The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Scarier Chiefs, Week 1 NFL Picks, Kyle “The Villain” Lowry, and Coach Steve Nash With Raja Bell

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons shares his thoughts on Lakers-Rockets and the NFL season opener in which the Chiefs rolled the Texans, before kicking off Million Dollar Picks for NFL Week 1 (3:35). Then Bill is joined by Raja Bell to discuss the Celtics-Raptors series, Game 6, the Raptors' effective defense, the Heat awaiting their opponent for the Eastern Conference Finals, Brooklyn Nets new head coach Steve Nash, and more (34:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's very special football is back edition of the Bill Simmons podcast on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by Spotify, which has the best podcast listening experience around change speeds, discover new podcasts, check out their awesome charts. You can do it all on the Spotify app. Listen to your podcasts on Spotify. We're also brought to you by Tik TOK, a great place to discover new music artists and so much more from viral duets to all kinds of trends and useful videos. So much of the content I hear about started on TikTok. You discover something new each time you open the app, even your favorite throwback song bubbling up yet again. Discover more on TikTok. We're also brought to you by Squarespace, where you can turn your great

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and theringer.com. We made a couple of Ringer announcements this week. We have spruced up the Ringer NFL schedule for us. Not only do we have Ryan Rosillo in the Ringer Fantasy Football Show, in the Ringer NFL Show, Kevin Clark and Nora Princiati on Sunday nights, and Kevin in the rotating cast

of Ringer Crew on Thursdays, but now on Tuesdays on the Ringer NFL Show, Ryan Shazier and Cole Wright. Yeah, Ryan Shazier, he retired from the Steelers this week. He's an awesome guy. We've enjoyed working with him so far, and he's going to give us the player perspective with Cole every Tuesday on the Ring of the NFL show.

And then on Wednesdays and Fridays, a guy that I've wanted to work with for a while, Warren Sharp, who's become something of a thing in the NFL community the last couple years. He's got incredible analytics, intelligence, the whole thing. On Wednesdays, him and Chris Vernon are going to break down basically all the trends from the week before, stuff Warren noticed, little stat stuff, all super nerdy, awesome stuff that I love that really helps me with my gambling.

And then on Friday, Warren and my old friend, Joe House, you've heard him on this podcast a few times. That's going to be the mega gambling preview. And House, I'm honestly worried for his safety. He's so excited to work with Sharp and get all kinds of stuff from him. So you can look out for that. Subscribe to the Ringer NFL show, and you can hear everybody that we have. It's just loaded at this point. Also, subscribe to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show and the Rosillo podcast. And while you're there, 10 questions with Kyle Brandt.

Still going on Spotify, making a big fuss every week. show and the Rusillo podcast. And while you're there, 10 questions with Kyle Brandt still going on Spotify, making a big fuss every week. So that's all we got going on the NFL side coming up. I'm excited for this one. We're going to talk about chiefs, Texans, and a little bit of the Lakers. And then I'm going to do million dollar picks at the very top. And then Raja bell came on to break down the Celtics Raptors series and how much I hate Kyle Lowry and a whole bunch of other stuff, including Steve Nash's hiring. So there you go. Good podcast coming up first,

our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we are taping this at the tail end of Chiefs-Texans. Chiefs win by 14. More importantly, last second field goal, 30 seconds left. That covers the over of 53. Dramatic. Gambling is back. Football is back.

It was every bit as choppy and weird as awkward as we expected, especially in the beginning and the top as the NFL pretended to care about social justice. We know they don't. I'll reserve comment on that for another time. It was nice to have football back. I really enjoyed watching this game because as I mentioned on a couple other pods, my son is now into fantasy football and he has Mahomes and Clyde Edwards Hilaire. And he was reacting to every first down or good thing that happened to either of those guys like it was game seven of the World Series or something. And it was just fun to re-experience

the joy of fantasy football through a fresh 12-year-old who hasn't had his guts ripped out by fantasy football yet. Texans, look, they're in my conference. My favorite team is the Patriots, and they traded Hopkins. They got David Johnson back, who I think we all liked as a fantasy guy this year, but you watch them and they just feel like a different team. Hopkins was this big shadow that loomed over every Texans game when you played them. You're just constantly thinking about him, worrying about him, and now he's not there.

And now he's replaced by Will Fuller, who's good when he's on the field, which is not as often as I think people would like. And Brandon Cooks, who has had, I think, five concussions. And God only knows how durable he's going to be this season. But it's just a different Texans team. They made a lot of moves. They traded away a lot and I'm not sure they're better off than they were two years ago. They certainly looked like they weren't in the same class of the chiefs. The

chiefs, the big difference, obviously it was Clyde Edwards, Hilaire, uh, the rookie huge fantasy guy. I did a keeper league last night when he went for 59 bucks. To put that in perspective, McCaffrey and Camaro went for 62. So he was getting the respect of these proven stud, high first round, high auction guys. And then you watch the Chiefs. You're like, oh, that's why he got the respect. He looks awesome. He's like a combination of Maurice Jones Drew,

Brian Westbrook, and Muggsy Bogues. And it just seems like he's impossible to tackle. The Texans' defense, I don't know how many tackles they missed, but he made them look really bad a couple times. He really shredded them. The Chiefs just look like they picked off where they left off last year. I think the stat was only two of the last 25 champs have repeated. And I normally hate picking a team to repeat,

but I didn't see anything tonight that made me think that they're not the team to beat. And that's not really saying anything that interesting. But, you know, usually there's some sort of, hmm, that's not as good. Or, oh, those guys left. Or, oh, they lost those two coordinators. Just seems like they're running it back.

That was the feeling I got. And as a Pats fan, I was concerned. The refs were in mid-season form. First touchdown of the game, guy dropped it. And they called it a touchdown. We had a five-minute review. It was clear that he fumbled it too early. We had to go through that whole thing.

It's like, oh, yeah, football really is back. Other than that, ordinary night, Al Michaels, Chris Collinsworth, it felt relatively normal. And I was thinking today is September 10th. It's about to be September 11th. Six months ago, March 11th was the Go Bear game and the night all hell break loose. On March 10th, that was when Spotify closed their offices. And we really started to think that this pandemic was gonna be a force of evil. And it's turned out to be the case. And then you fast forward six months after, life's still not normal.

I mean, you're in California right now. The air is as bad as it's been in a couple of years. Things are burning left and right. And the sky is this crazy color. And it just, especially if you're in Northern California, it looks like the world's ending if you look up in the sky. And things are obviously not the same. But today you had all four sports going at the same time,

which I'm pretty sure has never happened. Baseball, football, basketball playoffs, NHL playoffs, all happening simultaneously. So that was nuts. But you think about like this two and a half, three month stretch where we had no content to talk about. And all of a sudden we had a ton of stuff to talk about. Lakers beat the Rockets.

They took a 3-1 lead in the series. Another James Harden. Just not a meltdown, but you're also not sure as you're watching if he realized that basically if you fall behind 3-1 to this Lakers team, the series is over. There's a lack of urgency and assertion with him

that has just been there this whole decade. And I think when we did the book of basketball podcast about him, me and Zach Lowe, I urge you to listen to it if you haven't heard it yet. And we laid out the whole case for, this is one of the most unbelievable careers of any offensive player that we've had in the last 40 years. But,

and there's always going to be the, but with James Harden and he's never going to shake it. And he's never going to shake it for reasons like the last two weeks and what we saw today. You can't say like, oh man, that guy completely sucked. He got to the free throw line 20 times, started doing a bunch of weird stuff to him defensively. And I get it. His team's not that great.

But he's also never had that moment either. And, you know, when I did that book of basketball podcast with Zach and Zach talked about how the comparison for him wasn't George Girvin, which is where I was going, because I think Harden is Girvin 2.0 in so many different ways. I laid out that case. And Zach said, now he's more Carl Malone. He's the guard Carl Malone. He's going to put up this great statistical resume, and it's going to look awesome on basketballreference.com. And as the years pass,

people who weren't there are going to be like, wow, that James Harden, was he the best guard of all time? Is he better than Jordan? Because they weren't there. And that's why it's important for people like us who were there to be like, no, no, actually,

not somebody you 100% want in a playoff series. Just really not. Compared to all the other great players. Not sure this is the guy you want. Wouldn't be my first pick. Wouldn't be my second pick. Wouldn't be my 11th pick or my 15th pick or my 17th pick. It's just what it is. He never was able to throw that monkey off his back.

He just wasn't. And now he's in his thirties and a whole decade has passed. And I don't see the roadmap for this. I don't think he's ever going to have a better chance than he had the last three years. He's certainly in a situation in Houston now where they mortgage the future and they're kind of stuck with the team they have. God only knows what happens to Westbrook these next couple of years. And it's just a really frustrating career. And Malone was frustrating too. And he was somebody I wrote about a lot in my book. He was, uh, you know,

always good for 29 and 11 during the regular season, 28 and 11, 27 and 10, whatever. And in the playoffs, he always felt like somebody was going to get them. And that's just the way it is. And that's the way his career went. And he really didn't even make the finals until 97 to 98, when the league was pretty diluted and, and caught some lucky breaks in the West with just where the talent shook out and a jazz team that really was past its prime. I ended up making the finals two straight years and having about as much success as they ever had during the Malone Stockton run.

Maybe that will happen to Harden. Maybe at the tail end of whatever his prime ends up being, he'll have some belated run like Malone did. But you look back and you think like, it's just a lot of what ifs. It's a lot of huge games that didn't come up as big as you wanted them to. It's a lot of what ifs like Chris Chris Paul, game five, hurt his knee. What if they had kept OKC together one more year, all that stuff. But the reality is he's played in one finals and he was the sixth man and he played five games. They lost four of them and he hasn't been back to the finals since. And I'm not sure where it goes from here. The coach is going to leave. I'm not sure what happens to Daryl Mory and whether he stays or not.

The owner, by all accounts, is not exactly rolling in dough these days. And it's going to be a fascinating off-season story unless they can somehow miraculously come back from three to one and he can completely flip the narrative. I don't see it happening. The Lakers look like they're about as confident

as they've been really since March. They got Rondo back. We talked about him the other podcast, the one I did Tuesday night. Caruso's looking as good as he's looked. They, again, at least something from Kuzma. They're figuring out that they don't necessarily need the centers depending on the team.

I think that's going to be an important thing for the Clippers the next round if they want to go smaller. And we're headed for Lakers Clippers and we're headed for the LARM again. And Raja and I are going to talk about the Raptors-Celtics series when he comes on in a second. But stay tuned for that. I want to do million-dollar picks.

I did this the last couple years, had a lot of fun. Every week I bet a million fake dollars and try to see how I do on, on NFL games. And I can do teases. I can do parlays. I can do straight up picks all that. When I go into week one of a season, I try to go into it. I try to pick the playoff teams that I think are going to be there. A couple of disappointment teams to look out for, and then a couple of just horrible teams. And one of the strategies I like to use is if I think a team's going to be just awful, I really want to jump on them betting against them the first couple of weeks because the lines never really totally adjust the way they should until about week three.

So you can make a lot of money in week one and week two. So, you know, I had my seven AFC playoff teams. I have Casey as the one seed. I have Pittsburgh winning their division as the two seed. I think Pittsburgh is going to be really good this year. And that's somebody I'm going to ride these first couple of weeks. Tennessee winning the AFC South as the three seed. I have New England surprising people and winning the AFC East and not just because I'm a homer. I'm just so tired of people sleeping on Belichick. And I really don't feel like the quarterback drop off from Brady to Cam is going to be significant. If anything, Cam's going to add new life and a new dimension to them. Three wild cards, Baltimore, Indianapolis. I had Denver here as the seventh seed, but now with Von Miller and Cortland Sutton

got hurt and it just, there's a lot of bad omens with them now. So I'm going to, as much as I wanted to knock Buffalo out and make them the AFC disappointment team, I'm going to, uh, I'm going to have them squeeze in at like nine and seven as the seventh seed, which I guess would make Cleveland the AFC disappointment team, even though we're used to being disappointed by them. I'm going to regret it if Denver turns out to be fine and edges Buffalo. I'm going to be pissed off. I'm just telling you now. NFC playoffs.

So I had New Orleans in this one spot the whole time for the NFC. And the more I've looked at it, the more I've thought about it. The clowny trade that they tried to make really made me wonder what was going on with them. Because that tells me they don't love their team yet. The way they spent their salary cap was strange. Like the Taysom Hill, Jameis Winston, Andrew Brees, why are you spending that much money on one position?

Kevin Clark compared them to the plot of the Big Short, the way they've handled this team. Brees was on the fence of looking old last year. It seems too easy. My spidey senses are going off. Everyone's just like, yeah, New Orleans, Super Bowl team. I'm going to zag a little bit. I'm going to zag in a couple ways.

I have the Rams as my one seed for a variety of reasons. One, they went nine and seven last year. Everybody's acting like they were three and 13. I think they have a lot of talent. They mortgaged their future to be good this year. They don't have the kind of depth you'd want, but they're pretty stacked. And I think offensively, they'd be really good. I think defensively, they got rid of Wade Phillips and they found a defensive coordinator who actually had a pulse. So that's awesome. And I don't know, new stadium, easier schedule, the whole thing. I just kind of like them. I can't explain it. And Dallas seems too easy as the one seed. New Orleans seems too easy as the one seed.

I have the Rams as my one seed and I have Dallas as my two seed, mainly because their division looks so goddamn easy. And then Tampa Bay is my three seed. The more I look and read and talk to people, I just, I think they are going to have continuity because I think they've been secretly practicing all these months. And I keep hearing about Tom Brady and OJ Howard and the connection they're going to have and all this stuff.

I'm like, well, how? Obviously, they've been doing some underground stuff, but I like them in that division over New Orleans. I have Detroit winning the AFC North. That's basically my crazy sleeper pick. I don't even know if it's that much

of a sleeper. Their favorite against Chicago this week, New Orleans, Seattle, and Atlanta as my three wild cards. And I have San Francisco out. So San Francisco is a team that I'm going to be nudging against the first couple weeks. I think the other thing I've learned as you head into the first few weeks, you want to have an idea of what you want to do,

who you want to go for, and who you want to do, who you want to go for and who you want to go against. And because again, week one, week two, they don't really know how to set the lines and you can take advantage. But you also have to admit when you're wrong. And this is something I always make fun of Cousin Sal about. Cousin Sal will get attached to these teams. Like it was Denver last year. And he just kind of goes down with the cruise ship on it. It's like when you read those cruise ship stories where the sewage starts, it starts pouring out of the different toilets. And you know, it just sounds like the worst thing ever. And it's like, just get off the boat.

Sal will just go down with the boat. He'll be covered with sewage. Denver will be on a seven game losing streak. And he'll be telling you that this is the week it turns around. I'm off the boat. I'm happy to admit, wow, I missed that one. I'm going to zag the other way. And I think that's something that took me a while to learn how to do, where I was just so stubborn with these picks I had before the season.

I'm not going to be stubborn like that before. I think Kansas City is going to play the Rams in the Super Bowl. And if they don't play the Rams, it's going to be Tampa Bay. But I think it's KC against the Rams or Tampa Bay. And if I had to have another AFC team, if something weird happened to KC, I would say Pittsburgh because I like their coach. I like the QB. I like all the stuff they've done. I think their offense is going to be really good.

So anyway, week one is going to reflect kind of the way I'm leaning with this season in general. And even though Sal makes fun of me about with the NBA going on, I wasn't going to do homework. I actually did do a lot of homework. So there you go. One thing about Million Dollar Picks this year, it's sponsored by FanDuel. You've probably heard about FanDuel Sportsbooks,

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We're using FanDuel's lines for million-dollar picks this year. So if you're ready to claim your risk-free bet and you like one of these million-dollar picks, download the FanDuel Sportsbook app and be sure to sign up with promo code BS so they know I sent you that. It's FanDuel Sportsbook, promo code BS. Must be 21 plus, present in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, Indiana, or Colorado. First online real money wager only. Refund issued as non-withdrawable site credit

that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See full terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. West Virginia, 1800-GAMBLER.net. Indiana, 800-9-WITH-IT. Colorado, 800-522, 4700.

So we're using FanDuel lines to share for million dollar picks. And again, the gimmick is I spend a million dollars in fake money every week. And I actually have a gimmick to the gimmick that I'm going to tell you at the end here. All right, first, games that didn't make the cut. I stared long and hard at Rams plus two and a half on Sunday night. Long and hard.

As I said, I really like the Rams team. And the two and a half throws me off. Can I get the three? If this line goes to three, I'm banging the Rams. As I said, I picked them to be the number one seed in the NFC. The only thing that scares me and the reason I'm staying away is I want to see Dallas play a game because I think Dallas has the highest upside of anyone in the NFC with the, with if CD lamb is really the most talented receiver they

have those three receivers and Zeke and Dak was something to prove. I just want to see it. I'm afraid to bet against them. And I know I'm going to be kicking myself. The Rams are going to win this game and I'm like, God damn it. Why didn't I bet them? But, uh, but Dallas is a stay away from me in week one until I see what their offense looks like. So that's, that's one. The second one, the bills are minus six and a half against the jets. They're minus 300 to win the game. And it looks too easy. As I said, I don't like the Bills that much this year. I think too much hype. Don't trust Josh Allen yet. I kind of want to see it. And what worries me about this game is it's such an obvious teaser game. It's the Jets. They lost CJ Mosley. They traded Jamal Adams. Le'Veon Bell and Adam Gates don't like each other,

and blah, blah, blah. And it just has all the makings of you put the Bills in a tease, you tease them down to a half point, and then something terrible happens. So I don't know. I can't believe I'm afraid to go against the Jets. It's just ludicrous to even discuss, but something doesn't smell right with

that game. And if I've learned anything over the years, when I don't like the smell, I'm out. Speaking of smells, my dog, Willie, his breath, we don't know what happened, but his breath has gotten worse and worse. And we're researching why it's bad. My daughter said it smelled like fish sticks. So then I decided that it smelled like fish sticks that had been left in the car for like three days. Like in the summer, you have your car, but you haven't used it for a couple of days and the car gets really hot, but somebody left like a piece of food in there or something. His, his breath smells like fish sticks. If you left fish sticks in your hot car for three days. So now we call them fish sticks. Anyway, I'm going to, I'm going to name the Jets bills. That's my fish sticks game of the week. I don't like the smell of that game. So I'm staying away.

And then the other one that I looked at for a while, because I do like Atlanta this year as a frisky, put-up points, nine-and-seven-ish team that can just outscore teams from time to time. I love that they're getting points in a quote-unquote home game against Seattle. They're getting one-and-a-half. I don't think Seattle's a pass rush. I think Atlanta's going to be able to throw on them. And I honestly just don't want to bet against Russell Wilson. So he's my winner this year.

The I just don't want to bet against you guy. I just don't like betting against Russell Wilson. I like betting against him when he's favored by like nine at home against Arizona. And you're like, you know what? The Seahawks could be falling asleep this week. I don't like him in week one. I don't like going against him in week one

as much as I like that game, I do like the Falcons, but I'm going to stay away. I'm being smart this year. Million dollar picks. I really want to end up with like $20 million this year. I know it's not going to happen, but just indulge me. All right. Week one, million dollar picks. Drum roll, please. Here we go. First of all, I have a tease, but I'm going to save that for the end. I have three games that I like straight up. First one is the Lions minus three at home against the Bears. Love this one for a variety of reasons. I think the Lions with a healthy Stafford.

They spruced up their team. The defense, the pass rush still isn't great, but the secondary is going to be better. I really like their offense. They have some weapons. You probably drafted some of them in your fantasy league. Thought Stafford played really well last year until he got hurt. And I don't like that division that much. I think nine and seven,

like who the hell knows is going to come in that division. More importantly, the bears are starting Trubisky and we're now at the point where I, I'm already getting nostalgic about when we hit a time when Trubisky's not a starting quarterback anymore and we're like, man, remember when we used to be able to bet against Mitch Trubisky? That was amazing. Fucking love those days, man.

Betting against Mitch, just making money because Mitch sucks. My point is, it's a rare opportunity to make money against Mitch Trubisky one more time. I'm sure he's a great guy. I just don't think he should be a starting quarterback in the National Football League. Lions by three. I just, I'm so happy. I'm so delighted that all they have to do is basically,

if field goal you push and they win by four or more, and you're coming home sweet. So putting 200,000 on that. The line is minus 105, so 210 to win 200 on the Lions. I like that game. Second one, Tom Brady, top of Bay. They're getting three and a half points in New Orleans,

and it's going to be an awesome game. Fox has made it the 425 PM ET game, Brady versus Breeze, the whole thing. And I just feel like the Bucks are going to be ready for this one. And they have a lot of weapons. The great thing is Evans has a hamstring, quote unquote, he tweaked it.

He might play, he might not play. I'm okay either way. I just feel like the Bucs are going to win. I just don't see Tom Brady. I don't see this going badly, at least in the first month. I think it's going to go better than people think. And I think people are going to look at this and go, wow, Tom Brady. How do we not see this coming? How do we not see somebody who had one of the worst collection of skill guys in the league last year, and now he's on a team with awesome skill guys. And guess what? He's way better. Man, we should have seen this coming. It feels like a three-point game to me. Whether Evans,

how healthy he's going to be or not, it feels like a three-point game to me. And I think they can win it. And I'm putting $200,000 on it. I think the Bucs will either win it or come damn close. But three-point game and 200K on that. And then the Titans are playing in Denver. Again, I don't like the juju with Denver. I don't know what's going on with them. They just look like the bad omen team for this year. They're getting a little bit of sleeper buzz and then a couple injuries here heading into week one. First, Von Miller goes down. Cortland Sutton leaves practice, shoulder.

I thought he was really good for them last year. I'm not sure I trust Drew Locke. First game of the season on Monday night. And that Titans team was just, you know, one of the four teams that could have won the Superbowl last year and ran into a chief's juggernaut. But that was a really good team that won a lot of games and, and really had an identity. That's what I liked about them the most. They knew who they were. I still feel like they know who they are. They haven't changed that much. They kept the coaching staff intact. The Derrick Henry piece can't be

understated. I am in with them minus two and a half at Denver. That line being under three. I don't see that line being under... I see that line being three or over by the time we get to Sunday. I'm grabbing it now.

Last bet, a teaser. So you heard me say with Sal on Guess the Lions that I really wanted to go against the Jags these first couple weeks until they adjust the lines accordingly. I don't see a lot of hope for the Jags. I don't understand the case for it. This Colts team was a playoff team until Brissette got hurt

and T.Y. Hilton got hurt. And just guys on both sides of the ball, they just had a run of injuries. And I really do feel like that was a playoff team. They brought back Rivers to replace Brissette. They signed Jonathan Taylor,

and they have Jonathan Taylor on the Mac. Their running back's going to be really good. They're going to be able to control the ball. Defense is probably the same as it was last year. Half decent, not unbelievable. They're favored by 7.5 against Jacksonville, and I want to tease that down. I'm teasing that down to 1.5, 6-point tease.

You get to tease it with one more game. I am doing the Steelers who are favored by five and a half on FanDuel over the Giants on Monday night. I could see that be a high scoring game. I just don't see the Steelers losing the first game of the year to the Giants. Sorry, Daniel Jones, no way. So I am teasing the Colts minus seven and a half with the Steelers minus five and a half. All the Steelers have to do is either tie or win. All the Colts have to do is

win by two and bidding 400,000 on this. If I lose, I lose 440,000. So those are the big bets. And then adding a new thing, I need a sponsor for this one. The long shot parlay of the week. Every week I'm going to put 25K on a long shot parlay that I just kind of like. I think the odds for these will always be 8-1, 9-1, 10-1, 11-1, 12-1, something like that. If I hit two during the season, I make money. So I just have to hit two over the course of 17 weeks. Just have to hit two. If I hit three, now I'm rolling. So this one is plus 970 on FanDuel. 25K wins you $242,000. Here's what needs to happen. The Cardinals need to beat the Niners. Now, I really like this one because I think the Cardinals can beat the Niners anyway,

and I considered putting them in a straight-up bet as well for million-dollar picks, but I thought it would be more fun to put them here. They're plus 245 to beat the 49ers. 49ers, banged-up wide receivers, a lot of expectations for a little Super Bowl hangover. Kyler Murray running around doing Kyler Murray things Arizona getting a little buzz as a possible worst to first kind of division champ team

I just like the spot and I think it's one of those things they'll either get demolished by the Niners or it'll actually be a game that they can win so I have them and I have the Washington professional football team plus 210 to beat Philadelphia Who's already had some injuries. The Eagles fans are already grumbling about the team. The season hasn't even started yet. And then Washington

getting some buzz and not just some buzz because of the reprehensible organization that they have and the fact that they had to change their name, which they probably should have done a couple years ago. And to as a big fuck you to everybody, Snyder just named them the football team because he's a dick. That's like what a dick would do, which he is. What the irony is, Ron Rivera is the coach. Two potentially generational defensive players.

A running back that everybody seems to really like, Antonio Gibson. They got rid of Peterson so he could play. Haskins, you know, got, was somebody that people liked as much as Daniel Jones last year. I'm not crazy about him, but who knows? And then Terry McLaurin, who I thought was really good last year, but it's not like they're, they're not the Jaguars, put it that way.

And I would not be shocked if they beat Philly. Here's how not shocked I would be. We're betting 25,000 when 242,000 on a Washington Cardinals money parlay. So there you go. The million dollar picks recap. All these lines are on FanDuel. Colts minus seven and a half teased

with Steelers minus six for $400,000. Lions minus three over Chicago for $200,000. Bucks plus three and a half against New Orleans for $200,000. And Titans minus two and a half over Denver for $200,000. And then the long shot parlay of the week. Washington plus 210. Cardinals plus 245. Together, it's plus 970.

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excited football's back. So excited life feels normal again, even for a couple of days, even though we know it's not normal. Coming up, Rajabell and I are going to talk about Celtics Toronto and a whole bunch more. All right, we're going to get to Rajabell in one second. First, let's talk about Bacardi Spiced Rum. If you are looking to spice up your game day plans, check out Bacardi Spiced Rum for a new take on your favorite old classics, like a rum and Coke. Man, I had a huge rum and Coke phase once upon a time.

You know what else is fun with the Bacardi Spiced Rum? How about mojitos? Yeah, you know what's great? A mojito. You know what's really fun? Spicing it up the Bacardi Spiced Rum? How about mojitos? Yeah. You know what's great? A mojito. You know what's really fun? Spicing it up with Bacardi Spiced Rum. You could do it on Sunday. We have a million games coming up. Bacardi. Do what moves you. Drink responsibly. Bacardi USA. Coral Gables, Florida. Rum with natural flavors and spices. 35% alcohol by volume. And since we're here, I talked about TikTok. Music makes everything better, which is why it's at the core of TikTok's culture. Each time you open the app,

you learn something new. Whether it's a new hot song, new recipes, or even words of encouragement, you're bound to find useful bits of information everywhere you look. The short viral videos on TikTok cover a variety of topics in creative and educational ways, from household hacks to finance tips and lots in between. TikTok, a learning resource and cultural hub that brings helpful and inspiring content directly to you. And it's really fun to surf around there, too. You'll discover new ideas. You'll find unexpected skills, trends, information all in one place.

If you don't know enough about TikTok, check it out. Discover more on TikTok. All right, here's Rajabell. We taped this on Thursday before the Lakers game. So here it is. All right, Rajabell is here. We're taping this Thursday afternoon, East Coast time. So we don't know what happened in Thursday night game.

I don't really care. I hate Kyle Lowry. He's the best Celtics villain in a long, long time. I sports hate him. I don't actually truly hate him, but you once upon a time were this guy on teams. You were the guy who did all the shit he's doing now and you drove the other fans crazy.

You were in players' heads. Are you proud of Kyle Lowry? Do you feel kinship with him or do you see my antipathy for him? I think I can appreciate both sides. I mean, I love what he's doing. And, you know, for a team that lacked a true, like, real superstar, Kyle Lowry's a great player, an all-star year in and year out.

But you wouldn't necessarily think of him as a superstar, traditionally speaking. And Pascal Siakam was kind of supposed to be that and kind of isn't living up to the hype in the playoffs. And Kyle is like, look, I got this. I will do it. Which, I mean, I probably should give him a little bit more respect, put some more respect on his name

in the star category. But I love it. I love seeing a guy be under skin, just hit all the big shots. Some people just have a knack for being an irritant. We talked about it with my younger son. He's just, if he dies for a loose ball, he's going to put an elbow in your throat before he goes for the ball. You know what I mean?

Just shit like that. I always appreciate that. But I also see your side of it, man. It's tough. You guys, this should be over with. It should be a done deal. Yeah. Well, you figure it should have been over in five. It wasn't. And then yesterday I got to give Toronto. So I have so much respect for that team,

the Kyle Lowry, little bullshit stuff aside, the, the heart that they've shown. I think they have an inferior team. I just do. I don't, I think I thought nurse would be out of options going into game six, whereas like he's now tried everything. He's played his guards, crazy minutes. He just doesn't have the players. And then he figures out this game six wrinkle, which was basically play OG and an OB a ton. Don't play a center. And then something I don't ever remember seeing before that I feel like Phoenix, if they could go back in time, would have done with you in 2006. They have Kyle Lowry playing an illegal zone in the middle as this guy who's like, if you drive to the basket, he's taking a charge from you. And I can't remember ever seeing that before. And I can't believe it's working.

Yeah. I definitely can't remember seeing it i i mean there's if you have a guy that's willing to sacrifice his body they're not going to call you for the illegal d because you've mastered the ability to hop in and out of the like restricted area i mean i could see why it would work because today's game is predicated on you know collapsing defenses and kicking out the shooters so if there's going to be a guy there that as you drive is just going to step up and plug the hole with his body you know the problem is they're not a ton of guys that really want to throw their body in front of that consistently over and over and over again. But I do think that's a one game thing. Right. And I got to give Nick Nurse a lot of credit because he's number one willing like and his staff like they have the minds to come up with this type of stuff. Like you saw him the boxing one like last year like you know they'll come up with it number two like a lot of guys can scheme up stuff like that come up with it but they don't necessarily have the balls to throw it out there in a game of that kind of magnitude you know so like you know i got to give them a lot

of credit for that i do think that that's something that when um the celtics go back to the drawing board though they can answer that. They'll dig into that and have an answer. And so it becomes like whether Nick Nurse and staff have something else to throw at them. I thought they figured it out in the overtimes because what they started to do is they were starting to roll Tice on the baseline and just sneak in behind the defense.

Basically use some alley-oops, stuff around the rim and things like that. And that's how you negate that, basically, because if you're just not going to be able to protect the rim at all, you kind of attack it from the sides. Well, you know what's interesting? That's not to cut you off, but that's old-school basketball. Like, right now, you play without someone in the quote-unquote dunker spot. The spot that you saw, like, Tice playing was what you call a dunker.

It's like that, like, halfway out to the three-point line on the baseline. And you're basically sitting and waiting for your man to help. And then you're sneaking to the front of the rim. But today's game is so spread out that you rarely see a guy in that spot. Right. So the Celts figure it out. What they didn't figure out was how to stop the Raptors on the other end. I got to say, I was on a bunch of text threads

the last two days before the game trying to be like, we should win this game, but... And you're always like, all right, what's the but? And it's like, well, if they make 18 to 23s, that's how Toronto stays in the game.

They end up going, I think, 18 for 47 or 19 for 47. And they were tough threes. They got a couple easy ones. Robert Williams just has not figured out the geometry of basketball for some reason. It's like, hey, that circle, they can shoot behind it,

and it's worth three points. He just hasn't clicked with them yet. But Lowry made, I would say, three 28-footers. Van Vliet made at least two 28-footers. And at some point, you got to tip your hat. They scored six straight times in a do or die double overtime with crazy minutes, like crazy.

But I'm also not sure how sustainable that is for game seven. And you were in a situation in oh six where you didn't have Amari. You basically had a six and a half man team. The playoffs is going on. You're playing every other day. And you, and you guys kind of, I thought wore down as the playoffs went along.

Do you see that happening here? Um, see, that's, I don't know. Cause both teams are burning those guys. Like they're, they're burning up their,

their minutes. I think everyone is, is tiring at the same rate in this particular series. Cause you know, they're, they're just, neither team is super deep and, and their main guys have to play a ton of minutes. We did burn out.

I wound up tearing my calf in the Dallas series. And you're just out of bodies. You can't get it done. I think the bubble, because you're only getting that one day's rest, you're going to probably see... I'd take the under maybe in the next game, just because I think, especially in a double overtime game.

I think you're right though. And if you're Boston, you're probably a little conflicted today because there are probably a bunch of things you could look at on film and say, damn, we should have won that game. You know what I mean? But on the flip side of that, you're like, well, how many games are we going to win if we've basically executed our defensive game plan

and they're making the shots that you're talking about? And you alluded to Kyle and Fred Van Vliet and OG on Nobi stepped up and hit some big ones on the pick and pop. And Norman Powell was hitting, like going shot for shot with, like when you're in a game like that, like you're going to tip your hat. And at the same time, you'll feel like you probably could have done some things to close it out. I was afraid of Powell in this series he's one of those sneaky guys

like he's from another era Russo pointed this out like he averaged 16 points a game this year and you look at that and you're like whoa

16 points a game in like 23 minutes or whatever it was he could just fill it the problem for him is like they were basically had to choose between him and OG

if they're playing and Siakam like he basically only played two of the three and then they were like had to choose between him and OG if they're playing in Siakam like you basically only play two of the three and then they were like fuck it we'll just play all three of them and it worked I do feel like the Celtics will be ready for that gimmick but I look at it from the Celtics side my biggest fear with this team heading into this whole thing was you have two young guys who have had real playoff success already, but have not been the favorites. And I think it's different when you have the expectation of,

we're supposed to win this. The pressure is on us. The other team's got nothing to lose. They had nothing to lose the year they almost made the finals in 18. Kyrie goes out. It's like, well, we're not supposed to be here. And then they keep winning and you can feed off that so you have these two guys who've never been in the spot of like

holy shit we're supposed to win things aren't going our way how do we deal with that and then Kemba who's really never been in the postseason and hasn't played an important game since UConn basically and Kemba was terrible repeat terrible

in the game yesterday. And granted, they did a boxing one on him. They threw him off a little bit. He got torched defensively and was just clearly inferior to Van Vliet and Lowry. Is that a bad game or was there something more going on there? No, I think he had a bad game.

You know, boxing ones are designed to do that as much as they are to really have an effect on what you're doing offensively. Like you're when someone boxing ones, you, it starts playing mind games with you, right? It's, it's there to affect the person, um, that you're boxing and wanting. And I don't even mean necessarily just from like purely a basketball standpoint, you're in his head now. Like, what am I going to do? Like, you know, normal offense doesn't work here.

I'm out of the game. You start pressing a little bit. You shot a couple you don't want to shoot. Now you're not, you know, now you're playing mind games with yourself because you feel like you're cold and someone else is hot. Do I shoot the ball more?

Like, there's a lot of stuff that goes into that. Do I become a facilitator? And I think it just played some games with Kemba. It took him out of what he wanted to do. But I've seen Kemba operate even in this series. I'm not worried about Kemba bouncing back in Game 7. I don't think that they have the answer for

Kemba necessarily. But the Celtics better hope that I'm right because without Kemba, they would have to have almost perfect games from Jalen and Marcus Smart. And Tatum, who hasn't been good in five games. Right.

Yeah. They really miss Hayward. I mean, it's not even worth talking about. I think he brought so many good things to the table, and as frustrating as he was sometimes, he just knows how to play basketball and the ball moves. And when Toronto's doing something like they did in game six, where they're just like, we're going all small,

that would have been perfect for the Celtics. They would, they probably would have taken Tice out and just had Hayward and be like, we are five small guys are better than your small guys. Let's go. I think with the, the Kemba piece that I don't understand is if the box and one worked so well against him, why wouldn't the Celtics use that against Kyle Lowry? Like if this is working so well, maybe, maybe adapt it because everything Toronto is doing is coming through those two guards. Siakam has been really, really terrible. Even his best game in game four, wasn't even that good of a game. And they've, it seems like they figured out how to handle him. It's the guards that they cannot

handle. They cannot handle the little sneaky picks and go under the guy. They're shooting a 28 footer. You go over all of a sudden they grow in the basket. What would you do if you, let's say you're, you're in the market smart spot, which I think is a nice comparison. Actually, we take 2006 Raja and you're just Marcus smart, right? What would you do? What would be your moves? Like I'm guarding i'm guarding kyle lowry straight up you're guarding lowry and maybe a little van vliet and you're also kind of roaming as a free safety a little bit yeah that's that's a it's a good question um you know i i always like to start with with guys like that um trying to keep the ball out of their hands like so if i'm if one of

them is handling and i and i can't probably pick you up 94 feet, if I'm on the other one, like if Van Vliet's got it, I'm trying to deny Kyle Lowry the ball, right? Like, I really believe in getting guys off of spots if I can get you off of a spot, you know? So that's kind of where I start. I, you know, I'm a big believer, and we talked about this last time I was on the pod,

is like, as a defender, I'm only as good as the help you're going to give me ultimately in today's NBA, because there are going to be so many screenset, right? So like, yeah, I can jam you. Like I can try to be up in your shorts or I can play off of you, but there's, there's a screen coming eventually. And so, you know, I'm a believer in what you've seen, like in some of the Western conference series where they've just said, all right, we're going to throw a team at kawaii and it might not produce over the course of a series but it screwed him up in game what was it two like where

they just caught him off guard like kawaii was like oh shit what am i gonna do you've seen them do it to um you've seen them do it to lebron at times like you saw it happen in the utah and denver series where i'd like to make kyle lowry off the ball. And you got to pick one because you can't do it to both of them. You can't run around trapping both of those little guards. But I'm going to start with Kyle Lowry because I think he's the engine that makes that thing go. Fred VanVleet's great and he could probably beat you himself. But I don't think that if you can subtract Kyle Lowry from the equation, they're going to beat you more often than you'll beat them. I think that you need Kyle Lowry, what he brings to the table.

And so I'm going to chop that off if I can by trapping the shit out of it every time you bring a ball screen to it. What do you see them doing to Tatum? Because Tatum was in this incredible zone for about six, seven weeks before the pandemic hit where he was playing so freely

and he just wasn't thinking anymore. I always know when he's not a hundred percent himself. Cause you can, you kind of see the wheels turning. It's certain look on his face and you can see him trying to figure stuff out versus when he's just him and Jalen, when they're just going, you can feel it. Yeah. Toronto's doing stuff to him. And my, just from watching, it seems like the two things they're doing are anytime he's like the two things they're doing are anytime he's driving the lane, they're diving at his feet, trying to make it when he puts the ball on the ground, they're making it super uncomfortable for him. His handle's good, but not great. And I

think Toronto sniff that out. And then they're just being really physical with them. And he doesn't get the respect from the refs that I feel like, you know, the superstars get, and maybe he shouldn't because he's young. What else are you seeing other than those two things? No, I think you, you took the words out of my mouth. You hit what I was going to, I use the words like taking your space away. Like that's what I see them doing to him. Right. And you know, the reason why I couldn't employ a tactic like that, when you asked me about Kyle Lowry is he's so little, I can't get underneath him. You know, as a, as a six, five defender, I can't get underneath him. As a 6'5 defender, I can't get underneath 6 foot. But as those

two smaller guards and even normal Powell, Jason Tatum is what? 6'7", 6'8"? He's 6'8 and a half. You're getting underneath him. You're on his feet. You're taking away just the little bit of comfortableness that he has with the ball and affecting his rhythm

with that. So that's number one. And number two is, is they, they are being more physical, but what I like, this is part of his maturation as an offensive player. Like you can't let that affect you. Cause there are plenty of opportunities where they're not touching him up and it's in it's, it's affected him. Like, it's almost like he's waiting for the touch up, like the really great ones. And when he'll be there, he'll get there get there you know he'll probably get there in game seven but the point is like they're not worried about it they know it's coming watch kawaii play he's initiating the bump like because he just knows that it's coming so you initiate it you would you account for it already and if it doesn't come well then that's just icing on the cake i

think he started to be affected by it and you see him looking for it instead of just playing. But the part that's really jacking with him, in my opinion, is them taking his space away. They're underneath his feet. Yeah. Well, you know, yeah, they're diving at him on the spin move, which is his favorite move. The thing that they're doing that I didn't think would work where you pointed out with having him being guarded by much smaller guys. And it's in his head because sometimes he, when he turns, he has his elbows up and Van Vliet's just going to lean into his elbow and then dive back. And then it's like, foul. Um, when he turns into the shoulder, same thing. So he's now turning just to create space for himself, but he's afraid that he's going to commit an offensive foul. And once he crossed that line, he hasn't been the same.

Yeah, that's interesting. So, you know, I teach kids. Like, I coach at a high school, and I'm trying to teach my young boys how to play. And I always, like, I always revert back to that, like, thinking about them, because I didn't play the way these guys play. Like, I didn't have the ball as much as Jason Tatum had,

and I didn't have all that. But I, you know, I guarded those guys, so I know what they do. didn't have the ball as much as Jason Tatum had and I didn't have all that. But I, you know, I guarded those guys so I know what they do. When Kobe had the ball against me, once he turned, like, unless I got it really low with a low strip,

but, like, Jason Tatum doesn't bring the ball that low. Once he turns and elevates on a fadeaway, there's nothing I can do. So, that's what I say by, like, he looks like he's being, like like too concerned with the

defense. You're you have eight inches. So if the spin is your move, once you get into that and you don't feel somebody taken away, like a true charge, just go up and shoot the ball, bro. Like, don't worry about a foul. Trust it. That like the angle that you fade away at is going to create enough space for the elbow, not to hit him in the face and and just play like that i think he's preoccupied with like i saw him turn a couple times last night and it's almost like a like a head fake as if someone was going to block the shot they're not blocking your shot just shoot it they they figured out how to defend him by getting in his head and the other piece of that is lowry waiting for him underneath the basket because this is one of fell out and it's like if i just drive freely to the basket I got this little guy who's the best in the league

at taking charges. It's funny. You mentioned Kobe. Cause I was thinking about him, you know, they, I think they had a pretty good relationship and it was a running joke in Boston last year when Tatum his offense, you know, he was just shooting 22 footers and like, oh man, thanks for the advice, Kobe and stuff like that. But this is a situation where I think Kobe would be probably the best equipped in the world to tell Tatum like, all right, they're doing this. Here are

the three tricks. Because Kobe and Jordan were the two out of anybody we've had that figured out how to master shit like this. Where it's like, oh, you're going to do this? I'm going to get my spot here. I'm going to end up doing what I want to do. And I feel like Kawhi is weirdly moving into that territory because Kawhi plays at his speed. He doesn't care what you're doing, and he's going

to get the exact shot he wants to get, which really reminds me of Kobe. Obviously, he's not as gifted as Kobe. I do wonder if Tatum's going to get there four or five years from now, but he's so far away from being that guy and that's who they need. Yeah, it's a great point. Kawhi has the most Kobe true, like late 90s scoring vibe to him where that's the way they played, man.

Like you weren't going to speed it up. They were going to get you to a spot and they talk about it. Talk to Richard Hamilton, who's a good buddy of mine. And he talks about the way he was taught the game is if he could get to a spot, then the shot, he was good to go. And so they worked off of spots. These guys now work off of getting into their move.

If they can get to their move, they feel good about the shot. So it's not necessarily about the spots. But to your point, in this series, where they're up underneath your feet, not going to let not necessarily about the spots but to your point in this series where they're up underneath your feet not going to let you get into your bag into your move and you can't get all the way to the rim which is like you know analytically those are the two the three and the and the layup is what you want well then it becomes about getting to a spot a spot before the help can get there a spot where your length really is your advantage because there's nothing that small guard can do about it.

And I just don't... Yeah, Jason, he has to mature into that. And I think an off season, obviously it'd be really dope if he could still have Kobe to talk to him about that. But somebody will be in his ear. He'll understand because all you got to do is watch Kawhi.

You know, just watching this series, it's hard not to think about spots because all know, just watching this series, it's hard not to think about spots because all of the guys in this series have specific spots. Kemba, who I've gotten

to watch all year and really study and enjoy, he has that one move where he drives into the paint, draws the big guy toward him,

but then does the two-step drop back little 14-footer and it's kind of unstoppable. And it's very similar to the, to the Chris Paul move that Chris Paul mastered over the 12 years, right? Where he drives left to right, ends up darts backwards

and takes that little shot at the top of the foul line on the right side. And it's just a shot. And the really well-coached teams know about those spots. And I do feel like that's been a problem with Toronto. Toronto knows that move. And they're literally playing him for it before he's even doing it. And I think that's throwing him off too.

But that was like your favorite thing, right? To figure out these are the three spots I'm taking all three away. Yeah. So Logan and I talked Monday on the NBA show about film study. And we were talking, the conversation was revolving around Russ and him needing to go back to the drawing board and figure out what was happening to him.

But I was talking about what would happen from a film perspective when you went into a playoff series. So if Bill Simmons was my matchup, my primary matchup, I would get, at the time they were DVDs, now they'd just be videos of what you do and where you like to be. Oh, so it would have been so easy for me. It's just like, all I do is shoot from 20 feet, just stand next to me. So, so I would already, that's why I'd be

standing right next to you. Right. I'm like, fuck, he figured me out. I got it. Well, that was basically me. So we'd be doing it to each other. Um no, that's what you do. And that's why seven game series, it does become like what coaches can make that adjustment, what players can make that adjustment from game to game. Because typically, guys aren't going to let you get done what you want to get done. Because I've watched enough film to know what you want to do. And it becomes my job over the course of how many games we got in this series to try to stop you from doing it. Um, I have two huge questions for you, but we're going to take a quick break. All right, we're back. Here's my huge question. Number one about Toronto, Boston. I've come to hate Nick nurse. You're not, you're not going to be surprised to know this sports hate, not actually. I truly detest him. And he does a bunch of shady shit in the sidelines culminating during game six, where he goes all the way down to the court illegally and Tatum passes it to him because guess what? There's not supposed to be a coach standing on the bottom of the court. Now you're going to love this because nobody's ever mentioned

this to you. I like, I like to throw wrinkles at you. You played with somebody who is one of the three legendary dicks as a coach of all time, Mike D'Antoni, who has a move that he's been doing for 15 plus years and has never gotten called

out on it. When the other team is shooting a free throw, he waits, he stands near like the kind of the hash mark near mid court. And as the guy's lining up all of a sudden starts walking. So he's in the eye vision of the guy on the right and then throws his hands up pretending he's yelling at the ref and he does this every game. And nobody says Jack shit about it. Did you know he was doing that when you played for him?

I had no idea. Oh, stop it. I had no idea Mike D'Antoni would resort to... Oh my God, he's the worst. He pulls all those tricks. Mike is a saint. Certain coaches

admit that certain coaches do do shit like this. Oh, absolutely. Coaches have their bag of tricks. Do you think Nick Nurse did that on purpose last night? I think he I think when he's on the court on the defensive end like that

it's intentional. I think everything that dude does is intentional. I think he's the best coach in the league. Every single decision they make the way he works the refs the way even like they're getting blown out by 29 and he's fucking working the refs, working the refs, working the refs any sort of charge the fact that, I mean refs, I saw Tony brothers yesterday and I was

like, Oh no, this is, I don't know who this is going to be bad for, but it's going to be bad for somebody. Cause it's, it just is always so disjointed when he's the ref. They had no control of that game down the stretch. It was out of control at all. And, and we had, so in the first half, Lowry really tries to hurt Jalen Brown. And if it's like, if we're going to go flagrants and intent to injure all that stuff, it's like, I don't know how that's not an intent to injure when you stick your leg and

you undercut somebody like that. Is that a hundred percent an undercut? Yes. They didn't even review it. Yeah. I, there's the inconsistency with the NBA and what is a flagrant versus what's not a flagrant.

You're talking to the wrong guy on that. I have no, I think it's all ridiculous. My opinion across the board on that is it's ridiculous. All of them. Well, so we were reviewing, like there was one play, Marcus, he's jumping forward to block VanVleet's three. Right. Right?

He's trying to contest the three and he lands and he lands straight. He doesn't land with his feet out. He literally lands because he jumped. He lands straight, but when Van Vliet landed, his foot landed on Marcus, which could happen in any play. There was no intent at all and it was a flagrant. Lowry's doing five things a game

that there is intent and they're somehow not able to monitor that. I thought that was crazy, But then, you know, the big thing with the refs at the end of the game was Kemba doesn't get that call. Kemba gets hacked on that layup with two seconds left. He got hacked. Yeah, he got shoved in the back. Yeah. And they just

they decided not to call it. Stevens didn't challenge it for whatever reason. Well, they they like I think a rush job is to like you're there to manage way too many of them like way too many of them think they're the show. Like I think a ref's job is to, you're there to manage. Way too many of them think they're the show. I think the best refs have a game that goes off clean and no one's sitting here talking about the calls on Thursday morning and nobody really knows who the refs were, right?

But that rarely happens. I felt like they just lost control. They decided that they were going to swallow their whistle late in that game. And it just turned into a wrestling match and a bunch of bad flops. Everybody was diving all over the court. And I was a flopper.

So when you have me sitting here saying, Jesus Christ, man, you guys got to get up. Yeah, when you're upset about it, you know it's going to rock. Right. So I felt like they really did lose control. And Kemba's play highlighted it. It was obvious, you know, it was obvious and it was late enough.

But with enough time on the clock where I felt like they should have made that call and gave Toronto a chance to get the ball back. Like, you make that call. Well, when you have a disjointed, poorly officiated game like that, it favors Nick Nurse because he knows every trick. He's going to work it left and right. And Stevens, who I love, but my big criticism of him would always be like, he doesn't get mad enough about this stuff sometimes.

I think he likes to have this calm demeanor for his team. I think his team handles itself a certain way, which leads me to my second question after we finish talking about what a cheater Nick Nurse is. Does the Celtics team, do you think they've gotten knocked out of themselves with all the bullshit that has nothing to do with basketball in this series?

Because Toronto is playing every trick in the book and Lowry has been the alpha dog of this series. Now look at the Celtics. Tatum's young. Jalen is one tough motherfucker, but he's young. Kemba hasn't really been in it before. He's the nicest guy in the league, greatest guy in the league.

Everybody raves about how awesome he is. And it's really just smart as like kind of the badass to fight back. Is Toronto taking advantage of this? Yeah, I think you could see as the series went on, like when Boston came out of the blocks, they were Boston. They were playing Boston basketball.

And it wasn't just because they blew Toronto out, but they looked like they were more true to themselves in the way they were playing, the style they were playing. You only had one guy really out there for Boston, but he does it all the time in Marcus Smart. It was kind of engaging in the bullshit. As the series going on, you see more people engaging in the bullshit um as the series going on you see more people you know engaging in in the bs right like more more crying more flopping more stuff like that

and i think you did see it come to a head at the end of the game and i'm i'm fine with two teams you know beefing after the game and getting into it i got no problem with that but i think it gives you a little glimpse into like the celtics being a little probably rattled by what's going on you know what i mean like just not themselves as as you put it and the but the good news is like in the nba like that shit's gone like we let's let's get back to business we'll go back to the film let's let's see what's happening to us let's devise a game plan let's execute and we'll come out here you know tomorrow night and be ready to go so i think they can get rid of that, but they have fallen in to playing a style

that is more conducive to Toronto winning, 100%. Toronto made it more chaotic. They stole game three. And they semi-stole the game yesterday. I actually thought they played better for the most part. But it feels like they've outwitted the Celtics in this series. The fact that it's

three to three is ridiculous to me. The series should be over and I blame the Celtics more than almost that I credit the Raptors. Because even though

I have so much respect for the Raptors, they're doing what they've done for the last couple years. And it feels in some ways like Boston's like been blindsided by some of this stuff. It's like, Whoa,

what's this? It's like, yeah, this is playoff basketball. Yeah. It's happening. You have to fucking fight for this. And I think that brings us to this game seven,

where it's like Boston has a better team and Toronto is mentally tougher than them so far. And we've seen this play out one in two ways. One is the mentally tough team. Just, just they, that's it. They,

they put the foot on the neck and they finish it. Or you have this, this is becomes a get over the hump game. The Celtics get through this. They fought this great champ. They got tested. They got pushed to the extreme. And I'm starting to think now

if they win this series, I think it really helps them the next two rounds. This is the best. This is the best. It almost reminds me, my guy Sugar Ray Leonard, my favorite boxer.

He fought Benitez when he won the title and it was a 15 round war and it got him like ready to fight Tommy Hearns and all the guys he ended up fighting. This feels like it could be that for Boston or it could go the other way and it could be like,

holy shit, we're not as good as we thought we were. And it's this great reckoning. Well, yeah, that's what it's, I mean, it's going to come down to,

you know, whether or not you're, you're Jason Tatum's, you know, look, Marcus Smart can Jason Tatum's, you know. Look, Marcus Smart can't be like your most reliable scorer. I love Marcus Smart. He can't be your creator. He can barely dribble.

I mean, look, I love him, but he can't be the guy that you're. So it's going to come down to whether Boston can get Jason Tatum, Kemba Walker, offensively in rhythm and producing, and whether Toronto can continue to junk it up and just disrupt what they're trying to do and have at least three guys get buckets. I can't even ask, at this point, I can't even ask Siakam to show up. I think if Siakam were to really show up in the game, Boston could be in real trouble. But they've been getting a

little bit of production from everybody, Kyle Lowry, Van Vliet, Powell. But if they can junk it up and Boston falls into play in that way, I think you're going to see that they're champions for a reason. I mean, Kawhi's not there, but the rest of those guys played huge roles. But I do believe if you can get Kemba and Jason Tatum cooking, and they're playing fluidly offensively and feeling in a good rhythm, I think they're too much for Toronto. I think with Siakam, it's interesting. This happened to Anton Walker in the early 2000s,

where Celtics had a couple of playoff runs there in 2002 and 2003. And Anton was an all-star and was considered to be one of the young, up-and-coming star forwards and all that stuff. And he ran into the Nets team two years in a row. And the Nets just solved him. And he was just awful in both of those series. And honestly, his career was never the same. And the free throw shooting got in his head,

stuff like that. But the Nets were doing stuff in that series and you start to realize like, oh, you're actually pretty limited with this. I can't decide if we're there yet with Siakam, but the first six games, he just seems offensively a little bit limited. They keep trying to establish him as a low post guy and run stuff through him. And as a Celtics fan, I'm just like, great, please, please, please keep giving it to him. We can actually slow him down. And I don't know if he's having a bad series or if this is just who he is. Cause it might just be who is Juwan Howard is another guy like this, where in the playoffs people unlocked, just kind

of had to stop him. And then all of a sudden you become, you're shooting 20 footers. You're not really getting anything else. It's like, well, that's great. We'll take those every day. Yeah. It's funny. It's funny. You say that. that um i don't know that i have an opinion on it but i what i said to myself last night i'm worried about pascal siakam not in this series but in what i think he could have been and whether this derails that whether this is something that really stops him from from reaching potential that i thought and i don't know if I was right, but I thought he had a lot more trajectory to go in his game.

And I thought he could reach, you know, like semi-stardom. But this one, you know what? I was watching him last night. I was watching his body language. I was watching some of the shots. And he kept plugging away, like hit a nice little baseline 15-footer,

like was a big bucket at one point in the game. But some of the shots were barely drawing iron. And he didn't look like he was really comfy. And I was like, damn, that doesn't look like a guy who's a star. Like, you know what I mean? I hope it doesn't really get in the way of him becoming what I hope he can become. He might be like a Luol Deng or, you know, kind of in that mode where it's like a nice guy to have on your team.

But I'm with you. Especially the first six weeks of the season, it was like, oh man, this guy's became like kind of mini Kawhi. And he's really struggled. But the thing that's interesting is the Celtics are just not double teaming him. Like they actually don't really respect him.

And I think that would be the alarming thing for him going forward. Just like, I don't really respect them. Yeah. And I think that would be the alarming thing for him going forward. Um, just like, I don't really know what he should add to his game. I don't love his low post game. And it seems like the three point game would be the bigger advantage for him. So he's, he's kind of, he's in a weird way, kind of a tweener where he's like, he can't be like your top scoring option, but he's, he's kind of overqualified to just sit in the corner. Yeah. And I don't really know how to unlock that. He has to sharpen up.

Like if he wants to take that next step. Right now, he's a great transition player. Like he flourishes when you're out and the floor is wide open and he can kind of unfold at the rim like Giannis-ish, if you will. You know, he's got good length and he can get downhill. But the game really slows down at playoffs. You see it. It just slows down.

You're not getting out on the break that much. And so you have to really sharpen up your skill set. To your point, like there were a lot of chances last night for you to go one-on-one with someone who's not as big as you on the block, height or body-wise. You didn't capitalize with any kind of punishment down there and then you know you're not skilled enough with the ball in your hand to really you know start offense um so like if you're going to be in the half court to take that next step to stardom you have to produce like in the half court like you have to be able to get a bucket no matter

what like guys that kawaii gets a bucket regardless you I don't give a damn I'm getting a bucket yeah LeBron bucket James Harden bucket like you you know those guys to give Kevin Durant bucket um but their skills are sharp enough to get you a bucket whether you're in transition half court pick and roll you know they do it all he's got to sharpen up that skill set Jalen's a little bit like that too I think Jalen has more ways to impact the game offensively just because he's such an incredible athlete. He's such a good shooter and transition stuff like that. But when they try to post them up and stuff, there are similar results. Like he just doesn't, he hasn't figured out that piece of his game. Uh, all right, before we wrap up this, just talking about the rap salts, I know you're texting Larry. Just admit it to me.

We, you know, you just joined the ringer recently. You joined us like a month ago. I want us to get past this because I feel like you're his Mr. Miyagi where he's Daniel's son or whatever. You're his mentor. You're like, hey man, you should do that. When you drive on Tice, just grab his right arm.

They won't call it and pull him into you and do a charge. And I just know you're advising him. Just admit it. I wish I could take credit for that, man. But I love his game. But, you know, I love one of the self. I love Marcus Smart's game, too. They're one in the same.

Like, I think Kyle Lowry is a little better offensively. Not a little, a lot better offensively. But, like, what they do, the two of them as irritants and just guys that'll take whatever you give them is priceless. Well, that's why Stan Van Gundy really made me mad the other night when he was criticizing Marcus for flopping, but praising everything Kyle Lauer is doing. I was like, you can't have this both ways. You're on one side or the other, Stan Van Gundy.

A couple other bubble things I just wanted to hit quickly. I sent you a tweet from Tim McMahon at ESPN about how jazz VP, Dennis Lindsay mentioned that lack of travel has led to an improved product in the bubble. And he suggests the league tries to reduce travel and maybe do baseball style series. Once things go back to normal, he said the players feel better. And frankly,

we need to listen to the players. I just look at the game. We watched last night, the Toronto Celtics game six, which was a hardwood classics, incredible game that though we'll be watching that on NBA TV, 20 years from now, the shot making, um, the ball movement, how it was so atypical from the shit we've been watching. I mean, yeah, they threw up a lot of threes, but there's movement and coaches trying to figure each other out. As we mentioned earlier, like the little Tice adjustment was sending him to the rim and just this higher level of basketball.

It was just thrilling to watch. Do you feel like the bubble had anything to do with that? Listen, the bubble, bubbles clearly had an effect in a positive way on the product. I feel I don't have to, I can agree with that part of what Dennis Lindsay said and, and still tell you that I don't want to see baseball style series, but I don't think you can discount how much it does for you to be able to

leave a game, hit the locker room for 15 or 20 minutes, whatever it takes 30 minutes, and then be back in your hotel in 15 more minutes and be back at game planning or back at breaking down film or back at, you know, a dinner table and then in the bed, you know, when you, when you're traveling, Bill, and yes, coaches are doing film and breaking shit down on the plane. Like they're doing that, but it's disjointed. You leave the floor, then you got to hop in the locker room,

then you got to hop on a bus, and then you got to break your laptop down, and you got to get off the bus. Then you got to go through security, and then you got to get on the plane, then you got to break your laptop out. You got to do that again, all over again, when you get off the plane, and then do it again. No one's going to be as focused as they could be if you were just like, all right, guys, we're back at the hotel.

Let's break our shit down. In a league full of one percenters, you're looking for whatever fraction of a percent you can get to have an advantage. And I think it's there. I think it's, you're seeing it unfold in front of you. And from a player's perspective, you know, being able to get real nutrition, like real food in a real bed,

real treatment, get off your feet in a timely fashion. Like that's huge for your ability to recover. I think the way they could do it, because I thought about it. I thought that was a really interesting idea by him. So you got, you're playing in your conference. You're playing, you're playing the other conference once. That's 30 games.

And you're playing everybody in your own conference 52 times. I think you play your division four times because it's closer. Would it be a better league if it's like, oh, we have two road games, Celtics at Toronto. We'll play them on a Friday and Sunday. Celtics get in there on a Thursday and they stay till Sunday night. And instead of them flying four different cities, maybe just pair that up. So it's like, we know we have those two road games. Just put them together.

Yeah, I mean, in theory, yes. What that does to me as a viewer who's used to seeing a variety of different games, like being able to see Miamiami play you know orlando on a monday night and then see them like in texas on like a wednesday night like i don't know what that does to me right like i just don't know because i've watched the nba for so long and you rarely see that back to back like utah versus denver you know you know what i mean like it happens once in a while but i don't know what that does to the overall product when you've got

multiple teams doing that on the same weekend. I don't know if that makes sense. All right. Let's go personal experience for you. It's 2006. Yeah. You have two Lakers road games, and they're going to be Friday night, Sunday night.

You have this now circled on your schedule. Go in L.A. First of all, in L. You have this now circled on your schedule. Go in LA. First of all, in LA, great. Second, I got Kobe on a Friday night at 8 o'clock, and then I have him Sunday, 1230. Staying in LA all weekend, going at him twice. You can't tell me that wouldn't be the one

you circled on your schedule. Oh, no doubt. No doubt. I mean, look, but there's more to that story than just like being fresh and, and, and wanting to like, there's a lot that goes into that, right? There's a personal, that's a personal thing. I wanted those types of games personally, not just Kobe, but all the big ones. Like if you could have just eliminated some of the bad games on our schedules, I was for

it because I liked the big games. But I think there's something to it. I'm not saying no. I'm saying I certainly don't want the long, drawn-out baseball series. I know I don't want that. If you could pair up some of those back-to-backs, and we do two, I could try it. I just don't know if as a basketball purist from when I was young

and if the viewing experience would be the same for me. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I think there's a couple reasons plays better. I think having the same shooting background for two straight months is undeniably helpful. Yeah. I was on this early from 48 hours into watching basketball in the bubble. The thing that jumped out to me the most was the no cameraman under the basket. And I don't know if you and I have talked about this yet, but I was watching how hard the guys were driving in the basket without the fear of breaking their leg,

ripping their ACL or whatever, or crashing a cameraman. I was like, wow, this is actually an advantage for the teams that, especially the dudes that go flying to the basket. They don't have to worry about it. Now we're also seeing like even an inbounds plays and stuff where you have more room, you can step back most famously, like how Lowry did. There is a lot of stuff that's conducive to playing better offensively.

I feel like, um, I don't, I don't know that guys would consciously feel like there was more room there to drive harder. I'm not going to tell you that that's not a thing, but I don't know that I would be thinking about that. You know what I mean? I don't know that I'd be like,

damn, I can attack this cup harder because I don't have to run into the front row. The guy I noticed it with was Tatum. Yeah? Because I do feel like Tatum, because he has so much start to finish speed in a 15 feet span that there were tight. You were just constantly terrified. He was going to crash into the camera guys. And now I've noticed he's when he goes to the basket, he's

going and sometimes he's going six feet past the basket and then he's got to like run back into the play. So that, that, that's one guy that I know it's helped. Yeah, look, there's a lot of stuff that goes into playing a regular NBA game that's distracting. They're just distractions. I mean, it's a great atmosphere to play basketball in. We're all conditioned to do it. You, for the most part, tune all the stuff out.

It becomes white noise. But I mean, all of that is a distraction. When you want the best product, like when you tell a kid to study like and like to really try to you know get prepared you don't tell them to go in there and do it in front of like you know 10 000 people screaming and yelling like the you want them in a in a contained environment you want quiet you want and so i i think that when you put guys in gyms minus the distractions when and you couple it with all the other stuff like the

rest and the background and all of that, I think you're going to get a better product. We talked about Miami a little bit the last time. Who's more of a Rajah Belt team, Miami or Toronto? That's a great question. Thank you. I think it's Miami. I figured.

I think it's Miami. Yeah. They're just some... I really get down. And full disclosure, not a Heat fan. Me neither. Yeah. I're just some, they're, they, I really get down and full disclosure, not a heat fan. Like me neither. Yeah. I don't, I don't have hated him for years.

I didn't grow up one, even though I'm from Miami. And then I never got to play for him, which was like, I was a little sour about that, but they're really, really fun to watch. They play really hard and they got a bunch of dudes who I appreciate because

you wouldn't necessarily look at him and be like, Hey, yeah, he's, he's tough and he can score it and he can do, but they got a bunch of dudes who I appreciate because you wouldn't necessarily look at him and be like, Hey, yeah, he's, he's tough and he can score it and he can do, but they got a bunch of guys out there that could put it in the bucket and defend and they're tough as nails. Well,

this is where I get to brag about picking a Miami Clippers finals. Did you really? Yeah. Pre bubble or. Pre bubble playoffs. Pre bubble. 40 to one odds in case you were wondering. Shit, that's a good call.

I just liked how tough and weird they were. And as they proved in the Milwaukee series, tough and weird. And I know you talked about Giannis with Logan on Monday, so we don't need to do that. My question for you, as somebody who loves this stuff, and especially a guy like

Jimmy Butler, who just carries himself. I was saying how there was a tweet the other day about how he's like jewels and pulp fiction with the kind of intensity and that he would definitely be the guy in the league who has the bad-ass motherfucker wallet. The intensity that he has, can that actually be counterproductive as the stakes kept getting higher here? Where he's... Basically, is he the guy you want deciding games for you offensively

in round three and round four? In a perfect world, I would say no. And I hate to do that because Jimmy's been fantastic. But in a perfect world, I would say no. And I hate to do that because Jimmy's been fantastic. But in a perfect world, I'd want a pure scoring guy to be the decider. But they don't play like that. He fits what they do. If he needs a bucket, he gets it.

And he's tough enough where if he can't get it he's going to get to the free throw line but he also has a really good feel for for like being able to know when the other guys in a zone like a you know a point guard skill if you will even though he's not a true pg like he really is good about drawing defenses and getting it to these guys in position so i i think as the stakes get higher, the way this team is built, the style that they play, Jimmy's fine for it. I mean, if you told me I was building another type of team

and I could have Jimmy or Kevin Durant taking Kevin Durant, but I think Jimmy's good for this team. And he hasn't lost his cool. I think the fieriness and the fuck you attitude that he's got only becomes a negative if you see him start to like cross the line, I haven't seen him cross the line really. So I'm not really drinking on it. Yeah.

It's weird. It doesn't make sense to me that he could be the number one guy in a title team. But yet when I watch this team, he makes complete sense for the guys they have and how they feed off him and the way he carries himself. And you know, I,

the, when I knew they were going to win the Milwaukee series was after game two. And they just kind of walked off the court. Like, like whatever they did in game one, two, but I was like, Oh,

this is interesting. Are they doing this? Cause it was only game one. They know it's a long series in game two is same thing. I was like, yeah. All right. See you guys.

See you guys for game three. And you could just tell they knew they were going to win. And I think that a lot of that comes from him. My question is, you go to these next two rounds. Now you got Tatum and Brown and Boston makes it. Now you're in a little quid pro quo battle with those guys. But then the round after that, now you have LeBron and Kawhi waiting. And the best and worst thing

about Jimmy Butler is he really does think he's as good as those guys. And I love guys like that. But he really genuinely is like, hey, I get to play with my peers. My peer, Kawhi Leonard. It's good to see you again.

Haven't seen you since the game seven where we battled. And like, oh, it it's you LeBron James I can't wait to go head to head with my peer and which is an amazing thing but ultimately it could be their downfall I don't know how it's going to play out well I think first of all

like you don't exist as Jimmy Butler without that belief the irrational confidence you have to have it. And then secondly, I could make a case that although he's not LeBron,

AD, or Kawhi, the rest of his team is better than I think the rest of the other teams. Totally agree. Do you know what I mean? They're more unpredictable. You just don't know. All of a sudden, it's like, oh, that's heroes going to run their

offense in the last three minutes of this game. It's like, all right. And they're hella consistent. Two weeks ago, I said that the Heat could win the Eastern Conference, could not beat the Lakers and the Clippers. And then a week ago, I was like, well, why can't they? Because neither one of those

teams has been able to consistently put it on wax and the Heat are doing it every night. I want to talk quickly. Let's take a quick break, then we'll talk Lakers and then we'll go. Hey, you can turn your dream into a reality with Squarespace to make it easier than ever to launch your passion project. Whether you're looking to start a new business, showcase your work, publish content, sell products, and more, Squarespace is the tool for you. Beautiful templates created by world-class designers. The ability to customize just about anything with a few clicks. You can easily make a beautiful website yourself.

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use the offer code BS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that is squarespace.com slash BS offer code BS. You mentioned the Lakers. So Rondo saves them in game three with a classic old school Rondo. Rondo's got to be one of your guys, right? He's another guy. It's great.

Fantastic. You love he's, he's up to shit. He's doing stuff. Yes. And he was great. And that game was rockets up by one with 10 minutes left. And then Lakers get hot and they flipped the game. LeBron has been awesome.

The last two games, not a surprise. Davis has gotten whatever he's wanted. Not a surprise at the same time. The series is closer than I expected. And even though the Lakers are up to one, I don't feel the same way that I felt about the Clipper series, where it was like, Oh, this, the Clipper series is over. And it was over after game two, um, or after, after game one, in my opinion, this Lakers series, what are the Rockets have to do to beat them three out of four times? In your opinion, is it as simple as James Harden just has to be the best player in three

games? No, no, that, that would help, but he needs, he needs help. He's got to get,

they have to make shots. He's got to get... They have to make shots. They got to make threes. They have to open up the lanes for James Harden and Russ to both be able to get downhill at the rim. Right now, you've seen... At times, the Lakers will really collapse those, really do a good job of trapping James and getting it out of his hands.

And, you know, James does have to be the best player. Cause like what he does is kind of bugs me out late in games. Like, I don't, I don't understand for a guy that good who kind of just, I mean,

when he just is happy to recede into the background, three minutes left, completely bugs me out. But, but he, so he's gotta be the best player, but he needs guys to be able to make enough shots where they stop doing their shit,

where they're like, all right, we got to play honest. Like Austin Rivers, like we always joke, he's a friend of the show that I'm on Monday with Logan. But you got to make shots, bro. Like you got to step up and make shots. And so, yeah, coupling of James Harden and those guys making shots. And then I do think they've got to pick one

of either AD or LeBron and try to stop that. Like, cut the head off of that. Either by an early double or a commitment to double it whenever you can. Maybe it's easier on AD because he gets it more often, like, you know, in an area where you could trap him. But one of those two has to be taken out of the equation, make somebody else beat me.

I think it's pretty grim. I think they needed to win game three and they had it and I don't think I don't think it's possible to beat this Lakers team three or four times I agree with you I think the series

I think you could get them one more game ultimately it's a wrap but that was the best version of yourself let's be honest the league hasn't gotten involved in this series yet either. Wink, wink. Yeah.

Right. We haven't had the game where the Lakers shoot 55 free throws. Kuzma's 12 for 15 from the line. As everyone's like, wait, what's going on here? They want Lakers Clippers and the Rockets have not made a lot of friends over the years.

And the, the, the deck is stacked against them. I do think if they lose this series, I could see the coach and the deck is stacked against them. I do think if they lose this series, I could see the coach and the GM leaving. Yeah, that's tough. I mean, I feel bad for Mike. I could see it very easily.

I just feel bad for Mike because I don't know what people expected him to do. I think he's done a really good job. Yeah, me too. They have a lot of castaways on that team well what did you want to do bounced around Jeff Green's been on nine teams I know and wasn't very good on the last like stop like and he's having like a a renaissance of a of a career right now like I don't so anyway that's hard for me but I could see it too I mean if they I think they have some things to figure out there anyway if this if this

doesn't work this year, like you, you probably as Houston have to got it kind of reshuffle the deck anyway, right? Like you gotta, how long are you gonna ride with that? Clippers Denver's over.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a wrap. And then you're taking Miami over Boston or Toronto, unless Boston shows something crazy in game seven or how you feel about that? I'm not, I'm not,

I'm saying that could be a dog fight of a series. I gave Miami a chance to get there. I still think that if Boston is playing well, I take them over Toronto, but if Boston is playing well and is, is Gordon slated to come back like at all? Hopefully next round. Yeah.

If you get that ankle injury had was bad. Cause it, it actually, the nerve in his foot was a little messed up and I think that's why it's taken so long. Yeah. I mean, it's not like career damage or anything, but it was about as bad of a sprained ankle as you can get. You know, there's degrees of this stuff. Sure.

But yeah, I think they could beat them. Boston at full strength. I think they beat the heat ultimately, but it's going to be a knockdown drag out series. Two wars for them, man. If they can get by Toronto, then you got that tough-ass Miami team waiting. And then the other

thing, Miami has so many kryptonite guys for them. I'm sure you had that when you played on different teams. There's certain teams that guys just kill. You know? Like, did you have a team where you were just like, oh, we're playing these guys. I always do well against them. The Cleveland Cavaliers.

Really? I loved playing Cleveland Cavaliers. Loved it. I loved going to Cleveland. I loved when they came to us. It was fantastic. Yeah. It's so strange.

And for whatever reason, Miami has five of those guys. Before we go, you talked about the Nash hiring on the show with Logan. I talked about it a little on my show. And granted, 2020 is a fucking insane year and all this stuff should be litigated.

The only piece I wanted to talk about that I didn't really go into yet, which I really want to do with you, was just how great of a player Steve was. And I got to say, I was kind of shocked that anybody was surprised that he would just get to be a head coach without putting the time as an assistant or whatever. First of all, this is how the league works. As I listed on Sunday's pod, there's 25 examples of good to great players

who the moment they want to be a head coach, they become a head coach. I think it becomes a little differently if you're a role player, stuff like that. Maybe you have to be an assistant for a few years, but you know, I would use the example of like if Kobe Bryant, the last three years was like, you know what? I've decided to be an NBA head coach. Guess what would have happened? Somebody would have hired him as an NBA head coach. And to me, Nash was one of the best 40 players of all time, was probably the most likely, either him or Chauncey Billups, of anyone from his era. Hey, Jason Kidd, too. I would say those three. Nash, Billups, Kidd.

Those three, when you're watching them play, you see what kind of leaders they were, what kind of teammates they were, how thoughtful and cerebral they were. You're like, oh, man, if this guy ever wanted to be a coach, it would be amazing. You played with Nash for years. Were you shocked? I mean, granted, I know what kind of moment the country's have right now, but were you shocked that people kind of discounted that piece of this with the Nash part? Um, no, I wasn't really shocked. I think only, only, only because of where we are as a country like i think yeah people just that got lost in the in the higher right like and and i think like if you heard steve's press conference yesterday like i listened to you know some sound bites from it he rarely you know him like he rarely gets defensive and rarely like tries to throw something in your

face um and he didn't do it like if you listen to it it wasn't like something in your face. And he didn't do it... If you listen to it, it wasn't out in your face for everyone. You had to know Steve to understand when he was saying, I did leapfrog people, but I did lead a lot of good teams. He gave you his resume. And Steve doesn't give his resume a lot because it speaks for itself.

But I thought it was interesting that he felt the need to go ahead and give you his resume to just illustrate why he would be qualified to have that job. So I think just because of where we are in race relations and stuff like that, just how good of a player he was got lost in it. But Steve, look, Steve was a coach. I know. He fucking coached every game he played.

I felt like he was the player coach of that team. Yeah, he was a coach. I know. He fucking coached every game he played. I felt like he was the player coach of that team. Yeah, he was a coach. I mean, not to take anything from Mike, but they collaboratively, he was as involved in what was going on and play calling and deciding how we were going to attack stuff as anybody.

I mean, he was coaching his whole career. The only surprise for me was that he even wanted to coach because, and as you know, he had all family stuff the first four or five years. And he just was like, I played for, you know,

17 years. I want to be with my kids. I have young kids. I want to live in a different place. I want to maybe produce stuff, stuff like that. But when he got the warriors, when he started kind of working with them deep down,

I was like, Oh, I know what he's up to. Right. Oh, you felt that? Oh, I a hundred percent did. Okay. He cares too much about this basketball. Yeah. It's the same reason. Like, I know you're not going to be at the ringer for 10 years. At some point you're going to be running a team. Like you're, you're, it's going to happen when you're, when your life is at the point where you're you're it's gonna happen when you're when your life is at the point where you're like i'm ready to now do this grind and i feel like with steve i knew it was

gonna happen at some point i guess the shocking thing for me was that it was brooklyn because he's somebody who's played with a variety and i just for the record i have not talked to him about why did you want to coach durantant and KD and Kyrie, stuff like that. But he's somebody that's played with a variety of personalities, right? Yeah. And your son's team, which he's talked about on this podcast and on my old podcast,

was a fascinating mix of personalities where you had Amari, who, beloved teammate, but a little mercurial. And then you had Sean who on the one hand is the perfect, you know, Pippen type player for a team like that, but also has the people in his life where he's like, you should be the best guy in this team.

You should be a superstar. Sure. Blah, blah, blah. And you're, and Nash is navigating all of that. And I'm just surprised that this was the team he picked

because guess what he's going to be doing on Brooklyn? Navigating shit. What did you think of that choice? That's a good point. And I hadn't really dug into it like that. I really hadn't. I know Steve's got an affinity for New York. He does his soccer games there, like the charity games.

He lived in New York for a while. So it made sense to me from that respect. I was a little surprised too, just because he's got young kids and Steve's into everything, man. Like he's got a lot of interest and you alluded to it. It's a real grind.

So I didn't, when he told me, I was blown away. I was like, what? Like, I didn't even know he was into it. The last I had talked to him about Golden State, it was perfect because he could come and go. He was there sometimes, and then he got to be in Manhattan Beach

or wherever he was, like, doing his thing, you know? So, but that's a really interesting way to look at that, and there's going to be some real navigating going on there. Like, those are two really interesting personalities. Well, you have that. You also have some young guys, right? Karis Leverts, who was on the R2C2 podcast this week, we should mention. But it's somebody like, oh man, this is good third piece.

And it's like, well, Karis Levert needs the ball. Stand over there and shoot. Yeah. Hey, Karis, shut up. Go to your corner. Like, is he going to be happy? Then you have Kyrie who, you know, I, I'm a little biased because I had to root for him for a couple of years in Boston, but he's all over the place.

Yeah. You don't know week to week what you're getting, which I think from how it's been described to me, Sean was a little like that too. And I think a beloved teammate, much like Pippen was, but there would be times when, you know, he got a little moody and you kind of had to ride it out and navigate it, right? Yeah, you had to, I mean, that's a good way to put Sean. Sean's one of my favorite teammates.

Everybody said beloved teammate. Yeah, he really is. But he would have a couple moments. But yeah, like, you know, there was a time where I made an all-defensive team and Mike was, Mike told me before practice and he said, hey, look, man, we're not going to announce it before practice because we don't want somebody getting upset.

We'll do it. So there were some of those type of things that certainly happened. The difference between Sean and Kyrie for me is Sean wasn't a follower, so I don't want to say it like that. But Sean could take leadership. When Steve led, Sean't want to say it like that but sean could take leadership like when steve led sean was good to say you know even if he felt like i am the all-star and i'm the like when it was time when push came to shove he followed steve you know what i mean kairi at times falls into a weird

space of like you know wants to lead maybe the leadership style isn't like perfected yet um sometimes doesn't want to follow. And so those kinds of guys for me, sometimes it's like, well, we got to figure this out. Cause it can't be, you gotta be one or the other,

bro. Like you're either going to lead productively or you got to follow, you know, Kyrie wants to lead. And then for four straight days, won't talk to anybody, literally anybody in the team. And it's like,

I thought you were right. The leader of the team. It's look, I think Bill were the leader of the team. It's, look, I think Billups would also make a great coach. And I think he's known that for years. And I think he's flirted with it

a bunch of times. I just think there's a certain type that if you own an NBA team, you're going to be enchanted by. Jason Kidd was a no-brainer because he was another guy who was a coach on the floor.

Chauncey, same thing. Like what he did for the 09 Nuggets was incredible. I think the other piece everybody missed was Steve. Because I got to say, I was surprised. I thought if he did it, I thought it would be Phoenix. There was a moment when they got rid of their last coach before they hired Monty Williams, where I was like, in the back of my head, I'm like,

I wonder if this could be Steve. Cause you know, that would make sense to me. Um, right. The piece people are missing and I can't believe they missed it. He didn't ever want a title. Yeah.

You know how fucking competitive that dude is. And you know how close that Sun dude is. And you know how close that Suns team was. And if you just computer simulated 05 through 08 and played it 100 times, the Suns are winning a couple titles during that stretch. There's maybe some injury that doesn't happen or whatever. And even like 2010, which you were still on the...

No. Oh, you were off at that point. Yeah, that was Jason Richardson and Dudley and those yeah kobe with the uh the airball and our test like just throws in the rebound and you know he just came so close i i i feel like that has to be the biggest part of this that he wants a ring hey look you can't discount it and he's he's on record if if i'm correct i'm correct uh saying that that the one in Golden State didn't fulfill. It didn't really feel. Yeah, you know what I mean?

You're there sometimes. You're not. And so I could see that. It makes a lot of sense. Steve, I've talked to Steve about the job. Look, I didn't say this on any. I'll tell you. It was just done on our part this already I'll tell you right like it was just down on our pop

I'll tell you like Steve when Steve got the job he called me and asked me if I'd come work in Brooklyn with him like he he he wanted to have me on the staff I wasn't at the point in my life right now with my kids where I was ready to go back to that grind right but we had a lot of conversations um about what this looked like because I I'm, I'm like, Steve, like, you know that like you've never coached and I've never really coached. So like, right. We're going to need a lot of people who would coach. And his point was like,

look, bro, I know that he was like, and I'm going in hat in hand, understanding that there's a lot of stuff that I don't know, but fully knowing that I have a lot that I can give to like winning basketball games. And, and, you know, I'm going to communicate that I'm going to be, you know, really humble about who I am in the equation. And we'll combine all that experience with,

with what we got in terms of the know-how and we're going to make it work. So there's definitely something to, to the no championship. Like he's on a quest to try to get him one for sure. That was my other reaction when Steve got hired by Brooklyn. I was like, we're going to fucking lose Raja. I was like, god damn it. He's going to hire Raja. I love having Raja. This is such bullshit. He just

got here. No! So I'm glad you're going to wait a year at least. I figure at some point I know you're going to go back to basketball at some point. It would be insane if you didn't. But yeah, with the Steve thing, such a competitive dude

and I look at what is going to actually succeed if you're a coach. And I think Chauncey has all the same qualities. Are you a leader? Yeah. Check. Were you in a bunch of important basketball situations that you learned lessons from check um do you have a cerebral understanding of basketball

two checks we'll check and are you and are you fucking competitive and if you have those four things you are going to succeed as a head coach. And that was why I remember being on countdown in 2014 when Steve Kerr was picking between Golden State and the Knicks. And I was just like, I would bet every dollar I have that Steve Kerr will be a good coach because I know him. He's been in all these different situations. He has soaked up a bunch of different lessons. He's put real thought into this. He's been in all these different situations. He has soaked up a bunch of different lessons. He's put real thought into this. He worked for an NBA team and he is going to be a hundred percent prepared. I don't, I don't know if I would bet every dollar on Steve Nash to be a good coach, but I would bet I, the, the one thing that I don't know is how

much thought and time he put into this. Cause I knew from Steve Kerr, it had been years and years he'd been thinking about it. I never had the conversation with Steve. What do you have? Do you have any insight on that? I don't. I really don't. And I don't think it was as long as Steve Kerr. But again, I've never asked him.

It's just the sense I got. The one thing I think that you left out, and it may go without needing to be said because they were such good point guards a lot of those is their ability to communicate um and having a way with like people and not everyone has the same way with people like not everybody's a lovey huggy kind of like hey kumbaya but all of the really great ones can can communicate and and have their way with people where people know they care about them. People know that they're invested in them and they can get the best out of them. And I think Steve is one of those guys, just like Chauncey, to be a good point guard, that's what you're doing anyway, right? Like you're communicating with people.

You're getting them to buy in to like, I've got your best interest at heart. And because I've got yours and you got mine, we're going to win. I think those guys do that. Steve will do that. It's funny because I've spent time with both of them because I did some TV with Chauncey a couple of times. There's a command of the room with both guys that the only way I could explain it

is like what you hear about really good quarterbacks and what point guards do, there's a similar kind of demeanor that I can't really describe, but I just know it when I see it. And Chauncey, even though, like, he barely knew what he was doing on TV, the way he fit in with us

and how engaged he was with everybody and just all the little stuff. And you're like, oh, man. And I know, like, Iger became enamored with Chauncey. Like, Chauncey is like, Iger mentors Chauncey, Bob Iger,

the head of Disney. Okay. Just because he was like, this guy's, this guy's got special qualities. Like I really feel like he could do something important. And I do think like when you're talking about coach, like Steve Kerr has that,

Doc Rivers has that. There's a certain intangible. I guess the surprise for me is that Jason Kidd ended up not having it because I would have bet anything on him. Right. Yeah. And I don't really know what happened with that one. That's an,

that's an interesting, that's an interesting one, but I, you know, you're talking about it at the coaching level. I talk about it like on a playing level with parents a lot when they're saying to me, like what their kid is,

he's a point guard. And I'm like, well, just because he can dribble doesn't mean he's a point guard. Right. Or my's a point guard. And I'm like, well, just because he can dribble doesn't mean he's a point guard, right? Or my son's a quarterback. And I'm like, well, you know, I have a son that's a quarterback. Just because he's a, that doesn't make you a quarterback, makes you a quarterback is your command.

Like, can you like lead people? Do people follow when you say let's go? In the face of some real shit storm type of stuff are you calm like are you the the beacon where people are like yeah yeah yeah yeah i got he's good we'll follow that um and if you're you know if kids people don't have those qualities then it's hard for people to follow them you know what i mean but you're you're right like and i have to see that all the time like you know point guards aren't like made. They're born, you know? Coaches is a little different because you can learn that. But you have to have that like alpha.

Like, I got this. Follow me. I got you. That was when Larry Bird ended up randomly coaching the Pacers out of nowhere in the late 90s. And they ended up having a couple pretty good seasons. Then they finally made the finals. But to have like a great player as your coach,

there is some sort of confidence with when you're talking about, all right, who do you, who do you ultimately have to reach on your team? The two best guys, right? If he's telling Durant something, Durant's going to trust him in a way that is pretty uncommon.

And maybe it would be the same for Chauncey. Chauncey was a finals MVP. Doc Rivers, who had been in a bunch of wars, he never won a ring. But there's a certain weight that I think comes from certain guys. And maybe that's what KD needs at this point in his career too. I do. I know what you mean. And I think the fact that Steve had that relationship with KD, one that wasn't like a head coach player relationship. It was like a mentor. Yeah. Let me get in the gym and let's kick it around a little bit. Let's see what we can figure. I think that goes a long way with Steve Nash being able to say to KD when it really matters, hey man, this is how I see it. This is what we need to do.

And KD being like, fucking right. Like, let's do it. You know? I think players, really good or great players who coach are always going to have an advantage over the guys who didn't coach. In my opinion, the way the league is covered now, which makes me like,

when somebody like Popovich or Nick Nurse or Stevens or whoever, and they're able to get the same kind of respect. That's how you know those guys are amazing coaches. If they can win the same respect that, you know, somebody like Doc Rivers can get,

who was in all these wars when he played, you know, and those guys grew up watching him. So it's a fascinating topic. I think he certainly has all the tools to be an awesome coach. And if he can get the best out of Kyrie, It's a fascinating topic. I think he certainly has all the tools to be an awesome coach. If he can get the best out of Kyrie, what an accomplishment that would be. We all love watching Kyrie play basketball.

It would be nice to see Steve tap into it. You know Steve, and I've said this before. I think if Kyrie's at a point where he's going to be receptive to the style and the leadership that Steve has, I think it's going to be gold for Kyrie. Not just in Brooklyn right now for the next four years when Steve's there, but I think he'll learn things that he can take with him for the rest of his career. You know, I think it's going to be really, really educational for Kyrie. And there's a lot of stuff that, you know, Kyrie does naturally that's probably better than Steve did as a player. But in terms of just the leadership perspective, the communication, to your point,

communication's an everyday thing. It's an all the time thing. It's not a like when I feel like doing it type of thing. So even when you feel shitty, you're coming in the building, talking to Bill, talking to Raja, talking to Kyle. Like that's what I got to do. Even building, talking to Bill, talking to Raja, talking to Kyle. That's what I got to do.

Even if I had to suck it up to do it. Steve's got that stuff mastered. That'll be good shit for Kyrie to see up close and personal. Last thing on the Steve leadership, and then we'll go. It actually cost you the title. Because when he got knocked into the wall by Horry. I know. That was your guy. And he was like, they have, they have heard our

leader and you guys ran off your bench and get, and that's it. And you guys ended up losing the series. But like, I just don't feel like there's a lot of guys who had that kind of pull with their team, which is over the years. Like how many guys get knocked into the thing like that, where people literally lose their minds for a second. And just, and that was the case we made when we broke down that game in the book of basketball podcast, you know, you can't leave the bench, but you see your guy get knocked into the thing and you kind of leave your body for a second. You just start walking toward them. Cause this happened to me with my daughter playing soccer last year. Yeah. She got crushed by the goalie. Your parents aren't supposed to go on the field. And I just started instinctively walking on the field

because my kid was hurt. Right, right. And then someone's like, hey, get off the field. You know, one of the other parents, like, get, you're on the, and I was like, oh shit, I, you know, like four seconds passed.

I didn't even, I left my body. Right. And I'm sure that was like that for you and Amari and the other guys, right? You see him crumpled against the, and now it turns out he was selling it, but. Yeah, when he told me that he sold that like i i was like you motherfucker i wanted to kick his ass

what the hell what i thought you were really hurt no it's ridiculous but yes you could tell a lot from teammates reactions when a teammate gets dropped or you know jacked up or something like that. Or gets in a fight or anything. You can tell a lot. All right. I'm glad we talked about this because I felt like there was some additional perspective we needed to lend to the Nash thing.

And Chauncey on Indiana will be great too. I'm all for guys going right into the fire with this stuff if it was a guy who was kind of a pseudo coach when he played. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the exception. I'm with you a hundred percent. All right. Raja, we'll hear you on Mondays with Logan. Yes, sir. And if you leave the ringer to join Steve Nash's staff, I'm going to be, my heart will be broken. I've had enough. I've had enough pain in 2020. Don't do that to us. We need you for at least one year. I love it here, man. We're good.

No worries. All right, good. Good to see you. Yeah, you too, man. All right. Thanks to Raja Bell. Hope you enjoyed the Million Dollar Picks this week. Don't forget to go check them out on the FanDuel Sportsbook,

or you can play our free Ringer Mega Contest on FanDuel. Remember, pick five NFL games against the spread, including one double down pick. Get one point for every correct pick, and two if you hit your double down pick. We'll be right back. for free every week on Fando. Go to Fando.com slash mega contest. See you on Sunday night with the cuz coming off week one NFL. Go Celtics. I don't have feelings within On the wayside I'm a bruised soul I never was I don't have feelings within