The Bill Simmons Podcast - Sleeper Celtics, Boring Rockets, and Next-Gen Tickets With Bill's Dad, Mark Titus, and Nathan Hubbard | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 361)

Episode Date: May 4, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons connects with his dad to talk about the Celtics' second playoff win over the 76ers, how Philly can get back on track, the Red Sox, and (maybe) for the last time revisit the Patriots' 2018 draft picks (3:10). Then, Nathan Hubbard calls in to talk about his vision for next-gen ticket sales and his new company, Rival, as well as L.A. FC's new stadium, and being a sports parent (39:45), Finally, Bill talks with Mark Titus about the Rockets, the NBA's lackadaisical enforcement of traveling violations, the Pacers, the college basketball teams with the biggest persecution complexes, and Titus's bid to be head coach of the Chicago State men's basketball program (1:05:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast on the Boston Celtics podcast network. Just kidding. The Ringer podcast network. It's brought to you by ZipRecruiter. We need ZipRecruiter right now because I think even more coaches are going to get fired after this NBA playoffs than I thought. Use ZipRecruiter. Why not?

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The pre-opening diaries. I'm on this one as well. We talked about how he chose a restaurant location and then what you do to get your kitchen ready before you have a restaurant. A whole bunch of other good things. I found out that

you know, it made me hungry is what happened when I listened to it again. I just got hungry and I wanted to go eat food. The Dave Chang Show, subscribe right now. I'm also on the Masked Man Show this week. If you want to hear me ramble about wrestling and give my theories about Roman Reigns and how SmackDown should be all women and how wrestling managers should come back. We talked about the coward, Peter Rosenberg, our former Grantland friend who went heel, he went dark, and now Shoemaker and I have turned on him.

You can hear all of that. Rosenbum. Yeah, Rosenbum. Yeah, we're trying to start a feud with Shoemaker and Rosenberg. We'll see how it goes. Check that out. And the Rewatchables, the social network, we're doing it hopefully today, barring something bad happening.

Ringer merch, theringer.com slash shop. The Mellowthon, which we are having to save the OKC fans money on Mellow's contract next year. You can check that out, the Mellowthon. Those shirts available, theringinger.com slash shop. Coming up, we're calling a bunch of people. This one's going in a bunch of different directions. First, Pearl Jim. All right, on the phone right now, Celtics up 2-0 in the Sixers series.

We're going to talk about the playoffs. We're going to talk about Mark Titus' thoughts on the Rockets. We're going to talk about Nathan Hubbard's new venture. But my dad, who was there last night. Dad, you braved it out. 8.30 start. I can't believe you went. I'm so proud of you.

You're in the building. You're 70 years old. You didn't care when the... Oh, wait. You didn't go. You didn't go to the game. What happened? You know, you're giving me shit.

I had surgery two weeks ago, and you were here for it. I'm not 100% yet. And the game started at 8.42 at night. I'm not, I don't have the stamina yet. Well, you know who else wasn't 100% yesterday? Jalen Brown. I saw him out there. I saw Jalen Brown playing.

I saw them working on him. Maybe you should have been in the tunnel with Jalen Brown working on your legs. Well, Jalen didn't have his heart operated on. If I had my leg operated on, I would have been there last night. So give me a break. You were watching on your brand new 75-inch TV. Welcome to the 21st century, by the way. Welcome to the world of nice picture and widescreen and smart TV.

It's nice to have you here. I finally have a smart TV. I'm not smart enough to use it, but it's a smart TV. I like it. What's it like to see the puck in a hockey playoff game for the first time ever in your life? It's interesting, right? It's fun to see it. It is funny that you're able to follow the puck on a bigger screen, whereas on a smaller screen, you're just following the players.

You had to sit on the chair closest to your TV and squint to see where the puck was going in overtime games. Well, that was true. Yeah. Well, this is your time of year. It was a terrific game. Wonderful, wonderful game. Although, you and I were tweeting in the first half that it wasn't such a wonderful game wonderful wonderful game although you and I were tweeting in the first half

that it wasn't such a wonderful game and uh yeah it was a classic just bizarre home playoff game where the home team lays an egg it seems like the game is going in a specific direction Marcus Smart makes a couple threes

to kind of keep them hanging around and then all of a sudden like they've done all year, especially down 15 plus, the Celts just turned it on and made a bunch of threes and started jacking them and they were going in and then the crowd gets into it. And this team, no matter who is on the court, has done this all year. It's pretty crazy. They have, and it was interesting to sort of video this morning.

They were interviewing Jalen Brown, and he said he was just so complimentary of the crowd and how loud they were and how they never gave up and how in the last four minutes of the first half, they kind of willed the Celtics back into being only down by five at the half, which was really what you needed. I mean, the momentum had shifted, and Philly made a little run there in the fourth quarter at the end, but we still,

Rozier making these critical threes when the other team is making a push, it's crazy. I mean, he's been trickery. we have trick-or-treat guys. He's one of them. Marcus Smart is another. And Marcus Morris, of course, is the third. Your least favorite Celtic.

Marcus Morris, he's caused you a lot of... He might have been one of the reasons you had to have a surgery two weeks ago. He's one of those guys, and we've had them in the past, where he takes ridiculous his shot selection is ridiculous. But when it goes in, you're screaming great shot, great shot. But usually

he's a black hole for the most part. When you see him pass, you wonder what happened. He must have been triple teamed. It's a pretty ridiculous Celtics season. I don't know where to really rank it in the pantheon of most ridiculous Celtics seasons, but Gordon Hayward goes down in five minutes.

Kyrie goes down in like game 61. The whole offense revolves around Terry Rozier, who is our fourth guard, for better or worse, and somebody that we never really felt that strongly about and just seemed like a great athlete who didn't really have any idea how to run a basketball game. Marcus Smart's playing with a giant cast on his hand. Marcus Smart, it seems like he hurts his hand twice a game where you're like, oh, that's it.

He re-aggravated the hand, and he shakes it for a while. Then he makes a 28-footer. I was incredulous that he made... First of all, he shot 10 three-pointers last night with a hand that has a splint on it. He's got a cast.

Which is terrific. I'm not sure... They were all critical and needed for the victory but he's certainly not the guy you want out there shooting 10 three-pointers it's crazy we didn't have enough injury things

to worry about and then now Jalen Brown has this hamstring thing and he's landing after dunks and he's wincing and it's like now I have to worry about this too great I texted you during the game that and he's landing after dunks and he's wincing and it's like, now I have to worry about this too. Great. I texted you during the game that every time he went up, first of all, can he just lay it in? Yeah.

He goes up to these humongous dunks, comes flying down. Of course, all I'm seeing in my eyes is game number one when Gordon Haywood came down on a, on a dunk like this. And, and it, he did look like he was a little tenuous at the end of the game. Well, they played him like 35 minutes. Yeah. No, he played 25 minutes. Um, and then, uh, Stephen said, said after the game, he was on a 25 minute limit. And then Al Horford, who, you know, there's a lot of people in the Boston area, especially with platforms who don't really totally understand basketball,

and they just look at stats and they think, like, Al Horford's not that good. And he is on the best run of his career for the Celtics. I didn't – I watched him on the Hawks. I don't know if he played better than this on the Hawks, but he, he's been the key guy for this entire playoffs and is actually kind of the perfect guy if you want to beat Joel Embiid because he can pull him 25 feet from the basket and basically open up the paint for everybody. So that's been this unexpected advantage that we didn't know. And then the big one for me, Jason Tatum, who was 19 years old for half of the season, turned 20 right before the

spring, has scored over 20 for four straight games. Looked like he hit the rookie wall in January range. And it was like, oh man, well, either way, great rookie season. He showed a lot, just an incredible amount of potential there. And now that the confidence that he's played it with, um, in the playoffs and the way he's been able to go hard on both ends and the skill, the, the skill shot selection, all that stuff. Um, we were comparing him to Paul Pierce. I just think he's, he's at a higher level than Paul Pierce was as a rookie.

And Paul Pierce came in, he had been at Kansas for three years. So I think he was two and a half years older than Tatum was. And Tatum is just more advanced than Pierce was, which is saying something because Paul Pierce is one of the 40 best players ever. He's one of the best scorers in the history of the franchise. 2008 finals MVP. Awesome career. I was there for his entire rookie year. So were you. We were going to all the games.

And Tatum is more advanced. And every rep he's getting in these playoff games is just invaluable for him. Well, that's the crazy thing because at Saturday's game, Saturday night's game, game seven, on the bench in nice-looking street clothes, you had Kyrie Irving sitting next to Gordon Hayward sitting next to Daniel Tice. And then you have Marcus Smart with a splint on his hand. And, of course, two days later, you have Brown going down and somehow winning these games.

And it's crazy because Rozier, who's really showed himself to be a terrific ball player, he'd be playing 15 to 20 minutes a game as the backup to Irving. And Tatum wouldn't have started this season. We would have had Hayward in that spot. So it's a crazy, crazy season. I don't know how far we're going to go, but if our other guys come back healthy

and we've seen the development of Rozier and Tatum, next year really looks like it could be a super year. I'm not sure what they're going to do with Rozier. I guess he's a restricted free agent. And he could get one of those huge offers. Yeah, the big benefit for him is, or for the Celtics with him, is that it really seems like only five or six teams have cap space. It's interesting, though, the stuff he's bringing to the table

as a two-way guy with just the way he's been shooting the last 10 days or so. Obviously, he's not better than Kyrie. Kyrie's one of the best nine players in the league. But he does bring something. It's not as much of a drop-off, at least lately, as it seems like it should have been. And the way he's able to pressure people on both ends and the way he rebounds in traffic. He brings stuff to the table that you just shouldn't be getting from your fourth guard, the guy who was your fourth guard

at the start of the season. I think he's an above-average starter. I think he is too. Somebody who might have cap space could make him a crazy offer. We also have those Wahoos now tweeting or giving interviews on talk radio that it's time to trade Kyrie Irving while his trade value is high and give Rozier the starting job. No, no, no, no. I'm just laughing.

What's the matter with these people? No, no, no, no, no. We want to keep it all together. Well, I think that's when I was texting with my friend Haral Bob, who is a longtime esteemed NBA analyst slash gambler. And he was saying what's crazy to him about the Celtics. Both of us were saying this. The amount of shots they're taking with like six seconds left

in the shot clock or less, because they don't have the Kyrie guy to just be like, I just get out of my way. I'm going to create a shot for us. It's really complicated. It's this 15 step orchestrated handoffs and passes and quick passes and cuts and cuts all to get to the spot where it was six seconds left. Illustrated handoffs and passes and quick passes and cuts and cuts, all to get to the spot where it was six seconds left. Terry Rozier has the ball 25 feet from the basket with really no idea what to do other than to make a move

and jack up a three. Or Horford. All these guys, and yet the field goal percentage is, going back to the Bucs series at home, it seems like over and over again they're just scoring. Like if you're playing good defense on the Celts and then they score anyway, it's, it's, I think it's gotta be annoying after a while. I don't know if you watched the TNT after game show last night.

I did. Okay. Then you remember Kenny, the Jet Smith talking about, and if I can't quote him directly, but in the last 15 years, he's not seen a team like the Celtics that can bring people in off the bench to replace somebody and play exactly the same type of high-quality basketball as the guy they replaced. And, of course, it all brings back to Stephenson, how well- well prepared they are, the plays that they're running. You're right. I get nervous every time. I'm watching the shot clock, probably like you.

They get down 10, 9. They're not really ready to shoot. And somehow we make a play. Yeah. I'm not sure if I wish they started earlier or that's the intent is to do it that way. I think, though, you know, there's a lot of things I've picked up just watching Steven's coach the last four years. But what Kenny said, we've talked,

I talked about this on a podcast maybe two months ago with somebody. I can't remember who about Kyrie goes down. Roger just comes in. He's going to get all the same shots and plays that Kyrie got. They don't change their offense depending on who's in the game. And if Terry Roger goes down, guess what? Shane Larkin, you're shooting 19 times. They have a system.

They want to shoot 25 to 33s. They want the ball in Horford's hands a lot. They want their point guards to shoot. They don't care if it's Marcus Smart, who's a 28% three-point shooter. Keep jacking them up. And they want to play with a certain level of intensity and have a lot of passes. Did you see that stat where it was like the most passes in the playoffs?

I didn't see that. Yeah, it was the most team passes in the playoffs. I think they did it last game. And the Celtics led, and I think the Warriors were the other team. And both of them were just way ahead of it. And the Sixers were up there too. It was those three. And it makes sense because when you watch them, everyone's involved,

everyone's touching the ball and he doesn't care who's out there. If freaking Semmy's out there, guess what, Semmy, you're shooting corner threes, even though you haven't made one all year, you're shooting them anyway. Right. Right there. And it's also telling me that they're staying clear of certain players who would not be able to adjust to that kind of system. And the outlier a little bit is Marcus Morris because he does a little bit of his own thing.

But it looks like, for the most part, Stevens has corralled him, gotten him to play within the offense, except for those one or two times a game when suddenly he's taking the shot and you're screaming, don't take that shot. Well, you calling him an outlier is the nicest thing you've said about Marcus Morris in like three months. Yeah, I guess. Outlier can be. The other thing that's crazy about Stevens.

Not, not, I didn't mean Marcus Smart. I meant Marcus Smart. No, I know Marcus Morris. That's what I mean. Okay. Yeah, I meant Marcus Morris. The other thing that's crazy about Stevens is he can just put somebody in the freezer for four games, and then they get pulled out, and it's like nothing ever happened.

I don't know how he gets these guys to buy in. Like Greg Monroe. One of my favorite players finally played in the first half, Malone, and I thought he made a difference. Moses Malone? No, not Malone. Greg Monroe? Greg Monroe, yeah. Well, yeah, Greg Monroe.

He didn't bring him back in the second half, I don't think, but he made the difference in the first half. Yeah, he started the streak that ended up riding the end of the first half. I think the reason he always goes by the matchups, and they really want their centers to pull Embiid away from the basket. the end of the first half. I think the reason, he always goes by the matchups, and they really want their centers to pull Embiid away from the basket. So I think that's why Baines has played so much this series, and then Horford, obviously.

Well, I think you're right. I mean, Baines is shooting three-point shots for that reason. Yeah, what's funny is when I went to game two against Milwaukee, and we showed up super early, and we were watching Tatum warm up. And then we were also, the two guys warming up were Tatum and Baines. And Baines was just in the corner shooting threes. And I was with a friend of mine and we were both like, wow, didn't even realize he could shoot those because it's not like he's jacking them up that much during the season. And that's the shot. That's the shot he's been making, yeah. What are you seeing from Philly? Because I got to be honest, I felt like the Celtics stole one last night. I think there's home games where, you know,

you wait for the team to turn on. Home team should usually win a playoff game, especially one that starts at 840 at night with a bunch of drunk fans going nuts. I thought Philly really screwed that game up. I don't know what the hell they were doing. I don't know what Brett Brown was doing during the streak

with the four minutes left in the first half. Not stopping momentum at all. It was weird. He never called a timeout during that four-minute stretch to close the first half. It looked like he just froze, or maybe he just half, it looked like he just froze. Or maybe he just froze. It seemed like the team froze.

And then what they're doing with Simmons, who was a deer in the headlights last night, but they also weren't trying to get him going. And the Celtics, the best thing that happened with the Celtics is they play Giannis for seven games, and they basically go to grad school for how to get back on defense and set up a wall so that the freak athlete can't get to the rim. And once they took that away from him, and they're basically begging him to shoot and he won't. They're switching on all the cutters.

And he doesn't really seem to have a plan B. I can't believe they're not posting him up. Are you terrified every time he posts up? Well, I am, except they seem to have... Morris has been guarding him. And Horford? I mean, Horford's been guarding him. I'm not sure he can post up.

He could post up if they had Rozier guarding him or Smart, but that's not how the Celtics are playing this. It seems like they need to get him closer to the basket, trying to create open shots for people and stuff. It's weird. I'm really comfortable with, even though Embiid is frightening and completely unstoppable, I'm actually fine when they pound the ball to him.

Everyone else just stands around and watches him. Neither goes in or it doesn't. But it really seems like it takes them out of their flow when they're just playing bully ball with him. I'm much more scared when Simmons has the ball. You know, you and I, over the many years, we've always looked at game two as, I always assume the home team's going to win game one.

And if, you know, obviously Toronto didn't, and now look at the trouble they're in. Because game two is always the game that scared me at home. Yeah. When you have home court. I'm not at all. Nobody should be surprised that Philly came out so strong last night. I was surprised that we came out somewhat flat.

Our defense was kind of a step slow. And on the other hand, look at what Redick did, meaning not only did he score the first eight points of the game, it was fairly unstoppable in the first half. You kind of knew it wouldn't continue or couldn't continue, but if he had been normally excellent, not crazily shooting like last night, that game wouldn't have been a 22-point spread so quickly. So you have to take that. And you knew it was going to level off a little bit.

He's terrifying. It's terrifying to root against him. I feel like he's making the shot every single time when he shoots. I wish there was some point during his career that he could spend one year with the Celtics. I think he wanted to. I think they tried multiple times. They tried to get him. Well, look at the money he signed for, though.

Well, he gets to be in the ringer. That's almost as good, right? Well, yeah. He is one of your, he's an employee of the ringer. You're right. Well, I was going to tweet, if the Sixers won last night, I was going to tweet that JJ was not the employee of the day for the ringer. I right i well i was gonna tweet if the sixers won last night i was gonna tweet that jj was not the employee of the day for the ringer i would have been very upset but um yeah i think i i this is a classic old school playoff series where philly has more talent

boston has home court the crowds made a huge difference and the inexperience of Philly just having to deal with what it's like, it's just different. It's just the fire of it is different. You could argue the same thing about Milwaukee. You could argue that they had more talent. And they just, they weren't as well coached, obviously. The coaching thing was insurmountable for them in that series. But yeah, I think with Philly, you're going to see the flip side of it.

Boston played one good half on the road in Milwaukee. They played six halves in Milwaukee, and only one of them were good. The rest were garbage. And the young guys, it's just different on the road. And they're not going to play as well. Our guys don't shoot threes as well on the road. A great example is Rozier. He's just

not the same three-point shooter on the road as he is at home. So you worry about things like that. But we just need to steal one of those games in Philly. They've always had such a terrific fan base. They've had years of poor teams year after year. You should see something pretty exciting from that fan base.

I had a couple of emails from friends who sit in my area who were there last night, and boy, were they angry about and chastising and then eventually making fun of kevin hart who was in the front row uh and in that first half when philly was up going up up to 22 points he was dancing he was uh motioning to the crowd. He was just a really obnoxious Philadelphia fan. How did things end for him? How did things end for him? I'm guessing not great.

Not great, maybe leaving the arena. He left a little bit early. I thought the TNT guys did a good job of pointing out that Kevin Hart seems to have about five NBA teams. He's definitely from Philly and likes the Sixers, but he also has a bunch. There would be a good montage of Kevin Hart at playoff games wearing various teams' jerseys that aren't the Philly jersey. That would be funny. Maybe the ringer should do a little

montage of that. Wait, we're going to take a quick break. Quick break to talk about Squarespace. Think it, dream it, make it. With Squarespace, our friends at Squarespace make it easy to build beautiful websites, whether you're starting a business, changing careers, or launching a creative project. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store, it's all included in your Squarespace website. You can even get a unique domain, which strengthens your brand and makes it easier for visitors to find you, add and arrange your content

and features. With the click of a mouse, there's nothing to install, patch or upgrade ever. And Squarespace is award-winning. 24-7 customer support will help you no matter how hard or easy your problem may be. Start a free trial today at squarespace.com. Maybe there could be a Dr. Bill website on Squarespace. Who knows? When you're ready to launch, use offer code BS to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Again, squarespace.com, offer code BS. All right, coming back, my dad's still here. So where would you rank how Boston is reacting to this particular feel-good Celtics team versus some of the other Boston teams over this century? Other Celtic teams?

Just in general. Just the reaction that this team is getting compared to some Red Sox teams, Bruins, Celtics, anything. I mean, Pats. It's a good question because I go back to the 08 team, and you and I had great confidence that that was a team that if everything, if all the chips fell correctly, we would be in the finals and had a really good shot of winning. This is a funny, this is a different experience because without the guys that, that with the guys on the sideline who aren't playing and looking at who is out there and the short bench that we have,

I thought they'd maybe beat Philadelphia. and the short bench that we have. I thought they'd maybe beat Philadelphia. I thought they might beat Milwaukee. I was never that confident like I would have been back in 08. And now it's kind of funny to watch Toronto gets beat twice at home by Cleveland. Yeah. And I like the way we match up against Cleveland. If we ended up playing Cleveland.

Oh, God, why? Why aren't you saying that? First of all, you did the combo of, you advanced us to round three, and then you enjoy how we match up against one of the three best players of all time. I can't believe that just happened. I didn't say LeBron James. Oh, my God.

I said Cleveland as a team. Okay. If we advance and Cleveland advances, you give us no hope? I'm asking you, this sports guy, you give us no hope? No, I,

I, listen, if they beat this Philly team, who the hell knows? The Philly has so much more, just talent. It's really crazy. For them to win even two more games in this Philly

series needs to be a replica of what happened those first two games, where Rozier looks like an all-star, Tatum looks like he's 28 years old, and Horford outplays Embiid. Those three things need to happen two more times. If we still one game in Philly and we come back and you're at game five Wednesday night.

I'll feel confident. Yeah. With that crowd and with the momentum of needing one game. Well, the reality is they have two more, they're up to nothing and they have two more games at home. That's what you're supposed to do. And Philly's going to have to figure out how to win in Boston. They're going to, they're also, you know,

if they can somehow steal one, the thing with the Celtics team, they're very good defensively and they jack up a lot of threes. And that variable makes it... Yeah, 27 and 14. I don't think the Celtics are going to get a single call in game three. I'm just throwing that out there now. I think they got too many calls in games one and two.

Well, you never think we get calls. You're like the new Tommy Heinsohn. I'm a fan of Tommy Heinsohn. Do you want to complain about... Oh, last thing. Do you want to complain about... Oh, last thing. Do you want to thank Philadelphia for Jason Tatum, just quickly? Well, I'll just echo the words of Julius Erving,

who I was shocked came out publicly on your former station, ESPN, talking about how in retrospect Tatum should have been the first round draft pick or the first over a pair yeah yeah I said that Julia said that I think Thursday or Friday on talking to Jalen Rose that that if they had to do it over again, he said himself, and then he said, I mean Philadelphia, maybe you should have taken Tatum with the first pick. Philly can absolutely win this series.

They need to do one of two things. Either they need to rededicate themselves defensively because that's where most of their issues have been. Simmons, Simmons will get going. I'm not worried about him. Or they need to go the other way and just turn these into 128 to 124 type wide open, just put their best offensive guys out there, throw away the defense, don't even worry about it and just try to outscore and out shoot the Celts,

which I also think would work. And that's what worked when they played Cleveland six weeks ago. They was just up and down, run and gun. Well, if I'm Philadelphia, I'm devastated that they didn't hold on and win that game. Yeah, that's bad. And the other thing is, and it is a big point made in the globe today, that how much better they played when Simmons was on the bench. Yeah, but that's not sustainable, though.

No, it's not, but it was sustainable last night. I mean, they were up by two points when he made that substitution and brought Simmons back in. Yeah, and then we went on a run right after. We went on a run right after. I want to see him work through this. I really think he's – I think his ceiling is like top 20, top 25 all time.

If he can figure it out, that's his ceiling. I don't know if he's going to get there, but this is the first real blip that we've seen him hit since, since he was at LSU when that season fell apart those last four weeks. And he had that same kind of tentative, weird look in his face. And I want to see, I want to see him work through this.

He's well, I don't want to, I don't want to see him work through this. What are you talking about? I'm not saying I hope it works out. I'd like to see him work through it next year. But I mean, what are you kidding? I'm saying I want to see him work through it. I'm not saying I hope the results are in Philly's favor. I just say I want to see him work through it. I'm not saying I hope the results are in Philly's favor. I just said I want to see him work through it.

It's fun. I'm a basketball fan. And I heard you say right there. I'm a basketball fan. Hey, listen, the tape doesn't lie. Do you want to do 30 seconds on the Bruins? Because you're upset about the Bruins. I am upset.

I just think they, you know, I'm upset, and yet I'm just pretty worried because watching that first game against Toronto, and I know we won the game, but the first 12 minutes of that first period, Toronto looked like they could have had six goals. I mean, they were so much faster than we were to the puck. We couldn't get out of our own defensive end.

Which series are you talking about? Finally, we started scoring, and obviously we won the game 6-2. But that first 10 minutes or 12 minutes of game one is exactly what happened in game two and game three. So, yeah, I'm worried. Not Toronto. They're playing... I mean, Tampa Bay.

Tampa Bay. Yeah, mean, Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay. Yeah, I meant Tampa Bay. I hope Donato's out there tonight because they

need some scoring and they need a shake-up and maybe you bring out Brian Janta or...

We have some guys that are just not playing well. You're not happy with Tuukka Rask, although you

like him more than Marcus Morris. He's just not playing well. You're not happy with Tuukka Rask, although you like him more than Marcus Morris. He's not... I thought he was a franchise goalie, and I don't think that way anymore. I think he can have great nights, but I think if you look at his body of work,

he's a good average goalie, and the other guy... It's not what I expected. I thought he'd be, you know, you look at some of the two of the goals he gave up the other night. Yeah. Should have had them. I mean, you can't let those goals go by. So. All right. That's enough hockey talk. Last thing. Okay. Lamar Jackson. Have you recovered? I don't think I'm ever going to watch the draft again on TV.

It's too frustrating. I have my draft board. I have the people. We get all these articles for about three months on The Globe and The Herald. And it's about the people they've been working out. And they get 30 guys can come in and visit. Right. They sent out McDaniels to visit.

Baker Mayfield. For more than twice. And McDaniels went to visit Baker Mayfield, too, which we found out after the draft. That was crazy. I don't know where that came from, but they never take the people we think they should take. I think this running back was a great pick. I wouldn't have picked the – I would have taken the running back,

the first pick, and then I would have taken Lamar Jackson with that 31st pick. They already traded for a tackle. I don't know, you know. Why not just trade if you're not taking Lamar Jackson, just trade him for what the Eagles ended up getting for pick 32 and then trade back up to take the running back?

Yeah. I don't understand that at all. Because it seemed like once we got into the... They claim other teams were ready to take that yeah they always claim that I know it just seemed like the Lamar

whoever the Lamar Jackson kind of asset was the best asset at pick 31 whether you're gonna take them or trade them

and then they didn't do either and then and then the Eagles sitting at 32 end up getting three guys for him basically right

it's frustrating it's just a really frustrating draft and you know sitting at 32 end up getting three guys for him, basically. Right. It's frustrating. It's just a really frustrating draft. And, you know, you just, you harp back to the Super Bowl and how our defense couldn't stop anybody. And it looked, I'm just making a guess, and certainly I've read this as well, that they were all ready to take that linebacker from Alabama. And Vrabel moved up at 22 and took him.

Exactly. And I think it appeared that it kind of threw their whole draft board out of sync. And then they ended up taking the tackle and the running back and trading and trading and trading. And that linebacker was would have

from everything I read would have filled a real need and now we haven't really added you know you had fifth round when you had

fifth and sixth round linebackers I don't think you can have great expectations that's your expert opinion that's your expert opinion you don't trust the sixth round linebackers That's your expert opinion? That's your expert opinion? You don't trust the six-round linebackers?

Yeah. Listen, I'm sure people are tired of us hearing us complain about a team that won five Super Bowls and made eight Super Bowls in the last 17 years. But it would have been a really fun route for Lamar Jackson, and it's a bummer. Before we go, do you want to say goodbye to David Price before you write him off forever? I might've tweeted about him last night. I mean, he's two and four. He looked terrible. I mean, I was channel switching like everybody else and his fastball has lost about five miles an hour. His change-up sucks. I mean, it goes in the ground every time. Nobody's swinging at it. I don't know what's going on.

And what does he have, like three more years? It's huge dollars. And they already marooned Sandoval for huge money in San Francisco. I don't know what they're going to do, but he looked terrible. He looks terrible. At least Mookie's finally... At least he's a nice guy. Mookie's finally putting it all together, at least.

Oh, yeah. The MVP season we wanted from him. Mookie and Martinez have become best friends because they love to talk about hitting. I like that kind of stuff. Yeah. I can see the two of them in the locker room or the dugout just talking about how a certain pitch pitcher is pitching and that's what you want.

All right, dad. Anyway, your Twitter feed is Dr. Bill 1947. If you want to hear him flip out there in games, I will see you for game five in Boston. Assuming there is a game five, who the hell knows?

This has been the craziest Celtics playoff one in a long time. If there's a game seven, unfortunately, obviously you can't be here. It's Mother's Day. Yeah, I won't be there. Game seven on Mother's Day. That's kind of a cool thing to do, but let's hope. Well. Well, the moms.

I want to win it in five. So that's my goal. You already jinxed us 19 different ways. So keep it going. Dad, talk to you soon. Enjoy the weekend. All right, you too. Bye.

All right, we're calling my friend Nathan Hubbard. But first, does a mom deserve more than one day? When you send her pro flowers for Mother's Day, she's guaranteed to have at least seven days of fresh, beautiful flowers. Right now, my listeners can send 100 colorful blooms with a free glass vase. Vase, vase, vase. We have a vase? Vase. A free glass vase at just $19.99 plus shipping and handling. Use promo code BS with fresh flowers guaranteed delivery and unique vases and accessories that mom will love. Pro flowers is everything you need for all the moms you know. Just choose the delivery date you want. It's guaranteed.

You can even get your gift delivered on Mother's Day, May 13th. The only way to get 100 Call for Blooms with a free glass vase at just $19.99 is to visit proflowers.com. Click on the blue microphone in the upper right corner. Use my code BS, proflowers.com. Code BS. All right, on the line right corner. Use my code BS, proflowers.com. Code BS. All right, on the line right now. Exciting times for, you know, we have a lot of interns and PAs here at The Ringer. Some of them go on to do great things. One of them is Nathan Hubbard,

unpaid intern for the first two years at The Ringer and now launching his own company, Rival, which was announced today. How are you? House Heats 3 Judge also. Don't forget. Oh, I forgot. House Heats 3 Judge is number one on the byline. My greatest YouTube moment. Congratulations. Explain the company for one minute, and then we can talk about why I think this is so interesting. thing. Yeah. So look, I, I, the, there's no doubt that the experience of trying to go to a game now is still pretty broken for fans. And anyone who's tried to go into the secondary market and

buy a ticket has not had a lot of fun doing that. And so teams lose tons of money to the secondary market still. And because tickets are still fundamentally pieces of paper that can be passed around anonymously, you know, a team can have a game where they know less than 10% of the people who walk in the door. And that's crazy from a customer relationship management standpoint in an era where season tickets are becoming harder and harder to sell season tickets and where these teams are investing so much into these stadiums to try to monetize fans in new ways and create great experiences that get us off our asses off the couch.

And it's also not sustainable from a security perspective, right? If we need to know everything about 100 people getting on an airplane, we should maybe know something about 100,000 people walking into a stadium. And so Rivals is kind of a next-generation ticketing platform that ties access to identity, and we use facial recognition to do that. So it sort of blows up the notion of a ticket as a piece of paper and turns it into you. And that helps us control things like scalping. It helps us give fans fair access to awesome experiences and it helps teams build a better business. So the dream scenario is you do a deal with,

let's just say the Patriots, cause that's my favorite football team. And you're controlling all the tickets for each game to the point that my dad gets tickets from my uncle and he's going and it gets transferred. And now you have all the information on my dad and the facial recognition and he's going into the stadium. And when he puts that ticket in, your technology matches his face to that ticket and it's okay and he can go in.

That's it. As he's going through the metal detector, there are cameras there that identify him. And as he walks through the metal detector, he's in. So the two benefits are one, security, but then two, I always think about the Staples Center, for example, is just a disaster before games. And it's 5,000 people waiting outside of seven entrances and the metal detectors and all that. And frequently, if you don't get there

even 20 minutes before the game, you're not even getting in before tip-off because it takes 20 minutes to get in. Not to mention the security risk of just having 5,000 people crammed into one small area where somebody could just leave a backpack and something bad could happen. Would this mean if this technology is perfected and these different arenas end up adopting it, could that mass of people just move in seven times faster?

Yeah. I mean, two things. One is we can move people through faster, yes, and almost the sort of fast lane TSA pre-idea, except without the people patting you down in weird blue shirts. Right. But the second thing is when we know who you are and we can see that things are stacking up at the South Gate, we can also quickly send you a message that says, hey, Gate, you know, gate A and the northeast gate are wide open. Come on around. So there's a whole bunch of ways that you can control for crowd flow there. And then also within the stadium, too, because you know everybody, you can also keep people out of the concourses. You can do much more with delivering food and beverage and merchandise directly to seats, pushing people, you know, offers to move from the upper deck down and,

you know, get into the Lexus VIP club or whatever it is. So there's a whole lot that once you're tied to identity, you can do to improve that experience. Look, the game on the field or on the court is going to be awesome for two hours. And we're building a technology platform to make the rest of it way better. Could you cut off nephew Kyle when he's trying to get his ninth beer in the third quarter of a corporate game? That's the plan. It's funny. If you go into some of these box offices above where those people who, right, they're in these bank vaults and they're in these bank vaults because they're literally protecting money. These pieces of paper that are tickets are worth a ton of money. So they've got to like hide them

back there. First of all, we can get rid of the bank vault because there's no more piece of paper that are tickets are worth a ton of money. So they've got to like hide them back there. First of all, we can get rid of the bank vault because there's no more piece of paper. Right. But those people in the box office above them, you can't see it, but there's like 10 mug shots of people who have been kicked out. Uh, you know,

now in Toronto, I guess Drake's face is up there now. Yeah. But like, you know, due to like attack Russell Westbrook, all those, that guy in Utah, but those, those people all have, you know, mug shots above the box.

That's not a real way to actually bounce somebody from coming back in. And so now you can also, you know, if you're a team, you can keep out somebody who got a little rowdy. We can keep your dad from, from game five. So the best case scenario for this is a bunch of people, they would have to sign up and then they're in that system a lot like TSA or Clear. I actually, I've been using Clear for the last couple of months and it's great. And I just press the machine, I do a finger pin, I stare at something for one second

and then I just get to pass everybody. Yeah. So if I did this as a fan, conceivably that's going to eventually make my life a shitload easier when I'm going to sporting events. Yeah, it's going to make your life way easier. As a part of buying that ticket, wherever you buy it from, you're taking a selfie and then you're in. It's not like you, it's not

like you've got to pay extra money to do that. And look, the benefit here is right in these situations where there's asymmetric supply and demand, tons of people, 2 million people want 20,000 seats to, you know, the Western conference finals or whatever, right. It creates all these crazy dynamics. And Oh, by the way, there's a whole lot of scalpers who run in and try to grab those tickets and resell them at multiple times face value. So by also tying the ticket to identity, you can start to cut out that behavior and know that the fan that I'm trying to sell the ticket to is the fan who's actually going to walk through the gate. What is, what's the thing that the,

the great unknown for you that you're like, man, I need this one thing to go well, what is it? Well, I think it's, um, look, running a live event like that is super complicated. So there's all sorts of execution stuff, but, but we feel pretty awesome about the team that we've brought in people from Google and Salesforce and map and Amazon who've thought about these problems in other businesses. But to me, you know what it is? It's that, um, you know, our dads who both have been 40 plus year season ticket holders for a sports team.

Yeah. Like they don't change easily. Right. I can't get my dad to change his socks. Like, getting him to give up the piece of paper that he's used to walking through the gate with and moving to, you know, facial recognition, it's going to take some time, right? But I think at this point, you know, if we really map out the last couple years, you know, security is an issue.

And I don't think any of, you know, my dad certainly not having fun going to Monday night games in Washington, right? Yeah. So anything that can be done to make that experience more seamless, make it more fun, make it worth getting off the couch, out away from your beer fridge and the awesome, you know, TV that you're in front of and keep coming out, I think is going to be well-received, but that's probably it. It's just that things change slowly in sports, right? We think about these brands as, you know, these massive sports brands,

these, like, huge, you know, like Nike and Apple and Google and the Red Sox. And the truth is that in some cases these are just, like, dysfunctional family businesses, right? And they draft weird for a reason, and they manage their businesses weird for a reason. But increasingly, we're seeing a whole bunch of owners come into the league, and even some old school ones who are super progressive in how they think about it, who are willing to adopt this. It's just a pace of change. Is this a friend, a foe, or a frenemy to the existing, to the existing ticket companies that kind of control the infrastructure

right now? Yeah, I think it's, I think it is a friend eventually. And here's why I say that, like we're building the operating system that teams use to run their live events. Um, but we're not building this like massive consumer portal that has every event in the world that you would come to. Right. And so there's enough of those out there. There's the list is super long. There's tons of places for consumer demand. What we're building, um, is capable of plugging into all those places and, and giving the team or the artist the, the control to say, here's where I want to sell my stuff. And so in a lot of ways, I think we're going to be a friend to those places that are looking to sell tickets to fans. So right now you make deals with individual teams. Conceivably, you could make

a deal with a performer who's about to go on a live tour, but it's a case-by-case basis, right? Yeah, that's right. It sort of goes on a team-by-te basis, right? Yeah, that's right. It sort of goes on a team-by-team basis. And our job is to get it out there, get it fixed. Look, the premise here is this platform makes teams more money. It gets fair access to fans for amazing experiences and it keeps everybody safer. So we're going to get that out in a couple of big arena stadiums

and prove that point and then you know then you know the the the cabal of owners is pretty small and and they talk frequently and if we're doing that i feel pretty good about about our business and then it's just about what teams want to do once they know every fan how do they create a better experience for fans so that we keep coming out and we keep coming out to more games. Good luck with this. Um, quickly while I have you, uh, cousin Sal did win house eats three. If that's your question, he did win.

It's country. It's like how Marvin Hagler now on the Sugar Ray Leonard fight 30 years later. Um, quickly, how do we save Kanye? I, I don't know how to save Kanye, but maybe we stop listening and retweeting. Um, I think we let him Peter out. I, the question is, uh, it's about the music and the last couple of tracks. I'm not sure if they were jokes or real, but, um, we saved Kanye by giving his music a chance and then shutting it down if it's no good. Let him be an artist.

It turns out that all it takes to rejuvenate anyone is a hit single, no matter how crazy you're acting. Exactly. And so if this is performance art, what I really want to know is, there was an awesome interview with Jay-Z in the New York Times that was videoed, and you can find it online. And Jay, in his very godfather-y way, said that he was going to have a conversation with Kanye.

I want to see that conversation now. Because they still haven't talked. At least that's what Kanye said in one of those interviews. I think that's Charlamagne. We're in the nostalgia zone right now of the mid-'90s. Because you know the rule of it takes 20 years and then people get the nostalgia becomes a business. Yeah. or a cabal of bands that we all listened to pre-internet that you put mixtapes, you made mixtapes,

and you put songs from the mixtape to express your feelings to whoever you're dating. I'm talking about the Counting Crows, ladies and gentlemen, but others in that ilk. Rank those from one to three, what works as a sponsored concert, big reunion tour. Lilith Fair, number one, no doubt. I think you meant, I mean, Lollapalooza is still alive today,

but you meant like old school Lollapalooza. I meant like the 90s bands, like Bring Him Back. This is like actually the OG, it would be the OG Lollapalooza tour. Perry Farrell, all of it, yeah. I put that two, and then I put the rest number three. That sounds like a stale crowd of dad

bods with no vibe and an empty lawn at an amphitheater. Holding up a jukebox like John Cusack. Yeah. Hoping that Peter Gabriel's going to play Say Anything we're going to the Cannon Crows it's happening

I know for the enjoyment and the comedy it's happening I'm only going ironically not because I'm really excited you saw the Billions where they used Omaha you got into it you enjoyed it

I love the albums. It's just that he goes to Spokane. He basically goes to Kanye when he goes live, and I don't want to see it, but I will go as long as you're prepared to laugh. Is the Taylor Swift summer tour officially in crisis mode, or is it salvageable? I am going to the first show in San Francisco.

I believe that the back half of reputation is excellent. And I am still an unpaid intern for the ringer. And I will write a piece describing how the tour is next Saturday after I come back. Okay. Snapchat took a hit. The design was, um, really did turn people off. I don't think the Jenner slash Kardashian family helped. They got murdered in stock earnings. You actually wrote a piece for us about the new design and how dangerous it was. So now what happens to them? Well, look, Snapchat still matters, but those who've been through the ringer at twitter

before have seen some of those numbers before right and the thing that i will say is um it takes a lot for a founder of a company to rethink and question and challenge his or herself that quickly and the fact that evan is so publicly talking about rethinking a decision, you know, I think is good in the long run for Snap because not a lot of founders would be that sort of self-aware and reflective and willing to rethink something that, you know, quite frankly, he drove internally. So while I think that the design, uh, was a big risk. Um, and I think that Instagram continues to pick off, um, uh, you know, they, they take with snap builds and rebuild it quickly. Um, I'd still have some hope for snap going forward. That was tepid.

I'm just saying that was tepidid I will say though a couple years ago you were very bullish on don't quit on Twitter everyone uses Twitter everyone is stupid and you were right do I have to remind you that I just announced that I've got a startup company that is about a mile and a half

away from Snap's headquarters oh that's a good point I didn't think of that you and I we got LAFC season tickets from snaps headquarters. And. Oh, that's a good point. I didn't think of that. Um, you and I, we got LAFC season tickets. Yes. We got two next to each other and we're two home games into the season.

And we're already like, neither of us can go and we're trying to pass the tickets off. We did it again. I don't know how we, after making a big deal about how season tickets, you don't need them. Secondary market. It's so much easier. We got sucked in. We have season tickets, you don't need them. Secondary market. It's so much easier.

We got sucked in. We have season tickets. I did ask you at the time, why are we doing this? But I will say this. I went to the home opener. Yeah. On Sunday night. And it was electric.

The stadium is beautiful. The team is cool. The ownership group is awesome. Noma is a season, is an owner. Yeah. And is kicking around there with Mia Hamm. The ownership group is awesome. Noma is a season two, is an owner. Yeah. And it's kicking around there with Mia ham. And I don't know. I was great.

Magic Johnson's there. Yes. Yes. And in the 93rd minute, uh, Simon scores a goal and the place goes absolutely apeshit. And it reminded me why there's nothing like being there alive. And afterwards, you know, the team runs through the tunnel.

All these players are like the low-end golfers. They still have to hustle for it. So they'll stop and take pictures with our kids, and they'll high-five. Like, they do the work still to engage the fans. And so we're at that moment where maybe soccer in the U.S. is going to get too big and those stars, but now they're still hustling're still hustling like old school wrestlers. I loved it. So I will take every ticket that you don't want to use. I love how the, uh,

they really figured out that stadium and put the time and the energy and flew around and checked out all these other stadiums and, um, really put real thought into it and then created a cool stadium. They've done everything right with the brand of the team, with the way that they position the supporters, the chance of the supporters were no bueno, but, uh, but the, the way that they handled this sort of VIP lounge areas and the seating, there's not a bad seat in the building. And it really,

it brought that crowd to life. Everybody was just waiting for that first goal, came in the 93rd minute and people lost their minds. How was the food most importantly? The food was, I can't really tell you because there were so many people in the club that I did not go after it. My daughters loved the hot dog. Okay.

Okay. I think we- It looked good from afar. It was a busy night. I think we have some good Dodger Club possibilities this summer because the Dodger season is in the tank. There's nothing better than the Dodger

Club because, first of all, Tommy Lasorda is always hanging out for the first two innings. Eating. Eating and yelling at kids. Yeah. Berating small children. And signing crazy things on baseball. Tommy will write anything on a baseball at this point.

Tommy, could you write, go fuck yourself, Nathan? Sure. Exactly. So he, uh, he is in fine form after the third inning. It's boring though. because Tommy's done, and they take the Dodger dogs off, and it's just a dessert bar. But there's nothing better than that club at Dodger Stadium, it's for sure. The Angels have a chance to steal some shine from the Dodgers here this year. Just a chance. I'm throwing it as a chance. They do. I never like a company or a team that revolves around one man, but,

um, but that stadium is actually sneaky fun. The only problem is that it's so dang hot that, um, it's hard to go there without, without like a massive Japanese sun hat. When you say sneaky fun, are you comparing it to like being tortured in Vietnam or something?

Like what is, what is, what scale are we talking about here? I think of all the things, I think of all the things that there are to do in Orange County, I would rank them like this. Number one, the duck pond. Now, see, first of all, and I'm disappointed as an LA soccer parent, the number one thing to do in LA or in Orange County is when your kid has an all-day weekend soccer tournament,

but it's somehow near Irvine and you can kill four hours at the Irvine Spectrum. That's the best thing. To me, that's better than Disneyland. It's like the Mall of America in orange County. It's true. It's outdoors. It's Cougar central. It's phenomenal. There's food, there's shops, there's just soccer kids walk around in cleats, just ruining their,

ruining their cleats as they walk around this outdoor ball and, uh, and people just killing time. It's great. I love the Irvine spectrum. I get mall legs and, and I watch for the best full body tattoos I can find. Are you getting, are you, are you sad that our soccer parent run is now that our kids are teenagers, that it's, there's actually a finish line way down the line that we can actually see now?

Uh, am I sad that I'm going to get a weekend back? actually a finish line way down the line that we can actually see now? Am I sad that I'm going to get a weekend back? And am I sad that I don't have to watch parents compensate for their lame high school years by aggressively screaming at refs and coaches and their kids? No, no. The business of youth sports has taken the fun out of youth sports. I just want my kids to like play and with their friends and have fun. I was over it when somebody tried to recruit my six-year-old daughter to another club team and she's 13 now and here I am. Yeah. Well, I thought I was out too. And I thought the weekends were coming back and then all of a sudden my son became good at baseball. And now there's travel baseball potential. And I don't know what's going to happen to me. Is he still wearing a cup on the reg? Because my nine-year-old's playing baseball

and he is so resisting the cup. I sort of half want to just knee him in the nuts just to wake him up. It's worse. It's worse for my son. He's wearing the tooth fairy pillow. He's still wearing the tooth fairy pillow? Yeah, he puts that in his pants. That's what happens. My guy was wearing tights that were so, they were like ballet tights.

His baseball pants were from three years ago, so he couldn't actually fit the cup in there. And he convinced me that if a ball hit him, they were so tight, it would just bounce off. He hasn't taken one yet, but I think we got to migrate them to the cup. I think travel, any form of baseball past age eight has the worst parent comments in terms of just how sad the support is.

Good eye. Good eye. Good cut! Good cut! Almost! It's a lot of that. Because baseball, you're just failing half the time. You're either not hitting the ball, or you're throwing a ball, or a grounder's hitting your face. Yeah, 70% of the time the kid is failing miserably, and it's an individual sport disguised as a team sport. So you drive three hours to sit for three hours to watch your kid bat three times. I hate it.

Yeah. Soccer at least is done in an hour. We should do a pod where we rank all the kids sports just for parents. I've been dying to do this. I know that finishing last is either swimming or track, but, um, soccer has to be way up there. Soccer is way up there. Um, basketball is really good.

Yeah. Basketball is really good. Yeah. But swimming is super low. So let me also say musical theater is super low. I wasn't even on my radar. Musical theater, huh? Okay. All right. Well, we digressed. Rival, check it out. You must have a website, right? I didn't even look. We do. It's minimal. Rival.co.

Great. This is awesome. I'm glad you finally announced this. We've been talking about it forever. We can celebrate by eating large quantities of food somewhere. Talk to you soon. I'm still Team Ringer at heart. Nathan Harbert, thank you. All right, we're going to call Mark Titus from The Ringer. But first, Amazon Music, the simplest way to listen to the music you love. Discover tens of millions of songs, including the hottest new releases, thousands of curated playlists and stations across all your devices, just by asking. No ads, no limits, no interruptions. Find them at the tip of your tongue, having friends over tonight. Huh? Really? Just ask to play music for a dinner party. Shout out your favorite bands or your favorite years. Or if you are playing a song you enjoy and want to hear more like it,

simply say, Alexa, play more like this. Engaging with music has never been more natural, simple, and fun. You can even do your own playlist. Customize it. Do it like I did. I did a little lithium, 2002 to 2005, post-lithium, really fun alternative soundtrack.

I could just crank anytime I want on Amazon. New customers, start your 30-day free trial at AmazonMusic.com. That is AmazonMusic.com to start your 30-day trial. Free, renews automatically, cancels anytime. All right, on the line right now, one of the hosts of One Shining Podcast, a writer for TheRinger.com, and the next coach of Chicago State, Mark Titus. How are you? I'm doing fantastic.

It's beautiful here in Columbus, Ohio. It is? Is that a fact? Yeah. Well, that's why I'm doing fantastic. It's one of the three nice days here in Ohio, so it's exciting times. Everyone's buzzing about the LeBron. The Cavs are back. So that's helping the mood in central Ohio right now. So yeah. Good times. Let's talk. I love when March Madness ends because then you watch

NBA for two months and have all these. Yeah. It's like you dropped out of a UFO into whatever the NBA season was and you just noticed things and sometimes things we've all been talking about for a while, but then you're looking at it with fresh eyes. You wrote about... Yeah, that's how I always feel when I do this. I step in and I'm like, hey, you guys seen

these Warriors? How about that? A lot of good players on this team. The Rockets, though, they've been pretty polarizing. They've hit all the checkpoints that you want to have here, where they have a style that people either feel passionately about or they passionately hate. Their fans now have a persecution complex. It's really bringing everything to the table.

So you wrote about whether you enjoyed watching them or they were the seventh circle of hell for a basketball team. Where did you land? I land on, I enjoy it. Actually, no, I'm going to say, I'm not going to tell people where I land, Bill. We got to get them to click on the article, right? Good point. Yeah, we're not going to spoil it. Well, the thing that's so fascinating to me about the Rockets, and again, I'm not sure how much NBA people have been talking about this all year.

I imagine it's a conversation based on the fact that I tweeted out a link to the article. The reception I've gotten is pretty much what I expected, that everyone is very passionate about where they stand on this issue. Are the Rockets fun. But the reason I'm so fascinated by it is because we have this exact same argument at the college level with Virginia in that the Virginia Cavaliers have basically approached college basketball and said, we're going to make this the most efficient machine possible. And they go about it in a completely different way than Houston does. But it's sort of the same sort of conversations that are being had

where people who love the Virginia thing are like, what's not to love about this? They have figured out the most efficient way. And I know that the NBA fans are like, isn't that the same team that lost a 16th seed? It is, but I promise you, their system was the most efficient thing

and all of that. But everyone's like, this is the most boring brand of basketball I've ever seen. And it's just kind of fascinating to me that that's sort of the same problem that's happening. Now, the Rockets are probably more fun because they shoot threes. They have individual talent versus like Virginia kind of relies on the team play and defense and all that stuff. But that's why I guess I was so drawn to the conversations around the Rockets. You played for Ohio State back in the 1980s, and it was a different time back then.

The basketballs played differently, no three-point line. And now I look at the game you have that really would have translated nicely to 2018. Like, you easily could have been Ryan Anderson on the Rockets and just stood in the corner and taking corner threes. If I would have been, yeah, like four inches taller. Um,

I, I think that way, but I also think like part of the, part of this three point revolution that really pisses me off is like, you'll play pickup games. Now everybody's a three point shooter. Yeah. Like that was,

that was my identity. My whole life was like, I was the guy that can knock down threes and I was valuable to people and all of that but uh if I was coming on now

I probably wouldn't be valuable because like they would say we have a 6'11 guy who can do what you do why do we need your slow white ass who's 6'4

doing this right oh well you know it's kind of in pickup basketball it was a greater inefficiency I remember when I moved to LA and I was retired for a while, and then I came back and was playing with Jacoby at USC all the time. Threes counted for two and twos counted as one. points. So it was a little bit of the Daryl Morris system where the people who were actually smart

were just jacking up threes and doing slashing kick. And those were the teams that stayed on the court for three hours. But it's a little bit of the same thing with this James Harden thing. The thing that bothers me the most about the Rockets is he's perfected how to travel and not get caught. And there's this whole thing where people are like, no, no, it's not a travel, actually. You got a continuation step. It's like, no, that's definitely a travel. It just is.

We've all decided it's not, so I don't feel like he's breaking the rules. But at the same time, it's a travel. If you're in one spot and you take three steps and you end up five feet away from the spot you're in after you picked up the dribble, it's a travel. I don't care what rule thing you're tweaking. You're traveling and yet nobody cares.

I don't understand it. That was like the most maddening thing to me and watching all these rocket scans I've watched in the last month or so is this trap. Like, and the people that like support it and they're saying, but you get a gather step and then you get your two and a half steps that the NBA allows. The gather step. And then if you've also made a first team All-NBA team, you get another extra step. And then if the refs feel like it, maybe you get two more steps.

All these people are like, but it's in the rulebook. To which I say, change the rulebook. This is obviously travel. I don't know. That's the sort of stuff that like i mean it's funny because like i appreciate the choir like the college basketball fans but uh you know like that's the stuff that drives us nuts when we you watch college i know the nba fans like college is the most boring brain of basketball possible but sometimes like us

college fans we watch the the james harden travels we're like how is this even fun for anybody that that you allow this to happen there have to be rules right we have to we have to have rules in this game so yeah i don't know but his footwork's incredible though i think that's the part that's frustrating for me is like he's actually unbelievable and a ton of fun to watch and he knows he's traveling i mean i don't know. That's like the most frustrating part is like, he doesn't have to do this. He could still be very, very good. Um, but they do it and they allow it to happen. And it's just very confusing as to how he's kind of a genius.

He's figured out these different flaws in the sport that he just exploits over and over again. Like he was really the, Reggie Miller and some other guys were good at this before him, but he's the best at just being 28 feet from the basket and launching himself into somebody getting the three free throws. He's great. The Eurostep was out there. He perfected it.

The way he bangs off bodies and just then flails his arms, everyone's done that for 50 years. He's great at that. He's so hard to officiate and he's such a pain in the ass. But if he's on your team, you love it. You're like, well, this is great. What do you mean? He's taking advantage of the rules.

What's wrong with that? And that leads to the persecution complex. The bigger persecution complex for them though, is that I don't think their home crowd's very good and it's too easy to go in there and win. And it's just kind of a half dead crowd most of the time. And that's, they need to work on that more than defending James Harden. So my question to you as someone who follows an NBA much more closely than I do, obviously, is this,

are sort of the frustrations people have about the Rockets and their style of play and has science gone too far? Have the analytics gone too far? All that kind of stuff. Is it the Rockets, like how Daryl Morey approaches constructing a team and how D'Antoni runs a system

or is it James Harden? Or is it a combination of both? Is it more like a James Harden problem or a Rockets problem? No, it's specifically how they play. Because, and they're probably my least favorite league pass team, even though James Harden is now one of the best four guards of all time. It's just, you go to any game and it's the same.

You flick the channel and there's Harden 40 feet from the basket and there are the four guys standing there and he's deciding what to do and he just solves whatever the defense did on that possession and they score. It's super successful and it's great to watch if you're a Rockets fan.

If you like basketball, I just like watching movement. I like watching, I like watching creativity and, you know, even they had a stat with something about with the teams that had the most passes in the round. When I was like, that's cool. I like when the ball moves around. But it is funny. I think you've, you've had this in college for the entire time you've cared about college, the fan bases that have the persecution complexes. Only in the last I would say the last 10 years or so, and I think

Kobe and the Laker fans really started it and now it's spread to these other NBA teams. The persecution complexes of the fan bases are pretty hilarious, but mirror what you've seen in college for your whole life. Yeah. Oh yeah. The college thing is, and what's funny is,

I would say one of the most persecuted fan bases is Virginia, and it's sort of the same thing, and it's for the same reasons. It's like, our team is winning, we're obviously great, and then they inevitably lose in the tournament, and people are like,

like we said all along, your team is not great. You just run this little gimmick thing, and that just continues on and on. And now that they've lost to a 16 seed, it's only going to get worse. But yeah, it's a fascinating thing. Wait, can we rank the top five persecution complex college things? Because I have an idea who's number one.

I'm just going to float it. Shout out to Matt Jones, friend of the ringer, Kentucky Sports Radio. Kentucky has to be number one or number two, right? Because they are just like, you're either with us or against us is basically their mentality.

Kentucky's up there, but they also have enough fans that are smart enough to know that they still get coverage. So that's the thing. Even if you're hating on Kentucky, you're talking about Kentucky, and sometimes that's good enough for them. Yeah.

And they appreciate that. But you're absolutely right. You can never, unless you're saying Kentucky is the greatest thing ever. You're a dick, and you're against the program, and you hate Kyle Perry, and yeah, you suck. The number one to me, without question, is North Carolina State. It's not even close. Why? It's not even close.

Because they live in Duke and Carolina's shadow. They're getting hit by the FBI with this investigation. They've always got something going on with NCAA rules. Meanwhile, like Duke, Duke is skating by with everything. Carolina has, is admitting to like 30 years of academic fraud and they get literally no

punishment whatsoever. These people are absolutely rabid. And I mean, if you want to like stereotype your typical, your typical Duke fan, isn't even from North Carolina. Your typical Carolina fan is like your polo wear and tuck it into your khakis like tate yeah like tate you know great point the tate um but your typical nc state fan drives a pickup truck and has a few

shotguns back in the back of it and it's all so like all of these things kind of come together for nc state and it's it's absolutely like our favorite, our favorite forum, our favorite college forum, that we talk about all the time is pack pride, the NC state thing. And you just go on there and you see what people are talking about. It's awesome.

So who else is in there? Is Arizona in there now after the Sean Miller thing, they've got to have risen up big in the rankings. They're out there. Syracuse is surprisingly really high. That's a great one. I should have thought of that. They also have a lot of

media members who drive the agenda, which I think is annoying. Yeah. And then Bayhunter guy, like nationally, people don't really think Bayhunter that good of a coach,

but Syracuse, like he's a legend of Syracuse. Wait a second. He's not a good coach. Is that even a debate anymore? He's not a good, he's not an actually good basketball coach. I think he's a good recruiter, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to choose my words carefully. Hey, listen, the Keith Smart games on YouTube, that is one of the all-time coaching travesties that's ever happened in a game. They had the ball six seconds left, and everyone stood around and was just completely frozen as the season ended. So to defend Boeheim, he figured out long before anybody else

that 18, 19, 20-year-old kids are idiots and get in front of a zone defense and have no idea what to do and just pee down their leg and, and cannot break a zone to save their lives. And now you see like all these other coaches, right? Like coach K went to zone a ton this year. They ended up running like exclusively zone at Duke. Um, so Bayheim did figure that out. He was like, if we run a zone, even though it's obvious how to beat the zone, I think the kids are too stupid to figure it out. Right. So I'll give him credit for that. All I think the kids are too stupid to figure it out.

So I'll give them credit for that. All right. That's good. Congratulations, Tim, on that. Anyway. I went on One Shining Podcast in December, and we did a two-parter about the 12 schools that should just be better at college basketball. Like, if we were the college basketball czars, we would really go out of our way to try to make these programs better. And then one of them,

which we mentioned and I don't think we ended up picking was Loyola Chicago, which then had this great run and everyone from the Chicago area, including did big cat jump on the, was he on the bandwagon? He was right. Probably, probably that'd be a big cat move. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's total big cat move. But so everyone jumps on the bandwagon and inadvertently proves our point. And that's why we picked DePaul. We just had the wrong Chicago school. Now Chicago State needs a coach and you have unironically thrown your hat in the ring. You have really no coaching credentials at all, but you have a huge platform. You can raise awareness.

You know where to drop the bags. Some have described you as a young, like Rick Pitino at Providence type of, you'll do anything it takes to make this program good. What else am I missing? That's pretty, I want the job. I think that is the number one thing. So Chicago State fired their coach.

First of all, their coach was also their athletic director. Wow. So I'll give you a little lay of the land. Chicago State right now, as of last year, they had an interim president, an interim athletic director who was also the head basketball coach. One of the guys that was on their board of trustees, I forget what his title actually was. He was in an interim position

and his contract was supposed to run to July. But they found out that he was scheming to run for mayor of Chicago and cut his contract short. So they just fired him. So basically, the power structure of Chicago State is non-existent.

They're trying to figure that out before they even get to the basketball coach part. And that's where I'm stepping in. I'm saying they fired their coach, though, 50, I think it was 54 days ago, we're up to. They have no coach? In college basketball world, they still have no coach. Wow. And if you go two weeks, if you fire your coach and you don't have a new coach in like two weeks people are like man this is kind of getting out of control like are you gonna hire somebody it's

been 54 days there's no end in sight to this coaching series I'm standing right here saying I will bring attention to Chicago State I actually I do want the job I think that's getting lost on people people think this is a joke I very very much want this job Bill I think that's getting lost on people. People think this is a joke. I very, very much want this job, Bill. I need this job. No disrespect to the ringer and what you guys. It's a lot of disrespect. No, I feel disrespected. The opportunity to drop bags in Chicago, Illinois is, is too good to pass up and the content that could come of it. We would keep the podcast going too, by the way. Do I get to be, do I get to be a booster? Yeah, absolutely. All right, great. This is what we all wanted. This is great for the ringer. Yeah.

Well, I was hoping for Pepperdine because it's close and I could just easily, I could fly by the campus and just throw a suitcase with some cash in it or have nephew Kyle drop it off or whatever. But if it has to be this, I'll settle for this. Who gets a college basketball head coaching job first, you or Patino? What's it?

What are the, what are the odds? But I still think Patino is going to end up somewhere. He just got to swallow his pride first. I think he's still aiming way too high. And, uh, I mean,

no, I don't think certainly any respectable division one program is not going to touch him. Um, but he's going to land somewhere. I mean, like Dave Bliss, the guy who was behind the Baylor thing, pretty much the scummiest head coach that college basketball has ever seen. He was still getting jobs after all that went down.

So somebody's going to hire Patino somewhere. It's just a matter of whether he is like, okay, fine, I'll take your NAIA job just because I want to get back on the sidelines, which I'm not really sure he's going to do that. But if he does, he'll definitely get hired somewhere. If rock bottom is Dave Bliss, Patino is not rock bottom. Right?

Yeah, he's getting that. I mean, the weirdest thing is you listen to him talk and the smallest part of your brain kind of buys into what he's saying. It's the most, because this is what his job is. He has to be, this is part of recruiting and being charismatic. And,

and the reason he succeeds as a college basketball coach is he gets up there and he starts saying like, I don't know how else to tell you guys. I had no idea any of this was going on. And you're like, maybe, I mean, I guess there's no proof that he did.

Is he telling you? Maybe he did though. Maybe he really did. And you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I was like, you know, uh, so that little part of, I don't know. It's fascinating. We need, we need, we need slick Rick back in college basketball for sure, because it is not the same without him.

But, uh, so he's, I love him desperate to get back in though. He's my least favorite Celtics coach of all time. He has been an incredibly fun person to make fun of and tease and make jokes about and criticize and everything for people like us. Like he's just been a godsend with all that said, if Holy Cross hired him tomorrow, I would do a victory lap around the entire Ringer campus. I'd be so fired up.

Because you know what happens. If he's in Holy Cross, all of a sudden he's like, look, the Patriot League, we could win this bid every year. And why can't we be the Gonzaga of the East? And he would do his whole patina. And here comes the press. And one of our best advantages, we'll just get athletes and we can bring the second unit in that presses.

And I would buy in in three seconds, I'd be so fired up. The other funny little wrinkle about Patino to me right now is that, um, he never really produced great NBA players. He had like, he had some good ones like Jamal Massburn. Antoine was good for a few years. Yeah. Like he had, I don't mean to say they were all garbage, but he never, like given, given how great of a coach he was for however many decades in college he never produced like surefire hall

of fame guys and all that kind of stuff and then the year that he gets fired like the playoffs the big story of the playoffs are Terry Rozier and Donovan Mitchell are two of his guys and I wonder if there's some sort of correlation with that, that like it took killing Rick Pitino for his players to finally, finally be great on the NBA stage or something. Well, even Harold was really good in the Clippers. I was impressed by him. He did have this like belated run of whatever. Just quickly, your hometown or your home state, Indiana, it's been a hoop resurgence. You got the number one recruit, which you talked about this on One Shining Pie,

but we're redoing it. You got the number one recruit in all of college basketball for next year on IU. You had Victor Oladipo, who everybody went nuts when that Paul George trade happens. Victor Oladipo comes home and becomes the most popular Pacer since Reggie Miller and maybe even ascended Reggie Miller. I don't even know. It's back. Things are back.

You can't have Brad Stevens. That's the one thing I'll tell you. You can't have Brad Stevens. We need Brad Stevens. I'm going to be a wet blanket for the Pacers again because this is what I do best. I'll say this. I am wet blanket for the Pacers again because this is what I do best but I'll say this like I am actually excited about the Pacers because they're doing

the fact that all the depots and any other guy and he writes the Players Tribune thing about like this is what Indiana basketball means to me I buy into all of that I love that I just like can't get over this hump of pretending like the Pacers are now going to be something,

because they're not, and they never are. And that's okay. But my whole argument all along, like the existence of the Pacers, is like, go after the Victor Oladipo's out there. Go after the local legends, because we're probably never winning a title. We're never really... And Pacers fans lose their minds because they feel like we're so close. Like this is the Patriots thing. Like Patriots fans listening to me right now are like,

you're an asshole. How can you say that? We have a young team. We have a ton of cap space. We're going to draft Grayson Allen in the first round. We're going to use the cap space to get Durant or LeBron. And we're, you know, like, and this is, this is where they perpetually live is like, we didn't do it this year, but man, we were so much better than we expected. And next year is our year. And, um, I don't know. It's just like, do they have to, is this the Kevin O'Connor strategy? Like just tank and blow it up or something like that?

I actually, I think old Depot, I voted for him five on MVP. I think, I think he could be the best player on a finals team but i think no yeah they're really good they're i don't i that's what i'm saying like it was fun it was really really fun to watch i just like there's there's a sense around indianapolis that this was the start of something and now we build on this and we go and to that history has told me do not get your hopes up the best free agent the pacers have ever signed is David West. Yeah. And the history of the franchise. They have like the 20-something pick in the draft.

So, I mean, I'm not really sure. They'll be better next year, and it'll be exciting because Victor Oladipo is a ton of fun, and it's been great. But that's that. But, yeah, I don't know. Basketball matters in Indiana, again. People care about it outside of Indiana, and that's awesome. Nephi Kaya, we need wet blanket music for Titus. When he goes into wet blanket mode, we need like a sad trumpet playing and you could just do your wet blanket thing.

The people, people like the same people that love Indiana, the Hoosiers. And like, you go to the sweet 16 at IU and it's a disastrous season. It's like, how could we lose in the sweet 16? We should expect better. We have five national teams and the same people that like have that standard then get excited that the Pacers almost beat LeBron. We're a five seed and almost beat LeBron in the first round. And it was like, I mean, I get the context. I get that like the Pacers are supposed to be terrible this year and all that

kind of stuff. But that's the sort of To me like this was The quintessential Pacers season Is like everyone Was really really excited And when the dust settles You're like

We were the five seed Lost in the first round Yeah I don't know So This is what they need This summer They need

They need both Zeller brothers Not just one I want both They They need to Overpay for OG On the On the Raptors this summer, they need both Zeller brothers. Not just one, I want both. They need to overpay for OG on the Raptors. Just get him back. They screwed up. They never should have let him

get to Toronto. Get his ass back. And then maybe you know, maybe Yogi Ferrell. Oh, Yogi Ferrell? Maybe get him. But yeah, they should I don't think they should ever have anything less than seven IU guys on the team or on the coaching staff.

Yeah. All right, Titus, finish your book proposal and send it to me for God's sakes. I'm working on it. Hey, world, tweet at Titus and tell him to write an effing book. We have the idea. Tell him, push him. He's going to sit around all summer and procrastinate. Do your book. I will do it. This book's going to work. It have the idea. Tell him, push him. He's going to sit around all summer and procrastinate. Do your book. I will do it. This book's going to work. Now it's out there, yeah. Yeah, it's out

there. This book's going to work. People are going to buy it. It's a great idea. So finish your proposal and please sign it to me. All right. I will talk to you soon. Thanks for coming on. All right. Appreciate it. Bye. All right. Thanks so much to my dad. Thanks to Nathan Hubbard. Thanks to Mark the Shark Titus, the future head coach of Chicago State. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire my listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Thank you to the Ringer NBA show for all the great stuff they've done this week. Thanks to the Masked Man show for having me on. Thanks to the Rewatchables podcast. I hope you're subscribing.

Thanks to the Dave Chang Show, episode two in the books. Thanks to theringer.com slash shop. And thanks to everybody out there, including the good people of Boston, Massachusetts for an awesome crowd in those first two home games. I hope it continues for five and beyond. And I hope everybody enjoys

the weekend. Talk to you on Monday. On the way so I don't say I don't have a few years with them On the wayside I'm a person never lost

And I don't have to ever