The Bill Simmons Podcast - Revamping the NBA Playoffs, Plus Cousin Sal and Rockets GM Daryl Morey (Ep. 328)

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons breaks down the reasons why the NBA playoff format needs to be dramatically different (5:00). Then, Cousin Sal hops on the line to give his thoughts on the Winter Olympics (27:00), the NBA All-Star Game (34:00), and early Oscars picks (42:00). Finally, Rockets GM Daryl Morey joins to detail his journey through the NBA ranks and the importance of analytics in his life (56:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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where I think the entire staff has lost their mind over how great black Panther is. We were just turning the ringer.com and old black Panther site. Lots of good pieces up there right now. We also have Oscars coming in less than two weeks. We have some really fun stuff planned on the video audio side for that. I would encourage you to check out the big picture with Sean fantasy. We're going to put out a big podcast of all the interviews that I did. And more importantly, Fennessey did because he did more with some of the best directors and stars that were involved

with the Oscar race this year. So keep an eye out for that. And don't forget to check out all of our podcasts on The Ringer Podcast Network. Just go to th ringer.com slash podcasts. I talked on Friday. I said, there is a chance we might have Kevin Durant. People send in some great mailbag questions. I have them in a document. They're ready to be to be executed when we get Mr. Durant in a room, which I think will happen in the next two to three weeks, it's going to happen in Oakland.

I thought it might happen in LA. I was a little dubious because there's a lot going on here. And we're pushing a couple weeks. But thank you. Don't send any more questions. I have more than enough. We're going to pin him down. It's going to be like Frost Nixon.

Coming up, we're going to talk to Cousin Sal. And we're also going to run this interview that we did with Daryl Morey that is really good because Sloan Conference is coming up in Boston. First Pearl Jam. All right, we're going to call Cousin Sal in a second. I want to talk about something that happened this weekend with Adam Silver kind of opening the door for changing the NBA playoffs to a 1-16 seed seating situation where you throw the

conferences out. This is something I'm passionate about. I think it was 2007. I wrote a piece. It might've even been for ESPN, the magazine about the entertaining as hell tournament, which if you've, if you've consumed my content for the last 10 years, you've probably heard me mention a hundred times. But the idea of the tournament was that instead of just letting people throw away the last six weeks of the season, the reason I wrote about it, I think was in 07, everybody was tanking for Durant and Odin. So my thought was if you had a tournament for the two eight seeds in the playoffs, it would make it almost impossible for teams to just shut down players, which is what was happening. That year, the Celtics shut down

Paul Pierce when he could have come back and all that stuff. So my thought was if you guaranteed the first 14 seeds, so the one through seven in each conference, but then you said the eight seed was available in each conference for a play in. You had a 16 team play in. You put it somewhere. You made it a week long thing. And then the winners got the two eight seeds. But then they played a final game and they got like, you know, the 15th pick in the draft and five million dollars or whatever, whatever you made it that that would just be more fun than what was going on. So people really like that. Adam was not the commissioner at that point, but I had talked to him a bunch of times over

the next five or six years about it. And he always seemed like he wasn't totally happy with the way the playoff system was. So over the last five years, there's been a little more momentum. They're obviously tanking. People talk about it every year, and there's been a little more momentum. They're obviously tanking. People talk about it every year, and that's been a disaster. And I've been tweaking this idea over and over again. I put it on Twitter yesterday, but I wanted to just put it here so you guys could hear it and just really talk about it.

I just think this is better. Tate, you be ready over there because I'm going to throw this at you. First of all, let's start with the one through 16. If you did it right now, here's what it would look like if the season ended today. Houston would play the second play-in team. Golden State, number two seed, would play the top play-in seed. Then it would be three Toronto versus 14 Philly. That would be an awesome series.

Four Boston versus 13 Portland. That would be weird. Five Cleveland versus 12 Denver. Actually, I like Portland and Denver in those matchups, by the way. Six San Antonio against 11 Oklahoma City. Seven Minnesota versus 10 Milwaukee. And then eight Washington versus nine Indiana. That's just more fun

than whatever the hell we had going on. Now, if you had the playing tournament, because we only locked down 14 seeds, you would have Utah, the Clippers, Miami, Detroit, and in my opinion, the sleeper of the whole thing, the Lakers, because I like the way the Lakers have been playing. I think Utah would probably be favored. The stealth sleeper I had was Dallas,

just because of Rick Carlisle and Dennis Smith, Mike at Hot, Dirk, and they slow stuff down. The concept would be you'd have, basically it's a sweet 16, single elimination. I would have it so that there were home games for the higher seed the first two rounds so maybe you have over the course of like sat maybe it starts saturday and sunday and you have four games each day and you just knock all the knock all the games out and get to the final eight. And then on Tuesday and Wednesday, you have the next two rounds to get to the final four.

But then I would put the final four in a location. Tate, what would be the best location for this? The final four. Playing for the playing seeds. Would you go Vegas? I'm going to MSG. MSG? MSG.

What about Seattle? To make up to the people of Seattle for ripping the the sonics away from them that's a nice that's a nice gesture msg would be good too yeah just put it in the mecca the first time and then we'll go from there yeah so you do the final four and then you go back to back days so you do saturday you do the two games and then sunday you do the title which is a little grueling? But then you have five days off before the playoffs. First of all, I'd like to meet anybody who's not watching this. I think this would be fucking awesome. I just really like, I can't believe they haven't done this yet. It would be incredible, especially when you got to, you know, the final four where the stakes are you get into the playoffs

but I would also have a couple added wrinkles and I thought about this a lot. You don't want to have the draft pick be too good because you wouldn't want people tanking to get into the tournament. But I think you could give the team that wins the whole thing could get the top pick of the second round.

So before the second round starts, they get pick 31. And that's a nice pick, right? You get a nice cheap salary thing. The other thing I would do is I would give them a $5 million trade exception for the following year. So you have two like real things. There's real reasons to try to win the whole thing.

Now, Daryl Morey, my friend from Houston who's coming up a little bit later, he was saying after it's decided and you have your two play-in teams, that the top two seeds should be able to pick who they play. So we get it all. You have all the seeds, one through 16. And then the one seed says, no, actually, we don't want to play the 16 seed. We'd rather play the 13 seed. We'll go with them, which is great for a couple reasons.

One, it sets up a scenario of the 13 seed being totally disrespected. They wanted us. They got us. All that stuff. The drama of them – I mean, you could televise that. That could be like a special episode of The Jump or something where we find out what the actual matchups are. So that would be cool.

The second thing is this is the way for the NBA to dump eight regular season games because they could make up the money. I mean, we all know now that the regular season should be shorter. If you got down to 74, that basically everybody loses four home games, you could make up all the money with this tournament because there's 15 games total.

Now, I'm not sure if they could sell it or maybe they convince the local affiliates and the owners and maybe they probably lose two ESPN games and two TNT games because they shorten the season. You make it up to them by letting them split this tournament. And actually, you could probably make more money from it than you could from those eight games because I think they could sell this.

This is 15 games. It's 15 nights. What could they sell that for, Tate? I mean, that's 15 playoff games, basically. It's a lot of money. The entire playoffs, I think, is like 55 games, something like that. Be pretty good. Who do you think would win?

Utah, Miami, Clippers. Yeah, I think it's got to be the Jazz, right? They won 11 straight. The way they're playing right now? Yeah, Quinn Snyder. Guess what? I want to find out. I think this is so much more interesting.

And then when you have the one through 16, the other wrinkle I would have is I would go best of five in the first round. I would go back to that because the first round is too predictable. And over the course of a seven-game series, it's just too easy for the slightly better team to have the advantage. I would go best of five with the wrinkle that the one seed and the two seed get four home games out of the five. So they would host one and two and four and five at home.

And if you're going to beat them, you really have to beat them. And the two lowest seeds would get game three at home, and that's it. But I think this would work. Tate. Yes. What is your hole? What is your thing that, what is your thing that you think now here's the one reason this won't work.

I'm worried about the, uh, the history of it all, like not being able to match up. But I guess when you have the five game series that already, you know, it's already changed before. So that's,

that's more of my concern just that we can't match up the two eras or we split it like this is a different era interesting yeah because i remember when uh when tv really took off with basketball in the 90s when like everything was on once everybody had cable and the broadcasts were better and all that stuff in the mid 90s those best of fives were awesome in the early 90s too like charlotte and boston had an awesome best of five once when the Alonzo won it in game four of the thing. But that whole era was so unpredictable. And it was like,

if you lost one of those first two games, you might not come back home. You know, like the Celtics had home fit home court in 93. And I think they lost game one, but that was it. It was like, Oh,

I hope they come back for game five. They never did. I just think it would be better. I like five games, and people seem to go all out, too, in the five-game series because you don't have the time. Yeah, you have to. You can't screw around. The seven is like you can blow the first two and still win.

You can make up for it after the fact. So anyway, I really feel like this has a chance. I think they're ready. I think Adam's ready to do two things. I think he's ready to tweak the playoff system a little bit because they have so much momentum during the season now, especially with basketball, Twitter, and the ratings are up 20% and the marketability of the players,

all that stuff, that then follow that up with like just a shit round one where it just goes on too long. You know who's going to win every matchup. The same kind of teams are playing each other every year. There's kind of no unpredictability. If the All-Star game, which we're going to talk about with Sal in a second, if the All-Star game showed us anything yesterday, it's that kind of shaking the snow globe works. The reason those guys were playing hard was because it was weird

because they were playing with guys they'd never played with before and teammates were going against each other. And you see like the last play of the game, Curry has that three and Durant knows what he's going to do. I thought there was a level of gamesmanship and competitiveness that I haven't seen from the from the all-star game in 13 years i thought it worked and i really like seeing the weird combinations i love seeing kairi and westbrook and lebron and uh and durant all on the same team was fucking amazing and that

was the play like the game wouldn't play to lebron it's like a russell westbrook drive past the kairi on the baseline kairi back to lebron for a lay in. Yeah. Take the lead. It's crazy. It was cool. And to see like somebody like Embiid just seamlessly fit in there and Giannis not being a thousand percent ready. He's like a year away from, I think, dominating that game. He didn't. He didn't.

It was funny watching him. He didn't totally know how to play off the ball. He seemed a little nervous too. He seemed nervous. And he has the ball all the time in Milwaukee. And in that situation, he to play off the ball. He seemed a little nervous too. He seemed nervous. And he has the ball all the time in Milwaukee. And in that situation, he's playing off the ball. He's kind of running around like a chicken with his head cut off a little bit.

Whereas like you watch somebody like Al Horford, who just knows exactly what, you know, the sage veteran who's been at a million games and knew exactly where to go all the time. Or like Paul George, same thing. Paul George comes in and he's just like like that dude didn't need the ball he knew exactly what to do on both ends even lillard when lillard came in lillard was good it's it's a really nicely the reason that it was so sad that they screwed up the all-star game like they did was it was a really nice litmus test for

kind of who the best players were what their confidence level was as a superstar and all that stuff. And I thought yesterday worked. I thought LeBron tried hard because he was playing for team LeBron and he was trying to save face. So what I'm hoping is they fix the all-star game. I'd like to see them fix all-star saturday which is really still two events it's never i've written about this for 12 15 years too but it's never been explained to me why they wouldn't do horse and at least do like a final four of horse and i would much rather watch that than the skills challenge the reality all-star saturday i didn't show up till an hour in because i knew i didn't need to see the first hour. But they are trying to make stuff happen.

They are trying to become inventive. And the other thing Adam talked about was the one and done rule. It really seems like he's going to fix that too. Tate. Let's end it. It's time. Are you and Titus anti one and done? Definitely.

It hurts college basketball and i think it also hurts the nba too i would like to see them go to a baseball system where it's either go to high school right now or you have to stay in college for two years and there's no in between and make them and i mean my dream would be a committee where we had 12 people and they would decide who was ready to come right in and i think the the people, too, once they get rid of the rule, there's going to be a grace period where we're going to have some bad situations where guys go straight out of high school that don't work out, and then people are going to say, well, we need to fix this.

This is a problem. But you just have to let people weed themselves out on their own. Well, we've also had bad one-and-done situations. Yep. You know? There's been guys who, if they'd gone right from high school, would have been top five picks and then they a year passes. Shabazz Muhammad. Perfect.

Yeah. I think what happened to Ben Simmons at LSU was just a complete waste. We lost two Ben Simmons years. We lost one when he went to LSU and clearly was in the wrong situation. Then he got hurt. But I would like to see the baseball system of either come in right away or you can't come in for two years. I would also like to see them boost up the G League because the G League should be awesome. And unlike a college where the players are still getting paid, we just don't find out about it. In the G League, at least they'd get paid. They have a contract. And they get better accommodations and all that stuff.

And we get all the two-way guys now, too, which is great. Yeah. So I think my takeaway from all of this is I think Adam has done a really good job these last five plus years. And I guess it's been five. And I think he is ready to start flexing is my takeaway. My predictions over the next five years would be they're going to completely blow up the playoff system. They're going to get rid of one and done. And I think we have two more teams.

I think that's the third thing. Because if you get rid of, all this stuff goes hand in hand. If you get rid of, if you bring in the high school players immediately, that takes jobs away from the veterans right well you know what doesn't take jobs away from them two more teams yep 15 more spots 30 more spots 30 more spots so that would allow teams to take a high school guy and just stash them um maybe there's all kinds of ways you could tweak it but you know i i've been getting a lot of emails from the louisville area

or i should say correctly louisville so hayley o'shaughnessy doesn't get mad at me louisville louisville i would say louisville but it's louisville louisville you have to say it like you you're drunk louisville uh but apparently they have a state-of-the-art NBA arena, and everybody there is jazzed and fired up for an NBA team. I need to do more investigating, but that's the word in the street. You seem dubious. I choose Virginia over Louisville. Virginia?

Yeah. Where? Homage to the Squires. Just bring them back. The Richmond area. Tate loves the NBA. Virginia Beach area. Somewhere like that. Virginia Beach? Yeah. Somewhere like that. They tried area. Tate loves the NBA. The Virginia Beach area.

Somewhere like that. Virginia Beach? Yeah, somewhere like that. They tried to get the Kings once. Yeah, why not? It's a nice little growing area. They have a lot of tech jobs up there. It's a very underrated area. You don't think if Louisville gets it,

bring Patino back as coach GM? Let's do this, man. I like it. I like it. That'll be good. We'll get Chauncey Billups on staff. That'll be perfect. Anyway, I think Adam's going to blow some stuff up and I think it's going to be awesome. And I'm super excited for it. All right, we're going to bring in the cuz. Let's talk about

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let's call the cuz. All right. Cousin Sal on the line. On Wednesday, we are running the Best of Parent Corner Part 2. It's a 90-minute extravaganza of all of the parent corners we did from like week 9 or week 10 all the way through the playoffs. And then that's it. We have abandoned our parenting corner.

People miss it. We have abandoned our parenting corner. People miss it. More importantly, cuz, I worry, but this is when it gets really dangerous for you. Like yesterday, I'm at the All-Star game. All of a sudden, we're betting on Giannis to win the MVP. This is when it gets dangerous for us. There's Winter Olympics, college hoops, some random NBA, NHL, some spring training baseball. What are you doing? What are you gambling on these days? I was at the Genesis Open in Pacific Palisades yesterday, betting hole by hole on the golf tournament. And luckily I ended up with Bubba Watson at the end,

but it was a long road to get there. Between that and Winter Olympics, it's been tough. I got excited when the phone rang, but I realized it's not, it's still the off season, right? We're not back. We're not officially back yet. No, we're preseason hall of favor or something. Yeah. I'm a, I'm still licking my wounds from the Superbowl, the sounds of the game and inside the NFL and all those shows where they have

all the people mic'd up. I, I tried to avoid it. I can't now I've become progressively more bitter as it's gone along. I thought I was going to be able to shake this one off, but it's, it's not happening. So. Yeah, I feel I've talked to a few Patriots fans and they say the same thing the day after they were like, just like you were, well, we have our five championships. It's fine. It could be a lot worse if we didn't have Tom Brady and Belichick throughout the years. But yeah, the offseason is a son of a bitch and the highlights don't end.

And yeah, it's going to be rough for you. I'm sorry. I don't know what to even tell you. It really hurts the part when, because I realized something a couple of days later, maybe I was in denial. I mean, Belichick definitely got outcoached in that game. But like nine and a half minutes left the Eagles get the ball and at that point the only thing that

can't happen is the seven and a half minute drive which is exactly what happened but during the sounds of the game they cut to the Pats get the ball back with 221 left Jim Schwartz goes over to Peterson and it's Mike and he's like I'm I'm going to send everything and either we'll make a play or you'll get the ball back. And Peterson's like, great. So basically he was saying, I'm going to pressure the shit out of Brady. And if they score in five plays, great. We'll get the ball back with a minute.

I don't understand why the Patriots didn't do that. And I am now rooting for Matt Patricia to go 0-16 in Detroit. I'm shorting them. I'm betting the under for them. I'm going all in. Screw Matt Patricia. He 0-16 in Detroit. I'm shorting them. I'm betting the under for them. I'm going all in. Screw Matt Patricia. He cost me a Super Bowl. Why didn't the Pats just blitz and try to make something happen?

I don't know. I do know this. When the Patriots are playing great defense with no names, Bill Belichick gets the credit. Now when Matt Patricia forgets to blitz somebody, he can go to hell. But I know what you're saying. I've thought about it so many times with Brady. It's like, this guy is just, you know, he's doing whatever he wants to do back there.

Send somebody. You know, how do you want to get beat? It's worse. So, yeah, you guys should have sent someone somewhere in the seven and a half minutes. One thing that's interesting, though, when you got the ball back with 220, you were like a minus 260 favorite to win. Down five? Yeah. Jesus. with 220, you were like a minus 260 favorite to win. Seriously? Down five?

Yeah. Jesus. Yeah, everybody, people are sick of losing money on the Patriots. That's how sick they are. Tell us about the Winter Olympics stuff you've been betting on. I've actually, maybe I should only bet every four years in the Winter Olympics, because I'm hitting on a lot of things. I have the gold medals under 10 and a half for the U S and what do we have? Like five?

I feel bad. But wait a second. You bet on the under for gold medals for our own country. I thought we were only winning nine or 10 the way it said, yeah, we own snowboarding, but we have nothing else. We hit some of these slaloms,

but what, what else are we good at when these winter Olympics, why are we so bad hit some of these slaloms, but what else are we good at when these winter Olympics? Why are we so bad at some of these sports? I don't know. We even tried to create extra sports so that we'd be better at all of this stuff, and apparently it didn't really work. Well, is it because none of these are available in high school?

Like track and field, you know a bunch of people ran track and field, and it's nice to add sports, but if they don't have a program in high school in the U.S., we're going to fall behind immediately, right? I would like to see us start cheating more. I think the other countries are cheating. I think we've had a lot of success in professional sports with the cheating. And I would like to see us move that more to the Olympics and really start thinking about streamlining some of this stuff.

Put our best scientists toward it. Got to get better at skiing, more red blood cells in the oxygen. Let's just go for it. Hey, yesterday with the All-Star Game and Celebrity, all that stuff, were you in on all that stuff too or no? I had slam dunk.

No, I didn't have slam dunk i had the three point winning contest uh three four three contest i picked that winner it was a booker right booker yeah mitch right i had i had booker and gordon so i'll count that as a half a win uh that was nice the slam dunk i stayed away from i i just if dj khal is, is deciding where my money goes, I'm just, you know, I'm out. That actually should be a way to get a refund. Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. I don't, what are they doing with the judges up there? But who did you think should have won that?

They're saying Smith got robbed. What'd you think? I thought Mitchell should have won, but I was sitting in the stands. I called out Booker as the three point winner before the contest. Then I called out Mitchell for the slam dunk. And of course, never texted you and talked about actually betting on either of them. I really like Booker. I don't know what his odds were. But I don't know if you could see. I went to Saturday and went to Sunday. DJ Khaled was sitting next to Mark Wahlberg. And he was doing this air horn thing, DJ

Khaled. And by the fourth time, it looked like Wahlberg was just going to get up and start hauling off and just punching him. And he was just pissed off in general. I think he was furious at his agent. I haven't seen people that furious at their agents since our own agent, baby doll Dixon with that, that kind of antipathy and confusion and anger. But Mark Wahlberg was not happy to be there. I have no idea what they're doing with the dunk contest

where just keeping it 1 to 10 seems crazy. If the score is up to 50, why not just have everybody rate the dunks from 1 to 50? And then it's like you don't have to either have a 50 or a 45, basically, or the two outcomes every time. I think the problem is they approached the panel with this, and the problem is DJ Khaled can only count up to 10. Oh, is that what it was?

Yeah, that was it. So they had to keep it one through ten. When is it? Are we at the tail end of this DJ Khaled thing? I don't know. You got to get Carolla going on him. Not a huge fan, but he's fun. He's fun. I don't know. You got to get Carolla going on him. Not a huge fan, but he's fun. He's fun.

I don't know. He's fun. Tate, does your generation, is this like a your generation thing, DJ Howard? He's been famous for like 10 years, but now he's like popular, you know, general public famous. Do you find him humorous or funny in any way? No, he's never been humorous or funny. He made music.

I think he's presenting himself as humorous and funny. used to yell we global all the time which was entertaining but now it's a it's a warrant it's welcome so the amazing thing yesterday what was yesterday's date 219 218 218 it's it's a borderline remember the events of 218 because kevin hart came out and it was the worst 14 minutes I've ever seen in person. It was, not only was it not funny, it was confusing. It was weird. The audience, everyone in the room was like, what the hell is going on? It wouldn't stop. People were there for basketball.

It just kept going. And then it led to him introducing all the all-stars and kind of like roasting them, but not in a funny way. And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, Fergie came out and sang the national anthem and did it like Marilyn Monroe style. Fergie saved, she saved Rob Riggle and Kevin Hart because all the vitriol was going their way. And I tweeted that, well, I know that the MO

for the NBA all-star game is to not try hard, but this, this sketch takes it to a different level with Robert and Kevin Hart. It was really bad. And what's funny is the game itself was really good. So everybody kind of forgot about it, but the first 20 minutes was, was shaky.

My favorite part was our cousin, Jimmy was sitting right next to Spike Lee, who is not exactly the most hilarious guy alive. He was just like sitting next to Spike Lee for four quarters. Jimmy and Mark Wahlberg were frantically trying to set up a trade for their seats. I don't know. It didn't work out in the end. They should have given Jimmy an air horn.

Let's quickly, next week. I thought that was the best all-star game this decade. And I know that's not saying a ton. People get at me for the baseball all-star game that won 15 innings, but I remember just wanting that to end. But that was a great ending. It sucks that they, you know, down 13, Team LeBron decided to play defense, and they're just able to do that.

And it pushed, for a gambler's perspective, that freaking game pushed. They were covering for like 22 seconds, Team LeBron, favored by three. And it pushed, or if you got two and a half, it won. I have no idea why the new rules worked and inspired everybody to play harder, but they absolutely did. I had stopped going to the all-star game because i just there's not to me the seventh circle of hell is is bad pickup basketball it just bothers me on so many different levels this time um not only was were people playing

hard but even on the benches you could see um people were really locked in and jumping up on plays and trying to get calls and all that stuff. We bet on Giannis at plus 550 for a couple of reasons. One, I actually thought team staff could have and should have won. And it seemed like he was on that team that the guy positioned to kind of have the biggest impact. And I actually think it was the right bet and he didn't play well. I think if he had played well, he would have won the MVP because it was kind of sitting there. He had the most minutes. He was guarding LeBron. He was kind of their rebounder shot blocker along with Embiid who they were protecting with minutes. And he, I don't know, he wasn't 100% ready for that stage to be like one of the best five players in the world.

What was funny was Embiid was. I was really impressed with Embiid. You know, I tweeted that. And then you look at the tweets and the Philly fans are like, oh, welcome to the club. Oh, congratulations. You finally realized Embiid's good. It's like Embiid's played 75 games in four years. He's played. I looked it up.

He's played like 2,173 minutes or something like that. LeBron's played almost 2,100 minutes this year. So I actually think it was incredible that Embiid was able to just kind of belong on the court and, and do his thing with, you know, LeBron, Durant, Curry, the best guys in the league, and he belonged with those guys. And I don't know, it made me increase the ceiling on him. Now, with that said, he's played 75 games. Yeah. You know, you did a very bad thing just now.

I don't know if you realize you even did it. And, Tate, you might want to cut it out, but you admitted to your listeners that you read the tweet replies, and I hadn't heard you say that in a long time. No, the ones that were underneath. I clicked on the tweet. I clicked on the tweet to make sure it would go through because the Wi-Fi and the staples was so bad. And then I saw like the first two tweets underneath were like, oh, really?

And Bede's good? It's like, yeah, actually, it's kind of a big deal that he hasn't played 80 games yet. And he was out there. He's in his early 20s. How old is he? He's like 23. 23. And 23. I got to say,

if I'm a rocket up against LeBron, pretty good. Yeah. And if I'm a rockets fan, I know it's the all-star game, but that was yet another, uh, coach Dan,

Tony special down the stretch there. Yeah. Right. He had the wrong guys out there. What's funny is the most effective guy he had was Al Horford for what the game was because Al Horford's a good defender, doesn't care if he shoots. But it's like he probably should have played Horford and Embiid together

because Horford knew what he was doing. But, Tate, you watched that game, right? I did. Not a Mike D'Antoni classic down the stretch. I thought Embiid had a chance to win MVP for a little while. He did. It was sitting there for like five seconds. I was texting, we were texting the whole game.

I never gave up on the Giannis MVP because it became clear if his team won, there was no MVP. So whoever had a good fourth quarter was going to win it. And I tweeted, I think at the end of the third period that it was sitting there for LeBron. Because LeBron, they were losing, but LeBron had the stats. And it was like, oh, he has to just play well for one quarter.

They win the game, they win the MVP, which is exactly what happened. And that was my main takeaway from last night is, you know, sometimes with the All-Star game, all these guys are on the court, they're actually playing hard, and there's this natural hierarchy that develops. And he was the best player. He still is. Well, let me just say this. I jumped on your Greek freak MVP. I tried to convince you at the last second,

let's take LeBron and Curry. Maybe this is just too easy. We're overthinking this, whatever. LeBron, I think, was 13-2 to an MVP. But I only gave up on the Greek freak winning MVP once, and that was when he didn't play the entire third freaking quarter. Right, right. Yeah, that was a problem.

He wasn't in at all. And that makes me think, like, that's just another layer of why you shouldn't bet the NBA All-Star game. To bet the over or under is just insane to not root for those points or to root for more points. But to bet the game itself, you don't know who's trying. You don't know who had a crazy weekend. It looked like Jimmy Butler and the Greek Freak just went out hard,

and it showed a little bit on their play. You knew the Greek Freak was going to get to the hoop and dunk once a quarter, so you're going to get your 10 there. Not Jimmy, Jimmy Butler sat it out. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's it. I mean, what was the story? He just didn't

come to practice or what? Unclear. It's an interesting move. If you know you're not going to play that much to be like, my knee hurts, I'm just going to sit on the bench, but it's the alternative was me playing 12 minutes. I thought the way that

game shook out, it was kind of impossible for Team Curry not to win because their overall team was so much better than the LeBron team because LeBron had just lost three major guys. When the bench of LeBron's team was in versus the Steph team, it was no contest, but Steph was terrible. Harden looked like he hadn't slept for three days and Draymond was practically in a coma. So none of that was helping. That's why I would have played

Horford because Horford actually seemed like he had gotten a reasonable amount of sleep the whole weekend the most entertaining thing is Draymond during Fergie's anthem look it up and our cousin Jimmy is on directly after Draymond's cutaway he has his mouth wide open

when you talk about a coma Fergie didn't help matters I don't know what that was but look it up on YouTube. My highlight of the weekend was I talked to Sean McVay for a half hour on Friday night, and he was every bit as great as I wanted him to be, and he promised he would come on the BS Podcast,

so stay tuned for that. Oh, great. He's like a year older than Tate. Yeah, like he could hang out with Tate, and you would think they were the same age. But he was... Yeah, Tate thinks you would think they were the same age. But he was... Yeah, Tate thinks he's ahead of the game. You know, he produces podcasts. He stars in them.

You need to get your shit together, Tate. You got an NFL head coach who's like four months older than you. Yeah, you're still behind Sean McVay, Tate. Last thing and then we're going to go. The Oscars next week on Against All Odds with Cousin Sal. America's favorite gambling podcast. Yeah. You're going to do some Oscars.

We're going to get it going. You're going to do some Oscars. I know you like Get Out. We tried to talk you out of it. You think it's a winner, but I guess it's 15 or 20 to one odds. It's a fun bet. Yeah, so Best Picture is really interesting to me

because there are nine nominees and Shape of Water is minus 220, the favorite. Three Billboards is plus 140. Lady Bird is 11 to one and Get Out is 15 to one and Dunkirk is 40 to one. And there's been some industry buzz that even though those are the odds that it's Get Out versus Dunkirk is how this is going to actually shape out. My argument, Jimmy, you, me, and Jimmy were texting about it this weekend. And Jimmy, of course, was as dismissive and arrogant as always about it. But he, give me the token laugh on that. I was making a joke.

I'm trying to think. But he baited him into gambling on it. No, he didn't gamble on it. No, he didn't want to gamble on it. I thought he said, I'll take your bet on this. Oh, are we going gamble on it. No, he didn't want to gamble on it. I thought he said, I'll take your bet on this. Oh, are we going to bet on this? This is great. I'm going to do it then. I'm going to bet him. I don't know if the Oscar host is allowed to legally bet. I mean, they may carry him off the stage. That's true. We have to back him up. But he was adamant that Get Out, that it

was going to be Shape of Water, three billboards. And my argument is like, with nine nominees, how many votes do you actually need to win the Oscar? Yeah, two. All right, so let's say one out of every five. Just like they say, screw it. I like Get Out the most. Get Out was the coolest. Get Out's the movie I'll remember in 10 years. Whatever. Then it might sneak it out. most get out was the coolest get out's the movie i'll remember in 10 years whatever then then it

might sneak it out right almost like how trump won the election where it's like ah well with the math and then it acts like oh the math can work so exactly like trump it is exactly like trump winning the election no i think you're right the one thing like you used to be able to say well this won the golden globe it It won the SAG Award. It won this. So it's going to win Best Picture. But now that they diluted the pool, now that there's, like, nine or ten nominees,

that all goes out the window. So it is going to be interesting. So that's my argument. So, like, Best Actor, Best Actress, I think it would be crazy to bet against, like, Frances McDormand. I think she's going to win. And if she doesn't, the odds aren't really, I don't know.

It's just, if she gets like 40% of the vote, she wins. They don't show us the votes, unfortunately. But with Get Out, I just think with the nine, it makes it so much harder to figure out how a consensus would win, you know? And somebody could just steal it. But you're still not convinced. All right, I could buy that no it's not no you're not convinced don't i don't want you not convinced i don't want your courtesy nodding i'm gonna have some uh i'm gonna have some ringer experts

on next week and we're gonna we're gonna tell you how to how to nail your uh oscar pool and win money from your loved ones and friends. I'll tell you what you should win is Call Me By Your Name, which was basically a movie about two guys cycling around Italy. Yeah. Come on. They loved it. People love that movie.

It's like, hey, you guys want to go for another bike ride? All right. Hey. Hey, want to stop over on this hill? Great. Hey, want to ride back? Sure. If that shot in the streets of Detroit doesn't get any buzz,

like I think like, oh, it's Italy. It's beautiful. Look what they're doing to the peaches. Right. They're fornicating with the fruit. Oh, this is just the greatest. I don't think if it has any of that, we're even talking about it right now. It's a fine movie. It just shouldn't be an Oscar, like one of the two movies that could win an oscar and it's funny because it's it's convinced me once

and for all that any movie set in italy is 40 seems 40 better than it actually is and it could be any movie like in the godfather he goes to italy and those are the best scenes in the godfather nothing really happens like he just he stares at Apollonia. They have this terrible wedding. He met her like three minutes ago and then their car blows up and it's like, wow, the Italy scenes. Those are incredible.

How about when they walk through, you know? And then like there's that Diane Lane movie when she goes to Italy that my wife always watches. It's terrible. It's like your typical terrible rom-com, but it's in Italy, so she loves it. So, yeah.

I think someone should put this theory to the test. I think, like, Tyler Perry should take the Madea movies to, like, Rome and see what kind of buzz he gets. Anything. If he can go under a nomination. Anything that's outdoors, where they're just kind of walking around and there's a lot of wide shots of how pretty Italy is, it's gonna do well people are just gonna think it's fantastic yeah i think if

netflix they're throwing all this money around they should just say we're setting a a drama in italy it's just a drama and just things will happen people go on some cycling trips people walk around maybe there's a wine tasting episode and it'll just be great. I get out as 15 to one. Now I still think, I still think that's the best deal of any of these things. I could totally see it. And also I think you're going to be, I think you're going to get out your checkbook and write whatever amount you're betting on it. That's what I think. But the, the shape of water,

if that wins the Oscar, I'm going to be very upset is all I have to say. That was beautiful, though. Oh, my God. I mean, John Wick 2 has a better case than the Shape of Water. Terrible. I think the three billboards and the current climate and strong women and all that, I think that's going to get the most. The problem, though, is there's been three billboards backlash, though. People are saying it's like this decade's crash.

Not a compliment. Going the other way. Yeah. Yeah. Guess we'll see. Do you have a parent? It was good. I thought 90% of it was good.

I mean, not the killer cycling scenes that Call Me By Your Name had. Cruising around in those bicycles, man. It's like five different bicycling scenes. Breaking Away had less bicycling scenes than Call Me By Your Name. Who knew the Winklevoss twins could cycle as well as they did throughout the whole movie. Nice job. The Parent Corner, we're running it Wednesday.

I didn't know if you wanted to sneak one in. I have one. It makes me sound like an a-hole, but it's not great. But we found out my four-year-old is allergic to dairy products, and I did not want a kid allergic to anything. Like, this just, let alone dairy. I love ice cream. I want to take them out for ice cream.

I want to eat ice cream. And now this little son of a bitch is allergic to dairy and it sucks because we tested it out and he swells up and he gets blotchy and everything. But I don't know. Am I, am I allowed to give them back? What do I do? I just have to love them. Right?

So you're saying you're personally offended that you've created a child that is allergic to dairy. Yeah. It's one of the biggest, one of the biggest parental failures of your career it's got to be it's got to be and there's no reversing it right the problem is the the problem with with uh the dairy the dairy allergy is you feel bad when you're having pizza yeah you feel bad when you're having pizza. You feel bad when you're having ice cream. Like it's, it's more, it's more, it's more the parental guilt that it's affecting your life. You don't care about his life as much as it just affects your life.

It's like, really? You can't have pizza? Cause this little, this little shit's allergic to dairy. Yeah. My, my, my son is like, but no, I just, I want to, yeah, I don't think... I didn't want to say it, but no. I just want to... Yeah, I don't think... I don't know.

Like, if you were born and you had the ability to make decisions and you said, all right, here's the deal. You could... You either... You have to go without ice cream and pizza for the rest of your life or we'll take your left arm. What do you do? You have to think about it, right?

Yeah, I might give up a pinky. Yeah, all right, a pinky for sure. I married my wife who is allergic to shellfish. It's bothered me for 20 years. Sometimes it's just really annoying. Like I'm having a good lobster, great clam chowder. You can't give somebody a bite. It's just freaking annoying.

It's why you had to leave boston right yeah well there's this there's this famous story between us where we went to famous i mean in our friend circles because she's told the exaggerated version of this story for 20 years we went to a fenway park we went we saw pedro this is when i had no money we're scalping tickets for pedro because it was like i was like i'm that this will never happen again in my lifetime and we're there and we're like in the fifth row behind the Red Sox dugout and I got clam chowder and it was 99 it was during the 99 Pedro season and she's like I can't eat that I'm allergic to shellfish I'm like come on just try it so she tries it and then she goes she's like five minutes later,

she goes to the bathroom just to go to the bathroom. And she's like, I'll be right back and go to the bathroom. She doesn't come back for like 20 minutes. And I thought like she was getting beer or food or who knows, but more importantly, Pedro was pitching and it was 99 Pedro. And I'm like,

I'm not getting up. Like, what am I going to go wander Fenway Park looking for my wife? I just assumed she was in some food line. She comes back like a half hour later. She was like, I was just in the infirmary. I had to take Benadryl. I had a reaction to the clam chowder. And I'm like, oh, that's terrible. Oh my God. I wish I had known because we don't have cell phones back then. She't text and yeah and then I'm like you know Pedro's throwing like a two-hitter and I okay I had my focus like concerned for her

but also like Pedro's Pedro that story has now been twisted over the last 20 years to she had an allergic reaction in the seats she went off I didn't go with her because I didn't want to leave Pedro you know when they they just kind of take the kernel of truth and they just blow it out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're married. You know what they do. I like her version better, I have to be honest. You know what they do.

I know what they do. What's yours? What's your parent corner? My parent corner, I have a special wrinkle. I have a guest to work into my parent corner. Oh. Ben Simmons. Say hi to Sal.

Is he there? What's happening, Ben? Yeah, this is the first ever parent corner we've done with one of our kids in the parent corner. So Valentine's Day happened last week. And as you know, young Ben has a girlfriend, even though he's in the fourth grade, that we've been monitoring. It's a nice, cute, innocent relationship. Yeah, yeah, I won't say her name. Don't worry.

We'll call her Julie Roberts. No, let's call her by her name. What's her name, Ben? He's all bears. Roberts. So no, let's call her by her name. What's her name? So Ben decides he's going to get, um, his girlfriend a Valentine's day gift and he's with my mom and they buy her something. And then he's in Boston. He's with my step-mom. It decides he needs to get her another gift. Then he gets her a third gift.

And then he asked my daughter to make her slime. My daughter made her pink slime. So it was all the parent corner worlds are now colliding in all these different ways. Because my daughter is like, you know, a cocaine addict with slime, basically. She's just making it nonstop. And then brings this gift.

It was a bag with four different gifts for Valentine's Day to his true love. And it needs to say it went over great. Ben, that was a big win. It was. It was one of the best Valentine's

of his life. It was one of the best Valentine's of his life. Okay. I remember back in 2012, you had a good one. The 2012 Valentine though, good cookies that year. Yeah,

so it's stronger than ever, Sal. I don't know. I don't know where this goes. This is great. And Ben,

do you show her pictures of you meeting the other Ben Simmons or does she not care about that? What? Yeah. Yeah,

Ben, he met, it was the Ben Simmons summit this weekend at the All-Star Game. That was about to happen. Incredible. That's great to happen. Incredible. That's great.

So yeah, my parent corner is no matter how young your kids are, if it's true love, you just got to let it go. You got to let them spread those wings. Right. Ben, let me give you some advice. This is free advice. Find out if she has any shellfish allergies. And if she does, get rid of her immediately

or dairy allergies she doesn't have any dairy allergies right Ben? either one yeah that's worse Ben what do you think her favorite thing

about you is? I don't know you gotta talk into the mic maybe because I'm athletic you're athletic? I like you so embarrassed wow what a parent corner see people listen to the parent corner.

They're like, someday I'll have kids, and this is how it'll play out. Your son will give somebody. Ben, have you tried the RKO on her or any other finishing move from the WWE? Not yet. I don't think the wrestling's a big part of it. Yeah, I will say she didn't see on Saturday when he was watching Daddy's Home 2 while playing with 100 wrestling figures. Probably not ready for real work yet that's good you made us buy daddy's home 2 no that was zoe that was well one of you owes me 20 because that's one of the worst movies that's ever happened

it's a great movie you can't say that daddy's Daddy's Home 2 makes Grown Ups 2 look like Godfather 2. You don't even know what that means. Interesting. No. What is it? What's the biggest movie in your house right now for kids' movies, Sal? Well, now it's Toy Story 3. I don't know why they're all into it again.

Toy Story, you like that one, B? I love Toy Story. Your favorites are Grown Ups 1 and 2, Daddy's Home. I like Grown Ups 1 more than Grown Ups 2, actually. Yeah, incredible. Was that the one with the basketball scene? Yeah. Great basketball scene in that. Chris Rock really exposed in the basketball scene in Grown Ups.

Oh, really? Yeah, it's not great for him. I get excited. Do you get excited when you stumble across a movie you thought your kids may have seen and then they're like, no. I was talking with my son Archie. I was like, yeah, you remember that line from

Airplane? He's like, no, I never saw Airplane. I was like, oh my god, we have to watch Airplane tonight. Yeah, we can watch Airplane. We just had that happen four weeks ago with Happy Gilmore. I just assumed that was like one of the first ones we'd ever watched and we never saw it. And it was like, oh my God.

And it was like really everything Ben wanted from a movie. Supports, people got hit in the balls. They're swearing. Somebody lost their hand. Chubbs. Chubbs. Chubbs, yeah. Sal, against all odds, who do you have this week? It's going to be me and the degenerate trifecta.

We're going to talk Winter Olympics. We're going to talk the golf tournament. We're going to talk Oscars. And what else happened? Something. There's a lot going on. I don't know. We're going to talk a lot of stuff.

And then next week, we're going to have some ringer experts on to break down the true Oscar categories. Excellent. And then Parent Corner we're running on this Wednesday. Thanks for coming on, buddy. There you go. Good job by you. Good job by you. Let's talk about Belvedere.

Wow. A great one. Produced in one of the world's longest running distilleries, Belvedere Vodka, the world's finest all natural vodka. Crafted by a collective of master distillers, Belvedere is made with non-GMO Polish rye, pure water, no additives. Recognized for quality, Belvedere was named the ISC World Vodka

Producer of the Year in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Belvedere's unparalleled quality reminds me of a run that my favorite basketball player of all time had in the 80s. That's right, Larry Bird. Won the MVP three years in a row, 84, 85, 86. Won two finals MVPs. And yet somehow his best season was 87. He didn't win anything.

But that was a great run. Kind of like what's happening with Belvedere right now. Burdened the Celtics from that era. Delivered basketball, the utmost quality. Same for Belvedere. Enjoy a delicious cocktail with Belvedere vodka today. And remember, always drink responsibly. Okay, coming up. My friend Daryl Morey, got to know him with the Celtics way back when.

The Sloan Conference hadn't even really gotten going yet. If it was, it was like in like two classrooms. This year, it's happening in Boston this week. It's now a giant conference center place. Obama's going to be there. I mean, it went from like, I was the keynote speaker to Obama. That's how much this thing has grown.

But I put a lot of time and capital and energy into spreading the gospel for this thing at the end of last decade, early part of this decade. And it's been awesome to watch it blossom as the advanced metrics revolution has not even become a revolution anymore. It's just become something that is part of the way we follow sports.

Every year they celebrate it. They have all these panels, discussions, try to figure out where stuff's going. The best parts are like the little side panels in the papers and stuff like that. We found Kurt Goldsberry, who became a very popular Grant Lim writer for us and now works for the San Antonio Spurs. We found him because of the Sloan Conference. So it's really great. I'm really happy for everybody there, him and Jessica Gelman, who he's been running it with since forever, that everything is peaking this year with Obama. This is an interview I did with him in July. If you remember, he came on my podcast last summer and we did a whole thing. And after we finished, I realized we had never told the story of Daryl. And it's a cool story for a variety of reasons as you're going to about to hear but i think the big takeaway i always get asked from people you know how do i get my break what do i do do you have

any advice and all that and the advice is that twofold one is like you don't know what your break's going to be um you just got to be prepared to work your ass off and roll with it. And, and once you kind of open that door, even one inch, you just got to knock it down and it doesn't really matter how you do it. And it doesn't matter what vocation it is. Like once you get the sliver of a chance, you got to knock it down. Tate Frazier is a good example.

Trying. You're trying. You host the two podcasts now. But yeah, Daryl is a good example of like, you never know how your life's going to play out, man. You really don't. But you just got to keep plugging away and keep your brain moving. Anyway, this is it. This is a really good interview. And what's funny about it is we did this before the rocket season started. Now they've been, you know, they're the one seed in the entire nba right now and on top of that his whole plan of getting chris paul and all that stuff i would say it's worked out what are they like 29 and

one with their best four guys yep so um listen to it in the context of that we taped it like late july but everything holds congratulations to him him and Jessica for the Sloan Conference. And here we go. Here's Daryl Murray. Wanted to do the story of Daryl since you were here. Oh, man. I don't know if we'd ever done this. It's a good story.

It's a unique one. Yeah. All right. So. Starts in Ohio where I'm a couple miles from. Yeah, we can skip the childhood. LeBron and Maverick. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You and Maverick were best friends. So you were a slight underachiever, but super smart in high school. What college you went to? You went to Northwestern. Northwestern, yeah. Did well at Northwestern. I think so. Feels like I did.

When did you decide you wanted to get into sports? When I was like eight. Okay. So you're like me. Yeah. Yeah, reading the Bill James abstracts and was really into baseball. Um, because you know, I was a math nerd and love numbers. That was the only game that wasn't like you couldn't download, you couldn't get football stats or baseball was the only game in town. And, uh, So I was really big into baseball stats and all-star baseball with the spinners and Stratomatic.

So what are we talking, early 80s? Earl Weaver baseball. Yeah, it was mid-80s, towards the end of the 80s. Micro League baseball? Any Micro League? I didn't play Micro League. I played Earl Weaver baseball in the Commodore 64 and had a league with my friends. It was a nerdy league yeah this is

there wasn't yeah it was all male all male league as you might expect internet yeah exactly uh playing fantasy you know fantasy baseball and playing uh you know i was terrible at baseball i played basketball but was really into baseball statistics so went to northwestern got a job got a longer longer story that i won't tell but uh you know i found a job nearby in skokie at stats inc bill james's firm with john dewan the founder there and got uh and my wife worked there too my now wife ellen so so this is mid 90s you leave the northwestern you leave northwest. You get a job at Stats Inc. And at that time...

They were just a baseball firm. Yeah, and I feel like Stats had not taken off yet. Not really. Right, Stats got bought later. I mean, not even Stats, but just in general. Oh, in general. No, no. It seemed like the late 90s was when it flipped.

It started to really come on. Obviously, the founding of Stats Inc. was a big part of that. And while I was there with Mike Hanner, Mike really started the basketball part of Stats. And I was entering by hand all the basketball statistics. And then I got an opportunity in the 90s. I got part of their basketball book, their first basketball book.

I have that one. I know. I put a formula in it. That was like my first basketball thing. What was the formula? So Bill James had this formula called the Pythagorean baseball formula, which is basically take your runs scored and given up, and you can forecast how many wins you should have had from that and it didn't work in baseball and no one had really sort of

solved out of adapt something like that to basketball and uh i you know as part of a northwestern stats class i basically adapted it to basketball and it made made the book so that was my is it actually first claim to fame is it a good theory like does it hold up now absolutely yeah it still holds you just instead of instead of the square of your runs it's to the power of 14 so and that was the key yeah so my my history you've lost all your listeners right about now so oh my history of stats was i was very early with fantasy sports me and my dad were in a baseball league i think starting in 81 that was just batting average plus homers what it's amazing like the worst league ever well what were we gonna do there there was no way to keep track of this that was it so it's

like warped ops so if you had like you know robin you out and he had 320 with 20 homers. He was a 340. Yeah. So we drafted somebody for every position and it was like three outfielders. And then you had the guys all year. And if you traded them, it wasn't even like you had the old set. Was it just the American League too or both leagues? I think it was both leagues. Wow. But if, so if I traded you Robin Yount for Mike Schmidt halfway through the year, they

just, we just swapped the stats. And then next week, yeah, we didn't even. Because how were we going to compile the stats from April, May, June? It's like there's no internet. Calculating the cap. Like if you trade a guy, you switch everything. Got it. Okay.

So every once in a while, we'd get this in the mail from somebody. Be like, here are the stats. And it would be like your catcher first base all these guys 340 290 310 divide by the number and that was your team and then the totals so the free swingers were great like andre dawson like i'm trying to think your league the guys no stolen bases no but like uh so i would have changed your rules immediately you would have kicked me out these are my dad's friends they're all guys that are at a bar

I saw your dad at game 2 against the Cavs there he's sweating through the Celtics he was expecting I saw him at halftime when Cavs were up 75-38 I think he might have left one of those games he left at halftime

he was so disgusted that was the greatest performance I've ever seen by a player. Yeah. Yeah. So then in the mid-80s, a basketball league started. And I think it was one of the, it was called the Larry Bird League, ironically. I wrote about this a million years ago on ESPN. But these guys, it was something Bird said about how he judged basketball players.

He did points plus three. Points, rebounds, plus assists. That was Larry Bird's thing. Right. I players. He did points plus rebounds plus assists. He did points rebounds plus assists. That was Larry Bird's thing. Right. I think he might have stole it from Red, maybe. Maybe. I'm not sure, yeah. So this league was points, rebounds, assists,

and I think steals and blocks. Nice. And just add them all together and we called it the Larry Bird League. It actually works. And Larry Bird, of course, was amazing. That was way better than your batting average plus home runs. No question. No question.

So then we had that, and that was, that became once USA today started doing the remember they would have the tuesday stats yeah loved it poured over then you'd have to like by hand like add them on a piece of paper oh my god the first red sheet on commodore 64 was like my greatest thing ever yeah uh so yeah we didn't have anybody like you i think we had some yeah i think i might have even been doing it so then football my first one when was

1990 maybe nah and that was 1991 I think fantasy football came earlier no I'm saying when my first league yeah

but all this stuff was the same thing it was like very primitive info cause Roto baseball was like late 70s cause you had a 30 for 30 on that I watched that one and then

basketball came on like mid 80s and then uh and then you know football was like late 80s it was a little bit later yeah yeah yeah yeah so then stats inc was really i remember the first time i knew about the bill james stuff i read the books yeah it didn't seem really i want to buy them away from you you got god i got one on ebay i was you got on ebay got it on eBay and I immediately offered you double. And you're like, no. I was like, no way. You can offer me ten tuple.

Yeah, so you have more cake than me. So I was like, can't outbid you. It's so simple. It was so simplistic, the first abstract. Oh, yeah. No, it was. It's like 40 pages. It was pioneering.

Yeah. If you talk to Bill bill he'll credit some other people but he was the first one to put it on paper and and uh yeah i mean it's whenever i every year my favorite day of the year almost is i almost always have to go to lawrence kansas for a game you know obviously they have top prospects and bill goes to every game and i'll i'll have dinner with him and and uh you know he he's he's now working on like amazing he had this popular crime murder popular crime book which is unbelievable one of my favorite books of the last 15 years the kennedy thing yeah and uh he's got another one

coming out i don't think i can say anything about it but he's got one that's going to be unbelievable when it comes out so i like the thing that's great about him and it's just a good lesson when people always ask like how do i break into this business what's and so it's like well just work harder than everybody else and throw yourself into whatever you're doing bill james is the best example of i have an idea i'm going all the way with it like he does the true crime book and it's like it's 500 pages. And he spends 10 years on it. It's unbelievable. And he's like a lunatic with it. I think the best thing I ever heard him say, and it was a non-baseball related thing,

I asked him how he got into things. And his insight was like, look, I did poorly in high school because I love baseball and I like goofing around. And it was literally that's what made my career you know he's hilarious in his writing and his writing is unbelievable uh and he loved baseball so the things that got him in trouble in school are what made him who he is today so if you have a passion just chase it don't care about your teachers and and go all in don't go 90 exactly the bummer for me with bill james is that i just didn't know about him

yeah he's in the back of i was getting the sported news back then and that's how he would advertise but i would just never know about it it was right next to the guy on the beach getting the sand yeah it's like what is that and then i remember like maybe 81 seeing in a bookstore 81 or 82 and be like what's that dad might not have been a bookstore till a little later i saw it somewhere because i have boston's a little more progressive so they have those good bookstores ohio there's nothing where i was at so we had uh i didn't catch it till 86 actually the green the green i had the 82 one so somehow i got that amazing yeah i don't know a history of great bookstores so they probably they might have carried it actually yeah because they oh the the uh quality of them goes up i had to hope the walden

books would have something walden books oh my god remember those down at summit mall and yeah so so stats takes off yeah and the internet changes everything yeah and now all of a sudden loads of statistical information are going up and are changing how we're following sports. At the same time, Billy Bean, Moneyball, all that's starting. I'm desperate leaving stats because I couldn't, you know, it was a very low-paying job. I was like, I can't make whatever forever.

So I tried to get a job in sports. Not a single person said anything. This was in 96. You're writing, like like letters and stuff what are you doing right i sent a letter to every team you know here's what i hope to do blah blah blah no answer of course um which i wouldn't answer my own letter so it's fine um and then just desperate to get into sports so i i basically said hey i'm gonna have to be super rich like that's my only chance was i have to be so then i went on to do stuff that had no chance to make me super rich i

like i was at like a pharmaceutical firm i was at uh you know a company that called mitre that works with the nsa and cia um and then i decided to go to business school which is also a terrible idea to get rich but it's I got lucky got into a consulting firm and that firm ended up working on the Red Sox deal before John Henry bought it and that oh okay that was my my my key because the group that was going to buy him the local owners uh Karp and O'Donnell. I remember. Who actually outbid Henry. I was like the nobody working on that team. But they kicked to me a part of the project, which was like they wanted to buy the Red Sox and Celtics together

and then create a cable. I remember, yeah. That was a great idea, by the way. And Yes was just doing the same thing yeah and so i got that piece of the project and then of course they didn't get the bid i'm ready to jump off the building and it wasn't that was always shady how they didn't get the bid either oh it was how the how somehow the highest bid doesn't win the auction yeah and you know the reality was my memory was you know the our group wouldn't promise they would

support their one of their proposals for i think revenue sharing and so i think yeah he yeah i don't know i was nobody in the project so that's just what i heard yeah um and then basically you know wick uh who i really owe so much to was you, you know, had gone to the Celtics and put a bid down, but had like a one or two week due diligence period. And then Steve Paliuca, who knew the CEO of our firm, Parthenon, where I was at, you know, basically said, hey, we need to analyze this deal fast. And I think Steve, you know knew wick and told wick hey this group's already done really good analysis and so uh that's how i got on the celtics group you know helping wick to potentially buy the celtics and that was really my end so i mean that's a total fluke in a lot of ways in many ways yeah you know how things you know you like

to think you're ready for the opportunity because i had worked at stats and was such a huge sports fan and into all that but you know i know some amazing people i'm sure you do too who just have never gotten that that one little opening chance we basically had two because just randomly the red sox and celtics are selling at the same time during the perfect time for you to be involved yeah and if it's five years later neither of those teams are for sale yeah i mean i when people ask i'll get asked all the time like hey i want to get into sports what i do and i'm like yeah i don't know like like just just be passionate and and and when your break comes be ready to pounce i will say you know working with wick's team and steve paluka's team on that deal like my wife thought

it was crazy i literally wouldn't come out we were we were working 20 out of 24 hours around the clock and when you see that little crack in the door just plow through like don't uh you cannot like treat it like it's nine to five at that point like you have to stand out and i still remember this day wick like day three into it we were giving a presentation and and he and he turned to me and he was like you know you'd look really good in green i still remember that moment it was like one of the big moments of my life wow so he just he there was something about you that he liked and he's like we got to just fold this guy in somehow you have to ask him yeah and that's actually usually a taboo thing like you're not supposed to hire people away but uh i always thank bill ochmeyer the head

of parthenon who you know gave you know permission to maybe have me join the celtics so did they say like carve out what your dream like if you're gonna help the celtics how would you help us yeah i mean i didn't really care in fact i think wick almost didn't hire me because i was like desperately at like 3 a.m. saying, I really want to be there. Finally, I remember he sent me an email back like, hey, chill. It's going to be fine. I was acting very like a 20-year-old during that.

I knew it was maybe my break. And so I did not act rationally. I was very desperate and uh um yeah and then and then you know wick just had me like work on different things with the celtics and then he brought in he brought in danny ange and rich gotham and i you know i was i was pretty young so i you know it was appropriate for them to bring in more experienced guys and i just worked with both of them for a few years so when did you become like the advanced metrics guy for the celtics i mean i always like that was the thing and then uh you know i hired

mike zarin who's obviously almost a legend in the industry now uh he was in i hired him as an intern and he was working i think at the 12th circuit in columbus like one of the obvious probably the smartest guy i know and he's and then he actually ended up getting to work more on basketball than me because he he just was an intern full-time and I was like splitting my time between helping with the business side and the basketball side and yeah so that and then somehow some way like my next big break was when Carol Dawson was retiring in Houston. He, you know, he our owner, Leslie Alexander, was like looking for a new GM. He had been looking for a while, which I didn't know.

And but he was looking for someone different. He you know, he was obviously watching the trends of information and billy bean and he had interviewed i think i mean he'd have to say but i think he'd interviewed five six seven people and didn't like him he just didn't want to fire the old school gm the former player well leslie's been way ahead of his time for years like on the pace and space and who he's hired and I mean everything and you know I I was helping a headhunter Buffy Philippel giving she was like trying to find someone to help fit the job so I was helping her for like six months saying hey because I didn't think I was necessarily ready honestly I'd just been at the Celtics for I think three years and I was like hey what about this what about that and then finally she was like hey he wants to meet you and I was like hey what about this what about that and then finally she

was like hey he wants to meet you and I was like oh okay yeah man I found out on like a Tuesday and I was interviewing two days later at 9 a.m. and and I had the job by like two o'clock that that day so let's go backwards yeah so you're at the Celtics it's like this is your life here sort of yeah a little bit that's what i told you it was gonna be um you're at like oh four or five range they're revamping the team they have a bunch of cap space issues because they had traded for vin baker's contract that turned out to be a disaster then they had a lot on the vinbic yeah yeah then rave lafrance like he comes in he's got a big contract paul pierce had a big contract and they were kind of in salary cap held for four or five years the celtics fans were we're beside themselves we're going nuts because not only was the team not

good enough and it had been many years since you last last won the title, everyone knew they were just locked in because there was no flexibility under the cap and everything. So, yeah, the Vin Baker thing was one of the big things I worked on and Mike Zarin worked on, and obviously Danny did early. Just trying to figure out what to do with it. Trying to figure out because he obviously was going through some personal troubles at the time, and it was just how do we create a win-win for him

and the Celtics at that time. So I hear he's doing well. When did you start looking at different ways to evaluate players? Did that start at the Celtics? That started at Stats Inc. in, like, 96. So, like, at the Celtics, because you're dealing with all this old-school way of thinking and this and this guy.

No, he's a good shooter because that's his field goal percentage well I remember one big thing on that was uh coach O'Brien was a coach who's obviously a very good coach and and uh you know he was he was talking about how the defense was number one in the league and and he was looking at defensive raw field goal percentage and and I was actually working with Frank Vogel, Frank Vogel, the head coach. And he was, I think, the fourth assistant, maybe third or fourth assistant at the time. And Frank and I was really smart, and so was Coach O'Brien. And I was walking through like, hey, we're really not number one. You realize that?

And it turned out they were number one in defensive field goal percentage but we were like actually 11th in overall defense measured the right way which is really you know der yeah the rating yeah um and you know actually one of the tough meetings was me meeting with coach o'brien early and saying like okay yes you are number one in field goal percentage that's you know but you also are giving up the most open threes in the league so yeah like you can't we can't be packing the paint this much because like these threes are sort of killing you he would front the post so yeah again defensive field goal percentage low because no one got any like close in post-ups but the reality was we were

really low on defensive rebounding because people get inside position so our defensive rebounding percentage was was really bad then we also had sort of a no layups attitude so even if anyone got a layup we would just foul them so of course the only shots that actually happened were these like well you know we're either shots outside of six feet if you're inside six feet we're fouling you and then we're either shots outside of six feet. If you're inside six feet, we're fouling you. And then we're basically giving up inside position on rebounding. And so when you adjusted for all that, you know, it was basically like, yeah, we're not first.

We're like 11th. Yeah. And, like, Coach O'Brien, you know, he's great. He was like, yeah, that's not good. You know what's interesting about O'Brien is those Celtic teams he had when he took over from Patino were kind of a prototype for how basketball is being played now. It was just with terrible three-point shooters. But they were jacking up 25, 26 threes a game and getting to the line.

The late 90s Celtics team was one of the most unique ever. They were turning people over. They were playing pressure, up-tempo. And it was really innovative the problem was they were giving up way too many layups on the other end and just it just didn't work and i don't think for 48 minutes like the superstars of the league really can play that kind of basketball but it was really it's probably the last most innovative team that's been put on the floor in a long time it's it's not quite a 30 for 30 it's like kind of a half-assed 30 for 30 but

but i mean there was one year antoine i think in the playoff shot like eight threes a game yeah and was just that was what they're gonna do none of them were going in new threes were good i mean he was way up there on knowing three was worth more than two which is why one of our i was having a discussion with frank vogel that was like if you know it's good on offense you got to know it's bad on D like yeah you that that whole marriage hadn't happened yet because people were still running like Dick Harder type defensive concepts and and and a lot of those end up giving up more open threes and you know like it wasn't until recently now you get the switching with long range of people. The offenses have adjusted faster than the defenses to the modern game.

And you're only now seeing the coaches really adjust to how the offenses are playing. So could you feel, setting up how the Rockets thing happened, when things started shifting, Moneyball comes out, the advanced metrics thing is now becoming like this real touch point in sports journalism yeah how should we measure players there's this new way to do it the old school guards fighting back this is wrong who are the nerds screw these guys and i remember we were in houston at all-star weekend i didn't know you that well yeah um but i knew you and we my buddy's freezing cold mvp in my wedding sean sullivan and we were out at the four seasons hotel

and i was telling you you're gonna be a gm and you were like no i'm not and i'm like it's gonna happen one of these owners is gonna i know he's gonna look at this you literally predicted 100 i did i remember it it's listen I'm wrong a million times this is one of the times where I was like one of these owners is gonna be like I want my Billy Bean and I'm like who's around the league who's like you and there wasn't really that many right at that point Mike is the other guy he's gonna get a job as well Mike's been offered jobs a million times he's probably well now there's now there's a lot of them now though uh there's a lot of like advanced metrics based. There's a lot of advanced metrics based.

Yeah, exactly. But in 06, there wasn't. You know what else I remember in that four seasons? I had had too many. You were over-served. I was over-served. And you saved me from going up to a very key executive. Yeah, I made you leave.

I almost embarrassed myself completely, and you saved me. Well, you were feeling it. You might have killed my GM chance right there. You could have. Yeah, that was like the big power hotel. Yeah, everything was happening there. We had David Falk. Jordan was playing Bure.

Bure. But yeah, and then like three months later, all of a sudden. It was three months later. You're going in and everybody's like. It was actually two months later, if you can believe it It was three months later. You're going in and everybody's like. It was actually two months later if you can believe it. Because it was February and I got here in April of 06. So everybody's like, the Rockets hired a guy who didn't coach or play basketball? Who the hell is this guy?

Our poor CEO now, like Tad Brown, all the press hit of the negativity of of of you know our owner leslie alexander hiring me like hit and he's just dealing with like the radio guys calling me deep blue and like yeah like they're calling the owner crazy and and like he had to deal with all that and uh because i was like behind the scenes like it wasn't like right it wasn't like i was like known or anything around the league i was like mike was maybe 10 years ago right yeah and so yeah the owner i'll never forget the the risk you know the the personal risk the owner took to give me a shot it was amazing so you come in and you realize that you have two of the best players in the league in your team which is is an advantage. That was nice.

And I didn't realize how much. Including Tracy, who was like one of the early advanced metrics, painted him as much better than maybe the traditional ones. Absolutely. In fact, people were debating him or Kobe for a while. I still think his ceiling was higher than Kobe's. Tracy had two years better than Kobe ever had. Just on individual accolades obviously um i also don't

think kobe could have ever won 22 straight games with that houston team i still think that what t-mac did with that team is incredible literally made that happen like he you had seven guys my the moment i remember from the 22 game running streak more than any is where win number 17 and carl landry goes down because we had lost yow at game 11 carl landry goes down people don't realize carl was his rookie year he was like just dominating like just killing and i'm like oh this is over like freaking carl i mean he was key i talked to tracy and we had just signed Mike Harris out of Rice. Yeah. Really, really good player. Still playing in China.

Uh, and, uh, and I'm like, Tracy, man, unless Carl Landry is like, what's wrong.

And I was like, yeah, he's been great for us. He's like, well, I'm making him great. Like Mike Harris will be just as good. Don't worry.

Wow. Like he was right. Like Mike Harris said, like this amazing stretch of't worry. Wow. He was right. Mike Harris had this amazing stretch of five games before he finally lost to the eventual champion Celtics that year. T-Mac. He's the lost career of that decade. T-Mac made so many people better. People forget his passing was absurd.

James now is on his level, or maybe you could say better but like both i've been blessed to have two superstars who are like ridiculous passers so do you think uh i was a defender for t-mac hall of fame i actually thought he was underrated the peak level you can't yeah the demeanor that he had as a superstar do you feel like he was as cutthroat as he needed to be i i think it hurt that people thought he wasn't. I mean, go back and look at all his playoff statistics. They were unbelievable. He's one of those guys who got better in the playoffs.

I respect those guys. Dwight Howard, who people like to beat up now, look at his playoff run with us. He is, every year, unbelievable. So you look, almost every player gets like like 10 to 20 percent worse in the playoffs the guys who get better are the ones you want on your team and tracy was that what did you think were the big inefficiencies when you took over that quickly got closed because it seems like i mean shooting three pointers was i mean that one that one's still coming but like that was such an easy inefficiency, and now everyone's catching up.

That was a simple one. I'd say, obviously, the inefficiency of shots outside of the paint, not threes. I think that one's pretty closed. What about for how much success you had in the draft those first couple years? Oh, yeah, using draft models. Yeah, I mean mean we had you know obviously brooks you know aaron brooks picked late 20s carl andrew picked 31 that year you know even even on to like uh you know guys like even chandler parsons and stuff but you know our draft

board ends up getting you know the league is way more efficient in the draft now too so you let you really valued college production back then more than other teams. More than other teams. I think teams like the Spurs were always really smart. Spurs were obviously way ahead on international guys. That's caught up. That was a big advantage that got closed. And then the league overcorrected with Skidish Vili and Darko

and stuff like that. And so I actually think we may be in a little bit of an overcorrection on using analysis now because you'll see us sign guys. Chris Paul is one of the best mid-range shooters ever. Am I worried he's going to take mid-range? No, because he's really good at them, and it's going to add a good aspect to our offense. So I would say there might not be an overcorrection

or people using maybe numbers a little bit too much. So I'm hoping that will help us for a little while, that overreaction almost like the international players. Yeah, that was probably the flaw of your team last year was you abandoned the mid-range completely. Then San Antonio said, we're giving you 18 footers we dare you to take them i i would hate to go as far as flaw um i do think you want to every team has a flaw yeah oh of course that's a good point yeah i do think you want to be have multiple

threats from especially going against very good playoff defenses you want to have multiple threats all over the floor and multiple aspects to your offense and that's a big reason we're excited about chris i'm shocked people a lot of the arguments are like you know is the fit there and things like that and they remind me of the articles on when durant joined golden state go back and look yeah you can find all these articles like how they shouldn't have done it and it's there they were obviously absurd and the articles on us and whether or not james and chris can work i think are pretty crazy i think the only thing is the usage rate thing that was my biggest fear of it is that it's two guys that succeed the most when they have the ball right and my curry plays off the ball so that they're

sharing the ball thing i always thought it was gonna hurt like clay thompson the most here's why it'll work like either next to chris or james you need you need guys who can who can shoot like the fact that both of them shoot at a very high rate is pretty key yeah uh and then obviously chris uh being a very very good defender is also key so both of them work off the ball really well uh even though they're two of the best all time on the ball so i we're very comfortable it'll work. I mean, just look at USA Basketball. They make it work. I was going to say, when you have two of the best 15 guys in the league or whatever.

When the USA Basketball team's up 40, no one's like, oh, I wonder if it'll work with whether Steph, James, and Chris Balkan work. Yeah, it works pretty well. The other thing is they're both extremely smart players, so they're going to adapt to each other really well so the uh going back to the late 2000s the the model that you had the draft model yeah i always used to make fun of you well you gotta give a lot of credit to mike zarin as well we we had an early version and then mike came in and really uh really took it to the next level did you feel like other

teams figured out what the model was eventually yeah yeah teams have caught up because i figured it out in like three years yeah we feel i used to send you texts making fun i know you're like this guy you were always right yeah mike and i try to predict each other's picks every year it's pretty funny um yeah not mostly i mean we obviously feel like we're farther ahead but yeah the the edge is much smaller like there's the difference between better model and slightly better model is way different than better model no model right so so that edge is really eroded and and you know we're having to adapt and our thinking has adapted as well in the mid 2000s late 2000s too you guys did a lot of

some of the stuff you're doing with like where guys like to make shots on the floor and this guy's great from this spot and he's not good from this spot not a lot of teams were doing that back then right no yeah and i i think that's caught up too that's a lot of that helps defenses a lot yeah more maybe more than offenses. A lot of that really advanced work on scouting reports. Having a coaching staff that knows how to use it, that's still coming as well. I have a great coaching staff now. Even though Mike, obviously, is far along in his career,

he's always been a pioneer. Yeah. And he surrounded himself with, you know, great assistants who are also very, very forward-thinking guys. The most controversial trade you made early that people killed you on was Battier for Gay. Yes. You could have taken Rudy Gay, you could have drafted him.

What was that, 2006? We actually were going to take Tabo cephalosha not even reed k oh you weren't even gonna take reed yeah yeah i wasn't technically in charge so it was uh carol dawson was still the gm um and uh dennis lindsey was there he's gone on to be unbelievable with utah as you know and yeah i think i mean honestly i don't know for sure who carol was gonna take but uh as far as i could tell we were on the pace to take tabo to carol's credit he was trying to move up to get brandon roy he had that really pegged really well and uh and if you know but we were gonna take tabo actually and wow so yeah but you were pushing for betty right

your whole staff was pushing for shane because we we felt like with y'all and tracy in their prime shane was like it was actually really hard to enter the ball to y'all we need a guy who could That was pushing for Shane because we felt like with Yao and Tracy in their prime, Shane was like, it was actually really hard to enter the ball to Yao. We needed a guy who could be a defender next to Tracy, and we needed a guy who had height and could shoot the three and could enter the ball to Yao. And honestly, we needed an extra culture guy who was going to be good. So we pushed hard for that. And honestly, yeah, analyt analytically that's actually not

a good move um but we felt like analytically because the way i think you generally can get more value at the eighth spot than you maybe could get but we felt like because he had a long contract with people didn't like but we liked that he had like another five years on his deal from memphis and we felt like he was the perfect fit. I think it ended up being right when you go back. But I would say if you ask the Sloan Conference, should you trade the eighth pick for Shane back then, I bet 80% would say don't do it.

Yeah, what would be the equivalent now? It would be like if the Knicks traded the eighth pick for who? Yeah. I might not be able to use current players, but it would be like who the Knicks traded the eighth pick for who? Yeah. I might not be able to use current players, but it would be like who's a perfect. I'm trying to think of a current player. Well, I can tell you one. So P.J. Tucker would be like trade an eighth pick for a perfect win the title glue guy. We obviously think P.J.'s can do that for us.

But that was a weaker draft too, though, the 06. This draft now is better. Yeah, Aldridge had. It was a tough draft too, though, the 06. This draft now is better. Yeah, it had Aldridge. It was a tough draft to nail the picks. You know, Bargnani went first, I think. Ty Thomas was involved. Ty Thomas was two, and then there was like the Portland Chicago. Celtics traded the Randy Foy pick for Sebastian Telfair.

That was rough. Yeah. Did we? I don't remember doing that. Oh, yeah. That was a different year, wasn't it? No, that was 06. Did we get Telfair? They flipped it for. Oh, yeah. That was a different year, wasn't it? No, that was 06. Did we get Telfer?

They flipped it for... Oh, we retraded Telfer, maybe. No, we got the... I think you're mixing years. I don't remember. Foy was in that draft, though. That's right. No, no, that was the draft.

And they ended up, they had, I think, maybe it was LaFrance's contract, which they flipped for Zerdak's contract. Oh, no, no, I was in Houston. You were gone at that point. I was already in Houston. Yeah, you were gone. So this could have all happened. I was like, no, I was in Houston. You were gone at that point. I was already in Houston. Yeah, you were gone. So this could have all happened.

I was like, man, I don't remember that. No, the draft you were in, that was the great Celtics what if, was when Danny really wanted Robert Swift and offered the two first-round picks, and Seattle said no, and they had to settle for Al Jefferson, who ends up being in the KG trade, which is the 2008 title. You need to get lucky with these things. I was in the room. I don't think I can comment on the whole thing.

That's what happened. But yeah, obviously getting Al Jefferson was huge. And I didn't know Al Jefferson from anything. If I had any role back then, it was just working on the college model and not the high schoolers. I think that was 04. Yeah, it was 04. You need to get lucky sometimes.

You really do. I mean, you got to give credit to Danny for nailing the pick. Whether or not Robert Swift was the guy they wanted, he still nailed the pick. This was 14 years ago. You're acting like, what, is Danny Ainge going to find you? That was the story. They wanted Robert Swift.

Hey, man, maybe if he goes to Boston, maybe his career is different. Who knows? Robert Swift was someone that Danny danny ange wanted that's correct yes oh he learned his lesson now he knows to go for game but but here's the thing that's hindsight like robert swift could have worked out like no one knew at the time this is the problem of the draft and my issue that i have always gotten in trouble with with guessing with guys. High schoolers, foreign guys. There's just no way to know. Like Frank Nitalinka, who you can't talk about because he's on another team.

But it's like, he went eighth over Malik Monk and I went crazy because I love Malik Monk and I just think he's going to be a great pro. And I don't know with this guy who was in France who was averaging four points a game in France, maybe the upside's higher. But if I'm picking eighth, I want to make sure I get somebody, you know?

That's how I'm wired. One nice thing about, you know, never picking high, because, you know, our worst record ever is 41. You don't even know what that's like. It is, you know, those picks like six through 12. I mean, so here's the hard thing. It's really not fair to the GMs who pick there.

Like, let's say you pick five, right? Yeah. The owners don't judge like, did you get a good pick at five relative to other fifth picks in history, which is a shockingly low rate make it. I think only like 40% end up being pretty good. They judge it like, is the fifth pick better than the next 55 picks? You have no chance being next.

Almost no chance. Your odds of at the fifth pick being better than the next 55 picks you have no chance being next almost no chance yeah your odds of at the fifth pick being better than the next 55 or like three percent or four i'm making numbers up now i didn't analyze it but it's a really low damn percentage so like you're you're almost screwed picking five six seven you like i remember when i did the 2013 draft for espn so i really threw myself in the draft and when i knew everybody. You interviewed the guys. Oh, yeah. We did the job interview.

So I really had hardcore opinions. Was that Grantland or was it ESPN? It was Grantland and ESPN, yeah. And I remember thinking like. Because you went to Chicago interviewing guys. We went to Chicago. I was telling you my experience after and I was like, I like this guy. I like this guy.

This guy scared me. But I remember leaving that draft going, man, I don't know who the number one pick from this draft, the best guy from this draft six years from now is going to be. What was the 13 draft? So it was Giannis. Oh, yeah. So Giannis is in that draft.

I remember Jalen and I both really liked CJ McCollum. Yeah. Who ended up going 10th. He was a good interview. I really liked Odupo. Yeah, he was a great interview. But Giannis, we're studying these youtube clips and jalen's convinced it's like nine foot rims we're watching these like hazy greek ymca videos and he just looks much bigger than anyone else and we're like we're talking to fran forsella like forshella yeah we're like how does anyone know if yannis is going to be good at basketball

like yeah there's i saw him live twice once in a practice in greece our international scout marco did a great job identifying him and like you know he was there with his two brothers younger brother and his older brother and i mean he he looked amazing but like what am i supposed to do with that like it's like a practice basically and then i saw him most of the league saw him there was travisa international camp and you had to drive like two hours you could go see him on the national team play a game right around that time in june and i saw him there that was it live saw a lot of video real tough i mean i was actually really surprised philly didn't take him because um they ended up taking the work of the year so they did fine

but but because he was like this super high upside for the process yeah we had bet that he might take him because we were like super high upside may as well go for it we didn't know we thought schroeder was going to be the first like guy foreign guy in that range yeah i saw him live and yeah yannis felt like he was going to go like somewhere between 18 and 22 and and yet you kind of felt like somebody might take a swing at him yeah and then he went 15 and yeah but that's the thing so now that's a great job yeah so that's the number one guy in that thing yeah yeah and that's that goes back to your point it's actually been a really interesting period lately though i think the last five or seven drafts have actually gotten players outside the lottery that are just franchise guys that have been franchise guys which is super rare when you when you look back prior to that little set with you know those guys there was like it was really just like maybe one

or two ended up being like even all-stars outside of maybe pick 20 so yeah because like kawaii at 15 that was another big one uh gobert who gets sold the good that draft no one had right like if you you'd like was that yokage too no no later but if you invert like if you invert that draft you almost pick better if you go 30 to 1 right yeah invert that draft like go back and look it's great like that i i talked about this the michael lewis piece, I think, was like the one I was off the most. Really? Yeah. I think it was that one.

I don't remember. Jokic was another one. I mean, it does seem like every year there's at least one guy outside the top 12. My favorite is we did it with Chandler Parsons, and I think it happened with Jokic because I think they had other picks. And I think even Bob Myers has been humble about the Draymond pick that they had picks ahead of it. Didn't take them away. Like, didn't take.

So like, actually, our owner is super smart. Leslie came to me after we picked Chandler 38 that year. And he was obviously like one of the top five guys in the league till he got hurt. I mean, from that draft till he got hurt. And he we had two picks ahead of it. And like Leslie, our owner was like like you guys really messed up and and and i was like what he's like yeah you like you had two picks ahead we could have lost champ yeah we could have lost him and i was like would you believe i knew he'd make it to 30

and he was like no i was like no you shouldn't believe it because i didn't know yeah so i mean you feel um do you feel a bias bias those first few years with the GM? Were the GMs condescending with you? Or how'd that go, the first couple years? You know what, no. The GMs, I would say the big difference is when we compare to baseball. Because the baseball guys from the analytics that were coming in and telling everyone they were wrong, everything's wrong,'s wrong right yeah and so that was a tough sell when when by the time basketball really started looking

analytics a lot of our analysis was like making coaches feel better because like guys like shane badia they averaged like eight points and five rebounds but coaches loved them they're like i think this guy's really helping yeah a lot of the advanced analytics said like guys like shane are worth a lot more than you think. So when you have a message that's more like, hey, you're right, but here's a few areas where you could improve, that's different than like, you've been wrong your whole life, you idiot. Like, that was baseball. So the basketball integration was a little bit easier because a lot of the coaches were, you know,

they knew that points, reboundsounds and assists wasn't really a great way to evaluate players they just knew it and and then now these new things like adjusted plus minus and things like that we're saying the same thing they believed so that you believe in chemistry more than you did 12 years ago because we this is our this has been our biggest argument over the years i do especially i would say i would nuance so when you have a team like we have you know trying to win the title chemistry is really like i did probably underrate it um i still don't think it's important when you're like you know when you're awesome when you're philly yeah oh i got i got you yeah yeah it's like people worry about you know like uh when philly i'm not

saying philly now but i'm saying saying Philly when Sam was there. Like he was getting beat up for not worrying about chemistry. Like if you're going to win 15 games, like does it really matter how you do it? Like, I mean, like so. But I do – yeah. Luckily, it all starts with your best player, and James has been a great leader, and I've been blessed that way. But, yeah, I probably – especially when the team's really good,

I focus on it a lot. So when you started getting attention, notoriety, I nicknamed you lovingly Dork Elvis. I know, I love it. Sloan Conference. Yeah. You become. That was like your Trump nickname for me or something.

It was endearing. Yeah. And the Slo song conference takes off and you become kind of the face of the basketball analytics movement did you feel like there was resentment from the other gms because i always heard i always heard like people were like all right enough of this daryl morey we we've had it i mean they're right there should you know i should i should shut up more i mean that's that's true you don't say you've been better lately no but my personality as i'm yeah people like expect me to be one thing i'm very i'm different than what anyone expects i'm

like they think i'm going to be like just a very important you know introverted guy i'm not yeah and uh and so yeah i think i think my yeah i think i'd talk too much but you know it introverted guy. I'm not. Yeah. And, uh, and so, yeah, I think, I think my, yeah, I think I'd talk too much, but you know, it is. I think you taught, you might've done too much in the past. I don't think, I think you have the right balance. As long as I'm on the Bill Simmons show, it's fine. No, it's, you've had this, how many big interviews have you done? You haven't done that many anymore.

Not, not, not, not many. So I think Kyle, I almost feel like this is like BS podcast worthy. I don't know if I want to give this to the Ringer and Bisho. I might just have to save this for three weeks from now. Vernon's going to be mad. Yeah, screw that guy. I'm going to keep this for myself. I do think there's a balance.

I think Sam, who I know you're friends with, and I know him well too, I thought he became too kind of howard hughes-ish and i think it hurt him i think he could have been out there a tiny bit more and massage the media a little bit better well if you know it's gonna end how it's gonna end he would say for sure i think he felt like he had ownership support there to execute on the plan and part of the plan was to you know not be as out there especially during the down times yeah and you know they obviously that was the sam can be more communicative it's just

he thinks it's better for the team especially at that point i don't need to defend him he could come on especially at that point when he was there it didn't make sense to be that community i and that said like if he knew that he didn't have the support that he thought he had i'm sure he would have been out there more right yeah like because he's pretty good too no he is you know i think he could have handled it he absolutely could have and uh you know hopefully uh someone will give him a shot he could obviously help i think a lot of teams so do you see more teams imitating that 100 like especially at golden state it's like a juggernaut man like if you if you don't have i mean like we're trying to close that gap and we got james harden and

chris paul and we're hoping to be a 60 win team that's a huge bar in the west i think the west is gonna be strong normally if you could get to 55 60 when team that gives you a real shot to win the title yeah now like if we win 60 we're still gonna be like one in six at best probably in vegas usually that's like almost a 40 chance you're 15 to one odds right now yeah that's depressing man why is you yeah so are we really 15 to one right as we sit here i thought we might get to like at least now you're 15 to 1 which book which all of them people believe in the warriors yeah i understand i mean they have the second best player in the league who might even be the first best player in the league in 12 months and they have one of the best shooters of all time we don't

need to go through dream on green's really, and they brought everyone back. I would say it's a problem. We got James Harden in his prime. We're going for it. Just Paul? As I said before, look, you've been in sports long enough. There have been way bigger upsets than, you know. And, in fact, obviously Cleveland beat Golden State two years ago, so we know it's possible.

Well, the injury luck in the NBA is the most dramatic of any sport. Right, yeah. It's like overnight you can lose a guy and you're done. I would say almost, I don't know what the exact rate is, but I would say at least every other year an injury has swung the title in some way. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the Warriors were the best team. If you look at the first title they won, they didn't face the starting point guard of, I think, any team

the entire playoffs of my memories. Yeah, because beverly was out kairi was out right conley was out um yeah so you know and again like and then to last year you know they the warriors weren't they weren't 100 i mean they had all their guys on the floor but i don't think the whole team now bogut was gone. Curry was on. You watch him a year later, you realize how hurt he was in 16. Yeah. But, yeah, it's tough.

Injuries, you never know. The nobody believes in us factor is always strong. Yeah, hey, I learned that one from you. Got that going? No one believes in us, Bill. No, you got to get that going. Yeah. There was one more thing I wanted to cover.

Oh, this is the last part about just doing your job and things you've learned. Dealing with the media, Twitter, leaks, just this whole culture now of people are just so desperate for information all the time, 24-7, which is not what it was like 10 years ago. And stuff getting out that might not be true or interest or interest that maybe you had that you're hoping wasn't get out now that gets out how does that change your job uh it's it's been like a boiling of the frog like like you don't

really notice any key shift or whatever so uh it's always been something yeah i don't have a key moment where i'm like this is where things this is where things changed um i would say a lot of that stuff really helps us if you're a destination city like houston one of the reasons i'm out front with the media uh i and and um you know we you know we you know there's a lot of stuff written about the Rockets. That helps us recruit free agents. It really does. And, like, even meeting with the guys we met with, we met with one prominent guy in the last couple days,

went back to his team. Like, even a lot of his comments were around, you know, how forward-thinking the owner is, how forward-thinking the organization has been for years, how forward-thinking Mike D'Antoni has been. And, you know. I love to air on the BS podcast. That was important.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You did mention that. Oh, good. Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah. So, no, but, you know, the fact that we have a stable and our owner just, you know, re-upped all the key people at our team, I think, really does help us in free agency.

And so that's where the media, I think, can really help your team recruit free agents. So for the players you would rank it, they're looking at city, just where the city is. I would say, no, number one is what star are they pairing with, among the prominent free agents. Oh, interesting. Star first. Star first. Star one, two, two three okay then owner slash culture four is city slash organization okay so it's like you know just they're they're the players are getting smarter they're looking less at the coach and more at like the owner because you look at like everyone's like why is the west on top all these years yeah the owners are better.

I mean, like there's exceptions. Obviously Celtics have amazing owner and I'll forget some others in the East that have great owners. I don't know if you did. But you look, you look one through at least 11 in the West and these are like owners that have been really good. And that, that's the difference. So I think, so four is like owner and organization and then five is

probably and city sort of like i'd say tied on organization and city and then and then and then coaches i'd say coach on organization city are like tied and superstars like one two what about uh income tax ha that's a good one for you texas and florida yeah that may be it's got a factor a little bit discussed a may be discussed a lot. Yeah, we had a prominent free agent, I'd say like two years ago, who was asleep the whole meeting and then woke up when we showed him the tax savings. Oh, really? Yeah, that one didn't work out.

That's hilarious. Barbecue is up there? We have great barbecue, yeah. Is that like number eight? I think it's pretty far down the list. Is it ahead of gentlemen? Gentlemen clubs ahead or bad ahead i would say all this stuff jaylen talks about champagne and champagne it's a little bit higher up than the barbecue yeah so i mean you could get in houston you could live right outside the city and have a house that's like what 50 000 square feet yeah i

mean you could have a giant ranch. No, we show the players. So if you want, let's say, a $5 million to $10 million house in, say, the Bay Area or something, it's like $800,000 in Houston or something in a nice area. Jesus. You can get 20,000 square feet houses like Tracy McGrady still has in Sugarland for, you know, like a million and a half or something like that. Wait, I had one last, last question. I feel like the NBA owners are smarter than the NFL owners.

I don't know the NFL owners. And here's why. I think the NFL owners, a lot of old school money, older guys build it the old way. And it feels like these NBA owners that are coming in now, and now you have almost half the league full of them, these guys that made money like through tech or some sort of new wave industry, they're younger, they think differently, they take chances.

Do you feel that in the league? Yeah, I think the owners are smarter and they're hiring better people. And I do think that change is really happening. Absolutely. And Adam wants great owners. I want terrible owners. So, yeah, I want more bad owners. Really, you need at least six teams that don't know what they're doing?

Is your dream? If not more. Your dream would be 20 teams that don't know what they're doing? Is your dream? If not more, like, as you know. Your dream would be 20 teams that don't know what they're doing. At least. Well, I think you've seen the poker analogy. It's like, if you're the one shark and it's all minnows at the table, you clean up. But if you just add one more shark, like, all the profits is divided by two, basically. So even adding one marginal good owner, hurts like our ability to compete like in a

big way so yeah well it doesn't seem like it just seems like the rule of the NBA is there's always going to be a couple because you haven't had your when's your bad owner summit coming you always have your bad GM summit but you could that could be like a four-hour podcast. The Bad Owner Summit would be a long article. You want to get hired by him, so you're not going to do a Bad Owner Summit. Come on. That would be a long-ass Owner Summit thing. I do know that they don't like when I make fun of the owners. They don't. The league doesn't like that.

Yeah. I don't blame them because you know who owns the league? The owners. You were hard on the Clippers in that article a little bit to me. Yeah, I think so. Did they cancel your season tickets yet? No, I really like Balmer. He came in, and I think he's a smart guy.

I think he's starting to realize that he's hit a point that I think a lot of NBA owners hit at some point where they're like, I own the team. I should be making all these decisions and then delegating to somebody. I think the ones that turn things over to other people tend to regret it for the most part. Your owner is involved in everything, right?

Always involved. The one thing I talk about, people don't realize it's really important to have an active, involved owner. The whole thing where you don't want owner involved i think was created by coaches like 30 years ago like well because the owners were dumber back then they were guys that just were waltzing in be like hey let's trade for bob mcadoo i can't comment on that but this is a couple things i say on that look one the owners are the only people who have the the fans interest perfectly aligned they're going to own the team people who have the fans' interest perfectly aligned.

They're going to own the team a long time. The fans are going to be a fan a long time. GMs come in, and you've seen it. They have two more years on their deal, and they're trading seven draft picks. That kills the team. That's where you want your owner to step in. You also want the owners to hire smart guys,

but then ask a lot of questions because hopefully I'm decent at my job. There's a bunch of other like, but he is always asking me questions like, what about this? What about that? What about this? And it's, and it's, he is the reason the Rockets have been like the second best team in the league for the last 20 years.

Like we've had a good run while I've been there, but really look at. It's gone back to like 92 yeah he's back to yeah i think he owned it 93 two titles and yeah if you go back to then i think we're the fourth best record in two titles and really and some really bad luck with yeah well yeah actually i mean that yeah is somebody that could have been one of the best 40 players of all time and I think got run into the ground by his country. Well, it's actually one of my things I remember with our owner. When Yao got hurt in the second round of the playoffs against the Lakers,

I thought we could beat him, took him to seven games, even without Yao. Yao went down, and we were worried this might be it. He came back and played five more games but yeah he wasn't that was pretty much it and uh you know i was talking to mr alexander i said hey you know poor y'all whatever he's like yeah i really feel bad for y'all but what about the fans like what about like it's not just y'all obviously that's who we're thinking about at the time but it's it's all the who have put so much into it and everything like that. So it was, you know, I hadn't thought about that.

I was just worried about Yao and his foot and everything. Yeah. And he, again, owners are the only ones who, you know, coaches, you know, if they make it four years, they're lucky. Should get longer, 10 years probably. And GMs make it like six to ten years usually it's only the owners who care that you're giving away all your you know drop picks and everything like active smart owners beats beats uninvolved owner any day of the week

daryl morey this was good 12 years of the Rockets now? Coming up on 12, yeah. Amazing. 0-6 to now. And you never really had a dalliance with another team, right? No, I would never. You're a loyal dude. I would never leave. You know, Leslie gave me my shot.

You married the first girl I ever kissed you. You stayed with the same NBA team. That's actually, sadly, not the first kiss. It's damn close. The first one I went out with at northwestern though yeah ellen so you're a loyal guy i'm i'm i'm very you saved your best podcast performances for my podcast which i appreciate yeah i i like them a better podcast host than woosh that's not close actually yeah i love woj he's great at what he does yeah suck it woj you might have broken every story

yeah he's like literally the king of basketball but yeah no i mean you're great at podcasts and writing he's great at breaking stories you know so woj yeah now woj is gonna get his revenge on me he's gonna destroy me i like woj i get along with woj uh espn's adrian what you're asking i know i never predicted that unbelievable came to the mothership, man. Sometimes they just target people and they go grab them. Daryl Morey. Thanks. This was fun. Thank you. Good luck. I don't know when we're running this, but good luck with the rest. Good luck finding your minimum, guys. I appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks, bye. Thanks to Cousin Sal. Thanks to Tate. Thanks to Daryl Morey. Thanks to the other Ben Simmons.

Thanks to ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. My listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to TheRinger.com. Check us this week as we dive headfirst into Black Panther, Oscars, NBA second half of the season. NFL free agency is coming, Spring training, all that stuff. And thanks to Gillette. Get Gillette performance delivered to your door. No more getting mad at yourself

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We'll put it up late night Tuesday. Parent Corner Part 2. The sequel. Until then. On the wayside On the wayside I'm a bruised soul I never was And I don't have