The Bill Simmons Podcast - State of Zion, Sleeper Suns, Clubhouse’s Ceiling, and Brady’s Last Laugh With Rob Mahoney, Nathan Hubbard, and Seth Wickersham

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Rob Mahoney to discuss the New Orleans Pelicans, Zion Williamson after playing in almost 50 career NBA games, the exciting Phoenix Suns, and more (3:00). Then Bill talks with Nathan Hubbard about the latest “must have” social media app, Clubhouse; the upcoming AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am; and more (51:00). Finally Bill talks with ESPN’s Seth Wickersham about the aftermath of Tom Brady’s departure from the Patriots, the events leading up to his decision to leave, and more (1:17:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, did you know we blew out Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay this month? Yeah, they're doing three a week and they're in the middle of everything. They're doing pop culture, politics. They're talking about all the crazy bachelor stuff from this week. They're having special guests, famous guests. Yeah, go check it out. Subscribe now, Higher Learning on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this,

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Hey, if you miss hearing me talk about the challenge on MTV, the challenge double agents, my favorite half hour I spend every week is with Dave Jacoby, my old Grantland ESPN colleague. On the Ringer Dish podcast on Wednesday nights, we break down in about 25, 27 minutes, everything that happened in that night's challenge. It goes right up after the challenge finishes airing on MTV, which is 930 ET, 630 PT. You can hear a recap immediately.

I think it's the best challenge podcast of all time. I really do. I think it's head and shoulders above any other challenge podcast you ever listened to. We not only break it down, but we have a lot of fun making jokes about basically everybody on the show. I highly recommend it if you like the challenge. Check that out. Coming up, Rob Mahoney from TheRinger.com is going to discuss the New Orleans Pelicans, the Phoenix Suns, and more importantly, the both of us, Zion Williamson. Where are we as he heads to the 50 game mark? And then my friend Nathan Hubbard, we're going to talk about three things really fast.

Clubhouse, the new social app, Pebble Beach coming up, the golf tournament, and then music trends and what Taylor Swift is doing right now. And then finally, save the Patriots talk for the tail end, Seth Wickersham from ESPN. We're going to talk about everything that happened with Tom Brady the last couple years and who's to blame. Very fun conversation. This whole podcast is really good. You know who else we need right now?

Some Pearl Jam. All right, Rob Mahoney is here. He writes for TheRinger.com. He has a piece about the Miami Heat that's up today. We're not talking about the Miami Heat. We're going to talk about first this year's WTF team, the New Orleans Pelicans. I don't know what to make of this team. You can catch them on any given night and it's a completely different experience than the last night. I don't know if the players make sense together. Actually, I'm pretty sure they

don't. I don't really know what the overall philosophy is. I don't know if they're trying to be a playoff team, if they're trying to be rebuilding. I'm just constantly confused. And there was some optimism because they won a couple of games in a row and people were like, here they go, here's Zion. And then they get killed last night by the Bulls and have a hundred thousand breakdowns. And I guess my first question to you is,

the Pelicans, what the fuck? Yeah, how many exclamation points can we tack on to that WTF, do you think? But I mean, I was hoping you could answer this question because i think you're spot on in that it so much depends your view of this team on when you catch them even just like what stage in the season you caught them because for a minute it looked like they were going to live up to their personnel and be a tough-minded defensive team you know scrounging out offensive rebounds to get points and just kind of struggling on that end because of their spacing issues,

the script is completely flipped. And now this is all of a sudden a very competent offense, I think in part because they're really driven by Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson. They're making that part of it work. But the defense, Jesus Christ. I mean, there is inconsistent defensively as really any team out there.

Yeah, I would say other than Brooklyn, it's the team that's most likely to give up 140 on any given night to any team that knows what they're doing. So, if you actually look at their stats, and you haven't been watching that much, and you look at the stats, and you look at

Williamson and Ingram, and you go, alright, those guys are having good years, pretty efficient. And then you look at Lonzo those guys are having good years, pretty efficient. And then you look at Lonzo and you look at blood. So Lonzo shooting 37% from three bloods are shooting 40%. So going into the season, you're like, well,

their guards can't shoot. They're not going to be able to have no space. Well, their guards are actually shooting. Okay. But then when I watch everybody together, they don't have a five man lineup that I like. Like yesterday they were playing Kyra Lewis with,

he got a little more run and he's a really interesting rookie. He's really fast. He's a little Darren Foxy and gave them an energy that I was like, well, maybe this, maybe I would like this version of the Pelicans more if fast, you know, unleash Zion a little bit,

go up and down a little bit more. But I still don't know who the other two teammates would be with Kyra Lewis, Zion and Brandon Ingram. And I guess the fundamental question for me is, do Zion and Brandon Ingram make sense together on a team that's actually trying to win the title? I think they make sense on offense. But the question, I mean, with Zion really broadly is, who are you going to put at the five that's going to make up for all he doesn't do defensively right now? And that's always been my issue with the idea

of playing small and putting him at the five. His rotations just aren't there. I mean, really, the Pelicans as a team, if I were an opposing coach, I would say this is a team we can beat in rotation every time. They are a pass away from a defensive breakdown every time down the floor. And so if you keep moving the ball, you keep doing what you're supposed to do,

they will mess up. And whether it's an undersized guy in the corner who doesn't quite rotate over all the way, a J.J. Redick or a Josh Hart. I mean, they try hard. They do what they can, but they're not equipped to help rotation defenders if a guy like Zion isn't going to be one. So, I mean, I'm kind of bullish on the Ingram-Zion duo in general, but I'm really struggling to see how you put together those lineups.

And I can see how they kind of got into this conundrum where they clearly wanted to have some veterans, or at least some veterans fell into their lap in terms of what was available and trying to get some picks and make their other moves. But long term, it's a weird team to build with. And then you get Lonzo into this conversation too. And what they want to do with him. It's, it's kind of messy.

Yeah. So I look at it like how I look like the Celtics, I think are a good example of Jalen and Tatum. We're fine. I don't want to mess that up for the next 10 years. I feel like we can put pieces around those two guys and create whatever team we want with those two guys. And I'm happy because they compliment each other perfectly. They're exactly the two types of guys you would want in the league and where it's going. And you can just fit in like if Kemba Walker can somehow play better. Yeah. Who knows if that'll happen, but the, the point guard who can create his own offense and do some pick and roll stuff, you get a rebounder, couple shooters. I know what that team is. When I look at new Orleans

and you think like, all right, Zion and Ingram five years from now, who do I want next to them? So it's like, let's start at the five because it's clear that they don't want to play Zion at five and I don't blame them. I think the, the fantasy we had of this guy couldn't be a dream on green type guy defensively. Like that fantasy is gone. We've seen zero sides of that. It's like literally zero. So, all right, let's, let's do thought exercise with who just, who's at the five. Let's put them with Mitchell Robinson.

Okay. Let's put a shooter who can defend in the two spot. Right? So somebody who can, like Lou Dort. We'll put Lou Dort there in the two spot. Love it. And then we'll put like an older point guard who knows what the fuck he's doing as the point.

Like maybe like Mike Conley four years ago. Yeah. And that's our team. Is that team a title team? Because I feel like the answer is no. I still don't feel like you're going to be good enough defensively. Yeah. I mean, that part's the struggle.

And I wonder if Zion too, you know, you mentioned, you know, Lonzo and Bledsoe are shooting well this year, especially relative to what you would expect them to be. But defenses still guard them the same way. They still shrink down. They still want to put five bodies in between the rim and Zion if they can. What do you think that's going to mean for Zion's development? Because I could kind of see it both ways where on the one hand, you want him to get in space and have reps just making plays, reading defenses, figuring out what that looks

like. On the other hand, getting by with minimal space is kind of what you have to do in the playoffs 90% of the time. So could this be in its own perverse, twisted way, a good training scenario long-term for guys like Ingram and Zion to figure out just how hard it can be to create in difficult situations? It seems like the book on Zion is if he gets the ball on certain points on the court, the teams panic and they just collapse on him. And I think one of the reasons like you look at the Lonzo and the Bledsoe being 40% or close, every shot they take is completely wide open. So you almost have to factor that in.

It's like, all right, they're 37% on wide open threes. What does that look like if they actually have to be defended? There was a play yesterday in the Bulls game, and I was listening. I like listening to the New Orleans crew. The New Orleans guy, they interrupt each other. It's kind of like watching two uncles at a game. And they had one play where they just had three guys on Zion,

and the color guy was like, they triangle- him. He got excited about it. He had never seen three guys collapse on different times, but it's like, that's the book on how to defend Zion. And I want to get into Zion in a minute on how I think his year's gone. But just the fact that he's being defended like that is probably a good sign for Zion, I would think. I think so too. And I think Lonzo is figuring that out in a different way, you know, in terms of his pick and roll with Zion is really starting to click now. And I think a lot of that came from figuring out

he needed to get Zion the ball early. You know, it's really fun to hold onto the ball and throw alley-oops to Zion and watch him cram it through the rim. That's a good time for everybody. But it's probably more productive if you give it to this giant guy who's going to freak the defense out, even 15, 18 feet from the rim if he has any kind of momentum whatsoever.

So I think that shift has been pretty important for their offense, just like getting Zion in more positions where he's going downhill against the defense, forcing them to make split-second instinctive decisions, and in some cases, business decisions. Do I want to put my body between this guy and the basket? It's not an easy one to make. I'm going to say, I rarely do this where I go on the record. I'm going on the record with this. And I've done this a few times over the years, and I'm usually right. Long term, I don't think Ingram and Zion are together. I think at some point, Ingram gets traded for a piece. And then there's a whole thing about, we loved Ingram. It's just the fit of these two guys together. Yeah. Offensively it can work, but does it make sense for it to work? Because to me,

Ingram is like the perfect four, right? He's a stretch for who you can, he's malleable. He can move around. Not really that good defensively, but at least he's got some length. And they'll just flip him into somebody who is a more traditional Tatum Brown type of player would be my guess. And I think that's how this plays out because ultimately I don't see it. I think there's too many ways to get burned. You could put, again, Lou Dort. You could have an awesome two-way point guard. And you could have a rim protector.

And I still think, how are you stopping somebody like, I don't know, Kawhi? Yeah. Who's guarding him if you have Zion and Brandon Ingram at the same time? You're just always losing against Durant, against Tatum. You have to have a guy in your crunch time five who can guard those guys. And they're just never going to have that guy. When it's so weird to watch this group to where, you know,

you would have thought a Stan Van Gundy team, if anything, they're going to be there with the second rotation, the third effort. Like that's what his teams have done historically. It's just not there. And Ingram and Zion are the prime culprits of that. Our guys who are just,

you know, parked on their guy in the corner. They're not going to budge to help anybody. This team right now for me. And I think the big red flag with them is they don't do any of that stuff that buys their teammates time on defense, the little bumps, the little holds,

the little half rotations. It's all just kind of every man for himself a lot of times. And that involves in some cases, Steven Adams running 25 feet from the rim to try to get back to his man. It just, it doesn't work. It's funny with Ingram. I was thinking this,

because they just signed a new extension. So they couldn't have traded him this year. The most logical trade was Ingram for Harden. And maybe they threw in a pick or two, but just like removing all the stuff about that they couldn't trade them, that it would have seemed abrupt and you know, whether Harden would have wanted to go to New Orleans just as a pure basketball trade, just flipping those two dudes, letting Ingram have

his own team in Houston and then putting Harden with Zion and all of the stuff that could have come out of that. That was like the most fun basketball. Again, could not have happened because Ingram could have been traded. But I just really liked the idea of that. And it seems like ultimately, if you're going to unleash this, it's some sort of creator who's like a 6'4 to 6'6 type guy

who can, not that hard, he can play defense. But does that make sense or am I overthinking it? It does make sense, but it kind of makes me think Brandon Ingram is fated to be this guy

who's constantly flipped to younger teams to be like their next star of the future, the center of their team. And I mean, maybe that speaks to his fit and some of the complications

that come with it if you're that kind of player. Yeah, maybe that's who he is. Yeah. He's, my fear with him is I cause I do think he cares

about the right stuff I thought Zach Lowe's piece was interesting about him some of the quotes and I do think he's gotten better I think he gives a shit for sure um

but sometimes you can just be a good stats bad team guy right a lot of the stats he put up last year ultimately didn't matter the team sucked you know

and the fit with Zion I guess and it's time to talk Zion. The question for me, what's the ceiling compared to what I thought the ceiling was two years ago from what I'm watching? I think he's had some really good moments. He's played less than 50 games total in his whole career. His numbers are pretty crazy. He's basically 24-7 every game. He's almost shooting 60%.

He's getting to the line seven and a half times a game. Eye test-wise, there's a moment where if he just has one person on his back, he could spin toward the paint. If he's on the left block, he's been toward the paint, get whatever shot he wants. He can spin the other way and get that little lefty one handed jump hook. He's pretty devastating in transition still. And yet this is where I do the, and yet I felt like he was more explosive at Duke. He just was, he at Duke. He just was.

He moved better. There's moments like dead ball moments. This is why I'm dying to see him in person. Cause I never want to overreact one way or another to stuff I see on TV, but there's stuff in person where it just seems like he's laboring. Like he's got a limp, like he's carrying too much weight. Like he's not happy. The guy at Duke was played with so much joy. He really, he was so competitive and so joyful. And that was like

the thing that jumped out of him more than anything. He just seemed like this guy that just loved basketball more than anything. And the guy I'm watching now seems like a guy who's on a professional basketball team. Who's a little overweight, whose knee isn't 100%, maybe it's 95%, and doesn't seem to be playing with that same kind of joy that he had. What do you see? I mean, I see the same difference in terms of just the pop of his athleticism. You know, I think it's okay to say that. You know, players get very offended when you say,

oh, you took a step back athletically. You're not moving the same way you used to. But realistically, like, look at this guy. He looks like a different player. The flow of his game is very different. And it was always going to be that to some extent, you know, moving against bigger, stronger NBA athletes. There were going to be some compensation,

some trade-offs with that stuff. I think his game is changing. And it's okay, I think, if it's more of a below-the-rim bully ball type style. Like, he's still very explosive horizontally, like he can still go to the basket and still push people out of his way. It's just changing the scope of what that player looks like and figuring out how do we translate the way he does move well to trying to get him to be something on defense that he isn't yet. And so I don't know how we reconcile all those things, but there's no question that as a draft

prospect and as an NBA player, those are two totally different guys to me. Now the version we have now can still be a superstar. I think he's still well on his way to that, but, uh, but the complexion of what his game looks like is different. And to be fair, he's still a one-on-one. I haven't seen anybody like him since Barkley a million years ago. Um, he is still unstoppable is still unstoppable in transition.

If it's like a two-on-one, three-on-two, whatever, he can bulldoze his way to the basket as well as anybody in the league. He still seems like he's got a fast first step where his quick twitch stuff is still good. It's not like, but to me, it looks like he's carrying too much weight and I'm obviously not the first one to say that, but he just looks 20 pounds too heavy to me. And you can really feel it on the, in the, in the air stuff. He jumped

higher two years ago. Like it's a fact, go on YouTube, watch any Duke highlight thing. He just jumped higher. He was like Blake Griffin, that first full lob city quipper season where Blake Griffin was, you know, flying over people. Zion's not flying over people. He's kind of going through people more. And I think that's been what's really surprised me because he's only 20 years old. And that's what makes me wonder. I don't, I don't think he's like 80% healthy, but is it possible? He's like 93% healthy, 95% healthy? What do you, what do you think just from like a health standpoint, where is he? I mean, that could definitely be part of it. There's all, and there's always, you know, bumps and bruises we don't know about little ailments. We don't know about nagging stuff we don't know about. I think that's part of it. I think with

him still in the bigger picture sense, you're looking at him as a guy who just breaks matchups, regardless of that, you know, even if he is is a little slower even if this is kind of the speed he's going to operate at you know if you're a team that has kind of a tweener stretch four type how confident could you possibly be throwing that guy in front of zion to compete with in transition to get boxed out all the time and that's kind of the long-term future of this play here is all you know all all of the things we take for granted with modern basketball. Zion breaks that stuff. And so whatever the best version of

the Pelicans looks like, it's one that kind of works in contrast to the way the game is moving that beats it. In the rock, paper, scissors of basketball, he can beat so much of the modern style. There's three and a half overpowering guys in the league right now. LeBron, Embiid,

and Zion. And then my half is Ben Simmons on the right night if the game is really up and down. Oh, we got to get Giannis in there too. Yeah, Giannis. I forgot about Giannis. I'm sorry, Giannis. Yeah, there's four and a half.

I forgot about two-time MVP. There's four and a half. The Simmons thing, there's-time MVP. There's four and a half. The Simmons thing, there's certain nights where it just looks like he looks like LeBron. You know, where he looks like young LeBron, where he's like, I'm getting in the room every time. And you're like, wow, why doesn't he do this all the time? And then the next night you watch him and he's one for six. Yeah, so there's four guys and Zion's one of the four. And he's doing that, I feel like not at his athletic peak,

but some of the stuff that he's doing is stuff I haven't seen on a basketball court in an NBA game. The back to the basket, there's been kind of a resurgence with back to the basket stuff this year because we've kind of written it off, right? Like the stuff Embiid is doing this year is late 80s Ewing-ish. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, it helps when Embiid and Jokic both are just demolishing people on a nightly basis. Jokic, I think that LeBron will have some moments on the low post that it's just kind of funny when we think 10 years ago,

how we were so upset that he didn't do that stuff. And then the wild card to me is Giannis, who I just wonder what, every time he's on the low block or near the low Brock and gets the ball, the other team completely panics. And it would seem like maybe that's something you should do more often. You watch the end of the game yesterday, they're down one. The play they run is to get Giannis this open 20 footer against the Suns and And he missed it. Did you think it was going in?

I didn't think it was going in. He had 47 points. I still didn't think it was going in. I mean, I thought Chris Middleton was looking real open in that right corner, unfortunately. So it was a tough outcome for them. But you have to like that Giannis wants to take that shot. He wants that to be a part of his game so badly. And they kind of need it,

whether it's those face-up jumpers, long twos, whether it's the turnaround stuff in the post, they're going to need some of that eventually. Quick Pelican stuff. Just going back to them for a second. They're 11 and 13. They've, they've lost to a lot of good teams.

So if you're going to make the case, this might actually be a playoff team. They've lost to Utah twice, Phoenix, Lakers, Clippers, Miami, Indian OT.

Um, my questions to them, we talked about Zion and Ingram, whether that makes sense together. Second question, why did they trade Drew Holiday again? What was the purpose of that? I mean, especially given where they ended up, Holiday would have been a nice player to have around. I have to think some of it was in service of Holiday too

and trying to get him in a place where he could contend a little more easily. Could they have not been close to contending with Zion and Ingram and Drew Holiday? Wait, is Drew Holiday... I mean, he's a better shooter than Eric Bledsoe. Is he changing the world of what they do if you swap those two

guys out? Do you like what they got back for them knowing now that Giannis resigned with the Bucs? Because you have to take this Eric Bledsoe contract that I don't think they could, you know, he's been, he hasn't been a disaster, but I also think nobody's taken that contract at 19 million a year when he's a below average starting point guard. And then you get a bunch of picks that ultimately, like, who cares? Giannis is on the bucks. Unless he gets abducted by a UFO, you're just getting a bunch of picks that are in the 20s. And I guess this goes back to what we talked about at the top.

I don't understand the timetable with this team. What are they trying to do? Are they trying to just be frisky while also adding all these picks? Do they have a plan to compete? How does the Steven Adams thing play in it? Why is he on this team? Why are they paying him $29 million a year

and then an extension for $18 million after when the price for centers like him is $6 to $9 million? And they gave up a pick. He's definitely the confusing part of it. I think just in terms of that timeline that you're laying out, I get wanting to be competitive with Zion. I get wanting to put the right kinds of competitors around them. But what are those competitors doing right now?

You know, they strike me as a team that, for all, you know, they have a lot of good veterans in this group, but they're missing kind of like the anchor players. Like a Drew Holiday. Like a Drew Holiday. A culture setter. A guy who makes lineups make sense. And they just don't have

those players. They have great individual talent. They can string together some really interesting stuff offensively. And frankly, they can be good for two or three quarters in a game. They just have one disastrous quarter in so many different games where they're giving up 40 points. You can't be doing that.

You can't be digging yourself in that kind of hole. They trade for Adams. I hated it immediately. And just my default was like Adams, Zion and Ingram playing together in the last five minutes of the game. I don't see it. I just don't see it. And why do you want Adams in there clogging the paint for Zion?

Don't I want spacers? Why do I want somebody who can't be 25 feet from the basket? I thought that was really weird. Here, you know, people are like, well, they have so many picks. Have you actually gone through all the picks they have? Let's do it. I'm going to read them to you right now. They have their own pick in 2021.

They have a second rounders from the Cavs and the Wizards, which are pretty good. Those are the only time I'm going to mention second rounders. 2022 Pelicans. They have their own pick. They have the Lakers first round pick. Congrats. That's going to be the 28th pick.

2023, they can swap picks with the Lakers first round pick. Congrats. That's going to be the 28th pick. 2023, they can swap picks with the Lakers and they have a lottery protected Nuggets first. Well, Davis just re-signed with the Lakers. LeBron looks like he's going to Tom Brady us and play until he's 45. I'm pretty sure I'm not excited about either of those picks. 2024, they can swap picks with the Bucs. Cool.

That'll be, I guarantee the Bucs have a better record than them. And the Lakers, they have their first round pick, which they can defer to 2025 if they want. So now they're playing the long game with that pick. So let's say they defer it. 2025, the Pelicans first, Bucs first, Lakers first. So out of those, I would say maybe you get lucky with the Lakers pick unless Giannis gets

abducted by an alien. 2026, Bucs pick swap. Again, Giannis will be 32 at that point. Not sure that's going to matter. Then 27, Pels first, Bucs first. It's not exactly a mother load. No. There's no one

pick you're waiting on. There's no like prime Timberwolves pick in this package that they've collected. I think they were in a tough spot with that in terms of the timing. And I think, you know, especially coming off of the Bogdan Bogdanovich debacle in Milwaukee, what like the state

of play at that given time in that offseason and like how much do we want to bet that Giannis is going to sign this extension or not I think it was a reasonable thing to roll the dice on that especially when you know there was there was definitely a market for Drew he's a very attractive player he can play with all kinds of backcourt partners

you know they could have driven things up and push that down the line if they wanted to I just don't have a problem with taking that kind of risk at that time you know a lot of the league was asking the same questions about Giannis that they were coming to the same kind of shrugging conclusion about whether he was going to be a long term piece in Milwaukee's future or not. I thought it was a very good trade

I supported it, I signed off on it when they did it but now you look at it and it hasn't worked out I don't think the way maybe they were hoping it was going to work out. Story of the Pelican season in a lot of ways, things not working out quite the way they wanted. Well, I mean,

I guess the difference between that pick and that trade and the Davis trade is in the Davis trade, they got Ingram. They got a real guy in this new, in this trade with Milwaukee. They, they didn't really get anybody, you know, they got't really get anybody.

You know, they got Eric Bledsoe and George Hill, who they then flipped for Adams and threw one of those picks in there. But they didn't really get like a staple. And I don't know if Michael Porter Jr. was available, and he certainly doesn't make sense to the team they have, but they didn't even get anybody like that. I was looking, we'll put a bow on the Pelicans here. So I'm looking at OKC. OKC is 10 and 14. They just almost beat the Lakers twice.

They're like super duper frisky. They're kind of in the mix to, to maybe make the playing game. You know, which I'm sure is Sam Presti's worst nightmare, right? He's probably looking at this going, the one thing I didn't want to do was be in the seven to 10 range. I thought we were going to be terrible. I made all of these moves to try to be terrible and we're not. If you're him,

do you have to think about trading SGA and Dort? Let's hold that thought. We're going to take a break. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer.

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that are single-handedly preventing you from bottoming out the way you wanted wanted to SGA and door SGA. They're gonna have to pay in a couple of years. SGA single-handedly won them five games. Dort is somebody that I think would have real value on the market. Um, if they wanted to spin them because he's on a cheap contract, he's the exact three and D guy, any team wants, is there a match with the Pelicans? I'm making this up.

I have no inside info. Pelicans have all these picks. Could they just mother load, um, make the huge offer for SGA and door and just try to make that their team SGA door Ingram Zion, and actually like try to be good right away. But if you're the thunder and your house is made of draft picks,

are you really going to the store to buy more draft picks at that point? I would argue the other way. Why not just keep going? You're basically taking more chances at the roulette wheel, right? Yeah, but with picks that we just laid out aren't optimal.

If I'm the Thunder, I'm very comfortable with where we are. I think they're one of those teams that's in a place where it seems like almost no matter what kind of roster they put together, it turns out competent. It turns out to have a nice mix of players and talent. And they still have some moves down the line.

You know, when George Hill gets healthy and they can move him on potentially or Al Horford down the line, maybe there's some interest in him. I'm pretty confident. You know, if I'm the Thunder, I'm feeling pretty good about where we are. So you don't think the Celtics can get SGA

for Romeo Lankford in a couple pick swaps? Now we're getting into the long game here. OKC's draft pick barrage is so much more impressive. Oh, sure. Just this year, Houston swapped top four protected. Miami first, Denver first, Golden State top 20 protected.

2022, OKC first. They get to keep it if it's top 15. Clippers first. And then they have this Suns pick that's protected. It gets lighter, it gets lighter, and then it's finally unprotected in 25. 2023, they can swap with the Clips. Miami first, which is lottery protected three years,

unprotected in 26. Nuggets first, lottery protected for three years. Next year, OKC first, Clips first. Then there's a Houston possibility, top four protected. And then those Suns Miami picks might trickle down and be there. 2025, they get the best of OKC, Clips, and Houston. They get the best of those three. There's a possible Philly. Top six protected that year. One through four in 26, one through four in 27. And then all those other ones I mentioned. 26, they have OKC first,

Clips first. If I'm Presti, I'm insulted when they're comparing new Orleans and Griffin's pick load to my pick load. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. I have like a Ferrari. They have, you know, a Prius.

Well, I mean, this is only just like a gem in what is now a pile of gem draft picks, but the picks that got attached to the Westbrook, Chris Paul trade going from Houston to Oklahoma city. Unbelievable. I have a feeling we're going to be talking about those for a long time. I actually think that Westbrook trade now looks worse than the KG Pierce trade.

Because when Brooklyn made that trade, and the piece everybody is missing is Brooklyn every year was going to spend the most money in the league. It was inconceivable that they were ever going to be bad. Within a year, Prokhorov's like, we're not going to spend money anymore, cut costs. And the Celtics stumble into this unbelievable draft pick barrage that, you know, if Prokhorov was just spending $180 million a year in his roster, there's no way any of those picks are in the lottery. And we're remembering that completely differently.

The Westbrook thing, Presti had to know from a physical kind of where Westbrook's body was potentially two, three years down the line. He had to have been so delighted that he got all that stuff for him. Well, do you feel like that trade was about Westbrook or was it about keeping hard and happy for Houston and potentially, you know, if you're the Rockets and you're sensing things are at a certain precipice, are you making that trade basically just to try to take your last gasp at keeping your franchise

guy? I think that was the for Tita and his son saying we've got to keep James happy. I've known Darryl a long time. We've never talked about that Westbrook trade, so I just want to say that. We've never had like James happy. I've known Darryl a long time. We've never talked about that Westbrook trade, so I just want to say that.

We've never had a real talk since he left about, hey, what the fuck happened with that Westbrook trade? That trade goes against every conversation I've ever had with him about basketball. He never wanted to trade future picks like that. And just Westbrook's game was just not a game that he would have been enchanted with in any other conversation I ever had. So yeah, you're right. OKC was in the right place,

right time, twice. You have this crazy Houston thing. And then you have this Paul George situation that had like a 12 hour window, right? Yeah. Where either move it or not. So you think, you think they keep everybody and they don't try to bottom out. Okay, see. I don't know about keep everybody. They certainly could make some moves to shift around some veterans or shift around some pieces.

But in terms of the core guys, in terms of the SGA's of that roster, I don't see any huge move like that. I feel like Dort's a core guy. He's very good. Dort is exactly who you'd want once we get to the final four of a playoff series let's talk about the Suns quickly

we both really love the Suns you tell me what you love about the Suns I love that they're at this sweet spot in terms of a team that has its shit together but also has all these young guys doing new and exciting things you have Chris Paul directing traffic but you have Mikael Bridges being adventurous

on drives for really the first time in his NBA career. And especially with how underwhelming their starting lineup had been to start this season by the numbers, like they just hadn't been performing the way you would expect. They feel like sleeping giants sounds strong, but what's slightly smaller than a giant? Sleeping Colossus. This is a team that if it made a couple of either a roster move or now we've seen they've shuffled their starting line.

Frank Kaminski, fresh off the waiver wire at the start of the season, is now a starter. Or Cam Johnson. He plays crunch time for them sometimes. He's been huge. As they've made those kinds of moves and they're getting the rotation to shake out a little bit, this feels like a really good team. Totally agree.

I said a few weeks ago, I talked about them on a pod and I was saying one of the things that jumped out, and it was early, you don't want to overreact, but the thing that jumped out to me was that they had a specific pace to them that was unique to them. You could see it in all the pace and the, the, you

know, shots per a hundred possessions, all those stats. And in the last five minutes, they just seem like they have an advantage and you could see it again last night with Milwaukee. They were really good last five minutes of the fourth quarter team. I think the revelation for me has been Cam Johnson bridges. I think people felt really highly of when he came out of the draft. And I know when Philly traded him, the Philly fans were bummed because it was like that's the perfect 3 and D athlete that everybody's looking for these days. I'm not surprised that he's good.

The Cam Johnson thing, I thought that was a terrible pick. Last year, he just seemed like a gunner. This year, there's an all-aroundness to his game, right? Sometimes he'll grab a rebound and he'll run the fast break himself and have a three-on-two. He's athletic. I think he's good at— him and Bridges are both pretty good at switching on D.

That was not the book on Cam Johnson coming out of college, that this was going to be a guy who could defend people. And he's clutch. Both of those guys, at the end of these games, they'll have wide open shots. Everyone will gravitate to Chris Paul or Booker. And those guys will be open and they'll actually make the shots.

I think their crunch time five is really good. And it's interesting to me that Crowder's not in it. Like it's definitely, it's Bridges, it's Cam Johnson, it's Chris Paul, it's Aiton, Booker. And those five guys play really well together, which goes back to what we're talking about the Pelicans, where it's like these five guys, what's your lineup?

Who plays well together? The opposite is the Suns. They have five guys that play really well together. They're one of those teams who, especially with young teams, I try to think about like, what gives this team stability and what gives them upside? And shout out to Monte Williams for this

because I think he's part of the stability of that team. He gives them pretty set structure. They play pretty conservative on defense. Chris Paul is certainly a part of that, getting guys in the right places. And then they have Booker and Aiden and Bridges and Johnson who are these upside swings. And Chris Paul and Crunch Time,

one of the best upside swings we have. There's just a good blend here. And, and the cam Johnson piece of that I really like. And I think he's probably the closest thing they have to an answer at the four longterm, whether it's starting or finishing, like they're doing a thing right now where Frank Kaminsky starting based on

matchups, you know, if they have like more of a traditional four type Kaminsky will be in there. But I think cam Johnson is that guy. Ultimately. Um, I just don't think there's enough matchups that are really going to punish

him. And I like that dynamic you described just in terms of being a slinkier, longer athlete who can get them into some better spaces. Yeah. And if you talked about, are they a move away from making, making the West finals, you know,

Utah, which we can talk about another time. Every year, there's the team that looks awesome for the first two thirds of the season. And it's usually a team that has a real history playing together and just comes out of the gate. They look awesome. And then at some point we start to be like, Oh, they could win the title. And then they usually they peak first two thirds. I don't know if that's going to happen to Utah or not, but they would be the leading candidate for that. Lakers pencil them in. Clips, the way Kawhi's playing, I think have to be taken seriously still as the number two.

But I think after that, I think the Suns are in the four spot. And the question for me is how do they leapfrog Utah and the Clippers? Because you don't want to be in the four spot. And the question for me is, how do they leapfrog Utah and the Clippers? Because you don't want to be in the four spot and have to play the Lakers in round two. You need to get to three. Right?

I don't see a path for them now unless they make a trade. And the bummer is, had they, I keep saying this, but had they drafted Halliburton, I feel like that would have been enough. A lot of teams singing that tune these days.

Oh, my God. Well, it's not like we all didn't fucking know he was going to be good. I mean, Jesus. It's six months to study the draft. But other than that, the Kaminsky spot would be the spot you'd have to upgrade, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's the easy one to dial up in terms of need. How they

get there is a different question. I think one of the good things about them is with those other four guys, you could go with a lot of different types of players. You know, DeAndre Ayton is flexible enough as a big that you could pair him with all kinds of different guys. And he's an interesting counterpoint to Zion as, you know, Ayton came into the NBA with huge red flags about his defense and has really made himself into a pretty competent team defender, a guy who's reliable on that side of the ball. That's the leap that Zion needs to make. As we do all these kind of point-counterpoint with the Suns and Pelicans,

it is worth noting, these two teams played each other like a week ago, and the Pelicans worked over the Suns on one of their good nights. So there's a little more variance with New Orleans, but I like the stability of where Phoenix is. Yeah, The Aiton stuff started at last year when he came back from the suspension. Cause I, I wasn't sure if he was a bus, but I wasn't a fan and you could see something different after the suspension where it was like, Oh, this, this guy actually makes sense with how we play basketball. Now I like watching him. Yeah. I really like, there's six guys on this Suns team that I really enjoy watching.

And I think for him, he's, you know, he's averaging 12 and a half rebounds a game this year. He's, I think has pretty good hands. I think he plays hard. I think he gives a shit. He's tough. You know, he's,

I think he, he's not Luka Doncic, but I don't think we'll be talking about how they took eight and first, like the, the way we talk about seeing Bowie or something like that. He's a good player. Um, the, the X factor to me is Sarge, who I've always liked. I don't know if he makes sense in this current NBA. He's only played seven games. He'll be back at some point. What does he... If you put him in that Kaminsky thing with what we thought Sarich was a couple years ago, maybe you don't need to make a trade. Yeah, I think if he could be that player,

but I think the ship has kind of sailed. I mean, if anything, he and Kaminsky both work with that dynamite second unit they've had. And really, I think we probably need to give the Suns more credit for bargain hunting, for really pulling up guys out of the scrap heap, whether that's campaign, whether that's Dario Saric after he was left for dead.

They've really put together one of the best benches in the NBA without a lot of resources to do it. And so Saric to me, whether it's Kaminsky or Saric, there's a playmaking big in that kind of spot off the bench that I think makes a lot of sense. But I don't know as a starter and I was, I was a Dario apologist for a long time, but even, even I can't quite get there in terms of him being a finishing piece for them. Yeah. He definitely got a lot of fumes from the

process. People just wanted those process guys to be really good. And I think the thing I liked about him is I did feel like he, in the last five minutes, like was not afraid of the moment and would make a couple shots and things like that. I just, for the team that they have, I'm not sure he's going to be there. And then Crowder's the other one who's playing 27 a game,

but I think in the playoffs as a guy you're going to need. So I guess the thing for me would be the Kaminsky Sarge spot, that's a really easy spot to upgrade as you get closer to the trade deadline. There's going to be, those dudes are available. Those Patrick Patterson, but a little bit better types.

But then the other thing, it would be campaign. Is that our third guard in the playoffs? I mean, he was in the bubble at least. I mean, like MVP of the bubble campaign, basically. Alright, we both like the Suns. So, they're 15 and 9 right now.

They probably need some help from an injury standpoint with one of the two teams ahead of them. It seems like Utah, at least regular season-wise, is going to be there. They're excellent. I mean, I'm kind of sold on them as a contender, to be honest with you. So, you are sold. You're excellent. I mean, I'm kind of sold on them as a contender, to be honest with you.

So you are sold. You're buying. I mean, to the extent that anyone is really capable of competing with the Lakers right now, like the matchup stuff with LeBron and AD is always going to be tough for everyone out there. But every other box, they check. So if you're making the case for it,

Conley's just way better this year. Yep. And the Jordan Clarkson thing is kind of out of nowhere. Where he's like, this heat check guy who's feast or famine, but now he's like a pretty consistent heat check guy. He's like a reformed heat check guy. He went to some kind of camp

where they got rid of his heat check brainwashing. And now he's like playing in the flow of a real NBA offense. I think it really works for him. Last thing before we go, you wrote about Miami and you cautioned everybody not to give up on Miami. Right now they're 10-14. They're in the 11th spot. We know

they're going to be in the playoffs. But you're 10-14 with a 72 game season and you have one more Jimmy Butler, uh, spring labrum or, you know, one of those things where they lose another 10 games. Then all of a sudden it starts to get, uh, get a little uptight, but you feel like this is their team the rest of the way, or you think they would tinker with it? I feel like they, they feel pretty good about what they have in part because they haven't

seen it in total. You know, like we haven't seen Avery Bradley as a part of this team yet, really. Some of these other components that they haven't been able to work in because of injuries and COVID absences and all that. But, I mean, you're spot on about Jimmy Butler. Like if he misses any significant time, they're in a bad way. We've seen that. And some of that is surprising in terms of you would think a Bam out of bio driven offense with a bunch of shooting could work, but defenses have keyed in on those shooters so hard. They've taken away

so much of that stuff. And even, even though Bam is shooting mid range jumpers now, he's looking great. He's scoring at the best rate in his career. Those lineups have been a real problem. But I think the reassuring point is when Butler's on the floor, they win, they win those minutes, they win games. When Butler and Bam are on the floor together, they're even better. Like all those kinds of big picture signs are still there. It's just, turns out you need your all NBA players to be good. How much of effect do you think the awful uniforms have had on their season? It's gotta be at least 20%, right? Those are the worst uniforms anyone's come up with. There's been some really bad uniforms this year. The Phoenixes last night were awful too. I don't know what we're doing. Which Miami ones do you not like? The pink and blue

combo? Yeah. Even my family, they were on last night or two nights ago. I can't remember. My wife was walking by the TV and she's like, what is that? Why are they doing that? She was angry. Why? Do they think people will buy those? What is that? It's a little too take a good idea and make it airbrushed for me in terms of that particular look. But the rest of the Vice stuff has been so clean. I almost can't blame them for trying to push it one step further.

We're like... I guess we're at the one-third mark, maybe a little past. If you had to pick your East Finals right now, what would it be? I think Buck Sixers. I want to believe in the Nets, certainly on the right nights. They're totally overwhelming.

But I think Embiid is getting to the Sixers to that point where they have to be taken really seriously. I trust their defense pretty much. If you're looking at who has the strongest offense or defense in the East, what can you really hang your hat on? What can you build around? I trust Philly's defense

about as much as anything out there. I'm on the same way. To me, the Lakers game was the moment for me. Huge. They went toe-to-toe with those dudes. They had just as much size, just as much power, and just as much of an ability to score

at the end of games. And that one, and the Simmons' ability to guard LeBron, I thought was really eye-opening. He didn't stop him, but we've seen, um, two guys kind of go toe to toe with LeBron, a three actually. Cause Lou Dort, I'd say Lou Dort has to be in this conversation. The stunning one to me is Patrick Williams, who I think is a gem. I really liked this draft. I've talked about it in previous podcasts. I'm I'm pro 2020 draft. I like these guys. I think is a gem. I really like this draft. I've talked about it in previous podcasts. I'm pro 2020 draft.

I like these guys. I think Patrick Williams is really good. Well, the Bulls are going full, high degree of difficulty every night for Patrick Williams. He's guarding some of the toughest matchups out there. And I think that I'm a little, I'm kind of waiting to see on his offense in terms of some of the, you know, how that's going to shake out,

whether he's really going to be a great shot creator in time. But defensively, he's up to those challenges, which is exactly what you would want a player as young as him to be. Yeah, I kind of like watching the Bulls. It's a team, they're like the Pelicans. They're probably the Eastern Conference Pelicans. They don't totally make sense,

but there's enough going on. I like it. And you have LA versus LA in the West, if you had to bet on it right now, or would you put Utah? I think the default is still LA versus LA, but Utah, I think is probably closer than a lot of people think to, to crack in that door. The X factor with this stuff would be if we have fans for May, June,

and like if Utah is a two seed, but they actually have home games in Utah with fans. That's true. That's a real thing. You know, whereas like the Clippers who decided to roll over their money for the season ticket holders next year without giving us any input or bonuses or anything.

Don't worry, we're not bitter about that, Steve Ballmer. But I'll be really curious to see the atmosphere of these teams in these half-filled arenas where Utah could have a real advantage at a Clippers home game against the Lakers. It'll be mostly Lakers fans in a half-full arena. That'll be the weirdest vibe ever. So I guess we'll see. Rob Mahoney, pleasure as always.

Check out his piece on the Miami Heat which you can read on theringer.com thanks for coming on thanks Bill at Pennzoil we have one job pioneering a motor oil

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how your wheels hug the curves, and how with the Pennzoil Platinum up to 15-year, 800,000-kilometer protection guarantee, your adventures will be many. Pennzoil. Long may we drive. Available at your local Canadian tire. Enrollment required. Keep your receipts. Other conditions apply. See Pennzoil.ca slash warranty for full details. All right, my friend Nathan Hubbard is here. You can hear him on Fairway Rolling with Joe House. Pretty frequently, our golf podcast, there's a big golf season heating up. We're going to talk about this in one second.

I have three topics for you. We're going to rip through them. First of all, Clubhouse, social media app. You used to work for Twitter. It's starting to get some momentum, I would say, the last four or five weeks. There was an Elon Musk conversation that became a big deal. They're trying to do audio podcasts on demand crossed with like those weird panels that they have at like Tech Summit and NBA All-Star Weekend. You just kind of jump around, you go to different rooms. Is this going to work? What do you like

about it? Well, yeah, it's basically live unedited podcasting with a social layer. And you can invite your followers and anyone can join like i mean twitter's already copying it they're already testing out a thing called spaces you can you can see it occasionally popping up in your feed zuck at facebook true to form showed up last friday night and they are about to release a copy of it uh and you know that the he's the best cave on's the head of product at Twitter and he was the co-founder of Periscope. And if you remember how Periscope came to be, they saw what Meerkat was doing in live video streaming and they cloned it and then Twitter bought it. So Kavon's pretty familiar with

the move of copying it. I think the question is just whether this is a standalone product in a company or if it's just a feature of a larger product. And there's this bifurcation of conversation that's happening. You talked about Elon Musk. Elon Musk talking to the Robin Hood guy was fascinating. But then there's also a bunch of scammy, fraudish, self-help life coaching shit. And those rooms feel like a NXIVM conference at a Holiday Inn in Schenectady, New York or something. So I think live audio is easier to do than video.

It allows for more spontaneity. People are kind of afraid to go live on video. But this whole thing does feel kind of like the last gasp of the tech hoi polloi of the 2010s. They're trying to show that they are still cool enough and they can create enough FOMO to drag one more social network into unicorn status. And I'm just not sure how it's going to go here, especially because there's so much scam and potential for abuse in these rooms, coupled with just a full-on frontal attack from Twitter and Facebook? Well, you would think the pay content version of this would be where it ends up, right? Where you have Elon Musk and he's like, for $5, you can hear my conversation with so-and-so. And it becomes way more exclusive. A little like what we always talked about with Twitter, end up doing that. Where it is now, especially as more and more people join, it's just going to be this mess of people babbling in different rooms and the blowhard

potential is off the chart. I kind of go there and I, I, I'm going there and I'm just hate checking it out over checking it out. Like I'm annoyed by all the rooms. It was like, Oh, look at these two. And of course I've seen you in a couple of them because you've never turned down a chance to hop in a room and shoot the shit with five people. But ultimately, how do they make money with this? How is it essential? How is live audio that you can't just jump in and out of? You have actually have to listen to and digest, and then they want to own the audio. Um, it seems like whatever, whatever whatever works long term is going to look different than what this looks like. It starts to smell a lot like podcasting, but we'll see. I mean, I think the bigger, really interesting picture here is the elites in Silicon Valley trying to pull one

more company across the line, while in parallel, trying to go around some of the press that they've been frustrated by in terms of the coverage that they individually and the companies that they've invested in and created has been getting. And so a lot of the people in these rooms are trying to weave a narrative about technology directly to individuals without press. I mean, there's a lot of press that's been blocked from getting on to Clubhouse. So we'll see where this goes. It would not surprise me if between Kayvon and Twitter and Zuck at Facebook, if they just eat this thing alive. One thing that I thought, if they had to do this over again, I actually think they should

have made it more exclusive. It should have almost been like a Soho house kind of model where they invite you. You've been, you've been deemed, uh, either famous enough or interesting enough or whatever to join and nobody else can get in and build up demand. Because I think what's going to happen is it's going to get overrun, but there's a world where, you know, like those, those rich guy conferences they have, like, what's that one? The Allen, Allen and company one conference. Sure. Yeah. They, they have all the billionaires and then they invite like some randoms and they all come to Valley. Yeah. Yeah. They have a whole, they do the whole panel thing and you just hop on different panels and people act like blowhards. That model, I wonder if that would work as a social media app and then people could pay to witness a certain thing without actually belonging to the app. Does that make sense? description model for content. And it's kind of what a lot of conferences like Patty Cosgrave's Web Summit did a great job this year of taking what is basically the biggest tech conference

in the world online. People paid for that stuff. I'm just not sure that as a standalone app, the spontaneity of it is what makes it fun. These feel like you are a fly on the wall for these dinner party conversations. They're not edited. There's not a lot of discretion. I think as soon as you start to inject some formality into it, people are going to start to clam up and they're probably more likely to revert to the networks that they know where they have more control over their messages across Instagram and Twitter in particular. Right now, it's a place for people who are trying to network and do their whole thing and be a little blowhardy and a place for people who are trying to network and do their whole thing and be a little blowhardy and a place for people like us who've had two glasses of wine and we're like

hey you want to go on clubhouse and argue about fleetwood back and we just start a room it's like hey this is cool and then one of us says something dumb and then we regret it two hours later yeah it's the beauty of a network in its early days is there's, there's a bunch of cool shit, but then there's also a bunch of like scammers and people taking advantage of other people. There's just, the last thing we need is another platform to spread bullshit and misinformation. And so I think it's going to be really highly incumbent on the club house, uh, product folks to think about how they're going to manage abuse and misinformation. It's a super hard problem. It's one that Twitter, you know, and Instagram are having to deal with on a daily basis now. I don't know that Clubhouse has figured out how do you edit and fact check

within a, you know, within a live audio environment. Well, I'm rooting for it. I, I, I think the more the merrier, if it's a good thing, I think it's got some flaws, but, um, you and I are just going to have to go on and what, what are the dumbest rooms we could have? I mean, Fleetwood Mac is a dumb room. Fleetwood Mac, the Fleetwood Mac rumors room, and it's an hour long conversation about Fleetwood Mac. Well, let's do it. We'll do it this weekend. We'll start with like 1,500 people in there and by the end it'll just be you and me and maybe house, drunk house.

You, me, and Stevie Nicks' niece. It's the three of us talking about Fleetwood Mac. I'm down. I'm ready for it. Speaking of house, PGA Tour is headed to Pebble Beach, one of the best TV stops from a TV telecast standpoint. Your brother, Mark Hubbard,

aka Homeless Hubs, he is 80 to 1 on FanDuel right now. Is he? To win Pebble Beach. Does that seem high or low? Those seem like the lowest odds he's ever had to win a golf tournament. And the reason, first of all, he's two under and tied for 20th right now. But the reason is there's nobody playing this week. Everybody dropped out. This is literally the lowest strength of field event that pebble beach has ever had. And it's because a bunch of the guys played Phoenix last week.

Half of the big names went over to Saudi Arabia for just a money grab event that DJ won. Nobody paid attention. Nobody cared. And then all those guys thought they were going to come back and play Pebble. Pebble really now is a warm up for the Genesis here at Riviera in Los Angeles next week. But with the whole pro-am canceled and the weather just looks awful, it's going to rain three of the four days of the tournament. A bunch of the big guys bailed. And so the story this week is, can Jordan Spieth continue the magic from last week?

And I got news for you, Bill. He's three under three six. It looks good right now. We're taping this. It is 1145 PT speed. He looked, he had the magic from last week, except for when he had two balls in the water and the back nine, when he was trying to win the tournament. Other than that, it was magical. It was classic Jordan the last day. Let's be honest. There is also good news though. And that is that Brooks Koepka

involved, you know, involuntarily winning that golf tournament last weekend because everybody around him choked or just fell back means that Patrick Reed no longer has a guaranteed spot on the American Ryder Cup team. Is there a chance that he gets left off this year? Just for team chemistry, like Isaiah Thomas style? Exactly. He's going to get completely frozen out. Nobody likes him. His wife's burner Twitter account got outed last week.

And she just shit talks Justin Thomas and a bunch of the other players. And there's a real chance that this guy's going to be so toxic in the locker room that you can't have him around. I mean, the European players right now are so close. They all love each other. They do a bunch of stuff together. On paper, They're nowhere near as talented as the U S team, but man, if Jordan Spieth is going to make a little run here and be in the tournament, there's all kinds of drama between him and Patrick Reed. Now with the, with the burner account and

all the slacking that a bunch of the other players have taken, you may, you may have to drop him off. The problem is Patrick Reed, when his back is against the wall, seems to always deliver, so he may sneak his way into the automatic top six. I'm rooting against it. Well, our guy Brooks, I think he's definitely injured last year. Weird year. Didn't seem 100%

healthy, and he looked awesome on Sunday, especially when he realized he could steal the tournament. And that guy Han he was playing with realized he could steal the tournament. And that guy, Han, he was playing with, he just completely broke him. I haven't seen Han die like that since Fast and Furious, what was that?

Six? The other Han died in that one. My other favorite part was when the guy made the Gangnam style reference, the announcer. But then I think they belatedly realized, wait, people are going to think that's racist. Can you find the clip of when he did the Gangnam Style dance?

And then 10 minutes later, inexplicably, they're showing that clip, I think, so the guy could be covered, the announcer who made the joke, being like, see, he did that in a tournament previously. I enjoyed it. It was a really satisfying last nine rounds. So between Koepka, Spieth falling apart, Hahn, and, you know, I'm a Brooks guy.

That's my guy. Usually that tournament is the perfect lead into the Super Bowl because it's got 250 plus thousand people there. The most attended U.S. sporting event. And certainly the golf event. And it's crazy. This year, there was almost nobody there,

but it kind of let the field and the course itself shine through. There's a great par five that comes up 15. Then you've got 16 of par three in the stadium, a drivable par four, which is where both Zander and Jordan just swallowed their drivers and put it in the water. And then a birdieable 18th.

And if you play those holes well, there's guys who come out of there four or five under. So it's a great Super Bowl lead. And there was no chance Jordan was going to win that tournament. Like you knew he was going to finish plus one or whatever, because even after the round on Saturday, when he had 10 birdies shot, that's the most birdies he's ever had in a PGA Tour round.

He was talking about how it's not really about the results. And it's such an endearing moment. He is our biggest head case of a superstar. And it's just great to have him back in the mix. It reminded me a little of Jared Goff on the Rams when he can be good sometimes. Then other times, you know,

it's about to fall apart and nobody can stop it. And McVay would be on the sidelines with that look on his face. Like, I can't believe this fucking guy's falling apart right now. I mean, if Jared Goff had three Super Bowl trophies, it would be that way. But that's my point. The fact that

it reminded me of Jared Goff is not a good sign for how it's turned out for Speed the last couple of years. No, but listen, I never left Jordan Spieth Island while everybody went away. I built a hotel and a tiki bar. I've been waiting for everybody to come back. So I'm ready to profit as the masses come back for Jordan. Well, he's still in his mid twenties, right? Isn't he

like 27? He's 27. And there just, there just isn't anybody who lights up the outside world of golf the way Jordan Spieth does. I mean, house's mother-in-law was texting him on Saturday, like, Oh my God, Jordan Spieth. Like people just come out of the woodwork for this kid. There's something about, you know, he's a humble guy. He's got a great family story. And the brittleness and fragility of his mind makes him just that much more endearing.

And it's important to have him in the game. Last thing, we're on a very good pace right now. We're going to try to keep this to a 20-minute segment. So I'm very happy so far. Music trends. Big news today, Taylor Swift, it seems like she's re-releasing all of her own albums that she's just re-recording,

which I'm pretty sure nobody's done that before, right? Has anybody just re-recorded? Even I don't think Prince thought of this. Some people have tried. The connection that you can make is her manager is actually Def Leppard's drummer's brother, the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard's brother manages Taylor Swift. And it was Def Leppard who got in a fight with their label 10, 15 years ago and tried this and re-recorded some songs. In Taylor's case,

the last five years of her career have been as much about sort of using her platform to push back against the industry and also sort of shine a light forward for the evolution of artist into entrepreneur. And in her case, she believes she should own her master recordings. And it's why she left her last

label. Well-documented that Scooter Braun bought her masters. That started this process. She said, fuck that. I'm not letting anybody else profit off my stuff. I'm going to re-record this. Scooter sold it to another private equity firm who wanted to work with Taylor, but she was so knee-deep in re-recording this stuff and having so much fun that she didn't do it. The coolest thing about today is she posted the track list and, and it's going to come out April 9th. The single comes out tonight, um, which is love story. The, the crossover hit really was her first crossover hit this album, fearless one album of the year. But the coolest thing is there are

going to be two versions of Fearless on Spotify in two months. And she's so smart. What she's done in the song titles now is she's given the name of the song Love Story and in parentheses, it says Taylor's version. So every fan who and we know that most people don't listen to albums all the way through, they search for songs. Every fan who searches for a song is now going to see Love Story and then Love Story in parentheses Taylor's version. And it's her way of making sure

that that fan has to vote with their finger every time. Oh, I'm going to listen. You know, I want to support Taylor because every time they spin that song, Taylor gets paid instead of Scooter Braun. Should I have done that with my podcast after I left ESPN in 2015? Just called it the BS Report parentheses Bill's version? Yes, especially House Eats Three, in which I have a very important stake. House Eats Three, House's version.

Yeah, Vomit's version. But yes, it's a very interesting way for her to go reclaim her rights and and you know it comes at this amazing time for artists like the bruce springsteen superbowl jeep commercial was like the the the waving of the flag between the the tension between american artists and corporate america like if bruce is willing to do a commercial you know know, it's over. And a lot of this is because artists haven't gotten paid in over a year because they're not touring. And 80 to 90% of their income comes from the road. You now have all these artists

who are being forced to think about new ways to sort of monetize their brand, right? And Taylor is sort of leading the way here. This will be her fourth album in under a year and so i i think you know she put out she put out uh folklore she put out evermore she put out uh a live version of folklore the long pond sessions and now she's releasing fearless i think this historical album cycle where you and i would wait around for our favorite bands to tour in three years and put

out a new album, you know, once every two, three, four years, that's been blown up. And that's the TikTokification of the music business. You've got to stay current. You've got to stay relevant. You have to keep releasing content. And Taylor's showing everybody how to do that, not just in terms of the time that she and the frequency with which she's releasing, but also now demanding that you own your content going forward. I remember Rattle & Hum in 1991, the lead up to that. I think it had been three years since the previous album. Not Rattle & Hum, Octung Baby.

Yeah. It was, Rattle & Hum was 88, Octung Baby was 91. For the people listening, I'm talking about U2, a band that nobody under 35 no longer cares about. But for everyone in college, it was the biggest release of 1991. And I think it ended up selling like 20 million albums. But the lead up to that every, you know,

oh, it's next month, it's coming. It was almost like a movie. Yeah. And now it's the opposite thing. They just drop the albums overnight and you have no idea it's coming and boom, there it is. Evermore, Taylor Swift released it on a Thursday night. She had finished or written a song on it a week earlier. So that's the sort of massive condensing of release cycles. I mean, there's a girl, Olivia Rodrigo,

who I'm sure both of our daughters are super into. Oh, my daughter is really into, what's that, driver's license? Driver's license. Love Triangle. Older guy. Yeah. Dumped it's license. The whole thing. Love Triangle. Older guy. Yeah. Dumped it. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And she posted that song to her Instagram, just her playing a piano last summer. And there was some buzz about it and people were like, you should record it. Well, she released it January 8th, I think. And it was immediately Spotify's most streamed song in a day and in a week. And this girl's 17 years old. So that whole cycle of artist development and build up and A&R and guys cruising small clubs looking for the next bit of talent, throw that out the window. It's now becoming hugely algorithmic. You've got to be monitoring

in real time what's happening on TikTok, what's happening on these other platforms to try to find those artists who are popping and then grab them. And they can be stars in a matter of days. It's pretty bizarre. And it's almost like the new version of American Idol. Because my daughter, who's always playing at the piano and messing around with different songs and stuff, what, 10 years ago, what would have been her dream to get found

if she wanted to be a singer? It would have been like, I'd either go on American Idol or I'm in a band in college and somebody sees it, something like that. Now you could literally put something on Instagram

and overnight, your whole life is different. And that's something that goes back to the late two thousands and initially MySpace. And then it goes through to all the changes in this decade, but now it feels more overnight than it ever has before. I think. Well, and there's a couple manifestations of it. Like there's 3 million artists on Spotify now, which is a lot of junk, right? So the question is, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? What Spotify did amazingly well in the music industry in general has done. This is, I love the Spotify plugs, by the way. I really appreciate them.

You got it. No, it's really nice. Thank you. Compared to, compared to the video industry where like you have to have at least five, maybe six apps and subscriptions now to see all the content that you want to see. It's all in one place in the music industry. And so that's helping us achieve that vision that Chris Anderson's Wired article of a long time ago about the long tail. It is coming to fruition in the music business. we're going to have fewer massive stars, but a lot more nichification of artists who have smaller but really sustainable and highly passionate audiences and fan bases. As people have so much content to shift through, they're

really going to be able to find the stuff that works specifically for them. But that's why, you know, Taylor may be the last amazing, huge rock star, um, in this capacity because there's just so much content out there and, and technology is doing such a good job of fingerprinting what you like and helping you discover and sift through 3 million artists to find the stuff that's just for you. When do concerts come back? Man, I was with a... Because they canceled a lot of them, right? Yeah. I was with a very popular artist this week who told me that he does not believe it's happening until 2022, that there will be a few things in 21. But between the insurance

and not wanting to be the first ones back that a lot of people are starting to push their stuff and not into 2022, which is a little ironic because I think there's hope that, you know, you can have some outside concerts this summer. And I think we're going to see some of that, but there is some real hesitation in the artist community to jump out too fast and be the one who hosted a super spreader event. I think 2022. I've already heard about things this summer going by the wayside. It's setting up Coachella, which I'm too old for. And deep down, you're probably too old for it too. Coachella being the greatest music festival of the last however many years, when, when people can actually go to something again, what's going to be the moment that is like the holy shit. We're all out here. We're not afraid

of a pandemic and we're watching live music again. It'll be Coachella or it'll be something that's, uh, in the fall of two, one, if it takes that long, but it'll be something that's in the fall if it takes that long. But it'll be something, right? There'll be some sort of awesome music moment. Yeah, I think we're going to have a jailbreak here. We just, even before the pandemic, right, we were being drawn into these, staring at a screen all day, these sort of solitary screen-based interactions. But we're like chemically wired to be together. And ironically, you know, we talked about golf. It's golf that started bringing people back. Football accelerated that through the Super Bowl and the championship games.

And so I do think that we're going to have that moment late summer, maybe one of the big festivals in the U.S. decides to hold itself in the fall where, you know, there is just this release and a jailbreak of people who like like they want to like they want to, you know, national title or something and flood the streets. And I think that will unlock the energy that will bring the artists back out on the road. But I can tell you, there's artists who haven't been paid in two years who are sitting there going, you know, what am I going to do here? When can I go out? They just don't want to go out and do it in the wrong way. And so I think that the big companies in the industry and the artists are working together on that. But we're going to see concerts soon, but probably

not as soon as we would hope for. All right. You can hear Nathan Hubbard and I in our clubhouse room this weekend, breaking down Octung Baby 30 years later. Or some equally terrible idea. Why Stevie Nicks eats at BOA. It's going to be a great show. Now we have to do a clubhouse room. I feel like we joked about it. We're just going to have to pop up there.

Nathan, good to see you. We'll hear you on Fairway Rolling next week. Thanks, Bill. Take back your free time with PC Express Online Grocery Delivery and Pickup. Score in-store promos, PC Optimum points, and more free time. And still get groceries. Shop now at

pcexpress.ca Alright, Seth Wickersham is here. Longtime ESPN writer, specializing in big picture NFL pieces. He's written a lot of Patriot stuff over the years. Some stuff that riled me up a couple of times, but it turned out you were right every step of the way. Tom Brady goes to Tampa Bay, wins the Super Bowl in his first year, and it has launched an existential crisis in new England. Everybody has picked camps of this was Belichick's fault.

This was Brady's fault. Why didn't he just stay here? As you watch this whole thing unfold, what's your biggest takeaway, man? So that's, that's a big question. And I've been thinking about it all year.

Obviously I'm working on this book. It's better to be feared. It's about the Be Feared. It's about the New England Patriots dynasty. And I think that what Tom Brady and Bill Belichick did this past year was kind of reflective of each other in the way that when a married couple who gets divorced, who they end up dating, ends up being kind of reflective of what their marriage was. You had Brady, he goes to Tampa Bay, where Bruce Arians does not care

if he misses practice on Wednesday, Thursday. He just wants him ready for Sunday. You know, Brady's out on the boat the night before games, or the day before games, not the night. But, you know, he's sort of living this completely different lifestyle than the one that he was used to for 20 years. And then you have Belichick,

who this past year was really revealing in very subtle ways, in ways that I think that he has shied away from, from the 20 years of running the Patriots. I think it started in the spring when he said, every decision we made, everything we did was with the idea of fitting and accommodating Tom Brady. And I thought that was a very incredibly blunt statement that he made, especially because Brady's people would probably disagree with that. Brady's people say the opposite, that they actually made the moves despite the fact that they had Tom Brady. Exactly.

And so he goes out and he says this with, you know, every decision we made was with the design of Tom Brady. And then in the fall, midseason, the Patriots are struggling. He's asked by Charlie Weiss on Sirius XM, you know, what's going on with the team? And he says, well, you know, we sold out the past couple of years. Couldn't believe when would Bill Belichick say something like that in the middle of a season? We sold out. So I thought Well, his point was basically they spent so much money and kind of, with the way the NFL works, you kind of push things ahead and at some point the dinner bill is coming for the giant restaurant tab and this

was the season. Exactly, but I still thought that even the way that Belichick operates, you know, he's someone who just one thing that Belichick and Brady had in common was this steadfast belief in the next week and then the next play. I mean, those guys are opportunists. And for Bill Belichick in the middle of the season to admit that they sold out, kind of give himself a little bit of leeway. He was accused of making excuses. He said he wasn't making excuses, but he kind of was trying to tell the fan base, look, we've got to pay some bills, like you said, and this is going to be the year that we do it. Right. And the way the NFL works, usually it's a three-year run, a four-year run, and then you get slaughtered by the cap for a year. I think where his argument falls apart, and I've gone back and forth because I really don't think Brady was very good last year.

And I thought he had one foot out the door and, um, I just think he was so frustrated, but now the frustrations make more sense when you see him on a team like this Tampa team with so much talent. I think where Belichick's argument falls apart is if he had had some good drafts and he had been able to find talent the way that he found talent in the first part of the two thousands in the first part of the 2010s, then it's a different story. And they just whiffed.

They whiffed on draft picks. They, they missed out on, you know, high impact dudes over and over again. And in the NFL, you're as good as your last three or four drafts. Look at Tampa, Devin white, you know, he was the fifth pick of the draft the year before that's they took their huge nose tackle and they had, they just had guys, the Godwin pick. They had blue chippers that they found in the draft. And I think that's what Belichick kind of stopped doing in the mid 2010s. And he's, he's older now, you know, I think as he's about to hit 70. I don't know if it's realistic to

run everything the way he did when he was in his 50s. Yeah, it's really amazing because Bill has always been, I think, a pretty good draft evaluator over his years, but he's always been exceptional in free agency. I mean, that 2001 team was really a team that he put together with spare parts and discarded people like Mike Vrabel, Larry Izzo. But yeah, I mean, they had to overpay these veterans and they got slow fast because they weren't drafting as well. And I find it fascinating if we can just take a big picture look at Bill's career right now. There was a moment in the middle of or towards the end of the football life that the NFL network did on him. Where they lost to the Ravens in the playoffs.

He's driving to work the next day in his silver Volvo. And this is, I think after the 2009 season. And he says, you know, you're not going to have to, he's asked how long he's going to keep doing this. And he says,

well, you know, I'm not going to be Marv Levy out there coaching in my seventies. You're not going to have to worry about that. Well, Bill Belichick is going to be 69 in April. He has said for years privately that he did not want to turn over a bad team to his successor. I think he has way too much pride to do that. Yeah. I mean, the Patriots have, they have a lot of missing pieces right now. And in some ways he's back where he was in 2001, having to rebuild the roster and get lucky at the game's most important position. I think here's the difference though, with, with now and then

back then they still had blue chip guys from the Parcells era and from the late 90s, right? They had Willie McGinnis. They had Laura Malloy. They had Ty Law. They had the six pick in that draft heading into that season, which was Seymour. And then a couple other impact guys on both sides of the ball. Their offensive line was pretty good. They still had Bledsoe.

Now, we had no idea Bledsoe was going to get hurt and Brady was going to come in. But there were some pieces. I think what scares me about where they are now is the lack of pieces. And it really comes down to the last four to five drafts. It's like, is there a future all-pro on this team? And that's where it's kind of chilling. And those are the conversations I'm having

with my Pats fan friends on text. Is this turnaroundable? Because they have the most cap space. I think they're top three for cap space. Those are the conversations I'm having with my Pat's friend of fan friends on texts. Like the, is this turn around a book? Cause they have the most caps, but I think they're top three for cap space. And I've talked in previous pods about there's this chance this year because of COVID because the cap's pretty static. It might even go backward a little bit where the teams that have the most cap space might have a real competitive advantage and free agency, which is basically what he's great at, right? Getting the $6 million guy for 5 million, getting the $7 million guy for 6 million,

and just basically being able to get eight, nine good guys for a certain price. My question is, can he do that? Can he evaluate talent the same way that, that he was doing five, 10 years ago? Cause we just haven't seen it lately. And you know, everybody gets old. It happens. Yeah. And you know, he always had Brady who no one was ever going to earn more money than him. There was that, this great anecdote where, you know, Darrell Revis, when he was signing with the Patriots, I think he wanted something like 16 million a year.

Yeah. And Belichick threw it back at him. Brady makes $14 million. You're not earning more than him. So Reeves got in line. And he signed. I think he was there for that one year. And by the way, Brady had a discount every year.

He had Brady at a discount. And he doesn't have that anymore. And so is he able to – is it enough to go to New England now in this uncertain situation? They have no answer at quarterback. I mean, obviously, Cam Newton, he was hurt last year. He played hard, as he always does, but he was missing, he was painful to watch. I mean, he was missing throws that he used to hit in his sleep.

And a year ago at this time, or a year, you know, 10 months ago after Brady left, we all thought that Stidham was going to end up being the replacement, the guy that they had groomed and he had watched Brady for a year, you know, 10 months ago after Brady left, we all thought that Stidham was going to end up being the replacement, the guy that they had groomed and he had watched Brady for a year. I mean, that guy didn't start a game. Even when Cam Newton was out, even when he was ineffective, even when the season was lost, they didn't even start him. And so, yeah, I don't know whether he can pull off that, you know, the system that they've had and that they've patented for the past two

decades. I don't know if it continues without Tom in that same way that you just described. Yeah. The Stidham thing is tough because you'd figure if they thought he was talented, they would have tested him out at some point last year for a little four game stretch.

It's a little like what they had with Ryan Mallett, right? Garoppolo. I think they knew was good. Yeah. I think they thought Jacoby Brissett was Mallett, right? Garoppolo, I think they knew was good. Yeah. I think they thought Jacoby Brissett was pretty good. But Mallett, they always kind of hid, and then they would leak to people like, oh, Mallett, but we would never actually see him.

And same thing with the Stidham piece. The Cam Newton thing was a bummer because that Seattle game, there was so much promise. I was all in after that game, and I just think physically he broke down the, the, the piece that there's some Brady Gronk breadcrumbs in Tampa, especially from Gronk. Cause Gronk, I don't know if he has a self edit button about how great it was to be in Tampa, how much fun he's having, how the culture in New England, you know,

you can only deal with that for so long. What was eye-opening to you about some of those comments from both guys? Absolutely. And, you know, I think that goes back to like what we were discussing where, you know, Bruce Arians was the perfect rebound for Brady and for Gronk, you know, once they got out of that marriage and, you know And towards midseason, obviously, the Bucs were struggling. They hadn't quite found the rhythm in their identity on offense. There are a lot of reports about tension with Brady and the play calling. But I was told that even as bad as things were going, and you could see on Brady's face after games on those zoom calls how frustrated

he was yeah sick it made him to be struggling on offense like that no matter how bad it was he didn't regret leaving new england for a minute his worst day in tampa was better than his best day in new england the past couple years and except for probably winning the super bowl but you know he he was ready for something else And I thought that that was really revealing that Gronk will definitely let out those breadcrumbs. Brady is smoother about it. He won't quite go there. But it was just obvious to me how much those guys enjoyed playing

in a new system, in that weather, and for that head coach compared to what they were used to. Well, it seems like the fork in the road moment was all the Alex Guerrero stuff, which you were on from the get-go and his growing kind of reach inside the Patriots infrastructure and Belichick just deciding he didn't like it and trying to basically make it like, all right, if this is your guy, he's going to be over here. I don't I don't want him infiltrating my locker room, almost like how TJ Lavin talks about you're going to run my final in the challenge. And that was the fork in the road. I guess the question is.

He's going to accommodate a superstar only so far, right? But you're competing in this league where basically every other team is going to accommodate their superstar and give them special treatments. I mean, it's way worse than the NBA and the NBA they're doing. You saw what happened with Harden and Houston and you know, what LeBron was able to get away with in Miami and Cleveland. Like when you have like a top seven guy, you basically bend over backwards and give them everything you want. Let them secretly fly the private plane, all that stuff. Belichick, he's never going to do any of that.

It's kind of amazing to me in retrospect, Brady stayed as long as he did. Right. Yeah. And, you know, with Guerrero, it was, it was, I think it was three things. I think Guerrero was, was one of them, you know, Guerrero it was it was I think it was three things I think Guerrero was was one of them you know obviously like there was players who didn't know what to do because they felt torn between kind of aligning themselves with the Brady system and you know which was clearly trying to differentiate itself from the New England trainers yeah you know who do you

align with if if Julian Edelman goes down and you're trying to win Tom's trust? Do you go to TB12 or do you stick with what the Patriots and Belichick want you to do? And then I think Brady's contract. He wanted to play until he was 45 years old. The Patriots wanted him to retire a Patriot, but they did not want him to retire at age 45, a new England Patriot. They just did not think that he could hold up. And then finally Brady, you know,

like a lot of those NBA players and talk about accommodating superstars, he wanted more of a voice in personnel and in play comedy. And, you know, he told me once, you know, I'm more coach than player, but in reality, he was still really much, really a player there. And, you know, he told me once, you know, I'm more coach than player. But in reality, he was still really much, really a player there.

And, you know, he told Joe Montana at the Super Bowl a year ago, you know, they asked my opinion and then they just go do with their own thing. And I think he wanted a head coach that would listen to him. And it was a little bit more collaborative. And, you know, Bruce Arians is like, please, I'll happily listen to you. Yeah, you wonder even little stuff like 2000, the Sony Michelle pick heading into that season. They're just drafting these dudes. I'm sure he's getting no input at all.

But then the next year when they clearly need a receiver and you would figure like, who's a better asset to like be there as you're testing out these receivers than brady because i had gotten the intel a month after the draft when they took the kill harry where brady spent two days with them and i asked somebody who was kind of connected to it like what do you think and he's like brady doesn't think he's going to help this year he's probably a year away and i was like wow he's the third And he's like, Brady doesn't think he's going to help this year. He's probably a year away. And I was like, wow, he's the third kid. He's not going to, and it was right. And Brady could figure that out within 24 hours. It's, it's weird that they never involved in that

in general, you know, it's hard to argue with six Superbowls and nine Superbowl trips. So I say this, it is the all time nitpick, but the weirdest thing to watch over the course of that 20 years was how resistant they were to just draft dudes who succeed with Brady. The types of guys, like the one time they really did it was the Gronk Hernandez draft.

But the Troy Brown, Deion Branch types were always the guys he clicked with. And yet over and over again, Belichick would take these like speedsters that, you know, where it's like, even look at the, the team this year that Tampa had, who is he throwing to in the Superbowl? It was like, it was Gronk on big plays.

It was Antonio Brown on that one big, when they, when they had one chance to score a touchdown at the end of the first half, he has certain types of guys that he likes and they would not draft those guys. And I never understood it. I like, even in the draft with Nikhil Harry, the obvious guy for like who would match with Brady was Terry McLaurin. Like just watching football the last two years, like that's like a total Brady guy, little guy can get really smart, can figure out whatever. And I think at some point he got pretty frustrated with that because anytime they really gave him the toys that he could succeed with, you know,

three, four, maybe five Hall of Famers. And he was responsible for, you know, a good chunk of them. And, but when it came to receiver, he had some sort of blind spot. There was, the year they signed, the year they traded for Josh Gordon, they had made, I think, 28 moves at wide receiver between the end of the season and the

first week of the season. And, you know, you ask people why, and it's obvious because of the way they run their offense, where every route is an option route and their conversion routes. You saw that touchdown that Gronk had in the Super Bowl where he was running a flag and he kind of bent it inside. I mean, that's exactly what it is. That route's not put in the playbook. It's see what the defender's covering and run to the open spot. It's an IQ test. Absolutely.

And not every player can do that. And so, you know, and I think that Belichick did a lot to, you know, obviously the end of that last season in New England, he wanted Antonio Brown and he wanted to hang on to Antonio Brown even after the Sports Illustrated piece and all of the trouble that Antonio Brown and he wanted to hang on to Antonio Brown even after the Sports Illustrated

piece and all of the trouble that Antonio Brown got into and you know that was an ownership decision to move on from him and so I think it's when you talk about Brady and Bill and the personnel it is both as cut and dry as you put it and you know Belichick was willing to go out there and try to find guys like Josh Gordon and Antonio Brown, who pretty much worked well with Brady. But they just didn't end up working out for obviously different reasons. Yeah, I wonder, like, there's a fork in the road moment where if they just take Terry McLaurin or DK Benkaff instead of Nikhil Harry and they just ride the wave with Antonio Brown there. I think everybody, including myself, was like, yeah, you got to cut him.

But Brady didn't want to cut him. Brady believed in him and it was like, let's just ride this out. And they kind of overruled him. Had they not overruled him and you just had those two people, I wonder if he would have stayed. Going backwards, when you talk about they didn't want him to stay until he was 45,

I made this point on previous pods. This is all solvable in like 2017 if they do the one last giant deal. And they're just like, look, we have no idea how long Tom Brady's going to play, but we know he's going to retire as a Patriot. So if he thinks he can play to a 45, great. We'll pay him the whole time. Belichick was, you know, not, not incorrectly playing the math. He was like, well, all right, I'm going to look at the history of quarterbacks as they hit their forties. It's terrible. We can't, we can't bank on this. And so you have that little tug of war, but the reality is had they just said, all right, we're all in, here's a new seven year deal for X and we'll move it back and whatever. I just think he didn't think he could do it. And you were the first one to

write about the Garoppolo stuff and you know, whether they talked about Brady to the Niners and all that stuff. I wonder like if Belichick was just playing the math on that, you know, whether they talked about Brady to the Niners and all that stuff. I wonder, like, if Belichick was just playing the math on that, thinking like, it's not realistic that this guy is going to be good at age 41. And this guy really genuinely believes he's going to play till he's 45. I need to get out of this. And he was wrong. And I can't even criticize him for being wrong wrong because who could have thought Brady would play like this heading into his mid-40s? It's inconceivable.

Yeah. And, you know, by now, we all continually make the mistake of underestimating Tom Brady. And it turns out that even the people who knew him best, like Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft, did also. And, you know, I think And I think that the entire contract situation is fascinating to me

because you have Bill Belichick who clearly wanted to be committed to Brady on a year-to-year basis. You have Brady who's like, look, we've done something unprecedented. I'm trying to do something unprecedented. I'd like some clarity here. And I think that I've earned a deal

that it might be a leap of faith, but I think that I've earned a deal that, you know, it might be a leap of faith, but I think that I've earned enough credibility where I can reward that faith. And then you have Kraft who had kind of made a side deal with Brady saying, you know, if Bill ever wants to move on from you, I'll give you some say in how that goes down. And he was trying to kind of navigate the middle space. And it worked as long as it could it worked you know but you know they win the super bowl and against the rams you know brady again wants a two-year deal so angry in august that he thinks about walking out of camp

or the season starts he was so pissed They announced a two-year deal, which is really a one-year deal. He said publicly, he knew right then it was his last year in New England. And then they bring in Antonio Brown. And I think it provided a spirit lift where he was like, I think we can go win now. And then Brown just didn't last long there at all. And, you know, the rest is pretty well documented. I mean, at the middle of the 2019 season, the Patriots were undefeated. And he tells Al Michaels,

I'm the most miserable 8-0 quarterback in the NFL. Yeah, I wonder if they just gave him a three-year deal after the Rams Super Bowl. And maybe he's like, hey, we're, we're giving this Dale. We want you to retire as a Patriot. We might suck for one of these years. He would've taken it. I think he would've taken it.

I agree with you. Yeah. But, um, so if you're looking at like the little checkpoints where this fell apart, something, something during that Garoppolo stretch where even if Brady was brought up to the Niners and that got back to Brady, so that's the first betrayal. And then the second piece was Belichick

being forced to trade Garoppolo for under market because it seems like he wanted him to succeed. We talked about that the last time he came on the podcast. He literally took less than what Garoppolo is worth to kind of show the crafts that this was a mistake, it seems like. Would you agree with that?

It was a crazy situation. And then you have Brady last year, roughly a year ago at this time, telling the 49ers, hey, if you want me, you know, back channeling to the 49ers, hey, if you want me, I'm yours. You know, no free agency tour, no, you know, bidding war. I will go to San Francisco, go back to my hometown team. My parents can go back to driving to games. It's like Brady existed to torture Garoppolo.

And I mean, what do you think the 49ers felt watching that Super Bowl? Because here Garoppolo was barely played this year because he was injured. And Tom Brady didn't miss a snap due to injury again. Ended up throwing 50 touchdown passes last year when you combine regular season and playoffs. Oh my gosh.

Like, what were they thinking? Yeah, that would have been tough with Garoppolo's contract from a cap standpoint. I guess that would have been the catch, right? It was just bad luck with how it worked out with the money. Yeah, I mean, look, we're seeing stuff the last couple of years with LeBron and Brady that have no correlation to really anything in the history of sports, except for when Barry Bonds' head started growing in 2001. This seems much more authentic. And there's reasons for that, right? Like the machines are better,

the training's better, the knowledge is better, the diets are better. These guys have figured out a way to preserve their bodies as long as they don't get injured, um, in ways that we just couldn't measure. I think Kobe would have been the first guy that had this happen, except he got hurt. He pushed it too far. He blew out his Achilles. And I think that's the thing Brady and LeBron have not had happen yet and why they're, they're still able to chug along because they haven't had the injury that screwed up the training and the day-to-day and all the, all the work that they put in their bodies. So for Belichick, it's really hard to ding Belichick on this. It's hard to, to say, oh man, you should have known this dude could do this at

age 43, because to me it's inconceivable. And even when, uh, when Brady was saying he was going to play till 45, which I think I was the first one who wrote about that. Cause his friends were always telling me that he wants to play until he's 45, like 45. That seems like an insane numbers. Like, no, that's what he wants. He wants to play until he's four. And then Brady eventually started talking about it publicly. I want to play until I'm 45. He's going to play until he's 45. It makes no sense. This is a contact sport. He doesn't get hit that much.

And, you know, the most predictable moment of Super Bowl week was when Brady was asked that if he continues to play at a high level, will he think about playing beyond 45? And he was like, yeah, definitely. Because, I mean, it's just like what Belichick, we were talking about earlier, you know, in terms of him being 69 years old, entering the season with no end in sight. I mean, these guys are driven by something that, you know, most people can't fathom. And of course, they're going to move the goalposts.

When Brady was hurt in 2008, he was faced with his football mortality. And, you know, he was out in California rehabbing away from the team. And, you know, all these opportunities that had come to him during his first, you know, seven years as a starter, do you want to act? Do you want to do this, that? He realized he didn't want to do any of them. He wanted to play football. And so around that time, he starts talking about playing until age 40. Then a couple of years later, he talks about playing into his forties. And then, yeah, you probably were, you know, talking, you know, we put the benchmark on age 45 right there. And then of course, now he's talking about playing beyond that. I wish they had a little camera of Giselle next to him to look at her reaction when

he's talking about playing beyond 45, because it's pretty well documented that she would love it if he retired by now. But also, it couldn't have come to any surprise to her because he simply, he does not, there's nothing in this world that he enjoys doing more than playing football. I mean, the last dance came out last year and, you know, everybody asked Brady, oh, you know, are you like Jordan? Do you collect slights? And I think there is something about that with him. I think that he does. I don't think he manufactures them like Jordan did, but he simply loves playing football.

I mean, somebody once asked Jerry Seinfeld, how do you find the will to keep doing comedy and to perfect these jokes after you've accomplished so much? And Seinfeld was like, it's not will at all. Will is not eating a piece of cake at dinner. It's love. It's that you'd rather do this than anything else. And that's Tom Brady right now. Football's never been easier. You know, before the Super Bowl, he's talking to his receivers.

He's like, look, we got the answers to the test. We know exactly what to do. Let's just do it. He doesn't get hit very much. He's got a great, we got the answers to the test. We know exactly what to do. Let's just do it. He doesn't get hit very much. He's got a great group of talent around him. He's got a coach who lets him do whatever he wants. Yeah. And he's got more accumulated knowledge than anybody who's ever played quarterback.

Well, and he also has, I thought that Instagram video was so funny where the D-back was like, look at Brady. He's like, we're all celebrating. He's like packing his stuff, just getting ready. I think Brady probably thinks they have a better chance of winning next year than they did this year. Absolutely. And he's just now, you know, now he's in this territory where

the first goal was how to pass Manning, which he was pretty transparent about when the, when the emails came out with the flake gate and he sent that email to his friend, Kevin Brady about, you know, man, he's got one year left. I'm going to, I'm going to be playing six, seven more years. So, you know, it was always, always on his mind, but now, now he's moving in this territory where it's like him and Russell and Jordan and that's it.

I mean, imagine what it was like to be Peyton Manning watching the Super Bowl in person. He was there. Knowing that Tom Brady has had a Hall of Fame career since Peyton Manning retired at age 39. I know. Think about this. I was thinking about this the other day.

I was talking to my dad about this. You could take out the first five years of Brady's career, right? So his rookie year, where he doesn't play. The next four, where he wins three Super Bowls. You could just take them out. Start with his 2005 season, where they lose to Denver and Jake Plummer. And go all the way to now. And he's still the greatest quarterback of all time.

Yeah. He would still have stats that could be at least close to everybody else. He would have the Super Bowls and the resume. He would have the 18-1 season. And we would say he's the best. And then you have the first five years. You can just add those. So nobody's doing it again.

I mean, we talked, Sal and I talked on Sunday night about the difference between him and Mahomes. And I think Mah we, we talked, Sal and I talked on Sunday night about the difference in him and Mahomes who, and I think Mahomes is more talented, but I think Mahomes the wear and tear on him versus what's happened to Brady, where he's only really had one bad hit. He's had some concussions. There's no question. I think he was a hundred percent concussed in that Denver playoff game. They lost by two. I personally think he, at least in one of the Superbowls of the Philly Atlanta, maybe both,

he's definitely had a few, but other than that, he there's been a lot. And part of it's because he's six, five, and he's a huge guy. Mahomes is not a huge guy. Mahomes has already had four injuries varying from minor to major. And I think the durability piece has to be factored in. Yeah, Brady once told me this story where he, it was Saturday morning, and this is probably like 2010, 2011. And it was a Saturday morning meeting with Belichick the night before a game, the day before a game. And Belichick was watching the film of Mark Sanchez

and Brady's in the room with him. And Sanchez is rolling out. He's got defenders on his heels and he's got Braylon Edwards downfield open like 60 yards downfield. And Belichick's just watching this and he's talking out loud. He's just like, throw it. You're not going to have someone more open than that. Just throw it. And Brady's little thought bubble is like, are you joking? Do you know what would happen if I was rolling out and tried to throw

it 60 yards downfield? It wouldn't even go 20 yards. And Brady said to me, he goes, you know, when I see a play, I see it within my limits. And it was one of those comments at the time that I didn't really think much about, but you look at him now because he, you're right, he's not physically dominant like Mahomes, and yet a defense cannot take away every throw, and he knows where to go with the ball on almost every play, and it's just amazing. You know, there was the sequence at the end of the first half against the Packers where he threw the touchdown to Scotty Miller down the sideline. And, you know, he can't throw deep all the time. He has plenty of arm strength, but, you know, where it lands, you know, sometimes is anyone's guess. But that was a situation where, you know, he saw that that throw was going to be open and he was able to exploit it at the most critical moment.

And I think that's what he was getting at with comments like that. He just says, you know, when I see a play within my own limitations, I know exactly what I can do in any particular play and I don't try to do things that I can't. And it's amazing to consider the level that he's taken that to. It's also like he's just a gigantic guy. He's one of those guys that when you're standing in front of him, you're, you kind of do a double take. And this, this happens.

There's basketball players like this too. Like when you meet somebody like LeBron and he was like, Oh, this guy's six, nine, 60 pounds. Like you, you'll do the double take. There's not a lot of quarterbacks you would do the double take with. Like I had Rogers on my HBO show, seemed like a normal guy, like easily just could have been an actor or director or, you know, musician. You, you wouldn't have necessarily known he was a quarterback. Brady was different. Like he's a legit six, five and he's a big dude. And I think that's really helped him over the years. Absolutely. And he has a high release too.

And so he doesn't get into trouble throwing the ball because he's 6'4", 6'5", and he makes himself taller. But I know exactly what you mean. I mean, when you're next to him, you stand up straighter because he's that tall. He's a big dude. I know this is an impossible question to answer, and it's two parts.

And I know you've been asked it before. How do you think Belichick felt watching that game? A, did he watch the game? B, do you think he was rooting for Tom or do you think he was just studying what they were doing to the Chiefs and going into that weird Belichick student mode? I bet you that he was unsurprised by the results that Brady showed up in a big

game and probably deeply fired up in a way that he'll never admit publicly. What about Bob Kraft? The same, you know, I think the same. Probably, probably sadder. You know, I think that like Kraft's goal, you know, was to keep the band together as long as he possibly could. And generally he did a pretty good job of that. When you look at how sports dynasties go. But, you know, after the NFC championship game, Kraft texted Brady and he wished him good luck.

We haven't heard anything about whether Bill Belichick did. Right. See, I've talked to Jonathan Kraft a few times over the years. Kraft's son. You know he's Kraft's son, just for the listeners. He's a smart guy. Yeah. And a couple of times he would talk about Brady and it was just like, that's our guy.

He's our quarterback forever. And I really do think the crafts felt that way, you know? And I wonder, you know, Bob crafts old now, you know, he's, he's almost 80. He saved the Patriots, won six Superbowls. Like he goes down in history. I really think he cared about the Brady relationship and Brady, you know, especially as somebody who grew up in Massachusetts, understanding like when Bobby Orr left to play for the Blackhawks, that was really painful. Like I wish that hadn't happened now. When Bird stayed with the Celtics the entire time and retired,

same thing for Russell, Ted Williams. I think that meant something to him. And part of me is still surprised that he didn't overrule Belichick on this and just be like, Tom's never playing for another team. And if that's not cool with you, then this

is where we part ways. In a weird way, it feels like he picked Belichick. I think he did, but he also, both Jonathan and Robert had said publicly, especially after, I believe, the Falcon Super Bowl and the years after that, that Brady had earned the right to walk away on his terms from New England.

Yeah, so they're spreading the breadcrumbs just by saying that. Exactly. And then, I think that even if he had overruled Belichick a year ago now, it was too late. You know, I think that, like I said, in August of 2019, when they're negotiating that contract and Brady is contemplating walking out of training camp. You know, they got that clause in the contract that the Patriots couldn't franchise it. And, you know, Brady was gone.

And, you know, whether it, you know, it officially happened at Robert Kraft's house, you know, where he drove over and Kraft thought that they were going to quietly negotiate an extension with New England and instead Brady had other news. That's when it officially ended. But I think that Brady knew it was over for a long, long time. And that's a lot of the stuff that I'll explore in the book that comes out later this year. So the move in retrospect, they beat Atlanta.

It's the greatest performance by a player in a Super Bowl ever. I'll defend that to death. You leave that game, you wait two weeks and you're just like, let's do a seven year deal right now and whatever you're, you're retiring with us. And they just didn't do it. You know, they didn't do it. And remember, and that was also the off season where Brady decided that he was going to be known as something other than the new England Patriots quarterback. He was going to be known as something other than the New England Patriots quarterback.

He was going to be known as someone who wanted to revolutionize training. And, you know, that August... Hold on. That's when he started to get a little weird. Let's be honest. I mean, you know, his book came out in, you know, September of 2018,

and he did a lot of promotion for it. And, you know, he truly believed in that methodology. He still does. I mean, and all of those little things, they were small but pre-existing divides and they just got wider from there on out. Yeah. Well, it was a great run.

I solved my personal dilemma by just betting on the bucks every round. So that was really fun. It was like Brady was still back. When does your book come out? October, uh, 19th, I believe next fall. And you're like 90% done. Is there still a little morsels you're grabbing from people? Still got to do some work on the last month of the season. But, you know, it's pretty done. And, you know, it's a look at the Patriots' 20-year run and into the season.

And, you know, I just do my very best to, you know, show how that greatness was achieved and what the costs of it were. I hope you go deep into Deflategate and what a travesty that was. And I still can't believe it cost my team a first round pick. You could argue not having that first round pick could have been the start of all of this. That might've been, that could have been, who knows, an all pro linebacker,

although maybe they would have just traded backwards. All right. Seth Wickersham. Look forward to reading the book. Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thanks, bud. All right. That's it for the podcast. I am back on Sunday night, me and Kevin O'Connor. We're going to do a little Sunday night NBA pod. So we will see you on Sunday night. I don't have I don't have I don't have I don't have

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