The Bill Simmons Podcast - Reliving The Zion Sweepstakes and Heartbroken Knicks Fans With Ryen Russillo and Brian Koppelman | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo for The Ringer's 2019 NBA draft lottery show. They talk about draft karma, team needs leading up to the lottery, and cover some winners and losers after the picks are set (4:15). Then Bill calls up his old friend and diehard Knicks fan Brian Koppelman to discuss his thoughts about the Knicks likely missing out on Zion Williamson with the third overall pick (1:37:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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that's how much content we've had it's been fantastic including Binge Mode, which is coming out. It will be in your mailboxes or your pod mailbox, your pod, what is it? Pod library?

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Ringer NBA show has been humming this week. We're doing live reaction pods, all kinds of things. And theringer.com as well, where you can read about basketball. You can go there right now and read the NBA draft lottery reactions. You can check out Kevin O'Connor's draft guide. See where your team is, what could happen. Maybe pick somebody you've never heard of and adopt them as your favorite guy. It's up

to you. I don't judge. Coming up, here's what we're going to do. Listen carefully. We are going to run the entire live lottery show that Ryan Russo and I did for the at ringer Twitter handle, which had a lot of fun stuff in it. We did a pregame show. We did lottery karma rankings where we talked a lot about

hoops, who deserved, who deserved to win the lottery and also some fun Zion stuff. And if you watched it already, just fast forward to the end of that, uh, that whole show, which was by the way, really fun and a good idea because when the Lakers dropped in the top four, you can actually hear me almost having a stroke. So you'll hear that. If you've ever been like, I wonder what the sound of somebody

who might be having a stroke sounds like, it's me when the Lakers envelope jumped. I almost blacked out. I was so upset. So anyway, check that out. And if you already heard it or you don't want to listen to it because the ladder already happened, at about the one hour mark, Ursula and I do the, all right, this ladder just happened. Here are our instant reactions. And that's going to go for about another half hour. And then around, I'm going to say the hour, what would we say?

Hour 40. Hour 40 range. My buddy, Brian Koppelman, co-creator of Billions, as well as a guy who created rounders with David Levine. He came on, he is one of the biggest Knicks.

I wanted to have a giant Knicks fan on to talk about the aftermath of coming so close and then not getting Zion Williamson. So he was perfect and he was in rare form. Rare, rare form. So check that out as well. So that's all coming up. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. Jason's over there. He's nervous. This is the Ringer Live Lottery Show.

We don't do this very often. That's Ryan Russillo. We think this could be one of the most meaningful nights in recent NBA history. Or it could be just a blip. I don't know. What do you think? We almost missed the show. I was so excited about this.

And you and I sat in your office for way too long. And I was like, oh, he's already repeated. Am I supposed to watch the camera? This is informal, right? Yeah, no. Look at the camera. Look at me. You've done TV a couple times. Oh, yeah. Presented by State Farm. Right. It's an informal

live lottery show presented by State Farm. So, wanted to start this out with the live lottery karma power rankings, which I have not shown you. No. These are fresh. I like to figure out from a karma standpoint who deserves to win the lottery most. I'm a big karma guy.

I like to tip my servers at least 20% unless they really do something terrible. Then it might be like 17%. But for the most part, 20% and up for my server. Have you noticed some of the automated tipping though? And you see like 30% on a smoothie and you're like, come on guys, who's hitting 30? It's a great point. So lottery karma power rankings. Here are the questions that you have to ask yourself

if your team is eligible for Zion Williamson tonight. Number one, is your team overdue to win a lottery? I think that's fair. Like if I'm a Cavs fan, I'm not feeling overdue. Like, man, this is our time. It's no. Number two. Your anti-Cavs lottery thing, man, this is our time. It's, no. Number two. Your anti-Cavs lottery thing, though, is well-established.

I think I saw you lose it one time during the actual lottery show. I actually did. I kind of, like, blacked out. Yeah. And unfortunately, it's on YouTube. Didn't you demand, like, a rule change in the middle of an ESPN show? Yeah. The Cleveland fans are sober, and then there's some dickhead on TV just going nuts about how we need to change the rules.

I don't apologize, though. Second, has the team who is in the lottery, has their big-pictured game plan made any sense whatsoever? Or are they just in here because of dumb luck? Number three, this is an important one. Did they handle last season with dignity? So wait a minute. The Atlanta Hawks, 23-30 in their last 53 games last year dignified so you're going anti you're rewarding teams for being competitive and having winning records not tanking was their

dignity number four did they ever make you say why can people divorce their spouses but they can't divorce their teams if your team made you say that you're probably overdue to win the ladder. So that's a good karma. There's a couple of Knicks fans over there who have probably said that to themselves. I can't wait to see where the Knicks are ranked here. Last but not least. Do you honestly believe the karma gods feel bad for you?

And that's it. All right. So you look at like some of the teams that are available here, like the Sixers could win the lottery. I would say they have zero karma, right? I feel like no one's even, how has no one done a bad segment on that yet? Like if you have Zion, how does that fit with Ben Simmons? Like nobody even bothered.

Maybe they don't draft Zion. Yeah. Maybe they take John Moran. Like we needed a more traditional point, play Ben at the two. No one even did that bad segment. I feel like we missed an opportunity. I'm ready right now. Okay.

Before we get to the lottery karma rankings, are you okay with the way we do the lottery right now? Well, we changed it again. It seems like we overcorrected it a little bit. Yeah, but what happens then is that this is exactly what happens. Okay, so whatever system you've had, and they've gone back and forth with this so much. It goes all the way back to the Keem stuff.

Yeah. Whenever it was just, well, whoever has the worst record, we'll just go ahead and do that. We're like, wait a minute, that's ridiculous. We have to do some mods here. The tanking's out of control. I mean, this tanking thing is nothing new. It goes way back to what we saw some of the stuff happening in the 80s. The 80s was when it started.

The 80s. The rockets. The rockets ruined it for everybody. So then when it became that. Sean Yu shaking his head. Hey. Shots fired. He's still licking his wounds from Friday night.

I remember that 84 sports illustrated. Okay. Then we had the complaints that the worst team, once we had the lottery, we're like, wait a minute, the worst team in the league barely has that good of a chance of winning their World War pick.

So we're like, all right, so let's wait it heavily that way and now because tanking took off again like none of this there's no perfect system is the whole point so now they've corrected again in a way where if a bunch of teams that have bad if the knicks end up with the fifth pick then everyone's going to freak out considering how bad that team was this year so i don't i think the point of this is whatever percentage you want to put on it no one one's ever going to be happy. Who's in more danger if the Knicks get the fifth pick? Who'd you say? Like, is Adam Silver's job now in jeopardy at this point?

Is there a revolt? Does Stern FaceTime him? Stern's like, dude, I thought I gave you the playbook. I told you, freeze the envelope. Put, like, carbon whatever on it. What are you willing to believe, Conspiracy Bill? I think some chicanery happened in the 80s. You think the Ewing thing.

I think there's been some moments in NBA history that maybe they're happy that we don't go backwards. Like when David Stern found out about YouTube and he's like, wait, the lottery? Is the lottery going to be on YouTube from 85? He freaked out. There's no question. You can't find it? Oh, I've found it. I've studied it.

And that envelope had a turn on one of the corners. It absolutely 100% did. You can watch it on YouTube. Would you leave it to the turn? Like, you know how older people can be with envelopes in general. I don't even mail anything now. But I'm just saying, like, would you trust something that important if you were going to fix it to just search for the one with the dinged corner? So that's the counter to this is David Stern was a middle-aged man at this point who would have had to, while looking at the camera, just grab the thing, felt the cold envelope that had the corner and just pulled it out my counter is what if he practiced for like three straight weeks this is all he did and he had a

mustache he's just eight hours a day yeah eight hours a day he's just like all right nope do it again david nope nope reach down nope do it one more time and then finally like week three he got it he's like i got this let's go what'd you work on this off season so uh i don't know whenever anybody brings up the whole thing being fixed i always think of duncan on the spurs because that's where you want one of the greatest generational talents shagging the magic yep shagging the magic but that one's a little bit easier to explain or just the calves run of recent history so i'm just i'm not willing to believe it there were were a couple of shaky ones this decade. You think the Pelicans winning Anthony Davis was a shaky one?

Well, two in a row we had LeBron leaves the Cleveland Cavaliers. And then the next year they win the lottery with the Clippers pick, which was like the eighth pick. That raised my eyebrow. And then the next year, Anthony Davis, right? When the Pelicans were getting sold, they couldn't find a buyer. The Benson family is like, all right, fine. We'll buy them. And then it's like, Oh, the Pelicans were getting sold, they couldn't find a buyer. The Benson family is like, all right, fine, we'll buy them. And then it's like, oh, the Pelicans have won Anthony Davis. That was suspicious.

But we're also talking about fraud. Like this is a crime if you're fixing the lottery now. So that's the other thing too. I don't think it's happening. Think about how all different like stories or like these revelations or all these things go wrong and how we all find out because there's such great stories somebody wants to share them with somebody else so the NBA is that good at this that no one's ever shared any of these stories and to remind you of Chicago

with Rose or the pick with the Clippers pick there like there's there's a reason why we actually still get excited and there's 14 fan bases tuning in that it says one percent or two percent next to your team and it doesn't say zero so So somebody has to, with no odds, win. I know there are Sixers fans out there who still can't believe the shot hit four parts of the rim before it went in and they got knocked out and Embiid played 45 minutes and what, 32 seconds?

Backup center, Zion. So we had to. Monroe was minus nine. It's like, no, you didn't have to. You don't have to run Embiid in the ground. But I know there are some Sixers fans. I know there are some Sixers fans who are like, No, you didn't have to. You don't have to run and beat in the ground. Are we doing a Game 7 recap? I know there are some Sixers fans who are like,

yeah, 1%. We're in there. Where is it? Oh, sorry. Sorry, Chris. It's a good crowd. Good crowd. Lively. Lively in here. Where are you guys from?

Anyone from Ohio? All right. Cool. Three ways I would change the lottery rules. So you can agree or disagree. Are we not doing the karma ranking? We are doing it right now before we do it. Three ways to change something that's been changed every three years.

Go. Number one, no team can win the lottery twice in a five-year span. Yes or no? Can't win it twice. You just get, but you drop down to two. So that would rule out this year, Minnesota, Phoenix, and Philly. I would table that one. Table that one?

All right. I'm 0 for 1. No team can win the lottery if it's made the lottery five straight times. Yeah, win. Phoenix and the Lakers. Yeah, win is fine. Yeah. Oh, so you're in on that one. That one's not. Yeah, that's fine. Oh, so you're in on that one?

Yeah, that's fine. Because you know I'm an NBA Republican. What does that mean? I don't like to reward the lower class NBA teams. I'd rather destroy them. I'm an NBA Republican. Three,

no team can land a top three pick for three straight years. Didn't you just basically say the same thing three different ways? No, nobody qualified this year. Uh, you are just ruling out. I'm sorry.

I don't make incompetence. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. What about immigration? I love immigration. Uh, all right. Lottery karma rankings

okay that was a good episode separating this into categories do we have cool graphics for this show on you have you recovered from the drive-by shooting you're good oh the rockets thing were you even alive for that Ralph Sampson Hakeem stuff no he's just

very sensitive now don't even worry about it Durant got hurt and he like had a victory party on Thursday at the ring offices. Yeah, he's like, we're going to the finals. We've got this. James Harden, Chris Paul, Mike D'Antoni. What could go wrong? Yeah. All right, so no karma whatsoever.

I have two teams on this list. The Sixers, Celtics, neither of them deserve to win. I'm from Boston, and I would never think we deserve to win this. So the wrinkle there is- This is the proudest I've ever been to you. Thank you. Philly gets the first pick. Boston gets all the other slots with that Sacramento pick.

The other team that has no karma whatsoever is the Lakers who have picked second, second, second, and seventh since 2014. No playoffs since 2011. Okay, but it's not no karma. This is in the you don't have any good karma. Yeah, you deserve no lottery good spirits. Because I can't imagine that there's anyone outside of LA that if LA were to walk away with Zion,

they'd be like, well, you know what? That's good. I'm glad they had good luck because they've been basically laughing stock nationally of the NBA the last few weeks. Yeah, I have a little question for this. Okay. Are they the league's biggest train wreck right now?

Have the Knicks and kings passed the torch to the los angeles lakers after this latest coaching search where we had frank vogel who's like their fourth choice i actually like frank vogel but i mean he's like their fourth choice and then they're like but you have to also bring in jason kidd who is a game of thrones character um Cersei? No, no, let me guess it. And this is like the third craziest thing they've done this year? Oh, you're doing some Game of Thrones sports crossover content?

I was trying. I didn't know who you were coming up with. We're doing this? Right. No, he's more like a Varys. Bald. I thought everybody was calling him Littlefinger. Littlefinger?

Hey, that's an insult to Littlefinger. He was so much better at this. Littlefinger had a great run. Should I grab a sword? Wait a minute. So no karma for the Lakers. that's an insult to Littlefinger he was so much better at this Littlefinger had a great run should I grab a sword? wait a minute so no karma for the Lakers is my in my

yeah that's my opinion yeah yeah okay alright so no good karma next category new graphic a cereal bowl of karma points some karma points

but that's it I have the Suns here as the third lowest karma team nine straight lottery appearances they have picked first fourth fourth fifth thirteenth and fourteenth since 2013 here as the third lowest karma team. Nine straight lottery appearances. They have picked first, fourth, fourth, fifth, thirteenth, and fourteenth since 2013.

And they're owned by the Mad King, Robert Sarver, the worst owner in the league right now. Now, the counter is never made the finals. I'm sorry, never won the finals. Only made the finals twice. And I feel bad for their fans. The fans don't deserve this.

They don't deserve Robert Sarver for 13 years. So I feel for them. So that's why I gave them some points. When you were bringing up LA as the laughingstock or train wreck, I think Phoenix is the only one that could even hang. That rivals them? What a win for the Kings, not to even be mentioned. I don't think you can right now.

39 wins. They're not in the conversation. Really proud of them. It was a fun team this year. When don't think you can right now. 39 wins. They're not in the conversation. Really proud of them. It was a fun team this year. When you're kind of a league pass. Have a Marlboro Red on me, Vlade. What's that? I was telling Vlade to have a Marlboro Red on me in celebration.

He's not in the conversation. I thought you said meme in there. I was like, I didn't know what you were doing. All right. I'm good. But Phoenix is long term. Like Sarver, the day he got the keys, was just ramming it into the garage door. He's like, I'm good. But Phoenix is long-term. Sarver, the day he got the keys, was just ramming it into the garage door. He's like, I got this.

We're going to trade the seventh pick for cash. Do you have it written down how many picks they've had? I mean, just since 2013, they've had four top five picks. That tells me you're not good at this. Or the drafts. Yeah, the drafts weren't great. All right, so next I have the Hornets. The Hornets have had

they only have a 1% chance since 2008 they have picked between 8 and 12 9 times like they have basically said

to their fans we are locking down 36 wins for you guys we got this we're going to be the Orlando Magic just pick a little later

yeah I just want to point out they have 85 million on the books next year for Nick Batum, Bismack Biambo, Marvin Williams, one of the Zeller brothers, and Michael Kidd Gilchrist. $85 million. The cap's like 104. But it's going to go up. So maybe. That's good.

Maybe they have some room to get Deion Waiters. That's incredible. Yeah, it's bad. The Cavaliers are my next karma team as we start rising up the karma rankings. They have won the lottery four times since 2003. They have won five of the 35 lotteries, unless my math is wrong. Since 2011, they've picked first, first, first, fourth, fourth, and eighth. Just this decade.

So I'm not going to, I don't feel bad. It's well-established. They've won the title too, by the way. Yeah, we don't need to. By the way, can you imagine what Gilbert and the Cavs run would be like? Like we're sitting here looking at this Lakers thing because it doesn't seem to end. But at least there's some connection to success because we're talking about a family that's owned this team

for such a long time. All right. Sarver, the minute he walked in. But can imagine if gilbert never had the lebron years how bad it would be yeah it would be awful or i'm going the other way maybe lebron was holding gilbert back that'd be a great talk show segment was the second best player ever holding dan gilbert back coming up next second best in the league now? Yeah. I have the T-Wolves next.

They won the lottery in 2015. They had three number one overall picks in their roster this year. This is amazing. Since 06, they've picked first, second, third, fourth, fifth, fifth, sixth, sixth, seventh, seventh, ninth, and thirteenth. God, that's so many picks. It's so bad. Do you know that they have, they've won two playoff series ever and they were both in the same year, 2004? In the other

29 years they've existed, they did not win a playoff series. And that was when Garnett was out every year for consecutive years, needed help. And then he had that weird Trenton Hassel team. Yeah. Cassell was there. That was the team that went to the Western Conference Finals, right? Spreewell.

Yeah, Spree. Troy Hudson. Yeah, Troy Hudson. Everybody had the same look on that team. Does anybody remember that? Yeah, that's true. 30 seasons, 21 lottery appearances. 21.

Next one, last one in this category, the Heat. This is pretty good. No top nine picks since 2008. They've been exceedingly competent. They've only had their lottery card pulled once as a top three pick, Beasley in 2008. My thing with them, I wrote this two years ago, too pretty to be in the lottery, too sexy of a destination. Won some titles. They have salary cap, no state tax, Pat Riley. It's like, they don't belong here. This is, the lottery is for the downtrodden. I don't like having the heat in there.

But I really think that this team would have been in a weird kind of limbo. Maybe Dwayne Wade leaves if LeBron and those guys don't come. So I feel like you should put them, it's not bad karma for them, but I don't think they have as much like you should put them, it's not bad karma for them, but I don't think they have as much good karma just considering the history. Like that was the, one of the all-time great hookups where three players basically said, we'll go where you're already playing.

And it has nothing to do with anything else. So that to me is better than winning the lottery three years in a row. So I don't think they, they don't have anything coming their way. New graphic, a salad bowl of karma points. Now we're talking, we're now. How many categories we got here? How many bowls are we looking at? This is the second to last bowl. Okay.

I have the bowls here. 12.5% chance. They have the fourth spot in the lottery. They've only had one top 10 pick since the Rose draft. Wendell Carter last year, star of a ringer video. And that was about his highlight of his rookie season, I think. Sorry when that was true. Here's the thing.

Cheap franchise. I keep coming back to the karma thing with them where third biggest franchise, third biggest market we have for the NBA. And they kind of operate it like it's Memphis. They're always like, hey, we made this trade. We're under the tax. It's like, what are you guys talking about? You have a season ticket waiting list for 50 years?

You're Michael Jordan? Why are you cutting corners? So it would kind of be annoying if Jerry Reinstorf ended up yet again hitting the lottery literally with Zion. I got to tell you, the Jim Boylan news threw me off a bit. You know how whenever you think you're just being lied to all season long by an organization and you're totally fine with it? We're like, no, no, absolutely. This is our guy. And then they don't resign him.

Yeah. The Boylan part, we're like, no, we love him. We love him. The development, the whole thing. I thought he was going to have a heart attack and a timeout in the game. I'd be like, aren't you guys tanking? Like, why are you talking about the leadership of this team? Like, I don't even know why I'm watching right now.

And they brought him back. So the front office for them, no one ever wants to back me on this because it's gone so bad but they had an incredible stretch of drafting yeah wow where i'm like these guys are really good at it they're very steady and then to see it go the other way so quickly but you know the marketing deal worked out i still like carter uh i like carter this is a bad like if you started doing and i know we'll do some of the Zion fit stuff thing a little bit later. Like Chicago's actually one that scares me for Zion. Scares you in a bad way?

Yeah, because of Zach Levine and Chris Dunn. Because they're going to take minutes from him? Levine's like, I don't care. He's like, I'm older. They put him on the leadership committee? Yeah. Although, yeah, that's true. I don't know.

He probably can't be in the committee a year in. He probably has to apply. Yeah. Next team up from a's true. I don't know. He probably can't be in the committee a year in. He probably has to apply. Yeah. Next team up from a karma standpoint, the Mavs. They picked fifth and ninth the last two years. They have Luka Doncic. They have Porzingis. The wrinkle with this pick is unless it's top five,

it goes to the Hawks. So they actually need to be in the top five. From a karma standpoint, I had to downgrade them for that crazy sexual harassment saga they had that I never really felt like, you know, not to be a comedy killer here, but I never felt really satisfied about how we resolved all of that and the apologies and all that. I just thought it was unseemly and I docked them from a karma standpoint. So there you go. I have nothing to add. Yeah, I figured you wouldn't.

This is super awkward. Next up, Grizzlies. Grizzlies only a 3% chance. 10 top six picks from 1995 to 2009. If you're doing the ownership thing here, we know what we've dealt with in Sacramento. We know the current LA thing. We've already talked about Sarver, Gilbert, the whole deal. Memphis gets

away with Sneaky having maybe the most unsteady owner of all these guys. We're not even sure he has money. I think he bought the team and his value was high, but then it crashed and then let him buy the team anyway. I'm not even sure he... He's the guy to go to the Hamptons with.

You're like, this is sick. You're like, well, it's not really the hamptons with you're like this is sick and you're like well it's not really you know it's that he's renting it take your garbage with you what yeah i think he's we have billionaires in the nba i think he's a millionaire we want to play tony allen one-on-one which i kind of love that spirit i'm like i thought you would do that if you were an owner oh definitely especially him because tony his shot fell off later as he got older he'd be like oh man rassillo's here. He wants to run full. Yeah.

Why do you want to play full court one-on-one? Who's going to guard him? So it's fine. The wrinkle with this pick is Boston gets the pick if it's ninth or higher. And if you're a Celtics fan, you do not want the pick this year because you'd rather roll it over because Memphis is a top five bad roster situation right now considering they're in the West. Yeah, it's unprotected in a couple years. Yeah.

So that could be the kind of, that's a Tobias Harris acquiring type game-changing pick. Is that insulting? I'm trying to figure that out. You'll figure it out. Is that insulting, Chris? No, no. Chris is in a coma from game seven.

No, when you have one of those. Chris is like, we had to peel him out of the car to get him to work yesterday. We should just run Fultz video. Fultz over and over? Just Fultz video, like this moment in time in the lottery. When the Sixers are like,

man, if there's any way they could move up from three. This is just mean now. We're going to stop. I have a piece in my archives about guessing from 2017 about what Fultz's upside is and it's like I have him a couple hairs above Derrick Rose where Derrick Rose was in 08

like as a sure thing. I hate comps. We're all wrong. I hate comps so much because everybody will be like, well, who does he remind you of? I'm like, I don't want to say. There's a Kyrie Irving in this lottery though. Is there really? Yeah. Who is it? I'm going to save it for later. Okay. Last one in this category is the Pelicans.

They won in 2012. They picked six twice this decade. That's about it. And from a karma standpoint, in their favor, really dicked over by the player empowerment era this year, which is just the player empowerment era going wrong and Clutch intervening with their team and Davis just checking out

and then claiming he's checked back in and all that stuff. I actually felt bad for them. So I wouldn't, I'd be okay with that. I have a number one. I didn't come up with any rankings, but I would have them like as far as karma and be like a team that you have no ties to winning.

I go, you know what? Good for them. So here's the counter. Okay. They had Davis and then proceeded to try to speed rush a contender around him instead of just actually like being smartly building around him. They traded, they did two separate picks where they traded, what they traded two first for Drew Holiday.

They traded a first for Miritich. Yeah. And then they were always in a rush. Miritich later. They also gave out terrible deals. I mean, if you go through this stuff. Etuan Moore and, yeah. Well, Solomon Hill deals in all time. Solomon Hill.

Where everybody was just spending recklessly all the time. So yeah, that's fair. I mean, you can go year by year how they built the team, but they also, and this could be on the organization and ownership as well, but they have this run of injuries with that team. And maybe it's Davis, maybe it's Drew, but there's a feeling around the league

that they could upgrade that part of their team. All right, before we get to the last category, and there's one, two, three teams left. My gosh. From a karma standpoint. I want to talk about State Farm really quick because State Farm, do I have that thing? Oh, yeah.

I think they're great. Yeah. Watch this live. We're teaming up with State Farm to create a segment called What If, where we discuss theoretical NBA scenarios and imagine a world of infinite possibilities, just like the NBA. Anything can happen in real life with a State Farm agent. You can be better prepared for whatever life throws your way. I wanted to talk about, we're going to do this twice, about great NBA what-ifs from this decade. So here's one for you. What if Embiid doesn't get hurt in the 2014 workout stuff

leading up to the lottery and definitely goes first, but then LeBron decides he wants to go to Cleveland and then they trade Embiid to Minnesota, I guess, for Kevin Love? Does Minnesota, A, does Minnesota still do that deal for Embiid? Or would you keep Embiid and put him with LeBron and Kyrie

and be like, no, actually good. We don't need Kevin Love. He was the best player in the draft. And I'm not saying that retroactively. Hands down. It wasn't, Wiggins was a really good prospect and even Jabari Parker, you're like,

okay, this makes sense. These guys are going to go to the top three, but you're so scared off, especially a bigger guy, a foreign guy with those kinds of injuries that it was right in Hinckley's wheelhouse because he's like, even better,

I don't have to do this. But remember when, it's funny you bring this up because when LeBron wrote that letter about coming back, but the love Wiggins thing hadn't been done yet. And LeBron mentioned everybody except Wiggins. And Anthony Bennett.

Right. And it was like, wait a minute, you picked the guys that are going to be in this trade that everybody's been talking about? Yeah. And there was one theory that because Wiggins hadn't signed with LeBron's group, that that's why it was done. I don't think LeBron wanted to play.

Oh, they would never be that spiteful. But LeBron didn't want to play with any rookies anyway. He's never wanted rookies. He wanted them to trade the picks. All the times they've had picks, he's like, let's just trade these. I'm not going to play with some rookie. So I don't know if he would have appreciated Embiid as much when, you know, a lot of the players that tweet out about guys

when they're first watching them in the tournament, they're playing. It's not like they're going to be home scouting these guys. So to just say, oh, he would have loved Emb mb'd mb'd wouldn't have been traded and then maybe mb'd is still with lebron and cleveland it's a fun one but it's assuming a lot with lebron and a younger player that ruin your game no because i was thinking i think they do the trade mb'd's hurt the following year they end up with the number one pick again probably they take Towns and then they have Embiid and Towns which is like a really fun alternate universe which is basically what he has now

with Simmons except Towns is a better shooter I think Towns is probably a better point guard too sorry Chris anything is possible that's why State Farm agents are always sticking ahead helping to make sure you're ready for the what ifs in your life.

All right, last group, three teams. This is my top three karma teams in reverse order from three to one. The Wizards picked first, third, third, and sixth from 2010 to 2013. Here's where you get some karma. The John Wall thing, I actually looked it up because I forgot what it was worth. It's four years, $169 million, but that's for the next four years. It's actually not even like, oh, we're year one into the four years.

It's the most untradable contract in the NBA. No, starting next year, it's four years for $169 million. It's like they're in a fantasy league where they only get to spend 60% what your buddies can spend. It's like, all right, but you have to pay your full entry fee. Disaster. And then the Ernie Grenfell thing was just so unfair to have that as your GM. And he's just, you know, like having your uncle run your team. But doesn't that feel a bit like bad ownership if I counter here a little?

That, you know, they're the team that kept Ernie in that position. They're the ones that kept figuring it out like oh we're just going to keep fixing this on the fly like they kept adding to a flawed thing the whole time but they almost made the eastern conference finals two years ago yeah I don't know if any of the stuff we saw in the eastern conference finals last couple years is real you're just throwing it out yeah I just think I just think it's all the basketball is so bad yeah yeah right well the thing with Leon says I it seems like he's a good hockey owner they won the stanley cup so it's not like he's a bad owner you know no i think he's into it um

so i wouldn't i'm just surprised you have him ahead of new orleans that's all i just feel bad for the wizards fans because if i had john wall on my team that would be all i thought about every day like constantly just be like wow it's, my basketball life is over for four years. I'm back in 2023, basically. So next one, Knicks. I have them in this second to highest spot. Sorry, Jason. Did this take something out of you to get you to do this?

Because this is kind of your ownership rule here. Or does that mean you just feel that bad for the fans? To me, it's the fans trump all the other stuff. I couldn't put them one because they've been so incompetent the last really 20 years, 19 years. And they have an owner who just has no idea what he's doing.

I just feel bad for them. Like, I really feel like I can't remember another lottery situation where if the team won, more euphoria would happen than with this next thing. It would be the dominant sports story of the entire year. It would surpass Tiger winning the

Masters. It's crazy. So, there you go. Now you're kind of winded. No, I'm not not i'm just trying to think is it really bigger than tiger winning the masters if they got zion i mean it depends how good you think he is i think he's like lebron no i think that's good yeah so that's like wow this is transformative uh last one is atlanta they obey every karma thing I had they've only had one top three pick since 2008 lot of dignity 23 and 30 down the stretch

I love the dignity rankings so much dignity how deep did those go? who was last in dignity this year? like the hound in Thrones when he gives his own life to kill Mountain lot of dignity there spoiler alert

sorry if you haven't seen it by now I don't know what to do for you Tosiana Veep too uh yes she does um the hawks haven't been cool since the late 80s not that joe johnson run no no it was dominique basically two face-offs with MJ in the Eastern semifinals with Bird, and that was the peak of the Hawks. I asked Rembrandt this because he's from Atlanta,

my old Grantland teammate, and he agreed. This would be the greatest moment in Atlanta sports history if they won the, if they won the lottery. He was serious because they didn't win the Super Bowl. Nothing good has happened for them. 95 World Series? No, it's like the strike year. It's like, it's like half a year after. Yeah, it's like the strike year. It's like half a World Series.

Yeah, it's like, does that really count? The strike year they didn't have it. No, the lockout year, whatever. Or it started late. Yeah, it was 94. Nobody liked baseball that year. And that's your baseball segment on the lottery show tonight. Do you worry that if Zion goes to Atlanta

that's going to screw up Herter's development? Because I do. Herter? Like, whatever you do, it'd be just awesome if they won and they go to Zion. They're like, here's the deal. You're kind of like fourth in touches right now. You can figure it out. You know, the big three.

It's just something to think about. It's just something to think about. The big three, Herter, Zion, and Trey Young. Have you watched Herter i can't amazing he was like i can't wait till i'm allowed to go out in five years on the road so that's it so you think nick should be first no i think new orleans should be first really you really feel bad for no we have different i didn't know what the criteria was for the whole thing like basically i don't either. If you have a bunch of high lottery picks in recent history, then yeah, I just feel bad about the Anthony Davis thing. I'm pumped that Griff is in that position.

But yeah, you could counter it too by saying what's ownership doing? But if then you do that, how do you have the Knicks ahead of them? But I understand the fans. Look, there's more Knicks fans are more passionate about it. And we're really looking at something that would feel like the Ewing type reaction. I don't think that's overselling it at all. I feel like you're sucking

up to Davis in case you end up on the shop with him. There's a really good chance I'll never be on the shop. I'm still holding that hope every day of my life. To have the one white guy spot every year. I feel like that could be- Every week.

Every month, however, every three months, whatever it is. I just think there'd be like- Seth Rogen, Rosillo, I don't know. You're interchangeable for me. Yeah, I don't know. I still think you should do it. Consider it. I'm throwing your hat.

All right, in the Bs, we got this Will Kane character. We're going to break him down, and then I'm on the shop going, look, he's not that bad. And then everyone just eye rolls and pulls their hoodies up. Do you know how many teams have won the title

with the number one overall pick? The pick that year? 35 years of lotteries. A team wins the lottery. How many teams have actually won the title after winning the lottery with the guy they won the lottery with? I'll say it's one. So it's happened twice.

San Antonio with Robinson and Duncan. And then Cleveland with LeBron and Kyrie. So it's actually taken two guys that you won the lottery with to win the title. It's never just been one guy and then you win the title um but if you think about those circumstances and san antonio fans are incredibly stubborn about a bunch of stuff and i don't really get it like duncan's not a center yeah doing this no no but i'm just bringing this up we're attacking san antonio this is great san antonio fans no that was on the heart what do you mean best power forward ever like why because he told us like he played center yeah i've done this exercise i've gone through all of the guys that he played next to that didn't

really play center and would start and then it'd be on the bench and in that world of basketball he was a center and then the other thing is that spurs fans say they didn't tank for duncan oh my it was egregious. Robinson was ready to come back like at the all-star break and they just like put him in a cellar. And I don't blame them. I don't blame them for doing what they're doing, but I just don't like when people argue stuff

that's so painfully obvious the other way. It's like, you can still love the Spurs. You can stick up for the Spurs all the time, but you can't call Duncan a power forward and you can't say they didn't tank. There you go. I also, my other problem with Spurs fans who I respect and enjoy. How many Spurs fans do you know?

Well, I was in, I was in the heart of darkness, two straight finals with them yelling at me when I was doing countdown. The, they do this thing where it's like, nobody respects us. Nobody appreciates us.

We don't get enough attention. But then if you actually like follow basketball and read the internet, the Spurs got an incredible amount of love for Duncan, Ginobili, Pop. Pop gets treated with kid gloves more than any other sports figure we have. I actually think it's like

a big jerk circle for the Spurs. Am I allowed to say that on a live lottery show? I think you already started swearing. It's been weird for me because I swear so much on the podcast. I don't know if that was... Can you retroactively? I just don't want to be a first take at some point. No, but seriously, I think people love the Spurs.

You can't do the whole thing where it's like, ah, the Spurs. Who's talking about them? We did this from 2013 to 2015. All we did was talk about how great the Spurs were. I picked them to win every year for a decade. Just on the radio show, I'd go, just put me down for the Spurs. Like the Pats. So, you know, I actually think I believe in the Spurs more.

Has Brady started falling off a little bit? I'm just kidding. Don't do that. Edit that out. Pats, six Super Bowls, Spurs, five. I'm just pointing that out. Rockets with James Harden, zero. Sorry, Sean.

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That is squarespace.com slash BS. Offer code BS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash BS. Offer code BS. Back to the Live Ladder Show. So let's just play the game of if the Knicks win the lottery. Somebody, you're right, Jason. Just make sure he's okay over there. There's rumors that they would then flip him for Anthony Davis that Shams reported. And that like Kevin Knox would also be in it.

I was like apoplectic. I think like if you win the lottery and you get Zion, that is the equivalent of when a football team gets like Mahomes on a rookie deal. It's like the single biggest advantage you have. Zion will be like- And there's more certainty than even there would be with Mahomes. Right. You get Zion for, you know,

it's like 9 million, 9.5, 10, whatever it ends up being for the first four years. And then you also have this major advantage of being able to resign him. You would have to absolutely screw it up in a historic way for him not to be on your team for eight years. That's the biggest advantage you can have. I get Davis. He's 27 next year. He's been dinged up in

a lot of different ways. I'm not positive he can be the best guy on the title team. And I think Zion's a better prospect and has a higher ceiling than Anthony Davis did. And I thought Anthony Davis had a chance to be the best power forward ever. I think Zion has a chance to be like one of the best 10 guys. Would you have said this one year ago if Zion was coming out in last year's class? Off of that Pelican Trailblazers. When it was just like House of Highlights? I was just following Zion and House of Highlights and dunking?

No, I don't think I would have. Like, why do you follow this teenage kid on Instagram? Like, he's an awesome dunker. I'm all in on Zion. I'm still waiting for like the butt dot, dot, dot with him. It's like, I heard Colin today talking about, well, he's, he's not even six,

six. He's two 85 already. I'm not going to pressure. You can put on your knees and ankles. I don't like cowherds height, weight guys. Cause he would be love Colin. But if he was trying to make a point,

he would just shave off two inches in the, in the segment. Oh, I saw you did that. That was good. No, it's true. Yeah. Um, I saw you did that. That was good. No, it's true. Yeah. I just think like,

I think he's a sure thing and I get him at one third the price of a superstar for at least the next four years. Why would I trade that for Anthony Davis? In a vacuum, you wouldn't. You wouldn't. You wouldn't ever say,

let's do this. Let's do where you have all this cost certainty and you have to look at what the Anthony Davis contract isn't right now in comparison to a rookie deal, what it's going to be. It's, it's going to be one of the most massive contracts in the NBA.

So in a vacuum, I don't think you would do that, but. T'Andre Ayton represented the Suns. Is, uh, who's representing the Heat? Is it Wade?

So he can exchange it. Who is representing the Heat? Oh, I thought it'd be Wade. So you get footage of him doing a Jersey thing with like Russ Granik or something. How'd you feel about the Ewing move? I thought that was a bad move. I didn't like it.

Which team has him? The Knicks are using Ewing as their representative. Wait, do you care? I would have. Who would you have gone with? James Dolan should have been there. It would have been great. Drake? James Dolan just being been there. It would have been great.

Drake James Dolan. Just being like, fuck all you guys. I'm, I'm, I'm going to host my own lottery representative thing. People would freak out. Can you imagine that? Oh,

it'd be the worst. And then he wins and he's doing this and the Knicks vids. Yeah. Player for player though. If you were just like, I don't, as much as I like Zion and the whole thing, like there's still that one small party that

goes what's this going to look like once the guy's actually out there running around and we're comparing him to somebody who any given stretch of the last year we've thought of as maybe the best player in the NBA but if it's specific to the Knicks and the Knicks knowing they're getting Durant and say you're adding Kyrie to that because they have the two max slots knowing no I'm just I'm trying to think of all the different versions of. I'm just repeating what you said. I'm doing the, if it's the Knicks and they know they're getting the other two guys. Oh, here we go.

Okay. Lottery's happening. We're probably on a delay. All right. So the Celtics are staying at 14 with that Kings pick. Sorry, Philly fans. I love, by the way, the fact smashing of trying to get that in between picks. It's hard media.

All right, Miami. So we're still even at this point. Miami State tax rate is a little bit lower than the city. This should be Charlotte. Okay. All right. So here's the Lakers. If the Lakers don't come up here here I'm going to fucking flip the table over

I'm just telling all of you oh that looks green oh my god T-Wolves oh my god you've got to be kidding me what the hell how is the league doing this

that's just that's just magic and I'm not talking about Johnson yes How is the league doing this? That's just magic. And I'm not talking about Johnson. Yes. What is that? Let's go! Wait a second.

Yeah, they have two. I'm super confused. Wait a second. What is happening? Okay, so now that means Boston's not going to get the Grizzlies pick. The Grizzlies moved up, so the Celtics don't get their pick. Yeah, but you still have a chance that Zion's on the Lakers, so you're not in a great mood yet.

If Zion's on the Lakers, we're folding the ringer. The Atlanta Hawks. Wow, the Hawks got screwed. Let's go! The Hawks had the fifth best chance of winning this, and they moved back three spots. I'm so confused. Griff is just locked in right now. Oh, my God.

They dropped three spots. Well, right. So the Knicks could really end up five here. Because we already know three teams moved up. Lakers. Oh my god. So they went from three to six so this could so new york new york and cleveland still alive

this could be the next three worst teams this could be the next oh okay this is amazing. So we got the Knicks, the Lakers. Our feed just went out. I think now would be a good time to tell you about State Farm. Somebody just hit an input button. They're probably taking a break.

Because remember, they're switching it up to the four now, right? Is that? Alright, so the four teams alive right? Is that? All right. So the four teams alive, Lakers, Grizz, Pelicans, and Knicks. Wow. What are you going to do if Zion goes to the Lakers?

How are the Lakers in this? What were their odds? 2% chance. Lakers, 2% chance. What a coward. All right. So we have the Lakers with a 2% chance Memphis with a 6% chance

New Orleans with a 6% chance and I love Darius Garland too so this is kind of like whoever's fourth here is still a winner are you serious? yeah I do I love him he's only in four games technically five but he got hurt

boy it'd be amazing if... But hey, the Celtics didn't get that grist bit. Your tone, the color of your face has changed. I just want to point out the Lakers were completely screwed.

No free agents were going there. It was LeBron and that's it. It was like the sad last season of a TV drama that went on too long. And now all of a sudden they have one of the top four picks in the lottery. By some miracle of ping pong balls. You know what would be... What if it's R.J. Barrett and he goes third and then everybody's like, I can't believe you got R.J. Barrett at the beginning of the year.

He was going to potentially go number one. And he ends up being like a worse shooting Brandon Ingram. I just gave you a hole next like three years. By the way, New Orleans. Yes. I don't know. I don't know if I would trade Davis if I got a top

four pick. Well, Davis is probably going to have more to do with that than David Griffin, right? I don't think there's any pick other than Zahn where Davis is like, pick well davis is probably gonna have more to do with that than than david griffin right i don't think there's any pick other than zon where davis is like i mean i like darius garland i don't think davis is going hey that kid that's my kai recomp why did we do this live i feel like i'm gonna have a conniption the funny thing is every pick that we got after that Lakers thing you just kept yelling I don't know what's going on It's unbelievable

This is when you stopped being a CEO and started being real Unbelievable What are you looking for? Your karma rankings? They've had the second, second, second and seventh picks since 2014 and now we just put them in the top four again Does this mean Lonzo's not safe Karma rankings? They've had the second, second, second, and seventh picks since 2014. And now we just put them in the top four again.

Does this mean Lonzo's not safe if they get the second pick? It has. Actually, if they get the number one pick, do you think people will say this was rigged? Yes. Okay. Because people say it every year about multiple cities. I'm going to go up and down Hollywood after the lottery and yell at people that it was rigged. Can somebody make you a sign real quick? I wonder.

All right. So where does the league want him to go? Knicks? So the best case scenario for the Knicks or the league is Knicks one, Lakers two, New Orleans three, Memphis four. I don't know. How do you break the tie in New Orleans, Memphis? What's the worst case scenario for Zion right now? Memphis, New Orleans? Memphis. What's the worst case scenario for Zion right now? Memphis, New Orleans?

Memphis. Yeah, I think it's Memphis. Although it'll be Seattle in five years, probably, if he goes there. I'm kind of speechless. I got to be honest. Yeah, I can tell. I can tell. What's going on right now?

You've done radio by yourself. Why don't you carry us for a minute? It's got to gather my thoughts. Here's the thing about Pete Rose. If he knew... If he was betting on his team... Oh, my God. Who's the victim?

Oh, my God. I mean, Ty Cobb? You want me to do my Ty Cobb segment again? Belichick, second lineman on Tombstone says, we're taking calls. The Zion can't actually go to the Lakers, right? I don't think he can go to the Grizzlies or Pelicans. I don't know.

I would have to rethink everything I ever thought about my life if he went to the Pelicans does Davis go? Davis stays this league this league podium game would anybody trade it?

could this be a longer commercial? oh, they're dragging this one out. So New Orleans could conceivably trade Davis for the number one pick and reunite RJ Barrett and Zion. Yeah. The number, yeah, number three pick. I can't believe Kuzma's there. It's such like a loser move to send a player.

Really? Like classic loser Laker move. What about your brand? Terrible. How about Rob Palenka show up? Didn't Evan Turner do it one year? Yeah. Rob Palenka show up. Clean up your own mess. How about Elliot Perry? Wasn't expecting that tonight. Ewing.

Is it good or bad that Ewing's there? I don't know. I don't have an answer. I don't have an answer. Fourth pick coming. Look at that smile on Tatum's face. Yeah, all right.

All right, that's good. Now you're back in. You're back in. That's good. If this says next. I'm fine with four. Oh! Oh my gosh. I'm fine with four. Oh! Oh, my God.

Ewing has to smile. That's the biggest smile he's ever. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Grizzlies. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So New Orleans gets the

number one pick. They had a 6% chance of winning and they won a once in a decade type guy. I had them number one on my karma. See, the karma rankings worked. So is that the league going, we're sorry about the Lakers tampering with your team?

Here's the number one pick. You know what we want to do? Let's fix it this way. Instead of having Zion in either of the two biggest markets, let's pick the two smallest markets, and that's the right thing to do. All right, let's go quickly. Zion. David Griffin.

He was on NBA TV a month ago. All right. All right. Sorry. Sorry. We're just too. TV a month ago. With, uh... Alright. Sorry, we're just too... Alright, so let's go in order. New Orleans with Anthony Davis and Zion Williamson. I'm not doing it. And Drew Holiday, I'm not doing anything. I feel like that's like a contender

next year. You gotta make sure Davis is... Even if he said, I'm not re-signing after next year, you'd be like, no, you're gonna play with Zion. I'd give it at't even trade even if he said i'm not resigning after next year you'd be like now you're gonna play with zion we're gonna see i give it at least till february by the way all the bigs that you looked at like the deandre ayton thing like sometimes if you have two bigs that can't shoot right now and zion he just he can't i'm not saying he won't be able to but he was 31 from outside it wasn't great it looks really ugly everything else about him is basically perfect but what when you want to talk about perfect, big,

big combination, it's one of the best. It's about as good as he could have hoped for. Cause he's playing against, he's playing next to somebody who's big enough to kind of protect him defensively, but then can play away from him. And by the way, I feel like you could run a high screen with those guys.

Couldn't you with Zion as the, as the ball handler and Davis is the screener and vice versa I don't know who would stay up on Zion an NBA game yet until he proves himself enough but I actually I would I would look at it more as Drew Holiday Zion in the post kicking it back out to Davis and you can't double on either side or Zion yeah well I was like Zion off the screen with a head of steam yeah then he could just, Davis stays out. Right, Davis stays out. And we both love Holiday.

I thought he was the most underrated guy last year on a trapped on a not-so-good team. I really like their team. I think they have cap space, too, because Holiday makes, I think, 24. Davis makes some, but some guys came off. I think Solomon Hill, is he off? Solomon Hill was a 10 year deal.

They could stretch him. This is the first 10 year deal we've had. They could stretch him though. I think that team's a contender with those three guys. I really do. I don't think they would win the title, but I think they could make like the second round of the NBA playoffs. And could they do what Portland did this year?

That's about as far as I'll go with it. Just in his first year. Could they be frisky? What if Davis tells you and your Griff and says, I'm still not resigning after next year. Would you just go, all right, fine.

Like, what would you do? I'd play it out till February and try to see if he was happy with Zion. Because if Zion is really a transformative player, I'd want to see it. Do you think Kyrie was at home going, next. Well,

this, so this is one of the fun outcomes of this because if KD leaves the Warriors, the Warriors are still going to be as fun as they ever were. KD and Kyrie go to the Knicks, great. And then we have this New Orleans team that is now like the most fun league pass team we'll have.

They have to play together just for our sake. Could they trade potentially, could they trade Davis for the four pick Knox and the picks Dallas got in that trade?

I mean, they got from Dallas in that trade. So they have two firsts from Dallas down the road. Yeah. So four Knox and two more firsts

in the Knicks game. It depends on what Davis is telling you. If you're convinced there's no way you're resigning him, but you, it has like, think how quick this stuff changes in this league. Every,

every few months. What if Davis loved playing with Zion and goes, you know, I didn't want to do it. I told him I wanted to move on. I wanted to go to a bigger market. I want to play with guys close to my age. I don't want to rebuild and do this whole thing all over again.

But, I mean, Zion might be the kind of guy that you know they're going to get along. Zion's personality is incredible. I like Zion in New Orleans. I'm okay with that. I like him in the South. I like him better than Memphis because I just don't feel like, you know, I like Griff.

I like what they're trying to do. But, man, unbelievable. So we ended up with the ninth team got first. The eighth team got second. The first team got third. And with the ninth team got first the eighth team got second the first team got third and the eleventh team

got fourth who had that in their mock draft it's one of my least favorite sports talk radio things what do the Lakers do now

by the way this has Cam Reddish written all over it can we do a coming up next on that yeah coming up next what are the Lakers going to do this has Cam Reddish written all over it. Can we do a coming up next on that? Yeah. Coming up next. What are the Lakers going to do? This has Cam Reddish written all over it. Hey, let's take a break to talk about Home Depot. You can get everything for your home from the

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$45 or more. Visit homed depot.com for more information. Back to the live lottery show. Somebody who wasn't ready for the what ifs in his life, Jason Concepcion. Can you come over? Oh, I thought he laughed. I'll share my mic with you. So the fourth, you're not the fifth pick. That a win great i feel fine i feel good you don't you don't come up for the fourth for the fifth pick or the fourth pick that was incredible uh at that point there was uh you know real real high grade cocaine in my bloodstream

uh i was tasting blood I tasted blood in my mouth at that point. I was feeling really, really good. Fifth and fourth picks, I was feeling extremely good. How mad were you about the Lakers thing? Was that a monkey wrench? I didn't care. I liked it. I liked it because

I liked that there was some weird stuff going on. It just makes something interesting happen. I liked it. So you get the third pick. It's number three. Yeah. Which is not Zion and it's not John Morant. Yeah, I don't even know who the other guys are. Ryan?

Tyrion Lannister is, they're looking at him for four. I think RJ Barrett's still going to go really high, but for as good as good as Zion was towards the end, and he was incredible, R.J. and Reddish just got worse. I mean, Barrett shot 29% against

the ACC from three, shot 25% from three in the month of March, and then Reddish. I don't know what a pro scout would watch in his Duke games that would get you really excited, other than just his athleticism. But yeah, I'm bumming you out even more, man. So that's not really what I meant to do.

At the same time, I feel good. I honestly feel good. Katie's coming, right? Katie's coming. Kyrie's coming. Does RJ Barrett make sense with those two guys though? Because my answer would be no. Kyrie doesn't like him, I heard.

I don't think it's a joke it's a bill and I never know no with Kyrie you'd believe any sort of teammates I would honestly believe it like So who do you want now with third pick? You're not ready to think. A forward? A big guy? I guess R.J. Barrett. Would you have rather gotten the fifth pick and not gotten that close?

No, it's fine. I don't want to be down in bull bull land, wondering what's going to happen next. Well, what about third pick and knocks for Davis? Let's go. Okay. Let's do it today. That cheers you up.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, we're getting KD. Things are great. If you get the best player in the league in a month and a half, you're probably going to be okay. I'm feeling good about it. I think you're going to be okay. Yeah.

Thank you very much. All right. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. All right. We're going to wrap up. Heroic. Noble, heroic effort. Okay.

Let's do Memphis. I think they take Ja Morant 100 times out of 100. That's probably the easiest kind of pick. How great is that? Opening up what the Conley possibilities are. I think Conley could actually play off.

I think even Ja could play off if you had to. Does he have one year left or two? Conley has, that was a three year, wasn't it? Or was it four? No, I think it was massive.

I think he has, I thought he had one, I thought he had one year left next year and that was it. But maybe I'm wrong. All right, we're going to look it up right now. So yeah. So what if they,

is there a possibility that they would like rj barrett more than john morant he's got one year left with a player option for 34 million so he's got two years left okay yeah um say that again is there a possibility that rj barrett would go in that two spot and not john okay beginning of the year rj was in the conversation with Zion for number one. Even though Zion had all the hype, in the beginning it was a little bit like, hey, you know, this R.J. Barrett's right there with him. He had a big game against Kentucky.

Yeah. That first game of the season, his transition, the way he attacked. You know, like, this guy's a monster. And then it just, I don't know if it was Coach K and what they did, if they became too Zion-reliant it just over the course of more and more games, you saw more holes from him. So I'm sure there's some scouts that are still totally in love with him. I'm sure there's scouts that still like Cam Reddish, but Reddish was even a worse version than RJ and Reddish is a better athlete than Barrett is. I thought part of the problem with R.J. Barrett, well, two problems.

One, everybody talked about how they just didn't have shooters and he has this slashing kick game, but you're kicking out the guys who can't shoot. You know, Barrett shot it worse from three than Zion did. Fractionally less, but percentage-wise, Zion shot it better from three than R.J. Barrett. I like his shot, though. I'm not worried about his three-point shot.

It doesn't look as bad as Zion's shot. Yeah, I'm not worried about his three-point shot. The second thing that I think affected him, and I think it's totally justified, is from the get-go, people are like, why is this guy shooting? Give the ball to Zion. This guy's screwing things up.

This should be Zion's team. Why doesn't Zion get the ball at the end of the game? And you're 19, and you're reading that stuff, and your family's reading it, and you've gone from, you're this really highly regarded high school recruit to all of a sudden, you're in that stuff and your family's reading it and you've gone from, you're this really highly regarded high school recruit to all of a sudden you're in the freaking tornado and the Zion mania grew and grew.

I don't think it affected their relationship. It actually seemed like they were pretty close, but I just think that's a tough spot to put a college freshman in. So I'm interested to see what he's like on a team that's excited to have him. When it's more wide open, there's an argument made, get RJ out there,

let him initiate the plays a little bit more. It was a team that had no shooting as you pointed out, but Steve Nash had said, forget it. Once you get him, and then I saw, wait, they're both Canadian? I'm like, you guys are like another Joey Votto shot. I got it.

It's the same thing, like in a maximum security prison, the Canadians, they just hang out. Totally. They're like, we know you're not really Canadian. They know what they're doing. They're just not as violent. I think there's a chance, there's a chance that Memphis

would either move down a spot to flip picks with the Knicks and gain some more assets or just take Barrett with the second pick. Because I think there's, there are GMs out there that could talk themselves into the RJ Barrett

versus John Moran thing, would be my guess. I'm not saying it'll happen here, but I think it's in play. So if you're the Knicks and you really decide, you know what, we really need a superstar to go with all the other stuff for a potential superstar, could they move up a spot to get John Moran? Because if you look at their roster,

they're still going to have Conley. They're still going to have Parsons under contract. Shout out. Yeah. Valance Unis in the trade. Somebody, what was the derisive nickname for Gordon Hayward that had Chandler Parsons in it? It was like 4-Chan-ler-Parson

because he plays video games. 4-Chan-ler-P plays video games 4chan Lur Parsons like 4chan it hurt my feelings whoever made up that name I didn't like that maybe they maybe the Celtics could trade Gordon Hayward for one of these top 4 picks have you done that article yet?

Conley? Straight up? let me throw this scenario at you what if New Orleans' endgame was we want to put Zion and John Moran on the same team? So they say to the Knicks, we'll trade you Davis, but you have to make sure you get John Moran out of this. And then the Knicks have to move up, switch spots. Memphis gets Barrett. They get a whole bunch of other stuff. And then whatever.

You don't like that idea of John Moran and Zion in the same team? I'm not anti it, but I think what we do sometimes is where it's like, okay, let's get the whole positional thing figured out in this summer. You guys are the same class, same draft class. I'm just talking about from a fun

standpoint. John Moran and Zion in the same team? That's actually in play right now. would be not inconceivable uh no I don't think it's impossible I think it's really hard I think what you just mapped out would be really hard to pull off so we think best case scenario New Orleans takes Zion Memphis takes John Moran and now they can shop Conley this summer and I think Conley is really good and has a lot of trade value and I'm I'm not as scared by that number now that there's like a year plus the player option left no not anymore I mean I'd rather pay

somebody a ridiculous amount knowing like okay it's two years right so alright so you put down Ja the Knicks at three who knows but that's probably a pick there I think the Davis trade happens now to the Knicks if he unless he says I want to stay with Zion, I want to feel it out.

I personally wouldn't do it, but I think if you're New Orleans, you get the fresh slate, you get to start with two of the top three, you're ready to go. Right, right. And if those guys are really good, see, that's the thing, though, is you go, hey, then we'll have cap space. Somebody want to come here. What would you do if you were Davis? Well, I don't know if I'd want to do the Lakers thing

until this thing is sorted out. Because even just if it's me and LeBron, is that going to be enough? Is this Lakers thing really as bad as everybody's making it out to be? Because it's felt pretty bad now for a while, other than the LeBron blip of positivity. The Boston thing, I don't know that I'd want to do that until I knew Kyrie was leaving. But that's me being me, not being Anthony Davis.

So I would just start calling Durant. I would start calling Kyrie. I'd figure these guys out. I'd be like, where do you want to go? Because I'm not sure that I want to go to the Lakers. Because he did, when all that stuff was going down, he actually did want to go to the Lakers, which is why I pushed back on some of this that no one who's good wants to go play with LeBron anymore. I mean, it's gotten worse for LeBron, but Davis was as good as anybody and he

wanted to go there. So he was okay with it. That's a fair point. I'll steal it about two months from now. The NBA draft guide that the ringer did, Kevin O'Connor had his top 30 prospects. He had Zion 1. RJ Barrett 2. John Morant 3. Jarrett Culver guarded Texas Tech 4. He had that bad shooting game in the finals. DeAndre Hunter is 5.

I'm just trying to figure out the Lakers at 4 what they would do if they couldn't trade for Anthony Davis. At the very least, this is a tradable pick where they can get somebody really good. Right?

Maybe not a superstar. Yeah, right. An asset. Because when you think about the Jimmy Butler trade, it was five and seven ultimately. You know, and kind of a weird draft. And five was kind of a tarnished five. Yeah, right. It wasn't a great draft. And then, you know, and kind of a weird draft. And five was kind of a tarnished five. Yeah, right.

It wasn't a great draft. And then, you know, they did a good job of marketing. But it depends. Like who's the disgruntled guy who'll be under contract that we think is pretty good that can help at five? Jason Tatum. Would you do Gordon Hayward right now for the Lakers' fifth pick?

Stop. Stop me. Jason Tatum would you do Gordon Hayward right now for the Lakers pick I think it's it's from a from a who's going to win the title the next two years standpoint oh Darius Garland he's your number six he has Connor has him and his stuff on this is awesome he's really good but from a who's going to win

the NBA title in the next two years? LeBron James is on the Lakers. We assume he's going to be at the same level, offensively at least, next year. This number four pick that they just got, I think is the best asset they have right now other than LeBron.

I don't know with Brandon Ingram. I don't know what's going on with his blood clot issue. Is he going to be healthy next year? The number four is the most tradable asset I think that they have, even more than Lonzo. If I'm a GM and you call me and you're like, hey, man, I want to see any interest in the number four pick or Lonzo, I'd rather have the number four pick. This is a great point that you're bringing up because you're right. You're totally right. Think about people you know and how you get older like when

you're younger you knew you know a bunch of different people but as you're exposed to more and more people in the same people over time you probably find more things wrong with them right you like you ever realize like when you're living with people and unless you're still living with people i hope things pick up but you know what i saying? Like if you're my age and you have a, like that'd be weird at 40 to have a bunch of roommates. It's like in college, senior year is when everybody starts arguing at two in the morning. Cause right.

You start to realize like, you know what? You suck. I'm around you all the time. Yeah. Because you, the more you toilet paper again, right.

The more you learn about the person, it's weird. And that's why people break up. But like the more you learn about that person, it usually ends up leading towards negative things and the reason i'm bringing all this up is because with draft picks it's the exact same thing when it's a new pick and the wrapping is still on it and you haven't seen jared culver not be quick enough or take bad shots yeah you've looked at deandre hunter and say you know he's a nice role piece but i'm still hoping

you could be a superstar at number five because we've seen guys go there or later end up being really impact-type players. The newness of this pick and that it's your decision and you get to say, that's always more valuable. Well, it's also like you look at Culver, Hunter, Garland. Let's just look at those three. Every GM is going to have the rankings. They're going to totally love one of the three or like one of the three, but not love. And you can really talk yourself into it as it gets closer and closer.

Every year this happens. It's like, yeah, we brought Rosillo in. God, what a great guy, man. Such a pro. He had a tie on, really firm handshake. Asked me if I had any kids. This is our guy. And you just like, you go off a cliff with it.

Somebody asked me if I had kids the other day and I didn't think that was my guy. It was unrelated. Well, the thing with this pick though, they have cap space too. So they could, if they feel like they can't sign a free agent, they could use this number four pick

and take somebody's contract in and actually be able to fit the contract in. Right. Not have to load up on a bunch of contracts or, you know, sometimes it's the matching of salary stuff, which I still hate as a mechanism to prevent owners from spending more money than they want to. But, you know, you end up trading like you guys could agree on the prime principle things. And it's like, now I got to give you all these other pieces I don't even want to get

rid of because of magic salary. But that's a long old rant. Like I'm trying to think, for example, and I don't think the Wizards would do this. And I think they're smart enough not to trade Bradley Beal. But if the Lakers said, hey man, we'll give you the fourth pick

for Bradley Beal and not John Wall's contract, but one more bad contract right now. You'd at least have a meeting about it if you're the Wizards. I wouldn't do it. But those are the type of guys that they should be shopping for, the fourth pick,

somebody that can come in and play in a playoff series with LeBron. And there's not a lot of guys out there if you go through the list. If I'm doing the Beal deal, but it's so much money, so I'm not quite sure what it would mean. And then also factoring what Beal is going to cost you.

So what other, what other team would go? I want to give up an asset to bring in that backcourt that never did anything and probably doesn't get along all that much anyway. But Beal to the Lakers by itself is an absolute no brainer for the Lakers. You know, it'd be the most fun one that will never happen.

Gordon Hayward to the Cavs. No, Gordon Hayward has no trade value uh short of contract what about westbrook oh well now okay see here's your get out of jail free card here's the number four pick for westbrook you can start over you're at a salary cap luxury tax hell build around paul george and stephen adams and this number four pick talk yourself into one of these dudes lebron and westbrook look that's not crazy it's not crazy i'm gonna tell you why westbrook's contract over the next four years i really enjoy when you do

this to me just on the fly like what's westbrook what's the entire how many years it's a lot yeah it's not it's 38.5 41.5 44.2 and I'm going to go ahead and report that Russell Westbrook's picking up that option in 2023 for $47 million. Sources. 47? I just was able to get a text on that and confirm it. Jesus. So that's $47 million for somebody that, by the way, is having another slight knee thing. Like you made that knee joke about how many different knee touch-ups he has

yeah didn't he just do another one yeah this is not me turning in you know doing my Russell Westbrook rant again about just him being a tough fit that's another thing too like if you were the Lakers part of me wants to see that LeBron looking at Westbrook every time down the court going you know or LeBron running a play in westbrook just on the corner like with his arms on it but you know okc would say he's still in his prime we like him our fans love him he's the superstar that will stay here we can't go and replace him somebody else who wouldn't do it but like i love that game i got one more for you all right number four pick for ben simmons so you're getting better

at this thanks alright go ahead give me a breakdown just clutch client bring him in playoff ready he's been in the

second round two years in a row he's a little further along than whoever they get at the fourth Fitz athletic non-shooter Lakers roster

around LeBron yeah that's what we do here do it again under LeBron's wing he has a chance to become a superstar under the tutelage of LeBron. Yeah. That's our MO. That's what we do here. Do it again. Under LeBron's wing, he has a chance to become a superstar. Under the tutelage of LeBron James. LeBron might be like,

hey, bro, you're going to have to take a couple jumpers every now and then. Yeah. I'm shooting with him every day. We're going to turn him into something. That's actually, if you're Philly,

then you just, you pay for all the other guys. You take a guard with number four. Max McConnell. Try to get Herter, maybe. You can't get him. Every one of these picks is in play for Herter. Yeah.

Alright, so I think the Lakers shopped that pick. I don't think they'd take it. LeBron's telling them to shop the pick right now. And even though I think the LeBron-Rosser thing like that, look, I'm being sarcastic right now, but LeBron's not going to be looking at the draft going, I can't wait to play with one of these young guys

that develops into something. A 19-year-old, awesome. Oh, Cam Reddish, he's long? Sweet. You know what's funny? When Cam Reddish is probably texting LeBron right now, like, you know, they had that famous lunch a year ago and he wasn't even at Duke yet.

It was him and Rich Paul. So he's in and he's going to sign with Clutch. But now there's actually a chance the Lakers could take him. So he's probably texting LeBron like, yo, man, this is great. We're going to play together. LeBron's just pretending he didn't get the text. It's like, yeah.

Oh, I didn't realize you texted me. He's like, you have an iPhone. Hey, man, I hate you. Did you get my text? He's like, oh, man, my son took my phone. Something weird happened. Dropped it in the bathtub. All right.

Does that rice trick work? Can we do a quick losers? Yeah. Losers. Cleveland drops from two to five, which is just brutal. I mean, that is like, that happened in the Celtics that one year in the Duncan Lottery. I think they had the most ping pong balls, but they went somehow. They had the highest odds for one or two.

The worst they could have done was three and six, and that's exactly what they did. Yeah. No, that was 98. I'm saying that the Durant Lottery. Oh, you're right. They ended up with five. Which was like the lowest. The worst they could have.

Right. So Cleveland ends up at five. That's tough. The rebuilding project is going to take a little longer in Cleveland. Phoenix goes to six. That's a weird spot, though, by the way, guard-wise. Like, that makes you think it's Culver, it's Hunter. This stuff could change, too.

Like, the Mocs can influence us in a weird way. And I was looking when they had the ladder show. Billis' rankings were completely different than some of the other rankings. So Phoenix is 6. They're getting a guard. No, they're going to get another wing. They can't play. Like

a new Josh Jackson? Chicago 7, whatever. From a loser's standpoint, Atlanta was 5. Chicago 7 whatever from a loser standpoint Atlanta was 5 they dropped to 8 they did get the Dallas pick so they got 8 and 10 out of this Boston

wait hold on for a loser thing no I'm still going loser would you rather have Luka Doncic or would you rather have Trae Young in the 10th pick in this draft Luka Doncic, or would you rather have Trae Young in the 10th pick in this draft? Luka. Yeah.

No kidding. That trade was terrible. Your delivery was so— Everyone this year. Right. People this year, when Trae Young started playing better, people were going, you know, you can't judge that trade yet. I was like, sure I can. That trade was terrible. Trae Young could hit seven threes a game, and that trade is still bad.

The other guy is like the most comfortable rookie I think I've ever seen. Not saying he's the best rookie, but as far as him, like, all right, I'm just going to – I'm totally cool with all this. Yeah, we got another first. It's like, well, now you have the 10th pick. Congratulations. You have the 10th pick and a four-point drive. Kobe White, Trae Young just run you to death?

Yeah, sure. I think they're a loser. The Wizards, who were six in the selection thing, and they dropped to ninth. That's kind of a quiet murder. Usually you don't go that. I don't think anyone's ever gone from six to nine. But remember, because when they flattened this thing out of the top, it basically allowed these teams now,

like wherever you were, you can get bumped down another one. Yeah. So I can't wait like some gm who lost is going to give i don't know i'm not going to name any names to make it sound like i'm calling out reporters because that's not what i'm doing but there's going to be a gm whose night sucked and he's going to go this new system's terrible let me give you all my reasons why and they'll be like leagues league sources are saying teams are not happy but that probably already happened if we go on twitter that's probably there right now so washington

got screwed um dallas didn't end up with a first round pick but i think it's okay and then minnesota drops from i guess 10 to 11 so then everything else was right this is crazy how this played out but i did i did mean that that with Boston because if you think if you have the Sacramento pick going into this season, only top one protected and you end up 14th, which is what the odds told you because of their surprising season. Now look,

it's not like you're going to go back in time and say, oh, that was actually all these terrible trades. I mean, Ainge just stockpiled all these picks, but that's, if you would say a year ago, that Kings pick will be 14. No way. That's bad. I would say that they were a winner, that the Memphis pick rolled over, which is what they wanted, but then they're a loser

because the Memphis pick really rolled over, rolled over to number two. And John Morant might be like a superstar in two years, so that pick is top five protected next year. I just started thinking about Kyrie and John Morant together, and I stopped immediately.

Jesus. I wouldn't wish that on John Morant. So, yeah, action-packed. You think Rozier would do another week of TV shows? Can we? Rozier. I didn't get enough touches. We didn't talk about Zion's feelings about going to New Orleans.

Great question. That is. Can you hold out already? That was the weakest market in the league. Fair to say, right? Yeah. Worst attendance. Shakiest kind of media situation.

I think they had like one reporter covering the team. Ownership. Lowest local rights or local TV ratings. Worst in the league. I'd heard a story that when the Saints had a holiday party that it – you remember like in the first Caddyshack, really the only one that mattered, so I shouldn't have had to differentiate it. But when they went to the Bushwood pool and it said Caddy,

and it was like 1 to 115 or 145 to 2. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, we were like the caddies can have it for 15 minutes. Yeah. That's what it started turning into with the Pelicans where it was like Saints, holiday party, and then there would just be like a sticker. It said Pelicans 2.

So this was a team that was supposed to be sold at some point and now with everything that went wrong, the Benson ownership said, no, we're going to try to make another run at this thing. They bring in Griff. I guess the coaching situation is more stable than we thought, but it needs, it still needs to prove from the top down and not having like a football

department running the basketball department. It still needs to prove, but ultimately Zion, you know, it's not going to matter. We haven't seen a guy get that upset before he even came into the league, even though that's what the league has become. I think the four best prospects of this century were LeBron, KD, Anthony Davis, and Zion. And I'm not going to rank them.

I just think out of everybody we've had this decade, those were the four that really stood out. Anthony Davis and Zion. And I'm not going to rank them. I just think out of everybody we've had this decade, those were the four that really stood out. And New Orleans got two of them this decade. It's pretty good. Yeah, and we have no idea how it's going to turn out. Haley, what are they saying on the internets? What's the big topic right now? They're mad.

They're mad at New Orleans getting it? Yeah. Not the Lakers getting the fourth pick. Nobody thought that was shady. Well, people are saying that they've been just protesting every day

with these other guys going back to New Orleans and then not playing, allowing the team to get just in the perfect place. Oh, we didn't talk about that.

Because it's stupid. Davis is like... Actually, guys, that's all folks t-shirt. Part of the ploy. That's all folks. We're winning the lottery. What I did is I tanked for myself. I love the Pelicans.

Where's that extension? That is interesting, though. So they drop. The theory that he did it on purpose no I don't agree with that theory I'm saying if he hadn't stayed out of those games instead of the 9th pick they're like the 11th pick

and then they don't have the balls to win the lottery the balls I mean the ping pong balls yeah he must I feel like he's burned the bridge there like he'd really have to grovel if I'm a Pelicans fan and I don't know what that would be like

I don't think there's a shitload of them right now I'd really if you're from Louisiana this is how you'd handle it you'd be bummed out and you went to the game and then within three minutes you'd be in a good mood again because Zion did an alley-oop oh no I'm just talking about people from Louisiana. That's just what they do.

You think they're happy people. I went down to Baton Rouge the first time ever, and I go every year now, but I was there for an LSU-Alabama game. They lost. I thought it was going to be devastating. I asked one of my buddies who ran a place, I go, how bad is Saturday night going to be?

It's going to be terrible, isn't it? And he goes, it's Louisiana. Yeah. And then an hour later, I thought they won the national championship. So you think they'll forgive Anthony Davis they won the national championship. So, um, so you think they'll forgive Anthony Davis?

Everybody's too happy. that that's, that's selfishness. It's the same. It look, it's the same Celtics fan. That's MF and Kyrie in the tunnel at the end of the regular season. That if Kyrie resigns,

he's turning a Murph going, dude, you know what? I think he's grown up. You know, I like this press conference. I think he said the right thing. He hit all the right notes. So that's what would happen if Anthony Davis, the angst isn't about

like now I hate you forever. The angst and the disappointment is that you're telling me you don't want to be in my city. And if he said, you know what? I screwed up everything all last year. Let's see how the Zion thing goes. That's think about how you would act. You would just be like,

okay, that's he's staying or to the jerseys. I, the only part I didn't like was the part where you had Kyrie coming back to Boston. The, the craziest thing that might actually happen. Okay.

Which won't happen, but just, I'm throwing it out there. I'm running out of paper. New Orleans trades for LeBron James Anthony Davis they

New Orleans says you know what you get the Lakers but we've traded you for LeBron James and now it's LeBron James Zion and Drew Holiday in New Orleans says, you know what? You get the Lakers. But we've traded you for LeBron James. And now it's LeBron James, Zion, and Drew Holiday in New Orleans. Clutch South. Clutch South. I love it. Second office? Mark Jackson replaces Gentry in.

We're done with the lottery, right? Yeah, kind of. Did we do everything? Okay. Quickly, because we never previewed the playoffs, so just quickly. Warriors, Portland's going on right now. You're thinking 17-15 early?

Within a point, yeah. What was your prediction for the series, though? Five games, six games, seven games? I went six, because I think Portland can get one of these first two up there. I've just become more and more impressed with Portland. But, you know they they split and then durant comes back you know do you think golden state tries to win both of

these games without bringing kd back and potentially even tries to win the series without kd coming back if they go up to continue the fuck you kd run their own uh well don't you don't you think if they're up 2-0, that changes the KD? Yeah, you're taking it super careful at that point. And they did that with Steph before. Now, they were playing lesser opponents, but when Steph got hurt in 16, I think you could kind of tell that they were like, you know, I think we're still going to be all right.

We're still going to be all right. That was pre-KD. I didn't quite get enough information about KD's injury. It's like he strained his calf. It's like, strained calf? He's out for three weeks? Like, I wonder what's actually going on with the calf. I never trust any of these guys anymore.

Like, is there like a slight tear? Like, at one point, I was like, if I get another freaking Malcolm Brogdon update, you know? Oh, yeah. Like, that went on forever. The all-timer, though. Malcolm Brogdon. No, but the all-timer was the went on forever. The all timer though. No, but the all timer was,

was the KG 2009. Oh my God. That was a saga. I mean, lost was like speeded up. Yeah. It's like Mark Spears every day. It was just every day. No update.

And then some guy would think he would have info. And all you realize was that angel's lying. So my point is, is that with these Katie updates, there's not many people I trust on it. Not that they have bad information. I just don't know what when it's medical stuff, teams just, you know, they don't have to tell you. I feel like

the sweep is in, the no KD sweep is in play for the Warriors where they just dial it up in like a really, really FU way. Do you still think they could beat either teams in the East without KD? I think they could, yeah. Don't you? Could. It's a lot to ask for Megu Dahl

would be my only question. Like, does he have four weeks of really hardcore 35 minutes a game type of intensity in him? Would be my question. Yeah, because it always has felt like a different series and it just happened again, where towards the end, you're like,

you know, it just, it becomes a grind to him. Other series? Did you have time to think about that one? Toronto, Philly? I did. I mean, Toronto, Milwaukee. Wait a minute. If we want to do a quick Philly thing off the podcast,

how about the Brett Brown deal? We were incredibly wrong. We were like, the guy's's done didn't even entertain a scenario where he was the coach next year and then they waited two days and like brett brown's coming back okay to be fair though had you heard from anyone all year long that was like hey but that's a good case of sometimes nba sources not having good information on that because we didn't know what ownership wanted to do with Philly it reminded me I put this in the ringer NBA slack when the OKC brought back Scotty Brooks for the 14-15 season when they came out of the 14 playoffs and everybody was like oh they're not this is done they got to get a coach who understands how to stagger Durant and Westbrook

and stop doing things like playing Kendrick Perkins and this many big moments and run some sort of an offense. And he's done. And then they brought him back. And I went and found this article that was on the internet from after they brought him back. Rereadables. And the quote was, the quotes were very similar to what these Brett Brown quotes were.

Like, you know, we think we were really close. Obviously we need to work on some offense. Our stuff, our issues with him were more structural than anything like that. Like to not realize that a backup center was going to become important in a game seven on the road. Seems like something you could have figured out in March, but remember then the not staggering Westbrook Katie stuff was because those guys refused to do it.

Like we want to play the first 12 minutes of every game. Don't break us up. And then if you're, if you're Brooks, there's not really much you can do. And maybe to try to give because you're right. All year long, it's like this isn't going to work out. This isn't going to work out.

If he's out early, so they get the second round exit, you're wondering if in a weird way it would be a good thing down the road if they didn't make it to the Eastern Conference Finals so they could go ahead and fire him. And it's not even close to what happens. They endorse him, but I don't know if they're going to try to change up some of the substitution pattern stuff.

Because if they're bringing all these guys back, they've got to get a little bit more creative based on the matchup. And I wonder, when the extension kicks in for Brown, is what we're talking about, is maybe the team's like, you know what we don't want to do? Just eat 15 million right now. Or they felt like they were close. And maybe they are. Maybe they're closer than we realized. Well, you can talk yourself pretty quickly

into that. Ah that if that ball doesn't go totally we win overtime and then we're finals milwaukee you know is it a bad matchup to me it's more of a you think you're gonna get rid of them and then you actually look what the options are i mean there were like three teams in hot pursuit of monty williams that's amazing i mean why is that talked about more than three teams were chasing him. And I thought he was below average on New Orleans was my takeaway. Or average, like nice guy, but not a good game coach. Isn't that funny? I'm like, wait a minute.

Why does everybody? And I don't want to, because everybody's going to be like, oh, Monte Williams is a nice guy and all this. Yeah, we get all that stuff. But it's funny how quick that can change. And then when people look at Vogel and be like, well, if everyone else is getting the five years, I'll never get.

Lawrence Frank said this to me once after he had two runs at it. What a name drop. Yeah. That can change. And then when people look at Vogel and be like, well, if everyone else is getting the five years, I'll never get... Lawrence Frank said this to me once after he had two runs at it. What a name drop. Yeah. Just hang him now. He's probably watching. He said to me, he goes,

hey, you don't usually get the third chance when you're a non-player. You don't get that third head coaching gig. And so Vogel's looking at it this way. I mean, his flame out in Orlando was pretty quick and also kind of surprising because I think we all liked Vogel. But then Vogel was really good saying,

these are my issues with the offenses that I just didn't update my approach to. Yeah. And he studied with Brad Stevens last year and all that kind of stuff. In what world would you have thought Vogel was the L versus the Monte Williams win? Right. Like, oh, we couldn't get Monte Williams. Vogel was the L versus the Monte Williams win.

Right. Like, oh, we couldn't get Monte Williams. Vogel almost made the finals against LeBron and Wade in their primes. They were up 2-1, making people wonder what you could get for Bosh. I think... That was your podcast. It reminded me there was, in the 90s, like, Belichick got fired and people were like,

you know, a couple years passed and then he became a hot coaching candidate. I mean, look how that fucking turned out. Those guys never, it never works out. It's like rich. Jackasses. Like, man, you knew that guy wasn't going to make it. This Toronto-Milwaukee series, I think Milwaukee's going to win.

I've studied it the last couple days. I wagered on a Milwaukee Warriors series parlay, minus 154. All right. Thank you. Can you tell us what you studied? I looked at the matchups. I thought about it. I envisioned what would happen. And I do this weird envisioning process where I imagine.

You should tape one. Should I? It's like that Headspace app where you're just like this and you close your eyes. Does that work? There's a lot of people on that. A lot of people like Headspace. It just seems weird. Like I got to touch my phone to chill out.

I want you to try it. No. I bet I was in the Northeast for too long. It doesn't work. But I was trying to imagine close game, last five minutes. I feel like Toronto probably has to win two games in Milwaukee to win the series because they're not running the table at home. So if they win, it's going to go seven probably. And from what we saw last series with how scared Siakam was, what they needed from Serge Ibaka just to get through Philly,

and how nobody else was willing to create a play really except for Kawhi. I just don't think that can make the finals. Whereas Milwaukee has, they have some heat check guys, obviously they have some up and down guys, but they've also proven they can survive when Bledsoe's not good. Their three-point shooting can go away for a game, but

overall, the mask can be in their favor. And Giannis is just a freaking monster. And I think he can protect the rim on them. I think he's a... What do you do with Gasol in this series if they play Giannis at center? What happens? That's where the Ibaka thing steps up and he's going to find some defense that I don't think we've seen

consistently. And I'm not talking just about block numbers but there's times that Ibaka were I think Ibaka for the most part had a much better year this year. He tailed off the last two minutes. But he did tail off. But he was huge in game seven. They need vintage Ibaka I think to win this series. So that's probably a stupid request even though it was just great

seeing him be the one guy other than Kawhi that was like, I'm good. Like I've been in some of these big games. He was comfortable. It's really close. I picked Toronto at the beginning of the year to come out of the East. So I'm not going to change my pick on that one

because I could still see it going their way. But the Lowry game seven, like in between stats play, scared the hell out of me again as we're sitting there watching it, going like Bledsoe may just have a bad game because I think he's going to have a bad game. I think Lowry, you know, on the way, in the bus sometimes, that's when it's determined.

Yeah. And he was pretty frisky in that game seven and I still didn't feel like he trusted himself to beat anyone off the dribble and try to actually make a play. I think it's too hard to win with one score in round three. I think you win two rounds. But round three, it's just it doesn't jibe with what we've watched.

So, yeah, there we go. All right, that's it. This was really fun. This was an exciting night. Zion Williamson is going to New Orleans. Were you saving that all night? That was good. You like that? Yeah, it's like

09 Simmons. Thank you. All right, that's it for the Live Lottery Show. Right afterwards, I ran back to my office and we called Brian Koppelman, my friend, diehard Knicks fan. And you're about to hear that first. Want to do a quick message from NHTSA.

Quotes like, I'm not going very far. I'm in a rush. It's too uncomfortable. Sometimes I just forget. Look, don't kid yourself. There's no such thing as a good excuse for not buckling up. If you've used any of these excuses or others, you're putting yourself at risk of injury or death. In 2017, more than 10,000 people were unbuckled when they were killed in crashes.

That's 51% of people killed in motor vehicle crashes that were not wearing seatbelts. No matter what kind of vehicle you drive, wearing your seatbelt is the best defense in a crash. Even when you sit in the back seat, you still need to buckle up. That goes for when you ride in taxis, use ride sharing services, whatever. Cops are on the lookout and writing tickets. Why would you take the risk? In 2017 alone, seatbelts saved nearly 15,000 lives. So do the smart thing. Buckle up every trip, day or night.

Click it or ticket. That is a message from NHTSA. All right, right now, Brian Koppelman, his reaction to the Knicks not winning the lottery. All right, before we go, it is now 645 Pacific time. The Warriors game is going on right now, but I wanted to call a Knicks fan who went through the gamut of emotions tonight. We had Jason Concepcion on during our live lottery show a little earlier, and he was so shaken and distraught. He just couldn't barely talk.

Brian Koppelman, co-creator of Billions, my longtime friend. And now you've had an hour to digest this. Where are you at mentally? The Knicks did not get Zion Williamson, but you came damn close. I mean, damn, dude. I am, I mean, I'm not speechless, but I will say, because I expect it as a Knicks fan, right?

This is, I mean, this is what we have been cursed with. I believe cosmically because of James Dolan. Oh, wow. The fact that we got so... You wrote me a text and you said that we got dick-teased. And I thought that was pretty good. Yeah. But, you know, the thing is that, like, getting...

First of all, Knicks fans, right? So midway through the day today, the news comes out that the plan was – that Knicks plan was maybe to trade him right away for Davis. And so half the Knicks fans are arguing online as though it had already happened. So I knew this afternoon I was already like, we're just getting so far out ahead of this thing. But, of course, I'm sitting there completely focused. Sammy, my son, who, as you know, has been a fan his whole life, goes to the bar where the posting and toasting guys are having a thing. And I'm like, he's like, Dad, come to the bar. I can't possibly come to this bar and face this yet another crushing defeat in the face of all these people fucking laughing and drinking and singing.

But I would say this, like, getting signed would have almost negated all the pain we've felt over the last decade. Oh, no question. And I mean, that's what Sammy said to me, and I'm saying it now. It is true. Like, it would have just made it all, if not worth it, palatable. You could deal with it. You know, Bill, man, being a Knicks fan is just one indignity after another. The year we finish absolutely last in the standings is the year we no longer have a 25% chance.

At every turn, we just do it a little bit more wrong than everybody else. And so I'm sitting here and I just feel completely hopeless for the team. And I feel like, you know, look, Dolan would have fucked it up. I said this the other day to somebody, but it is true. For years, I've told you, I think he's Fredo Corleone, but I've changed it now. To me, he's like the unholy child of Fredo Corleone and Inspector Clouseau. Wow. Because, right?

I mean, if you think about it, he's that clueless as Clouseau, and he would design and minimize the gain he could have gotten from him. Do you believe he would have traded? I believe he could have gotten from him. Like, I believe he would, do you believe he would have traded? I believe he might've traded him for David. Yeah. There were reports today that they were going to shop him for, uh,

for Davis. And it was like, it was like Zion and Kevin Knox for Davis. And I was like, that's so absurd. And that would be such a bad trade. And I totally believe that they might do that. So like,

if he would have, if we would have, if we would have gotten Zion, you know, that would have just been more depressing, horrible torture for us. Like I, and Nick fans now are all saying like, it's going to be great. Look, I love KD. As you know, I was part of the long strategy by having KD do a cameo on Bill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I've been trying to set up the whole way that we'll come to New York. There's a lot of good stuff that can happen.

And so look, if KD comes, if Kyrie comes or whoever comes with KD, whoever KD wants to bring, that's incredible. The truth is, and we could be wrong about this, Bill, like Zion might not. I accept the fact like the announcers keep

pointing out that steph was taken number seven you know mj was taken number three durant was taken number two so of course like no one knows how this is gonna game out in the end but by my eyes zion is a once in a generation that's how i feel and you and i both been watching basketball for a really long time, very closely. And for me, that's what I see. And I see a guy who's going to work on his shot, and his shot's going to only get better. And every other aspect of his game is incredible, and his heart and his brain. And even, of course, this is the other thing about being an X-Fan.

We couldn't even fucking get John Moran, man. You're one away. We're one away from the other guy who you could see being a... Because, yeah, everyone talks about R.J. and they say at the beginning of it... I love the spin now people are giving, which is, hey, well, before the college

season, R.J. was the consensus number one pick. And I want to say to them, yeah, that means this guy played his way out of that position. He was the number one... He was the presumptive number one pick. And I want to say to them, yeah, that means this guy played his way out of that position. He was the number one, he was the presumptive number one pick. And then through the course of the season, he convinced everybody that he was. You know what I mean? And some kid from Murray State convinced everyone that he was better. So do you think RJ, is RJ going to be an all-star within the first three So, um, do you think RJ, is RJ going to be, um,

an all-star within the first three or four years? Do you think? I actually really like him more than most because I think he was on the wrong team for what he did. And, uh, Russell and I talked about it tonight. He was in a really bad situation where people just immediately love Zion.

And, and from the get go, it was like, why isn't Zion shooting at the end of the games? Why not Zion? More, more, more, more, more Zion. And I think from the get-go it was like, why isn't Zion shooting at the end of the games? Why not Zion? More, more, more, more, more Zion. And I think when you're 19, that's tough. Like imagine how old is your son now? Like 23? Yeah. 23. Yeah. So imagine your son starts writing four years ago and immediately somebody is like, why isn't that other guy in the newspaper writing more? Why is he sucks? Like get him out of there. Like, there's no way that doesn't affect you. So I feel like, uh, there's more in his game. And the other thing

is like, he's a slashing kick guy and they had no shooters. So, um, right. So I would just like to see him. You think it can work on the next year? Are they going to package him and Knox and go try to trade for somebody? Yeah. My guess is you end up with KD, somebody else, and then they make a huge play for Davis. And the question that Russell and I spent 20 minutes just talking about is what then happens with AD with this? Does this change his mind? Does he decide, you know what, I'll play for three years with this kid. I'll sign and I'll play for three years with this kid. I'll sign and I'll play for three years with this kid. Or does he say that to do the Pelicans say, let's feel this out until February.

Let's see how they look together. Rosillo made the point how you just like putting Davis and Zion together. That's honestly the perfect combination for what you would want from two bigs in 2020. Yeah. So if, if I'm new Orleans, I'm not doing anything until February. So you're right. You're holding Pat.

You're holding Pat. You're not, I'm not doing anything, but if the Knicks come to me and they say, we'll give you number three, we'll give you knocks. We'll also give you the two picks we got from Dallas. Give us a D kind of have to think about it because now,

now you have this mother load of picks plus Zion and you're playing the long game and trying to build it. And you're putting Zion back with one of his best friends and Knox, who's got this incredible upside if he's in the right situation. And you're doing what, what, what the Cavs didn't do with LeBron and what the Pelicans didn't do with Anthony Davis,

which was, you know, they tried to speed rush a contender with those guys. Whereas what OKC, which was originally Seattle did with Durant, was they didn't do anything. They just tried to draft really well for a couple years and then build around that,

which is what I think, that's what I would rather see New Orleans do. But I also think Davis, Holiday, and Zion together is a contender next year. I don't think they'll win the title. Yeah, they're a contender for sure. I will say, you know, I think I told you this the other day, I haven't had a drink in 2019.

I just decided like, hey, what if I don't drink for a while? And tonight was going to be the night. If we got Zion, I was just going to go fucking crazy. Yeah. But I can't start drinking having not gotten him. That just feels wrong. It feels like the wrong way to have a drink. Well, what does it say about the state of mind Knicks fans are in, in 2019, where

this was a 14% chance. This was, you could play Russian roulette and have better odds of getting hit by the bullet with one of the six chambers, then winning the lottery was Zion with the odds that Nick said. The real tease was, right, before the thing started, the odds were about the same as hitting an open-ended straight draw on the river, right? Yeah. Around 14%. But then when it was down to the final four, because we had the 14% chance of getting the

first one and the others didn't, we were suddenly at four flush after the flop. Oh, that's true. And when you have a four flush after the flop. Oh, that's true. And when you have a four flush after the flop, you know that feeling. You're basically there till the river and you suddenly have decided that, you know, even if a guy has trips, like you're probably calling the bet. You're probably right. Like you're in the hand until the river, unless you're like, so yes, you're right. Of course it was 14%, but then we're in the four.

And once we're in the four, I'm like, man, I hit a lot of flushes when I got the four flush. You know, you don't remember all the times that your cards went into the muck. You fucking remember the times. Well, see, it was even better than that though, because you had 14%. The Lakers had 2%.

I think Memphis was six. And I think New Orleans was also 2%. So compared your percentages compared to everybody else, you had better percentages than the other three combined. We figured it quickly in between. I think we were like at 55 or something like that. Yeah, that makes sense. So we had like a, you know, we had a real, we had a real shot,

but actually to go back to rounders, the truth is you always remember the outstanding bad beats worse, which is why this I'm going to remember. I'm going to remember we had a 55% chance when we were in the final four. And instead of getting Zion, we got the number three pick. So we can't go suicidal. It's not like number four pick. But it's the depressing night for Knicks fans.

Well, what if you end up a year from now or a month from now and you, a month and a half from now, KD, Kemba, and Anthony Davis are on the Knicks. That's in play. I would say that's better than a 25% chance. I mean, that's fantastic. Yeah, that could actually happen, though. Listen, and that'll be great. Look, you know what it is also?

We all have this... All Knicks fans. I mean, it's like the way, for a period of time, Sox fans were when, no matter what happened, it just came up cursed. It's going to take me a long time to have actual belief in the thing. I mean, we text a lot when Tiger was chasing. And, you know, I rewatched, because I'm going to the PGA this week. I rewatched last

year's PGA and, you know, it was instructive to me. Like, I remember how bummed I was on 17, when he flared that one off to the right and put himself out of the tournament. And then it did take till the masters. So watching the masters, I was so nervous that he wasn't going to have it together again. And then he got it together. And so now we were able to have faith. But right up until the very, you know, right up until the drive on 18, really until he put the third shot on 18 to where you knew now he was the worst, he was going to make this bogey. You thought, can this possibly happen? And so until I see KD in a New York Knicks uniform, I can't allow myself to believe in it.

Even though I know it's true, I can't allow myself to believe in it until I see it. You know, it's funny. I've been in this position twice with the Celtics. One was 97, where the Duncan Lottery, where they had the best odds. And it was coming off of the big three go down. Len Bias died in 86. Reggie Lewis dies in 93. And you're really starting to feel like

you've just hit rock bottom. And this lottery is going to be the big salvation. And we ended up getting three and six. And then fast forward to the 07 lottery, where now we're on this 20-year run of really nothing good happening, except for one Eastern Conference Finals run in 15 years. And it's the Durant-Odin lottery.

And we're in the driver's seat again with the best odds. And we end up dropping to five. And I wrote a column that day. Yeah, I wrote a column about it. It was honestly like getting run over by a train. So, and that was, well, that was all made even worse by the fact that you knew, I mean, I'll say one of my favorite things is if people go back and look, you knew Durant was the call. Yeah. I love Durant.

And so you had this knowledge thing. It was probably like, I know you're, you're incredibly followed unbelievably closely now, but you know, that that moment in the world, you might've been like the most knowledgeable basketball fan on earth in 2007. And you, you had, cause you were a fanatic. I don't even, you were, it was, it was everything. It was like your whole life. You were writing these columns. This was back when you were a writer. So you were writing.

And, um, you knew, and I remember that column that you wrote dude, because it was like, not only were you five, but you knew, and I remember that column that you wrote, dude, because it was like, not only were you five, but you knew what should happen. You knew that fucking GM was going to blow it in port. Like you knew the whole thing. Like you saw the matrix and you couldn't do anything about it. Yeah, that was tough.

But look at that. We won the title the next year. And ironically, this could be reenacted with the next. I mean, there's a world in where it's you hit rock bottom like the Celtics did that year. And then all of a sudden you have this big three in your life that you didn't have, you know, yesterday. Where it's like, oh my God. It's obviously like you grew up a fan of these teams and, you know, it's not like the Jim Plunkett. Patriots, yeah.

Patriots were winning tons of games that won Super Bowl they got to and then suddenly all three of your teams won but for a New York fan, for someone who loves the Jets and the Knicks primarily and the Jets these are dark days and tonight was a dark, dark night

I don't know what to tell you it's funny because I watched billions I'm sorry, I watched Rounders last weekend because I was thinking about you and it was on I like to have movies on when I have to do other stuff, movies that I've seen a million times

there's like a comfort safety to it and I'm watching it and like I still feel like the Mike McD face when he gets cleaned out in the beginning. That just incredible acting from Damon. That face he makes is like the face, right? That's the Mike McD, I just lost everything face was the same face Jason Concepcion had tonight after that Knicks lottery. I'm sure it was with that breathing out and everything.

Yeah, like kind of glassy-eyed, frozen face, little bit of a smile, but we've all had it. That's one of the great things about sports. It's like in the movie when Matt's watching Seidel play Chan and he's just describing it, you know, the way you feel when that happens. And Vodka comes over and she knows it too. Yeah, you're right. Listen, on the other hand, I'm going to take some solace in what you've said to me, which is it's sports. We don't know. We might get these three

people and, and with those three people, maybe we make a good run in the next couple of years. I really want KD here. I do think he's a total stone winner. I think if we get him here, it gives us every chance. Yeah. And he's still at the peak of his powers and should be for a few more years with the kind of game he has. He's never really had any sort of a major injury. He got hurt one year, but it was kind of one of those fluky ones.

He doesn't have the, I call it, the mechanical stuff that some guys have. Well, that was what you would say about Greg Oden back then. Yeah, well, Oden's the worst case scenario, but even somebody like Davis, the guy gets dinged up a lot. It doesn't seem that durable. Whereas Durant is just somebody that plays.

It seems like Embiid, that's the case too, right? Yes, yes. It seems like there's some structural stuff with him. So I think there's something going on there, whereas KD doesn't have that, or we hope he doesn't have that. Well, thanks for letting me come on the pod and talk about it. I didn't know I needed this catharsis, but I did. I needed it. I'm glad I was there. I just

want to remind you and Levine, you can have your ultimate revenge on Dolan. You just make a parody character of him next year. It's sitting there for you. Have Axe buy the team or something? Have Axe try to buy the Knicks or try to

buy the fake New York professional team try to buy the Knicks or try to buy the fake New York professional team that's clearly the Knicks. I mean, the scene we have to write is you coming to Axe's office to convince Axe to do this, basically. No, the scene I told you the scene I wanted is Axe comes on my podcast and we just

film it. And I just do a podcast with Damian Lillis. How's that compelling television? What did, no, Axe comes on my podcast and I'm trying to convince him to buy the Knicks. It's a throwaway thing. Oh,

so there's a plot story to it, but it's, it's on the podcast. No, I try to convince him and then people realize like, this is actually a good idea. I actually do this. Think about it.

Oh, in the world. Listen, everybody listens, then they start lobbying Axe to do it. I just want to point out, you've had more gratuitous cameos than that on Billions.

That would not be in the top three. I love it. Axe coming on my podcast would be a very fair cameo. Or maybe... Hey, Twitter people, let us know what you think. Should Axe come on Simmons's...

Hit both of us up. I'm at Brian Koppelman on Twitter. Actually, probably the, the guy I would really want to book if they asked me like, which real life character from billions would you want? I would, I would want hard Bob.

Hard Bob Beaufort's a good one to have. I mean, Chuck Senior'd be pretty good too. Just go, just go immediately into the porn with hard Bob. Did you recognize all three? Just answer. Did you recognize all three of them?

No, I did not. How many people hit all three? Just answer. Did you recognize all three of them? No, I did not. How many people hit all three? Like a, a surprising number of people. Everyone had a surprising number of people at all three, more than you would think. By the way,

you said, you said last three episodes of billions are off the hook. Yeah. The last three episodes are insane. Okay. So we're not on this week because of game of Thrones. Smart. Um, good idea. I mean, I think, I think not on this week because of Game of Thrones smart good idea what do you think

I mean I think anyone's gonna be watching Game of Thrones so I'm happy for Benny Up and Wise I love those guys they should take it out with no one else

on the air like just everyone watch their show everything goes black we're back the following Sunday and yeah 10, 11, and 12 are fucking nuts well you know

Shea Serrano huge Billions fan pointed out to me that you could get Billions like at midnight on Saturday night, the night before, and actually watch the Billions

for last weekend. I watched it late at night on Saturday night. I was like so delighted. It was like the best tip anyone gave me in 2019. I think it's really,

that was a really smart thing Showtime decided to do. And I'll say, I didn't know that that was going to work, but it totally worked, which is so many smart thing Showtime decided to do and I'll say I didn't know that that was going to work but it totally worked which is so many people now watch it

on the day of, on Sunday, like starting late at Saturday night and all day Sunday and then a lot of people will watch when it's really on. I'm happy any way

people want to watch but it won't be on this week and then three episodes right after. All right, good luck. Say hi to all your Nick fan friends. Give your son a hug

and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Brian. Talk to you soon. Bye. All right, good luck. Say hi to all your Nick fan friends. Give your son a hug and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Brian. Talk to you soon. Bye. All right, thanks so much to Rasil. Thanks so much to our awesome Ringer staff

who time and time again come through even when it's stuff at night. It sucks to work at night. I've been in that position many, many times at various points in my life and I really appreciate

whenever the team comes together and does stuff for the greater good because we like to deliver good content to you. Thanks to DAZN. Don't forget to go to DAZN.com. Check that out.

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I said decor. Okay. Yeah. homedepot.com slash decor. Use the code BSHomedepot and save up to 10% valid on select items online only. Free delivery on select items, $45 or more. Visit homedepot.com for more information. Back later this week with one more podcast.

Until then. I want to see them on the way so I never say I don't have feelings with them. On the wayside, on the way so I never say I don't have feelings with them.