The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Knicks Land a Haymaker, With Doc Rivers. Plus, a Mini-Mailbag, the End of 'Euphoria,' and a Movies Resurgence With Joanna Robinson and Chris Ryan.

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Join The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Doc Rivers LIVE on Netflix to recap the Knicks' Game 1 win over the Spurs in the NBA Finals (01:15). Then, Bill does a mini-mailbag (51:40) before being joined by Chris Ryan and Joanna Robinson to give their thoughts on the ‘Euphoria’ finale, whether it stuck the landing, as well as the state of TV and movies (1:21:20). Hosts: Bill SimmonsGuests: Doc Rivers, Chris Ryan, and Joanna RobinsonProducers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, Tucker Tashjian, and Chris Wohlers Brought to you by PayPal. Learn more at paypal.com Give No Quits. Shop at your Local Duluth Trading Company Store or Online The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by PayPal. You know a clutch move when you see one, a no look pass, a buzzer beater, big steel. Well, imagine if your wallet could pull off moves like that. That, my friends, is PayPal. Right now you can find offers from hundreds of brands like Sony, all birds, and Viator, and save offers before you check out. Earn unlimited rewards. Plus, you can add those rewards on top of credit card points.

Now that is clutch. Download the PayPal app today. save those offers, start scoring rewards. Terms and exclusions apply. See PayPal.com slash rewards terms, credit card points subject to issuers, terms, and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Dovemen Plus Care. Fella's it's time to care for your skin like you care for the game. Dovemen Plus Care is an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2026 and has just dropped their new limited edition deodorant antiperspirant collection. The deodorant is gentle. on your skin, bringing you 72-hour protection with zero aluminum.

The anti-percpirant comes in a goes-on dry spray for a smooth glide stick, keeping you fresh from kickoff to the final whistle. Visit dove.com slash CA slash EN slash men dash care to shop now. All right, the Bill Simmons podcast. We are live on Netflix. Special guest, my friend Doc Rivers is here after just an incredible, um, dramatic. wasn't the best played game

the stats weren't awesome but a lot of twists and turns the Knicks pull it out and I think we thought the same thing with about three, four minutes left one team looked like they kind of knew what they were doing and the other team looked like

the playoff experience, youth stuff was starting to creep in. I didn't like the shots I got I just didn't like anything and the Knicks just went into Nick's boat. Yeah, I don't know though Bill there was youth as far as at the end of the game

I would say this at the end of the game, if you told anyone, at least with me, before the game, it's going to come down to a single possession game, you're going to favor the Knicks, because the Knicks know exactly what they're doing. They're giving the ball to Brunson, and they're going to play off Brunson.

San Antonio, in any game down the stretch, you're not sure yet because that's where they are young. The two-man game with Fox and Wimby is usually the play. They actually ran it. Fox got a wide open shot that would have tied the game, if you remember. And he missed that shot. And then he followed up with a foul on, I think, Bridges, where Bridges had nothing. So those back-to-back plays.

There are three plays that changed the game to me. The offensive rebound that Bronson got and then got the three. The missed shot by Fox, where he would have tied the game up. Then Fox followed that up where he billed Bridges out with a foul. that's a seven-point swing in a game and San Antonio couldn't recover. Then the turnover by Wemby was the final now. And then Brunson with the moonball.

Yeah, so San Antonio takes the lead, 95-94 and the two Wembe free throws and then that whole sequence happens. Yeah. Fox made that shot in game seven against OKC. In this game, I think him and Wembe combined were seven for 27. Not great.

Yeah, well, Fox is one of the most clutch players in the NBA over the last three years down the stretch of the game. He really hasn't been other than Game 7, Oklahoma. That's their go-to play. And, you know, we know what the Knicks are going to do, and we pretty much know what San Antonio is going to do. They're going to go to the two-man game. Remember they lost that game to Oklahoma where Fox wasn't there.

They didn't have anything down the stretch to go to. Well, they went to it. Fox got his shot, like in the paint. Perfect look for him. Misses it. And then, you know, the Knicks is going to play Brunson Ball from there on. So I just think it came down to a little thing. A couple of things I was surprised by.

And I was wrong by. I was really surprised by Wemby Garden Towns to start the game. I was shocked by that. I was positive that Wembe would be on heart. Champagne or anyone else would be on towns. And the reason is that a lot. I was wimby to stay in the paint more. If you look at the beginning of the third quarter, the Spurs did that.

And I actually turned to my son, Spencer, and I said, huh, maybe the Spurs are playing Cat and Miles. Maybe that's what they wanted to do all along. But instead, they waited until the second half. And it had some impact. They got out to a quick lead to beginning of the third. They really never went back to that coverage, you know. And Hart didn't play his normal big minutes.

I think you played 26, 27 minutes. So Mike Brown, I got to tell you, coached his butt off tonight. He really did that. I never also thought that Wemey would be guarded by Car Anthony Towns. Successfully. Yeah, you thought it would be a foul machine. Well, I thought it would be Files. And I thought it'd be in In Inobie, I think this year has the best plus minus in the NBA versus Wembe defensively.

So I thought they would go to that and they never even went to it. So when you look at the Knicks, they still have that in their back to go to. I thought Car Anthony Towns played the game of his life. He was amazing. You know, my son's best turn to me and said, wow, Minnesota traded Carl Anthony Towns. And, you know, last year, no one was actually saying that, you know, because Carl was up and down. But I'll tell you, man, second half of this season, he's been absolutely unbublished. unbelievable. And again,

Mike Brown has put them in a right spot to be successful and you got to give Mike a lot of credit. Yeah, I had three heroes. Brunson obviously, I think he had 19 in the second half. Hart had 15 rebounds and six assists in 26 minutes. And then I thought Towns took it to Wembe. I thought it was a stalemate at worst between

them, not just statistically, but didn't seem afraid of them. Went by him a bunch of times. That was the big thing. I had the numbers wrong on Wemby and Fox. They were nine for 34 combined. And San Antonio only had two threes in the second half. And they didn't shoot well.

We'll go into some of the stuff they can do. Yeah. We can't lose sight of the biggest moment of this game that happened in the second quarter when somebody, I forget who it was, crashed into Brunson's knee. Yeah, it looked bad. Yeah, it looked bad.

You know, I didn't think it was bad, honestly. When I saw it, I thought it hurt. And you know what I mean by that? I thought that was a scare. because his need didn't go all the way in. So honestly, I was sitting there I said, he's okay. He just scared the hell out of him.

Then he didn't seem okay. Every Knicks fan of my life is like, are you serious? We just won a little bit in a row. We're in the finals. This is our guy. He's going to get hurt in the first half of a game. He goes into the tunnel and it's just pure panic.

And then in an hour and a half it flips and he's the hero of the game. His ankle gets stepped on. I mean, this dude, he is just so tough. The move he made late where he took the hit, got bumped. Give San Antonio credit. They did it all. The entire Oklahoma series where they stay down, they take the bump. And then you have to try to play through that.

And Brunson makes that shot. It just was the perfect moment for Brunson. Well, explain this to me with Brunson. SGA looks so uncomfortable against the Spurs team and all the guards. And Brunson looked like within a half he had solved it in the second half. And he was getting, I actually thought he could have more. points. He missed a couple shots that he usually made. Is it because the Knicks had better three point shooting or better space?

Like, what is it? What was the difference to them in OKC? Well, you just hit on one thing. They have way better spacing. All right. So, and they do a great job with their cuts and their spacing. That's number one. Number two, there was one time where he got in the paint and you can see Wendy wanted to help. But Carlton, the town kind of floats out to the corner, to the three. Well, in the Oklahoma series, um, Wimby got to stay in the paint. He really never left the pain. It was almost like they decided if Caruso and those guys can make enough threes, we'll lose the game.

We don't think they can. And they were right at the end of the day. Barely, because Caruso and Wallace made like half the corner threes. Ultimately, it didn't matter because Chet didn't make anything. Yeah, and Caruso was amazing in that series. And so, you know, New York, first of all, the one thing you got to give heart, he knows before the game that, That's who they are going to put him on or they're going to try to help off of him. He is a great cutter.

He's always in a dunker spot. And that's why you remind me of Rondo in rebounding. Oh, yeah. Yeah, when we put Rondo in the dunker spot a ton, why? Because when he didn't have the ball, if you didn't guard him, he rebounded the ball. And it allowed Rondon to have a free run at the glass. If you watch Hart, there's no one blocking him out. He's just going to rebound.

He has a free lane right to go rebound because no one's guarding him. And he takes advantage of it. He's one of the great rebounders in our league at his size. Well, and then on the flip side, Vassell, Champini, Harper, and Castle, I think they had like 30 rebounds combined with six minutes left in the game. They were crashing the board. San Antonio had 14 offensive rebounds. And really it came down. They just couldn't make shots.

And if I'm, I actually, they had two timeouts with like three minutes left. Yeah. And we both had the same thought of like, they don't look right. I feel like this is maybe like reset this. Wemby looked tired. I don't know if he shot his wide on the first half or what happened,

but I just, I don't know what the answer is. I take you the first half. Wendy looks sped up tonight. It looks like they're speeding them up tonight. I think he had six or seven turnovers, Bill. A lot of them were putting the ball on the floor.

I would know, you know, we have all kinds of stats, analytical stats with a team. And one of the things I would look at first is how many dribbles did he have? I know that sounds crazy, but it felt like he dribbled the ball way more than usual. The other thing is time of possession. How often did he hold the ball and have the ball in his hands?

It looked like way more than usual. And so I think that play right into the next hands. I think they would take that. Harper was phenomenal to me. He played great, played normal. It's funny. He just goes out in place and nothing kind of affects him. The two other guards, the three guards,

from San Antonio didn't have their best game. That's going to happen. That could be first game, jitters. That could be all kinds of things. They'll play better. But the Knicks will play better too. I thought Ananobe, down the stretch, you start playing well, but I thought he was struggling most of the game.

You know, save the bench, the game with the Knicks of the bench. That little sucker, Amarano. In the first half, yeah, he had really big minutes for them. He played great. And Sam, you know, I'm just, I mean, I'm just, I mean, I coach sham, and I'm just so proud of him. And by the way he plays it, how, like, you couldn't keep Shem on the floor five years ago, three years ago. Defensively, he couldn't guard anybody.

And that kid has worked his tail off, and he competes defensively. And the other thing now is he's always been a great shooter, but if he missed a couple, he would never keep shooting. And now he does. That's maturity, that's growing up, that's going through all the stuff. And he's doing that. I thought their bitch gave them a huge lift tonight. He was out there with like four minutes left in the Bridges spot. And then they brought Bridges back in.

But I was surprised how late he was in the game. Yeah. So Bridges will play better. He didn't have a great game offensively. But I thought Bridges had him a phenomenal game defensively. You know, it's so funny. Bridges gets so much criticism. But he does so many things.

And, you know, everyone just equates scoring to if you play well. And we all know there's so many. other things you can do. And Bridges does those things every night. Yeah. If I'm Wembe, what am I learning from that game? Patience, you know, to me, He Temple, thought he went too quick at times. I think they're going to put him on a post a little bit more, but not much more. The two-man game with him and Fox, there's something there. They just didn't get anything out of it. the 45 set, which I think we started it when I was with the Clippers with Chris Paul. You remember, that's what the 45 set actually came from.

They are the best that I've ever seen in it. Explain what the 45 set is. The 45 set is the four and the five. And usually they use a guard way up top, that double flat screen where a guard goes downhill, Wimby Rose, shooter in the backside, shooter in the corner. they run it as well as anybody I've ever seen. And they ran it three or four times early in the game, and it was successful, and they got away from it.

So you're going to see that way more in game two on Friday. I wonder what they do about Harper, because I actually thought he was their best player in that game. They took him out with a little over four minutes left when it was close. And then they lost the lead, and I didn't really like any of the offense they had except for that Fox nine-footer that he missed. I wonder if Harper,

I wonder if he has reached a point where you can't take him off. He just has to finish the games for you because he can create his own shot. He can, but the other guards can as well. I have to say that. I think there's going to be gain for it's going to come down between him and Champany. You know, the other guards, because of their defense,

they're rebounding, their athleticism. You keep them on the floor, but that makes them really small. That's one of the things I kept San Bill. I told you this, the Knicks are big. They're big. They're big at every spot. I guess Brunson is considered small, but we call them big body Brunson.

Hart plays like a five. Anonymous is huge. Bridges is long. Towns is long. They're a big basketball team. And so even though the Spurss guards did way better than I thought they would on the offensive glass, I think size matters. It does when Victor's around. But it also does because of all the Nick players would size.

and I thought it mattered tonight. I wonder, what do you think the NICS strategy was going into that game? Because it felt like they wanted to turn into a track meet early and kind of discombobituate the spurs and knock them out or whatever, whether they were in the last game. And then I thought down the stretch, you could see it wore down the spurs. And it felt like the Nix were like gaining strength almost. And do you think that was the strategy or it was just the outcome?

Yeah, I do. I think it's funny. I heard people say to half time, slow it down. I said, don't slow this game down. This is great for the NICs. The one thing they were doing, they were trying to get up the floor before Wembe could get there. They were trying to, that same thing Oklahoma tried, except for Oklahoma kept losing their ball handlers. All they had was Shay left, you know.

But the Knicks, they pass the ball forward. They attack early. They spread the floor. And it also didn't allow Wemby to get into his spot. Wembe loves being in the dunker spot defensively. But when they go in transition early and early attack, you saw Wemby out by the three. point line a lot tonight. San Antonio cannot like that.

So that absolutely was part of their gameplay. I had a bunch of Knicks fans in my life who were texting me during the game being like, I liked one being until tonight. Now I hate his guts. I'm tired of this. He's flopping around. Like he gets every call. It's so funny how you root against the guy for an hour and you're like, I'm out.

I hate this guy. Yeah, well, everyone flops around now. It's just so funny. I think it was. So they asked him, and they were trying to get him to say something about Shea, and he looked at the guy and says, everyone flops. Yeah, sure. You know, it's funny that it's not taught.

It's players work on it. But it's not taught, really. Players just work on it. I thought Bronson flopped and Tucker Anthony Towns flopped every bit as much as Wimby did. Yeah. But that's just part of the game. I like it. We're getting a lot of animosity.

I love that. Yeah. With the Towns thing, you said that at the top. about how Minnesota traded him. With that said, I'd never ever in a million years thought that he had this in him. And he's been doing it now for a month, right? The way he played today, there's almost like a cerebralness about what he's doing offensively. He's kind of staying away from the dumb fouls for the most part.

Like some of the stuff, like the quick attacks on Wembe is exactly what he had to do. Like before Wembe gets set, he was just trying to beat him and he was physical with him. I just loved how he played. He's playing smart. He's not losing his composure. Those are things that he always would do in the past. He's staying out of foul trouble. He may be their best passer at times.

And the biggest thing he's doing that no one talks about is his rebounding. He is a great rebounder, a great rebound, great offensive rebounder. So he's done a lot of things that we didn't know he can ever do. And the other thing is, and I've said, I've said this since we've, in 2008. Bill, when you hear about teams, and they all say it, you improve each round. And teams that don't go deep, never understand that. Players who have never gone deep, they never understand. It's not necessarily individual improvement. It's team improvement. And the Knicks in the first round may have been, you can say, maybe getable.

You know, in the second round, you know, they got it going. After that, after that, Atlanta meeting on whatever they had, they have come together. Like when you watch them play, there was a time out in this game where you heard Karantini Towns talking. I saw that. That was a limbo. That was six weeks ago, he wouldn't have said it and no one would have listened. You know, but that's part of the growth that teams go through each round. You get better.

You get closer. You trust more. You let go of all the individual crap, you know, all the numbers. chasing and you just start playing, you know, and you play the right way. El Dorado. Think about it. I love Alarado in this example. He comes from New Orleans where he played a ton of minutes.

And now you play two minutes, five minutes, six minutes, ten minutes, 20 minutes. He doesn't care. He just wants to help the team win. And you can see that throughout the Nick team. You can see that throughout the Spurs team. These are two teams that have grown each round. And they have, they both have come to this. like team unity thing.

And it's really helped the Nix because we never thought the Nix could get there. But they're there. They are absolutely there. I forgot to say that this segment is brought to you by New Era, which makes a bunch of great caps, all kinds of things. So that way you just mentioned about the selflessness,

I remember we did a podcast during the 24 finals. We were talking about the Celtics when they were, I think they won game three against Dallas. And you were excited about it because you were like, I see it. They get it. They understand what this last level is about. It's not about the stats anymore.

It's about looking out for each other, just trying to win whatever it takes. You don't care about your minutes. You don't look at the stat sheet. It feels like the Knicks have gotten there. And I thought San Antonio was going to win this series. And maybe they just suck tonight. Maybe they will.

But the fact that the Knicks were able to carry that three rounds inferior competition to now this stage tonight. and it's the same thing. It gives you hope if you're a Knicks fan, I would say. Well, I, this is, I've been asked because I'm always asked, who's going to win the series. And today I was golfing. I bet I was asked it 50 times, Bill, and my same answer is, I don't know.

Yeah. This one, usually you kind of have a, this one is too close to call. And, you know, if you're a Nick fan, you feel great, obviously. The big thing is if they do lose another game, but they come back with the next game. You know, and now game two is the biggest game of the finals for San Antonio. They can't go down 02. They just can't.

I guess they can. We've seen teams come back. But, you know, it's just so interesting. Yeah, this. They're not coming back from that. It's the guard play. That's the key for San Antonio. They did not have great guard play.

And their guards have been dominant in the playoffs. They've been dominant. They usually have big guard played by one or two, and then maybe two don't. All their guards didn't play well other than Harper. Harper was the only guard that played great tonight. I thought one of the things they weren't really 100% doing tonight was just attacking the rim all the time,

which is what they learned to do against OKC. Just got to go. Don't even think twice. Just go, go, go, go attack. Bigger guys. I bet if you sit back and count the drives that they were, bumped off on. Like, it was amazing.

Even Brunson had one. I think Fox had him beat, but he bumped him off path. And then nobody does it as better as good as anyone. Bridges does it. Heart is phenomenal at it. So they took a lot of the hits from San Antonio and kind of veered them outside to the paint. I thought that was really affected by the knee.

I thought New York's penetration defense was phenomenal. I thought they guarded the ball and took hits, held their ground, didn't back up, didn't flop defensively. They held their ground the night and their size matter again. When you played them this season, did you see this in them? No, no. I did say earlier they're the best team in the East when you go individual. Right. If you just count the numbers, you thought best team in the East.

And going into the playoffs, I did pick them to win the team. east before the playoffs started. But I just thought they would out talent people. They're out teaming people now. And when you put that talent together and now the way they're playing, they're a really good basketball team and they're hard to beat. Yeah, because I remember when this happened with the 08 Celtics, now, granted, they won way more regular season games.

But then the first two rounds were choppy, two seven game series. And then it really wasn't until near the end of the Detroit series. And then you could see something shifted. Yeah. Do you remember that? Like, what game was that when it just like, just something was different? I thought it was a game in Detroit. After we lost, you remember we lost, our first home game was against the Pistons.

Yeah. And I think it was game two. And we went right back in Detroit and won. I thought from that point on, we were, we had, you know, been made. You know, I love using that term. Like, you know, Godfather, we were made finally. Like, this team is, I thought that team played together all the time. But you remember going into playoffs, I made that comment.

I'm really worried we have not been tested. We hadn't lost two games in a row all year. Yeah. We hadn't gone through anything, and it just felt too easy. And that really concerned me. And so those two games seven, Atlanta game seven, went much of a game. But that Cleveland game seven, that kind of made us. And then the turnaround and then Detroit, the defending champs come in,

and they pop us right away. And we have to respond. I thought those are the things. And the Knicks have been going through. stuff all year. So they're different. They've gone through all stuff all year. Turmoil, chemistry problems, role problems. Guys were unhappy. They get to the first round. A lot of that is still going on. Atlanta takes it to them. They have that meeting and it all goes away.

Since then, they've been playing right throughout. And it's been amazing to watch. So is that the first recorded meeting in NBA history that actually worked? It actually worked, yeah. Because I don't think it was. a call of meeting like, you know, it just, from what I hear, the meeting just kind of happened. It wasn't one of those things, like, we're going to have a player meeting, which every coach is like, oh, God. Or we're going to have a coach. We want to have a team meeting where every coach says, oh, God.

Yeah. I got to tell you, Bill, I've been a player in these meetings, and I've been a coach in these meetings. And a lot of them go haywire. I was in San Antonio as a player. And we were down 02 to the Houston Rockets, right, way back in the Western Finals. And I think it was David Robinson or someone, or Moses Malone. I'm going to use him because there was all kinds of stuff in this meeting. The first part of the meeting, Greg Popovich is talking.

Now, Bob Hill is our coach. And Dennis Rodman, when Pop finishes, Dennis Robbins says, well, Who's listening to you? You're not the coach. This is the meeting. And Pop goes back at Dennis. Then Moses starts talking and Avery Johnson, Moses, I love you, but your time has passed.

And we're not going to read your press clippings anymore. Then Avery goes after David Robinson. I mean, the meeting was a disaster. It was a disaster. Having said that, we didn't go to Houston and win game three and four. So he just never know. So when you have those baitings, most of the time it's guys screaming at each other. And very rarely does it turn into a very productive group therapy session like in an Apple TV show or something.

Well, sometimes, sometimes you have phenomenal meetings. I will say there's been some good ones. But there's usually at some point a player you didn't expect to say something, says something that pisses off the entire locker room or another player. player. Now those two guys got a beef and it's all falling apart. That's usually what happens. It happens a lot. Yeah. So when they were trying to put together, I talked about this a few pods ago, like Wes and Leon trying to put this team together. And the motto is the 04 pistons, where it's like we don't, we're not going to luck into a top three lottery pick. But we can

kind of smartly, we can build around Brunson. He could be like our billups basically. And we could just kind of patch together different guys and we'll have wings that can play defense and towns will be our big guy. Do you see that when you watch them? Do you see the comparison? I mean, they're completely different teams. Two different teams because that Pistons team, anyone could have a big night. Right.

If you remember that. Where for the most part, Brunson is their go-to guy. 31 shots tonight. Yeah, he's the guy. And Detroit played more team ball, more movement. So a different team. Detroit was probably, was a way better defensive team. I think New York's a better offensive team in some ways.

But listen, when you look at the two teams, two teams couldn't be built any differently. The Spurs have done it basically through the draft. Fox is the only guy that you can make a case that they traded for. They signed some low-budget free agencies that have turned out great for them. But other than that, it's been Fox, right? Yeah. Where the Knicks, I asked my son, Spencer, who on a Knicks team was drafted by the Knicks that plays? There's only one.

It's Mitchell Robinson, right? That's it. Yeah. That's it. Everybody else, they traded for. They signed in free agency. So you got to give Leon those guys a lot of credit. They got the right pieces.

They did. I thought the Villanova thing was smart. Yeah. as much as people want to knock it, because it did create a team. It did create unity, and that was good. No one, and I don't care if Leon or anyone, no one thought Brunson would be this good. And I really liked him, you know, because people forget what he did to Phoenix. Oh, yeah.

In that series, like, it wasn't just the Lucas show. It was a Luca Brunson show. And he did it to Utah, too, for a couple games. He did that moments. Well, the Utah series, remember. I think Luca misses the game. He does. And he just takes over.

So he showed that he could do it. No one thought he could do it full time every night and be this clutch. Yeah. So give New York credit, they sign him. What I think they did better is once they realized what they had, they built around it. And I don't want to take shots at anybody, but I will say this. They are a lot of front office guys that can go out and get the stars. there's very few of them

to can then build the team into a championship team. That's what you have to do. You can go out and get these names, but can you make the other moves? You know, you look at Danny Agen, he's done it a ton. Brad Stevens has done it.

You know, Sam Presti. You know, it took him a while. You think about all the talent that Sam Presti had, and he finally kind of figured it out. Like, all right, we got the stars. All right. Now, I got to go get Hartinstein. I got to go get Caruso.

I got to get some of these role players because that's what's going to win the game for us. San Antonio, we don't even know who that role players are yet because they're so young, all their guards are so good. We don't even know who can be the next star. Could be Harper, can be Castle. I mean, there's so many guys.

But the next, give them credit. Hart is a role player. That's who he is. He actually knows who he is. Bridges is a role player. That's who he is. He actually knows he is. Robinson is a role player. And then the Carl Anthony Townstrait was humongous.

And at the time, I don't think anyone knew if it was a good trade or not, but it's turned out to be the game changer for them. Yeah, that was one of those. It was really hard to have a hard opinion on that trade. Yeah. You can see it from both sides being a disaster. Or I just, I remember being like, I understand why they did it. I don't know if I like it.

I understand why he did it. The logic. The logic was perfect. One of them was because the way he shoots to take a big outside of the paint and let Bronson work and then give Bruns and more space. So that absolutely is happening. It happened tonight.

And they needed a center because the league barely has any centers. Yeah, yeah. You know, you talk about the team building part and you just came from Milwaukee. They went the opposite way where they had Janus and they were like, we got to get another star for Janus and they traded basically all their future stuff for

Dame and tried to put them together as the combo, which I think is the old school model. Do you think like with the way that this new CBA and the second apron penalties and it feels like it feels like the depth and having a bunch of guys in that like seven to $15 million range is going to be more important than that second star? Yeah, I think it depends on who the first star is. you know if you have a shave you have a bronson yeah you get away with having a lot of other players and you know Williams is better than just a lot of other players he's injured but yeah maybe two maybe the two guys and then yeah just two and a half uh yeah you know what what happened to

Milwaukee is they got owed quick and their star wasn't you know yeah he was the young one everyone else got old really quickly uh you know i think if they could redo that trade they still do it but they would probably keep Drew. I thought from what I heard, they didn't think Drew and Dane could play together, and what they realized later is no, Dane needed Drew to protect him defensively from everybody else.

So the thought I actually thought was right. The execution of the rest of the part probably didn't work out. Now, moving forward, all these teams have to be very careful. Like if you, if you, you're number one guy is your number one guy. But you're number two, three, four, five,

you better. With the cap and the apron, it's so much harder, Bill. The three, the three star thing is gone. Like, we know that. Just contractually, you can't do it. The two-star thing is still alive. But you can make the case having a superstar, you know, a shade, and four really good players may be better.

Yeah, because the Seltzer in that situation now with Tatum and Brown. I think Tatum has the, I think he has the third biggest contract per year next year. And Brown has seven, so two is top seven. I don't know, I don't know how sustainable that is for the rest of the decade. How do you put a team around that, especially when you're watching a series like this where both teams go nine deep? You know, Cornette, who we didn't talk about. He came in at one point. I think Cornet's a good backup center.

But now it's on the point. As soon as Wemby comes out of the game, all the players in the other team, he came. or like just you could see the hop in their step that he's gone for four minutes. Yeah, but there's no play in the history. Maybe we'll back in the day, you know, and I'm being honest and shack a little bit. But I mean, listen, when Wemby walks off the floor, I don't care who you are. I think there's high school kids running right when Wemey walks off the floor and they're yelling, drive the ball now.

Right. Do it. Because it was so obvious. The Spurs is I think they get the nine point lead. They subbed him out. And it was like the Knicks just attacked the basket immediately. And so, you know. It was 6350.

Yeah. He goes out. And by the time he comes back in, it's 67, 61. The Knicks are back in the game. They're back in the game. And Brunson got it going. Brunson got it. Yeah.

So you needed, you had two things going at the same time. You know what else was going, by the way? I had multiple Nick fans friends there. they said it was like 15% Knicks fans. It was more than I thought it could be. I was surprised. Yeah, that's for game one. San Antonio, people don't sell tickets.

Well, clearly they do. But the Nick fans have been impressive. They really have been. You got to, like, Joel NB makes that ridiculous speech, you know, after they beat the Celtics about, you know, I'll pay for the tickets. And the Knicks, it was almost like the Nick fans took that personal. Right. What? We're going to buy the whole arena out. I mean, what happened with the Knicks fans in Philadelphia was unbelievable.

Yeah, that was crazy. You played for them a long time ago. Yeah. Got injured, but you were involved with that team that came the closest they've ever been, and that was 32 years ago. Yeah. But. I should have been active.

Well, yeah, you told that story on another pod that we did about how they should have activated you for the last two rounds. Yeah. Now this is 53 years. I've been saying I think this is the biggest title that anybody can have right now, unless maybe the bills. But the problem is the Knicks have, you know, six generations of fans and they're the biggest city. It's not even close.

I know that sounds funny because we're comparing football and basketball. Yeah. It's like the Cubs winning. Yeah. You know, it really is in a lot of ways. if the Knicks can win this. They've been through, first of all, they went through a lot of bad basketball.

It's not like they've been knocking on the championship door. Yeah. I mean, they went through a lot of bad basketball. And then they've kind of built this team. Leon, and you got to just give them all the credit in the world. It kind of, Emin West, they put this team together piece by piece. And now they're in it. And they're going to be in it for a long time.

This is not a flute. This team's going to be good. They're going to be good for a long time. contractually they're set up really well overall. So yeah. I can't think of another team with size of city and haven't won it that this would be any bigger.

This is as big as it is. This century, Red Sox and Cubs were the two big ones. Right. That's exactly right. The Red Sox and the Cubs were the two that they had to remove it from and then they got them. So now it's the Knicks. Well, we talked about the chess match of the series.

So the Knicks come out and do two things. Maybe San Antonio wasn't expecting. Having Towns Guard Wembe and just playing super fast and seeing if they could discombobituate them. I think they knew that. I think San Antonio did they play a pace. Yeah.

All right. So now we go to game two. And San Antonio is like, okay, they're going to have Wembe. Do you zag now if you're the Knicks? I'm like, no, actually, I'm not going to have Wemby Towns on Wemby this game. I'm going to put Oji on them right away.

I'm going to do this. No, no. Sometimes you overthink things. Yeah. That's in their back pocket. They still have that. If Towns had to get a quick file, I guarantee you they would have switched

and they'll be on them right away. They didn't have to do it, all right? That was one. Two, I would be very surprised to see Wemby garden Carl Anthony Towns. I just think it puts Wendy out of help. And without the help, I think it really hurts San Antonio. It also takes one be away from the glass.

And so even though towns are a heart will have free run to the glass, you still got a seven, six alien standing in other air and just swiping every rebound. So I think those are the two biggest changes that you'll see. I had two mailback questions for you quickly. First one is from Jeremy and Portland. is the NBA experiencing the greatest parody era in the history of the league. This year will be eight champions in eight years.

Half the league will have made the finals in the last 10 years. Do you think this is a fluke? COVID's part of that, or do you think this is just what the league is now? I think this is what the league. I think this is what collective bargaining and what they wanted.

You know, it doesn't allow the big marks to just outspend like the Dodgers, you know? Yeah. It doesn't allow for that. Now it's going to come down to, in my opinion,

GMs didn't know how to build real teams. I really do. I think, you know, coaches get fired all the time, right? I think this is the era of GMs. You better do your job. You all got the same type of money. You got a draft right.

You have to trade right. And more importantly, you have to sign right. I think this is also the era that most stars stay home. You're not going to see a whole bunch of movement anymore. It's not going to be a bunch of guys just leaving their team. I think you'll see more of the stars staying at home. Number one, they can make more money. And number two, teams can build around them.

So it's going to come down to, yeah, we know you can get us Kevin Durant. Or we know you can get James Harden. But how do you build around that? How do you put enough pieces around that? And so I think that's going to be the biggest change. Now, we'll say this. Mid-season, Bill, everyone said, there's a dynasty and it's in Oklahoma.

And we've been proven once again. There are no dynasties. There are no dynasties. Winning us. When I hear people talk about, well, they're just got to win the title. People have no idea how hard it is to win. Everything has to go right for you. You got to get lucky at times.

You got to stay healthy. You got to make big shots. Someone you don't know on your team has to make. And they all have to get along and buy in. It just takes, it takes so much to win. And that's where I mean by, you better build the right guys on that team. And it's got to be one through 15.

And I think that's the biggest difference. Can you talk about how different it is now with all the two-way guys and how much, having a bigger roster? How do you manage that? I think that's hurt in some ways. I think the smart teams, San Antonio,

or give them a, give a great example. Okay, yeah, they still have all their two-way guys, but they thought it was smart enough to get some vets, some older vets on their team, Crenette and Harrison Barnes. Olinnic. Olinic.

Like, that's a smart move. Now, those could be two ways. And I think a lot of the teams wouldn't sign those guys, Bill, and those are the teams that aren't winning. I'm telling you, you need a couple of those guys at the back of your bench. Always saw in Boston. We had the stars, and then we have the older guys, and it kind of boxed in the young guys. They had nowhere to go but to listen.

And I think that's really important on team. But it's harder now. You have these two-way guys. It's making the lead younger and younger and younger. It's what it's doing. I do like it. But if you are one of those teams that have a chance to win, you may have to give up one of those two ways to sign a veteran. on your team, a good veteran.

Not a guy that just wants to talk and can't play, can't do anything. These guys are important. And all the teams have, all the good teams do. Right. That's how guys like Pat Conantin, Olinick, these guys end up hanging,

Joe Ingalls, these guys end up hanging around for two extra years because they're not going to be talking to a teammate one, two, and three about, oh, I should be playing. Yeah. I don't know why I'm not in. Think about what Charlotte did. Charlotte has had a chemistry, culture problem.

They brought in forever. Forever, right? Yeah. You remember they cut back out of him for one day and went back and resigned him because they knew. He's not going to play, but he's good. Now that doesn't last. That probably won't even last next year. They'll probably have to go get someone else.

But those type of guys are invaluable. Coaches, in the old days, you know, when I first started coaching, you would always put someone at the end of your bench that you knew had your back. I remember Monty Williams when I was in Orlando. I just assigned Monty late to his career, but I knew Monty was going to be loyal. That's what teams, coaches did that all the time. Not as much anymore. You actually need guys that are just great team guys now.

I got a lot of emails wondering if the Chet Holmgren series against Wembe had parallels to Ben Simmons in the infamous Atlanta Hawks series that you coach. No, no, completely different. That's fine. Okay. I just fine. He was like he did not want to look at the rim anymore in game seven. I was getting flashbacks.

Yeah. Well, first of all, he didn't get it a lot either. You're right. You're right. Like he was out, he just was outplayed. And it was clear.

Like, this is why I like Wemby. It was so funny. I love Chet too. But this is why I love Wembe. Wemby for whatever reason, he takes Chet personal. Like,

Chet's the greatest guy. And so is Wemby. but, you know, Wimmy will never, he can't stand him. Wendy sees him and he goes right after him. And it's so obvious. Well, you had,

that was Zach Randolph and Blake Griffin, remember? Yeah, oh yeah. Same thing. Zach Randolph for some reason hated Blake Griffin. And every time he saw him,

he just wanted to go at him. Yeah. And it's so interesting because all they did, somebody compared them. Yeah. And for whatever reason, Wendy has Michael Jordan.

That's what I call. He's Michael Jordan guys. Like, you know, if you compare anything to Michael, you had to deal with Michael. And that's what is. But Wendy, and listen, Chet's still one of the top four or five best defenders at his sides in the league. He's still an all defensive guy. He's going to be a better offensive team, a player.

Oklahoma had two guys out in his series, and they should not overreact, nor will they, unless they got a great deal. that was the last question I had from you from Eli in Chicago talking about the check the check game seven and he said can you imagine what your podcast would have been like after scotty pippen's migraine game in the 90 eastern conference finals when the bulls lost to the bad boys you would have had topics like can mj we're in without a real number two who can they get for pippin can fill find five guys to trust and i do wonder like this culture we're in now you know we when we were when you were in the

league in the beginning, like magic sucked in the 84 finals, right? Pippin had the migraine game. Like people would worthy had the 84 finals when he threw the pass to Henderson for the steel and teams would lose and they would just move on. Isaiah. Turns the ball over. The game's over. Turns the ball over and flips the series.

You know, when we were in the with the clippers, Chris Paul had two of the worst minutes in the history of the game, right? Against Oklahoma City, yeah. That game's over with. You know, can you imagine? it was a podcast doing those times. I mean, that's all we would talk about. And all those players, for the most part, we covered and had great careers.

You know, Benz's would be the exception to the rule. Yeah, because this was, you only have one champion every area of 30 teams. There's going to be some ups and downs. Sometimes it's not going to be a year. You're going to have bad luck. You're going to have Jaylon Williams get hurt. You're going to have check. It's psyched out in the series.

It's a tough one, though, because they are. Most times it's not going to be a year. year. Like if you really thought about it, like if championship is the only thing, then most of the time it's not going to be your year. And a lot of times you go into the season knowing if that's the bar, this is not our year. Like if you're honest, now when you have a shot at it, then you go after it. I've been fortunate. I've had some teams that, you know, you can make a case, had a chance, maybe not when you look back on them. But at least we are trying to get it. But even that, you know, I coached 20, what, five years, five times, six times, seven times.

You know, it's not that many chances that you get unless you're on one of those teams that you win young and everybody stays. And you get a chance to coach a star over and over and over again. Phil Jackson has had that. Steve Kerr's had that. Pop has done it really in three iterations, really two. I mean, because you got to combine the David Robinson, Tim Duncan. But then Genobley and Tim Duncan. They're all with Duncan, though.

You can make a case. They're all were Duncan related. And now, you know, this is where, like I love Pop, right? This is where it bothers me the most. And that bothers me because I love Mitch. Is that Pop probably was thinking about retirement. Right? And then he's like, oh, my gosh, I got this guy.

I hit the jackpot. Yeah. I hit the jackpot again, and then it kind of gets taken away from them. That's really sad to me. For whatever reason, I don't know why it's sad to me, but it's really sad to me. Well, you mentioned Steve Kerr and how lucky you are to be able to get to coach somebody for most of their career, their entire career. He's just never leaving Steph.

It's become clear. I think he might just move into Steph's Gastron or something. He never wants to leave that guy. Listen, but you think about the multiple winning guys. Michael, Stoneblooded killer, a great guy, kind of great blue guy team-wise in a tough way. Tim Duncan, come on. You can't have like a better guy, a better leader of a team. And Steph, you can't have a better leader.

You know, as much as I love LeBron, Katie, and all these guys. that part of it they really did not have, or I don't know they didn't have it. But Steph is just so coachable. All those guys are coachable. Michael Jordan is crazy and tough as he was. The one thing you always heard about him, he respect coaching.

He really did. I think he came from Dean. I think Dean kind of embedded that in him. Tim Duncan clearly did. And Steph clearly does. And it's easy to build around guys like that. You know, and none of those teams have you ever heard Tim Duckett? Have you ever heard Tim Duncan say, this is my team?

Right. You know, have you ever heard Steph? This is my team. Think about Steph went and got KD and care less. You never heard them say, I'm on my team, this is my team. You know? And Michael didn't have to say. it. But I do think that kind of stuff matters.

Well, you talk about Michael and Curry and Duncan, and then I think Wembe and Brunson are both like this too, which is ironic. They're playing the finals. But they're like, I'm here. I'm with you guys to the bitter end. Build around me. I'll be the leader. I'm going to stick up for everybody else. But I'm not going to leverage anything. I'm not going to go to the papers. And I'm just, I trust you to build the right team around. Never got to hear them whispers, you know, rumors. They're just not going to do that. And that's part of what I mean about character.

I mean, that's so important on teams, especially winning teams. Yeah. All right, Doc Rivers. Well, I'm going to make you come back at least one more time during the finals. How's our guy Larry David doing? Is he all right? Is that a happy move right now? He made it through game one.

He's actually going to the garden, which I'm shocked by, but he's going to do it. But we do know, if things aren't going well by what this third quarter, he'll leave. He will absolutely leave. All right, thanks, Doc. We're going to take a break, come back with a little mailback. Thank you. Take care.

The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandul. It's all come down to this. Who do you think we'll be wearing the ring at the end of the NBA finals? Make your call with Fandul. Right now, new customers can hit the court with $350 of bonus bets, guaranteed after betting $5 for seven straight days. Fandle, the best place to bet all your favorite players during the finals. bet on their baskets and boards,

build the same game parlay for a chance. Any bigger payup at futures? Do whatever you want to do. Visit fander.com slash BS to get started. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC. Kentucky or Wyoming restrictions apply. C terms at sportsbook.

com. Game problem call 100 gambler. Call 188-78-7777 or visit CCPG.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right. I'm going to do a little solo mailback. Got a lot of good mailback. questions. You can email us, as always, at BS Podcast 33 at gmail.com. The most emails I got two

subjects. One was Steven Spielberg coming on and doing 2001 of Space Odyssey and the rewatchables. Just a lot of questions. Surprise that that was a surprise guest that we did not tip off. And also I think everybody thought it was a pretty amazing podcast, myself included. The biggest question was, what was he like? What was it like to sit there for two hours with him. And here's what I would say. One thing I've learned over the years, when you're with or in the presence of somebody who's really great at what they do, no matter what it is, there's going to be a joy and a passion and a love for whatever their expertise is that they can't hide. And it really is one of the reasons that they're so good at what they do.

And you can see with Spielberg, greatest living director, probably the greatest director we've ever had. and just loves movies, just loves talking about him, loves the whole process of them. The stories he was telling about the set, how he does, you know, how he interacts with different actors, depending on what their methods are, just a huge student of it. And I don't know, after spending two hours with them and just seeing how much fun he was having with us and with the format and just discussing the movie, it just, the whole thing made sense. Like, yeah, of course he's the best director. This is how much he loves movies.

This is his life. this is what he's devoted it to. So that's the thing. That would be the big takeaway for me, especially if somebody comes in. They haven't been, you know, over at the studio in my house. They don't really know what's going to happen.

And he just like completely bought in and was so excited to talk about the movie with us. So that was really cool. The other subject, people were wondering why I didn't seem more excited about the A.J. Brown trade when I did the podcast with Max Kellerman on Tuesday. So he's definitely,

Definitely one of the five or six best receivers in the league, and he's going to be 29 when this season starts. So you figure they'll get three, four seasons out of him, ideally, when he'll be awesome. Two would be a worst case there. It's a little like trading for Janus, where it's like, you know you're probably going to get two really good seasons. After that, you don't know. The salary stuff is pretty easy. He's in the high 20s. You don't have all of these crazy bonuses that you get if you're just signing a guy.

The reason I didn't seem more excited about it is I'm not positive why his production dipped the last couple years. And there's been a lot of good dialogue and a lot of good stats about this, about when he was at Tennessee, he was over the middle a lot more. At Philly, he wasn't. They basically just used him on the sides. And yet all the stuff with the man-to-man stats with him, he's like either he's the best receiver or one of the best receivers are just getting open and just being able to catch balls in traffic, everything. So the question for me is like, did he just kind of lose the will to live as a receiver by like 5%, especially last year after they won the Super Bowl because he wasn't being used in the way that he would have loved. And ultimately these guys have to be inherently selfish to be greater receiver.

And he's just like, I'm here. I'm a race car. I'm in the driveway. Please use me. Take me on the highway. You're not taking me on the highway enough. My engine needs to rev. And he's just going to come to the Patriots.

and the Patriots are going to use them that way, and it'll be a Moss in 2007 all over again. Or do you get a little worried that the Eagles, who have always been a step ahead of everybody, really, for the last 9, 10 years, who seem like they're selling high in a guy that they traded a first-round pick for, rode for a few years, got a Super Bowl out, then traded him for another first-round pick. How much did they know? Did they think he was heading toward a different phase of his career? I'm old enough to remember a lot of different receiver trades of guys in their late-20s, early 30s who were awesome, might be awesome again. And you just don't know. I think the Patriots had to do it. I wish they would have had to been able to put a protection on that 2020 pick. But ultimately,

the reason they didn't win the Super Bowl last year and got kind of killed in the big game wasn't just because they didn't have an awesome receiver. It was because they couldn't block. And to me, with the tougher schedule and all the things that are happening this season with the Super Bowl hangover and not knowing of Drake Mays 100%. I'm glad we're going to have guys who can get open and we're going to have big plate guys, and we might have a guy who's going to have 150 targets and 1,500 yards receiving and 15 touchdowns,

and he's just going to be awesome. But if they can't block, none of it's going to matter. So I'm a little more worried about that. Anyway, I was, I'm probably like 70, 30, 70, 70 optimistic, 30, a little suspicious, why we were able to just grab one of the five or six best receivers in the league for a pick two years from now. That's why I was a little tempered. Anyway, some mailback questions. Got a lot of questions or got a lot of answers from different readers about Zach and I wondering

what to call the Wemby Box and one. And everyone was saying, just call it Area 51. Adam from Toronto said, call it what's in the box after seven. But the best, uh, Kyle T wanted to call it the French press. I thought that was fun. But the one, Dan from Seattle was the first one that sent it, and there were a couple more after. This is the best one. Vic in a box.

Dan from Seattle wrote, Vic in a box and boom goes to dynamite. Perfect. Vick in a box is great. It's an homage to, I think Dick in the Box was 20 years ago, that SNL thing, but I love Vic in a Box, and I'm going to be calling

that from now on. So if they do it against the Knicks, you could just say, look, oh, they're playing Vic in a box. Stephen got this email a few times, too, and I should have, and I'm about to apologize. Stephen from San Francisco, listening to the Kellerman Pod, wants to make sure he's not taking crazy pills because we talked about the best crowd killers and never mentioned a guy named Steph Curry, the greatest shooter ever, the second that got brought up, I, like many others, immediately thought of the OKC game winner in 16 or the 2022 finals, game four, game six. What am I missing with the definition of crowd killer and how was he omitted?

Well, obviously, Steph would have been there. We kind of stumbled into that conversation. There was not a lot of thought put into the post-2010 guys, obviously, because we didn't include Steph Curry. That conversation started, just to remind you, it was what I wrote about Wal Frazier in my basketball book in 2009. And I wrote, I'm too young to remember watching Clyde Live, but he was, a legendary crowd killer by all counts.

In my basketball watching lifetime, only seven guys were crowd killers, Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isaiah, Andrew Tony, and strangely enough, Vinnie Johnson. So those are my seven. All right, so I actually went in, I looked through basketball reference, I looked through all the scores,

I really wanted to make sure I didn't miss anybody. And I also want to explain the definition of a crowd killer because there's been a bunch of guys we've had in the last 15 years that have had moments that would have been added to that list, like most famously, LeBron game 6, 2012 in the east. LeBron, Karee, Kauai, Dame, even James Hardin. They've all had crowd killer moments, but I think the crowd killer thing is,

it's a little different because it's a recognizable heat check, but there's an inevitability to it. And that's what we were talking about with Brunson, like in that Cleveland game, they're down 22 and he makes a couple, and the inevitability kicks them like, oh boy, I've been here before. I think Edwards can get here.

He's not there yet on this list. I think he can get there. He would be a draft pick for me. And I think SGA is like 95% there. And the thing that probably kills him with this is the fouls and the flopping. And sometimes the crowd is so mad at some of the calls that they're not being killed because they're actually engaged because they're mad at SGA. So he doesn't really 100% fit, but maybe he'll get in there.

So for the last 15 years, I had initially Jordan Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isaiah, Tony, Vinnie Johnson. From the last 15 years, you have to add stuff and you have to add Brunson. There's one other guy, though. I think Wembe has to be added, even though he's 22 and even though his whole career is ahead of him, and who knows, this might be the peak. But the combo of him on defense and then him when he gets going on offense and his ability to make 30-foot-3s like he did in game one of the OKC series. I think Wemby, Wembe might be the 10th.

He might be the only center. It's funny, Embed it had a couple crowd killer moments, but we've never seen him do it. It really mattered. But Wembe, I think, when Wembe is kind of starting to levitate above the game, the crowd gets psyched out in a real noticeable way that you could feel.

So that would be the 10th. Jonathan C writes, is there any country that had a worst eight sports months than Canada? Blue Jays. one out from World Series champs. The bills flame out. I like that candidate claims the bills.

They should. They lose to their biggest rival in OT in men's and women's Olympic hockey. Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, all missed the playoffs. Montreal makes the Eastern finals and loses to the former Hart for Whalers. SGA becomes one of the most maligned players

in the league and loses in game seven. He's still going. We have no Canadians in golf or tennis making an impact and no MMA guys. He's still going. Brett Hart came off awful in the Hogan documentary. And then he said, Sammy Zane seems lost lately.

Help us out, Bill. Jamal Murray just said he wasn't playing for the 2020. Canadian team. That was another thing that came out. The Maple Leafs won the lottery? That's all I got. S.J. won the title last year. He's going to be,

he's already probably one of the best 30 guards, 30 porters of all time. I don't know. It could be worse. You got to figure out the high. hockey thing, though. Not winning a Cups that's 93 when it's your national sport. It's pretty embarrassing. There's got to be a lot of soul searching going there. I got a lot of emails about this. I'll just read three. Alistar in the Blue Mountains of Australia. That's how far this, this theory

has trickled. What if Game 7 was the Ben Simmons game of Chet's career? And he put in parentheses, professional fisherman Ben Simmons, not my son, Ben Simmons. Chris from Philadelphia said, Chris's spurs series or Chet's spur series reminds me of when Ben Simmons's career ended against the 2011 Hawks and how he completely imploded. I look back at the box score from Game 7 and Simmons went two for four from the field. He did have 13 assists, but still maybe this ends with a Chet versus Simmons Bass Master Classic in 2035. I want to hear your thoughts. And then the last one I got on this was from MJ from Milwaukee. My comp from Chet is Rocky and Rocky 3 facing Wembe as Cobra Lang.

I think I made that joke. He was scared. He didn't want any part of him. Too fast, hasn't said anything like this. Wembe basically said, don't get this, Sukato statue. Give him guts. My question, who's going to be Chet's Apollo?

Who's going to take him to the gym and find his quickness? Who's going to race him on the beach, hug him uncomfortably? There is no tomorrow. It's from MJ, from Milwaukee. I don't think that person exists. Here's the thing. This is, you know, a couple OKC fans emailed about this. too. And I hadn't thought of it about when OKC lost to Dallas, the first time they made a

playoff run in 2024 when Dallas made the finals. And Dallas guarded Chet a little bit similarly where he's a slow release three point guy. So you can kind of play off him and then dive back at him, which is what the spurs were doing. And I think his real Achilles tail other other than he's in the same league as a seven foot six UFO is that he's got to figure out. had to have a quicker release on those corner threes because he's a good three point shooter. I still like Chet. I'm not going to get psyched out by that series. We talked about this in one of the pods recently.

There's been a lot of great players that have sucked in a playoffs. He's at his age and what we've seen from him so far and the fact that they've already won a title with him, I'm not quitting on Chet. With that said, I still want to know who says no to a Chet to the Clippers for the fifth pick trade, because the clippers do have cap space. And that would give them the foundation of Chet and Garland and Kauai Leonard. And then they could kind of patch around the sides. They've been really good at finding like mid-level free agents and veteran guys.

One trade I thought of, Quippers get Chet and a future Kings first. So they move back two spots. Kings get the fifth pick so they can take Aikoff, who I think is going to go fifth. OKC gets the seventh pick from the Clippers. and then they take Mara, the Michigan Center. And that's their Chet replacement, along with Hartenstein. They save a bunch of them. They would save $30 plus million with Chet versus the seventh pick,

Hartstein, the whole thing. So I kind of like that one. Plus the Clippers could pick up a future King's asset and still get Chet. That's around the range. I don't think top four is a Chet range, but I think five to seven could be a chat range. But as I said, multiple times already, it is not Presti's history or,

or it's just never something we've seen. He's not a panic trade guy and he's not a, oh God, we got to do something guy. He's a continuity guy. Andrew, speaking of fake trades, Andrew said it's not just the finals. It's fake trade season. You should come up with at least one fake trade

for every podcast episode until Frayorjee starts. Well, we are doing a lot of episodes this month. or rank your favorite five fake trades every Sunday night with Zach. More fake trades, exclamation point. I don't have a question. If we ranked our favorite fake trades every Sunday night with Zach, he would spend way too much time on that and probably have to be hospitalized, but I'm not against it.

Okay, June 3rd, 2016, my favorite fake trades right now. One of them is a Celtics one that I've kind of been hinting at for the last couple weeks in this podcast. I keep mentioning Murphy on the Pelicans as a possible Celtics piece. And the reason is because if the Celtics decide we already want a title with the Js, we don't want to pay both of these guys. Right now, they're two of the top seven contracts in the league. And not just by length of the deal, by what their price tag is just for the 2026-27 season.

And if they decide that's not sustainable in this current era, we have to figure out how to turn Jalen Brown into multiple pieces and a cheaper guy. Trey Murphy makes $25 million, which is $30 million less than Jalen Brown. Here's the trade. The Celtics would get Tray Murphy, Missy, the Young Center, who I like, Herb Jones,

and Cam Johnson from the Nuggets. Stay with me. Plus a 2030 Pelican swap and pick 26 from Denver, which they would have to do after the draft because Denver is not allowed to try. their first-round pick. New Orleans gets Jalen Brown.

Denver gets Sam Houser and pick 40 in the trade. So then the Celtics would have too many swing men, and then they could flip Herb Jones for something else. The other thing about Cam Johnson, they could put him in their giant trade exception they get. But I think if the Celtics trade, Jalen, I don't think it's going to be for Yonis. I think it's going to be a trade like this.

Multiple pieces, more flexibility, guys that would lead to one extra move after. this. And I think that's what they're thinking. I also think they could separately just trade Sam Hauser for Cam Johnson and put him in that trade exception and get pick 26 and try to have pick 26 and 27 in the draft. Then see if you can move up into the teams with those two picks. I mentioned Denver the other day and a bunch of Nuggets fans, Nuggets media members are mad. Bring it on. I stand by what I said. Hey, Denver, you're rich. I know about the second apron tax. I know about that all that shit. But they could just not pick up the Valanchunus contract for this year and then

figure out how to trade Cam Johnson for less and sign Peyton Watson. And by the way, I don't think Peyton Watson's getting as much money as everybody thinks. I don't know where his 20 million a year is coming from. We saw the guy play well for like five weeks and he got hurt, six weeks, eight weeks. I can't remember what it was. But I don't think, I don't, I think that's the range of guys that everybody's scared of right now, 17 to 22,000. million where you're overpaying, like basically exactly what happened to the Nuggets last year with Christian Brown, who I think was hurt last year. But if I'm Denver, I'm not picking on Valenciunis, and I'm trying to downgrade with Cam Johnson. And if I'm the Celtics,

then I can turn Sam Hauser and a Cam Johnson, and then if it is time to trade Jaylon Brown, who knows, my instinct is still that they're going to keep these guys. But if you could turn Sam Hauser and a Cam Johnson, do it, especially. especially because he's in expiring at 23 million. That gives you flexibility for February. I think everything in the Southics are going to do this summer is going to be about flexibility. They have a lot of young players that they like. They have two giant contracts.

They don't have really any of the in-between stuff. They have the Pritchard extension coming. Anyway, that's my first trade. Second one. Portland gets Janus and all his brothers. I think there's only two. Milwaukee gets Jeremy Grant's scoot. All of their picks swaps back.

Portland has, I think, two firsts and a swap, something like that. that plus another first and another swap and Portland gets Janus. Listen, we've talked about this trade before. I'm not breaking new ground here. And I don't know if Janus wants to go to Portland. I'd heard he wants to be in the East Coast. That's too far for him. And who knows if he wants to play for El Chippo, the Blazers owner, who's already on a mediator trying to claim that he's not El Chippo. Plus Carolina is in the Stanley Cup finals. So he's like, look, my El Chippo stuff works. Portland can figure out how to get Yannis without really giving up anything in their core and being able to put him with Drew Holiday and Klingin and Kamara

and most importantly, Denny. And I just think that's like, that's a better situation for him than Miami trading basically everything they have except Bam out of bio and all their picks and just ending up with Bam and Yannis and trying to figure it out. That's the most fun. I'd love to see Janice on that team reunited with Dame, reunited with Drew Holiday. The other one would be Palo Friana straight up.

And I don't know who has to throw in more for that, but as we mentioned a few pods ago, Orlando hired Janice's old assistant in Milwaukee, Sean Sweeney, who is the all-time, I can't believe you're not from Massachusetts, Massachusetts guy in the NBA, Sean Sweeney. But Palo Friannis makes a ton of sense for everybody. The last one, Washington gets Jimmy

Butler and a Golden State 27 first, unprotected. Golden State gets Anthony Davis, followed, followed by the Warriors signing LeBron James. And we officially had the expendables again. We have Anthony Davis. We have LeBron. We have Drayvon. We have Steph Curry. By the way, they can get Jimmy Butler back thanks to this stupid Mike Conley role that we nobody ever knew about or Mike Connolly got traded by Minnesota to, I think, Washington or Chicago somewhere, then got traded again and waived. And all of a sudden, Minnesota was able to pick them up. So maybe they could end up picking them back up in February. But I'm all in. I, listen, I've been driving this Golden State bandwagon. I also think there's real smoke. And I think there's some fire with LeBrongo in a Golden State.

I think it's his best option, especially when you look at San Antonio and you look at OKC, the young cores they have, how good their players are, and what the kind of the ceiling of those teams are compared to any other situation LeBron could be in, you're better off doing the All-Star team. And the tour with Steph and the puncher's chance of maybe all these old guys together could do some magic in the playoffs one last time.

They'd sell out every arena. Everybody would be in on it. I still love that idea. Nat in Oakland says, hey, Bill, I know you like a good title, defense, what do you make of the Thunder's honor level in their title defense? And how does it make their 25 title look? I think the parallels, the 2015 and 16 Warriors. The 16 run proved the 2015 team was legit. I completely agree. I've talked about this a lot. Title defenses are really important to me.

I wrote about it in my book. It's the biggest thing you can ding the 83-6ers on. They lost in five to a really weird Nets team in 1984. And I just, I feel like when you win the title, you guys, to defend it in some way. You have to have a little bit of pride. 87 Celtics being the best example of this. The team's just breaking down like an army platoon and there's still somehow make the finals. I would give OKC's defense in 8.5. The Jalen Williams thing, the further we get away from it, losing your second best guy,

I was trying to think like, is there another example of anyone this century who lost their second best guy and won the title? No. They went 75 and 22 this year. eight of their losses came against the spurs. They went 71 and 14 against everyone who was in the spurs this year, and they went 155 and 355 in two years. So I thought that was an awesome title defense.

Plus they turned into villains. What else do you want? And now they have the eye of the tiger for next year. We have a great Chet subplop. Maybe he goes to Australia, hikes the outback, grows a beard, grows a bigger beard. He has a beard, big bushyer beard. Noah from Conway, South Carolina said,

massive Spurs fan here. My question is, when be the first true non-USA face of the league? Has Shea or Yoka ever truly been the face? Has the media or the fans truly ever accepted them? He mentions Akeem. He mentions Dirk. Nash.

Even as USA has fallen behind in the best-in-the-league conversation, it feels like Yoka Giannis and Shea have not got ass in their seats. Like, Wembe, thoughts. I hate the face of the league. I said multiple times. I don't like it. I think it's stupid. People act like we always have to have one.

It's kind of, it's the mountain in the league they have to climb if you want to win the title that people are just thinking about it all times is how I would think about it. And in football, you know,

is Brady forever. And then it just became Mahomes. And it was like, if you get by Mahomes, that was almost as big of an achievement as winning the title. So I think that's a piece of, of it combined with the mom test of,

does my mom know who this player is? Does your mom know who this player is? Does anyone who doesn't follow sports know who the player is? Are they bringing in casual fans? And is just very general recognition of the person? And we have just not had this since LeBron and we definitely have a now with Wembe. And this is what I said all along. You know it when you see it.

You can't force it. You can't say, oh, it's Grant Hill. Ah, it's SGA. You just can't. You know it when you see it. Yokin's was 90% there, but never totally got there. He doesn't resonate like Wembe did. LeBron was that guy from 2011 to 16.

Curry and the Warriors collectively from the second part of that decade. Kobe and Shaq together, MJ, Bird of Magic, simultaneously, Kareem. You know it when you see it. And Wembe has it right now, no matter what happens in this finals. Next year, when we go into the next season, we'll be talking about Wemby and the Spurs, who could beat them. and also Wemby, Wemby, Wemby, Wembe, and he will sell out every arena he's in. He will get the biggest ratings, and that's what happens.

Josh S. wants to know if Nix win the title this year, is this the most improbable NBA championship when compared to where everything stood at the start of the playoffs. They completely revamped their offense halfway through a playoff series. Their best player is 4'7. I think he's taller than that. And it's the fucking New York Knicks. given where we were six weeks ago, this would be the most improbable championship

if they pulled it out. So they were six to one to win the East before the playoffs. I tweeted out some picks before the playoffs. And one of the long-shot picks was Brunson, to be the Eastern Conference MVP, was plus 650. And I think they were six to one to win the East.

That obviously flipped. So for improbable championships, 22 Warriors, the 2011 Dallas, 1977 Blazers, the 1978 Sonics making the finals, they didn't win, but that was incredibly improbable,

as was the 20 and 23 heats, but they didn't, neither of those teams won either. The 75 Warriors was pretty improbable, and then the 69 Celtics are the big ones. But this, I think the parallels to this one would be the 2011 Mavericks,

where very similar to the Mavericks, where it felt like they hit rock bottom in the first series. And the Mavericks had Portland. And then there was multiple times when it just felt like they didn't have a chance. Then they even get to the finals. They're two to one underdogs. So I would say the 2011 Dallas. The 22 Warriors, it was always felt like if they could just stay healthy and figure out their shit.

Pudos with Boston and Milwaukee. Milwaukee had Middleton banged up. Boston never been there before. And there was always a sense like if Golden State could just get there, that they could sneak it out. Dallas, especially when they're down 15 in game two after having lost game one. That was improbable as the finals was happening. It seemed to be a problem.

Zach Hogue said, he mentioned how I've always had a theory that championships and success come in bunches for cities. Is France having that moment right now, France, who's already won a World Cup final, or made the World Cup final last two years and they've won one. PSGs now went back-to-back champion league. French swimmer Marchand, not very familiar. with his work, but he's apparently shattering Michael Phelps' world records. The French rugby team has won a couple championships. Big deal in Europe, sure.

Wemby's down in the NBA finals. You could make case he's the best player in the NBA. So Zach asked, why not hammer France to win the World Cup with the Spurs to win the NBA finals and just bet on the summer of France? Now, you're seeing this after game one in the finals. That was plus 770 before the finals. I already had Spurs money. I threw some more on that.

I like that one. the year of France. So this is something I didn't realize until after I did the podcast with Max. Game six of the finals is on Tuesday, June 16th. And that same day, France is playing in New Jersey at the giant football stadium. They have a World Cup game at 12. And then potentially game six with the Knicks would be that night. And people could be like, could you try to go to both?

It's so crazy that France would be playing in the same night. that Wembe could potentially be, be quenching his first NBA championship that I almost feel like it's destined to happen. I really do. I was thinking about when I, in 1994, I went, my buddy Jim Grady was living in Portchester with my friend Camp, and I went up there and we were supposed to watch game five of Nick's Rockets. That was the night of the OJ car chase. And it just was like this crazy night that has been immortalized in multiple TV shows and documentary. and they're doing split screens. And it was definitely one of those.

I remember where I was when I watched this game and this whole car chase thing. I do wonder if that June 16th is going to be kind of a crazy day like that with the double France thing. Just something, some sort of signature French moment plus 770. We'll see if that one hits. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back and we're going to talk about TV shows and, and TV versus movies and a little seesaw that's starting a shift. And also we're going to talk about euphoria and the season finale of that show series finale now.

We're in talk with Joanna Robinson and Chris Ryan. And that is next right after this break. This episode is brought to by Duluth Trading Company, whether it's the 19th inning, the 12th quarter, or the fifth and a half shift overtime, not going anywhere. Which is why Duluth builds hardworking gear for folks who work their butts off. Their surefire arsenal or work shirts are built for function and comfort

giving a big foam middle finger to all that is futile. And the new no-quit utility shared is equipped with cooling and wicking tech, oh boy, to keep you comfortable all while being tough enough to take down your most daunting tasks. When it's Marathon WorkSession versus you, give no quits.

Shop at a Duluth store near you or at Duluth Trading. From the pitch to the store. stands to communities around the world. The beautiful game is coming to our beautiful country, uniting fans around a shared passion. Now you have the opportunity to hold this chapter of Canadian soccer history in the palm of your hands. Score the FIFA World Cup 2026, $1 coin today.

Look forward in your change. All right. I'm here with Joanna Robinson, Chris Ryan. We just did a rewatcher was taping. So I kept them around to talk a little pop culture. Euphoria was last night. Series finale, it sounds like. Oh, they confirmed it, yeah.

One of my least-like seasons of television I've had. I've never gotten so many all-caps texts from you. I was filled with hatred. I really hated it. Yeah. And I hate shitting on T. These things are hard to make. There's a million actors and our expectations.

But there's certain seasons. There was a Dexter season I remember that I was just like, I'm never fucking watching this show again. Did you keep watching it? No. You were out before the end of Dexter. Oh, yeah. Did you do that on Lost?

Did you ever freak out on Lost? I didn't like the last season of Lost. But that show had built up so much good well for me. Euphoria, it goes away for years. Right. Comes back and has three of the biggest under 35 actors that we have and just fumbles it. So it was an F-minus for me, but what did you think? It was like a C.

I would say for me, I think there's, some stuff in the finale that was really, really good. But I'm baffled by the way in which this season and this finale especially got bogged down in this, like, there's this Nazi cohort, and then there's Alamo and his bad guys. And so there's like two big shootout sequences that take up a lot of this episode, 30 minutes into the finale and we're still like shooting Nazis. And I'm just like, what about all these characters we spent all these years with? Like Hunter Schaefer plays Jules is barely.

in this finale. Like, you know, Cassie and Maddie are kind of in the finale. It was just really confusing to me. I understand the impulse and it's okay to want to sort of try to try something new with your show. Like, we've reinvented ourselves for this season, but you still have these legacy characters that have been there from the beginning. So to not give them a conclusive story or more air time in the final episode was absolutely insane to me.

Yeah, it was probably a lot warmer on it than you guys were. The addiction stuff really worked for me. I thought the Zendaya Coleman Domingo like relationship was amazing. Very good. And I'll say what I've kind of been like trumpeting the whole year with this show with Andy is I was just never bored. And so much TV bores me.

You know, like so much to the time I'm like, oh, I can see where this is going. Or I know what's going to happen now is like this XYZ is going to kind of play out. And when she, I guess obviously spoilers for this episode of Euphoria, I mean finale. But when she passes away at like the 40 minute, and there's still another hour.

I was like, oh, are we going to spend an hour kind of remembering Rue and doing the funeral? And then it turns into fucking taxi driver. I was like, well, I didn't see this coming. You know,

like I kind of thought maybe Al-Ali would sacrifice himself for Rue in some way. But it was such a, like a weird, dark fantasy of like the vengeance that probably people who lose people to addiction feel

like they want to take out. And it was just, I mean, you could say a lot of it, but it was very, unique. So I'm probably more in the B zone. If you're F and she's C, I'm a little bit higher on it, but just because I was

like, this never was dull to me. Well, that's why I wasn't sure until HBO confirmed it after we recorded our finale discussion, but that they confirmed that this is the final season. But I wasn't sure that it would be not, I mean, Jacob Allorty and Zendaya would no longer be

on the show, but you have plenty of other people and people are talking about it every week. And that's hard to find in this TV landscape. So I was a little surprise that HBO didn't try to squeeze another season out of Sam Levinson. It feels like they were probably good.

I'm just saying it's... Because now you have this idle season that was pretty crazy and super expensive. I'm sure this season was not expensive with probably better bang for the buck. This season was also marred by like the strikes and COVID and stuff like that. So it sounds like it went through a couple of different

like full creative reimagining and then they lost an actor. Yeah. Lost an actor and they also were cursed by never having their best actors all in the same scene for different reasons. I think for shooting schedules, but... Personal reasons. I really does seem like Zendaya and Cindy Swinia and Sidney did not want to be in a scene together,

which I think hurts the show. It felt very disjointed to me. I didn't like the all lordy stuff at all. I didn't understand it. Nate shouldn't have been in the season. Like, what the fuck was the point of that? Nate shouldn't have been in the season at all? Or should have died in the first...

If you're going to use it now, you just kill him in the first episode. The whole point of him is to create this... Well, the whole point of him is to say, we have Jacob Allorty on our show in 2026, right? Yeah. So that's why you keep Bellorty around. But for plot reasons, you really just needed Cassie to be in debt.

And so he could have died in the, they could have had the wedding and he died in, like, the first episode. But that stuff kind of hardly gets interrogated in the finale. Like, that was one of my problems with it, is that, like, this sort of chain reaction from Rue tells Lexi that she's a DEA informant. Yeah. And then Lexi tells Maddie.

and Maddie tells Alamo, Alamo seems like probably would have found out either way, but like there's no reckoning with like Maddie being like, I can't believe like this is what happened to Rue. Does she even know that she's the reason? And that was, that was,

that really bothered me because I know you're not like a huge Maddie slash Alexa Demi fan, but I really love that character. And I think she's one of the smarter characters on the show. And so for her to just casually drop this DEA information in front of, of Alamo, I thought was like a bizarrely stupid move to not then have any ramifications at all for that character.

Yeah. Like, emotionally is very strange. I mean, this is like a show that did something in an incredible way that TV shows rarely do anyway anymore, which is like mint stars. Like when you think about the fact that like there's that shot of Zendaya, like the young Zendaya when she's having her flashback. I'm like, wow, she was a kid when she started this show. Right. And like, so for them to have this lightning in a bottle with three performers, especially, Allorty, Sweetie and Zendaya, and it kind of have it wind up where it winds up.

I guess it does feel a little bit like a wasted opportunity, but it's not surprising that, you know, like, given their schedules and stuff like that, it is, it is disappointing, but it's not surprising that they're not more scenes together. But I just don't think some, like, Andy was just saying this today on the pod. Like, I don't think like anything like this is ever going to happen again where you have, this amount of, like, tower. So that's why I give it the F-minus. I don't think it was an F-minus show.

But I think they had the opportunity to do something really special with the people they had. And I just don't think they pulled it off. You don't think he had a lot of that way. You don't think off-campus is headed that way. Maybe. I don't know what they tried to do with Sidney Sweeney this season. She seemed to

enjoy it. She seemed to love it. And I'm so curious what you thought of it. Were they mocking what people think is the perception of her? Or was he mocking her without her knowing she was being mocked. I think it was the former. I don't, I feel like it was a little column A, little column B.

Like, I, I think there was just like a little bit of Sydney, sweetie not being entirely in on the joke, but her being somewhat in on the joke. That's how I felt. So my daughter, who loved this show and that's a big part of, like, her generation. Yeah. And she liked the finale, but she likes everything because she really liked Rue and the Coleman Domingo character. Well, Zoe had the theory that, like, I don't think.

think Vru's going to die because she's the narrator. Right. Yeah. And she thought that he would die and then she would take his place. And so they flipped it. But I guess the problem with Levinson is also the best thing about him. He can make anything look good and entertaining. Right. So this turns into like a Western.

We have like a whole Nazi shootout. Yeah. And it's all that's really well done and well filmed and just interesting. And then you kind of think about it after you're like, what the fuck just happened? Why was that? I'm just not emotionally invested in it at it at all. Why did I just spend an hour, 45 minutes watching that? And if that was a movie, would that have been a good use of my time?

I don't know. I disagree with you on one thing, though. I was pretty bored through multiple stretches yesterday. I just was like, what the fuck, man? The Nazi shootout, I thought was like a bearably long in this, like, and the Lori suicide when I'm just sort of like, I don't care about this character at all. I didn't care about anybody in that house. So when I say that, I mean, even when I would be like, this is the third time they've had this conversation.

or the fourth time the scene has happened visually, I would be like, there's something that popped. Like, even the shootout in the Nazi, like, I thought the tunnel sequence was cool. I thought the lasso sequence was cool. Like, there's stuff where I was like, oh, shit.

Like, nobody really makes westerns like this right now. Well, and as two people who were, like, podcasting about it week to week, like, there was always something to talk about and people were talking about it. And in this, like, you know, attention economy, like the fact that people were engaged at all, even if they were angrily engaged,

I mean, I don't know if that's a negative message to send, but, like, there's something provocative about it. Yeah, important about that. I guess the bigger issue is can any show end in a way that satisfies the fit base? Yeah. Hacks finale ruled also happened this week. When did the two specials come out? What year?

No, I mean, like, was it between one and two? One and two. Yeah, so, like, between one and two, they did these two specials. One was about Jules, and one's about Ali and Rue. And I remember thinking back about those Just after watching last night And being like, man, like, I wonder if it would have worked better

If it was like three of these weird Yeah I'm gonna do a Nate movie I'm gonna do a Cassie movie And then I'm gonna do the Ollie And Room movie And we'll put it all together And it'll be like a six to eight weeks special event

Of like wrapping up the euphoria storylines Yeah like skills But like to your point I wonder if there was holding out hope of like, well, maybe we'll do more. Maybe like in five years we'll come back and they'll be like, they'll all be older then. And maybe I can do the Rue as a private detective story then and all this stuff that

had been kicked around as ideas. Yeah. Too much time passed. And I think... That was a huge problem. I think it's really hard to figure out how to land the plane correctly when you're also trying to land the plane on this is five years after the last time you've seen all these people.

And I do. I mean, like, you know, would I rather had season three of Euphoria rather than the idol, yes. But I do, I mean, we can't underestimate the impact that losing Ingus Cloud had on this entire crew and this creator and stuff like that. So like I can understand that while still not enjoying the end product of what we got.

Is this better if it's just a five-year reunion for high school? And we don't go completely over the top and make this like the absolute craziest. I mean, there were scenes this season where it's like, you're trying to set the record for the craziest scene that's been on HBO five different times.

It's like the Dill Dole Limit. Would it almost have been better scaling it back the other way and trying to make the show a little more normal when it wasn't? Yeah, it's almost distracting at points because like when Ollie is doing his vengeance tour and you're like, wow, I'm really engaged.

This guy's got his military uniform on. This is like rolling thunder. It's happening. Yeah. But then you've got like fake Brazilian butt lifts like walking across the screen every second. And I know it's set in a strip club, so it like works.

There's no strip club in the world like that. But it's also just like, dude, fucking concentrate. Like tell the story that's right in front of you rather than making sure I see four snakes and two butts. You have one of your main character of the show, Maddie, here in this shootout, but she might as well have not been there. She was a piece of furniture. It was so weird. You liked the hacks finale a lot? I loved the hacks finale.

Yeah. I did. I liked it and it was also, but it was interesting. Did you watch hacks at all? No. Something happens at hacks. where they like kind of get up to the edge of something very, very, you know, like unexpected and impactful happening. And they back off of it at the last second, probably for the best for like in terms of people's enjoyment of it.

But I'm glad. I'm glad that with euphoria, they were like, this is what happens to people who dance too close to the sun a little bit. But also I would see with the hacks finale and I guess we're talking around it, like they don't say it's not going to happen. Sure. It's just not happening in this episode. Yeah. Right. TV's in a weird spot right now, even though we're all watching a ton of it. This year is very, the back half of this year is very strange. I don't know.

Like, I don't know what. I think the whole year's been weird because one of the weirdest things that's happened is we thought TV had taken over from movies. And now movies has happened this huge renaissance because they're actually making movies about original IP. Sean just heard you across town. I know. Sorry, Sean. Conversationally. He and Steven Spielberg clinking espresso. Yeah.

Conversation, I think more and more people are doing the, have you seen an obsession in? Yeah. It's the way it used to be. I don't know why we had to die for 10 years. And I don't think it was, you know, I know this is, we've done so many pods and different things about this, but I really just think everybody got lazy for a long time. And then it finally started not making money.

And then it's like, well, maybe we need to find new stories. It's like, yeah, motherfuckers. Oh, in terms of movies, yeah. COVID definitely fucked it up. and knocked it backwards, maybe this all would happen three years sooner. But movies just feel a little more vibrant the TV right now. Like, if I see another fucking Apple show, and I've watched most of them, where it's three actors I've known a few times from different things.

Yeah. And there's a murder, and one of them died, and now we go backwards. And like, how many fucking times can you make that show? Are you excited for Cape Fear? No, I'm not going to watch Kate Fair. Widows Bay. We're loving Widows Bay. Yeah.

The Pit. Couldn't get there. The pit? Were you into the pit? The pit was the last one. Yeah, I love the pit. The pit was the, you know, because I was sending you a text about it. I do know.

The pit was, so, and now people are going to rip the pit off. And then we're going to get a lot of like every hour and a day. But the pit was just ripping, you know, the pit. Legal. Allegedly. Allegedly. The pit is just doing old school television.

There's something about they got, I think that collectively, and you could do. a Matt Bellany conversation about moving away from networks and into streaming services and why different priorities change. But there was something about the golden age of television that basically raised

Joe and I as people who talk about this stuff, where it was like Breaking Bad and Sopranos and some of these shows, even if maybe there had been a feature script at its origin story ever, felt like a new and different way of telling story.

and then when you have this gold rush and talent rush into TV but it's like yeah guess what Nicole Kimman's going to be on this but she can only shoot for like four weeks so can we do all of her scenes in three sets and they have to be like before we know what the end of the show is

or I'm not even talking about our specific show but I feel like more and more you can see the scenes schedule reliant of shows where you're like oh did that did they actually not have like the ending or what like what happened here? And that and also it's connected to what Bill was saying about sort of this idea, the way in which IP or superheroes or whatever you,

however you care to put it, took over movies. Then all those like mid-level original idea of movies became like drawn out limited series because that's the only place you could tell those stories. Yeah. But you didn't have enough story there. So you just get this like really thin sort of diluted version of what would have been a good like, you know, just movies for adults movie.

and people can tell. You get tired of the time. A lot of those Apple shows that you're talking about are just stretched out movies that people can't get made as movies and so they're taking them to... And you make more money if you stretch it out.

There's something behavioral going on and I recognize it in myself where I get like three episodes into a show and I'm like, that's pretty good, but I think I'm good. I got it. You know what I mean? Oh my God. You make it three?

I'm like an episode half and I think I'm out. You're like kind of cruising through a Netflix. or an Apple or an Amazon show, and you're like, I think I got it. You know, like, I think that this is like kind of... Did you do any more Burroughs after we talked about it? No.

I think I got it. Yeah. I mean, like, that's a good example. Legends is like a great show on Netflix. I was like, I got to finish this, but there's something daunting, especially if, like, you know, like you said, like movies have kind of had this a little bit of a revival of like, we got to go out and see backrooms like the weekend. It comes out because it feels like that's...

People are talking about it. Really, like, a huge... I couldn't believe it. I mean, we live in L.A., obviously, where. everybody loves going to the movies. And we have great apps now where you can see how many seats are available and things like that. And so I was thinking about making my wife go to see backrooms last night and looked in the

morning and there were a bunch of seats left on like the 10 o'clock. You know, it was by the time I got to 2 o'clock, like everything was gone. It was like sold out. It was like, holy shit. And I was talking to my son about it because him and his friends, my son's 18. They love going to movies, obviously. but I do think a big piece of this other than the original IP thing. People were COVID stuck kind of in their house for a while,

not being able to go out as much. And then that started to slowly shift away. And then now it's back to normal. And now people are looking for excuses to go out again that I don't feel like was there a few years ago for a variety of reasons. They've also now they're learning that. And they just announced that obsession was supposed to come out this week on paid video and demand. Couldn't believe it. They delayed it.

And now they're delaying it for like another 30 days or 40 days. And the exact opposite is happening with TV where it's like there's four or five shows a year that are big deals that are weekly and everything else is like these binge drops that it's either were you a psycho and you watched it on Friday or have you watched it over the course of two months and you got to finish it but you haven't yet. And Joe and I are both huge fans of Widows Bay. One of the reasons why it's been, kind of like this cool little show is that you can kind of feel it

gain momentum. The same thing happened to the pit in his first season of the pit. Watching audiences need time to find these things. And if Widows Bay had been a binge jump, you wouldn't have this like as the audience grows

and then week to week and Widows Bay is a little bit of a theory show so like people get to trade theories and get really invested. And I've just like always been anti-Binge. It is very antisocial. And like what you're talking about in terms of this like post-COVID thing

is a social experience. When you go to a movie and you sit in a dark room with people and you laugh or you cry or whatever it is, you are feeling something with people around you and we're in a psychological space, societal space right now where people feel so isolated,

people feel like they can't connect or agree on anything. And if you have this communal experience, TV can be that if it comes out week to week and if everyone's watching the same thing, which is so hard to capture. It's happening with sports, sporting events too. It's like sports is completely.

back and attendance is doing great in all these different places because people like being around to their people. The binge thing, we've been talking about it on this podcast forever. I just don't like it. It's horrible.

But I'm for selfish reasons dating back to Grantland. It's like, it's just bad. Stranger Things was bad for us the way the schedule was. If they had spread it out, it would have been better for us. So I'm being selfish about it, but I just think the ability to dive into

a show every week, wonder what just happened, what's going to happen next is, I think that's how people want to watch shows. These networks aren't stupid if they thought there was more money or more interest in it being a week to week. I'm sure they would do it. I do think it's a little bit of like an us problem where it's like we like to talk about these things. We like to talk about these things episodically. I'm bummed out that the last season of the bear is going to go up on like a Thursday night. You know what I mean? I'm bummed out that. The bear has been a confusing case the entire run because its first season was a binge dump. But once it was such a huge thing, we were confused every year.

Should have been two a week. And well, and FX is like, we've got the numbers that support that this is the model for us. But like, it's more of an instant gratification versus a long-term investment thing. But I'm sure the numbers prove that if you binge drop something, you know, you will get more eyeballs on it immediately. But in terms of like building a Widows Bay audience or building a pit audience, like there's longer term benefits. Come Emmy season, come all these other things in terms of its endurance. Yeah, it's an us covering shows problem, but I also think it's like an impatience

and that anxiety, that insecurity that a lot of like studios and streamers are experiencing. I only like superficially follow this stuff, but I am very much aware that there's usually like a huge flood of shows right around now the previous few weeks because people are trying to get in under the Emmys nomination. Yeah, and the summer. And to me, that's a lot of, like, you know, maybe bigger stars doing TV who are like, if I'm doing this, I want to be up for an Emmy. Yeah.

Don't put me out in August and make people try to remember me next spring. Yeah. And I don't know if there's that many shows that it came out in the last couple of weeks that I would be like, this is so good. I wish it had a better runway or had a better window. But they were putting out way too much shit in like a six-week period. You're right. because they're like, we have to get this up to run an FYC campaign to get an Emmy nomination to satisfy the talent relations that we have and do whatever.

And I do think it's like kind of now blinding people to like be like, it just seems like five shows just pop up on Peacock every week and I don't know, know what to do about that. And I think that like we used to. Five shows where somebody gets kidnapped. Well, or just like do the HBO finale, the hacks finale. There were like a ton of finale. But do the HBO thing where you have two shows on at once and you promote them and you like

build conversation about them and then hand the baton off to the next two shows. It just doesn't make any sense. Because when you're thinking about, I do think a lot about the FYC stuff. And when you think about what they're running, like task is a huge thing they're running. And they didn't run that in the classic Emmy's window, you know, but it is week to week built an audience was a huge thing for them. Yeah. One other thing with the binge that I think gets lost is we always talk about how it's bad for us. It's bad for discussing.

I also find when you binge a show, I just don't. watch it as carefully. No, of course not. Especially, it's like, oh, I'll bang out four episodes. Like, I watched those seasons of the bear, and they all just are kind of lumped together, because I don't feel like I watch them

the way I would normally watch them if it was just spread out. Yeah. Like, even Euphoria, which drove me crazy, it was at least once a week, and I actually watched it, and it was something that I was concentrating on. If I was trying to binge that, that would have been a nightmare.

Yeah. I remember the bear thing that was jumped out at me. was like that first season, you're right. It had almost like a stranger things kind of thing where it went from like, have you seen the show The Bear? I remember you slacking me and you're like, have you seen this bear thing?

And it's like, no, now I have watched the Bear like in five hours, you know? Yeah. And it was the second season. And I think I had screener so it wasn't like a personal thing. But I remember being like, oh man, it sucks that not everyone is going to watch the Christmas dinner episode at the same time. Yeah.

You know, and that there's going to be prepackaged articles going out about how did the bear do that episode? And you're like, I would love for everybody to be like, oh, it's Bear Night, it's Wednesday night. And it's like, holy shit, Jamie Lee Curtis and John Bernthal are in this episode, like in Bob Odenkirk. Some of the best shows ever benefited from that more than anything. I mean, thrown certainly, sopranos, which still doesn't know.

But lost. I need to. Think about Lost now. It would have been 10 episodes a season. It would have been a binge show. And it just like, when Jack says we have to go, back, it just would have been trapped during the season-long binge, and everybody would experience it at different times, and it wouldn't have the impact.

I was thinking, with the pit, I was thinking so much about this idea of water cooler culture and water cooler conversation and the way in which shows like Lost or the Sopranos or Mad Men or whatever, to a lesser degree. Like, that idea of the water cooler is so rare, and it feels so good when everyone, when everyone watching something together when everyone's watching task. And like we can see it with the podcast numbers when people are like dialed into a show. And then people want to text me and talking. People want to text me on that night while they're watching and they're like, holy shit, I can't believe this happened. Or like, why did Robbie do this? Or, you know, what's, who's the

secret warrant on Widows Bay? You know, and that's just, that's better for our culture. When I was wearing for Jimmy's show, we came out on Monday when Sopranos was running. And so we, all the writers, we'd all get together with Jimmy. And we, we'd all get together with Jimmy. try to figure out like Act 1 and we'd all go around the room and pitch bits. And during this time, the Sopranos had like, was one of their runs. I can't remember what season. And we were just all around the room on the Monday. We would talk about the show for like an hour and a half.

We'd have like no bits. Everyone's like, damn it, man. And it was just like, that's just gone in the binge model. And so I don't know. I understand there's reasons why they do it. I'm sure the numbers are just as good. But like, I watched DTF because I had screeners for that. DTF St. Louis.

I watched it the day after New Year's all at once. I watched like six episodes in one day because I was hung over and I just wanted something to watch. And it hit me differently. I think if I had watched it week to week, I would have liked it more. But it was like too much all at once.

And that's another issue. Some of these shows are like too dense to bench. That's a show that didn't really work for me personally, but I will like... You respected it. I really... And also like is the kind of thing that we should have...

more of. Now, you could say DTF might have been like a good two-hour movie or, you know, whatever, but I wish more shows had like the sensibility and also like the creative bravery to be like, this is not like every other show. Like the sense of humor is going to be different. The performance style is going to be a little bit different. The tone is going to be different. You may or may not love it, but we're going to take a risk with it. And I think that there's a lot of like risk aversion in TV that you can really feel. Every show starting with a flash forward and then a six months

earlier is like it should be joined. It's like putting the hook at the front of your song. You guys don't trust me to watch the TV show because you got to show me a dead body in the first five seconds. I know. I know what show I'm watching. It's presumed innocent. You know, like it's like I assume. I've seen the movie. And to go back to your

point about how you don't watch binge shows that closely, then we get into that feedback loop that people have been talking about more and more recently where Netflix execs or whoever say you have to repeat things 10 times because people are second screening this. They're not paying attention. And so then the shows get worse. And so then people want to pay even less attention to them because you're like, oh, I already saw this scene. You keep repeating the same lines over and over again because you

think I'm not paying attention. And so I won't pay attention. Yeah, sadly, I was laid on the pit and we binged it. And I really tried to lock in, but I'm sure I missed a bunch of stuff. Well, the pit is almost, like, I think it's, it's an amazing week-to-week experience, but watching it and binge is almost representative of like the quality, like the durational quality of the day that they're having on the show. So if you watch like five episodes, you really are like, holy shit, it's been five hours and like, yeah, it did work, but I still feel like I missed some stuff.

You could have right at the end, didn't you? I thought you caught up like by the time of the finale. date. I caught up for you guys. Yeah. Yeah, I made it in time. It was good. But I do wonder, like, the seesaw of the movies versus TV, this is going to be an interesting next couple years. If I'm a creative person, do I want to have a movie and I can get out of it? I can just create something from scratch and have people see it and do well and make the next one? Or do I want to emulate what these other people are doing with these TV shows where it's like I might be locked into this for five, six years of my life.

life. By the way, I'm not going to make as much money as I used to back in the day. And I actually might have more upside on the movie side. Your brain's going to shift toward the movie making, I think. Like even somebody like the guy in the bear, right? Jeremy Allen White. No, the creator. Christor. He's making a movie next. Yeah. The bear was amazing for him, right? It's the stepping stone for him to make movies, which is where I think that's where the real money is going to be for them. I hope so, but there's still plenty of movies that come and go and people pay no attention to them. Sure. But you can at least move on to the next thing when you're doing it.

You do a show, this is, you're locked down. Even these euphoria actors couldn't get out of these shows. Yeah, like, Nate Bargazzi's movies kind of flopped. If he had been locked into like, I have to do everybody who loves Raymond for 10 years. Mr. Mom for 10 years, yeah. Although that was like kind of like, maybe that made more sense. I don't know. I mean, you know, the differences is like, yeah, Joe's right.

Like, there's going to be, for every odyssey and backrooms and obsession, there's going to be 10 movies. A bunch of me to know. Yeah. But then some of them can even do well when they end up on like the Amazon on demand, you know, the pay-per-view, the Roku. Does that even exist? I don't know. Fandango universe.

It is fun. You know, I'm relatively new to living in Los Angeles and but having worked with you guys for years and years and years and having listened to Mallory say, every screening of this is sold out. And I'm in San Francisco. I'm like, not here. And so it is nice to be in this town where people are going to the movies all the time. And any time of day that you decide to go to a movies,

there are going to be other people there. It's really cool. You're really right, though, about there's something different. Like, I remember even, like, last year with Andor, and I was like, me and the 10 people I know who are watching Andor are obsessed with this and can't believe this is happening. And then there's, like, all these people who are like, I know I'm going to love it.

I just, you know, just don't have time right now. You know what I mean? It's too much, because there's too much stuff, and it's too much of a commitment to go into any of these shows. That was one of things that kept me from the pit for a while. I was like, I don't know. I'm busy watching important stuff, like terrible NBA games. Yeah, but it is a commitment.

And I found the same thing, it would be a funny letterbox of like, did I quit this TV show? Yeah. Where it's like, I lasted an episode and a half with that new show on HBO that I just kind of stopped watching. I also feel like I hear from you more often than not, it was horrible. I watched all of it. Yes.

When it comes to TV. Yeah, but usually that means I had it on as I was doing other stuff. beef is a good example I saw every episode of beef but if you quizzed me on it I'd probably miss like half of the second season My nanny stole my dog and turned it into a fighting pit bull

Like when you're watching that on Netflix Like two seconds screen that Well and that's that's another thing that's winning right now It's certainly winning for Netflix Is these hour and a half true crime documentaries The crash has been I think number one on Netflix for like two weeks and I feel like everybody saw it

at some point had an opinion on it there were other documentaries about it and from a watercour standpoint it feels like true crime documentaries are hitting as hard as any TV show it's really a strange time can we talk about our pals at HBO who like HBO FX and Apple

are the ones who are like holding it down on the week-to-week releases despite the bear and Hulu is doing the release too and then you have to... Right, the mini half-binge sort of thing HBO this year had 9 of the 7 kingdoms, which was great,

but that's like their IP. Euphoria is their IP to a certain degree, right? DTF, which you liked. I liked, but that was, like, my dad would not have made it 10 minutes on that show. Like, that show had a distinct audience, and I'm not sure Middle America. It's an interesting one.

Ironically, because it was set in Middle America. Right. Right. House the Dragon, lanterns. And then Harry Potter at the end of the year. you know, off the back of them doing like, welcome to Derry and Dune, so them investing in these like IP shows. Yeah, it seems like they're kind of going a little bit more

either big blockbuster stuff or getting into the pitification of other genres. And I'm in, I'm here for the pitification of other genres, but like, and the pit, obviously. But like, I'm curious, like, where's this year's task or where's, you know,

where's like, as long as those guys still make industry. or something like it. As long as there's a show that comes out of nowhere and just kind of like feels like lightning in a bottle and it feels different.

Industry was great. Industry was great. Industry was fantastic. And that's the kind of thing that you really, really need to keep TV feel alive. What's the show you're looking forward to the most?

Pass the Dragon because I get to cover it with Chris. Actually, the real answer is the vampire list out on AMC. That's just my own personal. That's where. I don't. I don't know. I think lanterns. I'm really excited to see Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre in a show together.

I'm a big Kelly McDonald fan. She's in it. I'm excited about that. If you knew a super talented 25-year-old who made shit, would you tell them to go into TV or movies? It depends on what kind of shit they want to make. If they're little Vince Gilligan, then I would say, try to pitch a TV show. What would you want them to make? again it depends on the person yeah it depends on the person in the story we love TV and movies so like you know I wouldn't trade a well-made movie

for a shitty season of television I wouldn't trade a well-made season of television I push it toward movies The one thing I have learned is that over the last 15 years is like this will go in some cycle that's way faster than we understand and whether or not like the kind of TV that we're watching in three or four years feels way more like

the kind of TV we were watching in the early 2000s, I think that's possible. I think people could start being like, there were certain things that people expected. There's a reason why these kids are watching 300 episodes of Gilmore Girls and not this other show that kind of feels like Gilmore Girls, but isn't as well made. Like, how do we go back to that?

But the economics have to work. That did happen, by the way. Yeah. Graze Anatomy and Gilmore Girls for whatever reason. Friends, the office, you know. I think the 90s stuff is starting to die, according to my daughter. Well, because we're in the different nostalgia cycle.

It's too far now. The nostalgia cycle is now the 2000. What's really interesting is that Lost hasn't had its real moment again yet. And I keep waiting for it to happen. It had a mini peak during the pandemic, I would say. But, I mean, because everyone was at home watching everything. But yeah, it's not in that nostalgia cycle yet.

You know? Because in the 90s, we were... Usually 20 years is the nostalgia cycle. which is right now. 2030. Like I was talking to Yasi about 80s movie soundtracks. That's just going to be doing on bands playing. We were talking about the big chill.

We were talking about... Another time I didn't get the call from Yassie. And we were talking about... She won't take that personally. I was just fucking too intimidated by my knowledge of the 80s. We were talking about during dancing and that like 50s nostalgia that infused the 80s, you know, and how like all we listened to in my house was 50s music in the 80s. Yeah.

The 90s it was the 70s. Yeah. You know, like... Well, the 70s was amazing because like happy days, people go on. backwards. Yeah. Basically pre-Vietnam War. What did we just talk about that with?

What movie was? We talked about it with, yeah, we brought it up with something. Animal House. Right. Yeah. Oh, because Animal House was set in 1962. Yeah. But it's so weird that that never really happened for the 90s.

I don't know. Oh, it did. I mean, I feel like the 90 nostalgia has been a real, like, I was. But not, not like, we never had our happy days set in, like, But I think people, I mean, everything from the love story show to the way that like gene cuts came back, the way like the 90s came back. The last is the closest that we had. Also, there's like, I can name a hundred bands that sound basically like obscure bands from the 90s but are now like much bigger. It's crazy.

I was in New York a couple years ago and a friend of mine said she's like, oh, 90s fashion is back. I was like, yeah, kind of. And then four girls walked past us, like teenage girls dressed exactly like they were. walked out of my so-called life. Like exactly. Just like the flannels and the docks and it was just like, never mind. Yeah, my daughter's big on this. Yeah. She thought Love Story just fucking nailed that. She's like all this stuff you could wear now. She was all excited about it. Love story is a good success story. Sure. I wonder if we're going to get more of those too, like the real life stuff with the twist. We watched when my daughter was home, we watched the entire OJ show that they did 10 years ago.

That OJ show was great. The Brian Murphy OJ.J. Show. Oh, yeah. It was great. I forgot how awesome the actors were. The same people on Love Story. Paulson's out of control. Courtney Vance is out of control. There's like five great, great Sterling Brown. Travolta is Travolta-ing. Travolta is Travolta-Thervota. Cuba Gooding is really good.

I emailed Rob Mills. Swimmer. I texted Rob Mills at Hulu and I was like, you guys, you know, we're, it's almost OJ time. It's June 12th. You guys should put this on the main page because my daughter didn't know anything. Can they put it on the main page with, Almost all OJ time.

It's OJ time. It's OJ season. My daughter didn't know anything, and she, like, couldn't believe it. She didn't know that car chase happened. Yeah. And he's, and she's like... I remember that happening when it came out, and we were covering it. And I was just like, you had to write explainer posts.

You know, this is like what happened with the Crown, where it's just sort of like the Diana season of the Crown. Yeah, don't spoil the Crown. And don't spoil the OJ show. Don't spoil what... Whether the plane crashes in Love Story. That's another thing that's going on now is. have so much good content from the last 25 years that you can just repurpose the content,

pretend it's new. And somebody like my daughter would have no idea. What's the true crime story that you would want to tell in a love story fashion? Yeah. You know what? The Kuhnan and Doc was pretty good. It was too long, or the show was too long. But that was the Versace one I thought was good. It was just like too many episodes. I don't know, man. The further we get away from that Thrones Breaking Bad What else was in that? Madman. Madman. What was

there was a fourth one? Sopranos? Was Sopranos over in 06? No, that was 2000s. We had that run when we were at Grant Land War. We just had all those shows at the same time. You could go down the list. Americans Justifies like yeah, I mean there was tons of tons of stuff.

Hope it comes back. Joina Robinson. Thanks. Chris Ryan. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. All right, that's it for the podcast. thanks to Doc Rivers. Thanks to Chris Ryan and Joan Robinson. Thanks to Eduardo and Chris and Jack Wilson and everybody on the Spotify and Ringer side. I'm not sure if I'm going to be back on this feed this week. But you know where I'm going to be?

We have a rewatchables mailbag that's coming on Thursday. So stay tuned for that. It is in the bag that is coming. And then our next three movies, because we are doing From Hell Month. And the first one's going to be on Monday. No, single white female. on Monday, then hand that rocks the cradle the next week and then the good sun. All those movies are on Netflix if you want to watch those.

So I will see you again on this feed. Maybe Sunday night, maybe earlier. I don't know, but I'll see you soon. 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President D.C. Kentucky, Wyoming. First online real money wager on a minimum $5 wage required for seven consecutive days. bonus issued as non-wadrawable bonus bet you would to expire seven days after receipt. Game and problem call 100 Gambor or 1-800-7-7-7-7.

or visit ccpg.g.gatheg.org in Connecticut or MD gamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling help line, ma.org or call 800-3-27-50-50 for 24-7-support in Massachusetts or call 8778. Hope, NY. Or text Hope, N.Y in New York for Louisiana. Call 8777-7. 770 787.