The Bill Simmons Podcast - Tiger Gets GOATy, 76ers Panic Watch, NBA Overreactions, and 'Game of Thrones' for Dummies with Ryen Russillo | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: April 15, 2019

HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryan Russillo to discuss Tiger Woods’ return to glory after winning the 2019 Masters (3:54). Then Bill and Ryen recap game 1 of the first round of the NBA playoffs; Including a shaky start for the Raptors, the Nuggets loss to the Spurs, a bad matchup for the 76ers, and more (36:25), followed by some mailbag questions, Gym Corner (1:34:09), and a [SPOILER ALERT] recap of 'Game of Thrones' season 8, episode 1 (1:53:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's very special episode of the BS Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network brought to you by DAZN. Stream over 100 fight nights a year, including the biggest names in boxing and MMA without the pain of pay-per-view. Fighters like Canelo, Triple G, Daniel Jacobs, Anthony Joshua, a whole bunch. Plus behind the scenes content leading up to fight night, the library of classic fights, original programming. Everything is live and on demand download the zone app on your smart tvs tablets mobile gaming

consoles ryan rossella you're no stranger to the fight game i used to love going to see those fights you like pugilism and mixed martial arts i love it all what would be your style if you were an mma guy um just uh like all around guy? No, probably a lot of French kickboxing. You can also get access to the brand new MLB Live Whip Around Show, Change Up on every night of the week, hosted by Rosilla's friend, Adnan Virk. Getting set up with DAZN is easy.

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I've heard you talk about it. It's really great. I hit the crap out of it. More importantly, they sponsor Fairway Rolling. And I went on there to talk a little bit about Tiger with Joe House because Joe House has been my friend since the late 80s. We were in college together, and we love Tiger, as so many people do. And we kind of thought this day would never happen, but then it happened. We're going to talk about it in a second.

Check out the Fairway Rolling podcast. House is going to do another one this week, actually. I think Wednesday, where he's going to catch up with a couple more people, just as we sift through the opposite. What's that? What, what word is the opposite of wreckage? The beauty,

the view, whatever it is. Yeah. The anti wreckage of just an unbelievable, unbelievable night with a tiger woods. Hey, the ringer.com we're breaking down game of Thrones, NBA night with Tiger Woods. Hey, TheRinger.com. We're breaking down Game of Thrones, NBA playoffs, NFL draft.

This is heading toward one of the big weeks we've ever had, the last week of April, where the draft, Thrones, and the NBA playoffs, not to mention a lot of good movies coming out, all the stuff we care about. It's really crazy. Check out the Ringers Talk the Throne show, hashtag Talk the Thrones. Unbelievable night last night. I almost couldn't believe the numbers. It seemed like 45, 50,000 people were watching concurrently at all times. People love Game of Thrones. That's what I learned last night. I had no idea. Apparently, it's a popular show.

Yeah, we were sitting there, watched together, and then watched the Ringer show. Yeah, we watched. It was like a stock just going up and up and up. You were losing your mind. I was going nuts. I was like, wow, this is great. Plus, the show looked great.

Mallory and Jason do Binge Mode, and you can check that podcast out as well. That should be up midweek at some point where they will break down in detail everything that's going on. If you want to watch the replay of Talk to Thrones, just go to Ringer, put in hashtag Talk to Thrones. It'll be the first thing that comes up and you can watch the replay on that or on our YouTube channel. Eventually it'll be up there too. So coming up, Russel and I are going to talk about Tiger. We're going to talk about the NBA playoffs.

We might even talk a little Game of Thrones. I feel like we have to. We have some hot takes. We try to get everybody mad on social media. I did. We had a big dinner tonight. We're nice and fresh. We have water. We're ready to go. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Sunday night. Nephew Kyle's feeling good. He's sitting here.

He's just been fed. We watched Thrones. All I did all week was not move and watch television. I've been up since 4.45 this morning. I woke up. I checked my phone to see if it was six o'clock yet. The phone, I got blinded by the bright iPhone screen. You know when that happens? When it's like car headlights coming at you. And then I couldn't fall back asleep. And one thing led to another and I was just up and I made coffee and I got ready for my man tiger. And then he came through. And, uh, now by the time you listen to this, it's really late Sunday night,

or it'll be Monday morning. You're driving to work or you're working out, whatever. Um, we're still and I were talking earlier about who has brought the most sports talk radio slash talking head hours to the table of any athlete. So we're talking all time? All time. But it's modern era, but it's not fair to older guys. All time would really be the last 20 years.

Because that's really when this machine blossomed. Yeah. Where every big city has a 24-7 station. Instead of like, Wade Boggs, I thought I knew this guy. Right. Like when in New England 25 years ago, it was like Eddie Antleman. Yeah, right.

And then WEI became- He used to do positive shows. I was just thinking about that the other day. That's so weird he brought him up. Eddie Antleman. Yeah, just all day. It had to be a positive vibe. Yeah.

No complaining. Don't bring your negativity in here. Now it's flipped, but I would say I would have LeBron and Tiger in the finals. yeah no complaining don't bring your negativity in here now it's flipped but i would say i would have lebron and tiger in the finals i think jordan by the time he retired the mechanism wasn't in place yet like even espn they didn't really have the afternoon program they have now so i have tiger and lebron in the finals who do you have lebron is definitely in the finals but he's the winner too because you could also remember we're not talking

golf year-round the way we're talking about lebron or somebody who's you know arguably the the biggest the most famous athlete in any sport in the united states at least so just as somebody who did it for that long yeah we're getting 10 10 and a half months out of lebron every year the tiger thing was when it happened whether it's you know look that scandal is almost 10 years ago that was two i was looking it all up today amazing it's almost well it's the end it's november in 2009 right so that was massive and that was around the clock you were doing radio back then right you know yeah at that point yeah we just just started. And that was a weird spot for Scott because Scott was so close to him and Steinberg and who's one of the guys that

Tiger hugs at the end when he puts his arms out. And that's his guy. And I'd even heard that Tiger listened to the show all the time. And sometimes Tiger would text Van Pelt during the show. And that was after everything that happened. He was like, get rid of the Vermont guy. Yeah, he's like, this guy sucks. But doing the job, I don't think there's any way. Look, I'm not knocking the call here. I'm just saying there's no way. Maybe Tiger's not in the finals.

I'm going to tell you right now, and people are going to roll their eyes. Bonds is up there. So you think Bonds sneaks into the finals we were talking about the home run pursuit but also the hdfs the whole time i remember doing late night shows at espn i remember never forget one guy called and goes i'll give you ten thousand dollars if you can come up with any evidence and i was like well look at his 91 tops card i win so so um i don't know what other ones you would you well there was there was also the whole the bonds thing bled into the whole who's a baseball hall of famer or not which is one of the og sports

radio absolute segments you can have this guy belongs no he's absolutely not a hall of famer just people getting mad kaepernick had a late push for it but it was more of um it's not enough years no it's not enough years but it was it was a real real incredible run i was wondering like uh and i i don't say this as a homer pick even though it's my team but like a belichick pats kind of combo the brace is yeah just brady and the whole kind of combo. The Brady's? Yeah, just Brady and the- The whole kind of infrastructure, but that's not one person. You know what though?

If you just made it this two-headed thing with Belichick and Brady combined and the Patriots angst or the Patriots, which side are you on and all that stuff. The initial underdog thing. Maybe a one seed maybe out of the South. Brady versus Manning. Yeah, if you're able to include all that stuff,

Brady versus Manning. Because I think when people are listening to this right now they're going what about this huge story and you go okay well that's fine like individual stories themselves could have been really big this isn't about the biggest stories it's about kind of in the last 15 years or so which guy dominated all of the debate shows as much i I mean, Tebow, Tebow's kind of in that Kaepernick category where it was red hot for a couple of years. It was like four years maybe, but I didn't have the legs. No. So.

What did it mean to you today? Well, so. Did you cry? I got choked up when he was hugging the fam. I really did. I was surprised because I'm kind of a cyborg. The reason I brought up the sports talk radio, that whole thing is because this tiger story said, up when he was hugging the fam i really did i was surprised because i'm kind of a cyborg i i the reason i brought up the sports talk radio that whole thing is because this tiger story said so

many ebbs and flows and arcs and ups and downs and is he the goat can he be nicholas give me your timeline like you were what all-in tiger fan or just always love the factor you know because there's there's different levels to this right, were you always rooting for Tiger all the time and you always wanted him to win on top of everything else? Well, I was always one of those, who's the next guy I want to be in on that guy early guys. So I remember watching the amateur ones. So you were like a tier one then with Tiger.

Tier one, 100%. So easily my favorite golfer ever. It's not even close. And I would put him, like McEnroe is my favorite tennis player ever. It's not close. Tiger is my favorite golfer ever it's not even close okay and i would put him like mackinac is my favorite tennis player ever it's not close um tiger's my favorite golfer avon lindell too navratilova lindell kind of 1a or 2a 2b um tiger to me is like a i feel like he's a boston team like that's how i roofloft i didn't know that oh yeah i yeah. I didn't tweet this because I didn't want to be mocked on the freaking Twitter.

But I was thinking like Red Sox title, Pat, Super Bowl, Tiger Masters. I've won like the last three titles I've cared about. Oh, wow. You're claiming them. You really are claiming them. I'm fucking claiming them. This is good. I'm all in.

I never quit on them. All right. So 2009. Yeah. It goes down. How did you feel? So if you go back, I wrote a two-part mailbag about the Tiger thing. And you got shit on pretty heavy for this. No, no, that was later.

That was later. And the reason I'm bringing this up is I think it's important to understand where everybody's at with Tiger. I'm just saying I wrote like a 9,500 word column before this. It was like one of the longest columns. They had to split it over two pages because it way we would have taken too long to download. I had just so many thoughts. I, and I really felt like, look, the word tragedy gets thrown around at sports way

too much. I don't think this is a tragedy. We know what the real tragedies are, but this was like a sports tragedy. You have this guy that, you know it's ollie jordan tiger those are the big three of the last going back to the 60s and he dominated his in a way that it doesn't get dominated i mean during his peak years it's just you go back and look at it and be like that actually happened well i was going through it all today changing the course and like, do we have to change Augusta for him? All that stuff. And I'm sure there's some people being like, hey, ever heard of Ben Hogan?

And you just go, okay, yeah, but fine for like for the modern era for what he did. And to just expect like every week it was Tiger the field and you felt like an idiot if you took the field. Okay. So the 2009 thing happens and it's, I think it speaks to society. I think what happened today, or excuse me, with him winning this weekend speaks to society too, but it's, it turns into the things like, man, I thought you were so amazing, but look, you're fucked up just like everybody else.

And there's some weird joy that the public takes in that. Yeah. And I knew I was asking you that because that's not exactly what happened. People have, they like when somebody has it all and screws it up. Yeah. Because they like to go, if that was me, I wouldn't have done that. I would have handled that better. Or the person screwed up themselves and they're like, good, I'm glad he screwed up too.

I know, I'm serious. I think the thing that's amazing to me out of all this, House and I talked about it a little bit, but not totally. The ship had kind of sailed. This was done this way like if you go back to ali ali just wanted to fight again nobody like gave up on the on the thought of ali ever being good again it was like can we get this guy back in the ring yeah i mean honestly it wasn't even ali wanting to fight it was they wouldn't let him he was like trying to fight in canada no but it was people trying to get a check out of him. It was the people around him more than it was him.

It's disgusting. There was never a doubt in the talent. And with the Tiger thing, his back issues, his knee, his body, it just felt like it had hit the point where his body broke down. And you think back to even like less than three years ago, there was a real sadness to this story that this guy was done it was over and it was never happening and oh man but wasn't it great when he was good like nobody thought this was going to happen again i was happy with him contending again so you never thought see the

reason i'm bringing this up and i think some people probably wondering why are you going back 10 years when you really should be going back to the injuries but this this scandal never derailed him nearly as much as everybody thinks it did from from a competitive standpoint he just didn't win any majors so the public was like oh he's he's toast and you go wait a minute this doesn't make any sense no it did derail him though he was player of the year in 2013 and had five wins right but he wasn't he didn't win a major anymore okay but it and he was he had a couple good runs in 2011 too but he wasn't he wasn't tiger um yeah he wasn't peak tiger but i've always kind of resisted as he wasn't winning any majors after the first the the the family incident it was this thing where it's like oh

he's been derailed by that and i'm like he's actually still playing really competitive golf like i was going through it he he finished fourth and sixth in two majors in 2013. And then 2015 is when it starts kind of falling apart, even though he played in all four majors that year and he sucked in the Masters in 2015. And then 2016 is when he's hurt. And then I remember doing the show all the time because every week in 2017 as well,

it was this thing where they'd be going oh he's gonna be he's gonna be awesome i mean he played one event in two years but it was always this idea that you know the practice squad you have no i'd like going back a couple years but he's hitting the ball so well and then as soon as it started falling apart it was an injury again and i was always like well wait a minute what's the injury then if everything seems to be going great like i was wondering like how much of it was in his head well he lost his legs because his you know the knee that he pushed off i don't remember how many times it got operated on then he started having the back issues but you know you're right there is a misconception

that he was just not a relevant golfer at all after 09. Because even the 2011 Masters, I remember I wrote a column about it that day. He was in the hunt that day. And then he kind of self-destructed in the back nine. But he was in the hunt. And there was that familiar, like the sounds on the course and kind of the template for what happened today. His first event back was the Masters in 2010.

And he came in fourth. And he wasn't even playing that well yeah and i remember talking to scott about it and i go why would he come back why would he just get a tune-up somewhere else before he come back to augusta and this was you know van pelt's knowledge about golf which is incredible he just goes actually it's the best place for him to come back he knows the course well he knows the deal because you don't just get into augusta so it's going to be a different level of people and stands he goes and augusta is going to put their arms around tiger and try to protect him from all the nonsense as much as they possibly can so as i remember doing you know the stuff with with hit where you go is this guy really this

hurt or is he that damaged upstairs because he's lost his confidence and you go man i can't even compete anymore and then it's two years where it's one event but last year he was really good he was he was really good again last year and house and i talked about on his pod how he was at least in the mix again but there was always this feeling that he was 80 what he was or 85 what he was which mean which meant sure right he was super competitive what he was or 85% what he was, which meant he was super competitive. What I'm saying really good, I'm not saying anything about peak, but I mean, in the open, he was six, the PGA, he was second. So I almost feel like what happened this weekend, it's an awesome, awesome story, but I feel like the recovery had already started to happen for him.

True. There was some other level that he went to with the ball striking this weekend and i have i don't know what the stats are but it just felt like he was absolutely cranking it you know there was a couple where he was like neck and neck with fina who's like one of the best drivers on the tour right now i see i saw fina live at riviera what seeing him hit a ball live you just go there's something different with he's like a freak yeah and tiger was at least like in the vicinity of him. And he gets all of Tiger's hand-me-downs, which is cool. The thing with... The drives that he was hitting down the stretch, what was so great was...

And this happened with Nicholas in 86, where just everybody wants one guy to win. And it has this domino effect psychologically with the rest of the field. And I didn't feel like the announcers fully tapped into it when it was happening because the two guys he played with were the only two guys in the top 12

who did not shoot par today or better. And it was because they were playing with Tiger. It's intense and you're in this situation where everyone's rooting against you and you could feel it like if we were doing a podcast right now and there are 200 people in this room and all of them were rooting for me and anytime you said something they were just glaring at you like you would feel it and it's like some early svp show remotes my wife was watching i was like when moinari hit it into the drink in 12,

I like, I jumped out of my couch and I was like, yes. And she's like, I've never seen you root against somebody like this. And I was like, these are all my enemies. I want them all to have quadruple pokies.

But I feel like they could feel that on the course. And if you've, you know, you and I both been to Augusta, that place is, is it's like a church. It's, it's, I'm not even the biggest golf guy. And I, I can't tell you how awesome it is, but everyone's pulling for everybody. Right. And it was not the case today. And the other thing, and the part that I was so glad I went last year for a variety of reasons, like being able to see how hard we're to put on some of the holes. But you can't overstate how little you know what's going on. And you're stuck at a hole.

And the only thing you have to go by is the scoreboard when they change it. So when they show on TV and it's like, watch the roar when they realize Tiger's up to minus 13, he's in the lead. Here's a replay of that. Everybody goes nuts nuts and it seems like it's kind of oh they they're they're overreacting a little they had to have no you don't have a phone nobody knows no one has a phone they're all like holy shit tiger's winning like that's the reaction but that's just what it's like it's an amazing place getting in there is is great because it's almost like this reward when you walk through the ropes to augusta where they go all right however you got here knowing somebody bagged the lottery scalping them yeah second like however you got here now you're in and you're one of us and grab your cheap beers

and here's your awesome sandwich and here's your badge and the greatest thing ever when you realize wait we can just sit in anybody's seat and then it's just understood if they come back that you get up and get out of their seat. So that means there's tons of empty seats. I'm sure not Saturday and Sunday, maybe not even the entire week, but at least it was for me when I went two years ago. But then to see 18 to stand up in that tee box and look at that fairway and how tight it feels coming out of there. And it just feels like this blind shot. You know, on TV, i don't think it does it justice how i'm not saying it's the most intimidating hole it just feels nasty um you go

man this looks way harder in person than it does on tv and i can't even imagine how exciting it would have been to be there for this because like i was there last year on the thursday and tiger birdied 16 when we were there and everybody went nuts. And this is day one on a Thursday. Like who cares? And we react play. He wasn't in it when I was there. We reacted like this magical thing had happened. If you're there today,

when he hits that drive down 15 and we're, we're right in like, this is like tiger karaoke right now. These holes, these are like, this is the stretch that he, he owned when he was at Augusta 13, 14, 15, 16. Like these, these holes. These are like, this is the stretch that he owned when he was at Augusta, 13, 14, 15, 16. Like these are his holes.

And he has that drive on 15. He's just sitting there on the, standing there in the fairway for 20 minutes waiting for Brooks Koepka and that whole group to just finish. And it's like, man, if he puts this on the green, he's probably going to win the Masters. And boom, right on the green he's probably gonna win the masters and boom right in the green two putt goes to 16 and almost gets a hole-in-one which if he had gotten a hole-in-one

has to be in the conversation for greatest sports moment of all time i think we have to give it a week or two it's like four usa beats the russia in 80 tiger hole went with the masters it was okay dave roberts still question and dave roberts question bogeying 18 kind of put a damper on it no no no stop it no no no i'm trying to we were doing this earlier it was dangerous i'm kidding i'm kidding no but that that was dangerous though because he, he almost got too cute. He did. But the reason I bring it up is that we were trying to figure out throughout the next 24 to 48 hour cycle of who would zig when everybody's zagging.

Because I felt like you just zigged. No, I was doing that. You did the whole Tiger Woods was good the whole time. Where were you guys? No, no, no, no, no. He was, he was really good. I was trying to do it. His career wasn't drilled.

He was fine. I guess I feel like, no, no no that's not what i did i want to find the guy that is because we were asking like is this the unziggable if you're on a talk show if you're a radio host explain this whole thing to people so basically when everybody's zagging you know i want to zig when everybody else is zagging and this felt like an all-time zag moment where it's everybody, even if you didn't really root for Tiger, like what were you sitting there rooting for Molinari? I could see rooting for Tony Fina,

but just to see Tiger and everything he's gone through, and I understand he'll never have to worry about paying a bill the rest of his life, so we don't have to get into that debate. But to see him there with his family, I think even the most cold-hearted person would go, so many people never thought

that was happening again. And there's plenty of evidence that it wasn't going to happen again. And he's playing better. And like, man, what a weird 10 years this has been. The odyssey that he's gone through. Laughing stock. And then mug shots with the t-shirt on. And all this stuff.

You have to go through it all. And you're this laughing stock, even though you're still kind of the man. And then it's like, I just won the Masters. I just won the Masters at 43. Who would go on a talk show and be like, well, I think it's better for golf if Koepka wins because, and so this felt like the un-zigable type of topic. Well, so the zig. The zig would be, you'd have to come up with a different- No, no, just to explain the zig one more level. There are people out there that they look at the terrain.

Yeah, right. They study it and they go, nobody's going this way. I'm going to make the strongest case I possibly can the other way. And at least I'm going to make you stop and think. Which is like, I was a political science major, which weirdly ties into what we all do for a living. Where it's like, you take history and you make an argument. And you just try to sell the shit out of the argument which is basically the zig i think the zig is you know people are celebrating tiger talk about how great this is i look the other way i think of what we

lost we should add more of these and the only person who cost more of these titles was tiger woods we'll be back after this. Why Tiger winning the Masters is actually bad for golf. Why Tiger Woods is like UConn women's basketball next. Oh yeah, if Tiger's back as a dominant golfer, this is actually bad for golf. Yeah. You just come out of the second year. Dustin Johnson, Koepka, Finau.

Ever heard of him? You want to know why you have? Because Tiger was average. Say goodbye to that. We needed Tiger's sabbatical. Yeah. Yeah, I think... The Open Championship's canceled.

I do think there's... I think somebody will make a case of we shouldn't be celebrating this guy too much because he was handed the golden gift and he kind of blew it. I could see that case being made. I do not agree with it, obviously. Yeah, I just feel like. Somebody will say it. The whole reason I brought up all that stuff is just, I remember going, why is everybody saying this guy stinks when he's playing well after the incident?

And then it became this injury thing and well i kind of i'd kind of given up on like not him as much as i was saying hey let me know when he's healthy and he's actually going to finish a round like finish four rounds and then we'll take it from there and because every time he wasn't making cutters was withdrawing it would be right after three or four days of hearing how amazing his practice round was and so i was like i don't really know what's going on but it was an injury thing though no that's what i mean and then eventually like oh his back is actually that nobody else so like he had like like an arrest and a mug shot and it seemed like was he addicted to painkillers like there seemed like all this other stuff that might be going on

and we had no idea combined with the spinal fusion yeah and i can't over overstate the spinal fusion part of this like as a member of the Bad Back Club, I never had the back surgery, but you're just not supposed to ever really be the same. And that's why I always felt like Tiger, like House said today, he was always 80%. I just felt like that's where we were. It's like you watch Blake Griffin on the Pistons. And it's like, I remember Blake Griffin in Lob City. He doesn't jump that way anymore, but he's figured out a different way to be really good. I just thought that's where we were with Tiger.

But the Tiger today was fucking crushing the ball, hitting darts, carried himself differently. Not the overdramatic fist pumps, just the robot going to the next hole, like totally locked in. But his elation afterwards is- Then it all came out at the end. Right, yeah. I've never seen him like that before and I wouldn't expect it to look like it did 10 years ago. You know why?

Because what you really want to do is impress your kids when you have kids. I was trying to impress your kids earlier. I know, you were trying, they weren't even your kids you're trying to impress them. I was trying. People always wonder why Adam Sandler has spent like 10 years making kids movies. It's like because he had kids.

He wanted to impress his kids. That's why these celebrities, eventually they start making movies that are geared toward people who coincidentally are the same age as their kids. Right. Like Ted with Wahlberg. Yeah. Ted with Wahlberg. Yeah. Dead with Wahlberg. I'll be interested to see where we go next few weeks

with this Tiger story in terms of is he really back? Well, he's never back in the sense of what we were talking about. No, but what if he goes to the US Open

and he's leading after day two? Could he really actually be back? Is he not back until the Tiger Slam? Is that what you're two. Like, could he really like actually be back? Is he not back until the tiger slam? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Could the tiger slam be a thing again? But like, you know, Jack's he's three away from Jack now. Um, he won a, he won a major and a master's in every decade. Now he has a chance to be the first guy I think to do it in four decades. I don't think anyone did that. He's got all these

things now that we can start talking about. We go back to the sports radio talking head thing. There are all these kind of legacy things that people can start talking about again, that were gone, that were the ship had sailed. We, he was like,

Oh my God, remember when we thought he could catch Jack? That's like, shit. He might, might actually catch him. He is 43. Um,

it struck me today. 43 year old guy wins the masters. 41 year 43. Struck me today. 43-year-old guy wins the Masters. 41-year-old guy wins the Super Bowl. Wow. Has it ever been this good to be in your 40s? 49-year-old guy hosting a great podcast with Ryan Rossello. That's a big one.

Are you 50 this year? I am. What are you doing for that? I'm just tiger woods wins more majors we should probably try to get tiger involved be great i'm so happy he's back i really missed him and one of the things that struck me was that i'll just never like another golfer this much i just won't especially now i'm like you know there's no way you'll be kind of weird if in your mid-50s you're like god i love this zach whatever kid but i feel like part of the reason i love tiger is because he hit rock bottom like i loved him anyway but now it's like

you know he he made real mistakes that i think are important for people to learn from and we have these heroes and heroes aren't immortal. Heroes aren't perfect. Heroes fuck up. Heroes do dumb shit they wish they could take back. Like, I like that he has the warts. I think it makes him more human. I always feel like almost everybody has them

and there's just some people that get caught and a ton of people that don't. So that's just how I look. So I never build anybody up in my head anyway before anything's happened unless I actually really feel like I know the person, good or bad. But I have-

Wait, how old are you? I'm 43. I have a little bit of a problem and I think I had a really good seat for this. You know, when you're doing something where you feel like you're getting the nation's perspective fed back to you and to see the shit fest on this guy. And, you know, I'd heard rumblings where Tiger was like, look, I get it.

I screwed up. And my crime was women. I didn't I didn't fucking kill anybody. Yeah. All right. And like I kind of thought about that was like, yeah, you know, you did something that you're not supposed to do. You know, we can talk about what family values are and all these different things i didn't like how the public took a total dump on this guy and then we are so predictable that when he wins it's like man fucking love this story let me give you a hug let me give you a hug now i can't go i can't go

individually and keep track of who said what and all this different stuff. I just think that's what we do in this country a lot. We're incredibly just mean and harsh and nasty, but then we're also forgiving. But then if you win again and you provide us something, we'll embrace the hell out of you like nothing ever happened. So this is what happened to Ben Affleck, basically basically not to compare him to tiger woods as like him as an actor versus this is incredible i'm gonna turn my mic get ready get ready for this one the the classic story of the celebrity is you hit it big everybody loves you something happens where it's meteoric and then at some point everybody goes wait a second hold on who who the fuck is this guy then there's the fall then we kicked we kicked the person beat the shit out

of them then they crawl back and have the comeback and we're like i fucking love this guy it's nasty man that that is the arc now tiger is obviously more talented than ben affleck but it's the talent was pretty good but like if you go back and you watch you read like the gone baby gone stories and the town of affleck when he was re-establishing himself as a director and he was really trying to win the credibility back as much as anything with people that you know please take me seriously i'm not just a guy who just was grabbing paychecks to do an armageddon like i actually really care about the craft of what i'm doing what was wrong with armageddon i don't know you know he had pearl harbor although yeah look i get i mean oh no you

mean everything goes on it's not going to be goodwill hunting no way right you know but then it goes all the way and dayton's and celebs and he's has a drug and alcohol problem, all that stuff. But then it goes all the way to Argo. And it's like Ben Affleck has won. He has staged the full comeback. And I remember writing this at the time for Grantland. That's when he did the Batman movie. That was his Patriots, fuck you. I'm going for 19 and 0 moment where he'd already won. He'd already had the comeback. And then he was like, you know, you don't be really great if i pulled up batman and my question is what now does that become for tiger woods what is his version of ben affleck being like this was all great i'm back but now i'm gonna be batman so you think like probably him i

mean if you're putting me on the spot to think of something that's comparable so i'll just throw it back on you no that's what the podcast is i think i'm ready tiger tiger just keeps playing way longer than everybody wants him to that would be his bad like age 60 yeah and anybody he addresses where he's like i feel like i haven't really even played my peak golf yet he's doing like tiger stuff and everybody's roaring laughing um but by the way house and i on the pod like three weeks ago, because we did, he came on the pod and we tried to figure out, should we bet on Tiger to win the Masters? How realistic is this? And we looked it up and it had been like 10 guys in golf history won a major Tiger's age or older. I think he's like the seventh. I don't even see this stat today, but he's got to be like the

seventh or eighth oldest guy to win a major just at the age he's in now so history says it should be this might be his last major which is fine i'm just glad he's playing golf again he's in our lives i've never been anti him like a lot of people i go hey just want him around want him around there's nothing more played out than when somebody thinks it's an original thought. Be like, you know what I like is when he's in the mix. I just sort of like it when he's in the mix. And you go, oh, no shit. I've never heard anybody say that in the last 20 years.

But do you like when he wore the red outfit? Do you like how he brought it back? Old school tiger outfit? I had some questions about his nipples. I just, I can't, I can't figure out what's going on there. What about the mock turtleneck? I don't really like those mocks at all. I thought Cousin Sal had a great tweet on Saturday where he's like, I hope everybody in this final grouping

can again wear all lilac golf shirts. That was a really good tweet. But when he put his arms out and it was, you know, I don't have kids, so I understand like people think I'm incapable of understanding what it would be like to hug your kid after everything and comparing it to the Earl hug. But I was just in that moment happy for him. Just really, really happy for that dude. My whole dad DNA kicked in with the hug and the kids. I could watch anyone hug their kids.

You know how SportsCenter and ESPN will do those videos of watch this dad came back from Iraq and he's going to surprise his kid at a basketball game. I get choked up every time and I'm a cyborg. Yeah. I owe it. It always gets me. I just saw one recently. If somebody's brother came home and sat next to him in the cafeteria and the kid didn't realize it for a minute and he saw him and his whole body sank and he just hugged him. I'm like, this is always going to work on me. I saw one in a minor league baseball game and they were like, he's been at tennis camp for two weeks. And he came back.

I was like, okay. Tennis camp. Coming up, I'm going to tell you why Tiger Woods' comeback actually wasn't that meaningful. But first, let's take a break. Let's talk about Robinhood. It is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos, all commission free. While other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, Robinhood doesn't charge any commission fees. So you can trade stocks and keep all of

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Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help you build your portfolio. Sign up right now at simmons.robinhood.com. All right. We're here to talk basketball. This is what we expected to be talking about. This is a Sunday night podcast where we break down everything that happened over the weekend, everything we think is going to happen over the playoffs next few weeks. We're going to watch Game of Thrones, which we'll talk about later. We're going to eat food, and then we're going to tape this podcast. i think the number one story coming out of the weekend and i think you agree with me is uh wtf philadelphia no doubt i don't even who would

be in the finals with them for san antonio probably winning as a seven at denver you know denver doesn't lose a home we'll get in all this stuff i know a little bit later this is it's not even close. There's so many layers to this Philly story. Well, that's the thing. Let's start here. Just go. Why play Embiid? Why play him in game one? Why let

it drag? Why make it almost a game time decision? You think it messed up the team, the uncertainty, as opposed to just, hey, he's not playing? Also, this is your guy. This is the guy you're paying $35 million a year to. He is the key to whatever your team's going to be the next five years. And he was running around.

It looked a little Greg Oden-ish, I got to say. He just looked way creakier. He looked out of shape. If he's out of shape, why do i want him running around in a playoff game because that's that's a great way to get hurt worse um toronto fans by the way are going we can't even get mentioned as a big story when we lose we'll get to you toronto i know he took more threes than jj reddick he took more threes than tobias harris um he just looks slow and out of shape and i definitely think it hurt the team but more importantly risky and I

just don't get it so explain it to me the size numbers are so overwhelming what he's done against Jared Allen um what he's done against any of their their big lineups I don't think he was a guy that he missed a lot of threes because he misses threes now and it's a bad shot for him and it's frustrating to see him do that especially when you have a team where the other four starters average over 17 a game. So you don't need to take those. And I also never understand why anybody goes for that elongated pup fake, but people still do it.

The Nets are trying not to. Yeah, yeah, they try. I think they've done a better job than some of the other teams I've seen do it. So I thought the first four minutes of that game told you the reason why the Sixers wanted to play them because it looked overwhelming and you're looking at how big Philly is when they're right. And you're like,

this is so much size for Brooklyn to even deal with. But then I think when you give the team the taste that you're going to have him and you know, there's all these different things we can point to, but when Brooklyn went small and Atkinson really, I think that a number on Brett Brown in this game. Yeah. And you could see that Philly, it wasn't that they didn't have Joel in,

but they still sort of expected him to fix all of their defensive mistakes. And then they're going small. They're getting switched into Redick where I feel like Brown even left Redick in hoping he would foul out. Yeah. And it was, it was really messy. It was really messy at home for a Philly team

that I still think needs to prove to the rest of us, and maybe even Philly fans, that just, like, who are you really? Like, are you guys actually mentally tough? Are you two huge, shiny toys with two other nice scores and a guy who hits threes? And I don't know if I can really buy into you. And that Simmons game, to me, is the epitome of why we all worry about Ben Simmons and

who he's really going to be. Because he was invisible in that game. And if Embiid's going to be out, that's when Simmons is supposed to be unlocked. And then afterwards, none of these guys handle it. So that's all of this stuff combined. All the Philly problems sort of happened at once against, yes, a competitive, fun, spunky, well-coached Brooklyn team that shouldn't be beating the Sixers at their place game one, even if Embiid's in or out. He only played four and a half minutes at the start of the first quarter that took him

out. And that's when my eyebrows were raised. I was like, this is weird. If you're going to play him, play him. He was getting fouls against everybody. If he can only play four and a half minutes and you got to rest him, you're worried about his foul trouble situation, whatever. I just didn't – none of it felt right. The game plan didn't feel right.

They didn't get JJ involved at all. If you're not going to run plays for JJ, just don't play him. Just play TJ. Yeah, just don't play him. You can't have him out there just standing around because they're going to go after him on the other side. It confirmed to me two things that I was worried about with them really since before the trade deadline. I'm not sure Brett Brown's a good coach.

I just don't know if he knows how to pull the strings. I thought he got his ass kicked in game one. And more importantly, their best five, I'm not sure, are good together. And I saw this that, well, they've only played 10 games, and this is what we went back to. Yeah, but that's a problem. Like, when you've only played 10 games, it doesn't mean, oh, just give us the benefit of the doubt. It means I don't know what to look for.

Well, it also— And he staggers those two guys. Like, he would try to keep Butler and Harris out there and get the other two away from them. I get it, but they still have a real hole being unable to, like they couldn't contain Spencer did Winnie on Saturday. And it's like, this is what I was saying in February. Who who's guarding Kyrie, who who's guarding Damien Lillard, who's guarding like any shifty

guard who can put somebody in a screen and either pull up for a three or go to the basket. They don't have the purse. They don't have none of. They don't have... None of those five guys can handle a guy like that. I just think the lineup's redundant. And it's like if Harris is getting his, that means somebody else isn't getting his. Then Simmons, the last five minutes of a game,

I don't know what the hell he's doing. And he just disappears for stretches now. It's just a lot going on. I don't like any of it. I don't know what Simmons... And I like their players. You and I both like their players, right? I love him. I mean on i don't like any of it i don't know what simmons and i like their players it's not you and i both like their players right i love him i mean i don't like their bench i don't think their bench is very i think their bench is fine i actually do i go below average

on the bench but the bench shouldn't matter in the playoffs with all this time off in between and your team is young and you have these like the whole point is you have these four guys that are all huge and jimmy butler went, and it was kind of a funny Jimmy Butler game in the sense that it's like, so I'm going to be the only one here? I'm going to be the only one that understands it's game one? Well, he strapped it on in the second quarter, but in a way that we all knew wasn't sustainable because I don't think he can put four quarters together.

He comes and goes. Yeah, but at least they got something. At least it looked like they had a tough guy. And the Ben Simmons stuff, I just look at it and go you know there's a reason why he gets knocked more than others because last year when you watch him you go this dude is enormous end to end his vision he can board he should be able to swallow up other guys and there's certain times defensively where it looks really really good and then you see in today's game like you haven't changed at all.

So now I'm like recalibrating what I think of you and your ceiling. But since it was thought that maybe this guy's going to be a top 10 player, he doesn't understand spacing. Like he brings guys in when other guys, like he'll bring his guy into the paint when somebody else is working in the paint. Cause it's almost like, well, I know i can't stand outside because everyone's going to sag off of me so i don't i don't know if that's another coach a part of it's on ben and realizing like there's going to have to be possessions where you have to stand in certain spots but that wasn't that was a horrible game and then his whole attitude afterwards like oh if you're booing us and stay on that side you're like hey dude you're in philly figure it out like this is what's going to happen i was embarrassed by that I actually thought that felt like a little bit of a generational thing, which

we've talked about the players all season about their attitudes toward fans and behavior. And sometimes it's justified. Other times it's like, guess what? We're always going to have cheering and booing in sports. And if you suck at home to a Nets team that you're supposed to beat in five games, and only two guys on your team shows up, and you're in Philadelphia, where they're always going to call it like it is, which is one of the reasons I think Boston and Philly fans, even if they hate each other, they're kind of a little more similar than maybe we want to admit. Absolutely.

That was a no-show. They're on national TV. They deserve to be booed. They lost to a Nets team. They were down 12-14 in the first half. Russell was dog shit in the first half. a no-show they're on national tv they deserve to be booed they lost to a nets team they're down 12 14 the first half russell was dog shit in the first half yeah d'angelo he was terrible i mean he's great in the third quarter of the first half yes but the if you told me d'angelo's gonna play like dog shit in the first half what's the score gonna be i nets and double figures would have been

inconceivable so they gave up 62 points to the nets with D'Angelo Russell playing like shit in the first half. And he'll be really good in one of the next two games. But the same way he was a problem. No, didn't what he's good, man. He's good.

He's, he's good. And Levert's back and all these different guys. Well, that's the other thing. Levert, Levert had signs. What?

The last three weeks started to look like Levert again. Cause there was a couple moments a few weeks ago where it was, it felt a little Hayward-ish, where it was just like he might need eight, nine months before he looks like himself again. Because that was somebody in November, December where, remember, somebody wanted Jimmy Butler, Minnesota wanted Jimmy Butler for him. And the Nets were like, no way. I made fun of that on this podcast.

Like, oh, you don't want to give up Karis LeVert. That actually, they were right. I was wrong. They shouldn't have wanted to give him up because he's on a cheap contract. We were talking about this early today, but historically, there's always these things that when you'd mention Ryan Gomes,

you go like, I want KG, but do we have to give up Gomes? No, but he's way better than Ryan Gomes. No, he is. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Karis LeVert was actually always really good. He just was hurt all the time. And he's on a cheap contract.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So I get that point of it but if you're philly go hey guess what like we're gonna figure out the mb thing but we're gonna be more than anything we're gonna be ready when they go small and we're gonna figure out a way to make them pay when they go small instead of us chasing everybody around like if we're actually a decent defensive team which they're supposed to be but yeah unfortunately for me it's this carryover it's a carryover last year and not really going, oh, wait a minute, you're going to get bounced by this hurt Celtics team when you have Embiid and Simmons? But you say the figure out

the Embiid thing. What if this is just who he is for the rest of the playoffs? Well, then it's... Knees don't get less sore. Now we're in playoff ground. We're playing like every two, every three days now for the next two and a half months. When's he going to rest? The rest is better now than it is in the regular season. No, but I'm saying it seems like he needs two, every three days now for the next two and a half months. When's he going to rest? The rest is better now than it is in the regular season.

No, but I'm saying it seems like he needs two, three weeks off. He's not going to sit out any games. I'm holding out hope. I'm holding out hope that maybe that's stupid, but you think, all right, so let me put it this way. You think this is who the, this is the Embiid Phillies getting for the rest of however long their run is. I don't see why we wouldn't think that.

There's obviously something wrong with his knee. He's having issues. So why is it going to be better two days from now? I don't think he's as bad. This isn't like an ankle sprain. If he doesn't take five threes. I don't think he was as bad in game one as uh as you do well you know you know one of my specialties is i like to study the running styles of very tall men

they all look bad running when they're that big he's looked i've always watched him and one of the things i liked about him is when he ran it didn't seem like the Odin type thing where it was just like, oh man, that looks like that hurts. It would hurt to watch. In that game one, it hurt to watch him run. I felt like when they start looking down, no, I'm talking about like rebound running down the floor.

When they look down at their legs. See, Embiid, when he's tired, even when he's not hurt, when he's tired, he looks terrible when he's tired. But I's not hurt when he's tired he looks terrible when he's tired but I'm talking first half it looked that way the argument is on your side he had to leave the game

in the first half and go back I haven't given up on the idea that maybe we can figure this thing out and he'll be okay at some point I just think it's like 70-75% rest of the playoffs if he's not though if he can't go say he's done game two he's not playing again you if he can't go, say he's done game two, he's not playing again. You think the Nets then win this series?

Well, you laughed at me on Thursday. I tried to get you there on Thursday with this. You should be doing a little bit of a victory lap on this. No, no, because I didn't fully commit. All I said was this series had the recipe. This had all the makings. It had the coaching, the chemistry, the injuries, the unfamiliarity, a Nets team that I thought people were sleeping on.

It had all the makings. They were 5-1 favorites or 5-1 underdogs on Friday, which I thought was crazy. I thought you presented all those things, and then you still kind of didn't pick them. I just said I thought it was a seven-gamer. I guess I'm- And i still feel that way just still looking at the sixers team going are you really going to lose this next team and i always think it's important to remind ourselves sometimes weird shit happens in game one and then you you it's the only sample that

you have for that matchup and you go oh my my god, I can't believe this happened. They should win game two. They'll get all the calls. We know how this works. This is a weird, it was a very weird Saturday Sunday where you had this many teams like, wait a minute, they lost? These guys are going to lose? These guys are going to lose? I'm not saying this is normal. The Toronto

thing, I look at that and I'm like, Lowry was complete dog shit. I can explain that series in one sentence. explain that game in one sentence. Lowry got outscored 35 to zero by DJ Augustine and Michael Carter Williams. I don't think that's going to happen again. Are you sure about that? Lowry in the playoffs? 35 to nothing.

I don't know what Lowry does before these playoff series, but just do something different from now on. But we know he's hurt. Yeah, okay. But the problem is, man, I mean, he was terrible. He was terrible. When Michael Carter-Williams is single-handedly rejuvenating, he's already kind of rejuvenated career.

I like when Lowry broke his face open. Lowry also flopped and tried to get a call. I'll say one thing that I noticed over and over again, and I'm with you, I never like to overreact to game one and the smart money is always to zig in game two. If things were zagging one way, go the other way in game two. But I did notice with the Clippers, with Indiana, with who's he? Oh, Clippers Indiana. Who is the third team? Oh, Detroit, which is like Detroit's a lost cause.

I wish we could vote to not have to have that on anymore. That would have been nice. Just cancel it. Yeah. Hey, you guys moved on to the second round. We decided we don't want to take the chance. Giannis is going to get hurt. Your Milwaukee advances. That's by the way, another thing when I watched like Durant go down at one point the golden state game i think we went down

a couple times watching mb because mb was on the floor a bunch early yeah maybe that's another pro simmons mb is really banged up and he went down like six times yeah he was but i thought it was i thought that was grit i watched a lot of sixers this year i felt like uh i felt like he was way off but but no there's like i'm just saying there's going to be one injury that's going to change the course of one of these playoff stories. No question. One thing I noticed, though,

is in the regular season versus the playoffs, you need your two guys who can create a shot. And in the regular season, Gallinare in the first quarter and Lou Williams in the second quarter and figure out who's going to get hot. It makes sense over the course of 82 games. But then when it gets to the playoffs and everybody is going full speed and trying really, really hard and you're on the road, it's like a giant

magnifying glass on how ridiculous it is that this is your team and this is who you're relying on and that you don't have James Harden and you don't have Kyrie and you don't have Giannis, you don't have that guy. And even today with Indiana, Boston turned the defense up in the third quarter. Really good defense crowd got into it. And it's like, we'll see what Bogdanovich has up his sleeve. It's like, this is crazy. This is. And then if it's like when he, then it's Tyreek Evans, if it's not him. And those are their two creators. It's like you can't win a playoff game on the road against a better team that's playing well if those are your two guys.

Yeah, Wes Matthews. But it took me today to realize that. Wes Matthews came out just pissed off. Like he had the full samurai headband on. Yeah. And I'm like, wait a minute. Is Wesley Matthews going to just eat? And the Pacers were crisp

and they were mad it's like everybody's doubting us the celtics are slow on a bunch of stuff and then all the pacers starters couldn't score in the second half and the celtics like hey why don't we just like the celtics mailed it in in that first one indiana missed a bunch of open shots in the third quarter where it could have been like the lead could have gone higher things could have happened it was like 45 to 40 for a while and indiana was like a fake shot yeah it was a fake comeback in there i i've always looked at every team and that's why i worry about the jazz that whole two score thing you know look at golden state golden state against the clippers which is a little bit of what houston. Houston guarded three guys with five, but it never really mattered. They stayed with those rules.

The Clippers are doing something like that where they're guarding Durant, Clay, and Steph with five, and they're keeping everyone below the baseline, and they're leaving Draymond wide open. Which is exactly what they should do. Right. And it didn't work, and that's fine. It doesn't mean you should deviate from it. And Draymond hits those first two threes. But think how clogged up sometimes Golden State can

look trying to figure out, okay, how are we going to attack some of the things these guys are doing when they're guarding us with five and ignoring, like completely selling out with the philosophy that we're ignoring those two guys. Can you imagine being the Pacers and trying to find buckets when Golden State struggles at times? Right times right well and that's what i was thinking last night i'm watching the denver i thought denver was going to win the series i think they have better team and then you see the playoffs it slows down a little and san antonio has two guys who can get a shot right aldridge and derosen can at least get decent shots denver's two guys were yok, who doesn't really take a lot of shots. And all of a sudden, they're really relying on Jamal Murray. And they did-

Jokic took nine shots, by the way. I know. But he had 14 assists he's creating. He's at least creating- 14 boards, right. He's creating plays. But Jamal Murray was their other guy. And Jamal Murray didn't have it the whole game. He ends up taking 24 shots. He screws up on the last two plays. And the thing that was alarming to me, you know, and you don't think of it, I'm watching them in a regular season context, but in the playoffs, when you really need like whoever, I don't really even know what their other options were. And I don't think Mike Malone did

either. He's like, ah, all right, Jamal, maybe maybe maybe jamal will get jamal wide open 17 footer to win the game basically this maybe this will get him going they didn't really have anybody else they could have run that play for so now now i'm like i thought i thought denver is going to kill san antonio and now i'm looking at it going fuck are are we gonna get san antonio in the western finals is that how this is gonna play out you know we could still be right about both teams being underwhelmed and they're just playing each other right now too you know so when i look at san antonio going in i'm like you know this doesn't really this doesn't feel like it's that dangerous of a team you're two score guy i'm with you but at the end of the day i can't believe i just said that hate that phrase the end of the day denver shots six of 28 from

three at home okay they're not going to do that again yes jamal marie is actually still a question mark at this point in his career and this is what he does he is a little if you see him if you see him on the right right now you're like oh my god this guy's better than them booker but he missed a big three that he airballed malone and an ato ran a really it wasn't even that complicated it was a high screen where he got the look it up the Spurs sagged too far off of it was a beautiful open look he misses that one and then he gets stripped by Derek White who's a classic example of a Spur that I go oh the Spurs drafted him so I guess he's going to be good and he just fits in

he was terrific in game one he was all pumped And you're like, Jamal Murray just had three major, major screw-ups at the end of this game. But is Malone supposed to do something else? Because Malone's a good coach. The other thing that was noticeable because the playoffs,

it's just hotter. The lights are brighter. The team scouted you. Are you making fun of my end of the day? no I'm not I just could feel it they don't really have like a point guard and it's I was fine with it the whole year

because I think the whole point guard thing is overrated but at the same time like the Nets have two guys Dinwiddie and Russell that can at least calm a situation down and make sure the ball goes to the right place. Denver really relies on Jokic to make sure the ball goes to the right place, which is just abnormal.

I'm not saying it can't work. It's just weird to me. And by the way, we're talking about the two score thing. The other reason I brought that up, if Paul George is really hurt, which it seems like he might be, OKC is down to the one scorer, which is a real problem because that one scorer is Feaster Fam in Westbrook. And that was another one. My fear with OKC, and I thought they were going to win the series,

I thought George was healthier. I had just watched him in that Houston game the other night, and it seemed like the shoulder was manageable. Today it did not seem manageable. Today, and I think they were bummed out after. I think we're going to find out after the year that he has a torn rotator cuff or something. You think everybody's just really hurt, though?

Is there any part of this where I can- I think he's really hurt. I think he might have a torn rotator cuff. He might be. That was the word on the street a little bit, too. No, I get it, know i look at the end of that portland game where it feels like it's good you know portland put up this big lead everybody comes back it's weirder when somebody's up 20 and they maintain the whole thing that's just the way

this game works and okc's defense really cranked up there too they're staying with the guards more um which also led to canter having a field day with the rebounds i know you want to get to canter here but it's my guy george is struggling all day he can't hit anything the only thing keeping a minute scoring wise is his free throws because he still ended up with 26 points which is so fake but he had a three that was like a non-pressure three that he kind of walked into. And then there was a three that they ran for him, then he missed. And it just reminded me of all the Paul George stuff that we've been kind of let down about with him in the past.

Right, which we thought we'd gotten rid of this season. Right, and if he's hurt, and look, he's obviously hurt to some degree, but that makes them very different because I think Westbrook, like this wasn't a bad Westbrook game at all. I was tracking him the last six minutes. He was deferring. He was making the right read.

The only time he really forced it is when he grabbed that defensive rebound and he just tried to go end-to-end, and he didn't even make it past his own free throw line, and it was just a collision, and Portland ended up with the ball back. I liked how he was using Adams down the stretch too. He wasn't trying to. No. It was definitely a collision and Portland ended up with the ball back. I liked how he was using Adams down the stretch too. He wasn't like trying to. No. And he,

it was a, it was definitely a higher level thing, but look, look, I'm just talking pure eye test. I think sometimes you can tell when somebody doesn't look right, especially if you watch them a while. And the two guys that stuck out to me this weekend,

like that guy doesn't look right. We're Georgian and B. I just don't think they look right. Embiid, they gave us evidence that he's not right by leaving. I've just... Also, how about his quote about, it only hurts when I jump or cut? It's like, okay, well, so there's that.

I just couldn't help. What about standing? Does that feel good? I'm not saying Paul George isn't hurt. What I'm saying is, I've also seen Paul George look like this when he was supposedly healthy. That's my point. this is one of my favorite rassilo things right the why when you don't play well do we have to make an excuse and say you're injured this is your steph curry thing

right from back when but i actually thought steph was hurt yeah and i i think i think paul george is i think we're gonna find out that he's way more hurt than we realized. Now, on Enos Kanter. Yes. The floor is yours. Hose you down, Tiger and Enos in the same day. I've been on a couple islands. Deanne Waiters Island, obviously. Marcus Smart Island. I might own a small house on Yabasele island i haven't really talked about it that much it's a one-bedroom condo but uh those big sergey monia condo guy i've always liked can't i can't believe he didn't work out i like guys who can do things really well

in basketball i like one tool or that's why I've always liked Farid. And now Farid could only probably be successful on four teams, but now he's on one of the four teams. He's okay. Kanter can post up, crashes the offensive boards, competitive, great teammate, has been in big games, was in a lot of big games in OKC where they- On the bench.

No, he played. He played in that year in 2016. He played in that playoffs. He played. He hurt San Antonio. He had moments. I'm just saying there's also some series where he didn't get in. Yeah, but I had a problem when that happened.

I never understood why they didn't play him enough at Golden State. And everyone's like, well, the advanced metrics, he's terrible. It's like- Uh-oh, are you going anti-nerd right now? I'm going anti-nerd because everybody was pointing out the stuff he couldn't do and the reasons why it was bad to have him in the lineup. And meanwhile, they barely had enough guys that year. And if you watch that, like we did a rewatchables on that last game in Golden State, the game six, and he had like 10 points in that game in eight minutes or something.

I just, I've always thought there was a place for guys like him. And, you know, he'll hurt you on one end, but he'll help you on the other. And if he's, if he's bringing stuff to the table and taking stuff off the table, I'm okay with that. Because most subs just take stuff off the table.

I actually think he brings some things to the table. So that's my case for Kanter. Yeah, towards the end of that run and it was because it was Golden State, but he didn't really play as much. No, he didn't play at all. But also he's going against one of the great shooting teams of all time. Yeah, and that was kind

of the beginning of some of the small ball stuff. But yeah, they were they were inconsistent with him and his Dallas stuff. I just remember the Golden State series because he wouldn't shut up and it's like now you're not playing. I think he and Draymond, it'd be shocking if Draymond. He was really good. He was really good because Portland needed another level of, they just needed another outlet. And he's

always, look, the year he was supposed to play at Kentucky, if you go back and look at all his stuff, you could tell, you're like, man, this guy's really, really skilled. But as good as he was in game one and as much as you like him, maybe this is kind of a couple different things at once. I think there'll be a game in this series where it looks like you can't keep him out on the floor.

That's fine. All I'm saying is he was available for free at the end of February, which is crazy. Think of what Philly gave up for Tobias Harris, which I hated when they did it. And if they get knocked out in round one or they get knocked out in round two, that's going to look like a disaster. Like just a full-fledged disaster. They keep him and that's their insurance against letting Jimmy go. That's not why they did the trade. They did the trade because they wanted to win the title this year.

That was not a trade like, oh, I hope if we do this, it'll be easier to keep Tobias Harris. They did the trade because, look. Well, they did the trade because they like tobias harris enough thinking we're going to keep one of those two guys with but that's the number one reason they did that trade they're trying to win the title this year i know what they said but no but i'm saying they looked at it and i think they looked at it pretty smartly that you never know when you have young superstars and it might blow up at any time and you think your window is 10 years and it turns out it's two, we got to go for it. And we went for it.

That was a trade they made to win the title this year. That was not a future trade. I mean, if they keep him, great. But I think they really want to win this year. How do we make this about Enos Kanter? Because they gave up all that shit for Tobias Harris. Miritich goes for a second rounder. Enos Kanter goes for free.

Now, Tobias Harris is much better than those guys. But my point is, you can find people who can play in a playoff series. I don't necessarily have to trade every asset I have. And if I am, I better get somebody who is a slam dunk. And I don't think Tobias Harris is a slam dunk. If you look at the history of those kinds of deals, when a guy's in a contract and you can say, oh, we're just going to resign him.

Things change all the time. When it happened, we both were like, wow, that's actually kind of a lot in comparison to other things. It was crazy. It was an expiring free agent. So we're in agreement there. The Cantor thing, though, maybe the positive is it's not just the rebounding and the scoring

and knowing that there's going to be stretches where he gets eaten up and as much as like one game one we can think oh wow this is how the series is going to look it's not it doesn't like i went back and looked at some of the stuff the pacers beat the calves last year in game one by 18 it's ridiculous um the celtics that year with isaiah thomas they lost to the bulls they may have lost the Bulls if Rondo doesn't get hurt there the Houston San Antonio series was your second rounder you're an if Rondo doesn't get hurt truther from 2017 you think the cell you think you don't think the Celtics are in some trouble there I choose not to think about it that team wasn't that good man you know it they weren't that good but yeah you knowston smoked san antonio remember that series a couple years ago and that was game one i think they won by 20 something i had it all written down

here so i'm off the top of my head and then guess what happened we're like man san antonio too slow too old houston's so much more athletic look at the way they're cutting and then guess what san antonio and six and harden had an awful awful elimination game to go with some of his other stuff in his bad playoff resume. So all the stuff we've seen. Drive-by. Yeah. Harden. Jesus.

Turn off the headlights. Duck James. I try not to freak out too much as bad as it looked for the Thunder. The side, the thing that I haven't gotten to yet on Canada, and I'll make it quick on this is i wonder sometimes if a team and look so much what okc does is the high pick and roll with adams diving and then somebody coming off of that but if you are saying hey let's kill canter this whole game every minute he's in there let's kill canter let's kill canter does it screw everybody up i think that's great i like you see what i'm saying like but that's you're so focused on

exploiting one thing that it fucks up your whole kc out of their offense i totally agree because everyone's like oh canters and we got to do it um all i know is the guy had like 20 points and 18 rebounds and he was available was available for free on like february 27th it's crazy is this really a celtic segment that we just did on any scanner? Is this about your dad? I did it for my dad. Can you just, by the way, can you, can you share what happened to your dad? I can. Oh, um, no, I can. Oh, you said you can. Okay. So my dad, he goes, he likes to go away to this one place where I won't say where they are every year with my stepmother does the trip this year and does it for the middle weekend in April, not realizing that it's master's weekend.

The only two people that like tiger more than I do in my life. Um, well maybe house and I are tired. My dad and my agent, James baby doll Dixon, who is like, who actually has like a tiger statue in his basement loves tiger. It's his favorite human being. Life size? I think it is life size, actually. So he loves tiger. He's been waiting for this forever. He left to go to his vacation last night. So watches round three, now realizing that this tiger event is going to happen. Didn't he say like, hey, worst case ahead of time, like kidding around? Yeah, worst case. Yeah.

He's like, well, worst case, Tiger will be in the hunt, but it'll still be a win. He said something like that, but it'll still be a win because that'll mean Tiger's doing well. Like he tried to be magnanimous about it. He's in a place where there's not a lot of television. He's basically reading Twitter and text from me. That how he's miserable can he is his joy for tiger's accomplishment can that be enough to offset the fact that he's not able to watch any of it um i think he's happy and absolutely devastated because this was like he said this on the podcast last year. He said it was his number one sports wish for Tiger to win the Masters.

That's not fair. Including any Boston title. I'll call somebody. He has Celtics season tickets. And this was his number one sports wish over that. And somehow he didn't get to see the fourth round. Well, because the other 10 years have gone pretty well for all the other Boston teams.

That's the thing. He could also look at it another way and be be like the man has no wishes left i kind of wish 13 titles century revolution i really i wish the revolution have good owners i really wish you had tweeted out some absolutely douchebag boston tweet and we're like i'm actually claiming this one because i was there since his amateur rounds so duck boat i don't me softly i don't have a boxer anymore i used to sugar i used to be my guy and then uh i heard that in the aram podcast and then haggler and then they fought and that was weird wait a minute who'd you root for in leonard haggler i rooted for leonard but i but it was a lot of

soul searching asshole i know leonard was my guy from 76 Olympics, though. I had a longer tail with him. But McEnroe is my guy. You have guys. I do. I mean, I've never really had a golfer, though. There's guys I've met that I like. I wouldn't claim to say I know any of them all that well.

I didn't ever root for Tiger. Like when Tiger lost a tournament, was I upset? No. So you're at a different level with that. Actually, it's not even the same stratosphere. I'm trying to think like what individual guys I've liked. Oh, I like Federer a lot. I've always really enjoyed watching Federer.

I do too. He's like kind of tier two or tier three for me. I wouldn't say he's one of my guys. Like Sean White. I'm a big X Games guy. Mostly winner. So yeah yeah that's been a good run too hulk hogan you know who i liked macho man randy savage i loved i was a big junkyard dog guy but he never really you know as jyd fans we knew we were never gonna get a chance of the title well my other golf guy was nicholas just because growing up i was a kid in the 70s and the icons you just reared for the icons did you kind of like the cowboys then too no no you

just went nicholas tiger no ali nicholas yeah but nicholas is like he's the ali jesus man kind of a front runner everyone liked ali in 1975 he was the most popular human being on the planet what were you though wait a minute if you're i was five and six yeah so we had wild world of sports back then okay right so this is where it all started he was on every week and it was like him and evil knievel those were the two guys it was like these are my guys did you ever read montville's evil knievel book yeah it's that is incredible he was like that i felt like they were equally famous like the first seven years of my life knievel was miserable every stunt yeah he was scared to death he didn't want to do anything on all kinds of drugs legitimately bad guy yeah and that's my guy in montville that book i i would

put that up there with one of the greatest sports books i've ever read by the way just i'm yeah i know you likely right i don't want to be pumping up guys i do but that bird was my guy yeah but that one makes sense you're a boston guy who also happened to like sugar ray ollie i'm just saying i haven't had a lot of guys seems like i've had more guys than you for the guys individual stuff yeah i don't i don't have a ton of individual i mean i was I was a big Greg LeMond guy. Greg LeMond. Let's take a break. Let's talk about Bud Light.

Bud Light is keeping it real by putting an ingredients label on their packaging, brewed with hops, barley, water, and rice. No corn syrup, no preservatives, no artificial flavors. You know who else is keeping it real right now? You watching Billions, Kyle? No. Why aren't you watching Billions? What happened? My internet's out. Your internet's out? So your internet's not keeping it real. Yeah, not keeping it real. Jesus. Well, you have five Billions episodes. Billions has been

keeping it real this year. Game of Thrones is getting a lot of attention right now, and rightly so. But I like to look at Sunday Night as an extravaganza of television that I enjoy, not including the basketball playoffs. A lot of maneuvers. Barry. A lot of people watch Veep. I'm going to binge Veep at some point in my life. I'm like about six seasons behind on Veep.

But speaking of keeping it real, cheers to Bud Light. Nobody keeps it more real than them. Reminding you to enjoy responsibly and keep it real. Winners and losers of the weekend, just quickly, because I'm with you. We always overreact to that first weekend. I do think the Nets are kind of a bad matchup for Philly. I don't know if that'll translate to an actual win, but that is not a typically easy first round series.

Look, it was bad for a bunch of reasons, but I think the biggest thing is, who is this Philly team? Who are they really? Are they a bunch of individuals? It's more a case of Philly beating themselves versus... And they all said the wrong things after the fact. Didn't like any of it.

And the Amir Johnson phone thing was weird. We didn't even talk about that. We didn't talk about it because it's like, okay, ESPN catches it. We see it. Everybody immediately freaks out, me included. You're like, are you kidding me? And then all of a sudden, Dave McMenamin,neman espn reporter is like well wait a minute amir's daughter's really sick so then everybody feels guilty about

the tweets and all this different stuff but brett brown came out and didn't sell that message at all which means well wait a minute did did he not buy amir's story was that not the real story what's going on he was fine amir apologized to the to the team. So something's wrong there, and I don't want to sit here and debate whether or not, because there's still a part of you that's like, look, if his daughter was really that sick, I don't want to do that or be that guy. But that Philly team is this,

really all it's been now is hope. There's nothing, you know, whenever it gets- They won 50 games. They were 50 and 32. Right, and let's face it. It was a success based on everything, but it was a bunch of wins against teams that were tanking at the end of the season. And I got too excited about it too.

They've done nothing for me to go, hey, I'm going to give them a benefit of that a little bit, other than just the names. And I'm still sort of doing that a little. So that's- Well, you think about where we were a year ago. This is a round before they lost to the Celtics in five. And we were thinking, this is the next

great young team. They had all these assets. They had two of the best 10 young assets in the league, maybe the 10 best assets, period, for the trade value column or something. Simmons was on a real run where it seemed like he was starting

to look a little Magic Johnson-y. Bede was dominant and really Fultz was going to be good well no but they hadn't given up they hadn't given up yeah it was like eventually Fultz will come here and this is all going to go and now they they lose to Boston in five they have the confetti game is the big legacy of that series Brett Brown gets totally outcoached they know they might have a problem with brett brown they don't do anything about it it's almost like they feel bad about all the hinky they feel bad yeah they were like ah let's give them one more chance so now it would have sucked to fire the guy when they actually started getting good he got pretty badly outworked in that series goes to the colangelo thing that started by the ringer, unfortunately. So, you know, full disclosure.

But we wrote a piece that ended up getting the GM fired. They trade. They do that trade where they get the future Miami pick. They trade down from 10 to 16. Right. It takes Zaire Smith, who ends up has this huge sickness thing, misses almost the whole season then they do that they go all in on Jimmy Butler

then they go all in on Tobias Harris now they have no assets left I don't think anybody thinks Harris and Butler come back and beats Hurd again like if you're just ranking the holy shit like you can get another coach if Butler

leaves or Harrisris leaves whatever you'll you'll figure it out you'll use your cap space for something else the imb being heard again if that's a serious thing that's red flag number one the biggest one what is simmons why don't we feel any different about him than we did 12 months ago that worries me and then they don't have the assets anymore like the process is over there is no process this is their team so how do you fix it i have nothing i have nothing to add to it i just don't because all i can tell you there's no other move there's other players there's other groups of guys you look around the league and that's what's so weird about the east is it kawaii proven well kawaii is proven with a different organization and the siakam thing is nice and the ball that

orlando game could have gone either way. I'm not yet worried about, like I'm not doing the same old Toronto thing again here yet. It was a DJ Augustine heat check. Yeah, it was. And a terrible Larry game

in Orlando still almost lost. And by the way, Vucevic and the way they went and doubled them twice. You had an Aaron Gordon followed by Jonathan Isaac threes in the opposite corner. Those two guys hit

two huge threes in that game. Kawhi makes the great read, kicks out Gasol. That one goes in and out. That to me is a coin toss game. I'll wait until Toronto loses game two at home before I start freaking out about them again. But collectively, it's not proven. Milwaukee's new.

Giannis scares the shit out of everybody else, and he should. It seems like he's that guy that I don't know what anybody's going to do with this dude now. Boston, I have no read on that. Do you feel like Boston, if it gets to Boston-Milwaukee round two, that that series and Golden State-Houston are going to be the conference finals, basically?

Just trying to process it all out. Because when you said Boston, I really didn't think we had anything to say. Although, I know Gordon Hayward. I don't know what the final numbers were for Gordon Hayward. He looked really good today in sports. This has been a three-week thing. Try and tell people.

He's super aggressive again. And he didn't finish shots today, but I like the way he played. I stand by it. Him getting the ball in transition, just going, and then he was going to make the decision. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Did you see when he cherry-picked on a play in the fourth quarter for horford horford hit him on a little lefty reverse but he's taking off now like he's using his speed again you know a little so i

mean as we're running through all this stuff and i don't want to do too much more in philly here because there's really no disagreement no i have one good one for you in a second i'm just saying if i'm gonna kind of hold out hope for you i usually like a little evidence that i you know you that you've done something before and they haven't with the celts no i just mean philly in general i mean the celtics are the same thing i mean the celtics at times i'm like are you guys the most delusional like they released that video and be like we still don't see anybody's being a seven you're like you're the fourth seed guys like you're you're not the fourth seed after back to back titles the two things the best things for them is horford look better today just moving better and seemed healthier and the way hayward's playing i have a good one for you

kyle mark this spot because this is a potential breakout on Twitter. This is a great what if that I don't think we realized was a what if, but now I look back and it would have been really fun if it had played out this way. What if LeBron had gone to Philly last summer instead of the Lakers? Simmons comes off the bench. Maybe he makes Simmons better, but maybe, uh, then they don't have to do the Butler trade. Um, they trade Simmons for Trevor Ariza.

LeBron calls up James Jones. Um, if LeBron goes to Philly last summer, it's just more fun for every Philly's more fun. And the Lakers are more fun. The Lakers are more fun. Yeah. Cause the Lakers are just an unequivocal train wreck,

but at least they have cap space and they're built around young guys. Maybe magic's still there. We don't have to read. I'd love to get some true, true serum and LeBron and be like, Hey, are you really happy about this? Should you have stayed in Cleveland one more year or gone or gone to Philly?

I guess he didn't want to chase titles, but why not? Yeah, the Philly thing was weird. What's the point of the late? It was like a fake seed they planted to everybody. Yeah, maybe he didn't do it. It would have been a good what if though, right? No?

You're not with me. I wasn't expecting. I didn't expect to have my mind blown this late. Philly, well, you know, the thing is I still don't know. I don't know how that would look basketball wise better better than it looked for either team i think for what we saw last couple weeks yeah yeah i would agree with that i do think lebron could have brought some good stuff out of simmons because i do think Simmons has a high basketball IQ in some ways,

right? He's a great passer. He does the defensive rebound the way he takes off and goes. And then, as you said, there's other times where it's like he's never played pickup basketball before. He's running into guys as they're about to make a move, or he's doing pick handoffs, and he's in somebody's way. And he just seems really inexperienced to me sometimes do we do that thing on the air was that you and i texting about if simmons were at a bar how he would be as a customer i think we did that texting yeah do that do that whole bit though if simmons went to like a bar it was busy and he he would go over and be like hey i found a spot and he like he'd be like hey

can i get two midori sours and the guy'd be like that's the fucking service station that's what those brass rails are for you're in your way can you move sir please you're not supposed to go over there sir please move to the left simmons would get drinks and he'd be like all right hold on he's like i think i found a spot over there and he there'd be like this little area in the hallway he's like this is pretty good guys right and it'd be the hallway to the bathroom and everybody's like why are you guys fucking standing here like no one's standing here the reason the space was open because no one actually stands near the toilets the whole fucking time i was saying he'd be in vegas you're playing blackjack he's the guy standing between third base on one table and first base on the other who's just crowding both guys

the one guy gets trying to smoke a cigarette and keeps accidentally brushing it against simmons and every now and then he'll tell you to hit and he's right he's got his hand on your chair you're like can you just give me some room yeah how much are you for the drinks be like actually i got him for free because he thought i was waiting tables uh yeah um the only other overreaction for me from from uh are these still winners and losers because i think we did i think we turned it in overreactions um the the uh the paul george shoulder thing i can't wait to find out what's actually wrong with it because my spidey senses are just shooting fireworks. They keep alluding to it.

Well, they wrapped it up as soon as the first sub out. It was like, let's make sure we get an igloo on this guy. He had some quote about how he hadn't lifted it over his head since the Houston game or something. He hadn't lifted his arm over his head in five days. It's like, what's going on? So anyway,

Portland, shout out to them really quickly they lose uh they lose their center who was playing really well dame hit just the ballsiest 29 footer i thought that was great four of them but that last one like he had two westbrook should have been guarding him but at the same time like he was 29 feet away you're not even thinking about it yeah that was pretty great that was great out of them oh another loser i have another loser okay no you'll like this one no no i'm not ready i'm not telling you i want to i want to put your jetpack on for this one kevin durant what are you doing you're like the 14th best player of all time you're up 20 against the clippers why why are you in like a

blood feud with patrick like a double technical ejection thing with Patrick Beverly? What are you doing? What's wrong with you? You're 30 years old. That didn't bother me. It didn't. Now, if he gets five more texts. He's got two texts. Now he's got five left for the rest of the playoffs. Five less. What are you doing? Do this. Don't get five more

texts and lose a game in the postseason, okay? I think that's doable. Don't get any texts. That's doable. What are you, like in fourth grade?rick beverly setting the tone you know what i thought was funny is that people on twitter with that game was ah man the clippers are getting screwed here just screwed i looked it up yeah the clippers are taking like the same the clippers are taking one more free throw at that point when beverly and all those guys started going nuts beverly was going nuts lou williams was going nuts and then when beverly got that technical he didn't get the technical just because he clapped to the ref he got the technical because he nuts lou williams was going nuts and then when beverly got that technical he didn't get the technical just because he clapped to the ref he got the technical because he and

lou williams wouldn't let it go while um steph and then katie were taking free throws they just wouldn't stop and then beverly claps so most people are going to agree with you on the durant and being he's not a loser on that one beverly's annoying as hell i get that's how he's in the league so i respect that part of it but i but I think Durant has enough self-control even though he's been kind of pissy all year. Remember that playoff game when Larry Bird got thrown out because he started barking with Sedale Threat?

Sedale Threat. Oh, wait. That never happened because Larry Bird would have just told the guy to get the fuck away and not even bother. Sedale Threat knocked Ainge out, though, in a regular season game. He slapped him.

It was the greatest slap in the history of the NBA. Slap? No, there was a little... It was an open hand. It was an open hand Tony Soprano slap. I felt like Ainge got staggered on that one. He did. It was a slap. It was not a punch. I don't like...

When your stature is at a certain point, I don't like that. don't get caught up in that stuff and in general the way the Warriors have acted the last three months I think is a problem I don't know why that like give me the equivalent they're acting like babies all the time

like would you get into a fight with don't beef down never beef down don't beef down to Patrick Beverly yeah but I think that's ridiculous also like you know what else bothered me is that was a classic Doc Rivers and Doc Rivers great season kudos to him for the coaching but that was a classic look how smart I am I'm gonna put Patrick Beverly on Kevin Durant watch this guys it's like you know what you should put Patrick Beverly on? Steph Curry.

Have him hounding Steph Curry, touching him, stepping on his feet. That's the guy you need to take out. Kevin Durant's going to get his points anyway. I just watch Ainge get his He gets staggered. The slap, yeah. It was kind of like an open hand. It was a little

Mr. Miyagi. He wasn't ready for it. It wasn't like a... It's on YouTube. It's more of a punch than you think it is. But it's open hand. It was a little Mr. Miyagi. He wasn't ready for it. Right. It wasn't like a... It's on YouTube. It's more of a punch than you think it is. But it's open hand. But it's... Isaiah Thomas watched that quip a lot last summer. Maybe your best line.

Thank you. It took us... Let me throw a winner in there. Yeah. Houston, not just because they won game one, they had 99 points with seven minutes left against Utah. 99 points, seven minutes to go in that game. And everybody seems to love in basketball nerd world

this overplay hardened shit where you just sit on the left side. Going after the nerds? Yeah, a little bit. Okay. A little bit. Because the nerds really embraced it when it happened. And I really think you need to make sure everybody knows the plan

when one guy's giving him a straight line drive. Yeah. And he's left-handed, which always takes everyone an extra second. So sitting on it doesn't allow him to do a kind of step back three and get into that left-handed shooting position so i understand that benefit it also cuts down on some of the angles of his passing but two things there's way too many easy just drives to the bucket

and harden got going by the way and he didn't get any foul calls let's get any foul calls tonight and the other problem is is i think consecutive games going you're gonna put royce o'neill and just shade him on my right side like a guy like he's so good anybody who's that good is gonna know okay look hey everybody just know this is what i'm gonna do here this is what i'm gonna adjust so look i shouldn't have made it so personal it's just that i liked it i like when you get personal i don't know man i i don't i don't understand why people thought they somehow solved harden with this overplay thing they're not solving harden he's one of the best offensive players of all time um you know what bothered me i watched in house today play actual minutes in a playoff game daniel house yeah the Rockets had him. They screwed up. Remember they had to release him?

Here are the Rockets. Here's Daryl Morey, friend of the program, who over the last 12 years, over and over again, has found people that end up becoming worthwhile NBA players. Right? Like, I don't think anybody has found more people who would be like, wow, I didn't realize that guy was a role player or this, that. And they screw up with this guy and he's just out there for two months.

You have all these other teams. And I saw a lot of them. I'm pretty sure not all of them had 10 good players. And this guy just floats in the freaking outer space for two months. How does nobody sign him? Be like, oh, Daryl liked him. Let's just sign him. He must be good.

How has Daryl not reached that point yet? The Fareed one blew me away more, and I know you already brought that up, how he'd be good only on a few teams. Doesn't it feel like that's the Houston system thing, though? Remember, everybody would always want everybody on Phoenix when it was Nash and everything was rolling? You don't think Philly could have used House?

In that shaman role? Are all those shots going to be as open? Everything's open. Everything's open in this system. It's awesome. in that this version but i mean are all those shots going to be as open i mean everything's open everything's open in this system it's awesome if i was a gm who didn't make the playoffs and i watched the playoffs i would be watching all these random dudes who just ended up on these teams trying to figure out how i missed it's like with canter canter's sitting there for four months 18 rebounds 20 points it's like did i miss on that one sitting there for four months 18 rebounds 20 points it's like did i miss on that one what's going on here i'd be i'd just be studying that but it's

funny how the same teams are getting these guys over and over again yeah it's credit to old shane those guys because clearly they really like canada off they've liked him for five years at one point i just thought like we want to have the weirdest team of just huge white guys. So, hey, those four teams we mentioned in the last podcast, Portland, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Denver. And I said to you, one of these teams will be in the Western Finals by rule. And I think we picked OKC. Who would you pick now?

Because I'm at a loss. I don't know who I would pick. I feel like I'm always the non-Denver guy. And I still, I don't want to just give up on them against San Antonio. Denver's stock is low, but I think you're right. Now you're buying low. But Jamal Murray might have just had a bad game. Yeah, this isn't a stubborn, I'm thinkingver's awesome all season long yeah like i think i had

a pretty good read on denver yeah and their problems became exposed like jamal murray had the bad jamal murray game and i think you gotta worry okay where is your head going to be at now after your your playoff experience here but i still went to you if you're malone you know i didn't decide to go to Monte Morris instead of you. It's funny. They might have actually needed Isaiah Thomas if he had been able to bring it back together. They could have used him in that game

or somebody like him, somebody who has the skills that he ostensibly has. Quick break and then we'll do a couple emails. Let's take a quick break to talk about a couple podcasts on The Ringer, The Rewatchables. We did Major League. If you missed it, we put that up late last week. Me and Rembrandt ran, broke it down. Coming up this week, Field of Dreams. We're

putting that one up, I think on Friday. So be ready for that. Me, Mallory Rubin, I'm going to make her cry at least seven times. And I think Chris Ryan's going to be on that one as well. Speaking of those two and Jason Concepcion, they hosted Talk the Thrones on Twitter. Massive success. Did really well. Thanks for all the support. Thanks for spreading the word for us.

If you missed it, you can go back and watch the replay on Twitter or you can listen to Binge Mode for the podcast that they're going to be putting up at some point during the middle of the week where they're going to watch that episode, I don't know, 10 to 20 times and then break down everything you saw.

Speaking of breakdowns, a lot later Ursula and I are going to be breaking down Game of Thrones. We're going to be doing our breakdown. It's kind of like binge mode after a head injury. So look forward to that and check out binge mode. Check out Fairway Rowland, where I was on talking about Tiger with Joe House earlier today. And House is going to have another podcast

this week as well. So not to mention all the other great podcasts we have on theringer.com, as well as the website itself, where you can find some of the best writing on the internet, theringer.com, The Ringer Podcast Network. Binge mode, talk to the thrones. I hope you're watching and listening and reading all of it. All right, back to the podcast. Just some serious prices really quick. 76 is minus 215, Nets plus 180 right now. Raptors minus 300, Magic plus 250.

Actually like the Raptors. Magic aren't going to beat the Raptors minus 300. Magic plus 250. I actually like the Raptors. Magic aren't going to beat the Raptors, right? No, I don't think so. That's not happening. Yeah. Spurs minus 115. Nuggets minus 105. Celtics minus 800.

Thunder plus 120. Blazers minus 145. Any of those jump out of you? Not the Pacers The Denver The Denver number I feel like you're getting them down a game Home court still Basically even

Do you think a road team can win a series If they don't win game one? This is one of my weird theories What's the math on it? I a series if they don't win game one? This is one of my weird theories. What's the math on it? I almost feel like you have to win game one if you don't have the game seven road game. There's all these playoff things I don't like, though, when somebody says, oh, the series hasn't started until somebody beats the LCS. Yeah, I don't agree with that. Everybody repeats it all the time.

I've never really agreed with it. I don't like it. What if everybody wins home? Did the series never happen? Kyle liked that one dave from brooklyn wants to know on our on our pod before this you wondered why ben simmons didn't take the leap you expected this year oh no more ben simmons he's dating a kardashian exclamation point the list is endless of careers athletes whose careers take a detour when the relationship starts. Lamar, Blake, Reggie, Chandler Parsons, et cetera. Reggie Jackson?

Ben dating somebody in this family is easily the single biggest contributor to his lack of progress this season. Come on now. I don't think it's the Kardashian-Jenner thing as much as dating another celebrity. So I think they get a slightly unfair rap with this, but I just think it's, when you're dating another celebrity. So I think they get a slightly unfair rap with this, but I just think it's when you're dating another celebrity

and you're in that world and the combo of you becomes bigger and instead of just dealing with somebody who has a normal life, you're dealing with somebody whose life is abnormal as yours. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. Does it say something about the dude more than it means anything about the female? it's like you want to sign up for that you're into that you enjoy this thing like you think this is good for you i mean granted you could also be like hey i think she's really hot and she's famous so and i'm 21 and right yeah what do i know or 22 whatever it's yeah so it's probably not that complicated. Craig from Ottawa says... That'd be interesting, though. The PER of NBA players that pursue famous girlfriends.

Harden has been pretty honest about the worst year of my life was when I dated a celebrity, and I wish I had done that. Like the word... Who was he with, Meg Ryan? He was with... Chloe was. Oh, the Chloe. Chloe Kardashian.

Meg Ryan. Craig from Ottawa says, the Knicks announced Patrick Goon will be representing them at the draft lottery. How can the Ewing theory apply to the draft? Would the Knicks' potential to win the lottery be improved if Ewing got hurt the week of the lottery and they had to replace him with somebody else?

I think they should try that. They replace him with Marcus Camby? That's actually a great move. I vote for that. It's too smart. The Knicks will never do it. Jerome James. I can't wait for your reaction to this one.

Josh from Utah. I have a get out of jail free card for LeBron and the Lakers. Hire Becky Hammond. Become the first GOAT to play under a female coach. Hang it up. Wait for the 30-30 to be made. Everybody wins. That is one of those things that if they hired her every it would the narrative would completely flip people would be

so into it so we always talk ed ringer we always talk about uh behind the scenes we always joke about great hire twitter you know certain coaches or gms that everybody loves like some person will get hired that nobody knows and there'll just be this pack of writers been a great hire. And it's clear that there's somebody that they've been texting. That actually happened with Becky now. Five, six years. What's San Antonio?

Becky would be the great hire all the time. Because everybody loves her. Well, this is a theory that I had on. This was actually incredible. This is even brought up because when it was a Catherine Smith was the special teams coordinator for the Buffalo Bills when it

was before McDermott's crew was in there. And I looked it up again because she wasn't retained, at least in that role. And my point was, I have this radio show and everybody's talking about this as if it's like this real NFL coach who's female. Okay. And sometimes some of these stories, I'll go, wait a minute, what's really happening? What's actually happening versus what is everybody applauding? And so I thought, hey, I'm going to have this swing at this topic seven hours after everybody else has already done it. I thought it was interesting to bring it up and say, this is crazy. And I go, it's a sign of the times. And I'm not complaining about it. I'm not complaining about it. But I find it fascinating that no one wants to say, well, this is stupid

because three years ago, plenty of guys would have said, well, this is stupid. What's her background? Why is she a special teams coach? And it would have been fine. It wouldn't have been challenged, but the climate and the way we talk about gender roles and occupational stuff and on air, like all these different things. If anybody ever questions it, then that person's the asshole. And I wasn't even in a role on the radio where I wanted to question it. I was simply pointing out a new angle on a topic that everybody had taken their swing at going. That is interesting more than the hire itself. The reaction is good hire Twitter. And I still got killed for it. Wow. Interesting. Fascinating to watch it all unfold. And I go,

you realize by getting me getting killed i'm only proving the point that i just made on the air it's a self-fulfilling prophecy yeah like i'm a fucking wizard over here so if becky got it no one would dare go well you know what's your qualification san antonio deserves so much credit you only hear really good things about her so maybe it should be applauded that way. I think she needs at least one more year on the bench is from what I've heard. But people do think she's going to be a head coach.

Yeah, somebody's going to do it. I would... The LeBron thing would be weird because you can't treat her like David Blatt because then it would start coming back on you. So why is that a win for LeBron? That's an unwinnable situation for LeBron. I don't think LeBron wants to be coached, to be back on you. So why is that a win for LeBron? That's an unwinnable situation for LeBron. I don't think LeBron wants to be coached, to be honest with you.

You just described why Maverick Carter is going to be their next coach. Nick Field wants to know, did Magic Johnson create the player empowerment error? Think about it. Came into the league as an established star. Got his head coach fired after signing a ridiculous contract. First to create a brand for himself and his team, the Showtime Lakers,

first to become a businessman after his career, series of short-sighted decisions that he quickly bailed on, and approval rating that always bounces back no matter what, refuses to get off Twitter. He's saying Magic created the point of power in there. I think that's all true.

All good points, and it's still LeBron in 2010. Okay. I vote for magic. Yeah, but then why didn't it happen? Where was this in the 90s where everybody was pulling this stuff? Since LeBron in 2010. I think everybody was just stoned in the 90s. Andy from Kingston wants to know.

Jamaica? New York to know. Jamaica? New York? Maine. Tennessee? This is great. I like how he starts this. When the Cavaliers shock the world and win the NBA draft lottery, how long do you think it will take LeBron to start pushing for a trade

back to Cleveland so he can play with Zion? Does LeBron have a minimum number of number one picks the Cavs would need to get before he would try and force a trade back to Cleveland you know what I always like about the Cleveland thing is like well he wouldn't do that he hates Danny Gilbert well we already knew he hated him he went back for four years and won a fucking title so yeah um he doesn't hate him so much he wouldn't go back I do love the regretful did I leave Cleveland a year too early? Starts leaving the messages on the answer machine. Hey, how's it going?

Did you call me? Hey, my phone rang. I thought that wasn't you. You didn't FaceTime? Sorry about that. It's been a while. Rob Hardy from North Carolina. Unfortunately, he asked this after the playoffs had started.

But who do you think will have a breakout series playoff run a la Chris Middleton last year? Anyone? Anyone. Anyone in the 16 teams? Enos Cantor. Cantor's here. He's got all these AP first place

votes. That would be great. Tracking Enos canter's future contract and right now it's like pinned right under a max you have to like three years 38 million easy just from that one game and then they sign him and they go yeah three three for 38 45 but it's movable it's movable in two years first year it's a you know you're paying it anyway third year's expiring contract gordon hayward no um who siakam or has that already happened i was gonna say spencer dinwiddie i love spencer did what he he used to have this oh i guess what about one of the orlando guys dinwiddie has this mustache or used to that he it wasn't like i want to impress you i'm just fucking growing this thing yeah yeah this is for me not you yeah how about derrick white how about his dunk how about

the fact that he completely outplayed every nuggets card in that game i don't know it has i gotta go back and watch derrick white so make a pick i think it's fair that nobody's materialized yet so we can make a pick I'm gonna make one I'm gonna make one uh I'm actually gonna I'm gonna say D'Angelo Russell because what I liked about his game one and he's already an all-star obviously but I think he's a max guy and um what I liked about his game one is he sucked in the first half and came out after halftime and was really good which in a playoff game on the road counts for something, I think. I'll say Thonmaker. Okay.

I sent you this question earlier, so you'd be prepared. VP from Menlo Park says, I looked at the number one picks overall from the past 25 years. Iverson, Duncan, LeBron, et cetera, clearly exceeded expected value at number one picks overall from the past 25 years iverson duncan lebron etc clearly exceeded expected value number one pick he said wiggins and bogut all under the expected value he wants to know what is the mendoza line for number one picks so like he he thought it was like dwight or blake griffin which i disagree with those are probably the question is basically what is the cutoff line to determine if you were a successful number one overall pick or not so mendoza line's the wrong term i think

mendoza line is to what he i think he wants like median value right that's what he's looking for here so what is it in vorp is value above replace them right yeah value over so varp is less popular i i thought i listed the 25 guys and i thought we'd pick a player and it'd be like value over john wall or something like that so i separated by tiers like these are the last 30 years tier one is lebron duncan and shack tier two is iverson howard griffin c-web anthony davis kairi yeah because i didn't have iverson as a tier one so when he brought up iverson yeah iverson's a whole another conversation the best three of the last 30 years are lebron duncan and shack iverson howard gr Griffin, Weber, Davis, Kyrie. The third tier is a bigger one. Elton Brand, Yao, LJ, Derek Coleman, Carl Towns, Rose, Wall, Glenn Robinson, who is completely underrated,

Ben Simmons, Kenya Martin, Andrew Bogut, starts going downhill a little bit, DeAndre Ayton, Joe Smith, who played forever and had a couple of good seasons and was better than thought. Next tier, Bargnani, Wiggins, Purvis Ellison, Kwame Brown, Michael O'Candy. Last tier, Greg Oden, Markel Fultz, Anthony Bennett. So if you just do the halfway point of that, the 15th guy would be 6'9". It would be Derrick Rose, wall glenn robinson range i had glenn robinson as my

you know if you're if you do that it's kind of what you want to look above and below that right like if you so let's go with glenn robinson yeah i i had glenn robinson when it called voger value above vaguer value over yeah yeah value Value over, Voger. Voger. Value over Glenn Robinson. So, Anthony Bennett would be a high Voger. Right.

And Anthony Bennett would be like minus 5.0 Vogers. Oh, he'd be like minus 7.8 Voger. But, DeAndre Ayton right now is like minus 1.2 Voger. Yeah, but it's still

bumping up. It's early. It's INC on that one. How much money do you think Bargnani made in his career? Because I was looking up Bargnani stats today. Oh, it was like 40 million, right? Double it. 80? 75. He had a couple 20-point seasons, though. I know. I liked

Bargnani. I used to think I remember talking to Fernandes and being like, am I nuts to think in the right situation? God, that sounds like that NBA support group thing. No, but I, maybe he should be the next guy for NBA support group.

Wiggins. I was surprised. The language barrier. I mean, geez, it's not easy for these guys. It's tough. You know,

they're making fun of them. Yeah. You're over here smoking darts and on a moped whistling at all these traffic cops. I was surprised Wiggins was my seventh least favorite number one overall pick of the last 30. Because you got Markel. You got Bennett. You got Oden.

You got Bargnani. No, I have Bargnani ahead of Wiggins. No, but I'm just. I have Ellison, Kwame, Oluwakandi. I have Ellison, Kwame, Oluwakandi ahead of Wiggins. I'm not saying you're wrong, but think about that sentence. Bargnani had a couple 20-point seasons. Yeah, but he also kind of sucked, too.

Who would you rather have on your team? I'd still hold out hope for Wiggins a little bit more than Bargnani. I just feel like Wiggins would hurt my feelings more. At least with Bargnani, I had low expectations. Wiggins would have been really good for that support group. Be like, hey, we know Canadians are polite. Jesus. So I go with Vogar.

I think Zion's going to have a very high Vogar. Depends on the squad. I have a Jim Corner question for you. Okay. This is great. Kyle's going to be giggling the whole time. Question for Ryan for Jim Corner from Jordan. Male or female?

I don't know. I was doing box jumps besides the squat rack the other day. And another guy was doing squats beside with two and a half plates on each side, two and a half plates between my sets. This guy proceeds to unwrap one side of the bar first, leaving too much of the other side. The bar comes crashing down along with the weights

onto the box i was about to jump onto the guy shrugged it off like it was nothing i was stunned and severely annoyed ryan have you ever endured a near-death experience at the gym like that i've had some great question yeah all right so two and a half plates he must mean 245s and 25 on each side and basically if you're going to take off you know the most you can really leave is 245s on one side um and even then i'm almost neurotic about it anyway because i've just envisioned a bar coming and swinging across and taking me out so what happened here is the guy knows he fucked up and he looks like an idiot and maybe you know he was post squat you know he's gotten 275 so he may have had like that little weird head hangover thing where you're dizzy after the fact

because maybe that's heavy for him and he just started unloading because he wasn't thinking maybe he was pumped he got seven reps so he's sort of in this euphoric post squat deal and because he did all those things and he totally fucked it up he's not gonna own it he can't he's i mean i would hope you'd go hey man i'm really sorry i just lost but a dude in the gym with another stranger he's not going to own it he's going to do a peewee herman i meant to do that type thing to you and that's just that's just what goes on i've had a couple scenarios where not with me like i'll ask somebody to spot me. I try not to be a hero, even though if you don't ask for a spot, you're probably better off for the gains because you kind of know you're screwed if you don't get it off your chest. But you don't really want to start doing that, kids, if you're listening.

But I had a guy have, what were we at, 315, so 365. And I was spotting him in his pector off and it was what happens when a pector just tears away from the the either is the guy screaming no he was like up tore my pector my peck he didn't like fully blown to rip it to shreds but he tore it and then i had to like sort of deadlift it off of his chest. And then I was like, I felt bad. He's a really nice guy. And I was like,

oh man, he's like, something's wrong. Something's wrong. He's like, that sucks. That sucks. He's like,

oh my God. And I was like, man, I didn't know if I was going to be able to help pull that off you. Cause he was also pushing still. And he was just like, ah, screw it.

We would have just flipped it on one side or the other and figured it out. And I was like, all right, that would have been fun. So I see kids every now and then they load up too much and then i've i've gone by and and pulled something off a kid every now and then but equinox there's not a lot of kids there so i don't run into it anymore should is it okay if i tell people to stop sending their stories about nude old guys at the gym. We're maxed out on it.

People actually like this segment better than anything else we do. So, sorry. It's for better or worse. The re-readables really quickly. I won't even tell you what year I wrote this. You just have to guess. Okay. Think of all the under 25 guys we watched over the past two decades get thrust into a,

you're a little too young for this, but you're our franchise player. So how about you be our leader? And then flounder miserably. We're talking about dozens of guys, a few of whom had more talent than blank, but only five rose to the challenge without veteran help. KG, Chris Paul, LeBron, Wade, and blank. That's the complete list, unless I forgot some more, which I'm sure I did. To blank's credit, some believe blank is the playoff sleeper this year, and

it's mainly because he's turned into such a killer closer. Stay tuned. I'll give you one question if you need more information. You want me to guess what year you wrote that? I can give you the year if you need help. No, you want me to guess the player.

So it's none of the- I'll give you the year to help you out. 2010? 2009. 2009. It's Dwight. Nope. Hey, do Turkaloo.

Brandon Roy. Hey, do Turk. Hello, Brandon Roy. Oh yeah. I, yeah. I would love the rereadables. I got to tell you, 2009 is when you were really good. So I listed five guys who were,

oh, the, when I was really good, that was one of my career years. And 2009 Simmons. It was like like tiger it was like tiger 2004 um the uh how about i just listed five playoff closers one of which was brandon roy roy had a stretch there where it was unbelievable man i mean look that's not that's not on him and thank god he got his money but his knees were shot i'm saying yeah i love brandon you know what's funny is that celtics trade that led to that whole thing i hated that trade because

i like brandon roy so much i did too and then you talk to people i think you and i both probably have a couple sorts of that point everybody's like yeah he's gonna be out of the league in six years he's got no ligaments in his name it's like yeah but maybe it's like no he's not gonna be in the league. Yeah. Like, wasn't it short term? But wasn't it still worth having that Brandon Roy for five years? Fuck yeah. So the same thing with DeJuan Blair.

Remember that? Yeah. No. Like, well, he doesn't have any ACLs. It's like, all right, but this is the 40th pick. And he's just played in five years of games. We'll just take him. Game of Thrones really quickly.

Yeah, definitely. You uh you were down on this season well wait a minute not the whole season no i mean on tonight's episode tonight's you're down on season seven so far hey look as a writer i get it the guys are just trying to build momentum yeah right like what you normally have to do bill in this spot yeah is you know i know everybody wants all the bells and whistles and all the confetti but as a writer you're gonna set the tone you're gonna you're gonna like some of the choices your peers benny off in west bay right and but i think they kind of went dragon porn on you they're like i love it we know this is gonna be a little boring and then you and i were sitting there and you completely unprompted on the couch just say to kyle and i you go you know i can't get enough of these dragon scenes

i fucking love the dragons it was very high pr the dragon it was such a great line because everybody been quiet for like five minutes the other funny thing is it's just the three of us we're waiting for food thrones is on and all of a sudden that dude's in the brothel just getting annihilated by three women right and it's like hey so how's work it's like one of those i uh i don't know i don't know what the response was but then i was we were trying to dare each other and and clearly it's one of those things where i was like i want to send out the tweet it's the anti everything but it's not anti-throne so i love the show and the whole deal but it was the zig what would be yeah i wanted it this is not the premiere was not unziggable and so

i was like what would be the funniest thing that we could come up with and we came up some really funny stuff that we wouldn't tweet and then i just said hey when's veep on which we thought was funny and then nobody got said hey when's veep on which we thought was funny and then nobody got it no one got it because they thought i was doing the you know hockey finals and i give you a may baseball final highlight and they thought it was just me goofing on everybody being in the game of thrones but what i was really doing is because we were like 45 minutes in and you're like this is slow this is slow but i get what look i get what they were doing i don't know if everybody else i know you were looking at the in and you're like, this is slow. This is slow. But I get what, look, I get what they were doing.

I don't know if everybody else. I know you were looking at the structure and how they're setting up the next four episodes. I don't want nonlinear storylines. What's the B story? I'll tell you what I love, the dragons. I mean, those things, watching those babies fly. And it was like a date. You don't see a lot of that where you're like wait you guys are on a dragon flying date

and it seems way more dangerous it's just how does the dragon know that you're on there it's a fucking dragon well that's what he asked her john snow asked her what do you hold on to and she's like just figure it out and it's like can i have a little more info we're gonna be flying really high in these dragons like uh any tricks you think you're the queen of the seven kingdoms we can't get a fucking saddle for one of these things and then we try to ruin it for your wife a little bit yeah we did we really try to tell her one of the dragons died she didn't see it i thought it'd be funny for us to recap game since we have binge mode which is the best recap podcast on the internet, I thought it would be funny if we ended each podcast recapping that night's Game of Thrones from the eyes

of two guys who barely know all the characters' names, but have seen every episode. Seen every episode, yeah. But we needed Kyle pretty. He was a life raft for us. So here's what I thought happened today. Jon Snow found out that he's actually half Targaryen and that Khaleesi is his aunt, I guess, although he didn't know that part. At some point we thought it was

sister, but that's not true. I think it's aunt. It felt a little Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker. Which means he's actually the real Iron Throne guy. Yeah, heir to the throne. He's the heir to the throne. The rightful. He's the rightful heir, but now he has to decide whether he wants... Seven Kingdom. He has to decide whether he wants to take

the throne away from his girlfriend right who's his aunt yeah and by the way this isn't his aunt who he's been sleeping with this isn't one of the top four incest atrocities on game of thrones this this whole aunt nephew thing yeah and as kyle pointed out like my wife is kyle's aunt so this is gross this is grosser than we're giving her credit for um so that happened the uh i don't see kyle being a king the white walkers knocked down that giant wall and then they went to go check out what happened and there was a little boy that was attached to the wall around all these limbs and then it turned out i think he was a white walker and they set him on fire yeah he hadn't been possessed yet or he was or they didn't know um that was the real scare you hey we got to give these guys something yeah because we're just we're

bringing everybody back it's almost like a big family reunion we got to set the it's the template has been set here right but we got to give you a little spice too is what they were doing there was a little sansa not trusting uh daenerys little little side side eye action that john snow sensed and then called her on it and then uh it just seems like they're setting up some sort of tension you know what it felt like to me protective sister the college football playoff committee like they're sitting there and they're going you know the unsullied like come on and then they're like the dothraki like they're not very good at home they're good on the road and then you're sitting around be like hey you know these fucking zombies are like right around the corner yeah and you want to bitch about clans and whatnot right and the whatnot like come on. And that's what John Stone basically made the case.

And that's when I compared him to Belichick for one of the three times during the episode. Belichick gives up- Easily three, yeah. Easily. Easily three. Belichick gives up the crown. He immediately trades whatever he needs to trade

to get just more draft picks, basically, to fight the White Walkers. That's how he's thinking. He's not worried about crowns, what he has now. All he's thinking about is the big game way down the road fight the White Walkers. That's how he's thinking. He's not worried about crowns, what he has now. All he's thinking about is the big game way down the road, the White Walkers. That's it. We're on to the White Walkers.

Another thing that happened. You did, by the way, for the people that think Bill's kidding right now, he's not. Unprompted once again, he would just go, Belichick wouldn't do that. I really did. I think Belichick would win the Iron the iron throne right for people that think it's an actor it's kind of his his twitter thing he just sits around at home he goes up to his kid

his son was like going at the mozzarella sticks he's like bill wouldn't do it that way belichick would not have mozzarella stick right now uh theon who no longer has uh who has been missing his uh generals for a while a lot of guys on the show. He, yeah, he's a top, is he your favorite eunuch? Or do you like the bald guy? I like the bald guy because I think he's a real,

I feel like he's, despite it all, he's a real operator. And he's, you know, started at the bottom, now we're here. I could take a joke. So Theon freed his sister, Yara.

Good job right now. And she head butted him to thank him. That was cool. And then they made up and then she kind of let him go. And I don't know if we see her again. You know what blew my mind was the Viking robots. I was like, are you guys fucking? So like right at the end.

Yeah. When the Viking robot clan showed up, I'm like, okay, these guys stepped it up. And I think the robots are going to be the key to defeating the White Walkers. The Viking robots. Yeah. I didn't see that coming. And then the stars. People are going to start drug testing us for this podcast.

The next time i show up they'll be like can you uh can you come down i tried to quiet sell it uh and then the starks kind of reunited it was the first time we saw them together we left out cersei um she gave it up to uh what was that guy's name kyle you're on you're on you're on who i liked he's kind of a rational confidence you might be the only guy that likes him no i liked his strategy with cersei he went a rational confidence i want a boat one day some threes i like that part of it but um because he's always got boats right but i i think actually the biggest thing the biggest thing i'm glad you went there because of all the stuff that's happened because she said, you want a whore, buy one.

You want a queen, earn her. And every single woman that I follow on social media posted that. Like, now the rule, the game just changed. Like, hey, no offense. You know she still slept with the grimy pirate guy, right? You know she still slept with him.imy pirate guy right you know she still slept with him so and she might be pregnant yeah like it's a real good line but but he didn't he didn't turn around and leave with his boats now did he and he was like the cat eating the canary afterwards

too yeah he was a real that guy's not a cuddler i I can promise you this. That guy's dying. That guy will die over the next seven. Who's dying first? Who's the big first death? That guy's one of the first ones. I don't think he's tier one enough. So then creepy post-pubescent Bran. No one likes that guy. His approval rating is so low right now.

He's like Ben Simmons in Game of Thrones. I like that he took his shot, though, with Cersei. He just easily could have been murdered by any of the people in suit of armor at any time and then uh bran yeah bran it's reunited typically weird performance from bran like clearly wants to get traded i have one person i know one person who's like i like the raven storyline there are no dragons maybe guys haven't put them on a dragon the guy who said this people haven't emailed him in like a year by the way Bran hasn't been able to walk in six years they can't throw him on a dragon let him fly around a little bit get a little feel for the

being in the air with Drogon one of those guys no? is Drogon the dead dragon? who are the living dragons Kyle? Steve and Doug Steve and Doug the other two steve dragon hey come here doug so then uh get on doug john the last one at the end was brand seeing jamie lannister yeah there you go that was good the last time they had really locked eyes, he was seeing Jamie having sex with his sister

and then he got pushed off a high tower. So there's some mending offenses that needs to happen there. They might have to talk that one out. Maybe at NBA TV, one of the All-Star break episodes, you know, they get Shaq and Kobe. This week it's Jamie Lannister and Brad are going to talk it out.

Jamie's like, I didn't really know you. I just don't know why you did it. I thought you were peeping Tom. I was fine with you and your sister. Just don't push me off the tower next time. So what? You can see shit? How's this work?

And then the coming attractions, which they don't give away anything anymore because they know people like Mallory and Jason are just going to pick apart the freeze frames and figure out where the show's going. So now it's just like a whole lot of, it's like Mad Men used to do this too. It's like coming up on Mad Men, it would be like Don Draper having a Coke and then somebody in a car and then like Peggy saying something and then it was like, what was that? Is that? So anyway, they don't give it anyway.

So that was our Game of Thrones recap. What'd you think, Kyle? New segment or should this be the only time we did it who's your first dead guy oh i think cersei's lover is dead within yeah i would say two-thirds of an episode over under frame is 40 minutes episode two yeah they gotta they gotta take out somebody big in in the second episode i also think the bearded guy is going to have a really, really great death. The guy with the bug eyes. That guy. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, the...

Torment, yeah? Fire sword? He's going to have a death, but it'll be a cool death and he'll have a couple sentences before he goes. A soldier's death? The other thing, really, they haven't had a lot of scenes with Sansa and Jon Snow and how they disguise the height difference is phenomenal The other thing, really, they haven't had a lot of scenes with Sansa and Jon Snow. And how they disguise the height difference is phenomenal.

Because Kit Harington's like 5'6", 5'7", in real life. And you're pretty good friends with him, right? No. Stood next to him at a party once. Oh, I don't know. That's not what he said. He thinks you're closer this is like five foot 11 so they have to use these weird height things where you never actually see the wide shot

yeah and they're still she's still towering she's still towering it's like vin diesel and the rock and any fast and furious movie uh all right we're still a dual threat this week dual threat josh mccown part four of the backup QB stories. Think about this quarterback room. His 2007 Raiders team, Lane Kiffin was 33, the head coach. Al Davis was telling him to bench all the quarterbacks every week. Dante Culpepper was 30, still thought he was awesome. They had just signed holdout Jamarcus Russell,

whose idol was Dante Culpepper. McCown and then Andrew Walter, who had already asked for a trade. That was the QB room. And he tells me stories for about 15 minutes about that and the rest of his journey and the way it's ended. And it's a fun start. There's a lot of ups and downs throughout his career. His end is terrific, but the Raiders stuff alone is worth listening to.

Can't wait. All right, Ryan, we'll talk to you next week. See ya. All right, thanks to DAZN. Remember, setting up is easy. Download the DAZN app on the Apple or Android app store. Sign up by creating an account. Start watching across nearly any of your devices

and you can get a whole bunch of awesome fights, baseball, you name it. It's all on there. Check that out. Don't forget about Talk the Thrones. Our Twitter show, you should be watching it every week right after Game of Thrones ends. But if you missed this week, you can go right on there and watch the episode on the Twitter account that we have, which is at ringer, or you can do hashtag

Talk the Thrones or check out our YouTube channel where we have a lot of this stuff, including all the Game of Thrones content that we did over the course of the last five weeks. That is youtube.com slash ringer for all that stuff as well. Back with a couple more podcasts this week. Until then. I don't have.