The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Last 'Last Dance,' MJ the Almost-Knick, NBA Bubble Courtsides, MLB Strife and the Final 'RewatchaBulls' With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the final two episodes in the ESPN documentary series 'The Last Dance' (2:25) before Ryen and "Optimistic Bill" talk about the NBA potentially inching toward a return, as well as the murky future around the start of the MLB season (49:00). They share TV programming advice for content-starved networks (1:26:30) before revisiting Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals between the Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz and Michael Jordan's sixth and final championship (1:38:40). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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like Baseball Barbecue. We launched that one. TV Concierge, we launched that exclusively on Spotify. Behind the Billions, we launched that one. We have a new podcast this week that launches on May 20th called Boom Bust. Season one will be about the rise and fall of HQ. We're really proud of that one. Speaking of things we're proud of, if you go to The Ringer's YouTube channel or our Twitter feed, we have a 22-minute documentary that we did

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Speaking of things we're proud of, Priscilla and I, we've made it all the way to the end of The Last Dance. We have a little special musical treat coming up for you right now. Our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. You might recognize that song. You just heard it in the last dance. It's called Present Tense. It was kind of a sleeper, underrated,

top 20 Pearl Jam song. It was nice to see them crank that out at the end of the last dance. Ryan Rosillo is here. I thought we were going to be doing this for the rest of our lives, just every Sunday night coming on, talking about the next two shows of the Jordan doc, but now it's over. Now we have to move on with our lives. What every Sunday coming on, talking about the next two shows of the Jordan doc, but now it's over.

Now we have to move on with our lives. What was your reaction to the last two parts? Where it was at the beginning. I just, I still, to this day, and it was just reinforced over these weeks that an owner in Reinsdorf

would let Michael Jordan leave before he wanted to leave. It's unfathomable. I don't even know that it would happen again. I can't believe it happened once. And, you know, at the end, it's unfathomable i don't even know that it would happen again i can't believe it happened once and you know at the end it's like hey you know the best coach and all these guys the best gm you can't be the best gm if you're jerry kraus and you blow up this team before they wanted to leave they they owed i think that's almost some of the resentment that

i've learned about through through this i don't think mj is necessarily going to be wired differently bill after the fact because it was just who he was. But I agree with the players and just the nastiness of like, wait a minute, no one else beats us. And you're going to be the guy that prevents this. And honestly, for Reinsdorf to let Kraus do it, like Reinsdorf is just as, as much to blame for this as Kraus is. And, you know, the hints throughout the entire doc where Kraus is like, after they win, he goes, well, you know, the hints throughout the entire doc where Krause is like, after they win, he goes, well, you know, it's an organization. No, man, it's fucking 23. All right. Like, could you ever imagine being a general manager and kind of trying to sell that it's

ownership? It's the organization, like all those things sound nice, but it's because of MJ and to see Phil take kind of a shot at him during that park celebration in Chicago, where he's like, just to get the booze yeah right and he goes you know and Jerry and then all these guys want to come back it's just I can't believe an NBA owner would go yeah you know what that Michael Jordan guy let's let him leave and let's start this rebuild and the rebuild was a disaster so you don't get to be the best GM as great as he was putting this roster together and be part of it we've given

him that credit but you don't get to be the best GM when you blow this team up either. When I wrote about this two years ago, when LeBron was making his choice and I wrote a column, the first part of it was about why MJ really left in 98, the second retirement. I had never heard what he said in the doc tonight. It was just from people I had talked to. Um, he had never really talked about it profoundly like that. He just comes out and says it at the end of this last episode. He's like, I wanted to go for seven. I don't know what happened. I still can't believe it.

It still bothers me 22 years later. I got to be honest. I was blown away. To me, that was the most stunning part of all 10 episodes, that he was that adamant and that genuine about being perplexed all these years later that they didn't give them a chance to go for, for seven. And I think there was a little context missing and I know, you know, they're, they're trying to get to the finish line in the dock, but like the biggest thing that helped Kraus and Reinsdorf here was the lockout because the season ends, we have the

draft and then it just gets shut down for six months. I think if this had been a conventional summer where it's just like, okay, we had the draft, it's time for free agency. What's going to happen? The public would have been more aware of what was happening. And the Bulls fans, especially would have been like, well, wait a second, what? And I think it just would have fallen completely differently. And I think people would have been much more obviously understanding what was happening. As it played out, July, August, September,

October, November, December, nothing's happening. We think the season's going to get canceled. And then in January, Stern does a stare down with the players. He's ready to cancel the season unless they cave, which they do. And then we have this quick, let's get the season together. And Pippen just wanted to go to Houston. And then all of a sudden it was over. And guys are going different directions.

Phil's not coming back. And I think the feeling from people watching it was like, oh, well, I guess it's because Jordan wasn not coming back. And I think the, the, the feeling from people watching it was like, oh, well, I guess it's because Jordan wasn't coming back. And now we know that wasn't what happened. And it's incredible. It's a, I can't remember another example in any sport other than maybe Edmonton with Gretzky where they trade Gretzky for all those picks and pieces. They end up winning the cup the next year anyway. But that's the only other time I remember somebody so blatantly turning their back on more titles. Yeah, but even the Gretzky one, you can kind of understand.

I mean, look, it still is insane for a Canadian franchise to be training Gretzky. I mean, it doesn't make any... But there's the LA factor. It's his star becoming brighter. This is... MJ's either going to go for seven or he's not going to play anymore and somebody would have to tell me because i've gone through it and i've read some stuff and you know i think because money does always kind of lead to your answer it's like well ryan's earth didn't want to pay him somebody's gonna have to

convince me and i don't think i can be convinced that somehow it was more financially beneficial to ryan's door to not have mj and not have to pay that salary and the money they did right yeah right like that doesn't there's no way there's no way what you brought in that year would end up being a more profitable year having the team suck in the middle of a rebuild and you know phil has a line there go ahead i was just gonna just going to say, I wonder if it doesn't play out the way where the lockout ends and it's just complete chaos for a week. If Jordan had time to actually pick his next team, when I did the piece two years ago, I thought the Knicks were really the only logical place that made sense because

big city, MSG was his favorite place to play. If you're going to leave Chicago, it's either New York or LA. He wasn't going to play in LA with Shaq and young Kobe. That's would have been ridiculous. New York ends up trading for Latrell Sprewell. I think eight days, uh, after Jordan retires or before retires, I can't remember, but it's right around that same time where they had a bunch of contracts they could kind of piece together and they went and got Luttrell's bigger contract. So they could have done the sign and trade with the Bulls,

maybe give them some picks, but that's the only place he could have gone is the Knicks. And the Knicks ended up making the finals that year. And for anybody that would say, well, he would never do New York, not after all those battles. Well, then you didn't learn anything from the documentary. Oh, as a fuck you, he would have. He totally would have done it and also he ended up in washington three years later let's be honest it was like

he was like bulls or busts like he had to play for the fucking wizards but that was also like a big managing part of it i think didn't get an ownership piece of the whole thing so there was like a bigger bigger thing in play there with jordan but if there's one thing i think it's always worth reminding people whenever they say well will this guy go here or would he do this players athletes are far less attached to the cities than you are they just are and we can talk about the jeters and and some of the guys that you think are married to a city forever but considering the circumstances and to see jordan at the, like I, his bitterness at times is excessive. It's almost folklorish,

but in that moment, I mean, it's not like you're going to sit here and be like, man, I feel so bad for Michael Jordan, but the way he's legitimately pissed and he's so honest about it. He's like, look,

I would have wanted to come back for seven. Like, would we have won it? I, you know, he's like, I don't know, but I mean, give me a break and to be 35.

And, you know, you start getting towards the end of your career and every one of those seasons at that point, it's like one more chance to do this. He just pulls it off. It's not about athleticism anymore. I mean, he's still a pretty sick athlete. I mean, let's not act like he's just sitting there barely running up and down the court, but it's not like 91 MJ, but it doesn't matter because he just won three in a row. Maybe he's too exhausted. Maybe he's sick of the bullshit. Maybe they don't win it, but to have an executive who has to answer to an owner. So the owner signs off on this plan

where they've built up this resentment the entire year. And maybe it wasn't as ridiculous. You're right. I mean, it's a great point to bring up about the work stoppage and a potentially canceled season to distract us from the fact we're like wait a minute the bulls really are done like they're done done like michael jordan's not playing like what but we had been sold that message that we almost accepted it like maybe that was a strategic thing by kraus to say hey if phil goes 82 and oh it doesn't even matter because all year long as you and i are watching that season, you're going, wow, this is really it. Like, is it it?

I mean, it's constant. You're reading everything you can. Be like, is there going to be any break in this? No, he's not really going to retire. He's not really going to retire. So to see him at the very end of this talk, in that moment, looking at the iPad, admitting he had never talked to Reinsdorf about why this ever happened, which, again, seems insane, which probably is why Reinsdorf didn't even want to have that conversation. So we could deny, you know, deniable plausibility here

with the entire deal. I just, I can't believe it would happen. I can't believe it because I don't like what city, how could a major city too? We're talking about like one of the three to five most important cities in this country. How could they go? Yeah, you know what? We're good. You can retire. The thing is, so I have a hot take. I actually think it worked out pretty well because I don't think- Let me open a window. I don't think they would have won in 99. And here are the reasons why. It's a lockout season. It's 50 games in three months. It was brutal. And it really penalized the older teams. And if you,

even if you look at how the finals played out, you had the two teams that had young guys where it ended up making the finals, the older teams like Miami ended up falling short in their Utah falls short, um, 50 games in three months and then playoffs like every other day they're playing.

I just think they probably shouldn't have even won in 98. He was just so great. He pulled them over the finish line. But in 99, you have that Spurs team with Robinson and Duncan. Duncan, yeah. Duncan coming into his own. You have no Rodman anymore. Cause Rodman's done that. That's the other thing is it wouldn't have been the 98 bulls anymore. I don't know who the rebounder would have been. And as we saw with the 95 bulls, if you didn't have the Rodman or Grant guy, it didn't matter how good Jordan was going to be in a playoff series. They weren't winning. So I, I actually think dying of natural causes after 98 was a better

story, better for the narrative. I looked at it. I looked at all the free agents. I don't see a roadmap for them replacing Rodman successfully. And then the Pippen part, they would have had to pay him 70 million to stay. And I just don't think they were going to do that. I think they felt like he was starting to hit either the tail end of his prime or his post prime. I don I think they felt like he was starting to hit the end of his, uh, either the tail end of his prime or at his post prime. I don't think they're going to do it. I think Kraus was too stubborn and too convinced that the rebuild was a better move than to just be pay for past performance basically. So I, the way it played out is probably the best way is my point. You may be right about all of that. I'm not sure about the Bulls

because I don't want to bet against Jordan in the playoffs, even in a condensed season, because if you're the eighth seed Knicks making it to the NBA finals, then anything could happen. Good point. And if it's MJ, you know, I like my odds that anything can happen, but you're right. I'm not guaranteeing anything in the Spurs would be a bad matchup for him. I mean,

hell, they admit Carl Malone's a bad matchup for him. A bigger front line with two guys like that. What about this 98 Bulls team with Allen Henderson in the Dennis Rodman spot and Jordan a year older and Pippen in year one of a $70 million contract still pissed off at everybody because he got paid five years too late. And then Steve Kerr gone and all those guys are older, not doing as well.

I don't see it. I don't think they win the next year. I don't care how good Jordan is. They take on Tim Legler and they're like, now we have a bigger athletic Steve Kerr. Well, the more fun thing is if he goes to the Knicks and if they trade for him instead of Sprewell, because now you put him with Allen Houston, you put him with tail end Ewing okay well they've done that though like that's where Jordan this is where the player empowerment thing would have been different like here's Jordan one of the single most important and power up powerful athletes we've ever seen and yet in 98 he can't be like

uh no that's not happening or then he says fine, you have to trade me to the Knicks. The Bulls might have said no. Yeah. So, well, I think they would have rather him retire at this point than take on stuff because Kraus, as he said at the time, hey, the Celtics held on and they were a mess at the end. It's like, okay, very good point. But they did it with Pippen.

They signed and traded Pippen to Houston. Took a bunch of crap back. They didn't get anything good in that trade. They just took some contracts to try to keep... Honestly, teams didn't know what they were doing back then because you saw some trades in 99 and 2000. The Knicks did it with Ewing, where they're like, Ewing wants to go. All right, we'll get some players back.

And they have no idea like, oh, we're getting this guy who's got five years and $40 million left on his deal. This is actually terrible for us. We, we should just let you retire after the year, but they, teams were just a lot stupider in the late nineties.

Uh, even what they got for Pippen, it was like Brent prices contract and somebody else's shitty, shitty contract. That was kind of a bag of shit for Pippen, it was like Brent Price's contract and somebody else's shitty contract. They got a bag of shit for him. That was my thing. If you're going to sit there and say, look how smart we are. We're going to go ahead and not do what the Celtics do and hang on to this too long.

We're going to get out early. It's like, okay, are you going to win more than 20 games? Because that would be nice. It was a disaster. They were awful. And the good thing for them was it was a disaster. They went 8-42. They were awful. And the good thing for them was it was a lockout season, so it went by super fast. But yeah, to me, the alternate universe of this

isn't them keeping them together for a seventh run, because I think Jackson hated Kraus so much. I just think as a fuck you, he knew that if he didn't come back, Jordan wasn't going to play for another coach. And let's face it face it Jackson not afraid to be a dick every once in a while yeah and so that's really important that you bring it up because I didn't love Phil's quote in this and I liked Phil through the whole thing and like Phil became the Knicks run is really weird what it did to Phil like Phil's like the guy that's been best man in like 12 weddings and he has one horrible weekend in vegas and then everybody writes him off out of the friendship

group like that's what phil jackson's career was like with the knicks yeah he's like this guy comes fixes all the problems players love him to death and then he doesn't even really want the next job they have to pay him so much room to say yes and then that turns into a disaster he has a couple public blow-ups and then all of a sudden like people i think phil's taking on more negative damage where when i go back in this and i watch this and i like phil however the one quote i didn't like where he says kind of what you say here and that it was sort of poetic right it's poetic that we were able to move on the time is right well guess what phil you're going to collect checks for 20 more fucking years okay he was at the Lakers after one year off and he got it rolling because it was Phil and then he has his two stints with the Lakers and then he gets the money from the Knicks so it's not really

Phil's position to be telling players who are facing retirement here that I think now is like the right way to end the book because MJ would have rather just another chance at it even if the shot against the jazz is like the perfect ending but he still wasn't done anyway because he came back anyway so I screwed up you know much like Michael Jordan occasionally I'm human for the pippin trade they just took back Roy Rogers in a second round pick I don't know what Brent price trade I was thinking of where. I didn't remember. I just remember the Kelvin Cato deal later on.

Yeah. Really excited. I don't know where with Barkley, but yeah, so they would have had to take, I'm looking at the, uh, Spreewell trade.

That was, uh, Chris Mills, John Starks, and like one other contract. Basically they sent to golden state for Sprewell. So if you're the bulls, would you take it back?

Chris Mills and John Starks and one other piece to help Jordan go to the Knicks and basically potentially win a title for them. I don't think, I mean, it depends on what Jordan could have public pressured him. No, he could have done the whole, I want to go to the Knicks,

but Jerry Krause is blocking me. Like they, even back then player empowerment, I think could have been activated in certain cases. You know, Jordan really wanted to play. I think the league would have gotten involved potentially in that one too. Or he could have just signed there for the league minimum just to, you know, stick it to him and tried to make the money back. Endorsement wise.

A couple other things of the, of the doc that just wanted to flag. I thought that Steve Kerr part was probably my favorite part. Favorite, probably eight to 10 minutes section, this whole doc, and that was the perfect length, really good storytelling. And I knew all of it, but it was such an important time for them to drop that. They had introduced the bigger stories about the guys in the early episodes. It kind of saved the Kerr one for when they really needed it with 97. So I thought that was just really well done. And there was stuff I hadn't seen that wasn't even in the cut i saw 11 years ago like the the end of episode 9 with mj and bird and mj just giving him shit where he's like

fuck you bitch fuck you you bitch fuck you bitch go go enjoy your golf game like that made when i saw, my head almost exploded. Like I, it was just two of the icons just trash talking each other after the game. Bird just takes it. He's like, ah, motherfucker. I'll get him next time. But that was probably my favorite behind the scenes thing. And then the other one was after he won the title.

He's just back in his hotel room. Champagne playing the piano for all these randos. It was just like watching it's like eddie murphy or elvis or somebody like just these super famous people who've climbed the pinnacle they're like all right now you're gonna have to listen to my shitty piano playing think what kind of status you have to be at to have an after party in your hotel room and not know how to play the fucking piano and everybody's around you while you play the piano i i learned i already knew this about myself i would be a really bad entourage guy now i could handle being the main guy right but being a side guy that has to laugh

at marginal humor that's usually below marginal humor who like to lay out all the time to have to sit there and be like yeah i'm mj you're the man mj i would suck i would not be good in that role i don't aspire to ever be in that role if i had a really really famous friend like if dicaprio and i were buddies and it was the idea like i would just fly around with him i would just say look i'm i'm not going i'm not gonna go be side guy again in you would have been walking around going does anyone want to order a pizza up too soon and then you just would have gotten kicked out yeah i would have ended up with scotty burrell's crew and then with his yukon crew right right talking about stores yeah just going how do you guys do it you guys ever hang out with the women's team?

Yeah, so the pizza thing, I knew that, but it seemed like I went on Twitter right around that time. Just the people in my timeline, it was just all pizza. I underestimated how many people knew that story, which turned out to be not a lot. It was the food poisoning game. It wasn't the flu game. The pizza story, who knows if that's true, if it's apocryphal. Tim Grover, say five guys were at the door. It might've been three.

It definitely seems like the pizza was either poisoned or it's just the greatest coincidence in the world. But that's a pretty amazing story. I mean, I actually feel like that's an underrated story. They poisoned this pizza. Yeah, but here's what's weird about it. If you were going to poison Michael Jordan's pizza, would you show up five deep? Now, clearly something was off because Grover is telling you, like I believe a version of this that Grover's telling.

You're right. Maybe it's not five, but like clearly Grover isn't making this up out of thin air. And then he's got this thing and he goes, none of us ate the pizza, but when you're hungry, you're hungry. And then he's got this thing and he goes, none of us ate the pizza, but when you're hungry, you're hungry. And then you still kind of the default of, do I really think somebody would poison my

pizza or at least get me sick? And then you don't even want to think about what would make you sick. But then, as I told you, my recon mission there in Park City, where a guy came up to me and said, my friend's the guy that messed with his pizza, which I'm guaranteeing isn't true, but I love that a guy felt like, hey, you can use that on the podcast if you want. Yeah, throw that at Simmons. See what he says. Yeah. No, no. He was basically encouraging me to use it with you, which I've already brought up before, but it was one of those deals where he cams over like, here's a drink. And I go,

oh, yeah, what's up? He goes, just so you know, my's a drink. And I go, Oh yeah. What's up? Cause you know, just so you know, my friends, the guy who did the pizza thing back in the five deep, the five deep didn't, didn't pass the sniff test with me. There's only one city in America where five guys would show up with your poison pizza. And you and I both know what city that is. Philly. It's Philly runner up boston massachusetts it's one of those two no it's actually boston because boston would sit there and like think it's hilarious like the guys from boston would be like hey mj ed yo we didn't poison it or nothing haha yeah yeah hey do you hear about sully he went over to mj's hotel room philly they would just rifle a brick through

your window how do you poison a pizza? I felt like that part was glossed over. Do you have to find somebody who's sick? You don't have a poison gun? Is it actual poison or your uncle has bronchitis or do you use bad cheese?

Do you make it with bad meat? That's probably what you got to do. Use some spoiled meat. But then you'd have to have spoiled meat sitting around waiting for MJ to call in a pizza order. Well, I'm going to go ahead and guess pizza. The only place that's still open in Salt Lake isn't exactly Michelin rated. Fair enough. Good point.

Anything else jump out at you at you with this pippin pippins i want to talk about game five which are game six which we're going to talk about later pippin uh big winner on the whole thing just the episode 10 really cements that hey just you know pippin had a couple couple bumpy moments here but just so you know the guy's a fucking warrior and and please don't ever say anything bad about him because he's a six-time champ his quote about that last play where he starts laughing and he's like you get it get it out the way and the way he delivers the line and because he's hurt and because he knew it was mj And Rodman was really funny with the way he described it too. He goes, he passed it to John and he gave it to Kerr.

He goes, not on this one. And the no timeout, so they couldn't organize any kind of double. And if you do watch a shot against Russell, you can see, we'll get into it a little bit later, but there's a little confusion on what the second defender is supposed to do

and however they want to send some help. But I know we'll break that down a little bit more. But I agree with you. I think Pippen becomes somebody who... I think people just like him. I think people who spend time with him like him. And I don't know that that's a story that everybody always knows.

I know that I probably didn't know it 10 years ago. So the only big picture point I wanted to make about game six, because we're going to be breaking down the ins and outs of that game a little bit, was just like, I wrote once that I thought it was the greatest game anyone's ever played for basketball. And I didn't mean it from a skill point. I didn't mean it from a stat point. I didn't mean it from an impact point. I've seen in person, people play probably better,

quote unquote, just basketball games. I think what he did that game was really special. And it was cool hearing him talk about it at the end of the doc where he was talking about like how 98 was his favorite year because he'd finally figured out how to incorporate his mind with his body and, and just all the other shit that went into it. That wasn't just, I am more physically gifted than the people I'm playing. That's why I love that game. He misses 19 shots, but it's about the pace. It's it, all of it is so important. Pippen going out that early, him realizing like, oh fuck, I have to carry this whole thing. I have to pace myself. I'm going to have to play 44, 45 minutes. I'm the only scoring option on our team. I'm not

going to trust Kukoc. I can't really come out. I shouldn't even dribble the ball up because every moment of energy that I expend, I'm going to need at the end of this game. I have to figure out how to keep us in, but I can't spend too much of the tank. By the way, he was already over 4,000 minutes. And it's all about energy conservation. That's why when I compare it to Ali against Foreman and Zaire, it's same kind of thing, right? Where he's just kind of waiting, waiting.

He's taking the punishment, picking his waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for the right spot. But he, he, he goes for it like twice. Cause in the second quarter, he can see it might slip away and he goes on a scoring barrage and he scores, I think like 19 points, something like that. Then in the second half, he's got no legs anymore. He's done. Pippen is a decoy, which we're going to break down later. And he's missing. And then he audibles again and just starts trying to get to the basket, which is what they did in game seven, Indiana. Same thing, just Emmitt Smith. I need to move the chains. It's not pretty. I got to get four yards. I'm

going to get another four yards. And he's just trying to hang around, hang around, hang around, basically like watching somebody drive to Vegas and realizing that there's no gas stations left. And it's like, shit. All right, I'm going to turn off the air conditioner. I'm turning off the radio. Roll the windows down. We just, I think we can make it.

I'm not positive, but I'm going to go 61 miles an hour. And then when we go downhill, I'm going to speed up so I can get a lot of momentum that way. And he's just honestly like a genius trying to figure out what exactly will it take. And I'm not a huge hyperbole guy, but I think it's an amazing game. It's an amazing watch.

And the reason that it's my favorite is because he's not that great in it. It's all mental and it's all planning and just kind of waiting waiting waiting and then he finally pounces i did not grow up an mj fan it was a little tiger wood woodsy where you were like okay i'm not going to be buying the shirts here but i i want them in the mix which is the least original thought on tiger woods ever but watching this and seeing that game in particular like i may have done something if i were younger be like all right well whatever he took a million shots it wasn't

very efficient and that's completely ignoring everything you just pointed out that this was an absolute necessity because as we've learned going through these 90s teams teams that are winning championships competing for championships the third scoring option is a massive drop off to what a third scoring option is in today's game and even just the last few years is they've just tried to flood the floor with as many scores as you possibly can but what i like most about i don't know if it's a lesson or what i take away from it but i like mj more it was never fan boy i felt a little bit like one over these five weeks because it's just awesome. And there's always going to be that element of the crowd

that's like, oh, MJ again and MJ. Okay, well, look, it's over. But if you're ever going to overdo it with somebody, overdo it with somebody like this. And every one of those one-on-one interviews, I loved his thoughts on almost everything because I will take real and a little fucked up over fake and calculated and hiding their flaws with bullshit. I will take the first person over the second person

every single day. And that's how I feel about Jordan. And I don't know that I really understood that until I would see him in those one-on-one interviews. And Jason, the director, did such a great job with that because you felt like, okay, this is all real stuff. I mean, there's other people that would have done this that would have put on a show for 10 episodes going, I want to make sure I carefully craft this version of me. And MJ in this moment was like, I don't care about that. Screw that. I'm just going to tell you how I feel about every one of these things and that's really the bigger picture thing of what I appreciated the most about the doc and him now he goes once Pippen gets hurt

and he knows he's legit hurt and might not come back he's doing the math. And he's like, if the, if the jazz get to 90 points, we're, we're done. I don't, there's no roadmap for that bulls team with Pippen, either not playing or at 50% to get to 90 points. Jordan takes 34 shots. He goes to the line 15 times. That's about the most a guard can do. You look at any Harding game, any Kobe game, like Super Ball Hog type game, you do about 30 to 34 shots, 14 to 15 free throws, and you're going to score between 40 and 60 points, depending on how hot you are. Kukoc, maybe he's good for 20 on a great night. And then you're patching it together, the other 20 to 30. So he knows,

he knows he has to score half their points and he's going to have to take half their shots. And he, and when it's close in the last two minutes, he has to have something left. But he's, he knows all this in the first quarter and when you watch like the uh dma entertainment stuff just him on the sidelines

the way he's sitting like he's it's just like not wasting any any ounce of energy that he has he doesn't want to dribble the ball up i it's really uh really a crazy thing one other and the piano bar when he is after that game where he goes man when scotty when he was he goes that scared the shit out of me yeah that's the only time he admitted fear right and you're going whoa like this dude because the funny thing about the doc for 98 game five they think it's going to be four one see a utah he's so happy he's screwing around a little bit he's like this thing's over we're not going back to utah and then you're like no you're back in utah jazz play this great game carl malone and then to see him celebrating in his hotel room and admit to the entourage that can't stop laughing at everything uh he's like man when m man, when Pippen was hurt.

You know, I do think LeBron in 2018 got a little bit to the point Jordan was at, like at this version of Jordan, the mind-body combo, knowing like, all right, this is my team. For us to win, I have to handle the game the following way. I have to completely control the pace this way. I have to pick my spots this way. This is going to be a game. I'm probably going to have to score 40 points for us to win this. I'm going to have to play 44 minutes. I'm going to have to take breaks on defense and guard this guy. He's the only other player I've seen since we've been alive.

Um, that thought about things that way, like even bird and magic basketball just wasn't, uh, as vigorous. I don't think as much as I love the eighties, it wasn't as intense quarter to quarter play to play as it would become. I think at the mid nineties,

um, you could, in the eighties, you could just guard Marco Ravaroni or whoever. There was always one shitty guy to guard in the 80s. In the 90s, the game just became too sophisticated. You couldn't really hide like that

on defense. Those are the only two guys. Game one that LeBron played, I've said this before, in 2018 that I went to against Golden State, that was the best game I've said this before in 2018 that I went to against Golden State, that was the best game I've ever seen anyone play in person. Just complete control over everything on both ends, even when he didn't have the ball. It was really bonkers. One thing about Jason, the director,

who's my friend, who I've tried not to blow smoke up his ass during this. I don't think the average person understands how hard it is to do a documentary during a pandemic because this thing was not done. The last two episodes, they were kind of working on nine, but it wasn't done in 10. They were putting together. And you have, he's with, I don't know, six different editors. They're all in six different places, just on zoom, zoom calls and sending each other cuts of stuff. That's not how the process is supposed to go.

So the fact that like 10 was good, I thought that was amazing. I just, I know it's like inside baseball, but that's not how the process is supposed to work with everybody in different locations. It's exactly what you don't want, actually. No, this stuff takes forever. But it's one thing, too. You could probably say, well, the documentary just put some clips together, make sure the audio track matches and all this different stuff. I'd imagine they had some sense of how they wanted to end it with the burning of the notes about the team. And then the pearl jam song

plays perfectly with this but there's there's no there's no there's no feeling where any of it drops off like it doesn't it was rushed and it doesn't remotely feel rushed because if it felt rushed like you could see like oh you guys kind of hammer this stuff in there at the end it's uh it's incredible work man it's incredible work like man. It's incredible work. Like think of, Hey, we could do a two hour documentary. That's what usually people care about. And these guys banged out like almost 10 hours here. That's, that's, and I'm going to predict, I'll predict a couple of the things that come out tomorrow is because we're going to have to have the people that come out and we're like, ah, this sucked and that sucked. And why, where was this? And like the doc's going to take heat for not having his family in it enough

for ignoring his wife completely, his ex-wife, which I think was probably purposeful, right? I don't know. I don't know if that was a great ending to that marriage. Well, here's what I would know. Like if I'm one of the greatest that's ever done it and they're like, hey, we want you to do this thing. I'm not really that interested.

Oh, all right. Years later. Hey, do you want to do this thing? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe let's figure it out. Five years later. Hey, do you you want to do this thing yeah i don't know maybe let's figure it out five years later hey do you finally want to do this we have this footage last dance here's how we're going to do it we're going to now we got netflix involved is it down there's all this money involved yeah all right i'm warming up to it okay but we want to just be fair and make sure all the bases are covered we want to hear from your ex-wife

he's like i'm out right so you know for for anyone that because i've already seen that floating out there a little bit yeah uh this was not a 60 minutes investigation and honestly if it were sports 60 minutes would have fucked it up anyway so um i i liked it and i i don't think every single thing that's on has to be examined in a way that it's like, well, that's, it's a little dismissive. All right. Or how about this? Or you can have zero hours. Well, here's the thing. He's involved. His, his two of his closest business associates are executive producers on this. If you're expecting this to be OJ made in America kind of breakdown of somebody's, you know, all their faults

and all the terrible, it's just not going to happen. I actually think for what this kind of doc is, as you know, I call these the documersials in the worst hands, where it's just from executive producer Dwayne Wade. It's a story about Dwayne Wade. Like, this is why I didn't want to watch Blackballed, the thing that's coming out on Quibi

about the Clippers. It's executive produced by Chris Paul, the story about how the Clippers were heroes in 2014. It's like, all right, it sounds fine. I'm not watching it. This is about as good as you're going to do with somebody having some honest, authentic moments in a documentary that ultimately wouldn't have happened

unless he's blessed it. And that's just where we are in life. I'm sorry. And think about some of the other ones that have come out. And I'm not going to start trashing other pieces. Please do. They're all bad. I'm telling you.

What happened was like a couple guys do it and then it's like, all right, well, I'm getting 20 a game. Where's my documentary? And then they end up on these shows. And the funny thing is like, I'll talk to people behind the scenes that'll admit, like, yeah, we bought this, but it's not very good. How many times have you had that? I know you have.

I'm not trying to put you on the spot. But I've talked to people that have done deals on athlete documentaries. And they just sort of shrug going like, yeah, I don't know. It was a big name. We thought we might have something. And this thing's terrible. With 30 for 30. We really tried not to do that. I remember near the end at ESPN. No, you're really good at it. I'm just saying, no, I know. I'm saying one of, I remember when things started as flip, we, I had this Orlando magic

documentary. I was really passionate about, about the early, the quick rise and fall of the Shaq and Penny magic and just small market basketball and the whole thing. And the NBA was really not crazy about doing it. And we really did a lot of behind the scenes work. Like this is a great story. Like this is, what were they afraid of this? What if team,

they didn't like the narrative of this team had two big stars and and then one of them fled to la and then you know it was right when the dwight howard thing was happening where he fled to la which which dwight howard thing oh that when he went from orlando to the lakers okay so we ended up we convinced them to do it and i was really excited because i thought the bad boy pistons one which was another one I was involved with, where that was a Delca playing the land, but that was a pretty honest, authentic doc. This one, we couldn't do it unless Shaq and Penny were executive producers.

They had to be in it. And if you watch the doc, it has to do... It basically just is not how you would make a doc like that. It's, it's much more centered around them pretending that they're, they're in a good place with each other now. And who knows if that's the case or not, but it wasn't the interesting angle to take on the doc. And I felt like that's when things were starting to shift where it's like, well, I'll be interviewed for your doc if it's about me, but I have to get something too. And that really started a shift around 2014,

15 range. And that's just the way it is now. And by the way, I don't blame people. Like if somebody was like, Hey, I'm going to make a documentary about Grantland. I would be like,

fuck you. I'm not, I'm not being interviewed for that. And neither will anybody that is close to me. So good luck. Um, I said, yes,

but well, you said yes, maybe a couple, but I was only like a part time I was like a freelance writer though so I didn't feel like I knew the story But honestly it's really hard to do these And that's why OJ Made in America One of the reasons it was so great because

You could do A no holds barred OJ doc It's not like man I don't want to Piss off OJ like who the fuck cares Go at him Everyone in his life is going to be like yeah I'll be interviewed Yeah I guess maybe man, I don't want to piss off OJ. Like, who the fuck cares? Go at him. There's also another way. Everyone in his life is going to be like, yeah, I'll be interviewed.

Yeah, I guess maybe pissing off OJ, maybe I said that too lightly. Should we dump that? Well, let me see. Actually, now you kind of have me in a way that I... Now your juice is going. No, but...

Is there a really good story in the pursuit of trying to do this where there was one that you didn't get to do or somebody that it became really difficult with? Because you're right. Some of these things have become commercials and it's almost like a guy's branding deal where we struggle a little bit with athletes and going like, why can't you just be good at your sport? And it's not good enough. You have to have a brand. You have to have all this different stuff. For the most part, it's kind of fr you have to have a brand you have to have all this different stuff and for the most part it's kind of frowned upon because like not really as many guys can execute it as they want to execute it

and a lot of these docs are pretty bad and this one's incredible like have you had a moment or something that you'll never forget about like where you were close on something and it didn't happen or just the frustration of that yes many. Can you share once? Here's the thing. One of the stories about 30 for 30 that will always be underrated is how high the odds were for that actually happening. How many ways it could get gone wrong. Because as I found out in the years later, you really need a lot of luck with this stuff. You need the right people to believe in it. It's like a jigsaw puzzle and you need to somehow pull off 11 of the pieces of it to make it work. And if you're missing one of the pieces, the whole thing could fall apart. It's just hard.

You need to get the right people at the right times. Even like 30 for 30, it would have been impossible for us to do it if Barry Levinson hadn't agreed to do one of the docs because once we had him we could go try to get other people and then we get Peter Berg and now we can go to the next people be like hey we have Barry Levinson and Peter Berg if Barry Levinson says no I don't know if 30 for 30 is what it is you know I don't know who would have somebody had to be the first director the first named director to give this series credibility. Cause ESPN had no credibility at the time,

you know, on docs, you mean on, on sports docs, like to do what we were trying to do. They didn't have the credibility to do it in Hollywood. Um, but I had something,

I'll tell the story someday, but we had a thing at HBO a couple of years ago that I think would have been incredible. And it ended up kind of falling through. And it still makes me mad. I'll talk about it at some point in life. But that we had one idea that just should have been awesome.

And it's just hard. It's hard to land the plane on these. It really is. This is why the Jordan thing, it took four years. And even the first two, it didn't seem like it was going to happen. Even as you got into the summer of 2018, it's hard. And same thing with like movies, with TV shows,

you know what it's like out here. You're out here now. How many people have, oh, I have this pilot. Oh, it might get, and then it falls through. Oh, I had this movie up now and they kicked me off the movie. You need, you just need luck beyond the good idea and beyond the talent and beyond all these things and it's just it's really hard now that part of it is i luckily i think i've been around enough and seen the things that were supposed to happen when people are like you want to move out here and do this in hollywood and i was like yeah but you know i've been at espn 14 years so i think i can i think that's a bit of a breaking in point. And as soon as I got off the plane, within months, I had a deal with Ben Affleck's production company.

And my buddies were like, are you kidding? And at no point did I get excited. I went, all right, well, it sounds really cool. And if I told somebody that, it sounds amazing. And one of my agents was like, I can't believe you just got to town and now you already have this thing. And it fell through. I mean, it just fell through. So I didn't start tweeting about it. i didn't start bragging and going this

is sick if i were in my 20s i would have made t-shirts right there to get stuff done like everybody jokes in this town like you actually can't believe anything gets done because so few things happen like everything seems to fall apart we We have this Back to the Future rewatchables going tomorrow night, and there's a big part of it about- Back in time. Michael J. Fox wasn't originally in it. They had Eric Stoltz, not to step on the rewatchables, but they filmed five weeks of scenes with Eric Stoltz. And three weeks in, the director, Robert Zemeckis, and the producers are like, he's the wrong guy. He doesn't get the comic part. We got to make another run and try to

get Michael J. Fox. They go to the guy who runs the studio and they're like, we want to fire Eric Stoltz. We've already filmed with him for five weeks. We're going to reshoot everything we filmed. It's going to cost $3 million. The budget was $14 million. So basically, we need another $3 million. But this is the right move because this movie is going to be great. But it can't be great if we have Eric Stoltz. And the guy's like, cool, I'll give you the $3 million. If he says no, guess what? Back to the Future is like, eh, it's fine. Because Eric Stoltz couldn't get the comedy part of it. But that's the thing. It's like, everybody has stories like this all the time, and it's hard to land the plane. So if you're listening at home, it's fucking hard to land the plane. Congrats to Jason and Mike Tolan and all of our friends

for pulling this off because this plane, the runway was very small and it wasn't that long and they did it. This will be on a lot and I'm glad that it reinvigorated the Jordan legacy. We have a lot more to talk about on the pod including some

quarantine stuff. Optimistic Bill might be making a comeback and then we're going to do Rewatchables Game 6. So taking a break, then we'll come back. Let's talk about Miller time. Look, it's weird right now. People are having social distancing drinks. They're going over to each other's houses,

wearing masks, staying six feet away from each other, walking on opposite sides of the sidewalk. That doesn't mean we can't have Miller time. You can do it on Zoom. You can do it, pop over a friend's house, hang in the other part of the room during this time of social distancing, connecting with friends over a beer. It might look different, but it's more important than ever.

And Miller Lite, the original light beer, it's always been there to bring people together. In real life, through Miller Time, a moment for people to connect over a few beers. I know it's tough. It doesn't have to be impossible. It doesn't have to just be at a bar or at a big party. It can be anywhere. Had drinks with friends of ours that came over the other day.

Guess what? We were able to hang out 10 feet apart. It was fine. It was Miller Time. Miller Lite is the beer that makes Miller Time possible. Miller Lite is the original light beer that tastes great. It's less filling, which means it won't get in the way of enjoying time with your people. It's also been my favorite beer ever since I was a kid. In fact, in my Zoom background, you can kind of see my Celtics tradition, 1986 Miller Lite NBA champs poster. Miller Lite, the original Zoom background, you can kind of see my Celtics tradition, 1986 Miller Lite NBA champs poster. Miller Lite, the original light beer while you're home.

Enjoy a classic available for delivery today. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 96 calories, 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. All right, we're shifting gears a little bit. We are now in the dreaded mid-May post five weeks of MJ. Sports not really happening yet. I was watching some skins match today in golf. Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson. I didn't really care.

It was good to see a live event that I didn't know what was going to happen. But ultimately, I was like, eh, Bundesliga came back. People were excited about that yesterday. There's no fans. Were you excited about it? Cause a lot of people were excited about it. Yeah. I just never watched Bundesliga. So, you know, for me to just be like, oh yeah. Like I, I'm not starving, you know, it's like, I miss, I really miss sports. I want sports to come back, but I'm not at the point where I'm just going to sit down and watch like a Bundesliga game. I'm not putting people down who would do it. I'm just, I'm not personally there yet.

I don't know about you. Oh, no, no. I wouldn't. To me, especially as you get older, like if you enjoy this, why would I give you a hard time for enjoying this? Yeah. I mean, unless I were married and you were my neighbor,

like being weird around my wife, that would be enjoyment that I would frown upon but uh no no not at all but it uh i i just i'm i'm happy that it appears it's going to be worse if basketball comes back though it appears that i think most of most of the reaction is hey this is great i mean there's always the solvers out there that are going to solve everything and like my column solving all of these things that can't really be solved but i i thought the reaction was like cool we've got soccer on soccer that matters that early morning thing here in the states is really cool i mean it's never really been my thing is my time is is so even now like my time is so spoken for before the day even starts most days that

i usually am not going to watch sports that i don't talk about now which is it's kind of weird where sometimes when you can watch that stuff it's like hey i don't even have to have a take on any of this it's just on but um yeah i mean you know look i'm thrilled that that people have something and as we slowly try to figure this thing out with the NASCAR going and, you know, UFC, things have been really good. And that kind of leaves us now with what do we think about basketball and the NFL stuff? And then, of course, the baseball stuff is really hard to kind of figure out because there's certain players that speak out.

And I think sound, I don't know, the Blake Snell thing, he just didn't make any sense. But then it's like, if I'm anti-Blake Snell, does that mean I'm pro owner? Well, I don't want to do that either. So. Yeah. Baseball seems like the ultimate wildcard because their union has just been the hardest to that the union versus the owners in that specific sport has always been the iciest. It's there's, it's always going to be a standoff. And I was always pessimistic about, oh yeah, we'll get this together. We'll do an 80 game season.

It'll be great. It's just never how that sports worked. I think when you read all the NBA stuff from the last few days, it's been really encouraging. We were on here last week and I was pessimistic, Bill. And then-

Wait a minute. We have new? We have optimistic, Bill? Optimistic, Bill bill this week. I think the optimistic pessimistic, and you know, I'm sure it sounds like we're just being wishy-washy every week. But if you go back and listen to what we talked about last week, all that stuff we said was legitimate. We were like, look, this is bad. We need, we, we need momentum. We need the players to actually like make a step here. We need momentum. We need the players to actually make a step here. We need decisions. We need a timetable. We need them to say, if this doesn't happen in the next four weeks, it's not happening. None of that was happening a week ago. The day after we did that podcast, the players all got in a call, the superstars. And I broke it down a little bit

on Tuesday's pod here, but just like when I saw the names on the call, I was like, oh, this is good. This is the first good sign we've had because it's like, this is how shit happens in the NBA. The superstars ultimately are going to drive it. And if LeBron and Chris Paul didn't want to start the season again, it wasn't going to start. And if they did want to start the season again, now it has a good chance to start. What have you heard from the player side? That the vote, the yes-no vote that Woj talked about was overwhelmingly in favor

of the players wanting to come back and play, which is what I always thought. You know, wanting guys to come back and play, this hasn't been about selfishly what I need. Yes, I would like to see NBA games,

but I wasn't rooting for it so I'd have something to do. I was rooting for it so players could still make their money. The owners would still have their product. It wasn't a rooting for the owner's thing. And I think it was just part of it. And probably the most selfishly driven thing was hoping that our friends that work in this industry wouldn't lose jobs or have to take pay

cuts or furloughs or layoffs because there'd be something to actually cover. And the programs, the programming around is going to be tricky and I don't have any easy solutions. Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later, but like, that was what I was rooting for is that all of this is connected and that there'd be some sort of outcome, but the media coverage of it, I felt like, well, wait a minute. What about this? What about this? What about this? Like, look, we could do that all day. And at one point I was like, wait a minute, am I wrong? Am I wrong in assuming the players actually do want to come back and play? Like, I don't care how much money some of those guys have at the bank, especially the NBA players.

Most people don't want to lose the opportunity to add to their wealth. And if they feel like the science, the testing, the risk of all of these things are an acceptable level, and I don't know that they have the answer to that. I certainly don't. But if they feel comfortable with what they're hearing, and honestly, the way athletes are and younger guys and people being competitive and just guys being bored, their acceptable risk is probably higher than a lot of people even listening to this right now. And considering the money that they're going to be compensated or reduced rate of it all.

Well, when, when I'd heard the vote, the votes overwhelmingly, like the players want to come back and play. And I went, Oh, okay. Then like, that's what I kind of thought the whole time. So that makes me feel better much like you said because this thing the players using uh players union is very much superstar driven there can be 450 guys but it's not like all 450 guys have an equal voice and then the michelle roberts part of it you know i talked about last week i was like wait a minute is she does she not want these guys to come back is she speaking for the player or is she just being the combative thing that comes with that position, much like baseball? And so like that threw me off a little bit, but the vote I think is a huge step. We were hard on her last week. So I think it's fair for us to

be like, she did a good job this week. The players all got on the phone. She had to have been at least a small part of that as a sounding board. I can't imagine that they just said, we're going rogue. Don't tell Michelle, let's all get on the phone. It does seem like the players union is on the same page in a lot of different ways. And, you know, Woj wrote a piece, I think Friday about, um, the kind of autonomy Adam has at this point running the league, which Stern had it in a lot of ways, but a lot of it was more dictatorial, dictatorial, dictatorial, dictatorial, dictatorial, dictatorial. He had it, but really was adamant about flexing it and was way more confrontational than Adam is. Adam is a consensus guy.

And I think everything I've heard, and it was confirmed in that Woj piece, was these owners, they might have different factions, and there are three. There's three different factions. Can you explain those? Yeah, one of them is like, what the fuck are we doing? Let's get back out there. This is, we went from, you know,

it's basically the Dave Portnoy thing on Fox. We went from flattening the curve to now waiting for a cure. It's like, what happened? We flattened the curve. Let's get back to life. That's one faction. The second faction is let's be careful. Let's wait and see. Let's listen to the experts. And then the third faction is what are we doing? This isn't worth it. Um, we, we can't just rush back the liability, all that stuff. But I think what's happened is whatever side you're on in that they're empowering Adam to make the right decision and talk to the right people. And they trust him to make the right decision based on what's right for them financially. What's right for them from a legal and health risk standpoint.

Um, what's right for them for the sanctity of the season. Cause like we talked about last week when we were doing the jokingly, the, uh, single elimination tournament, you don't want a situation where people feel like this has been a totally tainted playoffs either where it's like, ah, we kind of did this, but, uh, the bucks one, but it doesn't count. And like, it has to really actually feel like the playoffs. So I think once they start figuring that component, how many,

how many teams are actually going to be in, I still feel like it should be 12. Maybe it'll end up being 16. I still think they should go best of five in round one. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll try to get greedy and go for the eight weeks. But what's changed from a week ago to now is that there was no momentum and everyone was going glass half full

looking for reasons not to do it and to be careful. And now it's proactive and now the players are involved. And I'm optimistic, Bill, again. And next week, if we could be back, being like, oh man, remember when I was optimistic a week ago?

That's the thing. All we can do is just tell you what we're hearing and where our heads are at week to week. And right now it seems more optimistic. And that's what is always worth reminding everybody throughout this entire thing is there could be some news next week where you go, actually, like here, here we go. Like the testing numbers. And that's the other part. I mean, this is, this is a non-sports part

of it, but I try every week to educate myself on it. And what I'm not doing is mining for facts that back up one extreme opinion or the other, because like there was a headline the other day about new Orleans, new Orleans opens back up Louisiana. Talk to my people. I'm like, what's going on? They're like, we're going for it. I guess, you know, even some of them down there were like, I don't know. We'll see. And then I saw a piece. Um, I think it got picked up nationally. It was like Louisiana highest test day, highest positive test day throughout this entire thing. And it lined right up with them reopening.

So everybody's kind of like, oh, here we go again with Louisiana. And so then I dig through the whole thing and it says, actually there was all these backlog tests. So the total was over a two week period, which I'm not even sure if that's accurate, but it just, the headline was written in a way to make it look like it was this devastating number. And I'm thinking, you you know my first reaction when you look at that

headline is like oh here we go second wave like all this stuff's going to be shut down and the point that i'm making is that even though that was a misleading headline i can find misleading headlines that tell you everything's great and i'll go oh wow that's a positive and then somebody else has a follow-up that says actually that's not really what's happening there either because reporting isn't as up to date with that state so So you just kind of like having to run one of these leagues and navigate all this stuff and sitting here May 17th and thinking May 18th, we have a plan. All of these plans are as temporary as anything they've ever planned. And that's what I think is always important to remind ourselves of. I also think, you know, I'm, I'm starting to

wrap my head around being in the same room with people that you have a general feeling they've taken care of themselves, not had that many people, not been around that many people, things like that. We've been around a couple of friends recently. And, you know, you think about where we were in January and February and the first part of March. I just think about my own life. Like, it's kind of amazing. I didn't get it. I'm sure I was around it. I went to All-Star Weekend in Chicago. I flew on a plane. I just think about my own life. Like it's kind of amazing. I didn't get it. I'm sure I was around it. I went to all-star weekend in Chicago. I flew on a plane. I was at a party on Thursday night. Commercial. Yeah. It's fucking sneaky. Priscilla barb yet again. I went to, I went to all-star on that Thursday night, ended up at a bar that had at least a thousand people

and was shaking hands, hugging, all stuff. People are buying drinks and everyone's just packed. This is February 15th, right? We know the viruses in the country. Three weeks before, I was at Sundance for three days, same thing. I had a whole bunch of, went to a couple of screenings, was at different parties. Then Holly reporter has this article, the virus was at Sundance. I know a couple of people who think they got it at Sundance. Um, fast forward. I went to the Oscars party that vanity fair has same thing. Thousand people crammed into the Annenberg, whatever Institute. And you know, I'm sure people had it there. I went to Clipper games was crammed in 20,000 people. You're leaving your cram next to people. This was in our country for two months. And I, the part that I don't understand is people that were exposed to

it. Why didn't some people get it? Why did other people get it? Here's the one thing that we know for sure. If I'm sitting on an airplane next to somebody in mid-February, I'm sitting next to you. We don't know each other and you're coughing and you're sick. And my reaction in mid-February would have been like, fuck man. I hope this guy doesn't get me sick. Right? Like just like, oh man, I hope I don't get the flu. I'm going to be really careful. I'm going to wash my hands. I'm just going to make sure I don't get germs from this person. I think what's changed now, now that we're in mid-May, there's going to be so much more germ awareness with people, so much more awareness of other people of just how healthy they are. You think about the Rudy Gobert situation with the Jazz. He was sick for like three days, right?

He's coughing on people. He's a flu. They don't really, they don't make the connection with the thing. They just have the test just to make sure. But he was sick. He's flying on the plane with them. It's not like they were like,

what the fuck, man? You're coughing. You can't be on the plane. And there were other teams that were on that plane too. I think the Kings were on that same Jazz plane. So then they were all like, what's going on? And you think like Durant and Fournette's get it, stuff like that.

I just think whatever version of society we're about to move into going forward, the awareness of who's around you, are they healthy? And if you're not feeling well, you're not going to be wanting to go out and be around a bunch of people if you're not sure what's going on with you either.

So for people to say it's not going to be at least a tiny bit safer, I think that's naive. I think it will be a little bit safer just because of the awareness. Yep. But your perspective is an older guy on this one. And there's an age delineation that I believe will exist here where the first time things are really full go and bars, it's going to be like a festival. That's not good. Yeah, that's not good, but that's dangerous. So I don't agree with that. I wouldn't want to go to a crowded bar, no matter how good we feel. If you were 25, you would. I probably would. I think you would too. I think we both would have been like, fuck it. Of course I would have. I'm going to wherever. I'll be fine. Yeah. And if I get it, I'll just stay away from people for two weeks

and then I can say I got it. Like, I totally get that mindset of people in their mid-20s. Yeah, because I was arguing. I'm sure that's you, Kyle, right now. He's ready to fucking go out. Are you kidding? Kyle's probably been out.

Kyle, have you been out? Kyle? He's lying. Party balls? What about just party balls Kyle how many people at the lake Kyle's been amazing I I gotta say I really thought Kyle was was gonna be one

of the first ones to crack but no no what's it what's it like a pretty adult in your neighborhood cuz down here at the beach they opened up the beach but it was for exercise the surfers who i always thought you could let them surf let them surf but the problem was is we've all become eight-year-olds with this stuff because then you're thinking okay wait a minute they're allowed to surf so if he's allowed to surf how come i'm not allowed to do this and I'm just playing Frisbee and all this stuff. And, you know, I'm, I drove by, I jumped in the water, which felt great. And then get out of there. Cause you're not supposed to like lays around. But I think the

real big thing is like, don't show up 20 deep. Cause there were people walking down with coolers, like getting ready to check out the sunset and it's, and it's hard to blame people. But if everybody did it, especially people coming from the inland, you know, and, they know a beach community is open and Manhattan beach goes out of their way to make sure parking is nearly impossible, which is funny too, because it's hard to find parking like around normal apartments and houses because everybody is coming from out of town, just parking and they do whatever the, cause the version of the beach is open and you see it and you go, okay, is this a positive? But then as soon as like matt liner right who lives here he posted it feels great it feels normal and he got absolutely dragged on twitter because he

posted a hey it feels good to be outside and back to some degree of normalcy because there's so many different factions of this where to one far extreme it's like how dare you go to the beach and be outside in the middle of all of this, even though the local numbers here are completely LA County has bad numbers. But even though I'm in LA County, I believe the numbers in my town are like minuscule. So I don't know who's right. It's we're in month three here. It's been, I think, 10 weeks since we did our, did LeBron clinch or did LeBron make this an MVP race against Giannis podcast? That was 10 weeks ago. It feels like a year ago. I think human beings fundamentally to just stay inside and avoid other people. So I'm not saying go to a bar in Wisconsin and cram in there with 150 other people. But for us to pretend this is the way this can just go for the next three years,

you know, you can't get judgmental about that. If somebody wants to go outside and rollerblade and feel normal for 10 minutes with a mask on. They're not fucking Satan. Yeah, and that's the problem, is that some people think that they are. What do you think of the baseball? Because you brought up a really good point. And as I always say,

Lords of the Realm is the most important sports book. Well, I missed second most behind Book of Basketball, but Lords of the Realm is... Thank you. It's so important because it gives you the entire backstory of not just baseball's economic issues, but just how bad ownership treated baseball players. It was the first major sport, and then it goes on like 80 years where you're dealing with collusion where the owners lose. So baseball players in ownership, it's like a marriage

where they have to stay married, but one side still thinks the other side is always cheating on them, but yet they're still, they're going to stay married. So when I see the animosity between players and owners, especially in that sport, like that one, you go, all right, like the basketball thing, you're right. Like it was silver. it felt far more cooperative, proactive football. We'll see that one hasn't been great, but baseball basically tried to have a new CBA on the fly. And then you think, wait a minute, are you guys proposing some fundamental change here with a salary cap, which is what baseball has always fought. It's why we had the strike back in 94. And I don't look at like Blake Snell's rant going, I'm just not pitching. I'm putting my life at risk,

where I guess there's evidence of him last month saying this thing was no worse than the flu. So I'm like, well, what happened? What changed there? Maybe he just simply changed his mind. Okay, fine. But there are instances with players, I mean, an A-Rod going out,

like do it for the good of the game. It's like, oh, we're all set. We're all set, A-Rod, on your assistance on what we think the rest of us should do but it is it is disappointing if baseball can't figure this out where i don't want the players to just agree to something that fundamentally goes up against everything they've done but like imagine if they actually can't figure this thing out and they don't get back on the air when all baseball is needed is a moment and they'd have it like this moment is

staring at him like here you go like you're gonna to be the thing and people are going to be into it and a lot of these numbers that you know people will try to argue stuff because of the numbers that people pull during this stretch which i think could be a little misleading actually extremely misleading in some cases but baseball needs to get back on but i'm not in such a like i'm not in the the mode of going oh these stupid players how come they don't just say yes to what the owners are doing here? Because it feels like at the beginning of this, the owners try to slip something in here where you're going, wait a minute. What are you guys trying to do? Just so we can get back on the air.

They remind me of the Republicans and the Democrats. Where they're just on opposite sides and completely distrustful at all times. And spinning whatever the story is against the other side. And even when, even when they come to some sort of agreement, it's, it, that doesn't go away. There's just been too much over the last 50 years. Who's Trump then? Cause I don't think that's fair to say of Manfred. I I'm just, I I'm not even, that wasn't even a political statement. I'm just saying you just have these two sides that are just

dug in on their sides and that's it. Is Blake Snell AOC? He's texting with Tommy Alter late at night. Whoa, breaking news. No, no, I made that up. Tommy, yeah. I don't want Tommy to go on Instagram

with no shirt on again. I didn't want to blow him off. Is he a big shirts off Instagram guy? About a year ago, Tommy started going shirts off on Instagram and it became just a delightful turn of events for all of us at the ringer. There's a lot of like, hey, where's the gym? Is it that way with the arm up, but kind of flexing? Those kinds of photos. where's the gym is it that way with the with the arm up but kind of flexing

those kind of photos it's been great huge huge fan of tom is instagram yeah i i would love if anybody want to hit me up on instagram if there's any like there's any people out there that are focusing on just sort of wellness and plant-based stuff i haven't found a lot of those accounts so if there are any good plant-based, just sort of mental health and then just physical wellness, anybody that's focused sort of in that lane, any recommendations would be appreciated. Back to the baseball for one second.

Sure. Pessimistic Bill is there for that one. I don't see that. I don't see those two sides being like, Hey man, let's put all of our baggage aside and figure this thing out. I feel like it was to be the opposite. And you have the superstars who have already made a shitload of money who are

just kind of like, fuck this. I'm not going to play for half price. I'd rather just not play at all and be with my family. Thanks anyway. You know, I think the difference with the NBA playoffs is first of all, it's half the teams.

Second of all, it's a, it's a short sprint. So it'd be six to eight weeks, whatever. We know it's going to be safe. There'll be real resolution. They'll get to compete. Um, if it all goes well and we don't have any sort of any bad stuff, it'll be a huge win. It'll be the most watched basketball we've had.

I did some recon. I meant to tell you this. I've done some recon on how they would handle the players talking on the court. Oh, this is good. All right. How that would go. They do have probably like a 7 to 10 second delay

when they show live sports, thanks to Janet Jackson. Janet Jackson, who completely changed live sports, never gets enough credit for one little nipple slip. And, you know, so they could do it if it was contained, let's say, you know, they're doing it at some practice facility type place. You have all the players and people on each team. You have, um, the people running the broadcast, maybe you have 150 the players and people on each team. You have the people running the broadcast. Maybe you have 150 people there total. You could do it where it's delayed for like two, three, four minutes, right?

The catch would be you couldn't do the live betting. So Adam would have to be like, all right, no live betting because it just opens the door for a massive scandal. So all the sites that we have, you'd have to agree. Like this would be bad. Don't do this. Don't have live bets. Or you can do live bets at a commercial or something like that. But yeah. All right. So if you had the Mike guys and let's say three minute delay and

it's Clippers Lakers and Paul George and LeBron start going at it, but we can hear it. And Paul George is like, Lakers, and Paul George and LeBron start going at it, but we can hear it. And Paul George is like, you're a fucking pussy. Fuck you. Starts doing that shit. You're a fucking pussy. You shouldn't have even won your third title. Fuck you.

When Durant did it to Bosh, that was one of those eye-opening. You're like, ooh, that's what some of Bosh's peers think of him. Yeah, it starts getting personal. Like, fuck you, LeBron. Grow some hair. Like that kind of shit. That's not nice, but yeah, I hear. I see what you're saying. Well, yeah. But who knows? I don't know how personal gets to the court. By the way, I don't think Paul George is the best example to say any. Yeah, he is. And Paul George is a really nice guy. Oh, Patrick Beverly is a good one. So Patrick Beverly is somebody who might actually, you know, say some shit, do some shit, whatever. If you had like a two and a half minute delay, I think you'd be able to solve some of that stuff. The weird part would be,

it would just go silent, you know, for two, three, four or five seconds. But, um, but you know,

it's doable. I, I would like to hear the sounds of the game. Now, you know, who's against it. Take one guess. Well, who's against it. So I'm,'s against it so i'm you were talking nba we're talking players the the being able to hear the sounds of the court

who is against this michelle roberts the coaches oh what do they just they just yell four down they don't they don't they'll be fine they don't want to hear any and they don't want stuff like Brad Stevens yelling at Jason Tatum. Let Giannis shoot from there. He can't fucking shoot that kind of stuff. The coaches don't want that. However, they navigate that

players don't always listen all the time. Good thing. Garnett's out of the league because they would just say like, oh my God, Garnett, the Garnett games, all Garnett games are only available on demand after they've aired garnett's available on showtime they garnett's am i like have you ever seen any human being swear as much as kevin garnett swears i've never seen anything like it like the the first courtside experience with Garnett, I went, oh my God. And like, you catch yourself like looking at a parent with a kid next to him and everybody just sort of in on it being like, well, this is what we're doing for two and a half hours. When I did the podcast with him and Sandler, he was on his best

behavior for like 15 minutes and then he got comfortable and some F-bombs and N-words started dropping left and right. I was like, oh, he's comfortable. And we were just off from that point. So yeah, I think the sounds of the game would be so cool. The pumping in the fake crowd noise, I would just hate that so much. I would almost rather have Mute just play like music, but like just play some acoustical soundtrack

or something over like some fake, fake crowd sounds. That's ridiculous. Who wants that? How about like the Memphis Grizzlies, Oregon guy, just have him pumped into every single game. Like he just is locked in.

And whenever the games tip up, he, I mean, he might have to do double headers and stuff, but, uh, I forget the name. I apologize.

Maybe we get it on that. Well, remember the old Celtic games. They, the Oregon was the Oregon for the Celtics and Bruins games was phenomenal. I really miss that. It's great. I can't believe it took 26 minutes to bring up how great. Hey, don't forget about the Celtics, Oregon.

Oh, true or false, I was watching some of the 1986 Celtics finals last night. 1980? Yeah, 1980. Oh, true. Everyone remembers 81. Nobody remembers when Sixers, first of all, Dawkins in game one just has his way with

Cowens, like in a really profound way. I was shocked. Doc is really good that year. The Lakers winning in 1980, 40 years ago, FYI. It's kind of a slept on title because that Sixers team was really good. They had Doc, Lionel Hollins, Bobby Jones is of a slept on title. Cause that Sixers team was really good.

They had doc Lionel Hollins. Bobby Jones is there. Henry Bibby, uh, doc at his peak Caldwell Jones said that team was not like a rollover team. Everyone thinks like Tony's on that team. Did you say Tony? No, Tony, Tony didn't show up till 81, 81. All right.

So you have 81, which I might've watched some of those last night to McHale, Tony and Parrish all show up. But in the 80 game, game three, which is on YouTube, you can find it. Maravich is playing crunch time. It's in Philly and, uh, and Philly ends up winning in the last minute by two, but the Celtics are going crunch time. Cowens, Bird, Maravich, tiny Archibald and Maxwell. It's four

Hall of Famers on the Celtics side and it's the first year of the three point line so somebody takes the three and it's like

a fucking spaceship they're like whoa three it's like one of those Bird makes a big three to cut it from five to two and they react like it's the most exciting

thing that's ever happened I highly recommend it but game four and game five not on YouTube because I'm not sure those tapes exist. I don't think they were televised. I think there's only local...

Because that was when they were tape delaying in 80 and 81. So you have the Eastern Conference Finals. There's no record of it. By the way, how great... I know Red Auerbach doesn't get a ton of credit. No, I'm kidding. But if you talk about him having teams that he thought were good,

but he knew this isn't enough, he didn't screw around. Right. The pre-Russell team was a good team. And he was like, we need to be better. And the same thing with that 1980 Celtics team. Because all the names you named, it's like, you know what? Actually, we're going to turn this thing over. They weren't big enough.

Yeah, they weren't big enough. so he goes and adds all that front line stuff they want to title i would say game six of the 81 finals because everyone remembers five and seven seven's a legendary game but game six celts come down from behind by 17 but that's the game where maxwell goes in the stands and dick stockton and his partner, who I think is Kevin Lockery, have an argument about whether it was justified or not. Stockton's like, you can't do that. No matter what the guy said, you can't hit a fan. And his partner's like, well, you don't know what he said. Maxwell, he gets going, he bumps into the guy, to some old guy who says something, he turns around and then Maxwell turns back and just goes back and shoves him in the stands. And it's like almost a riot.

And you know, this is the worst city. You can do this in those Philly fans. All the guys in the first couple of rows are like, let's fucking go. You know, it's like way worse. They're like, and you can see like the Sixers get nervous. They go in because they're like, oh shit. You know, it's almost like when somebody has a crazy spouse, you're like, oh God, I gotta, I gotta get my spouse out of there. Um, all the Sixers like, oh shit, like this could escalate. And, uh, Maxwell stays in the game. It turns into a rallying point and it's an amazing game, but there's a reason they don't show it on hardwood classics or anything because the pivotal turning point is Cedric Maxwell almost starting a riot.

It's, it's basically the pre-art test melee. It's unbelievable. No, it's a good point because, you know, I'd heard people say, well,

well, you know, and it would usually come down. Um, I don't know. Sometimes like the, the sensibilities that are applied after the fact, when it comes to different issues, it's like, Ohbury that's funny but the Ron Artest thing isn't and

then is it a race thing but you need to always be like you know the Maxwell thing I don't remember I mean look I'm really young for that this is where the gap shows up between you and I but that wasn't I don't think it was just a pro Boston consume thing I think people kind of understood or maybe it was just people understanding Philly. I don't know. Was Max vilified for that? Because I don't feel like historically he ever has been. No, that was a different era. There were way more

fights back then in the NBA. Crowds way more involved. It's just a lot more vicious, the stuff people are yelling at courtside and things like that. Even I was reading some of the Phil Jackson stuff. They leaked, or they didn't leak. They ran the ESPN magazine.

Phil Jackson did this four-part series for ESPN, the magazine, during the final season. And part one runs right before the playoffs. And he's just throwing grenades in there. And Jerry Krause, he has this whole thing about, um, about the Lakers, how he's been, you know, he never knows if he wants to coach again, but he has been watching the Lakers and kind of makes it seem like they're not poorly coached,

all this stuff. But in part four of that talks about the jazz fans, how frustrated it is for the bulls. Cause the jazz fans are just throwing coins at them for the entire game. We know security won't help us out. So this is all through the 90s shit like that's going on. It was really the Artest melee was the tipping point. Things were, whether we want to admit or not, things were weird. I went to the Nets Celtics

game, which I know you did too in 0-2, the Eastern Finals when Jason Kidd had had the domestic violence incident with his wife and you had idiot fans in the stands wearing, you know, wife beater t-shirts with kid's number on it. And it was horrible. And I remember even writing about it, like, wow, this is like a dark moment for us. But like now, if that happened,

like people would lose their fucking minds, the world would end. This was 2002. It's not that long ago, 18 years ago it isn't but i mean it that part of it that fan player interaction thing is so different where you know westbrook at the moment with the jazz fan and it became it was beyond the 24-hour news cycle and oh yeah it's i never really you know i'm like okay well what are you doing here because first of all Westbrook is about as antagonistic as it gets. All right. But it doesn't excuse you saying whatever you want to say to him. But then everybody kind of takes the player side here.

And then you work with Long. Like Long is all about it for player safety. And basically like any of you guys that think it's okay to say stuff to players, like fuck off. Like he's adamant about it. And I've had times along where I'm like, well, wait a minute. I don't like, I'm not sitting there saying that you guys should be harassed and people should say horrible things. Like, I would never do that stuff. I just wouldn't because we're in this.

Like, we do this. If I were a regular fan at, like, 44, 45 years old, screaming F you to players after a couple Coors Lights, like, you know, I don't really think, I would hope I wouldn't be like that outside of the sports industry. But like a lot of things, I think it's swung so far that it's... So if you're the player and you tell a guy to fuck off and he says it back to you, now it's on the fan. Because there's definitely times where you can see... The fans are more often than not the ones that are wrong here and out of control. But I do think there are instances where it's like, wait a minute, if you're if you're coming at me and I'm going to you and you've acknowledged me, then it's kind of on. But does that mean I should lose my seat?

You know, I don't know. But it's it's it's this isn't even stuff we would even talk about 20 years ago. You would be like, no, this is the whole point. Like you show up. What was the thing with the idiot? owner what did he say the guy the minority owner remember that like nine ten months ago the minority owner mark stevens when he had that incident with kyle lowry remember when they said he like shoved him oh yeah and then the guy got banned from the warriors games that was that guy that like to

me that's like no no go every time you're in the wrong 100 there's no there's there's no debate yeah wait a minute when the video was bad too right like he pushed him right yeah he was he was out of control he got vilified although it is one of those things where he he got vilified like he becomes you become like aaron Hernandez, basically, for that incident. It does get out of whack. The entire internet comes after you like you're Jeffrey Dahmer. Yeah. At first, you're a guy who had a couple of drinks at a Warriors game,

and you shouldn't have shoved Kyle Lowry. I don't know if you have to move to Malta. Yeah, that's kind of what it turns into. But look, he's banned for a year. He's fined half a million dollars. And he looks like don't push lowry like you're gonna get into it with kyle lowry no he's a douchebag it's just right it all played out it all played out the way it should have but i don't know if he should have the scarlet letter for the next 80 years of his life no that was kind of the thing where like in the moment everybody's trying to outdo each other on

their take on it like i don't think death is wrong. Death by stoning. Can we kill him? What if we hanged him outside the Warriors arena? Was that legal? If we do it outside stoning, is that alright? A year and a half of mills fair. I'll just leave it at that. It's a solid penalty.

Also, never being involved with the team again is another good one. We'll take a break and then we're going to do rewatch, uh, bulls. Hey, the coronavirus pandemic has sparked a massive increase in the number of cyber crime complaints flowing into the FBI. The internet crime complaint center, which typically receives 1000 complaints per day pre pandemic is nowemic, is now receiving 3,000 to 4,000 a day. Coronavirus-related schemes include domain names, spoofing personal protective equipment vendors, phishing emails promising government checks, and fraudulent COVID charities.

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for FS1 and ESPN. And then I had an idea about basketball that I forgot to give you that we can break out as a little ringer social video. I think I'm going to defer to you because I think you're hot on this and you have some good ideas. So I'm going to let you go and then I'll tell you the couple of the programming things that I came up with.

So they're running these basketball games, right? These old NBA games. Listen, people. Listen to me now. Listen to people. Listen to me now. Listen to me good. Get behind me. Mobilize behind me because I have found a really fun rewatchable gimmick here. Just show me fourth quarters.

Just cut the rest of the game. They always show these whole games. It's like, all right, I'm going to sit down and watch this two and a half hour game. Just show me all the good fourth quarters, like all of them. Show me the 1984 finals. Show me game two, game four, game five, game seven, two hours, fourth quarter crunch time of all of them. Show me the fourth quarters, different series. Show me the best fourth quarters. Show me the sleepy Floyd fourth quarter. It's perfect. It's 30 minute shows. There could be seven minutes of commercials, 22 minutes of content.

Give me a little context. Have hosts like you and me are the hosts. We're just on a little box. We're like, here's why we're showing this one. Whoa, watch out. Sleepy Floyd catches fire. Here's the game. Boom.

Half hour. I get to learn my NBA history. On to the next game. Why are we showing these two and a half hour games? Why are we showing three hour baseball games? Why are we showing three hour baseball games? Why are we showing three hour NFL games? Same thing for football. Show me the awesome football games.

Show me all of them. Show me any game from any year. Condense it in an hour for me. Just show me the best parts. Let me relive like they showed Monday night. They were showing Marino versus Bledsoe. First week, 1994. Old Pats uniforms.

Early Willie McGinnis. Marion Butts is just a fucking corpse. Ben Coates in his prime. I was like, I love this, but it's like, why am I watching drives that are going to lead to a punt? Just show me the best things. I think we need to filet mignon eyes. Filet mignon eyes.

I like this. Filet mignon eyes, filet mignon eyes, filet mignon eyes, this old sports content. Don't just be like, ah, here's a dump of the stuff. Like, show us the best stuff. You have editors. You have all these people at home.

You have all these people who aren't producing games right now. Unleash them on your library and make these awesome fourth quarters, fourth quarters of NFL games, third period of hockey games. Show me OTs. Just like, let's get the best of the best.

Let's go. That's my plea. I like that. I'm going to not top it. We both know this, that some of the problems with the football re-airing, at least for ESPN, is rights-based. So you're saying like nfl network should be doing this because i think there was even some issues with the espn running their own monday night football like however that language works like but people don't understand

and i didn't understand it till later on at the company is that the reason you pay so much for that wild card playoff game which is a massive massive sum but it's also so that you can build out your highlights like you have to buy the rights. So you can also like, we would have times we're in the radio show and let's face it like an ESPN two simulcast radio show. Isn't a priority highlight wise, but we'd have certain B roll where like, actually we can only run like 60 seconds of baseball for your show today. And you go, Oh, okay. Like, all right. Better make, better make it count i guess um but what i think somebody maybe the best way to do whatever version of the nba we get back and it would be harder for playoffs because it would feel like maybe you're diminishing the product but if they do an end of the regular season thing

or maybe they can figure out a way to make this work where there's some kind of red zone version of basketball where you've got a host that you really you know trust that's that's flexible maybe has a little bit of opinion to them and i don't know how the travel works with all those guys so i'm not trying to assume anything but i think you can do the distancing in studio and you start whipping around like i loved being on coast to coast but i never felt like coast to coast ever was given a chance because it was always kind of moved around all the time and it had that weird delay too remember had a weird delay but if you took whatever package of basketball you got now and tried to red zone channel a little bit it may build the urgency of the moment and it may help disguise the fact that it's going to look like a you scrimmages right well

what about if we had more than just the announcers like if all these announcers are remote and espn has raptors sixers and this is like they have no content. It's like game one Raptors Sixers round two. And it's like, our announcers are Mark Jones and Hubie Brown. Great. Um, why couldn't that on ESPN to have,

have Raptors fans announcers and on ESPN W you have like crazy Sixers fans announcers and do like basically what they did. Then they did have that college football game where they had the fans of the teams. Then they do that for like a BCS game. Yeah. They had fan friendly broadcasts. Yeah.

Four or five different ones. Well, what they did is they did that fans that are that fan bases announcers versus the other one. But then with Clemson Bama, which matched up obviously a bunch of times they had a clemson i think taj boyd may have done it and then uh one of the offensive linemen from alabama um barrett i think so they had uh they had all sorts of differences i mean look they had van pelton at

one point i was in the booth with tebow and mansell in the middle of them doing a quarter for one of the, for the national title game, Florida state and Auburn. It was me. Those guys have a lot in common too. There's an incredible picture of me fighting to keep my hair on with like the Tebow angel and the Mansell devil over both shoulders. Yes. And it exists that it exists. And, and, you know, we roll in and they're like, Hey, you're going to do a quarter with these guys and just see where it goes and it just kind of turns into a whole thing like van pelt and i were doing it and van pelt and i were kind of playing off each other the whole thing but i'm with you like why not experiment a little bit more with this but as we both know all the leagues have basically final say over who's doing any of their games right and they're going to gravitate toward

being careful. Yeah. Here's, here's another idea I have. I've been meaning to get this. This is a reader, a listener named Ben Grossman Cohen. He was like,

all right, there's no fan thing. Well, why does there have to be no fans? What if they sell this for the NBA? They sell a limited number of spots to be inside the quarantine bubble. You get to go to all the games, have backstage passes.

And he asks how many rich guys would leave their families behind for three months to do nothing but watch basketball and, and be around the players. So I was thinking about this because the rich guys do travel and they know who they are. And some of them even listen to this podcast where it's like they just have so much money

and whatever. To be like one of like the 25 rich guys the NBA invited to just go to all the playoff games and it's like, all right, you get all you can eat playoff tickets. The price is $10 million.

Half of it goes to the, to the league. Half of it goes to COVID-19 relief. So $10 million to get in. It's all you can eat. You're here. Hotel room, $10 million per ticket.

And we're gonna sell 25 of these. Make $250 billion. Do 25 rich guys buy these tickets maybe uh 25 i mean look 25 so yeah there'd be 25 guys that would do it because it'd be the status of it i mean this is the ultimate court side seat it's the ultimate court it's the ultimate fucking dick swing ultimate right oh you won the 25 no i couldn't get in they didn't ask me really they didn't ask you? Two problems. The flip side.

I heard you're going to the campus, the playoff campus. Yeah, you know, Adam called me and he told me the price and I was just like, well, once in a lifetime, obviously. You know, you have the money. I got to spend it. And they do that whole thing. They're just swinging dicks.

I think they'd get 25. I think they could get 50. 50 guys to drop 10 million? Start getting the Saudi Arabians, maybe a couple Russians. You start looking global. I don't know if the NBA would deal with the Russians right now.

Maybe a couple. Need to make that CBA money back. CBA's going backwards. It would help preserve the cap. The optics are one problem, but we're just pretending as if that's not an issue. I think the second problem is Dion waiters would be like, yo,

I need to, I think that, I think it would make everybody so mad where they just show this crowd. And it's just all of guys with dr pepper dyed hair and like their fancy leather jacket and just like walking around with their pass and they paid 10 million dollars to be there for two months i think it'll work i love that you're trying to save save the salary cap because if a player got upset you'd be like no that that it's 50 basketball related revenue and then if you sit there and say,

some of this is going into the COVID research, get, get more testing going. Yeah. There's a way to spin it there politically, try to get it in your favor. But, um,

I'm just trying to think. Bezos is just there. He's got two tickets. He's got him and his girlfriend. But where are they doubled up? They're sitting on 20 million bucks. He's like, I want to,

I'm in for 20 mil. No, they'd have to sit at opposite sides though. No, they, they, up they're sitting 20 million bucks he's like i want to i'm in for 20 mil no they'd have to sit at opposite sides though no they they because they're they're covered they're they're they're not distancing already so you can go with your spouse not everybody not everybody would want to do that right because it's also a way to maybe get away from your spouse if you're not you it's the nba yeah it's like oh way to maybe get away from your spouse. If you're not a huge fan. It's not you, it's the NBA. Yeah, it's like, oh, honey, sorry. They only said one ticket. It's just going to be me.

It's just going to be me with all these people. I do think there's something there. The best part would be who would want it for free. Like Jim, Clippers guy, would be like, well, obviously I'm free, right? And you'd be like, no, probably not. Like, we appreciate your support. Goldstein?

Yeah, Goldstein. Oh, Goldstein's in. The funny thing, though, is he'd flag coach to get there, but he'd pay the $10 million for the ticket. Because no one gets more excited about walking back to the postgame presser without a press pass than Goldstein. He's an OG, though. No, he is. But Goldstein is kind of like,

you know to not ask me for my pass, right? Right. The snakeskin jacket and the duster combo. That's my pass. It's Adam Silver and it's him. Yeah. Don't need a pass. And Messiah, apparently.

And apparently Messiah. Wanted to make sure you are properly excited for our newest Ringer podcast that is launching on May 20th, season one of our new series, Boom Bust, where we cover the rise and fall of HQ, the trivia app. We're really proud of this one. Please check it out. And if you don't know about some of the other new Ringer

podcasts, Baseball Barbecue with the Suspettus Family Barbecue guys, that launched. TV Concierge on Spotify exclusively, where you can find out everything you need to know about the best things to watch Monday through Friday, as well as behind the billions with Brian Koppelman and David Levine that is up and running as well. And if you love the rewatchables we're doing back to the future, it's happening

Monday night, dropping it at midnight. Me, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fantasy. Very excited about this one. And Armageddon coming later in the week. So it's an action-packed week on the Rewatchables. Check all that out. Check out the Ringer Podcast Network. You can listen to it on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. Rewatchables. This is the last one. Game six, 1998. You know, obviously banged home pretty hard in the last dance, which we discussed earlier. There's some fun Utah stuff, Just the context of this series where I just can't believe how diluted the league is in 97, but especially 98, it's almost like these two different eras and the next era hasn't started yet.

But this old era is like running on fumes and, and we're still allowed to have this jazz bulls thing. The jazz beat houston in five barkley's injured so he he kind of tries to play the first couple games i don't even think he plays in the deciding game hakeem's old drexler's done then you have and by the way when hakeem got old it happened really quickly with him yeah it's like it's tight ends and centers. It happens immediately. They beat the Spurs in five, Utah. And that's Duncan's first year. It's Duncan and Robinson.

Avery Johnson's there. Sean Elliott's there. It's a good Spurs team. But for whatever reason, I guess they weren't ready. I haven't watched that series or investigated it. But I'm kind of stunned because Robinson was good that year. And Duncan was Rookie of the Year. I I'm kind of stunned because Robinson was good that year and Duncan was rookie of the year. And, um, and they just kind of handled them and then they kill the Lakers in the, uh, Western finals. They sweep them. Shaq puts up a 31, 12 in the series.

Doesn't matter. Eddie Jones is a no-show Kobe's not ready yet. He's playing like 15, 60 minutes a game. And that's how they get to the finals. It's basically the hardest team they played was the Spurs. The Bulls side of it, the Pacers, was their tough series. The East was just way tougher back then. By 99, the league starts to flip. Kobe starts to

mature. Now, all of a sudden, you have a new superpower. Indiana really rounds in the shape. You get the Knicks have a last vestige. The Vince Carter Carter Iverson generation is coming. C-Web, he finally taps into whatever he has. All of a sudden you have a new batch of teams, but we just didn't. And you look at this series, which I watched a lot of this weekend. Pippen's hurt for the last two, three games, like really hurt, Like especially game five, game six, you could just see it.

Like as a bad bat guy, barely move. Stockton really seems like he's at a different point of his career this year compared to the year before. There's a lot more Howard Isley. Malone is just not as athletic as he used to be, but it still has all the savvy and he's strong

and there's their system. Other than that, they really don't have close to an all-star guy, not Jeff Hornacek's 35. And then you go to the bull side, Pippen's crippled. Jordan's got no legs left, which is why this is one of my favorite games he's ever played. I think one of the great performances ever. He's got no lift. He's got no legs left. He's played over 4,000 minutes in 98. He is running on fumes. Rodman is an oddity at this point. You never know if he's going to get 14 rebounds or just get kicked out in two minutes. Other than that, nobody in this game, other than Kukoc, who, you know, this is his best playoff series, you could even say is in their prime.

Kukoc is, this is probably the best version of Kukoc who's offensively really gifted, defensively a sieve. But it's just a bizarre series. Did you notice that when you were watching? Like, wow, man, this is the finals? I'm definitely guilty of taking notes, watching these, knowing the results and kind of having like a predetermined thought on every player and every team in this.

And there's too many moments, which are unfair to the Jazz, where I'm like, how the hell is this team a game away from winning the NBA title? How is this possible? And as you mentioned that Houston series, Barkley plays like 80 minutes over four games. He doesn't play five games in that first round series. And Utah still almost doesn't beat him. Right. It goes five during the best of five series, and Utah still almost doesn't beat him. Right. It goes five. They're in the best of five era, and they win game five.

So Malone, through the first four games, is 20 a game, under 50% shooting. And when you're the option almost every single possession, and you're an MVP, you have to have more than 20 a game. You have to. And in game five, he finally goes off. He goes off for 37 37 great from the floor and even in this game like at half like i tracked it a little bit here but at one point you know i know we'll get to all this stuff but you know it it feels kind of dead but i don't

know the video that i had was great video quality i think there may have been a little bit of a lag in the audio because you go from, you know, it's the Delta center at Salt Lake. Those fans are so intense and you see Kerr and Randy Brown with their fingers in their ears during the introductions going like, Oh my God, like this place again. And what it, it really, it's almost, I don't know if it's angst from the previous year, but Malone finally has this big game in game five.

And you're right, like Pippen dunks the first basket in this game. The first basket, it's two nothing, Pippen dunk, and he completely seizes up and he stays in the game for like another, he's out at 454 of the first quarter. So he played basically seven plus minutes and he can't move. He can't move, which I want to get to later as far as like what Utah did or didn't do against him. But there's a very slow vibe to this for a finals game in what ultimately becomes a deciding

game. And yet I can't be too unfair with Utah going like, how the hell are they here? How does this even work? Because it's like, look, let's not do the thing. When things don't work, you go 41 and 41, right? Or when things don't work, coaches get fired, people get traded. They're a game away from maybe winning a title, be back to back finals. So what they do works enough, but it isn't overwhelmingly impressive watching them do that. And let's go backwards to game one. Cause I'm with you. It's almost like their note like their institutional know-how became more valuable

than any other aspect of what they were doing. Exactly. Became more valuable than talent. They'd just been doing it for so many years in a row. Their system was in place to such a degree that it became kind of Belichickian with the Pats, where they could just plug in whoever and their system was so ingrained. It kind of almost didn't matter who 75% of the guys were. They're doing stuff in this series. Chris Morris is playing crunch time. Chris Morris is like a cast off on the Nets.

Oster Tag, who's huge in 97, in 98, he's useless. Foster's useless. But you go game one, the pace of these things are just so fucking slow. Game one, the Jazz win in overtime. The final score is 88-85. It's in a 53-minute game.

Stockton has 24 in the game clincher. The MJ is 33 points and 13 for 29 from the field. And you mentioned Malone started out slow. Malone's nine for 25 for 21 points. So game two, Chicago wins in Utah. MJ finishes with 37. There's Rodman's really good in this game.

And there's a whole subplot about how he went to Vegas before game two. And Costas is like reigning himself in. I watched the whole fourth quarter. Costas is like reigning himself in because Rodman's playing well, but he's so mad. Like he's just so disgusted by Rodman as a human being. Costas hates Rodman. He hates him. It's like worse than Walton and Malone. He's just like, he calls him a sideshow. He says he's tired. He's just taking shots left and right. But this game, both of these games were really close and really good.

This game was tied. The Jazz were up one with two minutes left in game two. Had a chance to go up two nothing. They got a stop. Stockton turns it over. Kerr misses a three, gets a rebound. Passes to Jordan. Three-point play.

Malone missed a 22-footer. Terrible. Kerr makes two free throws. Game's over. So now we go back to Chicago. The Bulls win game three, 96 to 54. And this was one of those games where I think all of us really started to worry about where basketball was going as a sport.

When you have somebody score 54 points, and this is coming off of 95, 96. They've moved the three-point line around. Like, there's real concerns. Like what are we doing wrong? Why isn't this more fun? Why is this so slow? Why, why is it just like the same over and over again, using 20 seconds of the shot clock game four is a little better. Um, Rodman has 14 rebounds. This is where Costas, the Bulls win by four. Malone has 21, zero points in the fourth quarter. Your guy, Scottie, has a 28, nine and five. This is his last good game of the series, but gets hurt late. MJ is 34, but Costas goes at the end about Rodman.

Off the court, his tired freak show continues, but on the court, he brings tremendous energy and heart. It's backhanded compliment game. So that game's tied with three minutes left. Morris and Burrell are both out there in crunch time. Just want to point that out. Scott Burrell, Chris Morris, crunch time game five.

Everyone thinks the bulls are going to win. Malone has the game of his life. 39, nine and five 17 for 27 field goal. Pippen's two for 16. Everyone thinks the Bulls are going to win. Malone has the game of his life. 39-9-5. 17 for 27 field goal. Pippen's 2 for 16 with the bad back. Kukoc has 30. MJ's 9 for 26.

Jazz are up 2 last minute. Malone hits a dagger too. Do you remember this in the moment? This was kind of like people shitting on Carl Malone for a week and a half, him the mail fraud i know i was yeah um this guy sucks fuck this he's no mj and he kind of came through right well it's been two years that's the problem it's like 97 is is bad carl malone footage all right and as we mentioned like 20 a game for you in the finals the the first four games isn't enough, especially on that team.

Because Stockton is so reluctant to shoot in 98. Like I tracked one stretch in game six where I'm like, where is it? And he finally takes some shots that we'll get to down the stretch. But you're like, I had my notes. I'm going, when's the last time he took a shot? Like I shouldn't be asking that about John Stockton. And if, unless Hornacek hit a few jumpers,

everything was Malone. It was a Stockton Malone decision where it usually ended up with Malone in the basketball. So do you notice the spacing that they, the bulls are basically like, all right, after game five, going into game six,

like we're doubling Malone. Fuck this. And then there's, this is not a great series for Jerry Sloan. I am left. I am left going at this point was Jerry, as you mentioned, the institutional knowledge.

It's a great point. It may be the best point you've made in all of these. Seriously. Thanks Priscilla. No, but it's just so true. Like there's something to be said of doing the same shit for a decade and going,

you know, we just know what to do. The problem is, it's like the other team also knows it by game five or game six. And it's a massive, massive adjustment, as you point out. But Ryan, we both played basketball. Well, you know, just different levels. When you have a chemistry with somebody you've been playing with forever.

I don't know who you had. I had House. I had Jacoby. I've heard about those pick and rolls with House for years. You know, it's just after a while, it just becomes kind of insurmountable for the other team. totally two guys three guys they know each other that well anyway go ahead i have to admit watching these now i go was jerry at this point just the guy that came in to the locker room before the game and was like hey you're gonna fucking suck today or what? And that was kind of it.

Well, he starts game six with Adam Keefe, and the announcers are going, well, as long as Adam Keefe's in the game, the Bulls don't have to guard him. It's like, well, why is he out there? What is he adding to this? He sucks offensively. Defensively, he's not doing anything.

What does he bring to the table? How about Antoine Carr, where they're like, where's Antoine Carr? They're freaking out that Antoine Carr isn't in the game. Now, granted, he went 5-5 in the second half of game five. Shooting wide-open 20-footers every time. And by the way, when you mention the scoring, I just think it's worth saying again,

the Jazz scored 54 points in a finals game. And people go revert back to the defense the pace is so slow okay it is so slow and it isn't necessarily all because of the defense because there's a lot of open jumpers in this game in game six there's a lot of open jumpers where i think some of it's the rules with what they want to defend and how they want to defend it but utah never really changes anything. They're like, hey, Pippen can't walk right now. Should we attack him?

Well, too bad Adam Keefe's in the game. Hey, guess what you get to do? You get to take him out and put in somebody else that he has to guard. And maybe you can attack Pippen a little bit. Why are you going for Pippen up fakes 30 feet away from the hoop when the guy can't walk? They never made that adjustment. Why aren't you setting picks on him? Why aren't you hitting him? Hey, I'm going to do one of my favorite things. I'm

going to get to bring up Larry Bird here. 1992 Cavs Celtic series. Bird's got the 30 pound back brace. Celts down three, two going into game six. Bird plays. There's this whole outcry that Bird's not playing enough. They changed the whole offense. They put bird at the top of the key and he can't really move, but he's such a good passer. They're running and they're just running all these back cuts and little screens and bird ends up with like 12 assists. It's unbelievable. He's just setting up.

Everybody makes a couple of shots. It's old school, Larry and the calves aren't doing anything. They're just treating him like he's not wearing a 30 pound back brace. You go to game seven, which I think that game's on YouTube and the Cavs are like, fuck this. That dude can't move. He can't bend over. What are we doing? And every time he gets the ball, they just swarm him. And guess what? He couldn't fucking move. So it was a good plan. He was completely useless in game seven. To your point, like what is Utah doing? Do they have scouts?

Don't they have anybody watching the telecast? Ahmad Rashad says in the first half, Scottie's not playing again. Scottie told the team he's not coming back. Scottie's back is in spasms. Scottie can't move. And then he comes back, and he's like this, and anybody who's ever had a back

injury, you just, it's so painful to watch you can see with every step he's feeling it up his neck his teeth he's going like and no what's sick is he actually has like a jump hook runner in the first half that goes in you actually get him in the post he gets you a couple buckets but they never ever attack him there's there's some really it's bizarre i don't like doing the anti-coach thing as much as you do. And where that happens with me at times, I may end up missing something because my first reaction isn't every coach sucks.

But I have to admit, I think Sloan's thing was, it's this is who we are. This is our identity. This is what we do. I caught him saying, hey, we're running four. They do that block screen where they, they screen block to block where the four guys beat the shit out of each other to get Malone and entry pass,

which we will get to at the end of this game. And that's kind of their bread and butter. That's what they do. But the things within the game, like it's great. You have an offense that works. And again, like I can't sit here.

It's almost like my Houston rockets thing. Like I can, I can get mad about it to a point, but it really should have worked in 2018. It really should have worked. And when no one thought anybody could even touch that Warriors team and Houston still almost pulled this thing off. And if Chris Paul doesn't pull the hamstring, like that's, you know, we may be sitting here having to be like, oh, that's weird that the Warriors thing ended when it did. And Houston's got a ring and we got to show him respect.

All right. But to say Sloan, like, I think it's two different things. I think it's Sloan's big picture identity. This is who we are. I've got maybe one of the smartest guys out there running our offense in Stockton and a Malone guy who I can count on. But in a series when we become predictable because we run the same shit every single time down, am I in game aware was Sloan at this stage of his career in game aware? Was there anyone on that staff saying, we're going to attack Scottie? Why are we defending Scottie this far away from the hoop? Why are we letting, because there's

some glimpses too of modern NBA that you see where when Jordan has that drive, and I don't want to get out of order here. This is your deal, so I don't want to do too much far ahead of time, but there's moments where you can see that Phil Jackson's sticking shooters in the corners,

whether it's Kukoc or Kerr on one side, to prevent that help off, which you still probably should have helped because it's MJ with the ball, but that's the kind of stuff that Phil Jackson is doing

and the doubles and their rules with doubling Carl Malone that change within the game that it made me wonder, now as I'm a little more educated watching these games, I go,

does Sloan just kind of go like, all right, let's go get them. And then nothing changes within the game because he trusts Stockton so much. So during the flu game, they said in the, uh,

in the broadcast that Jerry Sloan didn't want to know if Jordan was sick or not. He just, he didn't want his team to know because he just wanted them to do what they were going to do. He didn't want to change what their approach was. That's idiotic. If the guy on the other team is clearly compromised, why wouldn't you want your team to know that?

Why wouldn't you be running them around on picks and just trying to wear them down? Same thing for a game. I'm sure he didn't want to know that Pippen was hurt. And I'm sure the Utah was built back in the nineties where it's like, nah, don't tell Jerry. He'll get mad at you.

Like that. Jerry doesn't want to know. Jerry feels like the team's prepared. He just wants them to do their thing. He doesn't want any outside information because anybody who worked for the team could have been like, Hey, does Jerry know about the Scotie Pippen thing?

Like, his back's fucked up. He might not come back. Look, all these assistants these NBA teams have, and it's even more ridiculous now, but somebody notices it. Somebody notices it, and they just don't do anything with it. Did you see the play in the fourth quarter? He goes and sets a screen, but somebody bumps into him. Malone runs him over. He's setting a screen for Jordan. Yeah.

And Scotty falls down the same way. Like my dad would fall down when he's walking his dogs. Like he goes down and he's trying to get up. He's trying to push off with his hand just to stand up like gingerly as he's doing this. Jordan is dribbling around him and shoots, shoots a jumper as Scottie's kind of just rising to the ground. Like, it's like, you're watching your heart's breaking for Pippen. Cause

he's so hurt. And I mean, you know, the, the number one story of this game is the storybook ending for Jordan, which I know we'll talk about, but, um, the number two story for me is Pippen and the redemption for the migraine game and that, and asking to come out in game three in the Knicks series. But it was always this guy who's one of my favorite non-Celtics ever. People shit on for the migraine game. He was always considered and maybe not quite as tough as Michael. Meanwhile, he was. And this game over anything else, he plays 25 minutes.

I don't know how he did it. And he's in the right spots. And there's this great moment when Jordan's about to hit the game winning shot. Scotty goes to clear out and he's like kind of near mid court. And he's yelling at the ref that Utah is playing an illegal defense as this Michael Jordan moments, like this incredible moment that everybody's just kind of watching and be like, holy shit, is this really happening? And Scotty's like, man they're playing legal defense over there i i just thought to me this is like my favorite pippen game of all the pippen games yeah he deserves whatever spirit award you want to give him on this one because um because all those things you said

like some of this now because i think people like pippen and his second run at espn has gone a lot better than the first run where you know he was he's a quiet guy and if you're going to ask him to like carry a studio show that's going to be a problem but if you let him play off other guys with players like I think on the jump like we see a cooler version of Scottie and I think people want to defend Scottie especially in those first few episodes where there's all this stuff about the surgery and then it gets to the game three and sitting out like he has to wear that because I mean, if MJ is calling, calling Phil after he doesn't go back in that next game being like, Scott,

he's never going to live this down. If Bill Cartwright's crying in the locker room, like that's real shit. That's like, we should be sitting here 20 something years later going, Oh, actually it's been overblown. So he had to wear a lot of this stuff. And I know that affected how I thought of him. But I have more respect for him now because he can't move. He can't move in this game. And he's out there.

And you mentioned that screen where he can't get up. It's, I don't know how much of the sequencing you want to do here, but. He can do it. It's 66-61 at the end of the third. And you can see MJ immediately is like, okay. And MJ was 3-14 in the fourth quarters of the previous two games. And Costas not only hates Rodman, he is selling. And I think he has to sell it this hard.

I don't think it's overselling. I think it's the accurate amount of selling of like, we could be witnessing the last minutes of Michael Jordan. Like, that's a big deal. And Costas doesn't miss that beat at all. Even though listening to it, I'm like, man, Costas is not the traditional play-by-play guy. And sometimes I think it's great

because he has awareness of the story, which I think I like in play-by-play, but then there's other moments where you go, sometimes I prefer everybody just kind of laying out, but it's not going to happen at a three-man booth. At one point, Isaiah Thomas is like, the Bulls need more Luke Longley. He hasn't taken a shot. Which you're like, what? Like, wait, it's a rough game for Isaiah.

Like, what are you? What? Rodman hits a jumper. Remember that one from like 20 feet straight out. Rodman has this weird stretch where he gets tangled with Malone. And we all know that play where they're just like, he trips him alone, elbows him. He grabs Malone again. And Costas just

murders Rod he goes like Joe Buck Randy Randy Moss yeah he loses his mind that's got to be a flagrant oh my god and then they show the replay it's like ah it's fine that's not the line though the line is they were they're scheduled to do a wrestling thing and he's just immediately the hone is just shitting on lower themselves lowering themselves to a wrestling event rodman wants to start not sure why carl malone would want to lower himself to something like that you know this is a this is a message out there to all the young play-by-play guys don't do moralist play-by-play there's too many of them it's never worth of an older generation yeah joe buck became a hundred times cooler once he just started letting it fly because joe buck's freaking amazing anyway at what he does joe bucks is so good that he's like more relaxed than anybody that's done it

but whenever you do moralist play like there's a couple guys like there'll be a fight or there'll be some sort of thing like oh no place in the game for that and you're like you know what put stop doing the polly in a shit and just shut up and know that like guys go at it all right this is this is still some form of physical competition here and guys are going to lose it a little bit, but he is crushing Rodman whenever he gets a chance and he jumps all over him with that. And you're right.

Then they seize it again. And to Costas's credit, he changes his mind and is like, ah, okay, maybe that one wasn't flagrant, but when we got, we got to explain why Costas is announcing this game.

Oh yes. Take it away. Our guy, Marv, who's been one of the stars of the rewatchables who had just run out of ways to be impressed by, uh, by Michael run out of ways. We'll, we'll never know if he would have been impressed by, uh, by the last 41.9 seconds of this game. Cause Marvel is announcing he was accused of assault. He had to leave NBC and was out for a year. So Costas comes in and Costas had announced, uh, ABA games in the seventies.

And it's weird. The boot doesn't work. It's, it's bad because you have Collins and Isaiah together. Collins doesn't need a third person. He's loquacious. He they're constantly trying to set each other up. Collins is saying stuff like,

and Isaiah, that's what Michael loves to do there. He's always referencing Isaiah, and Isaiah's always referencing Doug. It's not working. I don't think they listen to each other either, by the way. It seems like they're in different locations. Yeah. But the biggest thing is Costas, and we've seen this

before, you could be a great announcer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a good basketball announcer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a good basketball announcer because there's a flow to basketball. So Costas is very, and there's Tim Malone and he throws it to Carr

and it's over to Russell. Russell takes the three, you know, and it's just, it's almost like Joe Tessitore doing a game. But then you get the good Costas because when it's like, he's the guy you want there when Jordan, like the last 41.9, when he lays it out and he immediately understands the moment

and he does this whole thing about if that was the last shot, Michael Jordan ever takes, what a way to go out. And he's almost, he turns into Howard Cosell. It's amazing. But his play, his actual play by play, wasn't that good. So it's like, there's pros and cons to the Costas experience. It seems like you liked them a little more. I did because I do think that there's storytelling that should go with this where... Yeah. I don't know the right way to do play-by-play.

I did it for a year in baseball. I sucked. I did one Celtics game. I was even worse. I mean, you don't just show up and do a Celtics game. Basically, the station I worked at that you worked at before I was there, the zone, I was free. And they were like, Hey, do you want that on your resume that you called an NBA game? And it was like, yeah, of course. You know? And I went from calling

double a Red Sox games to an NBA game in like 20 months. And I knew, I knew I wasn't going to do it. Like I knew that wasn't, I was like, you know what? I'm an opinion guy. This is what I like more. But at first I was like, Oh, I want to do play by play. So I don't ever, I'm nothing more than a consumer of it. Like you are. So I kind of like, I think Breen's great. And I like when Breen and Van Gundy and Mark Jackson are doing the top, like when they go podcast, I do. Right. And when people do, oh, you know, oh oh it's a game and i've got the podcast tonight you know you know what i don't need though i don't need a fucking breakdown of 200 possessions i know because there isn't always something to break down there isn't always a screen there isn't always a read that's wrong sometimes a guy just makes a shot and then the analyst i would say

not necessarily like the insecure analyst although that would be the case and it's understandable but some guys who kind of make their mark on it. Like I don't need a fact to it. I don't need a breakdown of every single possession. So if you give me story at times, I actually think I should kind of lay out even more with television, but it's just hard to do. And I think there's always more of a thing with a three-man booth where it becomes cluttery because there becomes competition with the two guys more so than like, hey, I trust you. You trust me. Let's not try to do this thing where I'm trying to alpha you in this whole deal. But no one really lays out that much. This booth for NBC had been a work like this is we're almost through the decade and it's never the same.

So clearly NBC was always trying to figure out a way to fix it. And it reminds me a little bit of the Monday Night Football problem that ESPN has is that the reason ESPN is going after stars is because people want stars. You may not think you do, but for every TV show, if it's a do it yourself show, you're more likely to watch a show. If there's a celebrity do it yourself thing, as opposed to Dave, who's really good on his miter saw. Okay. So when I think of some of the guys that are big names in the NBA that got these names in the NBA, that got these chances in this NBC booth, they're not ready.

Like Isaiah isn't ready. Magic wasn't great before this bill Walton's like on a vendetta, which is like the weirdest of the entire decade. But I think how many booths we got during all these MJ rewatch bus game every year. It changed. It's completely changed. Like Maddie Gukas is calling big games at one point.

And I'm like, wow, that's actually kind of crazy. because that's usually not what has to happen so as i finish the point here is that like that's why the executives make these decisions and are still now 20 years later struggling to find that star that resonates but the problem always becomes that you're giving the star a job that he doesn't have any qualifications for and if everybody were just happy with the most well-spoken play-by-play color commentary guy, who's been banging it away on college games or doing the Tuesday night NBA

game and his fourth or fifth, but has the best talent like that guy doesn't get that job because he's not a big enough star because the executive knows that's not who you want to watch or listen to. The, the storied history of NBA stars trying to go into the play-by-play booth and not doing well is long. I chronicled it in my book, which was 11 years ago. And since then we've had at least five more guys who haven't been able to do it. It's unbelievable. I mean, there was,

if you go back to the seventies, Oscar Robertson is on the broadcast one year for the playoffs and like halfway through the finals, they just get rid of him. Yeah. Like they're just like, man, this isn't working. Oscar, don't show up for game four.

And he's gone. There's no sign of it. It's like 1975 or 1970. It's after he retired. But yeah, it was like they would use Rick Barry. Rick Barry was in the 70s. He was still playing. He was the only guy they could find.

Imagine if they said to Witten, like, week 11, hey, you're off the next five or six weeks. We'll call you six weeks from now and see how it goes. You know what, though? Real quickly, I don't know what happened with Oscar, but the weird thing about it now is you're so in the moment, you're living in this moment, that when it goes bad for you as what, though, real quickly, like, I don't know what happened with Oscar, but like the weird thing about it now is you're so in the moment you're living in this moment that when it goes bad for you as the new guy, like you're way better off not being any good as a guy that's been around. But when you're the new guy that isn't as good, and it's a really hard thing to just jump

into. I know you think it's easier than I do. I think it's harder to just jump in and understand the beats and when we need analysis and when we don't need analysis. No, I think it's hard. I 100% think it's hard. Okay. I thought at one point you thought it was a little bit easier. I think it's so much harder, but the problem now, especially for the Monday Night Booth, is that you are the only show that night, and the second something goes wrong, then social media just turns on you, and it becomes even worse.

I think Witten and Booger actually got worse as their seasons went along because it just sucked for them to have the job and everybody ripping them all the time. I think the reason it's so hard is because it's so artificial and because it's almost always overproduced. The producers run game telecast, the producers run studio shows,

and they kind of just take the pieces they have who are the actual on-air talent and they cram them into whatever they decide this is what our show is going to be. So it's like, oh, all right. So you could say it in one of the games. I think it's game six. They have the three guys standing up

at the beginning, right? They have Costas who can talk in his sleep for the rest of his life. Collins, who's done enough TV at this point where he's pretty comfortable. And then they go to Isaiah and he's got to narrate over this pre-packaged video thing. The Far and Away video, by the way,

where they had this weird 90s dramatic cinema music. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. It's like Antoine Carr highlights and it sounds like the soundtrack to Far and Away. Right. So they come out of that and the three guys are on the court. They're all different sizes. It's like Antoine Carr highlights, and it sounds like the soundtrack to Far and Away. Right. So they come out of that, and the three guys are on the court.

They're all different sizes. It's bizarre. And it goes to Isaiah, and Isaiah has to talk for a minute straight as they're showing this highlight thing. And he's barely done TV. And guess what? He stops and starts and fumbles,

and he's terrible, and he can barely get the point, and it doesn't match up. And then it comes back to him, and now he's staring in the camera, and it's yeah maybe don't do that with isaiah thomas or pre-tape it yeah it actually reminds me the music from the steak it's what's for dinner ads it's really weird it's really like you know no hip-hop it's nba finals what the hell is so think about so just over the course of this decade NBC gets the rights they

start with Marv and Fratello it goes to Marv and and Fratello with Magic Johnson then it's like I think just Marv and Magic Johnson maybe that's it then Bill Walton's in there with the snapper it's Marv Bill Walton and the snapper then it's Marv okay but it's also more walt and gookas and gookas right okay yeah gookas is in there but then it ends up online right then then who is it in 97 it was marv bill walton and who is the third one is it is it gookas still maybe gookas is still there so they're like let's get rid of gookas he actually sounds semi-intelligent bring it out and now it's like doug collins and isaiah i i promise you doug collins didn't need a third person in the booth like, let's get rid of Gukas. He actually sounds semi-intelligent. Bring it out. And now it's like Doug Collins and Isaiah. I promise you Doug Collins didn't need a

third person in the booth. Like, you're good. Just have Bob Costas and Doug Collins. It's going to be great. Put Isaiah in the booth. But everyone wants to change stuff year after year. I mean, how many times have they changed Countdown in the last 20 years? And it's like, it's unbelievable. They've had 15

casts. That's television now though that's like hey if we have something new we're gonna go ahead and do it and and everybody's hoping they're gonna find that guy like randy moss was at fox and i almost feel like it was like we have to get randy moss because he was at fox and he did a couple things that were pretty good but it's you know look emmett smith well you know smith is emmett freaking smith you know, look, Emmett Smith, Smith is Emmett freaking Smith, you know, and like Emmett Smith shows up to ESPN. He wasn't any good. I don't even think he made it the whole contract. And you're thinking like, okay, but what are you supposed to do as a TV executive? Not give Emmett Smith a chance at doing the pre the pregame show to the NFL. Like it's Emmett

Smith. Of course you're going to give him that chance. And then unfortunately it's like, uh, usually, honestly, if you've made it that much like i wonder sometimes if it's almost like if you're that big of a deal as a player you're not as good as an analyst because you're like what do you guys want me to do well the funny thing now is jefferson's the best out of all these guys i think all the ex-players he's the best one um out of the newer out of the newer generation but it'll be years before he actually gets one of the good jobs because it's like well he's not famous enough it's like who cares he's good go go listen to him on the nets games he's the best one of all the

local color guys out of all of them he's the best so just put him on more games it's not he's really good uh he's also what i like about jeff Jefferson is he's so good in the studio shows. He's just good. More Richard Jefferson. Not rocket science. All right, quickly on this game because we got sidetracked. Although I did really enjoy it.

Game six. We did some MJ stuff at the stop, at the top that I'm going to save about just his performance. But the Bulls go up early. Pippen leaves. Jazz swing the game. MJ stuff at the stop at the top that I'm going to save about just his performance. But, um, the bulls go up early, Pippen leaves, jazz swing the game.

This game is close. Basically the whole game, uh, it's 35, 35. It's just that MJ comes out for two minutes and he becomes clear. Like he's going to probably have to play the rest of the game and his legs are shot. He's put over 4,000 minutes,

45, 45 at halftime. MJ has this little run in the second quarter where he's just got to go. And Isaiah, the one good thing about having Isaiah in this booth is that the great players know when the other great player, they, they sense something. It's like some sort of DNA thing where they're like, oh, he's starting to feel it. And he calls it even before he starts making more jumpers. MJ finishes with 23 at halftime. Malone has 20. Malone's good in this game.

So Malone's- And assists too. Three halves in a row where he's just been really good. It's like, oh shit, maybe Karl Malone figured this out. Third quarter, Utah's up. Jordan goes on a, he just, from a shooting standpoint, everything's short, everything's short. Everything's off. They have nowhere else to go.

Kukoc isn't really taking over. No, that was a shot. Utah can't pull away. There's so many empty Kukoc stretches. I mean, he was great in game seven against the Pacers. He's that massive third quarter. Yeah, but I would tell you Kukoc is not aged well in these reviewings. No, he definitely especially

defensively. So Utah's up three ten minutes left and they have to take Jordan out because he's dead. He's got nothing left. He has no legs. He just has that look. So they try to steal a couple minutes with him on the bench, which they do. They pull it off. By the time he comes back at like a little under the eight minute mark, they're still down three. So the jazz didn't extend the lead. And then you watch the end of this and you want it to be more heroic than it is, but it's really more like Ali against foray against Foreman, just taking hits. He he's got, he doesn't have the same, whatever anymore, the same gusto. He starts going to the line, just trying to bang into bodies. Like he's got no legs whatsoever.

And there's no sign of what's going to happen in the last 42 seconds from what you see in the third and fourth quarter. It just looks like he's shot, right? It looks like he's got nothing left. And then it flips. Yeah. I have two moments, if you'll allow me to just back up a little bit. Go.

Back up. I'm not going to go off on some tangent. No, do it. We're good. There's a stretch there, as you're right. Chicago gets up, Utah answers, and Utah's feeling good about themselves, up 25-22.

They take MJ out. This is your court at one point in an NBA finals game where there's one starter on the floor between both teams. Okay? Utah has Isley, Shannon Anderson, Chris Morris, Greg Foster, who has a stretch where he's absolutely shaving points. He's so bad.

He's so bad in this three-possession stretch. It's unbelievable. I's so bad in this three possession stretch it's unbelievable i actually felt bad for him like i didn't like him back then watching it now i'm getting a little softer and then ant antoine vinnie johnson car who they just can't get enough of in this game they're like anytime they get stagnant like get it to car where is he let the chef cook yeah he actually car comes in in the second half where they're like, oh, they they're resting car. They have to close with car, car, car, car.

And the car comes in mad substitution and rips everything off and throws it down like Superman's here. All right. So I got to say, wait, wait on that one point. It's kind of incredible that, that the Lakers couldn't make the finals in 97, 98 and 99 was Shaq, who was just a dominant, unbelievable force.

I know he wasn't totally in shape. I know he was a little bit more of a dick back then. But it's just hard to believe Shaq and any four teammates couldn't have beaten this Jazz team. Like, Jerry West, who gets blown left, right, all the way through for eternity.

And you look at that 98 Lakers team he put together, it's like, what were you doing? You actually could have won the title easily, but it was all back on Shaq back then because he hadn't won yet. He had said that quote about, I've won at every level except for college pros. And I think younger people, you don't realize that there's a very anti-shack stretch that happened before he won those titles and it was kind of like oh you can't win with this guy like shack was under the it's you know if there were talk shows back didn't take basketball seriously enough yeah exactly exactly but his team if you look at the team it's just not good enough but where i thought the jazz lost this game twice and you could argue they've lost but they get four legal defenses called in chicago by the way

they start that quarter where they're up and there's about a three minute stretch where these are the lineups again eisley anderson morris foster car chicago has kerr judd bushler scotty burrell kukoc and rodman who again is coming off the bench here and rodman's like in and out of this game too kukoc is the only starter, the only starter in a game during an NBA Finals game. Kukoc is the only one out of the 10. And you're thinking, okay, I get maybe Sloan's

trying to match the minutes with Malone and MJ here, but you've got to extend the lead somewhat when Pippen isn't out there, MJ isn't out there. And instead of it being something where they get, they're up,

they add like a point to their lead in those three minutes. They don't do anything with it. And then as you mentioned later, when MJ's off the court, they survive those minutes. They survive those minutes trying to find any way to rejuvenate him because he's taking every single shot. And as Costas correctly points out, legs wise, there's just not a lot of lift and none of that stuff is going in. And you're thinking, Gary, and it's not an elimination game for Chicago, but you go, what am I supposed to count on here with Chicago's offense?

Because now Pippen is just, even anything you've gotten from him is amazing, but this is not the MJ you expect to close. It's so funny. We've been doing these rewatchables for five weeks. The difference between him in 1998, in this moment with the 4,000 minutes and all the wear and tear

versus the guy we watched in 92 and 93, it's unbelievable. It's like night and day. I mean, he's athletically, he's basically at the tail end. He still has this. He has the head and all the little tricks and all that stuff.

But he really is in that Ali stage of just, all right, I'm just going to lay against the ropes. I'm going to take my beating. And then maybe there's a moment where I can get a straight right over, which ends up being the 41.9, where you have that sequence where he somehow gets the layup,

but then the strip and all that stuff. But he's kind of, that was his overhead, right? It's just kind of waiting, waiting. But man, he misses 19 field goals in this game, you know? And it's like, he had to take all the field goals. Who else? Unless Kukoc, God forbid he ever stepped up, but unless he, unless they were going to run stuff for him, what else are they going to do?

Like Isaiah's calling for Luke Long for luke long pretty below average and isaiah's calling for him to get more shots i wrote it down i couldn't believe it where's luke longley and i think maybe isaiah he's right where he should be right and luke holds up better i think historically on the rewatches here because he's so big he's very active defensively he's a good passer um i i ended up up liking Luke more going through all of these weeks, but you don't want him taking shots. And if we're watching Kukoc this way, you can't imagine what goes on in MJ's head when he looked at Kukoc,

like standing beyond the three point line, like I'm not passing it to you, but on that layup where he cuts it to two, uh, and that is after Stockton finally hits a shot. Cause he had missed the three. He'd had another miss off a curl. He hits that massive three

to make it 86-83. And you're going, oh, here we go. MJ gets that layup. They get it in four seconds. Cuts it to one. And Kerr stays in the corner. And Kerr actually has some nice moments

in this game. Okay? Kerr sets a huge screen on a Kukoc three where Malone clobbers him. The stuff that you let Malone do on these screens Malone would just murder you he kills Pippen on that play that you

talk about he had crushed Kerr on a play before that that opened up Kukoc but Kerr is at least providing something that you have to honor and his defense you know his defense in this game is underrated he's handling the ball because now there's no Pippen and MJ doesn't want to bring it up every time because Pippen can't because mj's like jesus i got enough

going on and harper and they have no other point guard other than her who could dribble and harper other than beating the shit out of stockton doesn't do a ton in this game uh well it's it's telling what happens to all the guys on the bulls after this game none of them go on really to do anything this was it the sum of the parts definitely exceeded the uh or the whole exceeded the sum of the parts i would screw that up god so let's go to the malone are we good on the malone play can we do that now because i i know you'd mentioned it already at the strip 0.9 yeah the strip it's this is this is really inexcusable for Malone, and this isn't trying to build

Walton Malone here, but as you watch this game, the number one rule is them deciding how they want to handle doubles, not if they want to or won't want to double Malone. They're doubling him the entire game, and some of the doubles are on the dribble,

where you wait until the guy actually dribbles, then you send the double. Some of the doubles are on the dribble, you know, where you wait until the guy actually dribbles. Then you send the double. Some of the doubles are on the catch. But without fail, it is a double team all the time. And it's actually pretty impressive. Utah's up three at the end of this because there's so many times

it's like, oh, here you go again. So on that play, what do they do? They run that block-to-block screen where it's, you know, two guys setting screens for each other. Malone usually kills the guy on his way to that left block. He gets the ball and Jordan never comes back to fight. I think it's Hornacek.

He doesn't keep following and he just turns back around. Malone, in that moment, you've been getting doubled the entire time. Yes, they've changed the rules on the double, but they've still doubled you. And for you to think at 41.9 on this play that has been run all series, they've seen it for two years, that MJ's not going to deviate a little bit on that. There's less time. There's 20 seconds left at this point. Yeah, right.

41.9 in the inbound. No, Jordan scores. They come down. They set up. It's like 22, 21 seconds left. All he has to do is take care of the ball. The thing you can't have is the turnover. No, you can't.

But you can't be that oblivious to the double team. It's bad. Shockingly, a double comes. Like, if he's watching all the basketball movement there, like, the only blind spot is behind you, and he turns right into the blind spot. It doesn't really even turn. Jordan slaps it away.

And it's just, honestly, it's just a massive lack of awareness at the worst possible time from alone there. It's not up there with Rasheed Wallace jumping off Robert Horry in game five of the Spurs Piston Series or Worthy throwing it cross court at getting it stolen by Henderson in game 284. Like some of the all-time brain,

Manu fouling Dirk in 06. Like there's a, there's a tier one of biggest brain farts and huge playoff games. This is probably a tier two bird getting lost in the city. Moncrief switch in 83. What I liked about it though, is I don't think Jordan did this other than this play, the way he specifically handled chasing Hornacek underneath, it was almost like he knew 99 times, I'm going to follow him, but I'm going to save this 100th

time when I really need it. I think I could double back and strip the ball. It's not something he just thought of in the moment. I'm convinced he had this in his pocket. When we really need this, I'm going to do this. And he did it. The other thing that's so underrated, and I love this so much. I'm a passionate believer in this. No timeout. Jackson read the moment, let the game

go. He had the best player ever with the ball. And I think almost every coach calls timeout, tries to set something up. He's just like, fuck it. I have Michael Jordan. Let's let this go. Let's let this unfold. And I think that really helped them because they end up, they spread it wide. He ends up getting one-on-one with Russell. Everyone else afraid to come help gets a wide open jumper that he actually makes. It's unbelievable. I could just say in the moment, watching this live was just so,

so thrilling. So breathtaking. It's one of my favorite athletic performance of it I've ever seen because he's just, he's done. He's got nothing left. The tank is fucking empty and he still summons the 42 seconds. And that's why we think he's the best ever.

Yeah. Costas owns the moment there. Maybe the last thing we see and you're going like, did I really get to see this? Is this freaking guy really going to do this and add to the legend? Or you strip Malone and then you hit the game winner, which he actually pushes off with his left hand. Cause Russell's body,

your body doesn't turn that way unless you're pushed. It's not like he slipped, but there are like those little glimpses that I've said, where you're noticing some stuff that's just staples now is that coup coach, like they ran that action so that the perimeter defender wasn't going to help off a coup coach. I can't imagine that Jordan was going to pass the coup coach in that spot. And Utah also gets caught up in a little thing where Antoine Carr and those guys are like, no, you were supposed to stay at the foul line and meet him there. So I think there's some

confusion on that part of it for the Jazz. There's also, going back to 97, and in this game as well, it's small ball, where the bigs are Carl Malone against Dennis Rodman. It happens in the deciding game in 97. It happens for good stretches in this game as well, where both teams say, let's get our center out of there. And specifically on those two drives that Jordan late, granted, no shot back or the other. Right.

It's, it's, no shot. Right. It's it's, there's more movement. Like there's more freedom in there to kind of move around, which is clearly a, a hint at what we see today in basketball. But I mean, obviously it took a lot longer than say a couple of seasons later for that to be the norm.

But I remember being like, did I really just see this? Right. Did that happen? Am I alive right now? Yeah. Jerry Sloan. Man, we're hard on Jerry Sloan.

Great coach. Good competitor. Maybe have another last play. I think by game 698, everybody had kind of figured out the, oh, you're going to try to get a Stockton three on top of the key. Like we've seen every variation of this. You're going to set a pick. You're either going to have Malone set a moving screen or just set a quickie pick, fake the pick and Stockton's just going to shoot right away. But we know he's getting the ball, maybe a plan B maybe they have, there's the NBA finals with when they have the cameras in the huddle and the bulls, they're on the bench with, after Jordan has scored and they're going, Hey, they're

going to go to Stockton for that three at the top of the key harp. Are you going to hop off and get, yeah, I got it. Like they know what place coming. So tough, tough beat for the, uh, for the jazz fans. Anyway, the rewatchables we're done. So I, I have some ideas for next week for us. Here are the two nominees.

Breaking Down When We Were Kings. The greatest sports documentary of all time. Yeah. Okay. That's it. We got to do a Bill Russell game. Will we do your vintage

bottle of Bill Russell? When do you want to do Hagler Hearns? Today. Tonight. Today. Whatever. That's another. So the point is, now that we've lost Michael Jordan content, Rasella and I are still going to be getting creative.

We're still going to be breaking down old shit until we have new shit to talk about. But you can listen to Rasella's. But you can listen to Rosillo's pod and you can listen to this pod. We have some more stuff coming up. We also have a Rewatchables Back to the Future podcast going up Monday night, so stay tuned for that as well. Rosillo.

Before we say goodbye, I just want to throw it out there. I was willing to babysit Ben for a day if we were doing a quarantine deal. So I think that's good content there. He would love it. And in fact, said recently, I really miss when Rosillo used to come over on Sunday nights was an actual quote from Ben. You guys are aligned. We are. I love guys like that. I'm saying we get them out in the water a little bit. I'm willing to take it.

I know you guys probably think I don't know what I'm dealing with here, but I think it's good content, the day with Ben, Pod. Be unbelievable. It would end up with just him playing video games while you wondered what happened in your life. Rosillo, a pleasure as always.

See you next time. Thanks, buddy. All right, thanks to ZipRecruiter. Thanks to Norton360 with LifeLock. Remember, the coronavirus pandemic has sparked a massive increase in the number of cybercrime complaints flowing into the FBI. Norton360 with LifeLock provides all-in-one protection with device security, identity theft protection, and a VPN for online privacy. No one can prevent all cybercrime and identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But Norton 360 with LifeLock,

a powerful ally for your cyber safety. Sign up today. Save 25% or more off your first year by going to norton.com slash Simmons. I have some great guests coming up this week. I'm just warning you now. Two more BS podcasts this week, plus two more rewatchables.

So you're getting five pods. Not counting this one. I guess you're getting four pods from podcasts this week, plus two more rewatchables. So you're getting five pods. Not counting this one. I guess you're getting four pods from me this week. Stay safe out there. Make good choices. We'll see you on Tuesday. I don't have feelings within On the wayside I'm a person never lost

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