The Bill Simmons Podcast - The NBA’s Danger Cycle, Plus Usyk Is Invincible, ‘Landman’ Can’t Lose, and Chalamet Will Win the Oscar With Chris Mannix and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

The Ringer's Bill Simmons shares his thoughts on the Bucks winning the NBA Cup before recalling all the instances in NBA history when the league was considered to be "in trouble" (2:13). Then, Bill is joined by Chris Mannix of SI and NBC Sports to discuss Jimmy Butler trade buzz and possible suitors (29:14), before discussing the upcoming Usyk-Fury fight and a February 2025 boxing "super card" (49:25). Next, Bill talks with Chris Ryan about Timothée Chalamet's performance as Bob Dylan in 'A Complete Unknown', his credible sports knowledge, and extend an open BS Pod invitation (1:09:20) before discussing their new favorite show, Taylor Sheridan's 'Landman' [SPOILERS] (1:19:28). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Chris Ryan and Chris Mannix Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, talking NBA cup in the state of the NBA, boxing, land man, Timothy Chalamet, this is a great podcast. That's all next. This episode is brought to you by Mitsubishi. What does the ambition look like to you? These days it would be easy to mistake it for suits, awards, money, fame, but it's an incomplete picture because actually ambition is on the inside. It's an invisible grind to pursue.

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adventure, or passion. Mitsubishi, drive your ambition. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables last night. Chris Ryan and I did The Gambler, a movie that came out 10 years ago with Mark Wahlberg, one of our favorite gambling movies. A really kind of deep, fun movie

to talk about and make fun of and also appreciate. So you can watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well, next week on the rewatchables, I think from, next week is the first week we're going to be video pod on Spotify for the rewatchables. So you can watch it on our YouTube channel, Ringer Movies, but more importantly, you can watch it on Spotify as you're listening to it. You can just see our beautiful faces.

So stay tuned for that. On this podcast, I'm going to start at the top with some thoughts about the NBA cup, the final game, and also the state of the NBA, because it's been a big topic lately and I have some big picture thoughts about that. Chris Mannix joined us to talk about, uh, just the Jimmy Butler trade buzz in Vegas and some other, uh, NBA topics. And then really I had them on talk about boxing because we have a big card this weekend, my guy Usyk is fighting fury, the rematch.

So we're going to talk about that and some of the big heavyweight fights coming up. And then last but not least CR Chris Ryan. Uh, we did a couple of things in studio yesterday that I taped for this podcast. Well, one is about a land man, which is my favorite TV show of the decade. Just hands down, uh, succession really started last decade. So I can say my favorite new show of this decade. And then, uh, we talked about Timothy Chalamet in the Bob Dylan movie and Chalamet's chances to win an Oscar. What should he do next? And more importantly, why hasn't he come on my

fucking podcast yet? So we're gonna hit all that first our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. I am taping this after the NBA Cup final in Vegas, the Milwaukee Bucks. They destroyed the Oklahoma City Thunder. Who could not hit a shot. It happens. They looked young. They looked a little nervous. They looked like a team of young guys from Oklahoma City who had just spent the last

five days in Las Vegas. They looked like a team that didn't realize they were at the adult table where Giannis was sitting, who proceeded to unleash holy hell on them, which he's been doing basically for over a month now. I think the last 16 games he's been doing basically for over a month now. I think the last 16 games, he's something like 34, 15, and seven. He doesn't shoot threes anymore,

which I think, not like he was jacking up 10 a game, but he was always shooting three. He would always kind of test it out, but now he's just like, I'm gonna be early 2000 Shack crossed with Spider-Man. And I think he's, as I'm recording this, he's plus 600 for MVP on Fandl. And, and, you know, he's closed the gap with him in Yokoch as great as Yokoch has been, but Watkase seems like a real contender.

Okay. See, still seems like a contender. This is the league now. If you don't make threes, you know, you're probably not going to win. If you're shooting 35 to 53 is a game. If they're not going in, you don't make threes, you know, you're probably not gonna win if you're shooting 35 to 50 threes a game. If they're not going in, you don't have a chance. Which ties into a bigger theme with what's going on with basketball right now.

The last couple weeks have been peak people asking me what's going on with the NBA. And, you know, part of it is the ratings. Because everyone loves to talk about ratings, even though the NBA just signed a $76 billion deal, and the ratings don't ultimately really matter. It's an American thing, more than a worldwide thing, because the league's doing well globally,

but when you look at big picture of what's going on with the league, LeBron and Curry, they're old. They're making desperate changes. They just changed the All-Star game again. You know, LeBron and Curry, they're old. They're making desperate changes. They just changed the All-Star game again. They just did the NBA Cup in Vegas. Too many foreign stars.

That's another thing you keep hearing. The schedule's too long. Been saying that for 20 years. We can't find any under 30 American superstars to carry the torch from LeBron and Curry. That's a valid thing. Too many threes. Too much sameness in the game. Can't really counter that.

Too woke, the league's too woke. It's driven off a lot of possible fans. I'm not touching that one. It's an American problem and it's not a worldwide problem because again, worldwide, internationally, the league is doing really well. but it's an American problem. And yet the franchise values are the highest it's ever been. They just got the highest meteorite steel they've ever gotten.

They have, I would say 35 to 40 completely recognizable stars, whereas football might have 10. So it's not like this is a disaster, but this is what we do with the NBA. We love to panic. We love to talk about how things are bad. And it's a little like what SNL is like, where everybody's like, SNL's dead, SNL's done. And then guess what?

SNL's gonna have its 50th year. This is an American problem, and this is eight decades of a recurring theme that I would call the NBA is in danger, that we're now living through again in December 2024. I wanna go backwards. I wanna go through eight decades of NBA history to show that for the most part,

this is a league that's kind of always a little bit in danger. Like football, dating back to the John Unitas beating the Giants in the late 50s, the greatest game ever played to that point. Football has always been solid. 50s, 60s, 70s, Super Bowl, the merger, it's just been going and going. The only time I ever remember people even wondering

what the future of football was going to be like, and I was one of the ones wondering, was the early 2010s with concussions, Gadell. We had to add a bunch of stuff with Gates after it. It seemed like they had to change the way that football was being played because it was too violent. And there was a moment there where it was like, where's football?

Are you gonna let your sons play football? Are we gonna be watching this in 20 years? And guess what? COVID happened and everybody was like, you know what? I love football. And now football feels like it's the biggest it's ever been. If you're talking about basketball, it's always been on the line of being in danger. So you go back to the forties and fifties, the first 15 years of the league.

Uh, they, the league, by, by the time we got to 1954, the league was in complete chaos. The pace was too slow. There was no shot clock. People were just fouling each other, trying to dribble out the clock. George Michael was dominating everything and the league kind of sucked. And then they came up with a shot clock.

That fixed some of it. It was still really violent. It was a lot like hockey back then. There wasn't nearly enough scoring. They had a big betting scandal. That was a big thing. There were barely any black players, kind of a problem. All the best black players were playing for the Harlem globe trotters, other

places, cause they wouldn't let them in the league. And when you think back to where the NBA was, even in the mid fifties, when Russell showed up, it was regional. Everything was in the East coast or like the, you know, like the Pennsylvania area, the fringes of the Midwest, there were no West coast teams and the NFL was bigger college football and college basketball were bigger. Baseball was bigger, boxing, horse racing, name of sport. It was probably dead even with hockey.

Get to the sixties. Russell's in there. We start finally getting some black stars. We get Elgin Baylor, we get Oscar, we get Will Chamberlain. And the sixties becomes, you know, Wilt versus Russell, Celtics dominance. That's still not going awesome. We still don't have like a definitive, the league is fine moment. And at the same time, this is one of the most tumultuous decades in American history.

There's a whole civil rights battle happening. There's assassinations all over the place. There's a whole civil rights battle happening. There's assassinations all over the place. And, you know, a league that's becoming a mostly black league had a pretty strange fit among all of that, especially as Russell is becoming one of the dominant athletes we've ever had and a huge spokesman along with Ollie and Jim Brown and some others.

So the league is gaining steam from an impact standpoint, but it still hasn't hit the popular piece yet. And then we have our first unicorn situation. There's five unicorn situations total, and I want you to remember this because we're going to tie it back in at the end. So this first unicorn situation, the 1969 finals, which turned out to be

Russell's last NBA finals, he's going for his 11th title. They're underdogs against the Lakers. We finally have a California team. We have Jerry West and Will Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor and the Lakers are favored to win game seven in LA. Russell beats them. And it turns out to be like the first great modern NBA finals game that we had the next year, the Knicks. Everyone in New York is like so delighted. The Knicks are finally good at basketball. Like the Celtics are gone.

They have a chance to win the title. 1970 finals, Willis gets hurt, comes back game seven, becomes one of the most famous games in NBA history. Also, Will kind of chokes. So we have that. Kareem enters the league that same year. And then in 1971, he wins the title. He's the most Ballyhoo college player to that point.

To somebody that's considered to be a successor to Russell and Wilt. So he's in the league and then the next year, 71-72, the Lakers win 33 straight, Jerry West finally wins the title, so you have this four year unicorn run, all these crazy events and it propels the league up a level. And all of a sudden now the NBA is looking really good. Well, we have to go back to the danger zone again.

From 1973 to 1976, they over expand. They make the classic mistake of they just add too many teams. The ABA has formed and is stealing a lot of the young players. So all of a sudden the quality of the play is starting to go down. The quality of officiating is starting to go down. ABC loses the NBA to CBS because CBS kind of double crosses Rune Arlige, who's the most important sports executive, probably of all time,

and Rune Arlige is pissed, and decides to counter program the living shit out of the NBA. College football, college basketball, wide world of sports, the superstars competition, and he just makes it his life's mission to set the NBA backwards. There's a salary boom that happens where all of a sudden you have some guys that aren't doing that well

who are making a lot of money and everyone's really aware of it. Sidney Wicks, Pete Maravich, Spencer Heywood. So there's animosity toward basketball players for the first time. The Knicks and Lakers are done at that point by the time we get to the mid-70s. And they have the future of the league, or so we would have thought on paper, Dr. J. Julius Erving, he's in the ABA, he's not even on television.

So the NBA not only is getting older with some of their older stars like, you know, Havlicek, Jerry West, all the guys from the previous generation, Oscar. But Doc, the guy who's supposed to come in and carry the league with Farim, is in the wrong league and not on TV. And I'm a young kid in Boston.

I would have loved watching Dr. J, not on TV. So again, we're in danger, and then what happens? We have a second unicorn situation. The 1976 finals. Havlicek and Cowan's on Boston, two of the most famous guys in the league. They're playing Phoenix, triple overtime game. I was lucky enough to be at the game with my dad.

I was six years old. I might have slept through the fourth quarter in the first two overtimes. But it turns out to be the greatest game in the history of the league. Celtics win the title, the NBA is back. The ABA merges into the NBA that summer. All of a sudden we have Dr. J, David Thompson, George Gervin, George McGuinness,

Moses Malone, all these guys are now in the NBA. And the NBA has 22 teams and stacked and it's awesome. And that leads to Kareem jumping to, Kareem's already in LA. Walton's on the Blazers. The Blazers take off that year.areem's already in LA. Walton's on the Blazers. The Blazers take off that year. Uh, and it's a late run.

Second half of the year into the playoffs, they beat the, beat Kareem. Then a beating Dr. J and Philly in the finals. Bill Walton turns out maybe he's the next Bill Russell. Everybody's in love with the guy. He's got the beard. He takes the jersey off after they win. So this is unicorn number two situation. 76 finals, 77 finals.

Basketball seems like it's in the best shape that it's been in maybe ever. What happens? We go back to the danger zone, the late 70s into the early 80s. Walton gets hurt the next year. Never really recovers. And it would be like when Benyama won the title this year

and then just got hurt and we didn't see him for six years. The cocaine era happens. And the cocaine, that's hitting all the sports, that's hitting Hollywood, that's hitting the comedy circles. Cocaine starts to wipe out pretty much everybody starting in 1978 and it does some real damage to the NBA and cuts short some careers, to the NBA and cut short some careers, changes the course of some careers, some young stars that they're counting on

go sideways. So you have that. You have the Kermit Washington punch in late 1977 of that 77-78 season where he punches Rudy Tomjanovic, a white guy, and all this ugly stuff surfaces up. All the casual racism that people felt toward, you know, a mostly black league being catered and sold to mostly white fans, that all pops up. And this crazy two year run of,

you can go back and read some of the old Sports Illustrated things about the league's too black. It's never gonna work. And it just, it fucking goes crazy. In a bad, bad, bad way. In a way that even as a little kid, I was kinda noticing the way they were talking about it. It was not great.

We had the dumb owner apex back then. This is when basically anybody could buy an NBA team and you just had these dumb owners, like the Celtics for a year had John White Brown, he was terrible. Just dumb owners making dumb trades, not trying to build anything. So the teams that are just in constant chaos, you have the dumb commissioner apex to Larry O'Brien, who's awful.

David Stern comes in and looks a hundred times better compared to him. A few years later, you have CBS fucking up the playoffs, either do tape delaying the primetime games or making the NBA schedule weekend playoff games so that you're playing game three and game four of a series back to back days. So they could care less about the health of the players. They really didn't want to show the NBA because it wasn't doing that well. So you had that. You had college hoops, the NFL, baseball, NHL, boxing, college football, and horse racing are all more popular than the NBA by the end

of the seventies because end of the 70s because they have the Washington, Seattle finals twice around, which are great basketball finals, but not exactly a marquee finals. And all of it is eventually captured in Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam, the best sports book of all time. That comes out, I think, in 82.

But the NBA, like the Lakers play the Sixers, I think, in 82 and 83, and some of those games weren't even on live television. They weren't on until 1130 on the East Coast. That's how bad it was for the NBA. So I'm gonna say a little more dangerous than right now. Leading to our third unicorn situation, the 1984 finals. We had Bird and Magic in the league for a while.

They don't play against each other in the finals, even though they have this great rivalry dating back to 79 when college basketball was way bigger than the NBA. Bird and Magic play each other during the same year at CBS, it's like, you know what, we're showing all of these finals games live now. We're gonna show them in prime time, we're gonna really try to get behind the league,

and they get Bird and Magic, they get a seven game series, they get one of the great series in the history of the league and they get bird of magic. They get a seven game series. They get one of the great series in the history of the league. That happens. They have Michael Jordan on the Olympic team that summer coming into the league on the Chicago Bulls, the third biggest market they have. MJ happens.

And then we're off. We get David Stern. We get Cable. We have USA and ESPN by that point. So as a little kid on the East Coast, all of a sudden I'm able, I couldn't see George Gervin and David Thompson or whoever in the 70s unless I went to the Boston Garden

to see them. Now in the 80s I can just pop on cable. I can see Dominique Wilkins, I can see Isaiah Thomas, I can see Adrian Danly, whoever I want I can see. I can see Magic Johnson on the other coast. So that's happening, they're figuring out how to brand stuff better. And once MJ really gets going with the Bulls,

the NBA takes off. We get the NBA, fantastic commercials. And we have this incredible unicorn 15 year run. Bird versus Magic, Jordan, six titles. We have the Riley Nicks and Hakim and Barkley and Isaiah's Pistons, the Blazers, Sean Kemp and GP, Stockton and Malone. I didn't really like watching them that much,

but I'm gonna throw them in anyway. On and on and on it went, and it was the watershed time to ever be a basketball fan. It was the most talent concentrated into one area. Everyone's playing super hard. The league was the most fun, I would say in the late 80s, early 90s, and it just kept Jordan retires.

They're fine because the Knicks make it that year. Jordan comes back. It becomes the biggest story really of anything other than maybe the decision with Lebron. Jordan wins three straight titles in a row in the Bulls, including the 72-win Bulls. And the NBA just goes, it's just arrow pointing up. All of it's captured in the last dance. Well what happens? We hit the danger zone again.

MJ retires. Right after he retires, lockout. No basketball for six, seven months. People are pissed. Because these guys are making so much money. The young guys are able to switch teams three, four years. Everyone starts getting mad. All the ugly casual racism stuff

starts like percolating a little bit again. It's like his hip hop culture infected the NBA. Extern puts in a dress code. Wasn't great, not great times. Well, what happens? We don't have an MJ successor. Granhill, KG, Tim Duncan, SeaWeb, Iverson, Shaq. We're an MJ successors.

And then 2000, Kobe and Shaq. So we have Shaq and Kobe together. We kind of know something's happening with Kobe. And in the 2000 season, something's happening with Kobe. And in the 2000 season, that's unicorn number four. Shaq and Kobe. Shaq fouls out of game four of the finals. Kobe comes in, puts on the Superman cape, wins the game. They end up winning the title.

This is after they escaped against Portland the previous round. And now we have this crazy Kobe and Shaq run. That was like real drama, real theater. They were great. The 2001 Laker team is probably one of the two best teams of the century. As of that's happening, a phenom named LeBron James

is in high school. He's gonna be in the 2003 draft with Carmelo and some others. And the league looks great from 2000 and 2003. That is our unicorn number four moment. Shaq and Kobe ending up on the same team in Los Angeles, California on the Lakers. Couldn't have worked out better. Well, we immediately hit the danger zone again in 2003. We have the Kobe incident and the trial.

Not great. We have the 2003 and 2004 finals, which were rock fights and ESPN Classic and NBA TV Hardwood Classics, I think are banned from showing any of those games. Defense got too good, the game got too physical. We had Kobe and Shaq falling apart. The game slowed down, the pace slowed down,

to the point that after the 2004 season, they had to add all these rule changes and these other, you know, legal defense stuff just to try to quicken stuff up again. And you had a league that was built around Tim Duncan. I think he's one of the seven best players of all time. Didn't really resonate with people like he should have. Dirk Nowitzki, German. KG, mostly stuck on bad teams except for 04. C-Web, Dwayne Wade, Angry Kobe, Young LeBron on crappy Cavs teams.

It was grim. And if you remember when I was writing for Page Two, back when my fingers worked, I used to have a joke about how I was one of the last 20 NBA fans. The joke was that the NBA kinda sucks now, but I still love it. And this was a joke about how I was one of the last 20 NBA fans. The joke was that the NBA kind of sucks now, but I still love it. This was a gimmick that I would do because we were in real danger with the league.

Culminating the 06 finals where we had the referee controversy with Dallas and Miami and we've all agreed not to talk about the 2006 finals. Then the 2007 finals where the East was in such bad shape. LeBron ends up making the finals. He's a heroic performance by him with just an awful Cavs team that I think would be a 14 seed

if we had them in the season now. So things are grim. Things are bad. There's a lot of what's wrong. You can go back and search for my column archives, multiple what's wrong with the NBA column. What happens? Well, unicorn number five situation happens, 2008 to 2018. In short order, we get the probably illegal Palgasol trade where the Lakers just steal Palgasol and nobody even

else knows he's available. Thanks again to Chris Wallace for creating the second mini Kobe dynasty. Gasol and the Lakers. Now the Lakers are a contender. KG has already been traded to Boston. Now Boston's contender. All of a sudden we have Celtics Lakers in 2008 and we're off, baby. We're back. We have, uh, we, Kobe, Kobe loses in 08, but wins the next two finals.

Celtics are in there in 2010 against them. After 2010, LeBron, who can't get it done with Cleveland, the decision, probably the single biggest off the court NBA moment that we've had other than MJ retiring, the decision. He changes teams. People lose their fucking minds. Goes to Miami. All of a sudden we have Miami LeBron.

We have aging but still fun Kobe on a Contender Lakers. Aging but still fun Celtics. A bunch of great young players coming up like KD and Russ on the Thunder. It's just going and going and going. And then what happens? Curry and the Warriors show up. Curry reinvents basketball.

He's hitting threes from all over the place. With Klay Thompson. They have their little run. This goes all the way through 2019. 2019 finals is the tipping point. Durant gets hurt. Klay gets hurt. That Warriors dynasty ends.

Durant, we lose a year of his prime. We lose a whole year of Curry's prime with the Warriors. Really two years. But that was our last unicorn stretch, 2008 to 2019. And then what happens? We're in danger again, starting in 2020. The bubble. The bubble ends this really fun NBA season we're having

where LeBron in the Lakers, Kawhi in the Clippers, Yannis is on his way up, NBA season we're having where LeBron in the Lakers, Kauai in the Clippers, Giannis is on his way up, Jokic is on his way up, Embiid's on his way up, Tatum and Brown are on Boston and it just feels like, and then boom, the bubble, weird. The player movement becomes out of control.

It just feels like every year guys are switching teams. It starts to feel a little more like NBA 2K. Load management becomes a bigger story. The schedule's too long, we all hate it. They won't do anything about it. The three point stuff just gets worse and worse and worse. Now we're at, like we have the Celtic shooting over 53, so there's a sameness to a lot of the games

that I think a lot of people are down on. I would encourage people to sameness to a lot of the games that I think a lot of people are down on. I would encourage people to go back and watch some of the terrible post-ups in the 80s and 90s and see if you still don't like threes, but there's definitely a curry effect with how the game's being played. The foreign stars are now all the best under 30 guys,

and this is a league that dating back to Hakim, who was just one of the best parts I've ever seen in my life, but he wasn't from here and he never resonated like an American guy. Now we have Yoke Ejinyan, Eson Luka and Embiid and Wembe and maybe even SGA, if he can bounce back and from, from a terrible NBA cup and, uh, and become, you know, a real guy this year, maybe take OKC the finals. Those are six guys that aren't from here. And we're talking about when is next star.

This is a league that's so beholden to the LeBron Curry Duran era and seems so afraid to pass the torch to the under 30 guys. You can see with the TV schedule, OKC is on TV this year less than the Lakers, less than the Warriors, because they keep feeding us, LeBron and Curry, you watch ESPN, you watch, you know, all the content they're doing on first take

and on the NBA today, it's always Lakers, Lakers, Lakers, like they're playing the hits. And it's coming at the expense of trying to build up these new stars, which we even saw in the Olympics. I love the Olympics. I thought LeBron and Curry and Durant watching those guys,

like Fendoff, Serbia, and France, like that was amazing stuff. But it did come at the expense of the next generation of guys who kind of needed a moment like that, you know? And I think this league is... If there's a criticism that I think is valid, it's pushing these guys that have kind of already had their moment, that were already great, and trying to extract more great moments from them when there's probably not a lot of greatness left time, like they gotta be pushing the younger guys more. And at the same time, like you have somebody like Edwards, who is such a unique and original guy. And then he shows up for this season, you're shooting 12 threes a game and he's

starting to look like everybody else I'm watching. So there's a sameness to the new guys. Um, and then you have somebody like Jokic who is really bird and magic trapped in a Serbian seven foot doughy body. But he's not from here. And for whatever reason, he doesn't cook with fans. I don't think the way he should. So my point, big picture, is that we've had five Unicorn moments.

And now we're due for a sixth. And this league has been due for a sixth. And this league has been around for eight decades. And every time a Unicorn moment, we're not even in the middle of one, or we don't have one coming, everybody thinks the NBA is in trouble, they're in danger, it's over.

This is just the DNA of the league. And here's what's gonna happen. There's gonna be some new player that that comes in some new team, some new event, it's going to shift this and all of a sudden we'll be like, Oh, you know, it's a, it's like, we did the Vince McMahon documentary, Triple H had this great quote about, um, when he was talking about with, when, uh, when Stone Cold and Vince and that whole era. And he was like, I felt it's like an earthquake.

It's like, did I feel that? Did it, did something move? And you just kind of know from a narrative standpoint, something has moved. And that's what the NBA needs right now. I don't know what that's going to be, but I'm going to bet on the 80 year history of the league and the fact that internationally it's fine. This is an American problem. People are losing interest in America

because they can watch fourth quarters of games on the NBA app. They can follow it like what Derek Thompson said on my podcast. You can follow the league without really watching it. So the ratings are down, but I'm not sure the interest is down. What they're missing, ironically,

is what women's college basketball with the WNBA had where Caitlin became somebody that people just wanted to watch. They just wanted to watch her games. They didn't care who she was playing. They didn't care what the stakes were. They wanted to watch her. And that's why I think you could really make the case. She's more valuable than anyone the NBA has

because she's the only must watch basketball player right now other than the old guys in the NBA. So they have to figure out what is their unicorn moment. But my prediction is that it's the NBA, it's been 80 years, it's looked bleak before. They always bounce back. This is the league we have chosen. We're gonna take a break

and we are going to come back with Chris Maddox. Fandl wants you to win even with Chris Maddox. Fandl wants you to win even bigger this NFL Thursday night. Right now, all customers can get a 30% catch a pass profit boost on the Thursday night football game. That means you can boost your NFL catch a pass bet by 30% and take home even more winnings during the game. Bet on over-unders, spreads, player props, and so much more. Plus, if you win, you'll get paid instantly.

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See terms for both offers at sportsbook.fandom.com gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. All right, Chris Mannix is here. You can read him on sports illustrator. You can listen to his excellent boxing pod. He's got a basketball pod too. He's in Vegas basketball pod too. He's in Vegas. We're taping this before the NBA Cup tonight.

So we're gonna avoid that. You really came on to tuck boxing. I'm gonna save that. I'm gonna put that over. Just quickly, some basketball stuff because you've been in Vegas for a couple days. What's the big buzz? What are all the kids talking about?

Well, the NBA really wants you to care about the NBA cup. That's for sure. OK. We'll see how much that sticks. But really, when you talk to people with different teams, the buzz nowadays is Jimmy Butler, right? And what exactly is going to happen down there in Miami? It's pretty clear at this point that there'll be a few teams that express some level of interest in Jimmy Butler.

And now I think the question is what kind of motivation does Miami have to do a deal here? Like Miami's playing some pretty good basketball. Jimmy just went for 35 the other night. And we know the heat when they, they just believe when they get to the playoffs, they can beat anybody and they've got a decent track record of, well, well, they, in 2022, they did, right? Like they got it. It's not happening this year. Yeah. Probably not. No, I agree with you. And if you look at their roster, like Jimmy doesn't fit the timeline. Like

everybody, including Bam Adebayo is 27 and younger. So you figure the Heat will, would have to get motivated to do a deal. The question is when, who's going to be on the table? What kind of offers are there? That's really kind of the most interesting thing I think in the league right now. So I watched the fourth quarter in OT of the game last night against Detroit that they ended up losing in OT. He was incredible in that game. I think he had like a 35, 19 and 12, something like that. But, uh, we looked like playoff Jimmy was really trying hard.

That team has a weird identity issue with, with hero who's been excellent. And it seems like over and over again, at the end of games, it's just these hero 27 footers or Butler. BAM's not involved really at all. And, uh, it's just, it's just a weird team to watch. It's not a team that's going to win four straight playoff rounds, but it seems like to me, we've seen this go a couple of different ways with the guy who maybe doesn't want to be there anymore or he's got, you know, he's going

to be a free agent at the end of the year. Maybe he's not, he's not happy. The team didn't give him an extension. He seems like he's moved toward the, I'm actually mad I didn't get the extension and now I'm leaving after the year. I'm gonna show everybody how awesome I am. And to me, I said this on the pod the other day, Houston's the team.

You watch Houston, were you there for the NBA Cup semifinals? I was not at that game, no. But I do think, Bill, Houston, they doth protest too much about how they're gonna keep this team together, right? Like every time you see like a quote from Raphael Stone

or some reporting coming out of Houston, it's we wanna keep this team together and see what it has. And I get that. I understand wanting to see how a young team fits over 82 games, how a young team plays in the postseason and kind of using that as a data point to build off of. But if you have a chance to supercharge your roster with a defensive-minded veteran that would fit in pretty well, I think an Eme Udoka system and his culture, I think you've

got to at least take a swing. Well, and the other big part is an end of the game guy, which they don't have. They, you really feel it. Like they have no chance in an OKC playoff series. They're just not going to be able to get shots. They want OKC just strangled them. You know, it's like, we're gonna talk boxing later. It was like watching the boxer who just doesn't let the other guy breathe. And the guy just is trapped in the corner against the ropes. Just, just trying to hang on.

That's how I felt watching them offensively. Shangoon is probably the safest bet. I's how I felt watching them offensively. Shen Goon's probably the safest bet. I don't trust any of their perimeter guys. And they don't have that one guy who's like, all right, one point game, three minutes left, like kind of take us home. They go to Fred Van Vliet. I don't trust Jalen Green at all. Like he go on down the line. But I like a lot of their players and I do think they have an identity.

And what's interesting is he fits in With the identity so perfectly so I was saying a couple days ago about Butler with Roger and then Van Vliet's expirings in there and you load it with You know guys to make that they have a bunch of expirings to make it work And then they have picks and for Miami it's just a reboot they get cap space this summer Nobody has cap space this summer. It's one of the crazy things. Like, yeah. And one other team, right. It's like Washington or say there's, I think there's only two teams with 30

million and up Miami could rig this. So all of a sudden they could have the most cap space and be to me, it's a reboot destination, uh, all of a sudden next year, they're a different team and a little more dangerous. And we've seen them do this multiple times in the last 20 years, right. We're all seems bleak. Then all of a sudden they're, they're a different team and a little more dangerous. And we've seen them do this multiple times in the last 20 years, right? Where it seems bleak, then all of a sudden they're, they're back. So I'm working under the assumption they're trading them. You don't think they would possibly think that they could beat the Celtics

and the Cavaliers and OKC. I just can't believe they would think that. I think they could, they probably think they could be competitive with Cleveland. Um, because there are things you can exploit against the Cavs in a seven game series. They can't believe they're on Boston's level. They're not. And that's really the bar, right?

Yeah. As of right now, today, they could extend Jimmy Butler. They can give him two years, buck 13. Like you've got to think till June 30th to do that if you really wanted to. They don't want to. You know, he's 35 years old and no matter how he's playing right now,

like the idea of attacking two more years onto to that option year, it doesn't make any sense to them. And I get that. Like how many teams over the last 12 months have handout extensions they wish they didn't, right? Like Denver and Jamal Murray, the Sixers and Joel Embiid even. Like, you don't... Even? That's the number one extension to be.

I was trying to be nice. I was trying to be nice. Like Embiid at least has like an MVP track record. Murray had never even been an All-Star. Like, he was coming off that absolute crap of a Olympic run. Like, there was... Those guys are just examples of, of, of guys you give extensions to way too early. Miami, they're on a different path here. Jimmy's not going to be on it. I think my question would be Bill is if like, like the draft capital

move is probably the right way to go. The expiring contract is probably the right way to go reboot, use that cap flexibility. But can you get interested in Michael Porter Jr. if that's a deal with Denver? I saw you had that last week. As a Yolkage guy, I loved it. And I was trying to talk myself into it, but that can't be the centerpiece. I mean, you don't think that, do you? Is Porter the centerpiece of a Butler trade? I mean, he's such a good offensive player. And I just think in that Miami system, you could unlock even more in them. But now I don't have cap space. Thanks to you. I do that. I'm committed to those three guys. You're throwing out your cap flexibility stuff. You're

going, you know, two more years at big number for Michael Porter. After After this year, yeah. Yeah, after this year, right. It's a tough call. I love his offensive dynamic. Everything he can do offensively, I love. And he's kind of shaken off the injury bug from the last couple of years. I just wondered, he kind of fits the timeline too. What is he, like 25, 26 years old? All of a sudden, you're adding MPJ in

with all these young guys, throw Jaime Jaquez into that mix. You've, you're good. Can you, I guess can you get something better than Porter Jr. and free agency? It would be kind of my question over the next couple of summers. I don't know the answer to that. You know who would root for that trade is the Celtics. Cause they'd be like, Oh wait, you're going to have Porter and hero and the same team in crunch time. This is great. It's like an all you can eat for who we're gonna attack.

I'm with you in the sense that I do like Porter as an asset a little more than I think other people. The contract, the back issues, there's real things to be scared about. Like the defense, the fact that he's been replaced during games in crunch time for Russell Westbrook for defensive purposes. Like there's red flags. I love that he's played with Jokic for this long

because that's like getting your fucking masters for how to play basketball, right? There does seem like there's more there offensively but to me that's a guy, like I'm looking at a team like Brooklyn or some of the other like Eastern Conference also rants and if you're looking at Porter thinking like, you know what, this is a guy who might be a 25 point game,

point of game scorer on a different team. Right now he's in the corner a lot, or he's like just trying to play. Yoke Edge and Murray are running everything. So what might that look like on a crappier team? What could that look like on like the Pistons with what we watched, you know, what Tim Hardaway and Beasley are doing and Tobias Harris are doing that kind of

shooting forward spot. What if you put Porter in there? So, um, yeah, listen, I would love to see Denver somehow improve this. I just don't know. I don't think Porter is enough to get somebody like Butler and then Golden State feels like they shot their wad with the Melton thing. Now they can't put the salaries together. Yeah. Well, you can still, I guess, rules-wise, put Schroeder into a deal. And I don't know who's going to want Schroeder on the expiring. And they've got some, the problem with Denver is they have no draft capital, right? Like you'd have to throw like Zeke Naji into that and hope somebody wants him. But man, you watch them, and I've watched a lot of them the last couple of weeks, like they need something.

Like they need somebody with an edge. They need somebody to bring some energy to that team. I know Murray's had a good couple of games, like 48 over the last two, but he looks awful. His shooting numbers are all down. Jokic, I mean, I don't want to dump on the guy because he's having a ridiculous offensive season, but defensively he's terrible, right?

And that's a big reason why they've sunk as far as they have defensively. So they just need an infusion of something if they're going to maximize this, you know, these last, not last, but these few years of Jokic playing at an MVP level. And I don't know if Butler's the guy, because all of a sudden you can't shoot at multiple positions, but his edge and his like the way he plays, I think that would be something that Denver needs. He's certainly the most fun for the playoff front. I can't believe you said Jokic's defense was terrible.

That really hurt my feelings. This is a number one Jokic lover. It's conditionally terrible because he's got great hands. He's jumping passing lanes. He gets steals like he's very active. He's good at breaking two on ones. There's things he does well, but then you watch a game like the Kings last night where they're just getting basically whatever they want. His lack of rim protection becomes more of a problem. Well, this is the problem among the problems. I was talking to an assistant coach that went up against him in the last couple of weeks.

I was talking to an assistant coach that went up against him in the last couple of weeks. Part of it is Michael Malone is just running him out there for 38 minutes a game. Yeah, because he has to. If you're carrying that heavy an offensive burden, it's going to cost you something on the other end, no matter who you are. And I think it's costing him there. The other thing I keep hearing, and I haven't been around him personally enough to see it, but people keep saying he's heavy, right? Like he's not in the kind of shape you've seen him in in years past. And all those things have caused him to go from being a guy that people saw trending

towards like an average to good defender. Like he's never going to be elite, but an average to good defender to now, he's kind of taken a step back into that, that below average defensive range. And look, it doesn't really matter for their purposes because he is so. Dynamic offensively, but you know, you look at their defensive problems and some of them are solved with Aaron Gordon back in the mix, but Yocic, Mari getting killed on the point of attack, some of the guys off the bench, uh, not delivering, they're, they're not good defensive team for all those reasons. Well, and I think think the too many minutes thing

is a big problem too. Is there any other Butler team? Because you threw out Denver the other day, Golden State and Houston were the two I was focusing on in the content I did. Is there anybody else we're not thinking of? Because it doesn't seem like there is. I get amused by how many times I keep hearing

Phoenix throwing this discussion, like it makes any sense for anybody to do a deal like that. Like Phoenix would have to trade Bradley Beale and Miami would have to want Bradley Beale. I don't know why Miami would have to. And he would have to wave a no trade clause and he's not Bradley Beale anymore. Like he's, if it was three years ago, Bradley Beale, I guess we could talk about it, but not the guy now. I don't, it doesn't seem like he can play for three straight weeks. It was three years ago, Bradley, Bill, I guess we could talk about it, but not the guy now. Doesn't seem like he can play for three straight weeks. No, I see a lot of just going down their hoops.

It's like Phoenix interested in Jimmy Butler. Dallas. Dallas too, that's another one. That's not gonna happen. No, I mean, I could see Golden State taking a swing. Golden State and Denver are the two teams that probably aren't all that concerned about Jimmy Butler next year.

It's all about this year. You want to maximize a window. And if Golden State can get him for some combination of Andrew Wiggins and Brandon Pajemski, then you'd probably jump at that if you're the Warriors and if Denver can get him, you know, just for Michael Porter Jr. and some filler, you'd probably jump at that. If you're, if you're the nuggets, at least you should, because you're, you're, you're not looking at two, three years down the line.

You're looking at now to win something. I thought I was going to, at Thursday, I had the cam Johnson, Dennis Schroeder, Golden state. I did a whole thing about it. And I really thought that was going to be how it played out. And they ended up, they got Schroeder two days later, they didn't get cam Johnson. And then they're reporting, people were saying they didn't want to put cominga on the table and it came Johnson trade.

I was really surprised by that because the contract that cam Johnson's on versus what comingo is probably going to get for agency next year, 30 million. I'm guessing Johnson's like at 22. I just rather have cam Johnson. I think he's a better asset. And I thought if they, and that's why I don't feel like that's dead yet, because I think the more you stare at that, the more you think, ah, Cam Johnson at 22 is just a good asset. That's like, if I was doing like top 30 best contracts in the league for non-rookie contract guys, Cam Johnson's in like the top 12,

making 22 a year. So I don't think that's dead yet. RG Do you think they're holding on to Kaminga though, to see if there's something better out there than cam Johnson that, yeah, I think they're holding on the problem though. You mentioned Schroeder before. I don't know if they can trade him in a, in a trade where he's with other players because it's the trade deadlines early this year. It's like February 6th. So I think the trade they did for Schroeder. It's not in that two month window where then you can repackage the guy for

multiple guys. I think that's, did they change the rule for that? I'm not smart enough to remember all the new rules there, but I do think- Maybe they changed it. From what I heard coming out of this was that they can package Schroeder in another deal. So it's basically, it's the same contract as D'Anthony Milt. The second round capital they swapped means nothing. Well, that's the same contract as D'Anthony Milt. The second round capital they swapped means nothing. Well, that's great then. So then, so they could do Kaminga, Wiggins, Schroeder,

and they'd have to send, find a fourth guy somewhere like Pudzemski, who I think they overvalued over the summer, I think was one of the lessons of the summer. That was like, they're making him basically untouchable and he's just been really bad this year. Not totally as far He's playing out of position, but he has been good. He's a low 30s from three-point range. He's really cratered And that's that's a shooter is interesting. I mean if he gets treated again with the big nine teams in eight years

Why do you think it didn't work for him in Boston because this version of shooter now I really like but in Boston It just didn't work. Yeah, I it's probably more to do with style of play. I don't really remember all the, I don't think there were any issues in the locker room. He had some of those early in his career, but I think he's moved past them. Yeah. It seemed like they liked them. Yeah.

And getting moved from Brooklyn is more about like, Hey, we want a guy that can't play more than we want a guy that can. Um, so I don't know, but you know, he offensively, I think he's going to help the Warriors to bring it full circle. Like in the short term, I think having another ball handler is good. Um, you know, having another score is good. A guy that can make shots and clutch situations, obviously, you know, Kerr likes him, um, I think he's going to help, but I don't think he's untouchable

over these next couple of months either. I really like them too. Cause competitive, a good defensive player, like just feisty. So the feistiness now you have him and you have Draymond and, uh, Camiga gets a little feisty sometimes. Curry talks shit. Like there's a little more of an identity with the team. The only other butler I was looking at and trying to figure out

anyway was the Cavs. Just is, is that even, does that even make sense? Do they have the contracts? I just couldn't figure it out. And I'm not confident that they would do anything major anyway, because they have great chemistry right now. And I don't think you'd want to fuck with that. Don't, yeah, the cabs to me, they've got great,

they're a great regular season team, right? Like they're built to win a whole bunch of regular season games because they'll play 11 guys. And that's awesome. And in the regular season. But that's not really consequential in the playoffs. I love Mitchell and Garland right now, but smallish guards in the postseason can get exploited.

We've seen it happen even in Cleveland before. So, you know, any deal with Butler and Cleveland would have to, I assume, involve Garland. Do you want Garland if you're Miami? Does that make any sense that you brought up defensive issues with Hiro and Porter? It's the same kind of situation if you bring Garland into that mix. I don't know. I don't think that's the move if I'm Cleveland, but I don't know that I'd make Cleveland a threat to Boston yet either, despite the fact they played really well against them in those two games.

Let me ask you if salaries, if you could throw out salaries when you made trades, do you think the Celtics would trade Peyton Pritchard straight up for Giannis? I mean, yes, but the fact that we're even asking that question. How about Peyton Pritchard for Jimmy Butler? that we're even asking that question. How about paying Prichard for Jimmy Butler? I don't know, man. This is an unbelievable season that he's having. I mean, this is beyond six man of the year.

Like, his per 36 stats now are nuts. Shooting stats are nuts. He's in the running for one of the best six man seasons anyone's had since, like, John Havlicek for the Celtics. I can't believe what I'm watching. The short answer to Prichard for Butler is, I think Boston would say no, because Butler doesn't shoot threes.

If you play for the Celtics, you have to shoot at least eight threes a game to, or be able to, to do. I mean, he's been awesome. And what a contract he's on too. Like you'd have to, you couldn't do a Butler deal because Butler's making like what? 46 million and Payton's making eight.

So you can't even, you can't do a Butler deal because Butler's making like what, 46 million and Payton's making eight. So, like, you know, he's- No, you can't even, you can barely put him in any trade. I would say if you're doing best contracts in the league, he's gotta be in like the top three. He might even be number one. He's six man of the year at seven million bucks and also gives them the luxury of like, oh, Derek White's a little banged up tonight.

We'll just play Pritchard. He'll score 29 in the starting spot. It's really great. I mean, the ceiling of this regular season Celtics team when everybody's back, I do feel like they have like a 16, 18 game winning streak in there somewhere before the season ends. Can you think of a player, I can't think of a player that's had the kind of like three year stretch of Peyton Prichard where it's like he's not playing,

Joe Masulla doesn't like him, he wants to be traded, all of a sudden he's getting opportunity, and now he's in the sixth man of the year. I'm sure guys have had this kind of roller coaster ride, but I haven't seen one like Peyton Pritchard who to get to this level, you'd said a couple of years ago, this was where we, what we'd be talking about Peyton Pritchard where would you trade him for Giannis or Jimmy Butler? Well, those were jokes, but yeah. I know, I know.

But now I think but there's a joke. I wouldn't trade him for Jimmy Butler. It's- Well, those were jokes, but yeah. I know, I know. But- No, I don't think Butler's a joke. I wouldn't trade him for Jimmy Butler. I mean, it's gonna come off crazy, but like, Peyton Pritchard fits what this team is doing. Peyton Pritchard can come off the bench and knock down, you know, six threes, two of them at the buzzer. Like, he's just the perfect fit for what they wanna do.

Yeah, if you're talking seven million for Peyton Pritchard or 48 for Jimmy Butler, I think for the way this Celtics team's constructed. It is, it's, it really feels like you see this happen sometimes in basketball and in football and baseball and boxing. It seems like the game slowed down for him a little bit. He'll have these moments where all of a sudden he's doing old man post-up plays on shorter guards. He's around the rim. He's like, Oh,

I'm going to do old man pick up basketball and just like shoot a jump hook over this guy. It's been really impressive to watch. Speaking of boxing, big fight this weekend. My guy who I bet on every time he fights, I just parlay him with football teams. Usyk is the rematch against Fury. Usyk's never lost.

Everybody's been looking forward to this fight. Is this to you, is this a, will he finally get the credit he deserves as a main draw fight? Or is this a, what does Tyson Fury have left fight? I think it's more of a what does Tyson Fury have left fight. Uh, I think it's more of a, what is Tyson fury have left fight. Um, I do think that for a broader audience, Usyk is, you know, getting some of the credit that he deserved back at cursor weight when he became the first ever undisputed champion in the four belt era comes to heavyweight beats AJ your guy twice. Uh, my guy, my guy who, no matter where I bet, I lose.

Four against. I'm like, oh, for my last six. I get a text from you every time Anthony Joshua fights. And it's usually like, I can't believe I bet on that guy. Or I can't believe I didn't bet on him, or whatever. Yeah, every time. Yeah. I think as much as he is getting some of the exposure

that he deserves, and I had like a two hour conversation with him last month for a story that's coming out on Friday. He's really a remarkable guy with a remarkable backstory. This is more about Tyson Fury and what does Tyson Fury have left in the tank? I mean, he has overcome a ton of stuff over the last 10 years, whether it's off the outside the ring issues, weight issues, depression issues, coming back from tough fights, you know, a whole bunch of different things. He's never had to come off a loss before and I talked to Tyson for a while last week. I've watched a lot of clips of him over the last couple of weeks and I do wonder kind of what is his mindset

over the last couple of weeks. And I do wonder kind of what is his mindset coming into this fight? Like how much does he have left at 36 years old, which is chronologically younger than Oggs and Usyk, but he's been through physically and perhaps mentally so much more. I mean, I saw an interview Tyson did this week where he said that he hasn't talked to his wife Paris

in three months. Like didn't really elaborate on that, but said he hadn't talked to his wife in three months. And I'm watching the interview. I'm like, what? Like, this is a big family. They were on that Netflix series. Like, they are intertwined, those two. Hasn't talked to her in three months. Now, maybe it's because, hey, I'm just totally locked in. I don't know if I buy that. But I'm wondering what Fury has left here because if you're not a hundred percent, if you don't have your A game, Usyk's gonna beat you. I think Usyk is a generational great.

I think he's one of those rare guys that only come along once every 20, 25 years that are so skilled, so strong. Doesn't matter what weight class you put him in, he's gonna dominate. Big guys, him in, he's gonna dominate. Big guys, small guys, he's gonna beat you with his discipline and with his game plan. If you don't have everything going for you the right way,

you're gonna get beaten. And that I'm not so sure about with Tyson Fury. Well, the interesting thing about the first fight is the scorecards had it closer than, I think I had it in my head when I was watching. I mean, Fury almost got knocked out. It seemed like it was a wrap. And he really got the shit kicked out of him.

I think it was the ninth round. And then, kind of right, he definitely won the 12th round. The 11th round, I remember two of the judges gave it to him. One judge didn't, which was super suspicious. But, I don't know, it was a split decision, but it really wasn't. Like, I don't think anybody watching that fight thought, Oh, I wonder who won. Fury's face looked worse.

Everything looked worse. I just think Usyk reminds me so much of, uh, Pereira and the UFC where it's. You just watch him. You're like, I don't know what the answer is to try to beat this guy. At least in UFC, you could try to take the guy down and get him on the ground. I, with Usyk, I almost feel like it's gotta be somebody like Bacoli just overpowering him and using like a huge size.

You know I'd bring Bacoli up. Just a huge size disadvantage cause he is like a blown up cruiserweight and maybe that's how to beat him. I just don't see Fury doing it. You gotta, first of all, at some point, you should sit down with Bacoli cause he's an incredibly engaging guy

and I know you love him. He's interesting. Usyk would beat Picoli 12-zip, by the way. Usyk would not make the same mistakes Jared Anderson made and stay within range of that right hand. He would just be zipping around. He would be zipping around them using feints inside, outside. How dare you disparage Picoli?

I'm putting that on Picoli's chalkboard. There's a lot of guys I wanna see Bacoli fight. He's a really funny guy. And fun to watch. But here's the thing, nobody wants to fight Bacoli. He couldn't even get on the February 22nd card. They had to push him to the next card, but he was supposed to, I mean,

it seemed like Dubois was gonna be the natural, whatever. He didn't wanna fight him. He was fighting Joseph Parker. Dubois does not wanna fight. Dubois does not wanna fight Martin Bacoli. Not with, like Dubois sitting out there going like, all right, there's maybe a rematch with AJ, which is worth eight figures.

There's maybe a unification fight with the winner of Fury and Usyk, that could be worth eight figures. I am not getting in the ring with Martin Bacoli and risking getting my head taken off. When I've already had some issues with knockouts in the past, you're not doing that. So look, Usyk, what I love about Usyk is that he kind of gives away the game plan before every fight.

Like when he makes these jokes where he's like, don't be afraid, Tyson, I'm not going to leave you alone. That is him telling you that he's going to be applying pressure all night. And pressure comes in different ways. Like it doesn't have to be this overwhelming, I'm going to put you in a headlock during every round type of pressure that we've seen from some brawlers. It can just be staying in your face and making you keep your hands up at all times and making you stay on your toes at all times. That's exhausting. Like Tyson Fury, I thought won the first half of that fight with Usyk. 4-2 could have been 3-3. But the pressure Usyk put on was overwhelming. And in the ninth round, it got up to him.

When Usyk landed that first straight left hand, you know, that was the fight right there. So he's gonna do the exact same thing again. And again, it goes back to theory. If he's not as sharp as he's been at his very best, I think he's going to have a lot of problems in this fight. Yuzik has a lot of pieces of things that I've loved from guys in the past. As the fight goes on, it just seems like he shrinks the ring and figures out the exact

distance, how to hit the guy with the little tiny punches that don't seem like a big deal. Then they add up. There like pieces of Hopkins in there. There's pieces of Cesar Chavez and they're like, they're just those guys that just. There's one fight, the first four rounds, and then the fight starts to shift and you can kind of feel it. And I don't really know what the answer is to beating him, but I just know I'm going to be betting on him every time he fights he's 37. I don't know how many more of these he has left, but I mean, he, if you look back at

his, he's 22 and O, he beat Joshua twice, beat Dubois, beat Fury already, could be beating him again. Um, he was dominant as a cruiserweight. Go back to the 2012 gold medal in that whole era. Like he was beating all those guys. And I don't, like, if he wins this, like, what's next? Cause you could fight, DuBois and Parker are fighting February 22nd, Soh Jung and Cabell.

So maybe it's one of those two. I don't, who's the next fight? It's not going to be AJ who wants nothing to do with, with Usyk. And AJ to me, like they, they keep talking about like, if Fury loses, you can make the AJ fight. Like we didn't just see AJ get clobbered over five rounds today in Dubois. Like, we're just gonna forget about that that happened. Remember the three in a row AJ won and not, not that one. So it's not going to be AJ. You beat Fury again. It's not going to be AJ. You beat fury again. It's not going to be fury.

Dubois would certainly do it, but like, yeah, I mean, I think it was sick. If there was enough money on the table would certainly fight Dan Dubois again, become undisputed champion once again. There could be like events out there for him. Like everybody in boxing has been trying to find a way to do a fight with Jay Lee Zhang on mainland China. Like the amount of times I've heard about Zhang going back to the bird's nest in Beijing in front of a hundred thousand people,

you know, for a while it was Anthony Joshua. Well, hey, it could be Alexander Usyk that fights him there if Zhang can get a win in his next fight. So maybe it's something like that, but he will have quite literally have cleaned out the heavyweight division if he beats Tyson Bure for the second time. Or there'll be guys he hasn't beaten, but beating those two top guys twice, that will be an accomplishment. And you asked me, like, how do you beat Usyk? To me, there's only one way to do it.

And that's to just apply unrelenting pressure to him. Because there have been times where Usyk has been in trouble. Like at Cruiserweight, he had a, I think it was a split decision win over Marius Brides, who's a physical guy at Cruiserweight. The times that AJ had success against him was when he was the one putting pressure. He was the one letting his right hand go. I think it was like the ninth or 10th round

of that second fight. We had Usyk in real trouble. Even early on Fury landed some good shots on Usyk, just didn't follow up and chase him down. Go back even further, Derek Chisora of all people. Derek Chisora might have given Usyk his toughest fight at heavyweight because through six rounds, he was just lumbering after him in that fight. So if you are willing to

just go all in and commit on a pressure style, you can have success against Usyk. But if you try to box him, you're gonna lose every single time because he is a better boxer than everyone at cruiserweight and everyone at heavyweight. Which is one of the things that made Fury special was at his size, he was like kind of a sneaky good boxer, but not compared to this good.

I'm glad you brought up Trisora. I think he's lost to everybody in the division at this point, right? He's still going. He's still not over yet. So is there a cruiserweight that could move up? Not, I mean, look, so Gilberto Ramirez is now a unified champion and Gilberto is someone that people in the U.S. know a little bit about. Former champ at 168, title contender at 175, lost to Bevo back in 2022 over at Abu Dhabi. He's a name in that division. And Usyk's fought in the US in the past. That

would probably be a pretty big fight if Ramirez wins one or two more fights. The other guy in that division is Jaya Pattaya, who's super athletic, good power at that weight class. Still try to build a name, I think, that's big enough to get someone like Usyk that's interested. So those are conceivable, possible fights, but I would make Usyk a big favorite against both those guys. Usyk too, Bill, the last fight, I forget what his exact weight was, but you could tell that in what was, I think, his fifth fight at heavyweight, he had grown into the weight class. Before he was just going up in weight and he was like 2'12", 2'13", 2'18", he was solid in the last fight. Like he is a full-fledged heavyweight right now. And if he takes on a cruiser

weight like Ramirez or Apataya coming up, they're going to have problems with his size. So yeah, there are some decent names there, but nobody that, that I would make a threat at this point to Usyk. Yeah. I remember that happened with Holyfield. It took him a couple to feel like he was a heavyweight and then it happened. Well, on Fandl right now, he's minus 166, 166 Usyk, which I just think is nuts. I don't understand at this point in his career

from everything we've seen how he's not minus 250 against everyone else in that division, just blind. There's not one person that he shouldn't be minus 250 against. I worry, Bill, but I worry about some of the... The scorecards were too close last time. Usyk, he needed that knockdown to pull out a decision. Um, you know, there's a lot of money in a trilogy. That's a reality, right? Like if Fury wins this whole pile of money, I don't, I don't want to do it, but I've seen enough in boxing to wonder, um, you know, what

could happen in a circumstance like this? I think Usyk's going to have to win clean. Are you saying boxing gets fishy sometimes? It gets very fishy. It gets very fishy. And I think more importantly, there's some bad judges in boxing, like really bad judges. And judging boxing is hard. I have to do it on an unofficial capacity every week at the zone. But some strange things happen on scorecards in boxing. And I hope we don't get that in this fight. I hope the right man comes out the winner.

Yeah. Probably the maddest people get at you is either something you wrote about LeBron or they didn't like how you scored round four in the third to last fight on a Dizone thing, right? People just go nuts about the scoring. I'd go nuts watching it. I get so mad. But it's always on a micro level, right?

It's like, I can't believe you scored the fourth round for such and such. I'll go back and rewatch that and I'll re-score it. But it's hard, especially some of these rounds where there's not a ton of action. And I think it was like Fury, some of those rounds were hard to score, especially in the first half of the fight

when there wasn't the kind of obvious action that you saw in the second half. But I mean, I just hope there's no controversy to this one. If Fury wins, great. Let's have a trilogy. I think it'd be awesome. But if Husig wins, you know, hope he wins clean. Well, the other thing when you're sitting close, you might miss like the biggest punch of the round because the ref blocked you or, you know, it's not an exact science. Before we go, we got to talk about the supercard in February 26th or February 22nd.

I don't know if there's been a card like this, like the third, fourth best fight on this card would be the best fight on a Saturday night. We talked, we talked in the past about how the Saudis and all this overseas money and they're just like, we want everybody good to fight each other and that's what we want. This seems like the full culmination of that. This is one of the best boxing cards of all time. When you saw it all laid out, were you shocked? They didn't even have room for Bacoli. They were like, now we're moving you over.

Moving your fight later. This is one of the, we have Super Middleweight, Lightweight, Welterweight, Better BF against B--ball, Dubois against Parker, Zhang's fighting Cabell. It's a fucking crazy card. It's the deepest card that I've ever seen. You go back to the 1990s and Don King put on some unbelievable pay-per-view cards where they were four fights deep, championship level, high level stuff. We've never had a card that on paper goes seven fights deep with all headliners night after night. And this is an example of the positive impact of the Saudis' entry into boxing.

What we're going to see in the main event on Saturday is an example. I mean, having two fights between Fury and Usyk in one year is remarkable. Even more remarkable is the headliner of the February 22nd card. I mean, we had to wait six years, six years, both Better BF and Bevil were world champions. And they didn't fight each other because there's no money in it, because neither one of them has a real fan base. Saudis come along, they make a fight in October, and less than six months later. We're getting the rematch like that is That's that there's a huge net positive

For the Saudis being involved in boxing for boxing. I would say this though I don't know how necessary it is to have seven fights like this on a card Because it's great if you want to watch all seven. If you are a true purist, if you're a diehard, yeah, you sit down at 11 o'clock in the morning on the west coast and you're watching, you know, Zhang fight or you're watching Virgil Ortiz fight. It's great. Like I will spend my entire day, if I'm not there, watching that particular card, but especially in the U S not a lot of people are probably going to do that. And I do think there's something to the idea of spreading this stuff out, right?

Like having two or three great fights on a car and then a month, month and a half from that, then having the other two or three great fights, like having sort of a schedule start to build up during a month. Yeah. So you get these guys- But don't you think this is UFC though? Like UFC has changed the thinking on this. Cause there'll be some UFC cards that you could watch for five straight hours.

And they kind of want that. Yeah, but UFC is able to do that month after month. Right? Like I don't know what the boxing schedule is after February 22nd. Like there are some fights I'm looking forward to, but you know, nothing with the kind of depth that we're going to see on the 22nd. Like, there are some fights I'm looking forward to, but, you know, nothing with the kind of depth that we're going to see on the 22nd. Like, even like Shakur Stevenson, Floyd Schofield, is a fun fight that would headline in Newark or in New York.

Virgil and Madremoff, good fight in Texas. Like, I think it's, look, I'm excited to watch every single one of these fights. I wouldn't argue, though, with the idea of like, hey, let's push a few of them, you know, a month from now and maybe a couple of others. Yes. Just, just divvy it up. Give these guys a chance for, for a little more exposure.

It's great that they're getting the money, like all these guys are getting paid. And in a sport like this, you deserve it. But, um, you know, I just worry about the exposure of a guy that's going to be fighting at noon Pacific in the U S that's the only thing I would, I would quibble with counter. This is like Thanksgiving. It's like, thing I would I would quibble with counter This is like Thanksgiving. It's like should we have sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and stuffing and like fuck it Let's just let's just go for it. To me. This is like a once in a decade kind of card

I don't know if they'll be able to replicate this many fights in a row I've never seen anything like this where you literally can't miss the first of seven fights. And the best thing is Stevenson, who I think is my least favorite good guy to watch, and now he's buried on this card with six other fights. So I don't have to be like, ah, do I get it? I don't really like watching this guy. And now it's like, he's just one of the many.

But somehow they left out my guy, Bacoli. So I have to get, do I have to get Bacoli on a podcast, try to pump him up? What do I need to do? I think you should. I think he'd fly to Los Angeles to do it. I mean, he's got like this incredible story where he's from Africa, but he's kind of Scottish now,

and he's got this great personality that comes with it. And he's been so avoided for so many years. Just to put a button on the card, it's a great problem to have, right? Like I'm excited about it. I want to see it. Everybody wants to see it. You're working, right?

Are you working it? I believe so. We haven't figured that out yet, but yeah. I was at the last Better Be a Beevil fight. Yeah. It's a great problem to have seven hours of high level boxing is going to be awesome for the boxing fans out there. Like ultimately that's, that's what it comes down to.

I wonder like this card so good. I wonder if you almost need to play by play guys. I don't, is it too much to ask one play? It's almost like you have to go WWF or they have the two different play by play guys for the five hour card. It's like, that's, I don't even know if Gus Johnson would be able to go for seven straight hours with boxing like that.

We did that whole Riyadh season card in LA, which I think was like six fights. Like that was a lot of, because that was a pretty deep one. You had, you know, David Morrell fighting low on that card. You had a pretty good slobberknocker of a fight with Jarrell Miller and Andy Ruiz, you know, low on that card. So yeah, it's, it's, these are long days, but they're, if you are like a true purist and someone that just wants to sit

down on your couch and is willing to invest seven hours, it's one of the, it'll be one of the better days you'll have. February 22nd, February turning into a surprisingly good sports month. It used to be like the dead month, but now all these different places have figured out like the trip. They moved the trade deadline up somehow against the Superbowl and then a whole bunch of stuff happening. Chris Mannix, great to see you. Have fun at the NBA Cup tonight. I hope all is well with you. You got it, man. Thanks. Coming up, you're going to hear two things I taped with Chris Ryan on Monday.

The first is about Timothee Chalamet and the Bob Dylan movie. Tried not to have any spoilers in this, so we're going to play that. And then after that, we're going to move right to Landman, my favorite new show of the 2020. So me and Chris Ryan right now. All right. I'm here with Chris Ryan. It is less than 10 days until the Bob Dylan movie comes out with Chalamet. A complete unknown.

You've seen it. I have. I saw it over the weekend on the Producers Guild app. Must be nice. Low expectations. I don't want to step on your pod, Vachon, because I know you have a big pod coming out on Christmas. The thing that jumped out to me was how good Shallow My Wings.

Yeah. And I intentionally tried not to read anything. I wasn't that excited about the movie because I've never loved Bob Dylan just because my entire life everyone's just talked about what kind of a moody dick he is. Perfect example of English teacher guy, English student. Right. A lot of reading, a lot of philosophizing. I liked the music, respected it.

My parents really liked it. It, a lot of philosophizing. Like the music, respected it. My parents really liked it. It means a lot to my mom, but we kind of know him, the older version of Bob Dylan, where he's just like kind of, kind of mutters and does... Anyway, Chalamet was great. Yes. As you know, I love when people sing in movies. Val Kilmer and the Doors is one of those. I always thought like, he never got enough credit.

Cooper and a Star is Born, doesn't he love singing? Yeah. He does a really good job. And I don't understand why he's not like a prohibitive best actor favorite. I don't think enough people have seen the movie yet. I think when he is actually like, first of all, this is, he's already doing the Lord's work on the promo tour, which we're going to talk about. Yeah. But once people see this movie,

I think that he might slingshot ahead of Ralph Fiennes and Adrian Brody. So what are the cases for Ralph Fiennes and Adrian Brody? So, Rafe is probably a... he deserves it. Body of work. Conclave's really good. Body of work? Like a Joel and B type of case two years ago? He's never won.

Okay. Okay. I'm wearing a thunder hat. I don't even acknowledge that. Yeah, body of work for Ray Fiennes and I think for Adrian Brody it would be like, this is it, this is the performance of a lifetime, even though he's already won,

which I think will probably count against him. Already won, that's a strike. Chalamet, this is great for the Oscars. It'll definitely get nominated and it will feel like a younger hip Oscar's. But I gotta be honest, I didn't, wasn't positive he had a performance like this in him. I didn't see a musical side of Chalamet.

It's the first movie that I feel like, this in Dune, but definitely Dune 2, where it's like, Timmy's a man now. Like, he's actually a convincing guy in his late 20s now. Remember when this happened to Leo? It was like the Catch Me If You Can air, where I was like, oh, Leo's an adult now. He had done The Beach and a couple of other things

to try and move into like out of heartthrob and into adult. I remember this happened to you when we went to the Ringer. Yeah. You shed like your Grant Lantern Idol. That was my blood diving. He went right up. But yeah, no, so now this opens up. He has this.

I think he's going to win the Oscar. Yeah. I'd be surprised if he didn't. I think he's gonna win the Oscar. Yeah. I'd be surprised if he didn't. I think he'll get a lot of momentum because it's so surprising how good he is in this. Yes. In a movie that probably shouldn't work, in a movie I'm not even positive.

I don't wanna step on your take because you have the whole pot, but I'm not positive. I love the movie that much, but I love the performances in it. I thought he was great. I thought, what's the Top Gun latest name? Monica Barbaro.

Monica Barbaro, yeah, she was great. She plays Joan Baez. Norton. Yeah, Norton is Pete Seeger. I think it's a movie that'll probably be like, a lot of people are like, I love the performances, I love the music. I don't know if there's like a huge story there.

But that's been a lot of musical biographies in general. Like Walk the Line was the same thing. People are like, I love Phoenix, I love Reese. Movie was solid. That one had a little bit more inherent tragedy built into it, but I think that this one is just gonna really blow people away because if you see the trailer, and if you just look at Timothee Chalamet, like, in his day-to-day life,

you probably wouldn't guess that he could pull this off. It has something in common with The Star Is Born, when we heard word about this, and then there was like the initial clips and you think oh no no brother oh boy here we go you know we've seen people make go this way and make the mistake yeah but uh but anyway you mentioned the press tour with Shalome so Shalome is using the opportunity that he might have here where he's uh odds on or he's going to be an odds on oscar favorite if not like the prohibitive favorite.

And he seems to be taking most of that time to make it clear how much he loves sports. Yeah, I love it. Now there's a very, you know, not famous, but infamous clip of him on Kimmel from like eight years ago or whatever it was, where he talks about how much he loves you. Right? Yeah. He's done Theo Vaughn, he's done Game Day, he's done all the late night shades. He was great on Game Day.

When are we getting Timmy on the Bill pod? I put the request in. I've wanted to have Mon for years. I know he's a big Knicks fan. He seems like a genuine sports fan. He seems like a nut. And we put the stuff out. I don't know how his team decides.

So this is the chalome, the challenge. Chalome, come on the pod Let's find out once and for all how much sports you know I saw you on college game day It was convincing, but I also know he's an actor Yeah And he could memorize what four or five pages of script of dialogue in one day So the he could remember he couldn't remember like six picks that his buddy gave him And I want to like really dive in with the Chalamet sports experience.

The flip side is that like there are photos of him like autograph hounding Amari Stoudemire. Like I think he might. Let's talk about it. OK. Let's find out this side of you, the sports side. It's not coming out in a Theo Vonn podcast. What do you think would you would do to him?

Would you just put him on Guess the Lines like blind? Would you? I want to go full like 80 minutes. Let's talk. Let's have the deep dive mix combo that you've never really had on a podcast. Travis Hunter, how does he translate to the NFL? Yeah, let's talk real college hoops. Do you gamble?

Where do you gamble? What sites to use? Are you a friend of Fandol? How'd you do last week on NFL picks? Like how deep does this go? Do you play fantasy football? What if he's not coming on your pod because he has lost most of the money he's made

following million dollar picks? No, I'm doing well this year. I just had a bad last week because of your team, the Eagles. Yeah, come on. Let's really see it once and for all. Do you have takes on the Super Bowl? Lions defense is banged up.

What do you think, Chalamet? Let's go. Why is NBA ratings down? NBA ratings down, why? What are your reasons? LeBron and Curry and Durant stay too long? What's your take? There are threes. Are we getting too much of an homogenous product with threes? Yeah, this is what the people want, Chalamet.

Come on the pod. We don't want you talking about how you've just been building your whole acting career towards playing Bob Dylan. We want to know whether or not you think Jalen Hurts can win a Super Bowl. And I want to pitch him, which I've Jalen Hurts can win a Super Bowl. And I want to pitch him, which I've done in the past, that did with Michael B. Jordan to much success, a couple roles that I think he should play now if he wins the best actor. What's next?

Heist movie. Really well done rom-com. And then what would be the third one. Just stuff for us. So I had pitched- Heist movie? Is he back? Sports movie. Sports movie. Coach?

For Greenwald, I pitched him, Timothee Chalamet, as a iconoclastic offensive coordinator, like the Ben Johnson story. Oh. Like a guy who's coming up through Texas high school football.

Isn't Mike McDaniel more fun? Yeah. He just kind of unravels because he was his quarterback. He only runs who's coming up through Texas high school football. Isn't Mike McDaniel more fun? Yeah. He just kind of unravels because he's his quarterback. He's only run somebody's slants. If we find out that Mike McDaniel got involved in some crazy Scarface Coke thing in Miami. Mike McDaniel crossed with Pain and Gain. Yes.

Starring Chalamet as the offensive coordinator to the Dolphins who's falling behind with gamblers. It's like we love these plays these, these plays you're calling, but our wide receivers keep getting killed out there. Another one's down. So sports movie, heist movie. Yeah. Does he need to be in a, there's something wrong with the house movie? Oh, like a horror?

Yeah. I think that this movie, when you see him and Dylan, he's got a little hair on his chest. And I think he needs to be back in the mix for Heat 2 conversations. I don't know what part, but I'm just saying he could be in the conversations. And then I think, I think you're right, a horror movie would be incredible. Or like if we're, I'm having fun with this, but if we're, if he's going to do the Leo playbook, just check mark best director one after the other. You work with all the greats.

That's what Leo did. Is there anything from like- Has he done Fincher yet? He hasn't. He hasn't done Fincher yet. No, it's Villeneuve. It's James Mangold for Complete Unknown. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Timothy Chalamet, the New Jersey drone story.

Oh, that would be great. As like a guy, just a guy in Jersey. Chalamet, just the trailers. It could be like Spielberg, like Close Encounters or War of the Worlds. Yeah. That sounds great. Yeah, Close Encounters of the drone kind. If he wants to cash in though, you've come up with some spy franchise.

Oh, like a Bourne kind of thing? Yeah, you come up with your own, or Mission Impossible, you come up with your own version. I mean, Hank's has, Tom Cruise has to... But maybe you mix it with sports. Oh, sports spy. Maybe he's a sports spy. Maybe he's like, he's like Connor Stallions. He's rich Paul crossed with a spy.

It's like clutches a front for all the espionage work he's doing. The young Scott Boris story. That's true. Maybe he plays Scott Boris. That could be a sports movie. Sure. That would be a great transformation. It'd be like when Leo played J. Edgar.

Well, out of all these ideas, the best idea is Mike McDaniel cross with Paine and Gain. Because we get Miami. Yeah. There's drugs. You could embed him in the Miami football scene. You could make it be like, it could be like Teddy Bridgewater is hanging out and stuff like that. It would be awesome. Well, whatever the case, Shalome, come on the podcast. Let's, let's do this once and for all. Let's talk about future roles. Let's talk sports. Let's talk Amara Stoudemire.

Let's talk Carmelo. Does he have thoughts on the Carmelo Marrow pod? Like I want to know all this stuff. Just come on the pod. Come open a six pack with Bill. Come on. You're going to win best actor. Come on the pod. All right. We're taping this after the sixth episode of Landman ran. So there's spoilers in this. Yeah.

See, I was making my all time TV rankings. All time, like anything ever broadcast on television. Yeah. I think Land Man's like third. This is the greatest show of this decade. I can't believe how much I love it. It's the first show in a while that when we're getting toward there's five minutes left, seven minutes left, I'm like, oh man, there's only seven minutes left.

You can't leave Cooper like that. Please, no. I can't wait a week. This sixth episode was the best episode of the season. It was incredible. It's everything we want from a dumb TV show like this. I don't know how good it is, but I know that I haven't had more fun talking about a TV show this year. Like literally, like every conversation I have about Land Man seems to go 20 minutes,

and it's just like we're hysterically laughing, but also deeply, deeply involved in the plot. This is Taylor Sheridan's, like, I didn't know that he was ever going to have like a home run again after Yellowstone. I thought he would have like much of a grand slam that niche people like, you know, like people love lioness. People like the mayor of King's town, Tulsa King, whatever the Yellowstone spinoffs. This feels like it could be the biggest show he made. Like I don't Billy Bob's no no Kevin Costner in

terms of like the matinee idol department. But in terms of like the Matt Nye Idol department, but in terms of like the amount of people watching it and the amount of times where you're just like, there's something in here for everyone. Like you can be into this because it's like Friday Night Lights. You can be into this because it's like Sicario. You can be into this because it's like Dallas.

I don't know, man. I love this show. Think of the three things you just mentioned and it's like a hybrid above those things. One of the things, cause we mentioned. And it's like a hybrid of all those things. One of the things, because we were talking to Fantasy about it, he'd only watched the first three and he's in like movies run now. And I feel like he hasn't paid 100% attention. Because if he did, he would understand.

Yeah. But I do feel like the second three episodes, the show really fell into place. It was almost like Sheridan needed to get a feel for the actors that he had. And once he realized, like, I just got to let Billy Bob and Allie Larder cook in every scene possible. This is the most I've liked Billy Bob, literally in 20 plus years. The first two episodes, Allie Larder mostly just appears on FaceTime. Right. It was like she hadn't finished her previous job yet. Yeah.

And they're like, well, can you FaceTime. Right. It was like she hadn't finished her previous job yet. Yeah. And they're like, well, can you FaceTime in? It would be like, basically being like, we're gonna have Sangoon just like only, only check in from the locker room. Yeah. He's not gonna play at all. Yeah.

It's an incredible performance by her, but you're right. Like after the first two episodes, I think the show teaches you how to watch it, which is essentially like, there are gonna be three or four scenes where Billy Bob absolutely monologues and cooks. And the only time that doesn't happen is when Ham calls him to yell at him. Right.

And then there's all this domestic drama between Billy Bob's character, Tommy, and her character is ex-wife, now current wife. And there it's just amazing. The funny thing is, if you notice that like, no one's giving Taylor Sheridan notes? This is Andy's big thing, Greenwald's big thing. There are scenes where you're like, how much longer is this scene gonna go? Like the dinner scene from episode four, I think, where she makes the wild boar bolognese. And then he's like, are you on your period?

And like, there's just, and you're like, how fucking long is this happening for? And it feels like you're just like, in some sort of experimental drama. Well, alright, so let's unwind this. So Billy Bob, this is basically the same theme as what he struck away with with Coster and Yellowstone. A really good, likeable, charismatic actor

who hadn't been really great in a role in a while and then Sheridan just unlocks it. He just wrote it for him. It's in his voice. This is all of the things I love about Billy Bob Thornton. And even like there's a little of the Friday Night Lights coach in here. A little bit of the NASA guy from Armageddon.

Right. Yeah. And this guy's been around forever. And when he's in the right role, he's perfect. But in this, he's like super perfect. Then Allie Larder, who I think all of us who had the Varsity Blues run, then she had the Heroes run. And I think everybody likes her,

but I hadn't seen her in anything. And this is, I was saying to you earlier, like there's that story about Starship Troopers, that Casper Van Diem thought he was in a serious drama, like a Spielberg movie, and everybody else knew what it was actually was. And I don't know what Allie Larder thinks the show is, but whatever she's doing, I love it.

But the show seems to be bending towards her now. Like in the beginning, I was like, this is insane. Like she's in a bikini on FaceTime crying every scene. And now it seems like she is an integral part of the drama. It is like in every scene, even when guys are getting absolutely murdered by falling pipes. Right. She's Dionne Waiters multiplied by 700. And her and Billy Bob are great together.

What's weird is that Demi Moore is in this show. Yeah. And if you would watch the trailer or if it was just the call, she'd be like, yeah, Demi Moore is going to have a much bigger part in the show than Allie Larder. Allie Larder's part is a hundred times bigger than... Demi Moore has had eight lines, and they filmed her from like 30 yards away in every scene.

Yeah. And I don't know why she's in the show other than maybe they needed the extra name. But, so those two and then the actor who plays Billy Bob's son in this. Oh, Jacob Laughlin. Yeah, so he was in this movie. He's just really good. Yeah, he was in a movie a while back, this Jeff Nichols movie called Mud. That's really, really good when he was a kid actor. And I haven't really seen him recently and he's awesome. Yeah. Like he is kind of like the Matt Saracen character,

like the- That's a good comparison. The prodigal kind of like son who wants to be an oil man, but doesn't want to do it on his dad's back. And he's just really soulful, really good. It could be really bad. This show would not work if he wasn't doing a good job.

And he's wiry, and I don't know how tall he is, but yet still believable when he stands up for himself. And I was attached to him within two episodes. He starts hanging out with, first of all, we didn't mention Michael Pena, who's in the credits in the first episode. Yes. And my shit detector's going off the whole time.

Well, he does a real live forever McBain speech in the middle of that first episode. Oh yeah, but they basically did the same thing they did with Kyle Chandler. On K-Stone. Yeah, where he was the swerve. And Dave Aenobo on Yellowstone. Yeah, so he dies, and then that sets off like his widow, all of a sudden Billy, and you

just know, it's like, oh man, this is gonna go up. His friends, the dead guy's friends, they don't like where they're at, and you just kind of know, but I still love it. One of the best parts about this show, which is so refreshing, is that it's not a overall mystery or overall plot that you have to keep track of all these different moving pieces. It's a great point. You're just like, there's a problem every week. It's like dead body in the oil well that we got to figure out,

we got another clue. Yeah, it's just every week, it's like West Wing or like Grey's Anatomy or like any big really successful drama. They just give you a problem that Billy Bob has to solve by the end of the episode or not. You know, or he's like, we're fucked and John Ham's going to get mad at me. And I feel like he has complete handle on who his character is, what what like his baggage is as a human being, who he has to answer to that he can get mean That's why episode 6 was so big because it was like I know there This there's a dark side with this guy and we haven't really seen it a hundred percent in the show and then in episode 6

Yeah, see it and the whole show is leading up to him confronting these guys who beat up his son in the moment He locks in You're just like the honestly it's like watching like a Michael Mann movie or something. Awesome. It was so good. One other thing I wanted to mention is that I think I realized that I'm a secret huge fan of shows where people have to travel a huge distance to have a very simple

conversation. This was a big thing for Ozark where it was like I need to see you and they'd have to drive all the way around the lake to the resort or all the way back. Car scenes. This scene, this show is basically like they need to have a conversation. You have to get on a private plane And fly from the Permian Basin to Dallas to get yelled at for five minutes And I was just like if we had that at the Ringer, if the Ringer was based in West Texas

And you were like, I'm gonna need to talk to you. And I'm like, I gotta go How fast can you get from Fort Worth to Houston? The private plane leaves Permian. I fly to Dallas and you were like, I'm gonna need to talk to you. And I'm like, I gotta go. How fast can you get from Fort Worth to Houston? The private plane leaves Permian. I fly to Dallas and you're like, I didn't much care for that Celtic steam. Let's talk about it. It is like we said about Tatum. I know you're emotional, but don't ever yell at me.

I'm your boss. This show checks so many boxes that just work for a TV show. Like, what is this world? This weird oil world. I don't really know this. Oh, now you're bringing me into it. Now I kind of feel like,

what's it like for the crews that work, you know, on these oil rigs or like they're like, oh, this is like this whole little community with these little mini houses. Then it's like the ham part. What's it like if you own this thing? Who do you deal with? The ham part's interesting because I don't feel like that's fully baked yet.

And I'm not sure how much time Ham had to film the show. Yeah, but I think that he does a really good job explaining things for people who might be looking at this more from the business perspective. Like the two speeches he's given, well the one... You're talking about Ham. Yeah, Ham. The one where he's like, this business is like constant crisis punctuated by extraordinary success. I'm like, that sounds like an incredible idea for a show.

And two, like when he's just like, I'm the bad guy. Like everybody hates, I've accepted the fact that the oil industry is the villain. So all my job is to do is keep oil between this number and this number. Well, and then the lawyer who was getting a little flirty with Billy Bob and then Allie Larder's character squashed it, but she's just an assassin. Yeah. And so in episode six, she goes to see the widow

and they're like, here's the check. And then they're doing a little back and forth and the widow smartly asks, well, wait a second, what do you guys get out of this? And she's like, just lays it out as cold as possible. There's five or, then the daughter is the other one. There's five or six really good characters that I want to know more about that I'm willing to go on

a couple journeys with. But the most important thing to me, this is the best show Jon Hamm's ever done. You know, people say mad men. It's going to get aggregated. No, no. Yeah. That's going on Hoop Sight.

People say Mad Men. I say watch Land Man for a couple episodes. No, I'm psyched for him that, I can't even tell, maybe he only had five shooting days in a month. Billy Bob seems to be the only one who was fully committed for the six episodes. And Billy Bob's got to memorize like five pages of a monologue. Right. It's an incredible feat athletically.

I do agree. Ham seems to be always getting off a plane, getting off on his mobile phone, and then hanging it up. Yeah, they're like, John, can you film from two to five? Yeah. We just need to get off a plane, and you're yelling at somebody. I saw Ham was on IZEN, and he was asking about how it was to shoot this and he was like, great! I put on a suit, I got off a plane, I talked, I'm done. It did me more, I was like, I loved it! Two day shoot. I think that this show does really remind me that it's okay for TV to be a lot of fun.

We've had a nice long stretch of prestige television that's very serious, very like, this is about important issues. There are important issues in Landman, but you can take them as seriously as you want. There is like at least three things in this, each episode where you're like, what did I just watch? Well, and the thing with Sheridan, and he figured out, he laid the groundwork for it with the first couple years of Yellowstone.

He's made a bunch of shows, obviously, but to me, this is his apex. This is just like, he's taken all the lessons he's done on all these different shows. And is just like, he's taken all the lessons he's done on all these different shows, and he's like, how can I make the most entertaining show possible about the oral world in Texas,

and just let some actors cook? But the father-son story is like, definitely really affecting. Like, I really, really like it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and the ex-wife stuff, you know that's not gonna last, how that's gonna go bad.

But there's so many good touches. Like, she goes back to get divorced, right, in episode six. Yeah that's gonna go bad. But there's so many good touches. Like she goes back to get divorced. Right? In episode six. Yeah. You gonna say the line? There's been a couple of lines that are like eyebrows and... Oh yeah. They'll push in almost an R. Yeah? So she says I may have to suck Victor's dick to get my Bentley.

Yeah. Her ex-husband. And he's like, well bring your toothbrush. Yes. And she goes. There's a whole party in the back, but they, the other thing is I like the houses. Like it's just these weird crazy mansions you would never see in any other walk of life that done a good job with that.

For Sheridan though, I just feel like he's figured it out once and for all. I think this is gonna be the biggest show he's ever had. And I know Yellowstone was the biggest show of the last 10 years. I honestly wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I think that Yellowstone was like a phenomenon where there wasn't really anything like that. There was no Western on TV at that moment, I don't think. This is a little bit more familiar to people, but

I think as it keeps going, they're probably only going to be... It's so popular, I wouldn't be surprised if some like huge star does a guest star next year. I was going to bring that up. Andy Garcia is supposed to be on this season. It's going to be getting bigger and bigger. That's the next iteration of this, is some big ass stars coming in. Because that's somewhat what happened with Yellowstone. But I think Yellowstone was a big show that we're all like, wait, is that a big show?

And people were kind of stealth watching it. No, people were actually watching Yellowstone. Yeah. And then COVID, it felt like everybody caught up. And then all of a sudden that became the biggest TV show. But, you know, it definitely went a little sideways once the Costner thing got weird. You know what's crazy about this show too is how fast they made a couple of the sets become like instantly recognizable and kind of iconic. Like the cafe that they all hang out at, the bar,

where it's like everyone's drinking all day long Yeah, they have like crazy shifts and then like you said the McMansion and the country club You're kind of like I already know this world It's like this is it usually takes a show like years to be like, oh and you know this place and you know that place And it's like no they instantly kind of hit all of that stuff. Yeah, so this is like There's the prestige TV stuff that we talk about that we have the podcast named after it and there's a certain like just elite scripted. Yeah, White Lotus kind of thing. And then there's like the Yellowstone side of stuff.

There's this middle ground between those two worlds that's the hardest thing to like straddle both lines. And I feel like this is one of the only shows that has done that. Yeah. You know, where it's like, this show is like not far away from being like a real prestige show, but it doesn't want to be. Yeah. It also wants to be funny and crazy and have music. And entertaining and goofy. Yeah. So where does it go? Where does it go? Where? From here? Yeah, the rest of the season.

I think that they'll probably keep playing out like the adversarial relationship between Monty and Tommy. But I think that the cool thing about this series is that it'll probably like Yellowstone where there's like a big bad every season. And so there will be like a big plot for each season, but all the parts will stay the same. One of the big lessons I've learned that if my son ever watches this is maybe don't get involved with the Widow as a kid. Just just just point blank. What other lessons could Ben take from this show?

Who has the friends that are threatening you with guns the moment you like spend, you're just raking. Instantly goes a motor lawn. You're raking your front yard. There's multiple, maybe like fine. There's lots of fish in the sea, buddy. Yeah. No, I think all the actors in this are really good too.

That's the other thing. Yeah. Like she's good, the actress who plays the widow. All across the line. Paulina Chavez, yeah. And the daughter is just going for it. She's the sister of a woman who was on The Bachelorette. Oh, is that true?

And yes, is 28, I mean, she's 28 years old. She's playing like an 18 year old. It is an extraordinary bit that she's just like, I'm nude in this house while like the lawyer guy is like, I can't look at you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the competition all time for a show like this? All time?

I'm saying like that middle ground between Prestige and like just going for it. I'm trying to think of other shows that were like this. Cause like White Lotus was way more on the Prestige side. You know, was goofy. Yeah, Succession's way more prestige. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, this is the hardest...

hardest one to thread. I think it's more... It would be something that like, David E. Kelly did. It would be like, Big Little Lies, maybe. That's good. Like, that kind of like, this is very pop. It's got big people in it. People will just like, looking at the furniture.

But this show's literally for everybody. There's not one person in my life who wouldn't like Landman. And if they didn't like Landman, I'd have to re-evaluate my relationship with them. Or you would at least be like, you would like a part of this. You'll like the oil stuff. You'll like the Cooper stuff. You'll like the love affair between Alleylarder and Billy Bob Thornton. There's something in here that you will like. I couldn't get my dad to watch it.

And because he's like, I got Yellowstone, I got sports, I got a lot of time. I will like. I couldn't get my dad to watch it. And, cause he's like, ah, Yellowstone, I got sports, I got a lot of time. I'm like, dad, if you don't fucking watch Land Man, I'm gonna like fly to Boston and I'm gonna just tie you up in front of the sofa and make you watch episodes. And so he checked it out. So he started to watch it.

Of course he's on my paramount cause he doesn't know how to pay for any streamer. And so he's like, yeah, I watched the first two, it's good. And then he watched the third one, he's like, third one was good. And then the fourth one, he's like, texted me, did you see Landman? So I went to watch the one last night after I did my pod on Sunday night. It had already been watched. I had to like start it over. My dad was just like, yeah, so I was like, oh, he's all in.

My mom's like that with Lioness. She was like, have you heard about this Lioness show? And I'm like, yeah, I have. Right. And then all of a sudden, it was like, all my episodes were done. So do you think Taylor Sheridan took the limitless pill? There's no other explanation for how he's able to produce this. So he has now written at least 40 hours of television this year.

I don't understand how he does it. I don't get it. Nobody, is there other people? Does he have like five people under him? I don't know, but this is like, we haven't seen a run like this in Sorkin where Sorkin wrote every episode of West Wing Can you imagine and this show honestly it kind of reminds me of West Wing a little bit It's a lot of people like walking and talking and solving problems Comparison yeah, and West Wing was close to the prestige side too, but it was just a really well done

Well, I feel like fun good plots per episode and West Wing was close to the prestige side too, but it was just a really well done, well acted fun show. But there would be like three good plots per episode of West Wing. There would be like an overarching thing where it's like the president's sick or whatever. But like for the most part, it would be like Josh is gonna solve something, Sam's gonna do something,

and like CJ's gonna do something. And then you get a big speech from the president. I just picture Sheridan in the writers room and he's like, man. There is no writers room. The show, yeah, he's just by himself with a dog and he's just like, man, I haven't had anyone blow up or had some terrible thing happen in an episode and a half.

I'm just gonna have this guy step on a bunch of pipes and then fall under and get crushed by them. I'll tell you what is unprecedented, it's unprecedented for someone to have the biggest show on TV end while possibly one of the biggest shows on TVs is beginning and you're responsible for both of them. I can't think of another time that's happened. Unbelievable.

That you're writing both of them. It'd be funny if we had like the first take type of infrastructure for TV show runners. And it was just like, it's Sheridan the Goat, that's coming up next. I thought you were gonna be like first take, but for like actual land man. Oh that'd be amazing. Should Cooper have kept it in his pants?

Coming up! That would be great. Yeah. Just an entire first take. Wind power! Does it use more energy than we think? What's Allie Larder's character's name? Oh I can't even remember.

I just heard her as Allie Larder. She doesn't need a name. I think her name is Allie Larder on the show. Angela. Angela. Angela. Yeah. Because Allie Larder's Instagram, she's like, Angela's back, episode four. What a win for her. I'm so happy for her. I'm happy for Billy Bob.

I'm happy for everyone on the show. I'm happy for us. Yeah. How many? So it's ten episodes? I think so, yeah. The odds of Mallory loving the show are 100%. She loves, she texted me on Saturday saying, six hours to lay a man. I'm like, Lamar Jackson's on I think this is the most ringery show that's come out since uh

Probably white lotus so when was that 2021? Yeah. Yeah, this is a beloved piece of art watch the land man. It's really good All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chris Mannix. Thanks to Chris Ryan. Thanks to Kyle Crayton and Steve Cerruti. As always, thanks to Jack Sanders for helping out last night with Craig Korlebeck as we taped some stuff with CR. And I will be back on Thursday with another podcast. See you then. I don't have a few years with him. Must be 21 plus in President-elect states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star

Casino or 18 plus and president DC gambling problem call 100 gambler visit rg-help.com call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit MD gambling help dot org in Maryland Hope is here visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24 7 support, Massachusetts or call 1-8778 Hope and why or text hope NY in New York