the rate that they go out there and they actually play.

But yeah, I mean, Steve Bomber spends all this money and telling me he's happy with these guys sitting. I would just like to know who's in control, who's making these decisions. But ultimately, it's like the player makes the decision, right? Ifon wants to play lebron's gonna play if jason tatum wants to play with his banged up wrist that he's dealing with right now he's gonna play if yannis who sat out the last couple of games wants to play through an injury he's gonna play so you can ultimately tell me it's like the team doctor it's ty lou it's jerry west it's it's lauren frank it's steve bio it's

it's kawaii leonard that's sitting out all these games. I asked you before the pod, who is the most surprising no man's land team to you? And then we'll do most surprising lottery team. To me, there's six teams in no man's land. And no man's land means you're not a lottery team. You have no chance of winning Banyama, but you also have no chance at the title. And you're in the middle and you're in that. You might win 44 games. You might win 39.

You might be in the playing game. You might be able to get this six seed. You might not even be in the playing game at all if you have some injuries. I have six teams. The Blazers, who we watched today against the Nuggets, the Clippers. I think the Hawks have to be in there. They've been 500 for over half the season now. The Raptors are under 500 and don't seem like a very happy team. The Bulls, who have been in a million trade rooms already. And then last but not least, the biggest surprise to me is Phoenix,

where your guy Eddie has just been doing the we good thing for 10 months, which has been hilarious, or eight months. But now they're 21 and 24, and Booker's no sign of him coming back for at least two more weeks. Chris Paul is at a different point in his career. That's a team that might end up in the lottery.

We don't have a lot of games left. They are at the 45 game mark. We only have 37 games left. There's not a shitload of time to turn this around. For me, it's the most surprising. Who is it for you? Well, Mark. We only have 37 games left. There's not a shitload of time to turn this around. For me, it's the most surprising. Who is it for you? Well, the Clippers I picked to go to the NBA Finals, so that's probably the most surprising to me, but we just talked

about them. And yeah, the Suns. I'm looking like an idiot. This is not really an advertisement to go listen to the show, because I picked the Clippers to be the best team in the West. I picked the Suns to be the second best team in the West. Right now, they both look like garbage. But I went back because I'm always searching for ammunition to throw at Eddie. How about this? As far as I can tell, 22 teams won 64 games. So 22 teams have won at least 64 games. Them and Dallas last year were

the only teams to win at least 64 games, get eliminated before the conference finals. Now it gets worse. So the season after a team won 64 games, at least 67 games, right? But Josh Howard, I think, is the second leading scorer. That might be the greatest accomplishment Dirk's ever had. But they come back the next year. They only win 51 games, okay? Then, you know, Philadelphia is another one. And I've heard you talk about the reason, like, the 83 Sixers can't be, you know, one of the great teams of all time is they just stunk the following year, right? They didn't back it up as a defending champion. They lost in round one to Michael Ray Rich to the Nets. Exactly.

So they lose in round one. They only won 52 games. Those are the two worst teams after a 64-win team season. This Suns team has to go like 30-9, I think, to not be the worst team after a 64-win team. I mean, it's been a shocking fall-off from last year. So I wanted to throw that into Eddie's face. So this has just been a historic surprise, I think.

Yeah, we did the over-under, Padme, Hassan, and Rosillo. And the over-under for the Suns was low 50s, I think. And Rosillo's whole case for the over was just like, are there going to be 13 games worse? Like we can strip everything else away. That just seems like a lot of games. Like that was a team that was really successful last year. And by the way, that logic was right.

But it was almost like Vegas had a feeling. And then you think like all the things that went wrong for them from basically that seventh game against Dallas, which we'll never get the, maybe there'll be an oral history seven years from now about it. But you have the Aiton, Monty Williams, that was a little weird. Then the Aiton,

they kind of begrudgingly give them the max. Jay Crowder, he bounces. You have all the Sarver drama. It's just that there were some breadcrumbs that were being sprinkled for us, but still to be under 500 this late. Now, but their best players hurt. So,

um, you got to factor that in. But on the other hand, there are some of the other really good teams, I think would at least be 500 if their best player got hurt. This is a team that is not. Yeah. And it's like,

not just Booker. I mean, it's Cam Johnson who was in there starting. Yeah. Chris Paul, I think has missed 19 games. Here's what I say to the sons fans, like,

like Eddie that are trying to throw it back in my face, though, Bill, because I went to training camp the year after they went to the NBA finals, and I'll tell you, they were livid. Chris Paul was livid. Monty Williams was not happy. They wanted, like, they didn't feel like they were getting appropriate credit because everybody was going, well, you faced the Lakers in the first round. There was no Anthony Davis.

You faced the Nuggets in the second round. There was no Jamal Murray, and then Will Barton got hurt. You faced the Clippers in the third round. There was no Anthony Davis. You faced the Nuggets in the second round. There was no Jamal Murray. And then Will Barton got hurt. You faced the Clippers in the third round. There was no Kawhi Leonard. So like they felt they were getting short change. Okay. Well, if you, if you're saying like those teams can't use injuries as an excuse, then you can't use injuries and excuse to, to be horrible this year. So that's my, my comeback to that. But yeah, they've had a, they've had a ton of injuries And the Crowder thing, we've talked about that in the past when you've called in the show, is the most mysterious holdout probably in the history of the sport. Yeah, I don't get it at all.

And I also don't understand why they're paying them. That's where professional sports, I feel like we've just lost the narrative when somebody's like, screw it, I'm not playing anymore. And they're like, okay, why don't you, you could take a break. We'll just send your paychecks every two weeks. It's like, what? Especially with Sarver. Like Sarver, right, still has to like sign off on that, I would think.

At least at the beginning. And they're still paying him despite the fact, like you would think he'd be trying to save every cent. So yeah, that makes no sense. And I like, listen, I blame Jay Crowder and he probably would get more playing time in Phoenix right now with everybody hurt than he would anywhere he got traded. But also it's a little bit on the organization. Like, how do you not smooth things over and make sure that the guy is happy and, you know, explain to him. By the way, is Jay Crowder really worth

it? Like, I remember him being pretty mediocre in the playoffs last year when they were trying to throw him and a bunch of other people at Luka Doncic. So those six teams I mentioned, Blazers, Clippers, Hawks, Raptors, Bulls, Phoenix, the Clippers and the Suns are the two teams that don't have a lot of outs. The Clippers could play the Paul George card if they really wanted to. The Suns, they're not trading Booker. Cam Johnson's eligible for an extension, which makes him a little bit harder to trade. And if I were them, I wouldn't want to trade him anyway. Aiton, they just signed to this mammoth deal. And you look around, it's like, would you rather have him for 30 or would you rather have Walker Kessler for a million bucks? Would you

rather have Robert Williams for 12 million? For what's, for what he is compared to his peers, he's now in the high end. And I think that makes him a lot harder to trade. That market is like the Mitchell Robinson. What is he like? He's like eight, nine. That market for centers like that, even though he's a higher end of it,

it's still pretty pricey. And so you have that. And then you have the Chris Paul contract, which I think at this point is untradeable. And if it's not untradeable, it probably is for Phoenix. They're not going to be happy to trade him, but he's making $35 million a year. Any really good team that would want him to push him over the top probably has a point guard already, which brings me back to the point from the Clippers thing. This is a really guard, perimeter-driven league now.

And if you can't kick ass at the one, the two, or the three in some way, I don't know where you fit in anymore. Yeah. On the Aiton thing, I was pointing out to Eddie, you're a ringer,

and I think I texted you this as well today. He's behind Robert Williams, right? I mean, I don't know if you have anything to do with that, but I think he's second Robert Williams, right? I mean, I don't know if you have anything to do with that, but I think he's second Robert Williams is in the 60s. So Robert Williams is making less money than him. And Aiton's not viewed as good of him. And then, yeah, with the Chris Paul contract, I think I looked that up the other day. It's 30-something this year. It's 30-something next year. And not everybody's aging like LeBronbron but i mean i gotta be honest up until

they got hurt last year i had him in my top five for the mvp race then he got hurt right before the all-star break and he fell off in the two previous years i voted for him top five with a vote at the end of the season so it's really just been a really fast drop off for him but i don't think he's getting it back do you no i mean we have the segment after this. We talk about Tom Brady. And look, man, it happens. You're going to hit an age where you're just not going to be the same guy anymore. We've seen this in sports. Sports can change.

They can change the rules. They can add teams. They can pull out the three-point line. They can make it easier to throw. The one thing that's never going to change is that at some point you get old and you're not as good as you used to be. And it happens to everybody. We kept waiting for it to happen to Chris Paul. And it seems like it's probably finally happened.

And it makes sense. He was in the 2005 draft. I'm not surprised. This is the rule of the league. Everybody gets old. Shaq kind of stumbling around on that Cavs team and that Celtics team where it's like Shaq's back. It's like, was he?

He was averaging like 12 points a game. This is what happens. And it's crazy that it hasn't happened to LeBron really at all yet. I mean, he's certainly not the same guy he was in the 09 to 13 range, but he's scoring like he's had the month straight of basically 33 a game and like 56% shooting. It's pretty nuts. I did not expect it. Did you? No, no. I mean, I thought, I mean, I expected it because I'm sick of talking about it.

So, you know, you always want to be screwed and have to tell that. I mean, 48 points. We let off the show with it today. What else are you going to do? You have to just because it's so amazing. But yeah, that's why you take advantage of the window, too. You have to take advantage when you have it. They were in the finals with a two-game lead.

Chris Paul didn't take advantage of it. They win 64 games. They were easily the favorite last year. You and I, you had them as the favorite, right? I had them winning the championship. They were playing the best for the first four months of the season, which is a pretty good litmus test usually.

Yeah, and your window is now, I think, closed. I asked you, we were texting, how many teams in the West do you think could actually win the title at this point? Because if you do the exercise, it's a lower number than I think people would think. Because for me, it's Nuggets and Grizzlies. Warriors have to be in there. Maybe Pelicans.

We still haven't seen them healthy at all. And I just think, I don't know if they could win three straight, but I feel like they could topple somebody. And then I'm done. I have three and a half teams. How many do you have? Okay, so I think the answer to this question though,

and we'll stick with the West right now, is a lot more than maybe at any point in NBA history when you combine the East and the West. Do you agree with that? Do you disagree with that? Like maybe the 70s after Walton got hurt and it was a little bit, even though it's funny because both years you had Washington and Seattle meeting in the finals, but I think it was probably pretty wide open in 78 and 79 after he got hurt.

But can you remember a year where you've had more teams than this? Maybe you're going to say you don't think there's many. I just think the parity is far greater than ever before. I think there's parity at the high end, but if you're asking me who's actually has a chance to actually win the title and win four straight playoff rounds, I have three and a half in the West Celtics, Milwaukee. I'm not ready to put Philly in there yet.

I just don't trust it for four rounds. I don't, I can't get there with them yet. I really want to see it. I want to see them have like a 15 game winning streak. I want to see everybody stay healthy. I want to see what they do with the trade deadline. I'm just not, I don't think they know what the team is yet. You can even see it like Maxie was starting, then he comes off the bench and Ty will play sometimes,

he doesn't play other time. And can Embiid stay healthy for 10 straight weeks? I just have questions. I think the Cavs are almost there, but I want to see what the trade is. And then that's it. I do not have Brooklyn in there. Yeah, so I guess I'll go over to the East then

since we finished there, then we can go back to the West. So I have Brooklyn in there. Yeah. So I guess I'll go over to the East then since we finished there, then we can go back to the West. But so I have Brooklyn. I mean, 20 games stretch. You do have them. Okay. I do have Brooklyn as a team. Now, like, do I think Kyrie Irving probably screws things up?

Yeah, I think he probably does. But Durant's that good, right? So it's basically just a Durant thing. I love TJ Warren, too. I think that was an awesome pickup by, by Sean Marks. And Claxton's a lot better than I thought. All right. Maybe they need to back up big, but Claxton's outperformed, you know, the, the apex to where I thought he could get to. So I will say Brooklyn, clearly I have Boston and Milwaukee, Philadelphia. I do like Maxie coming off the bench a little bit more. And I think he pointed on the podcast with with Zach when you were talking about like you can't have him on Harden

in the same backcourt and Melton was doing a good job when he was out but anytime you have somebody as good as is Embiid and Harden's playing at this level even though he's another guy you don't trust in the postseason like I'm not going to count out Embiid in a in in any series the best player on the floor in any series right uh you know and I think He's the best player on the floor in any series, right? I think that's the thing that the four teams have. Boston, Tatum can go through the entire playoffs, be the best player on the floor in any series. Giannis obviously can do that. Durant can do that.

Embiid can do that. That's my problem with Cleveland. Donovan Mitchell's been great. He's nowhere near those other four guys. Yeah, that's a fair point. You're right. The upside of Embiid, I would give them a half. I would give Cleveland a half. I'll give Brooklyn a half just because of

the Durant factor. So two and then three half teams. And then in the West I have three. And then New Orleans is a half. So I guess that's nine teams kind of in the mix. That is a half. So I guess that's nine teams kind of in the mix. That is a lot, but I really only believe in five.

Yeah, and I think the other good thing is just like, can you kid yourself, right? So like the Pelicans fans can at least kid themselves. And I do think like if they maybe if they make a move, they can do something. We were talking about Bogdanovich down there today, since in that Shams article, they were linking them. But maybe that's too many pieces because I'm interested with the Pelicans. Is like Brandon Ingram going to fit in next to Zion and be the number two? Like that's where we talk about continuity with the Clippers and last year with the Nets.

Like, all right, they've been great when Ingram was their number one guy. They're even better when Zion's their number one guy. But they haven't played together at all. And now you've got Zion who's out for a significant amount of time. So like once those two guys are together, are they going to mesh well? We don't know the answer, but I do think like you can kid yourself at least in New Orleans. I think you can kid yourself if you're the Clippers for sure, because there's still some experts I think that buy in. And maybe you can even kid yourself if you're in Sacramento.

I'm not saying they have a shot, but like they can kid themselves. Right. They can go into the postseason and say, like, why not us? Like, could they be probably a trade away? Probably one more move. But yeah, you're right. I think there's more teams that I wouldn't want to see in round one, which is a different list.

Right. I don't think Miami can win the title, but I would not want to play them in round one. I just don't want to. Sacramento, the way they move the ball and the way they can score and the home court advantage they have, I don't want to go down there down 3-2. I just don't.

So you go on that line and that becomes a little more reminiscent of the 93 season, which I think was the last season that was super deep like this, where just like all over the place, there were scary teams. Well, do you want to be Denver or Memphis and in the first round face the Lakers?

Do you want to face Golden State? Do you want to face Phoenix if all those teams are healthy? Or if the Lakers somehow go out and make a move for a guy like Bogdanovich, then they got Anthony Davis playing at an MVP level. Then you got LeBron playing like he is. You have Russell Westbrook,

can't be anywhere near the floor in the final two minutes, but is playing all right for the first 46 minutes. Like that would scare me. Wouldn't you be scared if you're Memphis? Like, would it be beyond belief for you to see the Lakers, Golden State? Clearly you think Golden State can. Or Phoenix, if they're in the playing,

beat a top two seed. Golden State as the three seed. There's all these incentives to get the one seed if you're Denver. I tweeted tonight, Denver's 20-3 at home and Memphis is 19-3. Those are real home records, which we don't really see as much anymore.

I think they both have real home court advantages that if you're the two seed, now you have to think like, eh, I'm going to have to play Golden State in round two. And then I have to win on the road in Denver in round three, which would suck. We got to take a break. FanDuel is America's number one sports book and new customers right now can get $150 in free bets guaranteed. When you place your first $5 bet. Just download the FanDuel Sportsbook app. It is safe. It is secure. It is super easy to use.

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Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL's best. They're all on Prime. Prime Monday Night Hockey. It's on Monday. It's on Prime. It frightens me that we agree on certain things when I'm driving around and I have your show on. Both of us were completely appalled that LeBron was pressuring the Lakers for help when he was single-handedly the reason they don't have any picks or assets left,

except for Anthony Davis. I just like the lack of... I don't want to say self-awareness because I think LeBron is really self-aware. His lack of culpability in any of this, I think, is pretty hilarious. And I keep waiting for somebody on the Lakers side to call him out or do the unnamed sources thing. But the Lakers franchise doesn't do that. They don't really mess with them.

They got mad at him once in the All-Star break. That's it. How about the media? Isn't that the media's job? Hey, LeBron, raise your hand and say, that's great, and I understand where you're coming from, but are you not responsible for part of this roster? Are you not responsible for signing the extension? Like you, the media is allowed to call them out as well, instead of just playing as PR puppet. so we agree on that we also agree on the Kyrie Irving superstar thing and we just saw it right Katie gets her the Nets are playing awesome they look great Katie and Kyrie's been on his best

behavior Katie's playing about as well as he's played in a couple years and he goes out and I hear and read in multiple places like well now it's time for Kyrie to try to carry the nets in KD's absence.

So I'm like, we've seen this play before. He'll carry him for about four days and watch what happens. And he's already like, they're already in a tailspin now. You can see where it's headed. He missed the game tonight, a calf injury, but we've already seen it when he has to be a leader, carry all that stuff. It's never going to work. The Simmons thing is, it's weird.

He is, all of his bad habits are worse than all of his good habits seem to be pretty good. But did you see he's missed, I think, 15 of his last 16 free throws? It's an actual stat. I don't know what you do with him in the playoffs. Teams are just going to hack a Benham, right? Why would you not do that? Yeah, I was watching. First of all,

yes, that's what you would do, especially in a high pressurized situation. Like imagine him stepping to the free throw line in Philadelphia or Boston and like the second round of the conference finals of a big game, not going to happen. Uh, Jock Vaughn can say like, he's not concerned, but he said he was concerned the other day when he basically had him on the bench for the final, what, 10 minutes against, uh minutes against the Celtics. So we didn't play him. And then I'm watching the game here against San Antonio today, and they're literally backing off him

15 feet, allowing him to take a shot, and he's not doing it. So you can play guys like that against maybe San Antonio, obviously, if they're fully healthy with Kyrie and Durant. You can't play a guy like that against Philadelphia or Boston or Milwaukee in the postseason.

It's not going to cut it. So we saw Portland tonight. And Dame is a guy that I really like because he's been pretty adamant. Like, hey, man, I signed up to stay here and try to win a title here. This is what I want to do. This is part. I don't want to go chase the title somewhere else. I want to live here.

I want to win a title. And yet when you watch them, going back to our no man's land discussion from before, it kind of seems like they should trade Dame. And I know you and Eddie talked about this on the show. Are they better off if they just build around Simons and Sharp and maybe they trade him and Jeremy Grant, try to bottom out one more time? What are you trying to accomplish with Dame when he's 32 with the disparity? And you could see it tonight is Denver's just toying with them. Jokic had maybe one sweat drop in the third quarter and that was it. What do you do if you're Portland at this point? Yeah, it doesn't look like

they're going to do it, but it's one of the few things Eddie and I agree on is, you know, think about it from a Celtics fan perspective, right? The best thing that they didn't do this with Bird, McHale and Parrish. I don't think you could do it with somebody as great as Bird, right? Is where you trade them and you reboot, but it led to 21 years where you're not winning anything. The second time around, they did do it with Paul Pierce and Garnett. They rebooted their franchise. Memphis did the same thing. And Memphis is probably the better example because they're also a really small market, but they traded the away the guys I think that are viewed as the best players in franchise history in Conley and Marc Gasol. And look where they are right now. They might win an NBA championship. They've got a new best player in franchise history

in John Morant. And Portland's like sitting on this guy just because he wants to be there. And he's a great talent. And I admire the fact he wants to stay there. I wish more guys did it. As a result, he's one of my favorite players. But you've got a perfect opportunity right now to get a massive ball because like the Lakers would give you the two picks, probably plus more you could get them for if they have anything more that they would give you. And other teams, the Knicks would give you, you know, everything you wanted. Other teams would as well. Then you can get all these picks. Plus, you have two guys that I think you like, I do, in Sharp and Simons. And you can reboot that way and get them more playing time.

Because Sharp's not going to get playing time behind Dame in order to progress as you'd want. So build around Sharp, Simons. Get a ton in return for Lillard and Jeremy Grant. And that's your quickest way to a rebuild. If you just let it play out, I mean, you're going to be in no man, like even more in no man's land. After that, you're going to be the worst team in the NBA. What do you think? What would you do?

I feel like he's earned the choice to be his with how he kept doubling up and what he means to the city. And I just wouldn't feel right about if he wanted to stay trading him. I also, more importantly, don't think there's the right trade. And I think if there was the right trade, it's a different story, right? Like if Tyrese Maxey was 20% better than he is, and Philly was 10% closer than they were to a title, and they were like, you know what,

Maxey and Harris for Dame, and we could actually lock down the title if we do this. And you present that to Dame. And it would make sense to have him and James Harden, which I actually don't think it makes sense to have them as a backcourt. A trade like that, or if Miami was better, and Miami had picks and some sort of chess piece beyond just the Lowry contract contract and they could really put together an awesome trade. That would make sense. But I, to me, there's no trade. There's no trade that where I'd be like, Oh, if,

if, Oh, if they do this, this would be awesome for Dame. And then you won't feel bad for it. So I think they probably keep them until this summer. Um, but in the meantime,

he kind of screwed the, you know, there'll be like the ninth seed, the 10th seed, there'll be in the play-in stuff. I guess you could talk yourself into, oh, that's good for Shaden Sharp. That's good for Simons. That's good for our young guys.

We'll get some play-in experience. But ultimately, where does it get you? By the time this all turns around, Dame's going to be 35. It's good for Lillard because he gets what he wants. I think it's good for the Portland fan that loves him and he and, you know, be arguably the greatest blazer of all time. I think for this generation, they'll say that. I wouldn't say that. But, you know, and then do you look bad around the rest of the league if you get rid of them? And then everybody's like, oh, why, maybe with the Clippers with Blake Griffin when they got rid of him. But it's not like free agents are going there anyway. But the point is it's going to be a long rebuild. Once Lillard,

Lillard winds down. I'd be more concerned if I was them keeping Lillard and then overpaying Jeremy Grant in free agency this summer and trying to like basically lock down your 44-win team. I think that's the history of the league says that's where you really get in trouble. When it's like, we have this nucleus that has no chance of winning the title.

Let's pour some more money into it. Like that's the classic Washington Wizards move, right? They're famous for that. Hey, we have a chance to lock down 44 wins for four more years. Let's do it. So that would make me nervous. The Dallas piece of this,

I wish they, the teams that were, it'd be like, oh my God, that would be amazing if they could go there. They just don't have enough to give Portland to make it worth their while. The one team that maybe does is Sacramento, but I don't know if Fox would be on the table for them at this point. It seems like they love him. Yeah, I don't know if Fox would be on the table

for them at this point. It seems like they love him. Yeah, I don't know if I would do that just because of the age difference and how well it's working. Yeah, but that's the thing. And you could go through every team and it just can't find the trade.

Maybe even like New Orleans. I don't know. I don't see it. So what do we think is going to be the big trade this deadline then? Because it's not that far away. Yeah,'t know. I don't see it. So what do we think is going to be the big trade this deadline then? Because it's not that far away. Yeah, I know. Who do you think the most desperate team is?

The desperate team to acquire something or to give something up? Either. So, you know, I think like, for example, Masai Ujiri, he's like the cold-hearted guy. So he's not. He traded Kyle Lowry. He wanted to blow it up. He traded DeMar DeRarta Rosen. Then he got rid of Lowry this past year, but like, that wasn't the popular thing to do in Toronto. Right. He pulled the cord anyway. And I think he's one of those GMs that's like not necessarily running the organization to like save his job.

Cause you get a lot of those guys. I think he does it for like legacy reasons. And he's not good just being in the middle or going like, all right, let me just see what I can do to like, uh, keep myself around for two or three more years. Uh, and he's got the most pieces too. I don't know if they'd be willing to blow it up and give away Siakam, but they got to get a no bay. Uh, I'm not sure like how much they could get for Fred Van Vliet. He's going to be a free agent. He's been horrible since midway through last year.

Uh, Gary Trent's a guy. Uh, so I would think that they could be the most active team as far as selling. And with Chicago as well, I know you've kind of turned the page on that. You're like, maybe they should hold. I don't know what to think anymore. What's their record now? 2024. But they won their last one. I just zigzag on them three times a week. I can't decide. Well, so I mean, but isn't best scenario, like you get eliminated in the first round? Like, is that good enough for Chicago? Is qualified for like, first of all, just make the play in because they're not going to be in the top six. And then once you get into the play and qualify for the postseason, get eliminated by Milwaukee, Boston, Brooklyn or Philadelphia in the first round.

Like, why would you want to keep that together? Especially when DeMar DeRozan is a little bit older. And quite frankly, I just want to see DeRozan on a winning team. He's been awesome the last two years. Well, did you see what Vucevic did to Golden State the other night? Yeah, and the greatest defender of all time. I actually had a tweet on that. It's like, so Draymond Green calls himself the greatest defender of all time,

yet he's given up 43 points to Vucevic. What is he doing against, I don't know, Will Chamberlain if the new degree is Bill Russell. How many points is Wilt scoring on Draymond if Vucevic is going to drop 43? The thing that

I watched some of that game on the NBA app, which has been really good at just, you can kind of catch up and just zoom through and fast forward and get to the parts you want. The Bulls have three guys who could be the best player on the court in a game. That's why they're 20 and 24,

and I can't write them off yet. They're only four and a half games behind the Knicks, and this goes to my zigzag thing. I watched that Warriors game, and I'm thinking, I don't know if I'd want to totally play this team in a playoff warriors game and i'm thinking like i don't know if i'd want to totally play this team in a playoff series and i don't even think they're good well the weird thing about them too you see how like they're great against the uh like the celtics and the bucks

and the nets and philadelphia like all these teams right on four remember last year when they couldn't beat any of those teams yeah now it's the opposite like last year i think couldn't beat any of those teams? Yeah. Now it's the opposite. Like last year, I think there were four and 18 against the top four seeds in each conference. This year, it's the complete opposite where they're playing well against the good teams and bad against the bad teams. So like, they're just a really weird team, but let me phrase it to you this way. Like if that was your team, would you want them to keep it together? Knowing like, you're just going to be in the middle of the road here?

Or would you go like, all right, Brad Stevens or Danny Ainge, blow this thing up because we're stuck in the middle. If they were my team, that's how I view it. I'd want them to blow it up. I would not be good with like, all right, we're the ninth seed. Maybe we can qualify for the postseason. If we get into the postseason, maybe we can push the Celtics or box the six or seven games. If that was my team, I would want the Lakers picks.

I think those are the best assets out there. And I've been saying that for two months. I'd be like, look, I like watching these guys, but if we can get both of those Laker picks for DeRozan and Vucevic, I'm doing that today. Like, just sign me up now.

I'm in. I don't know how much, how much of market value DeRozan, I think he's going to be 33 with some miles on him. I think he's over a thousand games now. And then Vucevic is a free agent at the end of the year. And then Levine's the other one who's got a huge contract and the knee that's been operated on twice.

They don't really have the ultimate kick-ass asset, right? It's almost like two of them have to be in the same trade for something to happen. Wait, last thing before we go, the OKC thing, the 21 and 23. They're 10 seed right now. And when you watch them,

it feels like they could get to a seven seed. What would you do if you ran that team they have 700 million picks would you would you trade for somebody would you get like some rebounding what would you do or that's that fan base absolutely despises me because maybe i've been sitting on your podcast last year at least said on my show a million times that they're the black eye of the nba because they were purposely losing for for multiple years. And I guess my biggest issue with Sam Presti is clearly he's a very intelligent guy. What I've never liked is that he's treated like, you know, Red Auerbach and Jerry West all rolled into one because, you know, let's be there's other like Masai Ujiri has won something. Bob Myers.

You're not impressed by Presti winning one finals game in his entire career? Not to the level of the rest of the media, where they again bow down to him. He's also had the worst trade in NBA history for no reason. With Harden. Wait, hold on. I have to stop you on that.

We have a new worst trade in NBA history. The Gobert trade took the Harden trade and it just vaulted over it like a rocket. It's in a different planet. I probably concur with that. You could argue Walker Kessler for Gobert straight up is a trade people would rather have Kessler than Rudy Gobert for $40 million a year.

And they got 70 other things in the trade. So I think that's the new worst trade about them. Yeah, he dropped 20-20 the other day on the home floor of Minnesota, like Tim Conley. It's got to be embarrassing for Tim Conley. He's averaging more blocks than him. I think it was like per 36, it's 3.7 for Kessler. It's 1.5 for Gobert.

The only reason you really get Gobert is to block shots. You know, so I can, and listen, the DeJounte Murray trades, not far behind. If this is what Atlanta is going to look like, they gave up a lot for DeJounte Murray too. So don't forget that. That's a horrible trade.

But so I've been, it's no go bear trade. The go bear, the go bear trades in Mars. It's, it's, it's Walker Kessler alone is, is an unfair trade.

And then they threw in nine other things. I can't get over it. Exactly. The fact that Walker Kessler is this an unfair trade. And then they threw in nine other things. I can't get over it. Exactly. The fact that Walker Kessler is this good is the funniest piece of this. Remember when they were saying how we, who was that guy? They didn't want to give up Jada McDaniels. Yes.

Yeah. So it's like, well, we kept him. That's where we drew the line. It's like, that's where you drew the line after you gave up 300 cents on the dollar. You drew the line at Jada McDaniels.

I saw the report today. Well, we didn't want to give up Walker Castro. Oh, well, that's right. Oh, you didn't? Yeah. He threw him in like he was a pair of car tires. Yeah. And I might, like you said,

he's probably the fifth or sixth most important part of that trade for Ainge too, right? After all the draft picks and maybe Jared Vanderbilt. Fifth? Honestly, I think he's like eighth or ninth. I would have had him behind Vanderbilt. Yeah, all the picks, then Vanderbilt and then maybe Walker Kessler.

So that makes the Ainge deal look even better. So we got that shock from him. We got the Lowry marketing shock from Cleveland. And that's another guy like Ainge. All right, he's won a championship. He's been to multiple finals and he's ripped. Oh, well, Danny Ainge almost made this trade.

Daryl Morey, your guy, like Daryl Morey at least tries every year and gets to the precipice of the NBA finals and gives it a shot. Like, so again, Presti's a really good GM. I just think he gets treated like he's, you know, the second coming of Red Auerbach and Jerry West. He is not that. With that said, they look like they have a bright future. Next step is, yes, with all those picks, do you agree? Like this summer, those have to be used for a veteran. All right. So like maybe even use the

pick you have this year. If it's in the lottery, you see a player you like. But then all these other future picks, like get a borderline all-star, get a borderline all-NBA guy. Stick him next to Shea Gildas Alexander. That kid can be one of the top 10 players in the sport and then start winning at a high level. Well, and they might have struck oil with Giddy, too, on top of everything else. We haven't even seen Shea yet.

Yeah, I don't know if next year is the year, but I think they should be thinking about two years from now. Can we win the NBA title and what are our moves and how do we use all these picks, which we can't use anyway. And what is our all in?

And then how do you convince a superstar to come to OKC and be the fulcrum of this? How does it work with SGA? It's clearly his team. I don't know. They've never really had the pressure, for whatever reason, of having results after they got to the 2012 finals

and whatever. It's just, it just seems like they're happy to just have really fun, likable young teams or some sort of gimmick like Russ trying to win the MVP. But I think that fan base

is just so happy to have a team. I can't see them being like, what the hell? We're so close. Like, I just think they're really grateful to have a team. I can't see them being like, what the hell? We're so close. Like, I just think they're really grateful to have the team. Yeah. It's my take.

You're talking about like convincing free agents to come. Well, what about convincing their own guys to stay? Because that's what didn't happen last time, right? With Durant wanting to leave and then it all started. Yeah. So it's like, all right, you got all these, you know, you got all these numbers out of the bar with the female.

All right, well, you actually have to like call them up and utilize them for the date. You got to use the number. These guys aren't, you know, he's not using the players. He's letting them go. You know, the other part of it is just like, look at all these young players, like John Morant now has all these great playoff experiences. Tatum, I think Eddie was talking about it today. Tatum has played like 70 or 80 postseason games already at the age of 24. Should have let Alexander play with the Clippers. He hasn't been back since. That's something that's going to suck. He went back for OKC. I think

he's had two playoff rounds. Remember the OKC Houston series? He kind of sucked, but I think it was really good for him. That's another one you and me and Eddie are all in. I'm all for if you can make the playoffs, try to do it. The experience is going to help. The experience is going to be good.

There's no downside. So when I look at like, I do think they're one of the 10 most talented teams in the West, as crazy as that sounds, just because they're young, they're healthy. They have an awesome guy.

This Jalen Williams, the really good one, that guy just came in about four weeks ago and he's been like a borderline dominant two-way athlete defensive guy. He's really good. So I don't know. I would, if I were them, I would at least sniff around and, you know, if somebody like Vucevic became available and I could give up two non-lottery picks, like, what do I care? Okay. Let's throw them in and we'll lock them in.

I also think that with what they did with Horford and with Chris Paul, I think there's a good vibe with that team, with the players, because they really took care of those guys and looked out for those guys and did that over and over again. So anyway. Yeah, Ken did the same thing about his time down there. Tell Eddie we're not good. We might be good with lottery balls and that's about it.

And tell them I don't miss them at all. Hashtag we ain't good is the message I'm going to deliver to them. So I'll do that first off tomorrow, Bill. All right. You can hear Termini and Eddie Johnson on the Sirius XM NBA radio and also on the NBA app because you can actually see their faces. Good to see you. Thanks, Bill. And it was nice to have an intelligent

basketball conversation for the first time in a while. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember.

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or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. Get to know yourself and your roots better in 2024 with AncestryDNA. Want to know where your family comes from in Northern France? Maybe you'd like to see how your genes influence certain traits like diet, fitness, and allergies. There's so much of you and your heritage to discover. Don't wait. Ancestry DNA kits are on sale now for a limited time. Visit ancestry.ca for details. Terms apply. Okay. Taping this Tuesday afternoon. If Tom Brady makes any crazy career decisions, don't blame us. Nora Princiati is here. Steven Ruiz is here. Last night, Tom Brady in a non-surprising

ass kicking by the Cowboys. I was not surprised. I was surprised by how bad Brady was. There's been glimpses. There's been whatever. That was the worst case scenario of the 45-year-old QB who looked a step or a split second slow and in the wrong spots a couple of times. Looked like he didn't want to get hit. I thought his eye level was down. Steven Ruiz, you're the QB whisperer. You study these guys. You make rankings for us. How did you leave the year with Brady as an elite quarterback is he out is he no longer an elite where do you stand uh no longer elite definitely I think I put him in the the second tier the guys that can win a Super Bowl but you need to have a really good team around

him like a Matthew Stafford for example last year but I agree with you I think that's the biggest thing that stood out was his eye level dropping Brady it's kind of hard to describe Brady's game just because it's kind of subtle what he's good at. But I always thought his pocket toughness was what made him different from all the other elite quarterbacks. And it's gone. And I don't know if it's gone because he's too old or if it's like, this team doesn't have it. And I don't want to get hit. So I thought maybe he was saving. Cause he,

he was doing this all year. He was saving his body. He was getting rid of the ball a split second sooner than he needed to all that stuff. And I was like in the playoffs, he's not going to do that. Cause now it's like four wins and you can win their Superbowl. He'll take the hits,

but he didn't. Nora, what did you say? You covered him once upon a time back when he had less hair and it might've been lighter. And he was probably about 10 pounds heavier. Slightly different jawline. Maybe a different face altogether. Maybe a different face. I don't know. Just throwing it out there. But you covered him back when he used to take the big hits. It just didn't seem like he wanted to do that yesterday. That's what it is, right? And you'll remember exactly what year it is, year it was better than I will, Bill.

But there's in one of the Patriots Super Bowl documentaries, there's a flashback to some season where they weren't very good. And there's a shot of Bill Belichick. Norah, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's against the Saints. It's the Monday night game in like 2010 against the Saints, the year that they lost to Baltimore in the wildfire round.

Yeah. They got blown out. Where Belichick's just like, we don't have it, and I know we don't have it. And there have been so many times this season where I've wondered if Brady, in terms of his willingness to take hits, is going through a similar thing. And

his best shot, if he's going to go somewhere else and try to play again next year, the best case scenario for that is that at some point this season, he just went, this team does not have it and it is not worth it for me to put my body on the line and I don't want to take the hits. And that that didn't change in the playoffs because he knew they still didn't have it. And they're going up against Micah Parsons and there was just absolutely no way.

I mean, that's a bad mentality to have at a playoff game. But if he still felt like that, then fine, he's got a shot if he wants to keep playing, but he looks like he's done getting hit. And he's a 45 year old. Who's never been particularly mobile. So if he's not like he can make the throws, that's still there. But if he's not willing to do that,

there's just no, you can't play football if you don't want to get hit. And honestly, it looks like he doesn't want to get hit. If you're Tom Brady, what is like a playoff game or a wildcard game? You care? This is like a week five game to him.

I don't, I don't, he doesn't care until like the divisional round, at least in this team, on this team. You know, I was thinking about my history with Brady and some of the great moments and all this.

And there was that, always that thing in the back of your head, this is going to end. It's going to be kind of a bummer when it happens. Yesterday, I picked Dallas. I bet on Dallas. I was rooting against Tampa, but I still felt sad watching it. It did hit that point. I don't even think Jordan on the Wizards, you know, his knees broke down, but he was still like, he never looked like that. He never had a game like that. And that red zone interception, which, you know, 20 years of the past, I'd immediately had flashbacks to the Carolina Superbowl when, uh, when we basically were about to put the game away and then he threw

this weird goal in the, in the end zone interception and it flipped the game. And they showed that he hadn't had a throw like that in like three, four years. It felt like this year he had a horseshoe up his ass a lot of the year. I thought it was a four and 13 team that snuck out a couple games. And to Nora's point, I think at some point you can talk yourself back into it if you're him by just saying that was the year from hell. I went through this horrible off the field thing. We never had it together. My offensive line fell apart right away.

We were never going to win a Super Bowl. And deep down, I knew that. And that's why I didn't play that well. And then because he's a competitor, you start talking yourself into, but next year and my life will be normal and then I'll have a new team. And I do think he's going to come back. And I think this is starting to feel like watching those boxers or UFC fighters that are like, no, man, you just got knocked out. Don't, no more. But I do think he's going to come back. And I think this is starting to feel like watching those boxers or UFC fighters that are like, no, man, you just got knocked out. Don't. No more. But I do think he's going to come back. Do you guys think he comes back?

I do. I definitely think he does. Yeah. I don't know if it's that bad. Am I crazy for buying into a little bit of that? Not a lot. But Brady over the course of the season

was not as bad as he was on Monday night. That was... I agree with that. He was in the first halves and I had a stat on my Thursday pod about their last five wins. I think they scored like 96 points total in the five wins

and 69 of them were in the fourth quarter in OT. So in the first three quarters they scored 29 points total in the five wins. And you start looking at stuff like that and you're like, wow, this team. And I test those backing up. They were always down. They were always scrapping and trying to come back.

And, you know, they just never looked right. Some of that is, you got to say it's on coaching though. And Brady had a hand in that too, right? This is in some ways the staff that he picked for this year I think they were the worst

I think they might have been the worst coach team in the league this year I think I really think they might have been I'm struggling to come up with Nathaniel Hackett exists and Jeff Saturday okay worst non-fired worst entire season long coaching staff of the year.

I mean, the play-action stuff is just unconscionable. It's 2023, man. We can't be going, our running game doesn't work, so we don't run our play-action stuff. You've got a great play-action. That's indefensible. And it was indefensible all year.

And part of the reason why they would have those fourth-quarter comebacks is they would get down big and all of a sudden they would be a little bit less conservative. And they had something. I don't think this team was ever going to be a great team once they stacked those offensive line injuries early. It was probably done. And I say that even though they were my

preseason Super Bowl pick. So, you know, whoops. I do think playing... Because a lot of the times when they put up those numbers in the fourth quarter, they were playing from behind and teams were playing soft. They were like playing quarters.

They weren't really rushing the passer. And I think that's like the perfect old man defense, right? That's like a practice defense. He doesn't have to worry about getting hit. He doesn't have to worry about tight window throws.

So it makes sense like that the splits went that way considering where he is in his career. Can I ask both of you this question? Because I hear this case made for Brady a lot where people say, well, if he had an awesome offensive line and if he had a way better offensive coordinator,

Brady would still be able to be Brady. Couldn't we say that? Steven, you rank all these QBs. Couldn't we say that about 15 QBs? Like I could say that about Jared Goff right now. Can block for Jared Goff and give him good receivers. And guess what? He's going to throw for 300 yards.

I could say it about Geno Smith. There's a whole bunch of people. Kirk Cousins, I think is maybe a little higher end version of that. But I think there's a whole bunch of people you could say, if you block for him, he's going to be good. The thing that Brady really didn't have for the second half of his Patriots career, and then it just vanished the last five years, was his ability to move around subtly is just gone. He was always good at that. He was never a scrambler, but he was always good at reading, oh, this guy's kind of coming this way. I'm just going to edge

over here. And all of a sudden he would have this clean pocket again. And I don't, I didn't see that anymore from him. But anyway, do you agree with that premise? Like, couldn't we say this about Jared Goff? Yeah, but I think the different, like on early downs, first and second down, I think that's the case. That's basically, you can get by with a quarterback like Brady if you have good protection,

or you can get by with a quarterback like Jared Goff. The difference between a Tom Brady and a Jared Goff is on third and long. And when you get exotic looks and blitzes, Jared Goff looks at the sideline with a dumb look on his face. Tom Brady knows what to do. I think that would be the difference between those two guys. And even a Kirk Cousins,

who still loses his mind in those situations, like we saw on Sunday. By the way, can we revisit the Dak versus Kirk debate? They're not the same quarterback. Two totally different quarterbacks. Can you give Dak that credit? Can we do a quick tangent for five seconds?

Literally rule number one in my playoff gambling manifesto that I've had for 25 years is don't overreact to the team that looked really good in the previous round. Dallas, to me, is like, they check every single box for, let's all slow down. Tampa was probably a 4-13 team that pulled four dumb games out of their butts,

and they sucked, and let's not put Dak in the Hall of Fame yet. I have my guard up. It's not that he went off or what did he throw? Five touchdowns, four touchdowns? Yeah. It's the way in which he went about it. Fair. Picking the defense apart. You never see jared golf look like that you see jared golf like hitting play action from under center and it's wide open i think that's the difference between a quarterback like dac who hasn't won admittedly hasn't really carried a team admittedly but when you see stuff like that you tend to think that he can do that. He can carry a team.

It's like internet hero Justin Herbert. Never seen him do it. He's been doing it in some lousy games. Ouch. Didn't see some overthrow Keenan Allen. If he just connects on that pass, the game's over. That was a bad throw. That was a bad throw.

He's kind of sailed it into the first row. Acho should have tweeted about that throw. He missed the opportunity. Nora, where do you stand on the could 25 QBs, if you gave them an awesome offensive line and a good offensive coordinator and good receivers, would probably be good? Except for Zach Wilson.

25 is too many, but 15. And Brady's probably now in the 10 to 15. In the bottom edge. Yeah. Yeah. He's probably I mean, he's he's he's football wise smarter than Kirk Cousins, someone like that.

And I still think that does matter against good defenses in the playoffs. If he if he has the right team, if he's in that type of position, it's more valuable to have someone who's been there and who knows how to read a defense the way that he does then to have someone like a Jared Goff,

certainly. But I think that extends further to some of the older guys who still, you know, they're not Brady. I do think that matters, but he's not, he's not an elevator anymore, except maybe in those individual situations where you have a third

and long game on the line type of thing where the encyclopedia brain comes into play. It's not that it doesn't matter. It's just that it doesn't matter more than having a younger guy with mobility who's not going to have the fear of getting hit. That stuff

is just more important because that matters every down. Yeah, if the offense doesn't get someone open, Brady has no second option. Whereas all these other guys now, all the elite guys, they can do something still, even if the play call doesn't work.

He's an elevator if you need almonds. There's like an almond shortage in the locker room. Nora, what Taylor Swift album would you compare Brady's 2022 season to? Oh, none of them. None of them. Okay, good answer. Those are masterpieces, Phil. Okay, next question.

Trying to get me in trouble. We all have to pick a team we think Tom Brady is is going to play for next year and I'll take the third pick. We'll just, we'll get, we can go snake draft. Nora, you go first.

Think he's going to, or think he should. No, think he's going to what team will be, he be on in 2023 because I think all of us think he's going to play again. I think most likely is the Raiders. I'll give my thoughts after. Steven, you go second.

That was my pick, but I'll do a different pick. You know what? I'll go San Francisco. I don't care. I don't care about Brock Purdy. San Francisco. San Francisco. Was not expected that one.

That's on my list. I think there's four teams and San Francisco is one of them. I might as well go bold. She took my first pick. Man, that was really bold. Brock Purdy hasn't lost yet. He's 7-0.

Just give it time. His time will come. He's going to be getting all the... What was Baker Mayfield doing commercials for? Progressive. Yeah, he's going to be getting all the... What was Baker Mayfield doing commercials for? Progressive. Yeah, he's going to be getting the progressive insurance where in October next year, he'll be like, can you believe Brock Purdy has three commercials?

That would be great. He could do a whole Bay Area housing market thing with that. That's good. Be good. All right, my pick. So you have two picks. Stephen basically took two picks. What's your backup pick, Nora?

My backup pick would be the Dolphins. Okay. So the Dolphins are my main pick. My backup pick is Carolina. Okay. And I'm going to just put Houston out there as like, just, just kind of putting them over there just in case Sean Payton goes there.

And who knows? They, I think they have a ton of picks. They could trade one of them for, for Peyton. And it does feel like Peyton and Brady might be a package deal, but if he actually wants to win the title and go with Sean Peyton, it's not New Orleans because New Orleans, it's been

well-documented with their situation as cap wise. I thought Carolina was good. And ironically, what are the odds? We have a Carolina Panthers fan on this podcast. Stephen Ruiz. Like, you have to admit they have talent. It's not inconceivable that if they got Brady and they did two other things in the NFC, that's like a top three seed. What do you think of that one, Stephen?

I mean, I would be down for it as a Panthers fan. They have the offensive line. They have some good receivers. The defense is young. I mean, I could see it if they get the right coach. I don't know if they're going to get the offensive line. They have some good receivers. The defense is young. I mean, I could see it if they get the right coach. I don't know if they're going

to get the right coach, but... And I also think, like, David Tepper's the kind of owner that Brady could kind of, like, have some power, some real power in that organization. So I could see, like,

he ceded power to Matt Rule, of all people. So Brady walks in there. He's given the keys to the franchise. I think Miami is most realistic because I still, I'm sorry, but I just find it hard to believe too,

is going to play football again after he had three concussions in the span of two months. Maybe I'm a cynical dick. I'm going to say it on pods, but I'm going to say it now. I totally agree with you, Bill. I'm going to say it right now.

Like how many concussions is enough before we all go, Whoa, that was too many. Is it, do we need to get to say it right now. How many concussions is enough before we all go, whoa, that was too many? Do we need to get to four? Do we need to get to six? And everyone's saying that first concussion, well, no, that wasn't technically a concussion. It's like, okay, cool. Well, he wobbled and had to take a knee and that fit the profile of any concussion I've

ever watched in a football game. And then he got another one three days later, four days later. So I'm going to say that first one was probably a concussion. But what is he going to have? What if he has another next year? My guess would be that maybe he takes a year off and maybe Brady comes in as the stopgap for a year. But Nora, is their line good enough? Does that fit the profile for him? That's more of a we know the relationship with the owner and we know that they tried to do it once, so maybe they would

try to do it again. And you like the offensive weapons. The line is the question. I mean, Carolina offensive line in much better shape than Miami. And then I think the other thing you have to think about is that if I could pick, I would much rather be in the NFC as Tom Brady at this point than in the AFC

where you have to deal with all of those quarterbacks. But Miami, lifestyle, he's already in Florida. Kids are there already. Yeah, the kids are there. There's definitely a lot to that. And then I

think they're going to need a quarterback. And for everything that they've done to put that roster in a Super Bowl window outside of the quarterback position, I don't think that Ross and everybody there is just going to say, Oh, well, whoops, this thing happened with Tua. So shoot, now we have Tyreek and we made that move and we spent all this money, but guess it's over.

Like, they're going to try to do something. Everything that we know about how they behave says that they're going to try to do something and says that they've... The last time they tried to do that, it was with Tom Brady. So, that makes a lot of sense to me. The other one that I would throw out there

is the Jets. Garrett Wilson. I test drove that I would throw out there is the jets. Garrett Wilson. I test drove that about a week and a half ago and everybody went bonkers. They'd have to get rid of their coach and hire Sean Payton. I think would have to be part of it. Yeah. Him just going to the jets on his own seems weird to me. I,

Steven, I don't think Vegas happens. Can I, can I explain my Vegas pick? I don't think he, I don't think he should go to Vegas, but I think Stephen, I don't think Vegas happens. Can I explain my Vegas pick? I don't think he should go. I don't think he should go to Vegas, but I think he would talk himself into Vegas and talk himself into being able to win in Vegas

because of Josh McDaniels. They have Devontae. The offensive line isn't good, but they had a running game. They have some weapons. And I think Tom Brady is someone who, I think he's self-aware, but I don't think he realizes his limits

and what he could bring to a team. And I think, I don't know. He's overconfident. Look at his business venture. It's like 80 for Brady. No one, no,

that's like a heat check. No one else does that. I think Brady will, could talk himself into winning in Vegas. Sally feels going to carry that movie. I think it's too far away from the fam. I don't think Kevin McDaniels are nearly as close as people seem to think they are.

And I don't think that's a team that is able to just they're two moves away. That team needs a lot of work.

No, they're not. Yeah. They need to figure out can they trade Carr for anything? They need to figure out the defense. Nora, you wrote about

some of this stuff. When was that? Today? Yeah, last night. Yeah, you had something like I don't know. I just don't feel like Nora you wrote about some of this stuff when was that today? didn't you write about it? you had something like I don't know I just don't feel like you're in a division with Mahomes and Herbert

so Carolina seems tiny to me like it's an even tinier market than Tampa but at the same time it's in the south it's in the NFC same division he knows all the teams and god damn's in the South. It's in the NFC. Same division. He knows all the teams. And goddamn, I thought the Panthers were pretty good.

I know I basically sunk with the ship. I did hit my six and a half over. But I felt like that team easily could have won 10 games. I can name three games they should have won right now off the top of my head. And I thought they had talent. And even what happens if Horn doesn't get hurt for that Tampa game? Like they probably win the division

and they would have done better against Dallas than Tampa did, I think. Yeah, that was bad coaching. Losing that Tampa game was like totally on Wilks. And I agree with you. I think the only reason that you ended up sinking is because they didn't have a quarterback. And when you have a limited quarterback, you can only do a certain amount of things.

There's an expiration date on it. And we saw that happen in Carolina. The offense fell off a cliff after that Lions game. Well, they've become the early buzz team is like, if I were a coaching candidate, Carolina may be at the top of the list, which I don't know that I saw coming, but it does make sense. There's a lot of good young players. You've got an owner who will pay if he needs to. So if you're Sean Payton

and if Brady feels like that as a package deal would be his dream situation. I like the owner. I think I like what I've read about him. And I think all these owners come in and they fail in the first couple of years. They think they know what they're doing and they don't and they have to learn the hard way.

But I think he'll spend the money, you know, which if you're in Carolina, that's probably the only thing you want. Like I said on Sunday, I told Sal that I was pretty sure they weren't going to fire Brandon Staley, the Chargers,

because I think they're too cheap. And so what happened on Monday? They fired the OC. They hired, they fired the QB coach. Brands daily is coming back. They don't want to pay two coaches. At least Carolina has shown that guy will spend the money.

That guy's like, spend all that money on Matt Rose. Like, all right, go ahead and leave. And I'll just pay for another coach. So, um,

wait, but we have two quick topics before we go. Um, Justin Herbert, take, take a slight hit for your, for you and the internet and the, and Justin Herbert, take a slight hit for you and the internet and the Herbertologists. No, not at all.

Okay. The tape was good. So we're going to make excuses for him again. Okay. Yeah, yeah, of course. Didn't have Mike Williams. It was all Brandon Staley's fault. The offensive coordinator just got fired.

The quarterback's coach just got fired. Two field goals in the second half. They had the ball up to the chance to put the game away. They didn't, but it's fine. He's great. He's our God. Just checking. Purdy, we don't vote. Ruiz, it doesn't seem like you believe at all.

No. I've seen this before. I don't understand how people fall for this over and over and over again. Just winning every game you play? No, the play action I don't understand how people fall for this over and over and over again. It's like every year. Just winning every game you play. No,

the play action, the play action quarterback who isn't really physically talented, who gets lands in a perfect scenario and has all these weapons around them. And yes, they win, but they never have to do anything. And even when they play poorly, like Purdy was not good on,

on Saturday. I know the numbers, but like first half, first half was awful. And he was still had great numbers going into the half. Still one of the best first halves ever for a debuting quarterback. I've seen Baker

Mayfield before. There was Baker Mayfield top 10 quarterback talk two years ago. I was the only one screaming at people that he wasn't a top 10 quarterback and telling them to check the play action splits. I know how this ends. We all know how this ends. I've seen this movie too many times and it ends every time. I don't this ends. We all know how this ends. I've seen this movie too many times, and it ends the same every time. I don't disagree with you,

but diagnose for us in one sentence. They score twice as many points with Brock Purdy as they did with Jimmy Garoppolo. Why? Because they have Christian McCaffrey. They had Christian... They had Christian McCaffrey for like half a game. For a couple... Yeah. They have

too many weapons for him to fail healthy healthy george kittle here's like a real here's a real take on him he is too small to play the way that he plays and he's not physically talented enough to survive like that like his body is too small to withstand that type of like chaotic inviting pressure taking hits he can't play like that that's why they draft big quarterbacks. They draft big quarterbacks for a reason. That's never going to change. Nora, you've done a lot of podcasting with Ruiz.

Has he admitted defeat ever? Or is it just like, I've made my take, and now I'm going to defend it for the rest of my life. Where do we go with this? Because what if Purdy wins the Super Bowl? Then what is the take? Anyone? What do you do at that point? Bowl, then what is the take? Anyone?

What do you do at that point? Stephen would not admit defeat on that. I've seen Nick Foles and Joe Flacco win Super Bowls in my lifetime. That's not going to move me. He's got the first spot. Purdy goes 11-0. He's like, hey, Joe Flacco ran the slate once.

Let's not just say Joe Flacco ran the slate. Joe Flacco looked like the greatest playoff quarterback of all time. He was. He had the greatest four-game stretch. Yeah. No, he was. It was like a run of good luck. Not good luck, but it was just a small sample size. That happens.

Sometimes people go on heaters. It was a small sample size. It was. It was a small sample size. The best Stephen take of the year was that the Broncos should frame Russell Wilson for a crime in order to get out of the contract. But like a white collar crime. Nobody gets hurt. Yeah, not anything like, you know, we don't want this getting dark. No, you give him like an exec job at Walmart.

No, that was my take, Stephen. My take him like an exec job at Walmart and then that was my take. Stephen, my take was cushy corporate job at Walmart. Just pay him the money when it doesn't count against the salary cap. Tell him that, you know, you're going to you're going to change a paradigm and corporate America or something. No, we're combining the schemes. We're combining the schemes. You give him the job first

and then you frame him for a crime like embezzlement once he's in the job like a Martha Stewart situation? Sure. I have a way hotter take than anything we've heard so far. I think I'm actually buying your Wilson stock. I think he's going to be fine next year.

He'll have a normal coach. He'll be 10 pounds thinner. He'll have the eye of the tiger. We're going to read all summer about how he changed his diet. He went pliability. I think something's going to come back. I don't think he goes down like this. He's too competitive.

I've got some bad news. Literally, we get that storyline about Russell Wilson every offseason. No, no. It's going to be a new and improved, better version. I thought he looked kind of doughy this year. I really did. I didn't think it would have been interesting as a basketball player to see what he looked like, like with just like with less clothes on because he just seemed I don't know. He seems slow.

Was it the Danger Witch? Did he say he was Raymond Felton? He looked a little Raymond Felton-y. He did. And he looked slow. Do you think it was the Subway sandwich that he made Danny Kelly hold at the Super Bowl last year. He had a few too many danger witches. That's the turning point. I think right there was the

Danny Kelly interactions. I think his quick twitch feet stuff, which I always thought really made him special. It just didn't seem like he had it anymore. I don't think that goes away when you're 34. I think it goes away when you're 44. 34 doesn't make sense to me.

The problem with this idea for me is that it's hinging on Russell Wilson having, I think, a greater degree of self-awareness than most of our history with Russell Wilson tells us is possible. It's a really, really good point. Who's winning the Super Bowl before we go? Chiefs. Yeah. Chiefs. Yeah. Chiefs.

I want to go 49ers for it to be more fun, but I just... I'm off the... I would have thought about the Bills before this week, but I'm off them. This has been too long with Allen, where we've seen him throw these bozo interceptions. At least twice a game, it seems like. Or at least he tries and then the Bengals I think like the winning streak kind of covered up the fact that this offense is kind of

hit a rut again I know they evolved like during the middle of the year but they're back to having some problems they had last year and now they've lost their offensive line so I'm kind of off them now too. It's a shame because I think this lined up absolutely splendidly perfectly for the Bengals, which I had been waiting for for two months.

And then they lose their left tackle, the right guard, the right tackle. And I don't know a lot about dislocated kneecaps, but I'm pretty sure I don't want my left tackle to have one, whether he's going to try to play or not. It seems a little, little risky. And now I don't know the AFC, but I got to say in the NFC, I really think like any of those four teams can win the more I'm looking at it. Like I think the Giants could beat anybody in one game and all they would have to do is just do it in this game. The next one, I am not afraid of Philly anymore. And the Purdy thing with the Niners just looms over everything. Like what happens if he turns into a pumpkin at the worst time? So in that conference, I'm just ready for anything. And in the AFC, it does feel like this played out nicely for the Chiefs. They kind

of just kept swimming straight and everybody else started to look weird. So at gunpoint, I would say Chiefs Niners, but I don't feel good about it. Who's the best coach on both sides? I would make the argument. I think Andy Reid, when you think about resume and everything he's accomplished, I think Andy Reid's the best coach on the AFC. But in-game coach on Sunday, you need him for one game. I'm taking the Jaguars coach. I'm taking Doug Peterson. I think he's the best coach, not only on that side of the bracket, but I think in the whole playoffs. So I don't even think we can write off the Jaguars because it's

not like the Chiefs have been this machine. They've lost to the Colts. They've lost to the Colts. They've let people hang around all season. I would have Dayball. I think he's been the best coach I've seen. Just this season, I think he's been the best. Who do you have, Nora? Are we just doing

AFC? No, we're doing both. I still think Shanahan. He was my coach of the year vote. And I don't think he'll win because it's just too... You got to start from a lower place. But even for just one game, I would take that guy

before anybody else. He's got that Andy Reid to him, though. And that Mike McCarthy. He's going that Andy Reid to him, though. And that Mike McCarthy. He's going to screw it up. If you give him a chance, he's going to mess up. Maybe. I don't know, though.

It was great to see both of you. We should mention that together on the Ringer NFL show on Sunday nights, and then sometimes Ruiz pops on the island with Nora as well during the middle of the week of the Ringer NFL show. And then what's the other thing around that?

What's that, Fridays? Friday. Yeah, Friday Ringer NFL show. And then what's the other thing around that? What's that, Fridays? Friday. Yeah, Friday Ringer NFL show as well. So if you want to hear more from these two consoles, you can hear the Ringer NFL show or read them on a great website called theringer.com. We'll see what happens with Tom Brady. Good to see both of you. Thanks for hopping on.

When you ride transit, please be safe. Yeah, be safe. Because what you do, others will do too. Others will do it too. So don't take shortcuts across tracks. Don't do that. In fact, just don't walk on tracks at all. Not at all.

Trains move quietly, so you won't hear them coming. You won't hear them coming. See, safe riding sets an example. Yeah, an example for me. Because safety is learned. It's learned. Okay, give it up. Give what up?

Really? Really, really. This message is brought to you by Metrolinks. All right, I am with Nick Khan in the WWE offices in Los Angeles. It is Tuesday, 10 o'clock a.m. Pacific time. So if anything happens over the next 12 hours, don't blame us, as I always say. Kind of a topsy-turvy last couple months for you guys. Been in the news, all kinds of stories.

There's been a board shakeup. You've been, you were, what, co-CEO the last couple years. Now you're the sole CEO. I came in as the president of WWE, and then when this past summer all of those events happened, Stephanie McMahon and I became co-CEOs. She was also chairwoman of the board. And as of this moment, I'm the CEO of WWE. Okay. So let's unwind this. Vince McMahon steps down a year ago, all of these revelations about different Nndas from years ago goes in the wall street journal um he steps down and it seems like he's gone then he goes on smackdown

and just watching him from afar the whole thing seemed insane it was like is this guy stepping down or not why is he on a show is he still around people are wondering if it's a work and now you have 10 months later, it really is starting to feel like the real life version of HBO's Succession where Vince is now. He did what seemed to be from afar, like a bored coup d'etat. Stephanie stepped down. There were rumors you were going to sell to Saudi Arabia,

which I never believed. But from we're watching this so far, this seems insane. What is it like to be in the middle of this? Does it seem less insane? What are the misnomers? Like, how real is all of this? So from the inside, it's not that insane to me. But it's also, you know, again, the word insider.

When you're on the inside, you sort of see things that might be coming and know what might be coming. You know, my thought has always been there's only one boss at WWE and it ain't me. Vince is obviously the founder, creator of the company. He's also the controlling shareholder, which, as you know, that's not a work term. Right. That's a legal term of art. So I think it was always my point of view, always Stephanie's point of view. At some point he would come back.

I think the way that he played it to me was smart, Bill, in that he went away for five, six months, which people, meaning the audience, seems to like when somebody does that. And he came back and took control back of his company as a control shareholder. So it is the public's company, it's a publicly traded company, but with that controlling share, gave him a lot of authority and he used it. And I applaud him for doing so. So, I mean, the behavior, especially some of the stuff in the NDAs, some people would say, many people would say, he shouldn't come back.

That should be it. He should leave. When he owns the company, it's basically up to him. You can have as much public pressure as you want, but it's his company. The reason that he wouldn't come back is if he felt like it would be hurting the value of the company, the prestige of the company, people's perception of whether they even want to be a fan of the company anymore.

So why did he come back? Because it does seem like it hurts the company. Well, so here's what I'd say. You and I had a conversation. I don't remember the exact timeframe, but whenever the Ray Rice stuff happened in the NFL eight, 10 years ago, whatever that was. And there were conversations at that point, not your point of view, not my point of view that, oh, is Roger Goodell going to resign? If you remember, he had a lot of heat on. And I think you and I both concluded to each other, well, no advertiser has fled. Ratings aren't down. The product seems to continue to build. Why would he resign? Why would he do that? So I think that's more, keep in mind, I've lived in Los Angeles. I think, how long have you been in LA now, Bill? 20 years.

So I've been here since 2000. So 22, 23 years. Sometimes I think it's just a three mile radius of LA thing. The, hey, step down and you have to sort of be punished for it. It didn't used to be that way. So I think for somebody like Vince, and by the way, you and he are two different people, but you're both founder CEOs. And I think founder CEOs, different than regular CEOs. So consider me for this moment in time, a regular CEO. There's something about the founder CEO that sees the vision,

sort of sees the future, can get there a moment in time before others can, and then everyone else catches up. So even, and again, these were, whatever your private frustrations may have been at prior employers, while you were trying to build something great, which Grantland was great, and The Ringer is great, I think it's the same thing for Vince as a founder CEO. It's his company.

So to me, WWE is Vince, Vince is WWE, and we're going to do the best we can to keep building the company. Can you walk me back to when he stepped down initially? Yeah. And the board, basically, it seemed like from afar forced him to step down. Is that accurate? I didn't see it as a force. I think Vince saw sort of the tonnage of things that were coming at him and us.

And he thought one thing he's always said, and you know, this is a longtime fan. I'm a longtime fan also. He'll do whatever's best for business. And I think at that moment, whether it's bringing the ultimate warrior back 20 plus years ago or whatever that might be, I think at that moment in time, he saw what's best for business was for him to step away for a while. So he did. And he really did step away. So there was no, hey, why are you doing this? Or I wouldn't do it that way. It was, in my opinion, total freedom to Stephanie, myself, and to Triple H on the creative side. It's only been a week, but he really, I believe what he said publicly about,

hey, I'm here to engage in strategic alternatives and the media rights. So far, the engagement has been that and other board issues. And not the behind the scenes wrestling stuff. Zero. Sports entertainment, any of that. Zero. None.

And by the way, I made it a point, as did others, to see him once a month or so while he was sitting out. Uh, I think those things are important and it's no different in my opinion than when other mutual friends of ours who have gone through hard times professionally, that's when they sort of need to hear from folks most that, Hey, you haven't forgotten about them and you're appreciative of them and all of those things. So I think in staying in contact that way, which was mostly social and personal, there was never a moment of no, do it this way or do it that way. It just didn't happen.

Were you surprised that he stepped down? I was surprised in the moment. Um, but once I thought about it, uh, for a couple of days, it made total sense to me. I wouldn't say it caught me off guard because, again, we were on the inside sort of feeling a bit of the pressure that was going on. So it certainly seemed, again, the right thing at the right time. Definitely surprised in the moment. After I digested it, it made total sense. Were you surprised that he started to inch his way back? No, no. That's Vince.

Yeah. Anyone who knows him who thought with a tweet, because I think he tweeted, you know, hey, I'm 77 now, time for me to call it a day or something to that effect. You know, when he stepped down, anyone who believed that was permanent doesn't know him. That was never going to happen. But I'm appreciative of the fact that he gave it the five, six months, let the dust settle a little bit, and then coming back in the way that he's come back. How much of him wanting to come back had to do with the fact that the company did really well without him? I mean, you guys had a little bit of a resurgence creatively. I think

in the wrestling community, people were super pleased with some of the moves and some of the pushes and kind of felt like the snow globe just got shook. And in a good way, you flipped it where AEW had all this momentum. And then all of a sudden, by the end of last year, it felt like WWE had a lot of the momentum. And do you think that bothered them? I don't think so. What do you think? I think it bothered them. Tell me. And do you think that bothered him? I don't think so. What do you think? I think it bothered him. Tell me. I do. I think, well, I think when you've created something and especially something you spent 50 years of your life on and you were the integral force of every decision that

was ever made and then all of a sudden you're out of it, you want, there's part of you that wants to think, eh, I was super important. Like this, this should kind of go downhill and it did it. It was the opposite. That's hard to deal with. I get it. I think again, you know, having been on the inside and keep in mind as a publicly traded company, if there was an official succession plan that would have had to be filed, you know, a long time ago. Yeah. I think the succession plan in his mind is the one that he put in place when he stepped down, which was Paul Triple H runs creative and Stephanie and I, you know, co-run, uh, or help to run the company, if you will, with Steph, his daughter as the

chairwoman. So to me, I never got a sense from him of any sort of bitterness or anything like that. He seemed for the first month of his hiatus thrilled. And if you think about it, even from your own career as an outside observer of it, how hard you've worked. A month off would be fucking amazing. Right, I think he went to Italy, whatever it was, the things that we all wish we could do while we're in the mix of, let's say,

quote unquote, empire building. First month was amazing. I think by month five, he was starting to get ready to return. And I think the strategic alternative process is a real one. I think he's hyped for it. I haven't seen any sort of heat

from him towards anybody who's at WWE, with WWE. There's no commentary from him, certainly to me, and I've been in touch with him, as you might imagine, a lot in the past week. There's no commentary from him, certainly to me. And I've been in touch with him as you might imagine a lot in the past week. There's no, why did, you know, Paul and you hire this or why did Steph and you do that? There's been none of that. At the same time, like there was some pretty dramatic board shakeup stuff. He brought back Michelle and George who he fired a

few years ago. A couple of people left the board. Why did people leave the board and George, who he fired a few years ago. A couple people left the board. Why did people leave the board and why did he feel like he had to do that? Explain the business piece of that to me. I think from the business point of view, I think the George and Michelle thing, you know, WWE, as you know, is a unique product. And I think it's one thing that you and I have bonded over over the years is that you are a fan, you are a fan, I was a fan, I am a fan. And it's sort of like this insider thing. So I think with George and Michelle, who I have nothing over, over the years is that you were a fan, you are a fan. I was a fan. I am a fan. And it's sort of like this insider thing. So I think with Georgia, Michelle, who I have nothing but good history with, keep in mind, they left the company, I think eight or nine months before I joined the company. So this was not a, you know, Hey, let's bring me in while he moves others out.

I think it was a deliberate process by him over that course of eight to nine months to figure out who we wanted to try to have in the seat. But they know the company and they're insiders and there's a shorthand with them. So I think as he engages in this potential transaction to have folks there that know the company, that know, hey, maybe certain things that happened in the past shouldn't have happened or in a modern day point of reference culture, which I always try to look at these things from, Bill, that, hey, certain things that were acceptable years ago aren't acceptable now. I think over time you can evolve with these things, and the modern day rules should apply to modern day. I don't think it should apply to the past. All right, counter. Please. It seemed like he wanted to get more of the board on his side,

so he moved out the three people probably who voted against him and moved in a couple people that he liked. So what is the business reason to do that? If he already has the controlling stake, why does he need a more favorable board to him, or am I reading that wrong? So I think it's a nuanced thing on the sales process. And here's what I mean by that. Traditionally, so if you're looking at, and I'm sure you are, the News Corp Fox potential

re-merger, you've seen that a special committee of the independent board has been assigned to oversee that process and to determine whether that's what's best for the shareholders. This is different. With the controlling shareholder, Vince is going to run that process. Yeah. So to have board members in who understood that with the controlling shareholder, this is going to be the way it is and people who would embrace that, I think ultimately that was a determining factor. But if Vince just said, I'm going to sell WD to anybody. Like I'm going to sell it to Netflix tomorrow. Couldn't he just do it? But does the

board have to, does the board ultimately have any say? That's the part I don't get. If he's the controlling stake, what does the board even matter? Why even have a board? And by the way, to your point on, Hey, I'm paraphrasing here, but it seems like he got friendlier board members in last week or whenever that was. I think the misperception always was that this board six months ago, six years ago, hey, they were just being puppeteered by Vince. It was not the case. Yeah. As you saw it this summer, it was a very real board. It was a very competent board. I believe George and Michelle, obviously real, you know, more than competent people who understand this process. But no, my understanding

is even as a controlling shareholder, as long as it's an unaligned fair process, if you will, the controlling shareholder can control it. If there was some handshake deal or he only wanted to declare, hey, I'm a buyer, not a seller. I'm going to buy out the other shares with some sort of financial partner, then it would be the board controlling that process. So that's not what he appears to be looking to do. Well, so you go backwards, Triple H, who seemed like he was running everything creatively, or at least was a huge force, and he gets kind of shoved to the side. He had some health issues, to be fair. But I think people were surprised.

NXT, Triple H's baby. That kind of basically gets the plug pulled out of it. It's still going, but it's not nearly the same. I thought it had so much momentum four or five years ago. And then Stephanie leaves a year ago or it takes us, she's going to be a mom and the whole thing. And then Vince steps down

and all of a sudden, Paul and Stephanie are back and you're running it and things are going well. And now Vince is back and Stephanie steps down. This is hard to keep track of. I understand.

So with Stephanie's whole thing, I'm just, I care about this company. I care about my father. I just need to, I need to help out. Or why did she step down? I still don't get that part.

So two things on that. Number one, it's important to anyone listening to this. If you're going to join a family business and you're not inside the family, as I am not inside the family, stay out of the family business. Fair.

Right, that's rule number one. And by the way, I know you're a fan of the show Succession. You reference it, so am I. I was saying this to my wife this weekend. When you watch that show and you see all of the family members and everything that goes on

and you see the outsiders in the company and you look at those outsiders the non-family members you say what an idiot why are you working that i guess that would be me you'd be like the lawyer who got involved with the coking character yeah yeah correct not jerry yeah yeah right not jerry oh yeah i was thinking but who's yeah i know it's your time right right so to me that you know, on a side, but I don't get involved in the family business. That is rule number one. Just as if you were in some dispute with a family member. But when you say family business, you're talking like family stuff, not actual business.

Correct. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I don't get in the family side of the family business. It's not my purview. I don't insert myself. I don't try to insert myself. I like to consider myself instead of a pot stirrer, someone who more sim my business yeah it's just not that that's number one number two keep in mind and you mentioned the paul health thing and i know paul has talked about this publicly that was as traumatic as i've seen a friend of mine go through that didn't result in death so and i don't think paul has undersold it because he's been very factual on it but it was

literally i remember i was talking to him. It was on a weekend. I said, hey, man, you sound out of breath. You okay? He's like, I might have COVID. I'm going to go get checked out, this and that. Next thing I know, Stephanie texted me hours later saying that, hey, he got rushed to, I believe it was Yale Medical Center.

The part of the heart called the widow maker. And I don't know the exact term for it, you're right, was blocked and he had to go in for emergency surgery or emergency procedure. I remember seeing him a month after that and it did not look like physically the Triple H that we all knew. And I don't mean the muscular part and all of that, even in his post career part, it just looked like a different person. Like the life was out of him. Yeah. Yeah. It was scary. It was scary for him. It was scary for Stephanie. They have three school-age daughters. Scary for them. And I think Steph made the move

that, again, you, me, any of us, if we could make it, would make it, if your spouse is down like that, is, hey, I'm just going to take a moment here. Leave of absence. And then, boom, things shifted. I would always kid with her in public and in private. It was the shortest leave of absence in the history of corporate America. I think it was less than three weeks.

And when she was asked, she got called by her dad, Vince, and I was on the phone to, hey, here's what's going on. We need you to step in at the time as the interim CEO. No problem, dad. I'm in. And then once the board made it official and Vince made it official, again, co-CEOs with her as a chairwoman. By the way, her work as an executive was off the charts, phenomenal, phenomenal. And she's great people. So it was easy. Work's never

easy, as you know, but it was easy working with her. And I think when she felt, Hey, my dad's come back now again, without getting into the family side of the family business, I can step out. That's what she did. Well, it seemed like for a few months there, she was going around, she was meeting with a bunch of people and it was kind of the make everything okay again, tour with a whole bunch of different sponsors. See how you still have your ground on these things. Yeah, but she was just, you know, things got a little crazy there,

but we're here to right the ship. And when I heard that, I was like, Vince isn't coming back if they're doing this. If she's going around and meeting all these leaders and different people, this means to me that this is a new era of the company. But now it's an old era of the company again. Do you think Vince learned any lessons over this time or are we just going back to where we were a year ago? Well, I don't think so. I think Vince is really happy where the company's at. Certainly that's what he's conveyed to me. Keep in mind. So his lesson is I'm going to stay out

of this and just concentrate on the sale. Yeah. What he said to me and what I've certainly experienced is, hey, I'm 77 now. I want to explore all strategic alternatives. Is there a sale out there? Is there a merger out there? What would make sense most for the company? Which is why when that Saudi thing we referenced earlier, and we have a great relationship. No, we didn't reference that yet. We didn't talk, I thought you mentioned it. We talked right before the pod, yeah.

There's a fake story last week. Fake, 100% fake, 100% made up, saying that there was an imminent transaction or whatever it was, totally false. That you were gonna sell basically privately to some Saudi money group, and that was gonna be how this ended. It seemed, and then I checked the person who had the,

and they had like 5,500 followers. But then the way the world works this time in 2023, people just ran with it for the next 18 hours. It was absurd. It was nuts. And by the way, that person subsequently took down that tweet. Right. Because again, when I'm saying 100% false, it was 100% false.

So in this process, he's there to oversee it. It's his controlling share. I'm involved in it. Triple H is involved in it. The board's obviously involved in it. Triple H being on the board, as I have the good fortune of being as well. And we're going to see how it plays out. It should not be a lengthy process.

Well, the funny thing about that story is you're a publicly traded company. And I mean, I sold my company when it was privately traded, but even then there are so many rules in place when you're saying it, whether for public traded companies involved, either selling or buying, there's so many rules in place that it would never come out that way. Like it did last week with this thing that just pops out. And plus the sale process, if you're going to do this correctly, which I would assume you are, it's months and months and you're going to want multiple bidders and you're going to play people against each other. And it would just be like, oh, somebody made us an offer. We're done.

It's the thing about the rules that you just mentioned, privately held, publicly traded, whatever it is. Again, the founder CEOs are inherently not rule followers. Yeah. So they should follow the law because nobody wants a problem with that. But in terms of the rules, you know, I didn't see you, this is a compliment. I didn't see you following that many rules at your prior employer. You sort of did it the way that you thought it needed to be done. And ultimately your work stood out. So to follow those rules, I would have to imagine was difficult for a period of time to get your head wrapped around them. Not as difficult for us because the company's been publicly traded for so long and you understand that the rules are really the SEC rules and nobody wants to violate any of those. So yeah, the

imminent announcement that it's been sold already or privatized, whatever it was, of course, if you're looking at it, connecting the dots, it made absolutely no sense. In terms of what the actual process will be, we're just starting it now. By the way, considering all that money you made on your transaction, maybe you come and bid it. I end up working for you. It's a good idea. Throw a couple billion or whatever it is. It'll be fine. I'll check my checking account.

Yeah, just write a check. Bank of America check or whatever it is. You still didn't properly explain to me why Stephanie left. I still don't get this part. The second time. I think she came back because her dad asked her to come back but she's good at this though she's great at it she's great and by the way the meetings that that she went on

that i participated in a lot as you can imagine when there's stories like that that come out you want to make sure that people see you and they know who to talk to and they know they can call you and that hey there's a face with the product and that there's somebody there to answer if there's a question. Yeah. So that was more about that. And at this moment in time, I think she felt her work was done for now.

Nothing is permanent. Again, terrific executive, even better person. Life is long. Let's see. So now he has neither child involved in WWE because Shane left last year. There were rumors he got fired. I don't know what I did.

Can you even comment on what happened with Shane? I don't have the particulars on that, but that's intentional. Yeah. Meaning, you know, again, I'm not going to ask. Even if it's a work thing, I'm not going to ask, Vince, tell me what happened with your son. I have too much respect for that.

It also would be career suicide. I've never seen that work. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not there to counsel them. They're not asking me to counsel them. As you know, family's complicated. Business is complicated. Family and business is even more complicated. I just assume stay away from it. But his son-in-law works there and he's the head of creative. Yeah. And, you know, there's always been a lot of Twitter chatter that somehow those two weren't getting along or this or that.

I think everybody's getting along just great. Are you worried about more revelations coming out about Vince that will be unflattering? I'm not. It feels like whatever happened, happened and it's out there and people know. I've always found him to be a very honest broker with this stuff.

So even when the process started last summer, there was nothing that he hid. There was nothing that he covered up. I think he was very honest about it. And I appreciated that. And I think a lot of other folks did too. Do you think that he was candid enough to the general public about it? I don't know that he really commented to the general public about it? I don't know that he really commented to the general public about it. He didn't really. Yeah. So it was, you know, he's, you remember his Armin

Katan interview. You remember his Bob Costas interview. The press thing is not what he enjoys doing. So I don't think he was going to have a sit down with anybody and talk through it. It's just not in his mind of things that he wants to do with his time or for his business slash our business. So the public mea culpa or whatever it was, I think in the retirement, that summed it up. Hey, I'm going to step away and thank you so much. And to me, again, on the inside, it was clearly not a work because there was nothing said about it on TV after the initial Stephanie goodbye. I think that was in Philly on SmackDown or Thank You Dad,

whatever that was. And then Roman Reigns built it into the storyline with Austin Theory on the subsequent Raw. He said, hey, your daddy's not around anymore, something to that effect, which our merchandise team made into t-shirts and they sold quite well.

But that's all we did, which should have showed the smart fan that it wasn't a work. You understand why there was 10% of me that still feels like this whole thing was a work, right?

Exactly. Especially like the timing of January before Rumble. This is like your playoffs right now from mid-January all the way through WrestleMania, which is in LA this year, which has a chance to be the biggest WrestleMania ever. All of this makes me, person who's had wrestling in my life since, I don't know, 1978, very suspicious. Well, by the way, can we talk on a personal note for a moment? Yeah.

2015, I believe, was the Dallas WrestleMania, 2015 or 16. 2015 was Dallas. Dallas. So San Francisco was 15 or 16. Dallas was after San Francisco. You and I were both there. How old is your son now? My son is now 15, but yeah, he was like eight probably. Eight. So my son is seven now. Yeah. So I remember you and I were texting. I think we were staying in the same hotel. You're like, check this video out. My son doing all the wrestling moves. Yeah.

Correct. Right, with the pillow, suplexes and that. And now I see my own son doing it. And I'm like, holy shit. This is just like a little boy thing at that moment in time. I don't know. It's something that I always remember it. And now when I see my kid doing it, it reminds me of that.

But you'll be at WrestleMania, I assume. You didn't answer my question about whether my 10% feeling that this was a work. Well, I'm sure you're going to be at WrestleMania. The 10% is going to be resolved. It's not a work. So if there's any anticipation that there's any swerve there, there's no swerve. Are there plans for Vince to be on camera and involved in any plots? Not at this moment. Not at this moment? No is the answer. That's like a non-denial denial.

No. No is the answer to that question. Could it change in a few months? Sure, it could change, but that would be Paul and Vince being on the same page about it. I don't see it right now. What's the sale process without telling me too much? All right. Cause I know you have some restrictions, but you have a bunch of suitors. You have a price in your head. Vince obviously wants to sell. Um, I, I actually sidebar question. Why does Vince want to sell? Is it an age thing? Is it like, what am I going to do? But the end, you know, I'm looking at the finish line a little bit here. Why not? Maybe this will be my final victory lap. Why sell now out of all times? I think he's ready. You know, I can't describe it as anything more than that after the last

five months. And keep in mind, again, you engaged in empire building. You're still engaged in empire building at a certain point. It's like, okay, how much more of this empire am I going to build? We continue to build it. He continued to build it until he stepped down five months or so ago. But I think in looking at a world of consolidation, the sort of standalone enterprise that owns 99% of its intellectual property with the media rights. And a library and media library right with the media rights coming up in october of 24 which means the process starts in a few months on that certainly to go lock in a bunch of long-term deals and then to sell or try to sell to everybody doesn't make sense the timing was now so even if you look at our annual shareholders

so you're saying you want to sell you sell the company and then you do the deals. The new person that comes in, that would be their first order of the business, would be to bang out the new 2024 media rights deals. That's the goal. Unless one of the media conglomerates ends up buying it directly. Right. Right. Then they certainly wouldn't want it encumbered by long-term media rights deals elsewhere. So for people listening, you have possible streamers, all the usual suspects. You have a place like Endeavor, which has already bought UFC and figured out how to mine that IP in all

those different ways. Are there any other lanes for suitors other than streamer or somebody like Endeavor? Is there somebody missing? Could somebody with deep pockets just come in and be like, I want to buy this? Like how the guy bought the Phoenix Suns? Yes. Okay. And by the way, we texted about when Real Sports had the piece on the new owner of the Phoenix Suns a month or so before that transaction took place. All of a sudden, he's getting press.

It's positive press. Obviously, he built his career really nicely. You sort of saw that he wanted to talk. Yeah, I heard about him in September. I think that was when I'd start talking about him on my pod. It started like the buzz starts kind of going out. Totally. I think you hit me on that early, too.

I had that one first. You had that first, right. I had some good info on that one. You had that first. You called it right. Everyone thought, everyone who wasn't on the inside thought it might go in a different direction to Bob Iger. You never did.

I never did. Cause I knew the story. Big shot. Bob Sarver wasn't selling to Bob Iger. Wasn't happening. Understood. Agreed. Agreed.

Um, the other, you know, Avenue again on an unencumbered process, it's everyone you just mentioned plus private equity. So there's a lot's folks out there who regret not being able to buy the Suns or not buying the UFC six, seven, eight years ago, you know, this is an opportunity that doesn't come around that often. Yeah, and we didn't mention the piece where Vince could sell a chunk of the company, not the whole company, right? Is that in play too, or is it just all or nothing?

No, that's in play. So again, when he's using the term strategic alternatives, that's not to be cute. It's basically, we're looking at everything. So if he said, I'm looking to sell the company, well, what does that mean? A piece of it, all of it. Do you merge the company? Do you buy another company instead of selling the company? Do you sell the company outright?

A lot of it will come down to price, but I don't think all of it. It's what's the best value for the shareholder and certainly what's the best value for Vince after the shareholder. So the stock after the announcement is flying high, as you may have seen, it's around 90 bucks, you know, a share now, you know, how much more is someone going to offer on that, that makes it a transaction that he wants to do. And it looks like we should mention the Reader Chatterton possible lawsuit, or it is a lawsuit, or Vince has to deal with that. Do you feel like suitors are going to wait to see how that plays out and how bad that's going to be? And is there going to be more details like that coming out, or are they just plowing ahead? I think everyone's just plowing ahead.

You just move forward, right? Because in all of these businesses, there's never a clean, clear path. There's always some encumbrance, something in the way, some hurdle in the way that you have to get around or get through. So I see that like I would any other item like it. What's it like to work with Vince day to day? Like that who I've been in his vortex slash vicinity a few times and there is a force of nature personality to him that is obviously unique to him. But what is that like just to, that's your life five days a week, six days a week, seven days a week. So first of all, I know this is going to sound like a can answer. He's much more polite than people think. I don't know if you found that to be the case.

He's way more soft-spoken. Totally. I think that's the disarming piece of him because you think he's going to be the guy on the TV show or the pay-per-view. I think he's a great listener. And by the way, I think you were the first one

with the Andre doc, the first quote-unquote outsider to come in and have a real voice with the WWE intellectual property. Yeah. Does that sound right to you? I don't think it is right. Yeah. I don't remember ever seeing that before. And keep in mind, I was in my prior life where Vince listened, he was listened to. And if you look at that final product, I hadn't seen anything for all the great sports documentaries. in its prime you John Skipper Connor shell 30 for 30 my

favorite everyone's gonna say two Escobars but two brothers yeah what was my favorite one's brothers one's brother yeah excuse me clearly my

favorite I've miss misspoke on the it was amazing yeah it was an amazing I'd never seen anything like that and when I saw the Andre one you know I thought it

would be like hey here's the body slam when he got slammed it at WrestleMania three that was just the backdrop of the whole thing to me. Um, so let me ask you, how did you find him to be in that process? Um, the process is actually for the Andre thing. I think that was pretty easy cause they trusted, you know, they, they knew what that story was. They trusted we would do a good story. I think the interesting process for me was working on this Netflix series, which is less collaborative, but we still needed interviews with him and sit down interviews

and just how he approached those interviews and how he wanted to get everything right, I thought was really interesting to watch from afar. And then how tough of a critic he was on himself. Yeah. After the interviews. That was the part I wasn't expecting and I was kind of amused by. Yeah, I thought the Andre thing to me, the reason that I found that one really compelling

is inside of WWE, that's the most revered superstar. Right. That was like their favorite IP. Correct. That was their favorite. I think Vince feels that Andre helped Vince to build the company, that attraction at that time.

And it was something that hadn't been mined or touched in a way. So to get in there and develop the trust and get his feedback and make sure his notes were heard and all that, I think we saw, again, the end on-air product. In the Vince documentary, Vince has a saying, everybody needs to be produced. So he's a perfectionist in the way that I see you as a perfectionist. Perhaps myself in certain genres, I needed to be perfect. I needed to be done the right way. So back to the initial question in terms of working with them, very polite, uh, always has

a thoughtful point of view in the smaller, the room, the better it is to have differing points of view. I think that applies to everybody. So if I'm in a meeting with 20 people who work with me. Yeah, 10 aren't going to talk. Yeah. Now you're done with eight. One person's going to try to put on a show. Totally. You know the drill. The most productive meetings are two people, three people, maybe four people, but 20 people in a room, you're not going to get the best version of anyone creative in my mind.

So what I've always tried to do with them, smaller meetings, whether it was he, Steph, Kevin Dunn, Paul, myself, just me and him, whatever it was, it's most effective. And I think it's the best use of time. So one recurring theme with Vince's career was that he kept having a challenger or there kept being these moments where it seemed like things might fall apart and then they didn't. And in the last couple of years, you had AEW. They come in as probably the most polished challenger you guys have had in 20 years. deep pockets, a TV station attached to them, and somebody in Tony Khan running their business who was a real wrestling fan, who really dipped into the history of wrestling in a bunch of different ways with some of the angles

and realized that he had to be a little bit of a different competitor to you versus what some other people have done, which is either get older wrestlers and try to compete with you that way or basically just do what WCW did which was just we're going to do the same thing as you. We're just going to try to spend more money to do it better.

They kind of countered it a little bit. They grabbed some ECW pieces and some indie wrestling things and some All Japan and all this stuff. And it seemed like a real competitor. It seemed like they had at least in the wrestling community of the nerds and the people who love

the five-star matches, all that stuff, they kind of tapped into that. At what point did you feel like they were a threat? Well, how do you think they're doing now? Not as well.

Right. I think a couple things. I've never met the guy. Although I think they're having a better 2023 than 22, but anyway, good. I think I've never met the kid. Tony Khan seems like a nice kid to me.

I don't know him. I have met his dad, who randomly I sat next to at some sports business luncheon that Stephanie and I went to a year and a half or so ago. I thought the dad was as impressive as could be. I think there was a piece on him in the New York Times a year or so prior to that. Self-made billionaire, I believe Pakistani immigrant, could not be more

impressed with him. I like the pivots. I'm not as big of an NFL fan as you are. I don't follow it the way you do. But I like the pivots he made. Make a mistake in hiring a certain coach a couple years ago. Get out of that mistake. Figure it out again. So could not be more impressed with the dad. He made his money in the auto parts business, I believe. So he knows that inside out. I don't believe he's involved on the wrestling side of the business.

I'm talking about storylines outside of financing it. Financing it. No, he's got just the pockets. Yeah, he has the pockets. And that's awesome. And I'm sure his kid appreciates it. But I don't, I was never threatened by that. But I tend not to be threatened.

I don't feel threatened by anyone on anything. It's just not how I do business. So I don't mean like, you know. No, I get you. If some guy came up to me with a rattlesnake in my face, yeah, I guess I'd feel threatened by that. But I think similar to you, Bill, I've never seen you scared. I just don't think you see people that way. I don't think when you were on your rise as primarily a writer at that time, I think you probably put targets on certain people who you thought held an esteemed position

who didn't deserve that position. Yeah. And then you overtook them with your work. But it all came down to your work, not their work. So for me, and I know I've used the quote before, it's that Jimmy Iovine, I think it's at the end of that Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine documentary on HBO,

where he says, you know, in your career, you got to be like a horse. Trey, Jimmy Iovine documentary on HBO where he says, you know, in your career, you got to be like a horse, a horse. You put blinders on it. Why do you put blinders on it? Horse looks to the left, looks to the right, stumbles, it breaks its leg. And you know what happens after that. I've always looked at business the same way. I don't care what anyone else is doing. I care what we're doing. And as long as we can have the best product on with the best talent and the best writers, I think we're doing. And as long as we can have the best product on with the best talent and the best writers, I think we're going to be in good shape. Competition is good too, I think, especially for what you're doing. It's on, it's what the country was built on. Yeah. Not to get too patriotic on this stuff,

but it's why antitrust laws exist. It's why there's Pepsi to Coke or whatever the modern version of that reference is. Everyone should be able to give it a try. I do think this, anyone can run a business at a loss. That's easy. Yeah. As long as someone continues to finance it, continues to finance it, you know, try running it. Are you saying that's AEW? I don't know. I don't know their books. You know, I haven't seen their books. They have spent a lot of money. Look, I know our books, which are public, we're off highest grossing revenue in 2022, highest profitability in 2022.

Other big factors on why Vince wants to explore a potential alternative now. And you took Cody Rhodes from them. How did you like that one? I liked it until he got hurt. Yeah. That was a tough break, but he's coming back soon, I assume assume he's coming back. Yeah. Text with him often. He's feeling good. Do you think he was going to become the guy last year in the company other than Roman?

It certainly felt he was heading in that direction. And now we'll see, you know, it's announced that he's returning at the Royal rumble. Right. So obviously that's not a secret. We wanted it to be announced. We want people to know that. By the way, Royal Rumble coming up in a couple weeks. Our highest grossing Royal Rumble ever already with still two weeks to go. What's the location? San Antonio, Texas. January 27th, which is a Saturday.

It's the night before the NFC AFC Conference Championship. Are the rumors true that The Rock is going to be at WrestleMania? I can't confirm or deny. You can't confirm? I can't confirm or deny any of those. The good thing is for Rock. Liberace won't be there, though. Liberace will not be there.

We've already confirmed that. Billy Martin will not be there. Billy Martin, yeah. Unfortunately, Muhammad Ali will not be there. A lot of the great ones will not be there. Bob Costas, still living, will not be there, if you remember from WrestleMania 2. Oh, yeah.

Correspondent or backstage reporter. Costas was in with wrestling in the 80s. He was in? Yeah, he turned on it, I think, during the Iraqi War era. By what? That angle. I think that was it. He was out.

You're right, because it was weird. When Vince had that interview with him, where they slapped the papers, was that Costas or Kattan where Vince slapped the papers? Well, he had the other one with Costas. That was during XFL. Right. And I think Costas was mad about the NBC part that they had XFL on. He felt like it was beneath them.

I think you're right. He came into it with a little animosity. Yeah, he was hot. He came in hot. I also think Costas... I give him credit, though. He stood up to Vince the whole time. Yeah.

And Vince was leaning forward and doing some of his tricks. Vince is an intimidating guy. Listen, he's strong. He's big. Yeah. He's rich. All of those things can intimidate a lot of people. some of his tricks. Vince is an intimidating guy. Listen, he's strong, he's big, you know, he's rich. All of those things can intimidate a lot of people. I did think it was interesting on that piece.

I know it's now 20 plus years ago. There was no mention of the fact that Costas did that WrestleMania 2 hit and was paid for it. So sometimes you see folks with the capital J journalism, you know, condemning someone for their XFL product. But, oh, I took your paycheck, you know, condemning someone for their XFL product. But, oh, I took your paycheck. Right. You know, 20 years prior or whatever it was.

They also worked together in the Letterman. I think it was the third year anniversary. They were two of the hosts. There were two different hospitals. Dude, that's a crazy callback. Trying to find the late night baby. I forgot about that. It was Vince and Larry Bud moment at one hospital and Costas at another one.

So you have WrestleMania in LA. April 1st and 2nd, SoFi Stadium. Which has a chance to actually be the biggest WrestleMania. Yes. It seems. We're 90% sold out for both nights. Keep in mind what you already know. We can seat on the field.

Yeah. Which, you know, for football, obviously they can't. And we haven't announced a match yet. So again, conveniently located, going into the media rights conversations. I think Los Angeles is the media capital of the world now, certainly of the country. And if you pull Northern California into Los Angeles, I think California is the capital. Most hotels, perfect WrestleMania location. Perfect.

Perfect. New matters also this is why this is why from a sales standpoint you have the ability to sell things when people don't even know who's on the on the card yet you have the ability to chew up all these tv hours and we just saw i think there was this um a stat about the most watched shows in 2022 and it was like all sports and it was all NFL. And it's just like sports is like the only reliable thing left, it seems like. And Dick Wolf.

And Dick Wolf. I saw that same thing you saw. And Shows with Fire. Shows with Fire. I think it was like the top 50 highest rated programs were all NFL. Or top 100 all NFL games. It's nuts. You told me, you told me

that this would play out this way with football. Cause I was like, yeah, football, they did the 16, 17 range after all the different things they had. And then Kaepernick, and it was like, man, this really seems like this is going to dip. And you were just like, football's never dipping. By the way, it's something we talk about internally all the time. You and I are about the same age. Yeah. So you remember early 80s, if you look back at it, when it was coming out of the 1970s Steelers and Bird and Magic were just in the league and Jordan wasn't in the league yet.

If you look at it and say, okay, who are the most popular athletes in the country at that moment in time? I would think it's some version and correct me on any of this. Carl Lewis, Larry Lou Retton, John McEnroe, Evel Knievel, Sugar Ray Leonard, all individual sports stars. And okay, yeah, throw in Joe Montana, let's say. And then all of a sudden the league became the league. And I remember in the 80s seeing those ratings go up every year and seeing the cost of the commercial spots go up every year. And ultimately, this was from someone's book. It's not my original quote, but it's, you know, football is what the country is. Baseball is and the attention was back on the game boom that's pandemics seemed like it helped too yeah listen they didn't people wanted football to come back and they just

they were like you know what i'm glad you're i'm glad you're still here totally you're one of the few constants i still have thank you yes even you remember roger goodell from his basement doing the draft yeah everyone again i'm not a hardcore NFL fan. I watched every moment of that draft because outside of that and WWE, there was no, and the Jordan, you know, documentary, there was no original content on TV. Do you miss being an agent? I'm, you know, I loved being an agent and. Because you were very close with clients and. Yeah.

Look, I never had a contract with a client. I never understood that. Think about this in terms of anyone who you get personal services from, your doctor, your lawyer, your CPA, you can fire them at any time. In fact work and you want to pay, pay and I'll continue with you. And if you don't, that's okay too. Even my initial deal with WWE when I was at CA was a handshake deal. Yeah. Was, Hey, you know, if you like our work, you'll pay us. If you don't like us, you don't have to pay us. And, uh, that seemed to work. Yeah. So you miss, it was fun. So you miss having the client relationships, negotiating, always finding that sucker at the table? Listen, you advised me on a lot of those deals for a lot of our mutual friends. So maybe you and I saw it from the same point of view.

There were some good runs there where there were a bunch of suitors all kind of banging heads and all of a sudden the prices would go way up. I think you and I said like ESPYs 2013 or 2014 or something like that. Yeah, it was 2013 was when Fox came in with FS1 and they were just like, here's some money everybody and then it was

like, oh shit, ESPN versus FS1 and then we still have CBS and NBC and the linear Fox and just seemed like things were moving there for a couple of years. Totally. And it's also, as you know, there aren't that many people who move the needle in that space. So it's not like you could say, okay, well, ESPN has however many they had, we're just going to go find our own and grow them and groom them if you can't build it buy it and that's what fs1 did i think they succeeded with that strategy they always got

on the map the coward thing certainly worked out totally what happens to espn now um i look does it spin off with abc you know i don't know but it's tough. Like does Disney sell the assets? Correct. Yeah. Or do they spin it off into a separate company that they control? Sort of the way, and there were obviously other facts around the News Corp, you know, breakup 10 years or so ago. But when you look at it, ESPN is still an extremely valuable asset. It's still, you know, 12, $13 billion of revenue a year between the sub fees and advertising whatever that number is and iger is a huge sports fan huge sports fan by the way i think his return great for the nba yep it did not feel like it was tracking you know the right way at disney now it

feels like it's totally tracking the right way at disney for an nba renewal you agree with that agree with that and i also think the z And I also think the Zaslav, that whole side of thing tracks great for ESPN too. It's tough. It's hard to imagine that they're going to have enough money to

spend on the NBA and then you have all the streamers coming in too. I don't know what to make of that, but I think Amazon, I think football was good for Amazon. It was great. So now that would make me think

who's going to think the NBA is good for them so you're guessing that amazon's going to grab that thursday night package i think tnt will have something because adam silver is such a loyal guy and as in the whole history with them but i don't think they'll have the i don't think they'll have the playoff games in the same way i don't think it'll be you know east in in the same way. I don't think it'll be East and the ESPN and the West and the TNT for the playoffs. I think those days are over. I could see ESPN actually taking a bigger piece and maybe they get 80% of it instead

of 50%. I could see that too. I think on a smaller note, I would imagine ESPN is going to be all over the NBA All-Star weekend. Yes. And I think about a smaller note, I would imagine ESPN is going to be all over the NBA All-Star weekend. Yes. And I think about it this way. The first ESPN Super Bowl, I don't believe, is until 2027. So the destination of, hey, well in advance, we're going to be in the city in terms of hospitality for your corporate partners,

it doesn't exist for NFL playoffs, as you know, because you don't know where you're going to be until the week before it doesn't exist for the nba finals until the conference championships are resolved so they can't really do it for the finals they had the x games for years obviously it's a marginal event i'm not comparing it to the all-star game but it was a big hospitality thing for them yeah so i look at it as that all-star weekend is probably something that they really, really want, that they're going to go after. And are they going to try to get more playoff games? Of course. It would seem to me like they are the kind of sleeping giant of all the TV rights stuff.

Because I think people are defaulting to, well, if TNT doesn't get it, it goes to the streamers. But I actually think it makes more sense to me. ESPN, I think, knows what its business is now. And I don't think it really knew it until about a year ago. It's games and highlights. Totally. Remember that first couple years with ESPN Plus,

they're creating all these different shows to put on there. It's like, guess what? I want to go on there and watch Holy Cross play, you know, Amherst and basketball in January. Like you just have to have as much of that stuff as possible. And I think they know that now.

And now it's just like big leagues and then just being everywhere for high school and college I think is where they're going to spend their money. I think, look, even if you look at Fox with what they're doing with their network, there was a college hoops game on Saturday night on Fox Network. It's effective.

And if you look at ESPN now in parting ways with the Big Ten, keep in mind also the other item, whatever the hours, the tonnage that ESPN owes to the MVPDs, the distributors for live content a year, now the Big Ten stuff, think primarily college hoops,

right? The football games are long college hoops. There's a lot of games that's going to go away. The beneficiary of that NBA, because having more games on fills that gap. Yeah. I also think the big 12 got their deal done in short order because certainly Disney did want, did not want to lose that tonnage. I think the Pac-12 could be a beneficiary of it, even in its weakened state. G League too, I think. I think ESPN's going to really push that hard the same way like they pushed WNBA for years and years. Now they're finally starting to see results on that. That's smart. It's going to be, I would say, the most fascinating money spending time we've had in a while over these next 18

months. And you guys are going to be right in the middle of it. Why couldn't ESPN be a home for WWE? I agree with you. Why couldn't it? I think, you know, we had, you know, years ago had a number of conversations with them. Um, you know, you texted me something, uh, when Jimmy Pataro got the big job there about, you know, in a very friendly way, how you and I had known him for years, uh, it doesn't mean he's going to do a WWE deal, but it certainly means, you know, when you have that sort of relationship that you'll get the truth, uh, which, you know, as you know, as a seller of content or provider of content is really all you want at the end of the day. So I can tell tell you this our audience only has a 10 overlap with the

ufc so in terms of all that true 10 maybe it's 11 but it's very very close to 10 um so if you look at all the subs that ufc is generated for espn plus our audience is different and supplemental to that so yeah we're we're hyped we think we're in a good spot. Is the WWE merry-go-round over before we go? Are we done? Are we done with announcements? Are we done with things coming out and people leaving and coming back? Is there anything left that can happen?

Listen, I don't want to jinx anything. I think the ship is steady. So I think we're good to go. You got to tell me, are you going to buy the WWE or I know again, I've decided to back out. Spotify deal. I'm saving

up for when A-Rod and the other guy, when they run out of money for the Timberwolves. I'm just kind of waiting on that. They're barely making these deadlines. Got my eye on it. Anthony Edwards. I like it. I like it. I keep hearing you would know this. I wouldn't. That like it. Finally team up with him. I like it. I keep hearing you would know this.

I wouldn't bet Portland's going to come up for sale in a couple years. Seems like Portland's pretty soon. There's always Indiana rumors, but who knows? And then Charlotte, I think those maybe. I think Portland's probably the safest bet to go. And then they got the two expansion teams. Do you look down on the geography of Portland where you would not buy that team?

I wouldn't care what team it was. Get in. I mean, we're talking, this is crazy. It's people like Matt Ishbia that could buy NBA teams now. The window was the late 2000s. That was where you could put together a group and the prices were reasonable and you could actually pull it off.

Now it's, the Sun's thing is blowing it out of the water. Now it's like rich guys only. It'll be interesting to see. They're going to keep relaxing their rules, I think, on what kind of team you can put together to buy a team.

And I think we're just going to see a lot of like, a lot of, what's the right word? Not teams, conglomerates. I don't even know. Yeah, groups, whatever it is.

Groups. We're going to see groups. That's going to be like the new thing. Did you think the Suns would go for the amount that they went for? Yeah.

I did. I thought it was going to be four billion plus. I think you had told me at one point one of the factors in your head on why it would go

for a robust number was the geographic proximity to Los Angeles. Yep. Which I know Matt geographic proximity to Los Angeles, which I know Matt is not from Los Angeles, but it's a big money city. And to San Francisco too. Totally.

It's within like an hour and a half of both of them. Yep. So all those money, Golden State certainly is not coming up for sale. The Clippers have a legitimate billionaire owner. Miami, no. Right. The New York teams, no.

Unless Joe Sia gets frisky. Yeah, so in terms of the 40-minute flight. Chicago, no. You'll never sell. So yeah. And Boston, I think Boston, I don't think they would sell either, but with the prices, the way things are going,

nothing would surprise me. There's no way these guys didn't see those numbers. I'm like, wait a second, what? Suns, four billion? What do you think the commanders? That's going to be like seven. Yeah, that's what I've read the seven. I'm starting to hear more. I wouldn't be surprised.

It's an amazing franchise. And you get to be the guy who followed the worst boyfriend of all time. You get to be the next guy. Totally. Listen, it's also. You're great. You're taking me to dinner. This is awesome. I can't believe it. Thank you. You're paying for dinner's also... You're great. You're taking me to dinner? This is awesome.

I can't believe it. Thank you. Oh, you're paying for dinner? You're so generous. Whoa, you held a door open for me? Oh, my God. You're the nicest guy ever. Someone also reminded me

that when Jack Kent Cooke owned the Redskins, that Richard Nixon, when he was president, would come to training camp. If you want to be a power broker in that geographic region, it's certainly a way to help.

So I don't know if the Bezos thing, how real it is, how real it isn't. But depending on what he wants to do next, it feels like he's certainly not done with the Washington Post. It's people with that kind of money. Yeah, real money. That are like, how much is it? Nine bill? All right, cool. Totally. Let me call my guy. That's kind of you now.

Stop. You understand what I'm saying? It could be you after this WWE sale. No, not me. Jeez. Let's see. That's kind of you now. Stop. You understand what I'm saying? It could be you after this WWE sale. No, not me. Jeez. Let's see. Let's see what it brings. All right.

Thanks for the time. Really appreciate it. Good luck with everything in the next few weeks and months and can't wait to see how this story unfolds. I appreciate you, man. Thanks for doing this.

All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Justin Termini. Thanks to Stephen Rezador and Prince Yadi. Thanks to Nick Khan. Thanks to Justin Termini. Thanks to Steven Ruiz, Adore Princey Addy. Thanks to Nick Khan. Thanks to Kyle Creighton for producing. As always, don't forget, new rewatchables went up. We did a live.

And I'm going to be back on this feed with Million Dollar Picks and a lot of football talk on Thursday. Let's see if we can keep the Million Dollar Picks like a mini hot streak. Semi-hot. Semi-hot streak. We'll see if we can keep it going on Thursday. See you then. I feel the air sweating on the wayside. I'm a person never once said I don't have to be alone.