The Bill Simmons Podcast - Steve Kerr on Bubble Ball, Golden State’s Gap Year, and ‘The Last Dance.’ Plus: Nathan Hubbard on Golf and Taylor Swift. 

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons talks with Warriors head coach Steve Kerr about the NBA restart, the evolution of basketball, the Warriors' (much needed) break from the NBA playoffs, scouting for the NBA draft during the pandemic, the NBA’s focus on social justice, reminiscing on his time with the Chicago Bulls after watching ‘The Last Dance,’ and more (5:00). Then Bill is joined by Nathan Hubbard to discuss the PGA Tour and the upcoming PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, as well as Taylor Swift's new album 'Folklore' and the USA's eventual return to stadiums and live events (1:14:37). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Check out Buffalo wild wings. Check out the ringer podcast network where you can find two new episodes of the rewatchables this week. One went up already. It was the Sandlot me, Mallory Rubin, Mina Kimes. The other one is going up on Wednesday night. Teen Wolf. Stay tuned for that. Check out higher learning on the ringer podcast network. Really good podcast this week. Rachel Lindsay taking a victory lap as we now have a black bachelor and a black bachelorette. Rachel's been calling this forever. And, uh, the pod was really funny this week. The victory lap was well-earned and hilarious. And speaking of van, the wire way

down in the hole, they're into season three now vantage Mel Hill. And, uh, that is for me, pound four pound, the most entertaining wire season. And one of my favorite TV seasons ever. And the one I, you know, Rocky is the best Rocky, but Rocky three was the most entertaining Rocky. The wire season three is the most entertaining wire season. It just is. So you can listen to them. Coming up in one second, Steve Kerr and Nathan Hubbard.

I'm licking my wounds with the Celtics. I'm upset. I wanted the bubble season to go better for them. I don't think they've looked that good. I can't believe Brad Watermaker and Semi Ojale are playing as much as they are. We had three first round picks last year. We had cap space to find at least veteran minimum people. And Kemba hasn't played more than 28 minutes left.

The team looks all over the place. Some of these teams look like they really haven't played basketball together in four and a half months, which is true. Other teams look like they've been playing this whole time, like Toronto. I don't know what to make of where we're going with the seedings, whether all this stuff even matters. You saw today, like the Clippers lose to the Suns, the Bucks lose to the Nets. I don't know why you would ever bet any favorite during this bubble basketball ever. It feels like we're headed for the weirdest playoffs we've had in the

21st century for the NBA. Everything is on the table. I was arguing with Cousin Sal about this because he thinks that only five teams can win the title. I think you could tell me nine teams could win the title. I think this is just so weird. It's such a weird atmosphere. They're playing every other day. Injuries are going to play an even bigger part than usual

because I just think we're going to have a lot of them with the frequency of these games. And then it's just, it's just got a weird feel to it in a good way. I think it's going to be really unpredictable. I don't, I, you would have told me in the beginning of March, I would have said the only three teams that have a chance to win the title are the Bucks, the Clippers, and the Lakers. Anybody else, somebody on those three teams would have had to have gotten injured to have a chance. Now, after watching bubble basketball for five, six days, I'm like, I don't know. You could tell me anything's going to happen. I believe it. I mean, the freaking Nets beat the Bucks today. They had dudes that I had never heard of six months ago, like their point guard. Where did that dude come from? It's kind of great.

It's like the real life replacements. Remember that movie with Gene Hackman and Keanu Reeves? The Nets are now the replacements. Gene Hackman, classic performance in that. It's not quite good enough to be a rewatchable. And yet Gene Hackman just squinting to see the cue cards and just rattling off lines that Gene Hackman autoply. I really enjoyed that movie. Maybe like season six of the rewatchables will do it. Anyway, I'm rambling. Steve Kerr and

Nathan Hubbard coming up in one second. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. So we hear about everybody in the bubble. What's going on inside the bubble. We don't hear about the people trapped outside the bubble. Like Steve Kerr. It's not allowed. You didn't qualify everybody in the bubble. What's going on inside the bubble. We don't hear about the people trapped outside the bubble. Like Steve Kerr. It's not allowed.

You didn't qualify to make the bubble. You're just on the outside watching games like the rest of us. This is the first NBA season or part of a season. You haven't been a part of since when. Gosh, that's, uh, that's a good,

good question. Um, gosh that's yeah that's a good good question um last time i was with a team that didn't make the playoffs was phoenix we missed the playoffs when i was a gm uh in 09 i think oh yeah yeah and then as a player orlando oh you made it in orlando cleveland you made it no no. Cleveland, you made it. No, no, we didn't make it with Orlando. It was Shaq's rookie year. And that's actually a great story.

I think we've talked about this. That was when we tied with Indiana and it went to like five different tiebreakers. And I've never seen this before. Like head-to-head was tied. Conference record was tied. Record Like head to head was tied. Conference record was tied. Record versus playoff opponents was tied. It finally got to the fifth tiebreaker, which was total score between the four between the two of us in our game against each other.

Yes, this actually happened. But the score, the story gets better because Indiana ended up over four games, outscoring us by like 10 points. So they get the eighth seed. This was 92. So they get the eighth seed. Orlando goes to the lottery and wins the lottery. That's right. That's how Chris Webber became Penny Hardaway and three future first-round picks.

All because of a random tie break. It's so weird. They just didn't have a coin flip that it was like total points in four games is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. It's so random because obviously nobody knows while those games are going on. You know, it's not like soccer where, you know, you know exactly what you know exactly what you need and you're playing at home and the aggregate score, you know you have to win by two or whatever it is. I mean, this is four random NBA games that are happening. And then after the fact, they made the decision to go to the tiebreak on the score. Really weird. That's dumb. All right.

So since the last time you've been on this podcast, you made the finals. You lost two of your best players in the finals. One of the best players in the world left your team, went to another team. You had your own podcast, the Ringer Podcast Network, Flying Coach. You missed the playoffs. The season stopped.

There's a pandemic. And now you've had more time to scout a top five draft pick than maybe any team has in the history of the league. These are all just things that have happened since the last time you've been on, not to mention nine other things. Yeah, not particularly in that order, I should say, too. Pretty random, Pretty random. But I have to say the Orlando thing was funny.

I mean, obviously, we were having a really rough season. Worst record in the league. And it's been a grind this year. And so when the Orlando thing happened, I don't think a lot of us were that disappointed to not be invited, especially the guys who have been part of this thing the last six years. Steph, Draymond, Clay, the guys needed a rest. They just needed to get away. But now that it's going, I haven't talked to those guys about it. Actually, I talked to Draymond about it, but I haven't talked to those guys about it actually I talked to Draymond about it

but I haven't talked to Steph or Clay but Draymond and I both kind of feel the same way which is we kind of want to be there like we're missing out these games look fun I think the NBA is doing a great job the games are competitive the players look great

and yeah to not be there is actually kind of painful. Were you surprised at the quality of play? I mean, a piece of this is that the worst eight teams in the league aren't playing. So just the quality of matchups is way better. It was like every night there's three awesome games, but at the same time, you were there in the lockout in 99 when guys came back and half the league was out of shape and the quality of play was really choppy. People were getting hurt. And this time around, it's the complete opposite. Why do you think it's so different this time around? Maybe because this happened during the middle of the season or late in the season, but not in the offseason.

So I think guys were more aware that the season could start back up. And I know we made that notion to our players that you got to stay ready for anything. We don't know what's going to happen, but, you know, and we can't practice, but keep yourselves in shape. I think too, there's probably a dynamic today that players in general keep themselves in better condition than players did 20 years ago. I don't know if that's fair or not, but it feels like there's more of a focus and players have more resources to,

to do so to keep themselves in the best possible shape in the off season. Yeah. I was thinking it was part resources, part just this social media era when right now where you're just going to get ridiculed. And you can feel that changing over the last decade. I remember being on TV when Harden's defense, when he got to Houston, when he just wasn't playing defense that well. One of those first Houston years. And it became like a thing on the internet.

And you think like he had to have seen it 20 years ago. You're getting made fun of on sports radio, maybe by the local host, maybe a heckler is yelling at you again, but that's it. Now it's like in your face if you're failing at all times. So I do wonder if that's part of it. These guys, you know, they, they, they spotlights on them 24 seven. It could be, you know, I, I, I say all the time that I, I think it's never been more difficult to be a professional athlete, um, than right now because of that. Uh, you got to find a way to either use it as motivation, which you're suggesting, um, you know, that judgment and that criticism and, and, um, that constant, uh, sort of observance that everybody, uh, gets to make. Um, but you also have to try to learn how to live with it and not

absorb it too much, you know, because it can wear you down all that, all that negativity. And so, back then it was easy. It was easy just to avoid stuff if you wanted to. But these days, the phones never leave players hands because it's just, um, what they've grown up with. And, um, so it's a, it's a different,

different time. And, and there's just so much criticism and judgment coming their way. Well, just think if we had all those stuff in the late nineties, your blood feud with John Stockton, it would have just gone to a completely other level. You'd have been taking shots on Twitter. Really? It was, it was Biggie and Tupac and you and John Stockton, I think in the nineties, those are the two feuds

I remember the most. You can feel it in some of the last dance stuff too. It's chippy every game. There's just no love lost. It was chippy. Yeah. It would have been a, would have been a lot bigger had we had Twitter back then. You talk about guys who take shit. So you traded for one Wiggins who is much maligned, um, expensive, former number one draft pick. Um, people were always constantly disappointed with him. Then he goes to you guys and fits right in. And it was clear there's some change of scenery stuff that helps, but also like I, sometimes guys almost become underrated when the expectations are way up here. You're still, he's still pretty young. Um, were you surprised? Cause I don't know what your, what your thoughts

on him were before that trade, but were you surprised when he got there, the stuff that he could do and what you saw? I wasn't surprised at all about what we saw because, you know, I've coached against him now for the last six years and he's had big games against us. You know, the biggest thing for us was all about what you need today to win games. You know, the game has changed so much and it's so hard to guard. You know, I watched Houston-Dallas the other night. It was 150-148. I mean, how do you guard anybody? You know, there's nobody in the paint. You got, you know, 10 guys who can shoot threes and penetrate and kick. So you got to have size and versatility on the wings. And you think about our roster, you know, losing Kevin Durant,

Andre Iguodala, Sean Livingston, those guys, obviously for good, you know, two to retirement, one to free agency, and then Clay Thompson for the year. That's basically, you know, our main wing core defensively. And those guys represented along with Draymond, everything that not only we've been about over the last five, six years, but what the league has turned into, you know, multi-positional defenders who can compliment one another and just, you know, guard their position, but also guard two or three other positions. And so Andrew has the size and athleticism to do exactly that. And we knew that. And he was an excellent defender for us during the last stretch and played really well offensively.

And, you know, he may not be, you know, an MVP candidate, but he's a damn good player and he fits right in with what we're trying to do. And he gives us some of that defensive versatility that we lost with all those defections. Well, you guys, so you have this bubble and everybody's here. That's going to matter in the, over the course of the decade, I feel like, except for the Warriors, but this is kind of the one year. Next year, you're going to be back. You have this top five pick, whatever happens, whether we take somebody or trade, whatever you have this, you're just kind of monitoring it, watching it, but you're kind of the shadow that's looming over these playoffs, right? Cause next year you're going to be in this mix at the same time. I remember texting with you

last year as that fifth season was going and you just kept saying every time, like people don't understand how hard this is. They don't understand five years of this. They don't understand what this is like. This is crazy. This is insane. Nobody gets it. Like, and you had been through it a couple of times. Now you had the break, the hiatus, you got to jump back into it next year. Did you need this? I mean, you've, you've been pretty public. It's hard to talk about like, yeah, it's awesome that we suck this year and we had to

rebuild at the same time. Like, is it possible for a basketball team to do that for more than five years? Yeah, that's, uh, that's the question. Um, and tough to look back historically and find examples of that. The Celtics in the 60s, obviously, with Bill Russell. The Lakers in the 80s with Magic and Kareem. They went the whole decade. But it's pretty rare in the modern era especially to for to see anybody go more than five six years so uh we're we're obviously hoping that we can abuck that trend and and uh you know get get back at it next year and and uh well you're starting over though what's

that you're you're starting over though like next year is basically year one of whatever this new kind of era is for you we're we are except we're starting over with an all-star backcourt you know yeah two of the two of the greatest shooters ever to live who uh technically are still you know in their prime so um we we think we have a chance to be really good. And, you know, we've added Andrew, obviously, as we talked about. You know, Draymond still has plenty in the tank. And we really felt good about some of our young guys developing this year and getting that draft pick. So in some ways we're starting over, but we have a head start. We're not starting from scratch.

But it is a different sort of iteration of our team. And that's exciting. That's what makes it fun. You're starting over with a team that went 73-9 four years ago. But with those three guys, you're kind of back to that identity. Yeah. I was even thinking about it watching The Last Dance, where everyone remembers the Pippin year that's covered in that thing when jordan goes to play baseball and the bulls are still a contender but the year when jordan came back the team was not doing that well it was a 500 team and it was the wear and tear combined with some roster atrophy and you know maybe the coach isn't

resonating the way he, maybe he did three, four years ago. And that was a team that if MJ doesn't come back, I don't know, you know, maybe he's like a seven seed or an eight seed. I don't, I don't think anything good would have happened, but yeah, it made me think like, even you see with the 2000 Lakers, Oh, Oh, Oh, one, two, they win. Oh, three Duncan gets them. Oh four. They had the Fisher shot saves them, but then they get crushed in the finals and it's over. And that was another five-year thing. And maybe, you know, with these a hundred game seasons that maybe that's how this plays out to do it for more than five years, I think is in this modern era with the player

switching and all that stuff is going to be pretty hard. And we didn't even talk about that. The fact that keeping your team together is harder than it's ever been. Right. Yeah. It's really hard. I mean, you know, players are more likely to, to want to seek a new opportunity elsewhere, but also just the way the cap is constructed, you know, it's really hard to pay everybody. And if you have a good young team like we did, you know, five, six years ago, you need a break and somewhere you got to get lucky. And where we got lucky was Steph signing the contract when he had the ankle surgery

that made him hugely underpaid. Yeah. That allowed us, and then the cap spike that came when the cap went up and that allowed us to sign Kevin. But, you know, before long, everybody was a free agent. And so you got Steph Clay making Max, Draymond making near Max, Kevin, you know, would have made max. And, and this, this required an ownership group that was willing to go so far over the tax and pay, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and, uh, and they were willing to do it, but, um, it's, it's so rare that, that anybody will ever get to that point. So I think it's much more likely

that you're going to see shorter windows for teams. When you look back at that five years, you won three titles. What was the number that it should have been? Because three feels right, but four and five, I would say the over- under heading into that five-year stretch. If you had told me they're getting Durant after they win the title in 15, you would

have said maybe three and a half and you win three, but three feels like kind of the right number four with how hard it is to keep guys healthy over a 100 game season. Right. You know, you're just going to have bad luck with at least one of the years, which finally happened to you last year. Right. It's just hard. Yeah, it's a hard game to play because, you know, you could make the argument

that if we had beaten Cleveland in 16, Kevin wouldn't have come. Right. You know, and if he hadn't come, there's no way we would have won you know won the next couple I mean he was the finals MVP two years in a row yeah so who knows I mean everything kind of happens sequentially and I just know that it was an incredible run that we'd like to kind of, as we talked about, start anew. But, you know, as a coach, what you really want is you want to be able to have a shot at it as an organization.

You just want to swing at the plate and then you kind of you kind of live with, you know, your fate. And as long as everybody is is all in and you go for it, you know, sometimes things are going to go your fate. And as long as everybody is, is all in and you, you go for it. You know, sometimes things are going to go your way. Sometimes they're not, and you just move on. It's a good spot for a coach to be in for a rebuilding year. No pressure. People are like, you're like, wow, they're hurt. It's not Steve's fault. What's he going to do? Just buy an extra year. It's great. Yeah. Well, you just nailed it. Yeah. Wait till next year.

The 2017 Warriors, the first Katie's first year. I spent a lot of time thinking about this because there was no basketball on and I'm just watching old basketball games, which you got sucked into too. You were, you were watching some of the old ones. I think we all just missed basketball. And I don't know if I wrote my book again, which I never will. Cause I'm too lazy. Um, that 2017 warriors team would, would be in the top five. And I don't know what the place would be, but if you're just talking about hardest team to defend with all the shooting and the way basketball is played now. But then it gets

into that weird game of, well, if you take the 86 Celtics, is McHale shooting threes or is it the 86 Celtics themselves? And then your brain breaks, but it's kind of hard for me to believe if we just had a time machine and threw everybody into a series that the 17 Warriors with all the threes, that feels like that should be worth like eight to nine extra points a game in any hypothetical matchup. Right. Do you think that team who, who would have been the biggest problem for that team? Historically? Yeah. If you take any of the great teams, you're matching them up with the 17 warriors. Who, who's the team that you're like, Oh shit, they would be a problem. say the 86 celtics but i'm biased yeah and i'm biased so i'm going to say the 96

bulls and yeah i i mean i i think um honestly when i look back at the that bulls team um that team was actually built to play today now minus the volume of three-point shooting, but I think that team was capable of it. But when you're talking about the versatility that you need to defend today, if you throw out onto the court Ron Harper, Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, Tony Kukoc, and Dennis Rodman, that's a 2020 defense. Right. Those five guys can guard anybody. And, um, and then offensively, you know, nobody can, nobody ever could guard Michael Jordan. Then you can only imagine now with the spacing and, and the rules and, and Kukoc was, was unbelievable. He was way better than, than people really remember him for. And so, you know, that, and that's the hard part. You said it, it's so hard to compare eras. So

like, you know, take, take us against, you know, the, the 17 warriors against the Lakers of 86, you know, so are we really going to guard Kareem down on the block? You know, can we really? Yeah. How are you going to do that? You'd have to put Durant on him. Yeah, yeah, we'd have to, but then is Kareem really going to come out and guard high screen and roll with Steph?

You know, like there's all these things that don't match up that you can just chalk up to completely different era, totally different style. You know, that team never had to account for what we do and vice versa. So you literally can't even play that game. But the reason I love thinking about the Bulls in this era, that 96, 97 team, is because I think that team fit into any era. Yeah.

Well, also, you think like somebody like Kukoc is a classic born-too-soon guy, right? Yeah. Because nowadays, he would just be stretched for, he would take

probably seven, eight threes a game. And you could even maybe make him point forward in some situations. Like you would just play Steph off the ball with him and stuff like that.

Totally. And it was, I was thinking about that stuff a lot. Rossello and I would talk about it on the pod on Sunday because we're watching these old games and we were deep diving all these different Bulls games thinking of some guys that just don't make sense for the current era at all

that were playing big minutes. Somebody like Adam Keefe, who was a valuable guy on a Jazz team that made two finals teams. And that kind of guy is just out of the league. You know, if you have like that banger bruiser putback guy, there's no place for him. And he has to learn how to shoot threes or he's out. That's it. Yeah. Or you, and you can even go higher up the, the food chain. And, you know, I mean, Adam was a really good role player. You could go to all-star

level players, you know, and do the same thing. Buck Williams was a hell of a player. Old school, you know, foreman, just, he was going to knock you down. He was going to rebound. But his shooting range didn't really extend beyond about 15 feet. So how would, how would he fit into today's game? You know, today, if you can't shoot beyond, you know, the, the three point line and you're a big man, it's, it's really hard. You, you better be a lob threat because now everybody's just spacing the floor and your five man has to be a lob threat to get that vertical spacing. Um, you know, Dallas comes to mind, you know, a guy like Dwight Powell is such a good lob threat. And then they put the ball in Luka's hands and they spread the floor. And defensively, you know, you don't know where to go, you know, because you got so much to

cover. And that's the modern, that's the modern game. And that's what everybody's doing is they're putting you in these really difficult situations where you got to cover so much more court than ever before well you texted me that over the weekend i was imagining you just watching six games in a row just as a fan for the first time in a while and you see like i was so fascinated by some of the portland games were great and i watched every minute of both of them. How teams are defending Lillard now where he's 35, 40 feet from the basket. They're just trapping them because they don't want him.

Everybody's spread out. And then he has a choice. Like he can just immediately get rid of the ball to the, to Nurkic or whoever's out up there trying to help or just try to break it. But when he breaks it, he has the ability to go full speed into the middle, do a layup with either hand or kick out to a three. And it's like, everything is being decided at the 40 foot mark of the basket. And I just think if you had shown me that in the mid eighties, I wouldn't have known what the fuck was going on. You know, in the eighties, it was like, you're just trying to get as close to

the rim as you possibly could on your offense. And this is like teams going, no, no, no, we got, we got to figure this out 40. Like, where are we going? I guess is my question. I don't know. I don't know. I remember we had a game, um, against Cleveland in, uh, can't remember if it was, um, 15 or 16, not a finals game, a regular season game. And we were flying on to the next city. And, you know, all the coaches have their laptops. We're all watching the game. Same thing, you know, every team does.

You go right from the locker room, you get on the plane, you open your laptop, and you're watching the game. And there was a play, you know, Steph made a couple of threes and there was a play. I've never seen this before. He crossed half court. Draymond came up and set a screen literally at the semi-circle at half court. And Kevin Love blitzed him. He, you know, he jumped, he jumped the screen at half court, and I froze the picture. I turned it around. I showed the two coaches who were sitting across from me. I said, have you ever seen anybody get blitzed at half court?

And it was shocking because nobody's ever shot the ball from out there. Right. But, you know, so you always, you know, in the past you, you, you would blitz kind of at the three point line, but Cleveland was understandably because Steph was Steph. They, they, they decided to blitz Steph all the way out at half court. And I had never seen it before. And, uh, but like you said, Lillard. Harden's another one. Yeah. Harden. I mean, uh, Donchich. I mean, there's so many guys now, Trey young, you gotta, you gotta think about doing something with 35 feet from the basket. It's crazy. Well, and those shooting Rangers are crazy too. Like in that Dallas

comeback, Houston had Friday Harden's at that. What's that hash mark thing that sticks out. It's like 35 feet from the basket. Steph's made a couple of fuck you threes from there just for like fun. Harden just in the flow is like, oh, I'm open. And just bangs one home and cuts it from six to three. And the announcer wasn't even like shocked. It was like a 35 footer. And he was just like, yeah, I'm going to take this. And it just seems like the marksmanship, like think about when, when you were playing in the mid nineties and people like Steve Kerr, amazing three point

shooter, you were taking like normal shots and the flow of a game, you know, wide open threes or pull, you know, catching shoots. These guys now are, have a dude in front of them and they're doing like step backs from 30. I don't, what does it make sense to you that the shooting's getting better? I think people are working so hard at it. Um, they're, they're just coaches and players are understanding the importance of it at every position. Yeah. So, uh, you got a guy, uh, like TJ Warren at Warren at Indiana, you know, when he came up a few years ago in Phoenix, you knew he was a bucket getter, you know, so he'd come off the bench and you really worried about him, but he seemed more like an old school scorer, you know, kind of elbows and

15, 18 feet and he'd score in transition, big, strong body. And, you know, the other night he had 53. I watched it. How many threes did he make? I can't, I can't remember. He made a few, but it was, it was some 18, a lot of 18, 15 footers mixed in there too. Just, yeah, but he's got, so now, but now he's added the three, you know, to to to that game. And so I think the point is, you got guys who never would have dreamt of shooting a three, right, you know, 10 years ago, even. And every single guy on the roster is now shooting a couple hundred threes a day at least. Um, and we have, I think more technology, um, more knowledge about, uh, how to, you know, how to teach guys to shoot and, and things that, that we can do to, to help them help the process along. It's, it's pretty interesting. Yeah. I, uh, I wonder about, you know, when, when we were growing up, you had like the guys with the weird shots, right? Like Jamal Wilkes.

Yeah. And it's just like, wow, that's a shot I've never seen. Or like Mike Evans. Mike Evans shooting it from like his right shoulder. And now everybody shoots the same with perfect motion that they've learned, what, by like age 11? Where it's like elbow, move your hand, release. And maybe if you're doing that for 15, 20 years and your, your mechanics are perfect by the time you're in the sixth grade,

maybe that's the difference. Cause I, I'm always struck by the mechanics, how nice everybody's shots are and how little very variation there are in shooting styles now. For the most part, everybody has the same shot. Well, and there's so much effort that goes into it day after day after day at every level. And of course, what you miss now is you never see a guy who comes into the league with a low post game. The days of Tim Duncan coming in as a rookie and going down to the low block looking like Kevin McHale with his footwork, reverse pivot, fake step through, lay-ins. You don't see any of that because players don't grow up

going down to the block. They grow up going to the three-point line, and then they practice hundreds and hundreds of threes. So the game has completely changed. And even the Spurs are doing it. Have you watched the Spurs? They've been really fun to watch in the bubble. Yeah, it's funny. I was like, please don't make the playoffs Spurs. I would much rather see Portland or Memphis in there. And then the Spurs are just, I don't know, they know what they're doing at the end of the games at the

Rosen, who is like much maligned now in the advanced stats community. And then if it's a tie game in the last minute, like he's scoring. So it's, I don't know what stat there is for that, but he knows at least how to get two points. Well,

he's now there. He's now their format, you know? And instead of being the two, he's now the four they're playing. They're playing all their young guards. I mean, they know, and instead of being the two, he's now the four. They're playing all their young guards. I mean, they're doing the smart thing. They're taking this as a chance to develop their young guys.

Right. And their young guys look great, but they're playing a different style, and it looks like they're having fun. But, you know, game after game now now you just see, you can see the floor opening up more and more and more Houston, Milwaukee was a fascinating matchup to watch. Uh, it really was. Yeah. And, uh, so yeah, the question about where, where does it go and where does it end? Um, maybe, maybe the answer, um, is, you know, Houston, DallasDallas, five men who can shoot threes. Porzingis shooting a 30-footer out at the top of the key, that's your center.

How do you defend the paint when the center's out there shooting? And Houston basically saying, we're just not going to play a center and having all five guys shoot threes, you know, if, if that's the, if that's the future, um, you know, defensive coordinators have a, have a tough job on their hands. Yeah. Houston was basically saying to Porzingis. Yeah. If you want to take seven footers, like be our guests, we're going to be taking threes on the other end. So, you know, we'll go three for two. The math's going to be in our favor. I don't know how that's going to play out from a playoff standpoint because we have no home court

advantage, really. Just watching as a fan of this whole thing, does home court advantage matter at all anymore in this? Or is this just like basically a weird tournament in Turkey, like a FIFA World Championships tournament? What is this? I don't know. I mean, you know, not being there, it's hard to really have any feel for it. And I haven't talked to any of the coaches, you know, in the last week or so to get an idea. I will give the NBA a lot of credit. The games come across really well. The broadcasts have been great. The sound, the visuals.

It's a really, really high quality presentation. And players have been fantastic and energy's great. So I'm really enjoying it. But I don't know that anybody really has any idea what to expect as this all unfolds over the next couple of months. It's been wonderful on the West Coast. There's games coming on. There was a 1030 Monday morning game yesterday. It was almost like March Madness.

And it was a good game. And throughout the day, it's like, oh, man, I like that one. I like that one. And I think we all miss basketball so much. Um, from the social justice standpoint, you, you had the coaches association, which I didn't really know about till we, you and Pete were talking about it on your pod, um, trying to figure out what, what you want to do as coaches, how to mentor your players, um, just what your role was in this whole evolving universe as the country is trying to figure out all these different things. And the players are trying to figure out how do we fit as role models? How do we fit in as,

as human beings who want to make a statement or stand up for whatever. What, what was your role as a coach during that whole thing? Yeah. I mean, we're, I think we're, it's still evolving and we're, and, um, as a coaches association, uh, we're all kind of going through that all the time and sorting through it. We have conference calls, um, frequently. Uh, I think, you know, we, what we've, what we've sort of zeroed in on is education. I mean, in the end, we're coaches, you know, and what we are trying to do is use our platform to educate ourselves, our teams, our organizations, and hopefully our fans. And we've been really blessed with a lot of help. Brian Stevenson,

the civil rights lawyer from the Equal Justice Initiative, has joined us, is basically advising us. He's an incredible person. I don't know if you saw the movie Just Mercy. It's a fantastic movie. It's based on his life. And so he's really been advising us. And he, you know, we had a lot of discussion early on about, you know, what we can do because we're really, you know, just coaches. We're citizens. We're American citizens who want to help and we want to protect our players and their families and our communities, but we're basketball coaches. And so he really helped us zero in on education because as coaches, we're really just teachers. And so we're trying to educate ourselves on a lot of different areas, Black American history and politics and voting rights, um, you know, there's a long list of

things we all need to know more about. And those are the things we're trying to zero in on. So you have 30 coaches on a, on a giant zoom. Yeah. Yeah. And then, uh, and we also have a, is there a leader? How does it work? Like, like is somebody late leading the agenda or everybody just chimes in? It's chaired by Lloyd Pierce, who's done an incredible job. And Lloyd leads us and he leads the conversations and really the direction in which we're heading. And we've got a couple of former coaches in there, too, who want to help. David Fisdale, Stan Van Gundy, both of them very passionate about civil rights issues. And so we have calls. We had them weekly for a long time, and now we have them less frequently, but constantly keeping in touch with each other and sharing ideas. And the big thing that we came up with that we're trying to instill is that every coach and every team is going to partner with a local grassroots organization in each NBA city and learn about what's happening in our communities and then partner with those

grassroots organizations. Because what we didn't want to do was just kind of, you know, put our name on something and not actually be involved. And so every organization, every coach has taken it upon himself to develop relationships on the ground with grassroots leaders and figure out an area where he wanted to help and where his team can get involved. So it's been really, really productive. It's kind of, it makes sense in the big picture with the league itself, right? Think about the 50s and 60s leading up to now. And it makes sense to me. And I think it's the way it should be that the NBA would be, out of all the leagues we have,

out of all the entertainment entities that we have, would be so omnipresent with this stuff. Like, I'm not surprised at all. This is the league we grew up with. And even like you go back and read the stuff that happened in the 60s and some of the guys in that era and Russell and Elgin and Oscar,

like I was really psyched that some of these guys stepped up. And then we had some new younger guys emerge. Like you spent some time with Jalen in the world championship. So you, you spent some time with Jalen in, uh, the world championship. So you weren't surprised to see that, but the, you know, I think he's 23, 23 or 24 years old. And he, and he acts like he's 36. Um, he's so mature, but you saw, you saw him and some of these other guys. Um, was there anybody that you were surprised by that became one of the leaders of this that you just didn't know anything about? Not really. Like you said, I think this has become almost expected

from the NBA. And I think a big part of always felt empowered by management, by ownership. And it feels more like a partnership. You know, any kind of social justice work and commentary, the league has always been very supportive. So I think the players feel really confident speaking out and the younger guys are looking at LeBron James and Chris Paul and the veteran players who have really taken upon themselves to be the leaders of this movement. And I think it's really, really healthy because they're preaching really good stuff,

registering to vote and voter turnout and peaceful protest, things that our country is supposed to be about. And it's time that we live up to some of those ideals. Do you think any of this could have happened in the 90s when you played or was the country not ready for it? No, I don't think the country was ready for it. Because you played with some people who definitely thought about this stuff and were pretty political.

And you were also, you know, you're definitely one of the people who's always thinking about this stuff. But there were different expectations, really really until the last decade, right? Yeah. Yeah. And maybe some of it is social media. A lot of it is the current climate, the awful things that have happened that you're staring at on your phone.

And it's now been probably a decade or so since people have really been besieged by this violence that's coming across the phone. And I think it's just whether it's conscious or subconscious, but over time, it's like enough, enough, you know, and then the, and then I think the, uh, the quarantine, uh, probably pushed it over the top because now you're not, you're not capable of losing yourself in your job and your family. You're literally at home every day watching people get murdered on your phone. And you're sitting at home thinking, what are we doing?

And I think that's what sort of pushed it over the top. And that's why so many people are so upset now and justifiably so. And that's why so many people are trying to change things. Let's take a break to talk about Blue Apron. Home cooking matters now more than ever. I mean, literally more than ever. With Blue Apron, you can have peace of mind by getting fresh quality ingredients delivered straight to your door so you can cook delicious, easy meals in the comfort of your home. Again, your home. Blue Apron takes the guesswork out of dinner and we need more than just deciding what to eat. You can know your ingredients are being prepared and packaged with the highest attention and quality and safety. Create a plan that works for

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Visit blueapron.com slash Simmons. That's how you get it. Once again, blueapron.com slash Simmons, blue apron, feed your soul back to Steve Kerr. Can I talk to Steve Kerr, former media guy for a second, not the former coach, former guy, really, really good color analyst. Once upon a time used to come on the BS report, talk hoops with me. Um, I think you can answer this. I don't think this is a tampering violation. I wanted to ask you about a couple of players just cause you're home watching this. So start with Giannis. Cause I was watching him Sunday night. Giannis is basically a seven foot point guard, but he's kind of, you played with Shaq, right? You played with him 93. And if you go back and you watch young Shaq, young Shaq could,

when he was skinny, could take a rebound and go full court and then either dunk or dish off. And people would be like, Oh my God, that's amazing. I can't believe a center just did that. How did that happen? And Giannis, this is just who he is. Like, is Giannis a one of one, or do you think there's more coming? There's more seven foot point centers coming, or is this it? Is this the only one we're going to have? Media Steve is gone, Bill. Media Steve's gone? You can't even answer. Well, Coach Steve doesn't want to get fined. Oh, that's true. So you can't even talk about the players?

No, especially guys who are going to be free agents and all that stuff. Remember last year, I think Doc got fined for... Yeah, good point. You're right. It's a bad question by me. I miss Media Steve, though. I want Media Steve's thoughts on Luka Doncic as people are throwing the Larry Bird thing around. I don't know how I feel about it.

Somebody said on TV, the TV guy was like, don't take this the wrong way, but I think he's like a cross between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. And I was like, I don't take this the wrong way, but I think he's like a cross between magic Johnson and Larry bird. And I was like, Whoa. And then I was like, eh, you kind of see it. Like he's averaging 30 a game. It's not inconceivable.

Um, all right. You media, Steve can answer this though. We seem to have a disproportionate amount of really good players right now, which happens from time to time. Like I was doing my MVP ballot. I left off Davis and Harden and Dame Lillard. And then you think like Embiid wasn't on there either. We have like 12 superstars right now. It feels like the deepest talent we've had since the early nineties. You can answer that one. Yeah, I think I can answer that one without getting myself in trouble.

I think it's a great time for the league because we've got a lot of stars and a lot of incredibly gifted players. And basketball has always been such a visible sport. I mean, you're seeing the expressions and the emotions of the players up close. And I think, by and large, our guys are really likable. You know, they've done a great job of carrying themselves and handling themselves and, you know, looking after each other and doing really good deeds

in their communities. And so I'm, I'm really proud of where the NBA is right now. And I think the players take great pride in it too. So yeah, deep, deep talent pool and, and a lot of really good people.

It's a good combination. Yeah. Like I had Yokeage, I think I had him fourth on my MVP, which I don't think he's going to make top five. I just think, I personally think he's more valuable than others, but I was watching him in the game. They beat OKC in overtime yesterday and he's throwing like Bill Walton passes from the foul line. I'm just thinking

like he's probably one of the best four passing centers of all time. He's like an afterthought this season with the nine other guys everybody's talking about constantly. It feels really loaded. I was trying to think like, I think the margin of error for things to go wrong with a superstar is the lowest it's been right now because the technology is the best, right? If you get hurt, you can come back. Whereas like Sabonis ruptures his Achilles in 1986 and he's just never going to be the same after that or whatever his injury was, or Bill Walton has a foot issue and they misdiagnose it. And then all of a sudden half his career's gone.

So somebody like Kareem, who was an alien who just plays four years in college and then, or three years in college and 20 years is like a complete anomaly. But now with the technology, with the way the guys take care of themselves, with the sleep and the food and how they know what to eat, it's kind of hard to fuck that up.

You know, if you're fucking up now in 2020, you're really looking to screw it up. Whereas like in the 80s, like you didn't play in the eighties, but cocaine comes in there for six years, right? It's just this big wild card and it takes out all these dudes. Every decade had something until right now, right now it's like the, and then all these younger guys, as you pointed out, are learning from the LeBron, Chris Paul guys, like how to be an adult. But meanwhile, they're 23. You, you've played on a whole bunch of different teams. You played with a lot of non-adults who were like 25, 27 year old stars

and were completely immature. Doesn't seem like we have that as much anymore. And I have no idea why. What do you think? Well, there's a lot of money at stake more than, more than there's ever been before. Um, so that's always a motivator, but, um, you, you mentioned earlier, just the shaming of social media. There's, you know, these guys have, they've never had a bigger microscope on them. Uh, so it's, you know, it's pretty tough to go out and, uh, you know, getting a lot of trouble these days when you know that somebody can just pick up their phone and, and film you. Um, so I think guys more and more now just stay in their hotel. And, um, to be honest, we have such bigger staffs now, uh, to help the players than we ever did before. When my first year in the NBA was 88. So I did play in the eighties briefly, but

we had, uh, we had our whole staff basically on, on the, in the traveling party was, um, a trainer and equipment manager, two assistant coaches and a head coach. And that was it. We didn't have a video coordinator. Um, we didn't have a weight coordinator. We didn't have a weight coach. If you wanted to lift, they gave you a membership at a gym across the street from the arena. And it was like you just literally go in and just lift on your own or get on the treadmill. We didn't even have a weight coach. So now we've got a cast of thousands. We've got nutritionists. We've got chefs. I mean, these guys have every single bit of

knowledge and advantage and they're using it wisely. It makes sense. I still don't understand how guys like Jalen and Tatum come into the league as these fully formed adults who could give good interviews and have the right thing to say where I just remember what I was like at that age and I just could not have pulled it off and over and over again these dudes come in like look at somebody like Giannis the Giannis is 25 or 26 he's grew up in a different country and then you see him in these interviews and he's just like out of like central casting. It's like, how did, how did these dudes do this? I I'm constantly amazed over and over. Um, when you think about like you're the blazers team you were

on in the early, early two thousands, like imagine that team was social media. That would have been interesting. That probably wouldn't have gone well. Probably probably not and uh to be honest there's not there's not a single team i played for that that it would have gone well for rodman would have been tough it would have been a disaster it would have been a disaster um but uh yeah it was a it was a completely different time and era. In a lot of ways, I feel sorry for the guys today just because there's very little freedom and privacy for them. And they've just had to adjust and they've done a good job of it. But it's kind of sad that they just can't go out and enjoy themselves without you know, without having camera phones stuck in their faces everywhere. Plus they're tall too. They stand out to begin with. And then on top of being famous,

how did the last dance change your life or did it? It didn't change my life. Um, you know, maybe, uh, maybe a handful of people who thought of me as a coach realized that I actually played. So I got some of that. But for the most part, you know, it was mostly just a trip down memory lane and really fun to watch, especially with my kids. You know, they were all toddlers at the time. So it's really fun to watch with them. I, you didn't get any street cred. I don't know what that means. I mean, I don't think people find out. I don't think people, you didn't play for 22, 23, 24 years. I don't think people realize you were actually in these games in big ways. You know, like somebody like my son just knows you as the Warriors coach.

He's there. You're in two K. It's like, there's video, Steve Kerr coaching, whatever. He had no idea you played. It's like Steve Kerr played. I'm like, yeah, he won some titles. So from that, did you learn anything from the doc? Was there anything you didn't know? Um, there was a lot of stuff that

I had just forgotten. You know, I couldn't, I couldn't remember what happened in, in what year. Like I remember Scotty's injury. Um, but I had the details wrong. And, and I, I remember Dennis was going off to, to, uh, be in a wrestling match. I forgot that that was in the finals. Um, that was insane. Even I was shocked. Yeah. The finals. Um, yeah. So there was stuff that, that I hadn't thought about in a long time, but, um, but yeah, it was, it was all there and, uh, they did a And they did a great job with it. It was a little disappointing that a couple of guys, Luke Longley and Ron Harper, didn't get a whole lot of coverage. But, you know, you can only do so much, obviously.

And Luke lives in remote Western Australia. So, you know, I still talk with him. He's still a good friend. And I don't know what the budget was for the last dance, but it wasn't big enough to fly to remote Western Australia, I think, and go interview him. But I would have liked to have seen him and Ron get a little more love just because they were starters and huge, huge players on those teams.

It was a big win for you and I, because I remember one of the first times you came on the podcast and this was last decade when I was on ESPN and you did your whole, there will never be another Jordan thing. And I think it got picked up by news outlets and stuff where you were just like, it will never happen again. He's the best ever. Like this guy literally wouldn't let us lose 10 times. You had your whole thing. And as the years pass, everybody just wants whoever the current guy is to be the guy. So there's this whole bit,

the cutoffs basically late twenties. I think everyone under late twenties is like, no, LeBron's the best ever because that's who they saw. So then the last dance gets dropped and you could kind of feel it where people like, Oh shit. Yeah. I didn't wait. He did that. Oh,

Oh, he made, he made the last, the last shot of the finals and then retired. Like they literally didn't know that stuff. And it's stuff you and I, you lived it. I watched it.

Like we just kind of took it for granted. So that was eyeopening to me. You know what? I remember that, uh, that, that definitely, um, was a good reminder, uh, watching the last dance was that everybody in the arena was afraid of, of Michael. Like he would walk in and it felt like the other team knew the game was over and it felt like the fans knew it was over. And that was something I've never felt before or since. You know, it's I mean, there's obviously guys who garner incredible respect from opponents and from fans and officials, but there was a different aura with Michael where, and I think Judd Bushler even said it during the show,

during the last dance. He had one of the best lines of the whole thing. He said, you know, everybody was afraid of him. He said, fans, the officials, the other team, hell, even we were afraid of him, you know? And I thought it was hilarious, but it was, it was, it was kind of true. Like Michael just hovered over the proceedings and was such an alpha that even amongst the, you know, these incredible athletes in the NBA, it was like, nobody really had a chance a chance when he was playing. That's what it felt like.

Yeah, I think I wish they had banged that home a little more because that's my memory of that team. Especially going to see you guys, the 96, 97 range when you just went from city to city and it was like the fucking

Rolling Stones were in town. That's never really happened since I think Miami for a couple of years there, it, it, I don't want to say approached it, but dabbled in it. And I think your team, but the 73 win season, just cause people go in and watch Curry early when that started happening. I was like, Oh, this reminds me a little of what it was like during the MJR and then the 2017 team where it just was like this juggernaut.

I just have never had this sensation before or since of that team coming to your town and it just felt different. And it was different because of Michael, but it was also like the enduring thing for me was always Michael and Scotty together where he had just trained. He basically willed this other amazing athlete to kind of think and act and do all the things he needed him to do. And they just kind of moved together in this way.

That was just, I've never seen anything like it. And I don't think that's happened since where you have these two guys that were like linked like that. You know, I thought the doc did a good job of capturing that piece. Yeah. Yeah. Scotty was was such a devastating player and devastating for she was so smart defensively.

He was just a genius defensively and guarded everybody and covered up so much of the floor. And he was really our point guard. I mean, he was a point forward, basically. You know, he was the guy who kind of set the table and got everybody involved. And you're right. The two of them together were athletically, you know, it was just shocking to see that kind of speed and force. And I think the difference, you mentioned the Warriors,

the similarity was that you'd see a lot of red jerseys in 96, 97 on the road. You know, you just, before the game, we'd be out shooting and you'd see a lot of Bulls jerseys. And then same thing in like 15, 16, 17, you'd see a lot of Warriors jerseys and then same thing in like 15 16 17 you'd see a lot of a lot of warriors jerseys on the road but honestly it felt um it felt like they were dominated by children in uh in curry jerseys yeah i think steph had has this allure for kids because they can identify with him because he doesn't look, you know, like, um, somebody they could never be. You know, you, you can look at Scottie Pippen and go,

yeah, I'm never going to look like Scottie Pippen. I mean, he's six, eight, he's got these massive arms and, uh, you know, just a, just a freak of nature athletically. And Michael. And here's Steph. Steph walks in at 6'3", 180, and every kid can kind of look at him and go, hey, you know what? I could actually be him, even though they're not going to be,

but they can dream about it. And so I saw over the years, I've seen so many children wearing Curry jerseys, and that's a big difference in the dynamics. Well, I think that was always the thing with Durant, right? He's this seven-foot guy with three-point range in every shot in the book, and he's a one-on-one. Nobody's going to be like, someday I'm going to grow up and be Kevin Durant. No, you're not.

There will never be another Kevin Durant. Probably there's never going to be another Giannis. The thing with Curry that has always interested me, and I don't know how much you've followed this, but the other superstars, sometimes I wonder if they always seem like they're glass half empty on him a little bit.

You always feel these little petty, you can even feel it during the playoffs and stuff where even though I think he was one of the best three or four players of that decade by any calculation, I think he's one of the best 25 of all time. It's, you don't hear the other superstars raving about him like that. Whereas like they'll rave about LeBron, somebody like that. What do you, do you sense that as the coach? Is it something about his style

with all the threes or whatever, like that he's not seen as this incredible franchise player like somebody like LeBron or Kawhi is seen? I don't really sense it as a coach. I mean, I just sense

that there's just a big difference in what he does compared to most of those other guys. You know, you go to an all-star game, and Bob Myers talks about this. You go to an all-star game and you sit courtside and generally you're looking at the just most incredible athletes on the face of the earth you know they're all six seven ripped jump out of the gym fast um just amazing athletes and then there's you know there's step Steph and there's Kyrie, you know, there's like two, two, six, three guys who have this other worldly skill that nobody else on the floor does. Um, and so I think that's probably what it is, is that it's, it's just, it looks so different. You know, um, the, the vast majority of superstars are like almost superhuman and, uh, and, and guys like Steph or Kyrie are just, you know, just normal sized, uh, normal looking guys who happened to just be amazing

with the ball in their hands. This was the Nash issue too. I think when people were like, Oh, that guy's going to win back to, I remember writing it like back to back MVP, Steve Nash, this white guy with, with weird hair. Come on. Um, are you done reviewing your top five picks of the draft or do you just, are you just on YouTube until three in the morning, every night, just studying jump shots and jump hooks? No, I mean, we, uh, we are still evaluating, but the problem is there's nothing left to evaluate. Right. And we need in-person interviews.

We need in-person workouts, just like everybody else does. You can't do that on Zoom? You can do it on Zoom, but there you know, there's nothing that beats sitting down with somebody, you know, and looking them in the eye and getting to know them a little bit. And then, of course, watching them work out, putting them through a workout. So we're still hoping for that, just like all the teams are. But especially if you're in the top five, you're committing so much money. It's such a huge decision. It's a decision that will affect the organization one way or the other for the next decade, potentially.

So you got to get it right. And, you know, we're left with very little information. And it's frustrating, but everybody's in the same boat. I like that you're involved in another draft like this. When we got to know each other, you're running those Suns drafts. And I don't know. It's just, it's got to be fun to throw yourself into a draft

where you know you're getting one of the top five picks, which you've never had before, where you're literally like in the fantasy draft with the most money, basically, where you could just kind of own it. It's really fun. It's really fun. And Bob does a great job. And it's been fun to watch him work and see our scouts and be part of the various calls and scouting reports and mock drafts. And, you know, we've had a lot of fun, uh, with the project. So, um, I'm, uh, I'm really, it's the first time I've been involved at all, um, because the finals have gone right up to the,

you know, last few days. It's like three days before the draft sometimes. So I've never really known anybody in, in, uh, in the five years that I've been around for the draft. I've never known any of the guys that we were considering. So this is a lot more fun. So you're like, you're weighing in. They're like, Hey Steve, settle down. We've got this. We got this. Yeah. We know what we're doing. What kind of feedback do you get for flying coach? Really good. Really good. A lot of people, I think, really liked Dave Roberts or Pop or Doc, you know, compare notes, talk strategy, talk about our respective sports. I thought Doc Rivers and Pop were both just amazing to speak with and get their perspectives on life in America. So we had a blast doing it. And Pete and I have been good friends over the years. And we really enjoyed each other's company.

So a lot of fun. Well, we loved having it, but the best part for me was the two of you trying to get ready to actually do the podcast really should have been its own podcast, especially when, when Pete figured it out, but you still couldn't figure out the zoom recording thing. And Pete was so delighted that he did better than you. Yeah. And it was like, you guys are competing with each other. It could be less worse with technology, but it was, it was amazing. We pulled it off. I got to say, if you had told me six

months ago, we're going to be doing this podcast with Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll in two separate cities by zoom, and they're going to be recording it and sending the files. I would have been like, no way. 101 odds. But it happened. Yeah. It happened. It happened. We had a fitting conclusion with Cory Booker joining us and he was awesome. And I've had a lot of great feedback and a lot of people have commented and told me how much they enjoyed it. Well, it's the closest we're going to get to Media Steve, I feel like. Media Steve's like in the garage. Yeah, he's in enjoyed it. Well, it's the closest we're going to get to media. Steve, I feel like media Steve's like in the garage. Yeah.

He's in the garage. Hopefully media Steve won't, won't be around for a while, but, uh, another couple of seasons like this one, media Steve might be back a little sooner than expected. Steve might be feeling the heat. This top five pick all your guys coming back. Plus you get clay Thompson back in your life. You miss Clay. That was the toughest thing with this season.

Yeah. Not only is he an incredible player, but he just adds a levity to the situation every day. Loves playing basketball. And I've seen him a few times this summer. He's doing great. So he's ready to roam. All right.

Well, good luck. It was good seeing you. We miss not having the Warriors involved in this awesome basketball experience, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing them for the rest of the decade. But we'll be back. All right.

Good to see you. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Bye, Steve. See you later. All right. We're bringing in Nathan Hubbard in one second.

Wanted to mention a new rewatchables went up on Monday night. We did the Sandlot, me, Mallory and Mina. And then Wednesday night, Teen Wolf. That's coming midweek. Oh yeah.

We're doing two week for this month in August. Meanwhile, I don't know if you knew this sports are finally back. The only way to celebrate their return is that Buffalo Wild Wings with a favorite of my son's, wing bundles for takeout or delivery. You won't see any fans in the crowd on TV, but it doesn't mean we're not here. Diehard fans will be cheering louder than they ever have before for the fans watching at home. But at the bar in spirit, you can still get your favorite wings.

Order a wing bundle and get traditional and boneless wings and fries for the house. Sports are back. No better place to watch than with Buffalo wild wings order at buffalo wild wings.com or through the Buffalo wild wings app. Again, now more than ever, we need sports sports need us at participating locations for a limited time bundles only for takeout or delivery through Buffalo Wild Wings app or website. Not valid with any other offer. So I've been friends with Nathan Hubbard for a long time. He was a big deal in the music business and the ticketing business and still is.

And lately he's been moonlighting as Joe House's co-host on fairway rolling and they're excellent together. So nobody better to talk about golf and Taylor Swift. Don't ask why that's the combo for him, the perfect combo, but it just is my friend, Nathan Hubbard. Here he is. All right. When I want to talk about Taylor Swift and the PGA championship, there's only one place I go. It's my friend Nathan Hubbard who is on Fairway Rolling every week with Joe House. We have a big fan duel contest

that we're really excited about. It's called Fairway Rolling Dough. Right? Is that what it's called? Yes. The Fairway Rolling Dough Leaderboard Series Invitational. Yeah. So it's the four majors or the three majors plus the tour championship. Yeah.

And whoever does the best, they win some stuff, including this jacket that we think is going to become more valuable than the Masters jacket. But you get to go against me and House and Nathan and a couple other ringer favorites. So there you go.

You want to do Taylor Swift first or PGA championship first? We better do PGA first because we can talk about Taylor forever. Okay. Your bro is on the tour. It's been a fun sub pod of knowing you the last few years. Mark Hubbard. More importantly, it's made you care much more about golf.

I feel like you're on the top of your game. Your bro is in this tournament, and his odds are... Not great, bro. They're not great. I'm scrolling. You should keep scrolling. I'm scrolling. John Daly withdrew.

Where the hell is he? He's low. Jesus. You can get good value. I couldn't find him. What are his odds? Not good I couldn't find him. What are his odds? Not good. Don't bet him.

Well, he was in the mix like, what, four weeks ago? He's been in the mix a lot since the restart and really all year. I mean, he's 30-something on the FedEx Cup points list right now. He's been playing great. You know, took the last two weeks off, but this is his first major. I got it. As an esteemed member, what are they? It looks like 400 to one. Yeah. So I'm putting money on that, but nobody else should. As an esteemed member of the media, I have a credential to this week's PGA. So I will be on site, walking a million

miles, watching a bunch of the guys play and maybe, maybe watching my brother play too. Do you have to quarantine or you just get to walk in and do your thing? No, you get into the bubble. You got to keep your distance and wear a mask and sign a waiver and all those things. But I am not going to get a cotton swab to the back of the brain as far as I know. All right, without stepping on fairway rolling, give us three guys to watch for the PGA Championship. I love the fact that we're cheating on House, by the way, and we didn't even invite him to this podcast.

Well, we've got to, we put down a really good pod that goes up tomorrow with Justin Ray, who is an absolute numbers maestro on a lot of these things. And one of the things that we talked about on the pod is, look, I talked to Mark from his practice round today. So the rough is really patchy. None of it is horrible, but there are spots where it's seven out of 10 of difficulty. And then one foot away, it's two out of 10

difficulty, but the greens are really big and flat. It's super cold there. It's going to play super long. And so the sneaky stat we think this week is guys who can putt from 15 to 25 feet are going to be the ones who really compete here. Yes. You know, the guys who dink and dunk around are going to struggle a bit because it is certainly a course for long hitters, but the second shot is going to be long. And so the 15, 25 foot putters are going to be great. And when you look at those stats, right, the guys who do that well, uh, you know, Webb Simpson is second on tour, 15 to 25 feet, uh, from 15, 25 feet. He's first in putts over 10 feet. He who shall not be named our boy, Jordan Spieth is great

in those categories. Another guy who was awesome in those categories is Gary Woodland. And he was runner up at the match play event that Rory won on this course five years ago. So this is traditionally billed one of those tournaments. It's always kind of been the stepchild of the majors, but it's got a little bit more juice this year, I think, because we have not a major in a year. But it's also been a tournament in which a lot of young guys sometimes break through and win their first major. And so we got a ton of noise about the locomotive that is Brooks Koepka. We got a ton of noise about Beefy Bryson. But I'm looking at a couple of guys who I think could break through for their first

one this week. And that is Daniel Berger, who in his last seven starts has a first, a T2, a T3, a T4, a T5, and a T9. So he's playing well. And Xander Shuffley, who's a California boy, who he's won a tour championship before, has been playing well, just not totally gotten over the hump the last couple of tourneys. But I think if we're going to see a breakout winner, it's going to come from those two guys. So big greens and 15 to 25 putts, not great for Beefy Bryson.

Not great for Beefy Bryson. We talked about on the pod, the best joke that the PGA played is they paired him with Adam Scott. And the reason that's hilarious is because Adam Scott has not been seen or heard from since the quarantine started. He disappeared. He hasn't played top 10 player in the world. This will be the first tournament that he's played. And he's like been in his basement, probably didn't even know that golf was back until last week. And now he's going to show up

on the first tee with Bryson DeChambeau, who he probably will not recognize and who could introduce himself as like a club pro. And Adam Scott would think, yeah, he just must've qualified. So it's not great for Bryson. Although look, the Bryson's problem has been the short game, a short wedges. His driving has been unbelievable. He's actually putting really well. The question this week is just, can he keep his head on straight? I mean, last week he got derailed by fire ants. And two weeks before that, he literally pulled a tin cup and made a 10 just because he stubbornly was hitting three woods

out of Jack Nicklaus's super long rough at the Memorial. We just don't know if all of the eating and all the weight gain and the club head speed has fixed what Bryson's issue seems to be at the moment, which is what's between his ears. How about two of my guys that I always bet on for majors? My guy, John Rahm, who is now 16 to one. And then my guy, Tommy Fleetwood, who hurts my feelings every major when I put something on him and then he falls apart. Should I not do that? Should I stay away from those guys finally? I feel like Fleetwood had his chance in Minnesota to show us that he was one of the big

guys. It was a super diluted field there two weeks ago. DJ showed up. Tommy Fleetwood did not show up there. And that's my concern. The good news, if you're a Tommy Fleetwood fan, is the weather seems like the English coast. There's going to be low fog and it's going to be cool. And the ball's not going to fly that far. But Tommy Fleetwood, he's played well in majors, but he just hasn't shown us that he's got the stuff. As far as Jon Rahm, it was like we had Jon Rahm week when he was world number one for about 13 seconds

before JT took it back last week, and then everybody stopped talking about him. Yeah. And this week, he's in a pairing with Sergio, his countrymen, and Phil, the Arizona buddies. So he's got a good pairing. Nobody's talking about him because of the great finish that we saw between JT and Brooks last week. And obviously Tiger's back in it. And not a whole lot of chatter about Rom. But the last time we saw all the best players in the world

competing on a major type setup was at the Memorial, and Jon Rom won, and he won pretty handily. Brooks is favorite right now, or he's one of the favorites 12-1. I mean, he is talking like the Brooks of old. Oh.

The first, up until two weeks ago, you could tell he just didn't have his mojo. His confidence wasn't there. He was owning it. He was saying, yeah, I'm just not playing well enough. He wasn't using the knee as an excuse. And then last week, somebody pissed him off, I think, because he was defending champ there.

And they said, you know, hey, you've been struggling lately. Is it different defending when you're not at your best? And they said, you know, Hey, um, you've been struggling lately. Is it different defending when you're not, you know, at your best? And he said, uh, remind me, am I the defending champ or not? And, you know, he went out and damn near won the tournament, probably should have won the tournament. JT got super lucky. He had, as house said, he had massive horseshoes up his ass to win that tournament last week. And, and Brooks saved for a pull into the water, you know, probably wins that tournament last week. And Brooks saved for a pull into the water, you know, probably wins that tournament this week. He just, he looks like he's a guy on the mission. He looks like he's a guy who's ready to three Pete that hasn't been done since, you know, Walter Hagan or whatever, which means it basically hasn't been done in the modern era.

So I think he has as good a chance as anybody to win this week, but Brooks has not been consistent up until last week. The best golfer in the Koepka family was chase Koepka. And, uh, so we're going to have to see Brooks really come back and do it two weeks in a row. Tiger. I mean,

you know how, like when you and I go play golf around the 13th or 14th hole, you start complaining about your back and how much it hurts. And you start wondering if maybe we should pick up tennis instead. Yeah. That's not untrue. It's 75 degrees in LA.

It's going to be 55 degrees in Harding Park. And so I don't feel great about Tiger's ability to get loose and activate the glutes and get flexible and so forth. That said, I've been watching his practice rounds. He's playing good, good golf. I just think at this point in his career, Tiger Woods is going to win when he can outthink the rest of the field. And if you watch his practice round work, he's been thinking, where does the ball going to collect? What happens if it spins off this hill? Let me see where the putts could end up and let

me try those putts, which is great. It's just, I'm not sure that Harding Park is a course that is like a thinking man's course. This feels more like a course that you bully because it's 7,200 yards and a par 70. And those guys who can put 15 to 25 feet are going to do it. And that's frankly been a weakness of tigers. He just seems to have put in a new putter today, um, which may bode well, may bode poorly. What I want from tiger is from to make a cut from to show. Well, I'm not expecting tiger to compete for the win this week. A lot of personalities and stars and emerging stars in this particular

tournament. I think golf's in a nice spot right now. Golf reminds me of the NBA, like some, some older legends, some in their prime guys and some up and comers. And there's just more than usual. So the odds are when we sometimes with the PGA you have,

it's like Sunday on the eighth hole and they show the leaderboard and six of the guys, this is going to be the greatest moment of their decade. Just being one of the, one of the final seven this year, pretty hard to imagine Sunday around whatever eighth hole. And they show the leaderboard two of the guys I feel like will be famous. I think almost for sure. The good news about the restart was, the cool thing about the restart was, it was the only thing there. So it gave us a chance to get to know some of the guys outside of the top five, top 10, who we don't normally see on a regular cadence. And like you said,

there's a lot of great young personalities on tour. Think about Max Homa, who he's got his own podcast. He's awesome on Twitter, staying with my brother this week. He's just around the corner. He went to school at Cal. He knows this course super well. He's a guy who five years ago, we didn't know who Max Homa was. And it's making golf a lot more fun. By the way, we've just talked about golf for however many minutes. We haven't talked about Dustin Johnson, who's been or Rory or Rory McIlroy, who, you know, uh, has not played his best golf since the restart, but he's the guy who won the last tournament that was played on this course. And he's, yeah, he hadn't won a major

in six years. At some point, you got to figure if Rory's going to go down as one of the greats, he's going to shift it back into gear. And this is a good week for him. Good driver of the golf ball. He can put his face off. There's no reason why he shouldn't be able to compete this week. Rory's 15 to one DJs, 20 to one. I haven't decided what I'm doing yet, but I do, I do. I do like the thought of my guy, John Rahm at 16 to one. I haven't decided what I'm doing yet, but I do, I do, I do like the thought of my guy, John Rahm at 16 to one. I got a little tiny bit, like 1% choked up him and old Jack Nicholas kind of having their moment there when he won the Nicholas tournament. And, uh, and Nicholas was doing, he did a great job. They kind of went for the,

for the handshake, realized it was a bad idea and settled on like a awkward fist bump. It was the awkwardness I needed. It was everything. It was great. I mean, John Rahm is not quite a Greg Oden all-star, but he looks like he's older than 25. And we forget that.

Is that how old he is? Yes. He's 25? Yes. He's younger. Yes, he's younger. My God, he looks like Chris Noth. He looks like he should be dating Carrie Bradshaw. He's younger than JT. He's younger than a bunch of these stars

that we have out there who we just assume are the next wave. And, you know, the difference is, obviously, Rom hasn't had his moment in the sun in a major, but, man, he really is. He really is a man among boys out there when you see him in person. He's got a long way to go. All right. Well, I'm excited for the PGA. Excited to hear you in-house on Fairway Roland. Excited

to enter the Fairway... What's the title again? Fairway, Roland Doe leaderboard series, invitational. The main thing is you win a jacket, so we should just call it. Give us that jacket. Some ringer stuff too, but we'll all be in there. So feel free to come kick my ass. I've been working on my lineup. All right. Taylor Swift. You've been a Taylor file for a while. We wrote about it on the ringer. We had some podcasts on it, but we have not heard from Nathan Hubbard, the, the, the Taylor whisperer. You really like this album. I love this album. I think this is, uh, maybe not even arguably her third best album, third best album. What were the top two? I think, I think it's 1989 and Red.

Although for me, and I'm really just saying Red so that the horde doesn't come after me for not including Red. I actually think Red was a little bit schizophrenic because she was this weirdly straddling between country with the hints at pop. It sort of was the precursor to 1989. But this is an awesome album. And I mean, the funniest part of this record is, of course, Taylor, you know, she got sort of spurned a bit by the country music scene when she went pop. She never was sort of fully embraced in the pop world by some who felt like, you know, I mean, all of the old and now sort of tired knocks on Taylor, maybe not being authentic in

that format or so forth. But this record, she's basically made like a dad indie rock album and everybody's embracing her because there's plenty of space on dad indie rock Island. Like, come on in the water's warm. Like, Oh my God, Taylor, you actually obsess over the national and Bon Iver. Like, we love. Get in here. And that's what this record is. I'm not going to tell you that sonically, it is massively innovative. If you go listen to The National's album, I Am Easy to Find, and you listen to the collaboration between Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon on the Big Red Machine album, and then go watch the movie. There's a short film called I'm Easy to Find that Mike Mills of REM

directed that kind of tracks the biography of a woman from life to death. And we know Taylor was pretty obsessed with that album. The imagery that she's put out around this record is super reminiscent of that film. But those two albums, the Big Red Machine album and I'm Easy to Find have a lot of what you hear instrumentally, sonically on this album. But it's a format that she's really poured herself into and written awesome, awesome songs. She's put her voice out front in the way that from Reputation and 1989 and Lover, a lot of those songs were pretty heavily produced. And what we've always known is that the bones of those songs are really great. And that's what this record is. What kind of career would you

compare her to at this point? Because she starts out as a teen. She has that whole kind of arc. And then it's like, wow, she might act this, this kid might actually stick around, but now she's in her early thirties and it felt like she had just put out the other album. But I guess that was what, two years ago. Um, every two, every 18 to 24 months, it seems like she's doing something musically relevant. I don't follow it, which is why you're on the podcast right now. Who is her, who is her doppelganger from a previous era? Does that person even exist?

I'm not sure. I mean, the, the, the closest thing that you might compare it to is Madonna because Madonna constantly was able to reinvent herself. Yeah. But this is her eighth album. U2's eighth album was Zeropa. Madonna's eighth album was music. Historically, the great ones, for whatever reason,

on their eighth record have pivoted to try some new genre. It hasn't always worked, right? I'm not sure I love Zurobo. Not sure a lot of people said they love music. But this one, she just sort of intuitively knew it was time. I mean, you, me and Zane Lowe were talking not too many months ago about what we expected from our next record. And we sort of had the sense that she was going to do something a little more stripped down. The fan base was calling for her to go back and do a country album. Well, she's not a country artist. She never has been. But this was enough of a thing where she clearly had a bunch of music that she listens to and has been obsessed over for a while. So it was pretty easy, again, for her to sort of pour herself into that format.

And it really unlocked an authenticity in her voice that she's been criticized for not having before. She's a massive fan of folk music. Her voice in so many parts of this album sounds like it was lifted off of Joni Mitchell's Blue album. And she lives up in the canyons of LA, just where Joni lives. You can just hear those influences running through, the way she bounces from the upper to the lower register in her melodies. And again, say what you will about the absolute originality of what this album is sonically, but the songs are great. Wow. High praise from you.

Taylor Swift banging it out. She's like in halfway through decade two. I mean, remember, she was supposed to, a year ago, before the quarantine, she was literally last week going to open up the new stadium in LA with her Loverfest, a massive tour, which in her, I think, the way she thought about it from a business perspective was a different way to tour, a way to introduce people to new artists, a way for her to maybe not have to go all the way around the world, but economically to basically own a series of festivals. She was going to do big, basically stadium, pop and rock songs. This couldn't be further from the truth. There's no way to play this album in a stadium.

It just doesn't work. This is an album that gets played, you know, at Carnegie Hall or, you know, at some indie venue, at the Greek Theater in LA or something. Yeah. And, you know, what's going to be interesting is when, hopefully, if and when we get back to those large venue concerts what the

hell is she going to do because she's now got two records that couldn't be more diametrically opposed in terms of how you would perform them that are sitting on top of each other that nobody's heard or do live bonus question do you think the our post-pandemic world, whenever we get there and people start going to stadiums and arenas again, but people are still going to be conscious and wary of who's going into those arenas, are we headed toward a world, which we've talked about on this podcast before, of just much more accountability for who enters an arena and a stadium and a much different series of checkpoints. More elaborate too. I think so. Just the liability alone at this point of large scale live events is a huge part of why we're not seeing them come back. But I think we're moving towards a place.

The problem in live events has always been, we don't know who those fans are. It's been a problem for everybody. It's a problem for the artist because they don't have a direct relationship with their customer who is literally standing right in front of them. It's been a problem for the venues

because, hey, historically, there's been a security issue, right? There's 100 people getting on an airplane. There's 100,000's been a security issue, right? There's 100 people getting on an airplane. There's 100,000 people walking into a stadium, right? Super vulnerable. And by the way, in the case of sports, they're on national television, right? And it's a problem for the fan because we haven't been able to really serve the fan in a way that provides the best possible live experience.

And so the digitization of the industry has accelerated towards digitizing what that ticket is and really more acutely, tying your access to your identity. And so that we know who you are, because if we know everything about 100 people getting on an airplane, we should probably know something about 100,000 people walking into a stadium. And now, more than anything, whether it's for contact tracing or to make sure that you're not a super spreader walking into a stadium full of people, I think you're going to see a lot more constraints and controls over how live events happen. And that isn't to say that it's going to be a big brotherly experience or that it's going to change the fact that we're all chemically wired to be together. It's why we're all so restless right now. Human beings are wired to have that experience. But I think it's got to be done in

a way that keeps people safe. And that's going to include offering up your identity, number one, so that we know it's you who's buying the ticket, not a scalper, taking advantage of an artist selling a ticket at a lower price, but also making sure that that artist can provide a great experience to you. And God forbid, in the event that somebody's sick or is a bad actor, that you can discourage that kind of behavior. It feels like all that stuff is going to combine when we start really thinking about what that world's going to look like.

All of these different issues we have, this is an excuse now to try to solve them. Yeah, the live event industry's got to do that in a way that makes it seamless to the fan. But what we know is there's so much pent-up demand right now. People want these opportunities. So the problem isn't going to be,

how do we get people back into stadiums? It's going to be, how do we space out all these events so that you don't blow all of your life savings on live events in the first two months when we're back, right? But I think a lot of the work and thinking that's going on behind the scenes right now is how do we incorporate the security and safety from a health standpoint and obviously also from a security standpoint so that when live

events come back, that it vaults back into that sort of future vision that frankly, you and I've been talking about on this pod for a couple of years. I'm excited for it. All right. Have fun at the golf tournament. Best of luck to homeless hubs. Give them our best. 400 to one. I think it's a bargain. And the fairway rolling dough leaderboard contest is on fan deal. Now you can join. You can try to beat us.

You can try to get in for that jacket and everything else. Nathan Hubbard. Have enjoyed hearing you on fairway wrong. Good to see you. All right. Thanks to Spotify. Thanks to Buffalo Wild Wings. Thanks to Blue Apron.

Thanks to Steve Kerr and Nathan Hubbard. This podcast is coming back on Thursday night. If you miss me, you can listen to the rewatchables. The Sandlot is already up. And we have on Wednesday night, Teen Wolf is coming. And not to mention a whole bunch of awesome podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. Check them all out. And I'll see you on Thursday. I don't have a few years

with him on the wayside I'm a bruised son of a I don't have a few years