The Bill Simmons Podcast - Unanswerable NBA Questions With Zach Lowe, Plus Brian Koppelman and David Levien on Creating ‘Super Pumped’ During a Pandemic

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by ESPN's Zach Lowe to run through the biggest questions remaining for the rest of the NBA season, including how the Ben Simmons–James Harden trade will play out, the Warriors' dependence on Draymond Green’s health, Denver’s playoff potential, a Lakers-Clippers play-in possibility, and Brooklyn’s ceiling (2:28). Then they rank the most shocking trades from the past decade (74:42). Later, Bill is joined by showrunners Brian Koppelman and David Levien to talk about their newest show, ‘Super Pumped’ (87:12). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Zach Lowe, Brian Koppelman, and David Levien Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We have a lot of stuff we're going to be covering, but short-term, Severance, Van and Joanna are doing that. I think that's going up Friday. Sunday night, Mallory and I reviewed the first episode of Super Pumped, and then Monday morning, the season finale of Euphoria, which is just an awesome show.

Just one of the most creative shows that's been on in the last few years. So yeah. And then it just kicks in after that. We have so many good shows coming in March and April. Subscribe to the Prestige TV podcast. Subscribe to the Ringer Gambling podcast as well. A lot of college basketball there lately. Our guy John Jastrzemski has been diving in.

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my old friend Zach Lowe and I are going to talk basketball as we head into the stretch run. Unanswerable questions. What really happened with the Harden-Simmons trade? Are we seeing Zion again? All that stuff. That's next. And then after that, my old friends, Brian Koppelman and David Levine, who did Billions, who did Rounders, who have been popping on this podcast and on a few ringer pods for a while. They have a new show called Super Pumped on Showtime. So we're going to talk to them as well.

It's all next. Obviously a little weird to do podcast today when it seems like we are headed toward one of the biggest global conflicts we've had since I've been alive, but what else can you do? Got to do your job. We're going to talk basketball and television. If you want to hear about all the other stuff that's going on, plenty of places to hear about that. But anyway, let's kick it off with Pearl Jam. All right. My old Grantland teammate, Zach Lowe, is here. We are taping this in the morning before the NBA season kicks up again on Thursday night. The NBA is in a weird spot.

I talked about this in the trade deadline pod in one of the 19 parts. There's some stuff going on with the league that I'm not sure can be put back into the box at this point with the player movement and the erratic nature of how these seasons go and guys just jumping around and things like that. And it makes it hard to achieve the stuff that I think you and I both like is to watch a team that's been together for a while, like with the Spurs and 13 and 14, probably being the best recent example of that. With all that said, I'm really excited for the stretch run. I'm really excited for the playoffs. I think there's

a ton of questions to be answered. You did some stuff with Jeff Van Gundy on the low post. You did some big questions. You left a lot on the table. I was relieved. I listened to the whole thing. There's a lot of other questions we could hit. I guess the big one I want to start with, and I want to go in a lot of directions. The way people have discussed the Simmons-Hardin thing as it was happening and then since it happened, and even Van Gundy, who I think is a smart guy, was like, I love this trade for both teams.

I think it's potentially great for them. I have no idea if Simmons is going to be good. And I don't think you do. I don't think anybody does. I keep thinking of him from what we saw last year and what we've seen in other big spot locations. Think about him in a playoff series, right? Everybody's like, this is going to be great. He's that third guy. He doesn't need to be a scorer. He can fill in all the blanks. He can guard everybody. This could be a potentially devastating third edition. Kyrie, they're lifting the mask up. This is the perfect third guy for them. Just think about him in a playoff series, in a game six in Philly, in a game six in Boston,

in a game six in Atlanta, his haunted house. Do you trust Ben Simmons to come through in a basketball game? That's my first question. The second question is, does it matter? They might not meet him. He might be a 25-minute-a-game guy for them. So where do you stand on all this? First of all, Van Gundy alerted. In my head, I've been so excited for a potential Nets Sixers playoff series now, obviously. And I didn't even think, you mentioned going to Philly. I didn't even think about the drama of Doc Rivers going hack-a-ben in Philly and daring him to.

I mean, that would be the most exciting, like non game winning or game tying free throws in the history of basketball. I would be riveted to that. So I, I, I think Simmons is going to be really good for Brooklyn. That's here's my prediction.

He's going to come out and play really, really well. He's a perfect fit with their team, all of that. And I don't, I'm at the point with Simmons where it's like, I don't really, it's cool. Like it's going to be fun. And, and I'm going to be happy for you when you're putting up like 19, 11 and 11 and flying

up and down the court and guarding everybody against the magic on April 1st or whatever it is. And I also like, I'm going to stop caring a little while and i'm gonna wait till second round by the way if you get there you're eighth right now and their schedule out of the gates with none of their guys playing regularly is brutal after the all-star break but let's just say you get to the second round fourth quarter last six minutes that's what i'm interested in are you just gonna hide are you hiding in the dunker spot are you are you afraid to get fouled in transition how about like how about are you playing but like are you out there what if they just use him as a 25 minute a game guy and we actually never see him in the last six

minutes but see here's the difference why he can be out there other than if he gets if he starts getting intentionally fouled but with philly they just didn't have another ball handler period to initiate the offense when he when when simmons went into dunker spot mode it was mb'd in the post or like hey seth curry can you run as many pick and rolls as steph curry even though that's like way outside your skill set yeah with this with this it's like you you can be in the dunker spot and get offensive rebounds and push the pace so So we got these two other guys to do it. So I think he will be on the court and his, if we see the worst case scenario with him, it will be less harmful for Brooklyn than it was for Philly. But I do think he's going to come out of the gate. Like he shot out of a cannon

because he's got something to prove. And I think he's excited to play. I think you and I are on the higher level of people who defended him as a basketball player over the years, which after the Atlanta series became a lot tougher because he seemed terrified. No, that's just a deep, that's a demarcation point. There's before and after, like, yes, that's it. Now there were hints, right? There was like the Toronto series.

I wrote a whole piece of, Hey, are we going to talk about the fact that Ben Simmons is averaging like nine points a game and is in the dunker spot? The Celtics series the year before, they were hence, but they were outweighed by what he had done in prior playoff rounds. The Atlanta game and the Atlanta series was like, that's a black line before and after. I'm out on him, but I'm willing to be pulled back in. You were out on the Celtics like three weeks ago. I know. Listen, I have flip-flopped many times. This is part of what it's like to have a podcast in 2022. I'm really concerned about the,

can he play in big games and big spots? Can he come through? And has he worked hard enough on his game over the years? Because that's the big thing. However we want to talk about him as like, was he in an unfair spot in Philly? Is it fair to say that a 25 year old kid can't get better? What is he going through with the mental stuff? I think we can all agree that he didn't work on his game enough as some of

these other guys, when your foul shooting gets worse, when your three point shooting is a flat line, when you are over and over again making the same mistakes and you're basically, your team's playing four and five in the last eight minutes of playoff games, he's going to have to prove to me

that he worked on this stuff. If he comes back as the same guy as last year, I don't think that helps Brooklyn because I think it's easy to stop a team that's going four and five, even a team that has Kyrie and KD. It's still really hard to score when you're four and five. I think, I disagree with you

that I think it still helps Brooklyn just because of his defense, his rebounding and his ability to push the pace and transition. You can tell me when it slows down, no one's going to guard him, but I can use him as a ball screener in a way that I couldn't in Philly because we just didn't have the ball handlers for it i can if he's just getting offensive rebounds that's why i still think it helps him i still think he's

going to be on the floor in crunch time but yeah i mean it's like it's like what i said to you about harden a couple years ago i'm i don't care anymore when you go 30 10 and 10 against the pistons in march i don't care it's great like i don't care. It's great. Like, I don't care. You put up 50 in Charlotte. Awesome. Like wake me up when your team's down three, two in the second round. And like, are you going to shit the bed again and go two for 11 with 10 turnovers? Are you going to play? Like that's, that's, that's where I am with Simmons.

Wake me up in the fourth quarter of the theoretical Nets Buck series in the second round. Listen, we're talking about nut crunch time. It's not even just crunch time're talking about nut crunch time. It's not even just crunch time. It's nut crunch time. And as I get older, I realized that more and more I value players basically based on how are they going to react in the biggest moments with the most pressure that are the most intense. And you think about those Milwaukee Phoenix games we watched, which were really awesome. I think we're going to look back at that series, especially three, four, five, and six. It's like, wow, those were amazing.

You know what we don't talk about enough from that Milwaukee Phoenix series? The fact that Phoenix easily could have won if like three plays had happened. Well, that and the iconic play has become the Giannis block, the retreat block on the Aiton lob. No, it's the Drew Steele alley-oop.

The Drew Steele alley-oop. The Drew Steele alley-oop is the most audacious no, no, no, oh my God, yes, play in basketball history. But also the steal, the combo of that, the steal and the balls to throw that alley-oop. I agree. I think that's a bigger play than the honest block.

I was watching recently and I was like, it seemed like Phoenix was going to score. And Phoenix scores. I don't know. I think they win the series. If Booker just scores on that play, I think they probably win the series. It's just a crazy, in every sense of the word, crazy.

It's a crazy sequence of events. And you and I are aligned on this because we've talked about it before. I don't think Giannis got enough credit and respect for what he did those last couple rounds. Because I think one of the narratives that came out of it was just, well, the Nets would have won.

Well, if Durant's foot wasn't on the line. And it became a lot of that. And even now you feel it this year. Because the best player in the league thing has shifted. And we'll talk about that later. But it's kind of funny that the three best players in the league are setters. It's Giannis, Jokic, and Embiid.

Those are the three best players right now. And Lucas, I think, has a chance to crash that party, and so does Curry. And who knows? LeBron could average 35 a game the last 22 games. But it's just weird that when I met you, when we started working together in 2011-12, that was right as the center position was being phased out.

We had no good centers. Now the centers are potentially controlling the league. I'm glad you mentioned Giannis because there's always been this sort of Giannis-Simmons comparison of, well, if you just gave Simmons four shooters around him and let him run and cook like Giannis can, remember when Ilya Sova and Bellinelli were there and Embiid was injured and they went like 12-1 or whatever it was. And they both are bad free throw shooters and all that. And I agree there are some similarities there.

The difference is that when Giannis was having the 10 count on him on free throws and when Giannis was shooting 40% in big playoff games from the line, he fucking kept on going. It was like, hack me, hack me hack me i dare you to keep stopping me if that's the only way you can do it like that's what we want to see that's what you want to see from your star that's what you want to see from simmons like i'm going to

keep on going and i'm going to gut through it and what did he go in the last game 17 of 19 at the line or something crazy like that like that's what that's what you want to see that that's an underrated bit of mental toughness from Giannis is just the total fearlessness with the whole world bearing down on his biggest inadequacy. And he just shrugged it off like, I'm going right back. I thought that was the big revelation from that whole playoffs. I think fear is really underrated as a trait in sports. And I think we gloss over it. And it could be any level. You could be talking about elementary school, high school, college, whatever.

The kids that are out there and they're just like, almost like there's an irrational confidence to them. I'm really good. I don't care. Giannis should have been psyched out at some point during that Sun series. Because especially like if you go back

and watch a couple of those games, they were kind of cratering. And part of it was because of the free throws, remember? And at some point, there was like a Simmons kind of scenario there, but they fought through it. And I think he is one of the most mentally tough guys in the league.

Like if we're doing our mentally tough rankings, I don't know who's won, but he's up there. LeBron's obviously up there, but Giannis is absolutely 100% up there. Chris Paul. Also, he hurt his knee in the second round and everyone was like, LeBron's obviously up there, but Giannis is absolutely 100% up there. Chris Paul. Also, he hurt his knee in the second round and everyone was like, oh my God, his body is broken. It's over.

And then like three games later, he was scoring 50 in the finals. Like nothing happened. Yeah, I think I'm glad you brought up the Simmons-Giannis thing because I said this to you before we started taping. I do wonder if we've spent more time talking about Simmons than any kind of not that consequential star in NBA history. I'm sure there's been other examples over the years. Like there was a lot of Stefan Marbury talk in the two thousands,

for instance, I think honestly, Vince Carter as cool of a career, as cool of a career as he had, if you actually look back at his career, it's like he was in round two once, got traded to Orlando, they made the conference finals, Celtics knocked him out. Missing big free throws in that series. Yeah. And was on better teams than I think people realized. He quit on Toronto. And I think

we look back at that. I think now his career, everybody thinks of so fondly and the dunks and how exciting he was. But I look at it as pretty disappointing. I think he could have had a much bigger foothold on that whole Kobe generation than he probably did. He certainly, from a talent standpoint, seeing both of those guys in person in their peak, they're pretty close. Vince was- Young Vince, early 2000s Vince was unstoppable,

completely unstoppable, just like Kobe was. I don't really feel like one was more dominant than the other, but, just like Kobe was. I don't really feel like one was more dominant than the other, but Kobe just was mentally different. I think late career Dallas Vince kind of rewrote the narrative of some of his career unjustifiably. So he has a playoff buzzer beater against the Spurs. Can I give you one of the more talked about

that maybe they deserve stars that's going to hit you? It's going to hit you a little bit in the gut and it's going to hurt me a little bit, but I kind of think I should say it. Can I give it to you? Yeah. Antoine Walker. Yeah,

you're right. I was fascinated by Antoine Walker. I talked all the time about Antoine Walker. What did it amount to? I mean, he's a good player. He made a couple of all-star games. How many all-star games in Antoine Walker make three?

He made a couple. He got Kenya Martin kind of, and Kenya Martin destroyed him in the back-to-back post seasons and that was it. And then he couldn't shoot the free throws anymore. But you know, we've had guys over the years that actually probably deserve some of the buzz. How many did he make?

Three. Like Rondo is somebody that we probably talked about more than we needed to. But on the other hand, like he was the best player in a series that had LeBron James at age 25 and went toe-to-toe with LeBron and was better and his team won. And in 2012,

dragged them within the precipice of the finals. And in 2009 had, so he had stuff, you know? And I think with Simmons, I just want to, I want to see it because I do think there's a scenario where he's just not playing in the last eight minutes of big games for them,

especially if they're on the road. Because Philly's going to be brutal to him. Boston's going to be brutal to him. I'll be interested to see if Chicago, like what we get from those crowds. More unanswerable questions for you. Will we see Draymond again? Yes. Okay.

As of now, yes. Obviously, with a back issue, as we have learned and are relearning all the time, you never know. But everything I've heard recently is, including straight from Draymond when he was on TNT, is optimistic about a return well before the regular season is over.

So without any knowledge of anything else, I'm going to go. Yes. Do you know when the last time he's played? What's today? February 24th. I'm going to guess January 18th, January 5th, 5th. Yeah. He's been out a month and a half and there's doesn't seem like there's, I know he's played like only a,035 minutes or some such thing. So, wow. They were 29-7. He got hurt during the January 5th game.

That was his last game, which they lost. And then they went 13-9 after that. So, they're basically 29-7, then 13-10. They're now 42 and seven, 17. And I mean, there's a bunch of reasons I think this is important. If he's not a hundred percent, I don't think they can win the title. I think they need him a hundred percent. It can't be like him playing through stuff. He's sitting out, he's on the bench with, you know, the big heat wrap on his back. I, you know, they made the decision. They didn't want to trade for insurance

in any way. They didn't want to put Wiseman on the table. They punted on Miles Turner. They didn't even want to do the Ibaka tonic. They're way over the tax. And I think you could say it's smart. You could say they're playing the long game, but I think they're thinking, we want to be in this for a few years here and we hope Draymond comes back. My point is, if he doesn't come back, cross him off. Because I don't think they have any... I think he has to be 100%.

I don't even think 90%. The way how deep the West, the top three of the West, plus how crazy the East is, to win four straight playoff rounds, you got to be at full power this year, in my opinion. What about 94%? How about 92?

No, it's just, he's going to have to play in crunch time for them, and he's going to have to guard bigger dudes. And that's going to be how they have to play if they want to win. And if he's, if he, to bang,

especially if you're playing every other day. So I'm, I'm officially concerned. And maybe I'm sensitive to it because my daughter had a back thing and had a bulging concerned. And maybe I'm sensitive to it because my daughter had a back thing and had a bulging disc and it was like, nah, it'll be six weeks. Then it was four months and he has better science than she does. But I, backs scare me, as you know, I, backs and feet are my two, the two things that I just cringe. You got to start doing the LeBron

a million dollars a year on your, on your daughter's, you know, health and physical wellbeing. I mean, what are you doing? What are you doing? Well, by the way,

LeBron is at like $3 million a year now. I think that million dollars here is, I think Chris Paul is at like a million and a half a year. All right. So you can start at a million. Let's like, what do we have four months for a bulging disc? Wait,

what do you, what do you, what do you, what are you doing? man, it's the back injuries are rough. So do you think we see Wiseman again? I do, but I've said this

from not even the beginning of the season, over the summer. I do think we're going to see Wiseman. I do think they will try him. I have said all along that I do not expect Wiseman to be a meaningful part of this team. I don't think he's guaranteed

a lot of rotation minutes or maybe any rotation minutes when the chips are down. So I get the fascination with Wiseman. He's the number two pick in the draft. You took him over LaMelo, this, that, and the other thing. He's a big part of the bridge to the next era of Warriors basketball. But for this particular season, I just kind of wrote it off as if he gives him anything, it's a bonus. I'm not expecting anything. It's a lot of Kevon Looney.

Kevon Looney is good, but I'm not sure any player needed the all-star break more than Kevon Looney. It's a lot of Kevon. I think they're going to end up being a three seed. And I think Memphis gets a two seed. I said this yesterday. People keep asking me,

can Utah catch Memphis for the three seed and this and that? Is Utah going to come out? How about can Memphis catch Golden State for the two seed? They're two games out with a much easier schedule. They have the head-to-head with the Warriors. They're up 2-1. And I believe the way the tiebreakers work, they have it even if the Warriors even the season series at 2-2. I haven't looked at the odds today,

but I think they're probably almost 50-50 to get the two seed, I would imagine. Yeah, for the conference, it's funny. If you go on FanDuel, Golden State is still the favorite at plus 170 with Phoenix, which I think is insane because of the Draymond piece. Utah's plus 550, Denver's 17 to one, and Memphis is 17 to one. The two seeds are really important for them because

I don't know, man. This isn't rocket science to say this, but if it's game seven, Memphis, Golden State, and I can have that game in Memphis, I'm pretty excited about it. I think they can catch Golden State. I like this website called StatMuse. You can look up the records with certain dates. So since December 15th, pretty long sample size, Memphis is 24-8. Golden State is 19-12. They're four and a half games better than them. If you go to January 1st, Memphis is 18-5, Golden State's 15-10. So they're on just a trajectory they're on. They're going to pass them. Unless Ja has one of those sprained ankle injuries because he jumped into 17 guys and went five feet in the air.

You always have to worry about that with him. But I think if you go since January 1st, Phoenix is 21-2. Memphis is 18-5. Do you know who the third best team is? It's not the Celtics. Dallas? Yeah, Dallas. Dallas is 18-6. And you look at some of the

Luka stuff, this was another unanswerable question I had for you. Can Luka win the scoring title? Luka's two points behind. There's a bunch of guys in that like 29 to 29 and a half. Luca's at, at 27 and a half, but he's only played 44 games. I did the math. If he's basically 34 a game, the rest of the way he wins the title, he gets a 30 a game. You, you're more, you're more committed than I am. I don't care enough about the scoring title to have sat down and done the math. I just eyeballed it.

I cared about it for gambling because he was five to one odds. I was staring at you. I looked at it. He's sixth and he's two full points behind Embiid, who's just a little bit ahead of Giannis, who's just a little bit ahead of LeBron. And I'm like, two full points. He's got to average some crazy amount to have a shot at this. But I'm like, I just don't care enough to sit here and spend the two minutes.

You did it. You did it. I did it. 34 and a half or something you said? Yeah. So his last nine games, he was over 36. I have more unanswerable questions. We got to take a break. This episode is brought to you by Movember.

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What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend that powers your scale with no preset spending limit. More cash on hand to grow your business with up to 55 interest-free days and the ability to reach further with access to over 1400 airport lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. All right. Here's a big unanswerable question zach what if jabal murray comes back and he's good right away well that would fly in the face of what usually happens with acl injuries um but that's what makes the west so interesting is we're talking about uh grizzlies warriors a 2-3 matchup in the second round.

But, you know, seven and six, particularly six, is going to be an interesting team, whether it's Dallas, Denver, whoever it ends up being. And, you know, you know how high I am on the Nuggets. Well, you and I are driving the Jokic. Hey, everybody, wake up. Can you fucking look at what's happening here at Bainwagon? That is one.

But I know what I saw when this team had Porter healthy, Murray healthy, and Aaron Gordon healthy. And I saw, holy shit, this works. It works. I thought the Aaron Gordon trade would work. I thought he was a better fit than Jeremy Grant. Seeing it, I was like, it's even better than I thought. This is a championship contending championship level team. To me, they're the sleeping giant in the West.

It just feels like they're really sleeping till next year because it's just a lot to ask to get both of those guys back. Both of those guys humming to, I mean, you know, these playoff games, man, they are. I always go back to a story I heard about a player Tuesday. I think it was the 2019 season. He was in his first playoff series ever. I think he was a rookie, maybe a rookie or second-year player. I'm not going to say the player or the team.

They played game one of the series. In the locker room, one of the coaches went over and was like, hey, great win. What did you think? The player was like, we got to play like six more of those maybe in this series that's the hardest game i've ever played in my life like so it's easy to say like if murray's healthy this and that it's the playoffs are just a different animal it's hard for me to imagine murray and porter being up to that for a long playoff run i love to be wrong because I love

watching that team play. Denver feels more like absent actual evidence that they are playing really well. Those two guys, Denver feels like more a 22, 23 team for the championship race than 21, 22. I think playoff games. I don't know what the exact number is, but they should be worth like 1.4 of a game, just in terms of the miles you put on somebody's body. Do you think when we do the all-time scoring list and the all-time points list,

the all-time rebounds list, we should just combine regular season and playoffs or no? So I never even really thought of that until LeBron. I was at the Laker game when he broke this record of the combined thing, which I didn't know was a record. The only way I care about it is the minutes. Because I don't think it's fair to combine the regular season and playoffs because we have so many more rounds now. Back in the 50s, 60s, there was two rounds and you might have 12 playoff games

total. It's a way of giving players credit for playoff games that doesn't show up when we talk about the all-time stuff. But yeah, you can't compare the 60s to now. From a minute standpoint, though, whatever LeBron's minutes are, it's some crazy number. I think it might be 10,000 minutes, something like that in the playoffs, some nutty number. But that's really like,

you'd think those are like 10,000 hard minutes. That's not, I get to go on cruise control because I'm in Detroit and they suck. And I'm just going to dribble around and shoot some threes. Like every one of those playoff games is brutal. On the Denver thing. So I think they have to stay in the top six and Minnesota is a little frisky, like going back to those records, you know, to those records since the dates, I was kind of shocked. Minnesota, 15-9 in their last 24. Minnesota, 19-13 in their last 32. That's a 50-win pace and that's a really significant sample size. Denver's right around the same. The reason I bring that up is Minnesota is two and a half behind Denver.

If I'm Denver, I just keep me in the six seed. I don't want any part of a playing game. I don't want to put more miles on anybody. I get to buy another week for Murray. And if I can get Murray back at the beginning of April even, and I can get 25 to 27 minutes a game from him on top of all the other good stuff that's going on. I just, you can't tell me Golden State wants to see Jokic in a seven game series. You just can't. I think Denver has, is it would take a lot for Denver to fall to seven. So there are three games up in the loss column over Minnesota. They've played 26 home games and 32 road games. They have six home games coming to them. And by winning percentage, one of the easiest schedules in the West with Minnesota, again, three games out, it's reversed. They have a very hard schedule and a road heavy

schedule. So I think Minnesota, I know they're dreaming of six. I just think they have too much ground to make up and they got it. You know what? Seven's great. Seven's fine. You get home court, you get two, two chances to win one game, like take seven and go with it. The play in the Lakers Clippers eight, nine scenarios. Delicious. It's delicious. Lakers Clippers. It actually might happen. We might have a one game Lakers Clippers playoffs and FYI, I have no fucking idea who's going to be in that game. Like, will Kawhi be in that game? Will Paul George be

in that game? Here it comes. I can feel it. Here it comes. Will Russell Westbrook be in that game? There it is! I knew it was coming. And that's our next answer to a question. Would you be shocked if Russell Westbrook, by the end of the season, just wasn't playing basketball? Yeah, Would you be shocked if Russell Westbrook by the end of the season just wasn't playing basketball?

Yeah, I would be shocked. You wouldn't be shocked by that? I would be just like gone, like banished, benched, benched. You're talking benched, like Russell Westbrook. Not talking benched. I'm talking Vogel. The Lakers are 27-31. And Vogel at some point is going to be like,

if we don't win a couple of playoff rounds here, I'm gone anyway. What do I care about Russ's feelings? I'm just not going to play him the last eight minutes of these games. Russ gets mad. Russ takes it personally. And, you know, back tightness, whatever,

I'm shutting it down. And that's it. We never see Russ again. Listen, I'm not saying this is the most realistic scenario. I'm just saying, would I rule it out? No, I wouldn't. Based on what we've seen in basketball over the last 40 years, would you rule out Russell Westbrook taking his ball and going home? Because I would not. You have a way of bringing up a very long shot idea, explaining how it could come to be and having the listener be like,

you know, that explanation kind of makes the kind of sense. It feels less, it feels less preposterous. I do have to, by the way, I do have to give you credit. Speaking of Russell Westbrook, I was listening to your reunion pod with Jacoby and Kevin Wilds. Yeah. And you started on what I knew immediately would be a long and winding metaphor about how the Westbrook trade, LeBron's involvement in the Westbrook trade was like, if your wife asked you to design a wine cellar. And as soon as you said the word wine cellar, I heard Wild's laugh. And I was on my Peloton, my knockoff Peloton laughing because I was like, this is going to be about 90 seconds. Yeah. And by the end, I'm going to be like, wait, did that make sense?

Did it not? I enjoyed it. Did it make sense? I'm not sure what happened. I landed the plate on that one. How did you think of the wine seller? I don't know. It just came up with that right away.

Yeah. I heard you and Van Gundy talk about this too. Look, the Davis trade worked out because they won a title. So I think we can consider it a success, right? The whole point of making a trade, you win one title. That's it. Like I look at the 2008 Celtics, they should have won more than one title, but at least they won a title for all the moves they made. No question. I was going to take issue with you because I thought you were treading almost towards being like, was the AD trade, in retrospect, is it not working out as well as they hope? To me, they won the title.

They won the title. And they still have Anthony Davis, who's not 30 yet. But, big but, they gave up a lot to get him. They gave up most of their assets. And it was worth it because they won the title. But they gave up all of their assets for two guys and let whatever other assets leave in free agency. And you can't tell me that LeBron wasn't the driving force behind both of those things. We know he was driving force behind the Westbrook trade. We know he was driving force behind the Anthony Davis trade. And like,

I said this at the time, I thought they overpaid for Davis, but it was worth it because you have a window with LeBron. But they definitely overpaid. I mean, Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball were in that trade on top of all the picks that they threw in. It was a shitload. And I don't know. I kind of would have wanted to see Lonzo Ball

and the Lakers with LeBron and Anthony Davis. Like if they could have kept him, made, if you look at all the other superstar trades that have happened, if it had just been Brandon Ingram and all those picks, that's right around where the other superstar trades landed, but they kind of threw in Lonzo. Like he was a free set of tires. I would have liked to have seen him on those teams. But my point is like they mortgaged everything for those two guys. One of the guys didn't work out. The other guys had a lot of trouble staying on the court. And I just don't know. I hate defending Polenko and Buss and all these

people because I certainly don't really feel like they know what they're doing either. The fact that Kurt Rambis is involved is hilarious, but I don't know what else you can do at this point. You don't have any assets. We're talking about their 2027 first round pick. It's five years from now that's their only asset i do enjoy all the stories that come out about like uh-oh sources say kurt rambis was at the coaches meeting today sources say that's a sign like kurt rambis yeah can you imagine can you imagine being on that coaching staff and you're discussing strategy and kurt rambis comes in the room career head coaching record whatever it is and just start rambis who put he played ryan gomes more minutes than kevin love in 2010 i looked it up that's a thing you can look up on basketball which is what

does he say i'm just gonna sit in here guys just want to see what you're up to just what do you just just pretend i'm not here i'm just a fly on the wall yeah i'm just sitting in no it's totally normal i've just said i just i just want to, trying to get my hands on every part of the team here. Just trying to check it in. I'm just married to the owner's best friend. I'm just here. Don't look at me. I'm just over here somewhere. Yeah. So I'm fascinated by this Lakers thing, but I have another Lakers hot take. I kind of like watching Lakers more when Davis isn't out there and LeBron has to do everything. He can do it if he just has to do it for three weeks where it's like, all right, I'll do everything. He's still really good at that.

I don't know if he could do it for 100 games, but he could do it for 10. Yeah, but you're not winning anything. You're not winning anything, but I'm saying from an entertainment standpoint, I think the next three weeks are going to be really fun with LeBron because they can't fuck around anymore. They can't have any more losses. So he is going – the two guys that I think are going to explode after the All-Star break are him and Luka.

And Luka was already exploding. So speaking of the Lakers, margin for error. Yeah. It's not – they have no margin of error. Well, we were having some pre-show meeting for something, and somebody brought up like, should we talk about the Lakers' chances of getting out of the play-in? And I was

like, getting out of the play-in? They're six games out of the sixth seed with the hardest schedule in the West, and Anthony Davis is hurt. They're lucky there are three games up on Portland that Portland is trying their best not to try, although their new guys keep winning. Well, you see, Nurkic is out four weeks.

That's what I'm saying. They're trying their best not to try, but they're frisky right now. And then, you know, New Orleans, Sacramento, those teams are so far behind the Lakers. They're like, the Lakers are not getting into the top six. It's over for that. They're in the plan.

And in fact, I've had, I've had a few little birdies pitch me the same joke over the last 24, 48 hours. Say, wouldn't it be funny if the Lakers finished ninth, not eighth, but ninth or 10th pick ninth.

Let's just say ninth. Cause that's their eighth or ninth is where the, really where they are. And all of a sudden LeBron vociferous critic of the play in tournament when his team was seven or eight and would have been guaranteed a play in spot is now ninth. And the play in tournament is his lifeline to any post-season life. Does he have to issue a public apology and praise the play?

She just stopped playing it. You know, it'd be hypocritical for me to play. I'm going to, I'm going to and praise the play. She's just not playing it. You know, it'd be hypocritical for me to play. I'm going to, I'm going to sit out the play at third, but I'm going to stick to my guns. I bet he doesn't do that. But,

but you guys had the whole punch a chance segment. I'll tell you this. You can look at the lake. The Lakers are not good. Like objectively, they're not good. Not good. I just know.

Playoffs are a different animal. LeBron anthony davis on the other team i you're gonna tell me you're gonna be shocked if it's two two warriors lakers going into game five like i won't be shocked i'll be mildly maybe a little bit surprised that they're able to get it together that quickly but those two guys are that good and in the playoffs vocalel is just going to be like I'm putting like all all the kid gloves are out the door for the playoffs if he wants to play three shooters around them the entire game or what the Lakers have that passes as three shooters that's what he'll do if that means Russ plays eight minutes that means he plays now Russ is going to be in Mexico rehabilitating look this is what I noticed

when I went to the game last week. If it's just LeBron and Davis and Monk and Austin Reeves and pick any other swingman. Monk's the third best player on the team. Yeah, if that's your crunch time and it's Davis, LeBron, two shooters and somebody who could just dribble the ball

over a half court, I'm still scared if I'm the other team. If it's one game winner takes all, they're going to play probably the Clippers in the eight, nine, and there will be 80% Laker fans there. No matter who's hosting that game. If the Lakers are hosting a bit, a hundred percent Laker fans, if the Clippers are hosting it, it'll be like 75, 80%. All the Clipper fans will sell their tickets to try to basically pay for the season. And then Minnesota, I mean, talk about like nobody on that team has played in a big game before. Like Russell played in one playoff series.

Has Towns, has Towns ever played in a game like that since college? He's like a winner. Houston, Minnesota, first round during the halcyon days of Tom Thibodeau in Minnesota. Oh, well, there you go. during the halcyon days of Tom Thibodeau in Minnesota. Oh. There you go. Yeah, I mean, and then there's the scenario of what would be the most fun team for the Lakers to play if they made it in round one, which is clearly Memphis. Memphis Lakers would be off the hook.

No question. Old versus young. The Desmond Bain trash-talking LeBron thing. It would be by far the most fun. The two most fun series, hands down, are Memphis Lakers and Philly Brooklyn. Philly Brooklyn is an iconic series.

Philly Brooklyn, I've already- If that's your four or five, three, six. I've already said it. Philly Brooklyn, goodbye family for two weeks. You're not seeing me. I'm going to-

You're going to all of them. I'm getting a hotel in Brooklyn. Like I'm not even messing around. I'm not even taking the Metro North home after Brooklyn games. I'm just all in for the whole thing. I am going to a lot of lab basketball over the next few weeks.

I think I'm going to three or four games next week. I really missed it. I forgot like how much, I mean, I don't need to tell you this, how much you pick up when you're there. I've only been in like three games this year. It's just, it's so, I'm throwing myself back into it. All right, more

unanswerables. Is there a world that Kyrie has cleared and starts playing every game and he's just awesome and he averages like 29 a game and KD comes back and even, like, just remove, I don't even know what we're getting from Simmons.

But we finally get to see at least kd and kairi kicking ass together and it becomes the thing because i feel like it's in play i think the mayor's office announcement whatever yesterday certainly indicated that we are on a track to that world pretty soon. And yeah, Kyrie is, I mean, he was all NBA 50-40-90 last year and was fantastic in the role he played between Durant and Harden. Now has to play a little bit of a different role. You know, Steve Nash, I think, mentioned yesterday about how he's sort of ramping up into condition to play every game if that comes to pass. And I do think,

and I wrote about this last week, it's, it's an orange flag. It's not a red flag, which is an orange flag that no one has talked about yet is Kyrie's rim attempts are way, way, way down compared to compared to usual.

And for now I'm chalking that up because he looks like Kyrie still. I'm chalking that up to the nets have had to play all these lineups with two and three guys who are non-shooters. So Lane's all clogged and B, he's just not playing every game. So he hasn't been able to get into a rhythm. But I'm keeping my eye on that stat for the rest of the season and into the offseason as Kyrie does whatever he's going to do with that player option. But I think we're trending toward that world that you described for sure what is the kairi summer market looking like uh do the shanghai do the shanghai sharks have cap space you know there's gonna be somebody talking themselves into him oh there's no no no i'm

being facetious there will be multiple someones that will talk themselves into him it's just going to be a matter of what does he do? What did the, I don't even know what the nets want. Like I, if I'm Sean Marks, I think I want them to opt in. Can,

if he opts out, can I get them on like a two year max? So I'm not like, I I'm not losing sleep every night about like the fourth and fifth year. I don't even know what I want, but if he opts out at 100% for sure, there will be at least one, if not three to four teams that compete with the nets.

Do you want, let's take a break. Do you want to compare trade Intel that we've heard from the Simmons Harden trade since it happened? Cause I have a couple nuggets. You can throw your nuggets at me. I probably don't have as many nuggets as you. All right, we'll take a break.

All right, so I mentioned I knew a lot about the Harden-Simmons trade. And I never ended up doing on the pot. And then Chris Vernon's been badgering me for 10 days. This is what I heard. And I've had pretty good intel throughout this whole thing. This is what I was hearing in the moment, that Embiid really wanted Bradley Beal and was pushing really hard for it and was talking to him all the time and was pushing, pushing, pushing. And part of the reason the trade stuff took so long was because there was a Sixers side that wanted Harden, obviously Daryl, because Harden's this guy.

But Embiid really wanted Beal because he felt like he was a better fit and was pushing, pushing, pushing. Then Beal gets hurt. But then the Sixers are still pushing. I mean, I'm sorry, Embiid is still pushing. No, no, no, Beal, Beal, Beal, still working on him. And then Beal's like, I'm sorry. Embiid is still pushing. No, no, no. Beal, Beal, Beal still working on him. And then Beal's like, I'm out. And he gets surgery. And then that's how we end

up with the Harden situation. So that was one piece. Wow. The second piece, Harden saying that Philly was his first choice all along is just not true. Because him and Durant together were badgering people in the Nets front office and higher to make the Harden trade during that. Remember that? Like, what, 72 hours? Then all of a sudden, Nets are like, all right, fine. Jared Allen's in it now, and here more picks and they kind of up their offer. It was because of Harden and KD together.

Well, I remember maybe a month before that trade, me and Ramona and Woj all put our reporting together and it was just as a short news piece, but it was about, I don't know if it was a month before the trade, but it was well before the trade. It was about how Harden had his eyes set on Brooklyn because that's what we had all been hearing.

And so I, I first choice, whatever. I mean, I, I, he, he wanted to go to Brooklyn.

He died. I don't know if he wanted to go to Brooklyn more than he wanted to, but you heard his press conference, you heard his press conference, right? He said it was my first choice all along. It's just not true. That's not how it played out the month leading up to that first trade.

People say stuff at press conferences. That's not true. He wanted to go to Brooklyn, which leads to the third piece of this. All right, so what happened? I know a lot of people have written a lot of different things about this, but the part of it that I haven't really seen people discuss properly

and it's weird. I think there's parallels to when KD was on the Warriors, a topic that we talked about a lot, where KD is the finals MVP. He's the bet. He toe-to-toe with LeBron. He's the best player in that series, but it's still kind of Curry's team.

And at some point between year one and year three, when he decides it's time for me to go, I will always think the big driving force of this was like, Steph's the guy here. This is his team. It's his franchise. Everyone caters to Steph. And I want my own team.

And I'm not even saying that's a selfish thing. He's just- What about, what about, I will never, I won these two titles and finals MVPs, but I'm not treated. These aren't, these aren't being counted as quote unquote real championships because our team was too loaded. A hundred percent. You have that too. You have all that stuff. And he starts thinking about that. And he's realizing like, if I stay here, I'm always going to be on Steph's team. I'm never going to get the full credit for what I deserve.

I need my own team. And he falls in basketball love with Kyrie and the rest of this history. Harden goes to Brooklyn. You did a lot of reporting on this because you're more connected with everyone in the Nets than anybody I know. Harden's like the leader of the team last year, right? He's like the rock of the team. He's doing everything.

He's actually dipping into this side of Harden that we kind of didn't realize we were starting to reevaluate. What do we think of him as a player that, well, he can do this too. It's like, Jesus. Well, we had a whole thing about is what do we think? Is there any precedent for a player getting traded in season and possibly winning the MVP in that same season? Like, are we okay with that? The way it happened. And I ultimately was like, I think it would take a lot to get there, but that's how good he was.

So Katie is selling hard and I know, come here. This is going to be amazing. We're going to be the best offensive team of all time. Hey, what about Kyrie? No, no,

he's great. You love him. So then a lot of Kyrie time and exposure. By the summer, I think Harden's wondering like, hmm, now the COVID stuff's coming in. Now Kyrie's saying, I'm not going to play if I'm not vaccinated. Harden, this is a KD-Kyrie team, right?

Would you say those are the people we all know players drive franchises? This is a KD Kyrie team. Harden's on the outside. It's not a James Harden team. He's the guy that got brought in to help the team win. But ultimately, it's a KD Kyrie team. They're the ones who tell the Nets, you can't put DeAndre Jordan in the deal, trade Jared Allen. DeAndre's our guy, stuff like that. At some point, Harden starts to get into the same spot that KD was in on the Warriors. This is never going to be my team. They

put up with all this Kyrie bullshit. Meanwhile, I'm out here. My hamstring's still not feeling 100%. I'm playing hurt. This guy won't even play. Now, the seeds of discontent start. Then you have the people coming in. They can sense it.

He says a couple things to whoever, like, fucking Kyrie won't play. Now you got Meek Mill, like, you should come to Philly. That'd be great. And because the NBA has turned into 10th grade, you can easily just switch friend groups, right? So now it's like, oh, Philly.

Yeah, I could just go there. And we just go down that road. Because what's clear in the last month when Harden was on Brooklyn was he was kind of an outcast, right? He'd distanced himself at least a little bit from everybody else. And you could see it on the court. You could see it when you watched him. And he started to check out. And I think that's what happened. I don't think it was one thing. I don't think it was a smoking gun. I think it was a slow realization. This will never be my team. I could go to Philly.

It's me and Embiid. My guy, Michael Rubin's there. My guy, Meek Mill's there. My guy, Daryl's there. Daryl loves me more than anyone and this can be my team and that's how it happens. What do you think? I laid out my whole case what do you

think two things number one it's joelle and beads team and it's joelle and beads city so if you think you're going to go in and make a james harden's team and james harden city you are not you are mistaken that is not going to happen it's joelle and beads teamen's city, you are not, you are mistaken. That is not going to happen. It's Joel Embiid's team. It's his city. Now, you can be the leading scorer. I agree with you, which is why this is going to be so fascinating because I think Harden's in the same situation he was just in, but doesn't realize it

yet. Well, but like, I just don't understand. It's, it was not hard, and I don't know all that went into Kevin Durant's decision to sign with the warriors and all that went into his decision to leave. Like we can speculate. I just don't,

I don't, I don't, I can go back and read his interviews, whatever. I just don't know how you could think I'm going to go there. And I'm not saying he thought this, but it was obviously no matter who goes there, that's Steph's team forever.

That was the case in 2016. That's the case now. That's the case in three years. It's his team. It doesn't, like, this Joel Embiid is the process. That's who he is. This is his franchise. It's never going to be anybody else's.

Giannis could go there, and it's Embiid's team. Luka could go there, and it's Embiid's team. That's just how this works like dallas was always going to be dirk's team no matter who went there alongside him it's it's their team the other thing is well you know the only people that figured that out was kg and pierce because pierce didn't have the the chips yet so they figured out how to basically split the this is his team thing anyway god the other thing is like you you all the intel this hard and simmons thing has has the intel as you know

it was just all over the place the rumors were all over the place you'd hear one thing and then the next thing would contradict it you'd hear this and that and all that but that the rumors were everywhere i no matter what no matter how many conversations I have that say this is true or say it's exaggerated or to say it's not true, I will never, ever, ever believe anything but that if Kyrie were just playing, this would have all been fine. Like, I just, I believe that. I think you're right. I will always believe that. I don't care who poo-poos it at press conferences. I don't care who poo--poohs it at press conferences. I don't care who pooh-poohs it behind closed doors. If Kyrie Irving were playing in my gut, in my soul, I think the Nets

are like 50 and 10 or 45 and 15 and rolling and everyone's happy and there is no James Harden trade and they're the title favorites right now. I 100% agree. That's the thing with this stuff. It is a bunch of small baby steps that all of a sudden leads to a result that you might not expect. With the Durant thing though, I'm 100% confident he would run the Golden State thing back 100 times out of 100.

He went there to win titles, to be on one of the best teams ever, to not play with Russell Westbrook anymore. It was his best chance. He wanted to leave OKC. He wanted to go to a different place. He wanted to grow as a human being and as a player. Gold State was perfect. Honestly, I wish

he had stayed longer. I think when you look back at with the Achilles and him getting hurt when he did and stuff, who knows? Maybe he runs it back for one more year and then goes to Brooklyn. I don't know. But I don't think he would have any regrets about how it played out in Golden State. And as invincible as they were, and as much as they allegedly

ruined the NBA for three years because they were too good, they got pushed to game seven in their second year together and didn't win in their didn't win the title in their third year together so i do agree that fully at full throttle they were invincible and the 2017 run when they went 15 and 16 and one of the playoffs was a pretty true representation of what that team could be yeah but like they weren't invincible houston almost beat them when they were almost totally healthy other than andre and then toronto did beat them now it took took a lot for toronto to beat them but toronto was good like that was a good that was a really good team and like injuries

happen now do two catastrophic injuries happen back-to-back? Do the Warriors win that series if just KD gets hurt but not Klay? I don't know the answers to those questions, but anyway, that's a tangent. That 2017 Warriors team was amazing. I will never forget. I will never forget. I was at a game in Denver early that season, Warriors-Nuggets, and I don't know if it was the second quarter,

it was the third quarter, but there was one of those like four minutes stretches where they had all their best players on the court. It was the death lineup, whatever the new death lineup was. And like three minutes passed and they scored like 24 points. And I just remember being like, I just, it was like a, it was like euphoric it was

just like washing over you and you just felt these nuggets players like all these guys are good this is a good team and they're just reduced to rubble witnessing this thing happening to them totally helpless it was it was unbelievable I've only seen four teams get to that level in my life, but I do think the old one Lakers were the, were the sleeper of that conversation because the regular season record wasn't great. They kind of, they had some shit going on. Then they kind of figured it out and then they just started destroying

everybody. I mean, they, they were just obliterating teams and that's kind of the last level. It was funny. Cause I felt like Phoenix was inching toward that a little bit this season. It wasn't like the blowing out. It was like the 24 point stuff like you just talked about.

But the stuff they were doing in crunch time, which there's a lot of data that backs it up, you know, which so I'm not I'm not breaking new ground here. But their precision in the last five minutes of games was pretty fucking eerie to watch. You just felt like they were scoring every time. Like teams, in the last five minutes of the game, you're not supposed to score 50 to 70% of the time you have the ball, right? Even you look at like those last five seconds of the game, everybody's percentages are like 23%, 25%. It's hard to score when teams are clamping down, even on the All-Star

game. When people are really trying in defense, much harder to score, not rocket science. Phoenix would just get good shots. It didn't matter. It was like, oh, Booker, just get your 15-footer over here. Oh, Chris is just going to run a pick and roll. Oh, Bridges, open three. They got whatever shots they wanted at every point of the game. And I was so bummed that Chris got hurt because I really liked watching them. I compared them in my column a couple of weeks ago because you're right. They're not a tidal wave of just explosion that leaves you awestruck and helpless. I compared them to they are the inheritors of the Spurs pound the rock philosophy where it's just like, oh, we're down by five. We're not going

to change how we play. We're going to continue to make every correct decision, every correct pass, every correct read, going to continue to set our flare screens and do our off ball movement and just chip, chip, chip, chip, chip. The math is going to win out for us. Chip, chip, chip. And suddenly it's like, oh, we're up by 17 because we just stuck with it, made the right play every time. And there's nothing spectacular. I mean, it is spectacular in the aggregate, but you don't get this feeling of awe watching them. And then by the end of the game, like, oh, they won again. They're 48 and 10.

They never lose. Really, really, really competitive, which is another thing like competitive fucking dudes who just want to win at basketball. Right. They don't have a good time. They're not celebrating. I think Booker, who everybody said always had this in him, Paul just unleashed it. Maybe some of it was Booker hitting his mid-20s and all that.

But that dude's as competitive as anyone in the league, right? It's like, look at him, Giannis, people like that. Those guys really give a shit every game. And then Bridges, I was pro that contract. He even went up a level this year on the defense. I didn't get people being anti that contract.

I'm worried about what it means for Aiton, this and that. That's a good contract for Mikael Bridges. You mentioned the Spurs. To me, they are more the inheritors of, Isaiah Dumars Pistons teams. When I watched them where that the great thing, those teams could play defense, obviously, and had a couple of the best defensive players of their generation, but they also just got really

good shots at the end of games. And they had multiple guys. You watch the Suns and you're just like, wow, Paul and Booker. I just, you're in good hands. Every possession with one of these two guys, it's such a rare thing to have for a basketball team. And we,

there's different versions of that, right? Like you could say the same about the nets, but I just really liked the shots they always get. I always keep saying that, but like, I just enjoy the shots. And I have the nineties Pistons teams were like the 89, 90 teams. You just break people down. Vinnie Johnson would get hot,

be like, all right, we're going to ride him for three minutes and he'd score every time. Oh, we'll go to a wire. Oh, Isaiah, let's, let's ISO him. And they would just get good shots. Anyway. I don't, I don't mean stylistically. They're nothing like either the 13, 14 spurs or the Duncan, you know, the peak, just throw it into Duncan Spurs. I just think in the sort of mundane relentlessness with which they play, they just sort of remind me of just, we're just going to stick with it, stick with it, stick with it, stick with it. And we know our game, we know what to do and we're going to break you by the end. Well, you and I, I think, I think we respect the 14 Spurs more than most because that team

absolutely demolished a Miami team that I think people now are like, oh, then LeBron didn't have enough help. It's like, we didn't feel that way when we were at the games. Miami was still favored when they were down 2-1 in that series. People still expected them to come back. They still thought LeBron could pull off anything. And there was a moment in game four when I think everybody kind of realized, oh, this Spurs team is freaking legendary. There's no way they're losing this series. But it took really until like the third quarter of game four. Remember, you could see the life kind of seeping out of LeBron. Oh, you could see it was over. Like, it was like, they have no answer. They know they have no answer. It's very obvious when a team realizes we can't beat this team.

Or not we can't beat this team, but we need to go 20 or 40 from three. We need so much to go right because we don't have an answer for what's happening within us right now. Do you believe in the Celtics at all? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, good. I do too. It's hard not to believe in them. They have the best point differential in the East,

although they're sixth, which is weird. The East is all weird. Believe in them to, you know, again, do I think they can win the East? I would put them behind probably Milwaukee, Miami, and we just have to see these Philly and Brooklyn teams. But it would not surprise me. They're the kind of team where it's like it wouldn't surprise me

if they won any individual series against any of those teams, really, or against really any team in the East. Milwaukee would surprise me a little bit. But it would surprise me if they were able to win three in a row. Me too. I believe in their defense. I think it's real. That was the biggest reason.

Before the season, I said they're a lock for top six. They have a chance to get top three and a chance to get third. Because remember, everyone was like Brooklyn, Milwaukee, runaway, one, two. Yeah, that didn't really work out. And it was because at the end, the know the nba is chaotic guys get hurt there's conflict within teams there's evolution there's trades and this and that but if you can bank on elite defense every single game you're gonna win a fair number of games that's why i looked at the subscales like i don't know how a lot of these issues are going to sort them out

their shooting is just so so the tatum brown thing do they amplify each other but you look up and down the line even before they got der White, this should be a top five defense, period. And it took a while, but now they're number two in defense, sniffing number one. White, Smart, Tatum, Brown, Williams, if all of them are healthy, are going to be really hard to score against. You know, one of my great joys of the season is- The 19 times I texted you that i was out on the celtics no not that that's all that's always fun but that's yeah that's is slowly but surely you have come around on the time lord you're ready you're oh my god against against your better judgment against against your

gut and your soul against how you feel every time he jumps anywhere near the backboard or the baseline against all of that, you're starting to come around. It's not even starting. I'm a believer. I just, can he stay in the court? They,

he may did some good stuff to shift him away from some of his weaknesses to try to keep them away from the top of the key and stuff like that. Try to keep them closer to the rim as much as they possibly could. You know, that's like every team was attacking him. I just worry now that if he lets you down at some point, you've, you've given,

you've given yourself over to loving him. And after resisting it for so long, that's when, that's when, that's when you're most vulnerable emotionally. And so I worry now he's going to let you down somehow. He sucked me in. I,

the thing that I like about him is he, he does really play hard. And I think, you know, Mannix told me this. Ime really challenged him, really challenged him to be tough, to play through injuries, to be like an alpha dog as a center. And I think he's had a huge impact on him. With that said, I mean, if we're going to rank the guys who just terrify me when I'm watching them

during a game and jaw has to be first, I'm just terrified of jaw at all times. John, no, don't go into 17 guys. Uh, Williams is Williams is up there for me. He's just jumping around. He's flying. He's going in a cameraman and, uh, you know, I would love to see them stay healthy who is who is your biggest ceiling basement team so i'm gonna define this as this as as this yeah i need this i need this one spelled out for me so the the building that has the most stories between the basement and the ceiling can you give me some candidates or who who am i i mean i have a gut i have a gut answer but you know i'll just give you my so basement would be we just lost in the play-in tournament yeah ceiling would be we won the title okay so this this isn't this is this is the obvious answer

to this is the nets because they're in the play-in tournament with the schedule so tough after the all-star break and kd's return still, I mean, coming soon. Simmons not playing Kyrie playing some games, not others. They're, they're eighth and have championship level if all goes right potential. So to me, I don't know that there's any team right now that you could say losing the play in or win the title. I guess you could argue Celtics.

I just don't think they could win the title. I don't think the bulls can win the title and I don't think argue Celtics. I just don't think they can win the title. I don't think the Bulls can win the title, and I don't think they're going to go into the play-in. They're so far ahead. I had Denver as the second choice in this because they could be a six seed and losing five, or I could actually see them in the finals.

It's just hard for me. Again, I love Denver, and you could make the same argument with the clippers if anybody ever knew anything about what kawaii was going to do um it's just hard for me to get there with two just huge pieces coming back from so much time away due to injury it's hard for me to get there so to me the nets are the nets are the obvious winner here and the lakers people will bring up the lakers itakers. It's just hard to see a title. A title? It's just hard to fathom that they could have a ceiling as high as the Nets.

No, but it goes back to Wilds' puncher's chance thing. One game playoff in round one where all of a sudden you're down 3-2 to them and LeBron's sniffing it. I just wouldn't be too fired up to see them. Their supporting cast is bad, but it's not egregious. It's not like where LeBron was in 2014 with that Miami

team and something like that, where it's just like we literally can't find three other guys to put next to you. Like, they at least have shooting, you know, but they need to, the Westbrook thing, Westbrook will single-handedly kill them. The best thing that could happen for them is either Westbrook just completely gives into what he needs to be, or he disappears. It'll probably be one or the other. Memphis, most likely outcome for them. I'll give you three from the last, since we've known each other.

The 2011 Bulls, really good regular season, not enough when they actually had to play a good team. Lost in the conference finals. Got to the conference finals. That's a long run. Conference finals is no joke. Okay, so that could be Memphis. The 2019 Bucks where

got a taste, jumped in, jumped in, threw a couple haymakers. 2015 Warriors where it's like, my God, this team's going to win the title. Or give me any example of a fun

2013 Nuggets. Fun regular season completely falls apart when we get to the playoffs. I'll give you those four scenarios. I'm trying to think of a good analog for young team

that loses in a competitive second round series to a more accomplished veteran team. I thought that was the 2019 Bucks, but they made the conference finals. I guess you're right. They did. I thought they had lost in round too but but was clearly sending a signal to the league we're here this is this is step one and it was a pretty damn good step like we won the first

round pretty easily we went toe-to-toe with the warriors or whatever in the second round i'm trying to think of a good kind of analog for that but that would Whatever that is, that would be my most likely outcome for them. I agree. I think they went around. I think there's some upside if Jackson... To me, Jackson's the swing guy for them. Because I wasn't a huge fan

heading into the season, and then what he's been doing defensively, I've been kind of blown away by. That's overshadowed the fact that he's shooting 41% and 31% on threes. Like at some point he's going to have to make shots. Maybe the 2013 warriors, although you don't want to project dynastic greatness on any team,

but the 2013 warriors, that's a good one. Beat the nuggets in the first round, went toe to toe with the Spurs in the second round. It sort of sent the warning of, Oh shit, this team, like what they do in the regular season carries went toe-to-toe with the Spurs in the second round and sort of sent the warning of, oh shit, this team, like what they do in the regular season carries over and is a problem.

Yeah, that's a good one because then you have the Steph arrival season with the Ja arrival season. Right? Something magical was happening with Steph that year. We're like, wow, this could really end up being something. And feel the same way about Ja. That Spurs series was a warning sign to the entire NBA.

Like, we're here and this is a real thing. And the most veteran, smart, accomplished, whatever opponent in the Western Conference is really just like praying to get by us despite Andrew Bogut being hurt and Steph tweaking his ankle in that series. They're just like, can we be done with these guys? Because this Steph guy is kind of tearing us apart.

I'm fired up for Memphis. I'm fired up for their run. It's the most fun of all the teams. He's the most electric player in the NBA right now. He's a show every single night. I said this on the pod, and I really tried to say it carefully because I do not like to compare anybody to MJ in any way. But the point I was making was

the way he attacks the rim and the angles and his body contortion and the shit like that, it just reminds me a little of that 80s MJ. He's so fucking exciting when he goes to the basket in a way that's just different than anybody we've seen in a while. And even like the Rose Westbrook comparisons, he's a little different

because he's also trying to dunk on people or go around people and do this double clutch shit. And it feels like he's getting better. I don't think he should be eligible for most improved player though because he's like the odds on favor right now. Because he was good last year.

I think he's like, he's definitely made a leap. But to me, like Darius Garland is the embodiment of what most improved player should be. Where you go from like, you're a solid scoring guard to you are now a creator

for a potential top five playoff team and you're creating shots at the end of games and doing stuff. How is he not the most improved player? I haven't dove. It's funny you mentioned that because this morning I was like, I got to carve out a few hours to go through the 9,000 candidates that are going to be for most improved player, which is always the most amorphous and impossible reward.

It just depends on there's the school of thought that the jump from whatever Ja was last year, borderline all-star, I don't know, an impossible reward it just depends on there's the school of thought that the the the jump from whatever jaw was last year borderline all-star i don't know yeah super to superstar is the hardest and most consequential jump to make in the nba so there's that and that that was the school of thought that was like maybe luca should be in the conversation a couple of seasons ago or whatever it is i i i think it's interesting i don't know who. I haven't thought about it. Time Lord will be in there. Are your guys Time Lord?

Big 22 games for Time Lord. Try to clinch it down. What about, and then there's the whole should a second-year player win it, whereas do we expect guys to just get better? Because Desmond Bain might be a better candidate on his own team. Yeah, we need more elaboration on what that award is.

Hero is kind of floating around in the, in the fringes of it too, just because last year it looked like, Oh my God, I can't believe I spent $500 on a Tyler here, a rookie card. Like people are saying that. And it just seemed like he was five,

people spent $500 on a tire. His rookie card was like over $500 after the, after the playoffs. I don't get, I guess I'm just not as I I'll buy, like I have some framed photos and stuff in my office, but 500 bucks, man,

I could get like 10 Indian meals at my favorite Indian takeout place for 500 bucks. It's a volatile market. Cause you think like that Zion year was the hot box. It was like one of the hottest product and everyone wanted Zion and then Ja turned out to be the guy. Right. And now if that was the Zion thing is cratered. We have no idea.

Do you know how many games he's played? In his career? Yeah. 85, I think. 85. I think it's 105. I think it's, I'll look at him now. I think he's missed

115 and played 85 or some such thing like that. Jesus. I thought it was 105. I mean, we don't even need to do this. 85. Jesus. We don't see him in New Orleans again. We're going to make history. This is

the first time the guy is going to get traded before he signs the Franchise Max, but there might be enough time for him to sign the Franchise Max with the team he gets traded for. And by the way, if you're giving Zion the Franchise Max, Godspeed, man. So your conclusion from all of this, see, I'm comfortable looking at this mystery. I don't know Zion. I don't know Zion's family, whatever. Like, I'm looking at all of this weirdness, right? He's in Portland.

The injury timetable keeps getting extended in uncertain ways, although that happens with foot injuries sometimes. And I just sort of struggle. Like, I don't really know. You hear all sorts of different things. You're comfortable just saying it's over, it's fractured, it's done. Yeah, the season ticket letter, I thought, things you're you're comfortable just saying it's over it's fractured it's done yeah the pre the

season ticket letter i thought was that was that that's a wrap when you're not even putting them in there that's a wrap that was weird there's no question that was just like that was really aggressive and bizarre but we also that i think we have less it's funny it more shines a light on the reporting structure and the way every, there's always one reporter that has some connection to every star, right? Whether it's a direct connection to the star or to the agent or something, someone in the entourage, whatever. Zion is like, almost like he's entered Kauai land where he's just all the way over there.

Nobody even knows what's going on, where he's working out, how much he weighs. He's like fucking Marlon Brando. It's like he's on the island of Dr. Moreau. We don't know where he is. I do think, so the comparison that's being made all the time is, was this Anthony Davis 2.0 with the New Orleans star, number one pick, forcing his way out blah blah i actually think the kawaii thing is is not necessarily more apt but more more why there is anxiety within the new orleans fan base because it feels like when kawaii remember kawaii was like working out in new york at the players

union offices like away from the spurs and like the nature of his, his injury was sort of vague and weird. It feels, I can see why people would connect the dots and say, well, it feels like that. And so the outcome thus must be the same as it was in San Antonio. I just, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. If I knew I would write it, Bill, if I knew I would, I would write it. If I knew what was going to happen, I would write it. I don't know.

NBA disgruntled superstar movement checklist. It checks a lot of the boxes. It's guy working out on his own, not trusting the team doctors anymore is way up. That's like a level one. Oh, this isn't. How many times have people come back from that? Where it's like, yeah, I remember that time he didn't trust the doctors. I guess like KG is one of the only times I remember in 2009 when there was so much mystery about his knee and whether he was going to come back or not. And then he ended up playing four more years for them. But are you going to KG night? I wasn't planning to.

When is it? I don't even know what day it is. I think it's March 13th. My dad's been trying to get me to fly back. I don't know. I do love KG. I think it'll be an emotional night. Does Ray Allen go to

KG night? We should be able to bet on that on FanDuel. Doesn't look good. Doesn't look promising. Doesn't look great. Doesn't look great. We're wrapping. Anything else you want to hit? Aren't we going to do Shocking Trades real quick? You want to save that for't we going to do shocking trades real quick? You want to save that for yours?

Because we're doing a home and home. Let's do it. We'll end with shocking trades. This is a very Simmonsy podcast topic, the shocking trades. I'll think of more nerd podcast topics when you come on mine. All right. So this is the last segment. The concept is most exciting trades that have happened since Zach and I knew each other, which is basically 2012.

Here are the candidates. So by the way, exciting has to be, it can't be like we knew the trade was happening for a few weeks. Like Harden-Simmons. Too much noise. Yeah, too much foreplay, too much like variations. And we knew it was coming. I'm just saying the trades that made us go, whoa, and immediately you have 50 texts on your phone. Here are the nominees.

Harden Trade 1.0, which we have a podcast that I think is on YouTube that we did right after that. Neither of us like to trade for OKC. Just FYI. The Anthony Davis trade, where we didn't know if it was going to happen or not, but we kind of knew it was going to happen. I'm not going to do the analysis before the analysis. Go. Celts, Brooklyn, 2013. There were sniffs and rumors,

and then at the draft boom Paul George to the Clippers because it also had had Kyrie I mean

Kawhi Kawhi Kyrie is our next one the Kyrie trade to the Celtics the CP the bizarre CP Westbrook trade that is now

scientists will be studying a thousand years from now wondering what happened. Harden trade 2.0, where we didn't know if he was going Brooklyn or Philly. Porzingis to Dallas. It's kind of a random grenade we weren't expecting. The boogie trade, same thing. All-star weekend.

And then finally, Philly and Boston flipping picks in 2017. The Tatum-Foltz trade with the Miami in there. That was one of my nominees. Can I give some love to a couple other shocking ones? I think Russ to the Lakers. It was one of those ones like, I kind of don't believe they're going to do it

until they did it kind of thing. It's like watching a friend get married to somebody he just met at a strip club two days earlier. And you're like, they're not actually getting married. Oh my God, they're getting married. And I wanted the Boston Philly one, and so I'm glad it's in. I guess this one is just too nerdy and the teams are not relevant enough, but I got a lot of the text message volume and Twitter shock for the Sabonis Halliburton trade was really, really high considering that Sacramento and Indiana are sort of mediocre to bad teams. That was one that got a lot of,

whoa, what's happening here? What? But those are the only other ones I wanted to mention. I had one other, I thought of was when Rudy Gay got traded from Memphis. A very small trade,

but it turned into and I remember because I was doing TV that year, it became the touchpoint of this whole analytics versus eye test movement. The first wave of that where all versus eye test movement, the first wave of that,

where all the eye tests, the X, and I was on TV with Magic and Jalen, and they're like, I can't believe they traded Rudy Gay, who's, you know, he was their guy at the end of games. And I was just like, all the numbers say Rudy Gay wasn't that great for them at the end of games.

He was having a horrible year. He's having a terrible year. And it's like, it's kind of addition by subtraction. It opens up this stuff and these things can happen. And remember the whole kind of smart guy community, which you were leading at the point. Everyone was like, this trade is actually pretty smart for Memphis and Tayshaun Prince is going to do some stuff.

And remember that though? It turned into like, it was like lost with Jack versus, Jack versus Locke. It turned into these two was like lost with jack versus uh jack versus lock it turned into these two two mantras going head to head i i he may not have been having a horrible year that year i think i conflated it for a second with when toronto then traded him to sacramento when he was having a really dismal year for toronto and they got a bunch of bench players back and you kind of had a mini version of the same thing where it's like really they just got like patrick patterson and gravis vasquez and john selman's like that's all that's it and i was like i kind of think the raptors are gonna be better right and they were um yeah

anyway not quite not quite splashy enough so how do you want to do this i had i went i went in reverse order three two one but i can go one two three if three, if you want, whatever you want to do. No, let's go reverse order. Give me your three. Kyrie to Boston. I will never, ever forget where I was when I got the email from our news desk that we were about to post Brian Wendher's story about Kyrie requesting a trade from the Cavs. And then you started going through like, who has the assets to do it what makes sense and very clearly boston conference rival playoff rival was one of the teams that had the assets to do well are they really going to trade with each other and then you throw in the like wait a second he wants to trade away from lebron james after making the finals like that's that's weird uh that's unusual so that that's number three for me and. And you could make it number one, I wouldn't argue. It was number three for me as well. It was also a weirdly important moment for

the ringer. It was kind of when the ringer fell into place in a lot of ways, because we were having, it was summer of 2017, and we were having a basketball meeting. You remember, you used to do that at Grantland. We would fly everyone in and we would have this huge five-hour spitball session pre-pandemic. And we were doing that as we were all in a room together, the Kyrie trade happens.

And it was like, boom. All right. All right. I'm going to go do my podcast. I'll grab whoever. And you ringer MBA, they're going to go and we're going to do that. We'll do that live on YouTube ringer NBA, they're going to go. And we're going to do

that. We'll do that live on YouTube. And these two people are going to go write a story about, and it was like the whole, and then the whole company kind of made sense basically because that trade, but it was like, let's go. How do we react to this as fast as possible? And it was also stunning because they traded him to Boston. And then you had the whole like week to 10 days or whatever it was of like, wait, is the trade going to fall apart over Isaiah Thomas's physical and draft compensation?

And it was in limbo. And like, is there, can they really go back on this? And is he really going to go back to Cleveland? That was, that was a fun one. That was a bad trade by Cleveland. That's my take.

I, when do you think like what superstars, even like what drew holiday got people like that, that kind of underestimated where the market was going for how the league was starting to value these top 20 guys. And they were like two years too early with that trade. But I mean, they had to,

I know he had to go and the whole thing, but I would have kept them and wrote it out until all they did it. They did it for the Nets pick, which became Sexton. But yeah, I remember at the time, I was in Croatia when that trade happened, and the consensus reaction right away was, oh, Cavs fleeced Danny Ainge, and I was like, I kind of think this trade's pretty freaking good

for Boston. I thought the opposite, yeah. And it could work out for Cleveland. I think we were all learning then the extent of Isaiah's hip problems and all of that. But yeah, that was a saga. What do you have for number two? Paul George to the Clippers.

That was my number one. Totally justifiable number one. Loses a little bit for me because I was asleep when it finally had, when it actually happened. See, I was awake. I was West coast. Yeah. It was a Friday night. Just thought I was going to hang out and have some wine with my wife and watch a movie.

And then all of a sudden everything exploded. About 36 hours before that trade. Again, another vivid memory. I was on the ferry. You know, the New York city has this East River ferry system. I was on the ferry back from South Street Seaport where we have our studios to Long Island City where I lived at the time. And on that ferry ride, so it must have been like, what, July 6th or something like that, July 5th? Yeah.

On that ferry ride, I got a text from one of those people who just kind of knows stuff about the NBA. Yeah. This person does not work in the NBA, not a basketball person, just is in the right circles to know things about the NBA. This person will, he or she will know who they are when they hear this, texted me, have you heard anything about Paul George going to the Clippers and Kawhi wanting Paul George at the Clippers. And that was, I had not until that text. And as soon as I got that text, I started thinking, made a couple of calls, as you can imagine, didn't get very far trying to figure out if there was any truth to that. So it got, it didn't get spoiled for me, but that put it on my radar.

And I was like, boy, that's interesting. That's really interesting. And then when you saw just how many picks, let alone Shea Gildress Alexander and Danilo Gallinari, it was like, oh my God. I still can't believe they threw in SGA. I don't think threw in is the right terminology. I think the deal with- I think OKC was like, we're not doing this unless we get SGA. But man, that was part of the shocking thing to me because I had been going to the Clipper

games. I was like, that guy's good. He's something. He's gotten better. He's gotten way better. So that was your number one and my number two. My number... Yeah, give me your number two then. Maybe your number two is my number one. So we match except we have one

thing flip. Yeah, my number two is the first Harden trade. Yeah, that's my number one. Boom. Because we had done a podcast, I think, two weeks before I had written. It was in the air that it was possible that they might trade him,

but I just never thought they were going to actually do it. And then when they did it, we were like, oh my God, they did it. And that's what they got? And it was just like, it almost made my head explode. Well, just think about it. They had just made the finals. He had just won, I believe, six man of the year.

Did he win six man of the year? Yeah, and he eviscerated the Spurs in the Western finals and was clearly like Spurs killer. And the season was starting like four days later or some, it was like the season was basically started. He'd been playing in preseason games. And the money was like, what was it? 7 million bucks total.

It was like he wanted 60 and they wanted to pay him 53. It wasn't even like a lot of money. So the closer you got to the season starting the more you just thought like they're not really gonna do this and break up this team right before the season over x amount of dollars like it is the closer you got to the season somehow the less feasible it seemed and then bam at like nine or ten at night or something it was also before it was 2012 it was also before like i didn't have push notifications on my phone for like the five big newsbreakers. Nobody was on Twitter like all the time. And so it was it was you found out not I found out about it from a text from you.

I was at dinner with people and it would just it was you. The reaction was more not old fashioned, but different than it would be today. I think today we would have been just on our screens waiting for notifications, and then it was a little bit more organic, I guess. Yeah, and that was the first fun thing that happened when we were working together. It was like, oh, how do we do this? All right, you write that, and then we come on the pod. That was an absolute bomb. Number four for me was probably going to be the Celtics-Nets trade

with KG and Pierce and all the picks. That was probably going to be number four on my shock list. But those are my top three. Kyrie, KG, Harden. I agree with that. All right. I like we had the same top three. That's kind of fun.

Just in order. I think it was the right top three. All right. So I'm going to pop on your pod at some point over the next 10 days and we'll do the home and home. I will actually get to watch some basketball. I'm excited. I can't wait. Football's over football's behind me. This is when I absolutely dive in, in crazy ways and watch everything. It was good to see you as always. Um, listen to the low post. If you're not listening to that already and I'll be on there in the next 10 days

see you in LA soon my friend alright alright my friends Brian Kopman and David Levine are here they have a new show coming out on Showtime on Sunday night

it's called Super Pumped we are going to be reviewing that show on the Prestige TV podcast on Sunday night me and your friend Mallory Rubin awesome we deep dove on the Prestige TV podcast on Sunday night, me and your friend, Mally Rubin. Awesome.

We deep dove on the first episode. Well, I'll try not to spoil it. So what made you guys want to dive into this world? Because I think the concept of an anthology series that's basically like social network-y, diving into these different things that have happened fairly recently, but have had all these effects on the world. Like it feels like this could go on forever. So who had the idea?

Well, you know, season three is the Spotify purchase of The Ringer. We've got, we can't wait for season three. No, that's like season seven. That's three, three, five, maybe season three B is going to be. That's it. Yeah, no, that's like you're at the tail end, can't get any good actors. It's true. It's true.

We bring Hal Linden out to play you. Oh, Judd Hirsch can play Daniel Eck. Well, just it's our take of it. You pick somebody that just infuriates me and I end the relationship with you because I'm like, really? That guy? That's his playmate?

So who had the idea? Well, Mike Isaac had the idea. He wrote this brilliant book. And then, well, Brian, you were in touch with him on Twitter. And he sent you this manuscript. Yeah, it's like one of the only good things to come out of Twitter is Mike Isaac, the author, like sent me a direct message and he said, will you read my manuscript? It's coming out.

I started reading it and I sent it to Dave. And you know, man, like the story to us was so incredible. Having, like you, been kind of fascinated by the way these Silicon Valley players do what they're doing, the way things are valued, the, you know, all the, all the sort of questions that it raises about cap, how we perform a certain kind of capitalism culturally and how we reward people. And then it's also, there's just so much badass, amazing shit that they do.

And then, and then also there's, there were a couple of amazing villains to us. Like there's the question about Travis and there's a question about various people, but like the taxi and limousine commissions were so crooked for so long. And then you had this situation where these guys at Uber are going to unseat the really bad taxi and limousine commissions who were really so corrupt, but then was Uber going to become just as corrupt? Like were the rebels just going to become fascists too? And that seemed really, and also because, you know, I mean, you know, for a long time, we're so interested in writing about and making stuff about people who mythologize themselves

and who kind of narrate their world vision as they're trying to take over something, you know, right from our first movie, from Billions, everything else. It's kind of what we do, you know? And then there was this amazing personal aspect to it also. Like, you know, people could have an awareness of the business story that at some point Uber made a play for the autonomous driving program at Google. So you could know that story, but then you read Mike Isaac's book and you see the part where at a conference, Sergey Brin got seated next to Travis's girlfriend and hit on her and invited her to hang out at the pool that night.

And suddenly Travis is incensed and he's now making the play against like the biggest tech company. And you realize it was half a personal move beyond, you know, he was just incited by it. And that's, it's amazing to see these huge things moved by personal. And we dramatize that in a later episode. And the last way I'll answer it is sort of like, you know how you and Chris Ryan talk about you did the first heat thing because you just love talking about that. And you didn't really know you were then going to have hundreds of episodes. So I would say like a lot of this stuff is instinctive. Over all this time we've learned, because like I can give you all the

intellectual answers, but mostly it's like I was reading the book and I thought, I want to make this show. I think Dave will too. And I sent it to him and immediately we started, he called me and we were like, oh, well that fucking scene with the safe rides fee is one of the crazy, oh my God, the thing that happened in India.

And suddenly, I mean, I know you can relate to this because you do it. Suddenly we were just making the show without any kind of like thinking of it we weren't like ah in our master we were like I don't know suddenly we're like and then you know we write this script and Joe Gordon Levitt

signs on two days later which never happens so it just felt it started rolling and then like we know a lot of people in Silicon Valley and realized we've been fascinated by them and the way they think for a long time. And this would be an opportunity

for the first couple of seasons anyway to get inside it. You mean the 37 people in Silicon Valley who thinks you based Axe on them? All those people? No, that's all the- They're on Wall Street. Or Wall Street. So you go, you get this book.

What's the process? Are you just going page by page? Are you writing in the book? Are you just pulling out, like, do you have a list of characters and then a list of possible scenes? And, like, when do you start thinking about the arc of this season? I did a master document for myself that was just like great scenes that had to be represented in important characters. And there were so many of them and

thing is just a volume. And then we did versions of that in the writer's room. We had this amazing writer's room, predominantly female, and everybody would come in and just, at first we would just talk about what was interesting and then the stories that came up over and over and the moments that kept sticking became the things that we would like hang everything else on and we started to find a shape for it yeah so it's a master document it's not like three different documents with like possible scenes oh no that was just, that was my first, yeah, that was my first document

just as a thing to grab from. Cause it was like five pages long instead of 300, which was the book, which was folded on every page, you know? But yeah, then everybody came in and, you know, I wouldn't, we were not that scientific about it. It was just like, what are the things that are the most interesting that you don't even have to keep searching for the most that are just at the top of your head?

Then we put them in. Yes, you create a character matrix, like a list of the characters you think, okay, well, these are probably the main people we're going to focus on. Then these are probably the story beats that you have to hit. And so you have a running list of that for sure. And I think both of us did the thing where we both read the book and then we both did the audio book after that. And the audio book in this case was really helpful for me

because we got the book pre-pandemic, but during pandemics, we really started working on it. And I remember where I got, you know, I left the city, I rented a house outside of the city. And so I would go walking around with the book in my ears, and then the scenes would really jump out at me in a different way. And then I would like take, I would just write it right into the phone, like an email to myself, or, and I would sometimes just call right into the phone, like an email to myself. And I would sometimes just call him to bother Dave in whatever he was doing. So how are you guys creating something during a pandemic? Is it all Zoom?

Are you just on the phone? I don't know. Unless you were all living together. Zoom. We did not live with the writer's room. Everything went virtual. And we started Zooming a couple of weeks in, basically. But that sucks, right?

Because it's so much better when you're just sitting next to each other. The two of us would find a way to get together. Yeah. Right. I mean, the thing is, when everybody humps to the same place physically, then you feel honor bound to spend like eight hours in there. Yeah. When we were all just checking in on Zoom,

we would do it like two hours, have great conversation, then go about our lives. So there was a trade-off there. Yeah, the creative process over Zoom is pretty brutal. I think it's really hard to spitball. You almost have to come in with like your prepared checklist versus actually like, all right, well, I'll get on Zoom and we'll bat some stuff around. I just don't like it.

You haven't gotten used to it? Oh, so I don't like it. Like I write songs and sometimes I'll do co-writes on Zoom. And in the beginning, it was strange for sure. Like two people, someone in Nashville has a guitar and I have a guitar and we're trying to write a song. But by now, if I'm, I'm like just becoming friends with somebody on there and we're like playing our guitars and, and, and they're better than me on the guitar, whoever they are, but we're just suddenly like able to, to do it. I don't know if this has gone

away for, I think I'm getting used to it. Also the one thing about being in the writer's room, physically, you have the whiteboard with everything on it. And when you're just sitting there and there's a lull in conversation, just staring at it for hours and things start to just like present themselves to you. And then when you're doing it on zoom, there's like software where you get a PDF type of thing with all that. It's just not as good. Even if you get a big monitor, it doesn't have the same feeling as the handwritten whiteboard thing. Well, we felt that way doing podcasts, right?

Like even like the rewatchables, it's so much more fun to do those in person because we can read each other's body language. We can finish sentences, stuff like that. But do you think when you hear them, this is what I was going to ask you, when you hear a rewatchables back, like that maybe you're not a big show back

or whatever podcast that you maybe you're not a big show back or whatever podcast that you can you you think you know you can feel when one was zoomed as opposed to in person oh yeah 100 you think it's a big difference yeah because i think in person you talk over each other more and it's okay on zoom there's always a your turn your your turn, my turn. That kind of hits. And sometimes you can get over it and start talking over each other. So that's why I was fascinated by the spitballing and the creative process with this, where if it's your turn, your turn, then they go, then they go,

and it just goes around. For sure, when we did JFK, it was amazing to all be in the room together. That was spectacular. But I thought when me and you did First Blood was really good because even though we were on Zoom with each other, maybe we were just so fucking geeked about that movie.

But I thought that people really liked that episode. Yeah, I think if it's two people and maybe even three and the three of us know each other, so it might be a little easier. But I think once you get to like eight, nine, 10 people, you know, and you have a writer's room, that gets unwieldy, I would imagine. Though I'll say the younger writers who might be a little bit timid to go in the big room, when, you know, that thing about it's your turn now, they have to take their turn.

And it yields some good stuff. Oh, interesting. Because then they have to pitch their idea and it works. And so they got used to, they're, they're sitting in their house. So they feel safer or something. I don't know.

Just that the space is carved out. They don't have to take it over in front of six more senior people. And we got great stuff out of it. And maybe because we were writing about the tech world too, and making a show about the tech world, it more lent itself somehow, you know, like vibe, like maybe the vibey thing because we're writing about a technological advancement in something maybe it was oh you know okay but or maybe we just like lumped it because like we're

in this situation and there's fucking nothing we can do about it you know so what's the balance with how factual you have to be versus how much fun you can have? Because those are always the hardest things with these, right? And like Winning Time, the Lakers show that's coming on HBO, it's the same thing, right? I won the bet. I said within 14 minutes we were going to get it. Well, we're in this golden age of taking real-life IP

and turning it into whatever. I can't wait to see that show. Inventing Anno is another one. And it's like, this is now really, it started from, uh, the OJ,

whatever that Ryan Murphy OJ series was. We're now in the golden era of whatever this era is. We're here's the thing that happened. We've got awesome actors and people that know how to make shit. Yes. And now they're going to dramatize it. So how do you figure out how to have fun while also obeying the facts? What's the line? You know, again, we had this great book that laid out these incredible events and settings.

It didn't have the dialogue because people weren't in the room. So we were able to ideate and come up with that, whatever dialogue we wanted. But yeah, there'd be that moment where you would want somebody to say something they did that was insane or have the story go in some way and then you realize well these are real people and it didn't happen and we just can't do that like the girly the girly travis scenes which are really good at some point you're making up the dialogue for those scenes but you're trying to represent like all right this is the general gist of what happened but you don don't know what happened. You weren't there. No, you can't know exactly what was said, but you're trying to make them, I guess you say to yourself, we definitely said to ourselves, we don't want to have them say or do anything that seems out of character with who they are in the world. But like within that, then yeah, we, look, the show has to be fucking entertaining.

I mean, no matter what, it has to be something that you want to watch and you want to tell your friends to watch and that you dig. Because if we want to make a point about all this, the only way to do that is to get people enjoying the story. But I will say the thing that, one thing that really opened up for us was because it's a show about disruption, it allowed us to be very

disruptive in the way we told the story. Meaning we could have Quentin Tarantino's voiceover, we could have all sorts of things come onto the screen, we could break the fourth wall. Because we're about a disruptive industry, we had this freedom, we think, to tell it however we wanted to tell it.

It's been fascinating watching people receive that and understand it, whether they love it or they whatever. It it's been fascinating watching people receive that and understand it, whether they love it or they, whatever. It's been great to see people get that the forum is serving this story in a way, you know? So then you're looking at Travis, who's the quote unquote hero of the show. He's the anti-hero of the show, but he's the lead of the show. And you guys are like me, where you watch any movie or documentary, you end up rooting for whoever the lead person is.

It doesn't matter how awful of a person they are. It's hard not to root for Travis, right? You're kind of in it. It's a human thing. The one you spend the most time with, you start to identify with in a weird way. The Sopranos leveraged this the best out of any show ever,

right? Tony's a horrible person and you're just rooting for him. Episode college, episode four or five. I mean, he kills that guy and taking his daughter on a trip. But I would say, you know, and I love that you stopped watching at a certain point because you want to like keep up with it as it goes. Yeah, I only watched two. I didn't, I wanted to be with everybody else. I love that. But I will say, when Ariana Huffington gets in the show, and then as certain events happen at Uber, there are other people who take you through the story, not just Gurley, so that you might find yourself separating in a way, and then having to sort of wonder about that. You know, we got to do this for like a long time on Billions where we got to have people look at the characters a certain way. And then when they started doing certain things, it forced you to go like, wait, why am I rooting for this terrible person? Fuck, what does that say about like who I am and about the culture?

I mean, you know, you could see it play out in sports all the time, right? Like, I mean, watching in the next few, three weeks, watching net fans justify loving Kyrie is going to be amazing to watch. By the way, you made fun of me for a winning. I knew you were going to bring up the nets and your hatred for them at some point. I knew that was coming up. I love Steve Nash. I don't hate him.

I don't hate him at all. No, I'm dying to see Winning Time, by the way. That's why. I like it. Of course, on my mind. I can't wait to see it. Well, you know what's funny

is you had one issue that Winning Time also has. They had to have Kareem have an actor playing Kareem. Kareem was 7'3". His skyhook is the most perfect looking shot anyone ever had.

Agreed. And they have a guy who's shorter doing skyhooks. You're talking about Bill Gurley being 6'8"? You have gigantic Bill Gurley, which is a huge part. It was weird for me because I've met and interacted with multiple people who are characters in this show, including Gurley. And one of the things that's so important to whatever he brings to the table is the height.

He's an intimidating guy, six, eight. You're looking up at him, you know, and he, he knows how to leverage that in different situations. No doubt.

And, but you have Kyle Chandler who's fucking awesome in this show, but he's not six, eight. So what do you do? You wear Tom Cruise lifts, Tom Cruise lifts like five inch Nikes. No, we didn't.

We didn't do it. We didn't do it. We had a conversation about doing an entire visual effect piece every time he's in the scene where we do something with perspective and shrink everything down and make it seem like he's outside. And we were just like, what are we getting from this? Unlike Kareem, who's a very public figure who's playing in a game where you benefit by being big, it's who this guy was. So what is he really getting by sitting at a board table being the tallest? It could be somewhat intimidating, but it's his personality, really. Yeah, it's the it's the confidence and yeah you know his his he's almost like an nba gm who is scouting different prospects and it's like i like this guy this guy has something

but the difference is he's now then going into business with that person trying to shape their business if he doesn't like the way things are going which is why the end of the first episode when he brings in the ringer, who might be a spy, is he here to help? Is Gurley planting him? What's going on? That's the extra level that goes on. But yeah, I mean, obviously, because I got to spend a lot of time with Gurley at one point in my life. And that was my favorite part of the show, that it was Kyle Chandler playing Gurley. I just was, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, me too. And you know, I mean, I know Bill pretty well and I really like him and I had to, he and I just put up really hard lines to not talk about any of this. And we talk about rock

and roll all the time. We text about music, but we had to like, you know, just not engage on this. But I agree with you. He's, as a human being, I don't know, you know, I only know his business life from Mike Isaac's book, but as a guy, I am fond of him. And I agree, he uses the height. He uses the height very well. And he's like the second biggest Jason Isbell fan in the world behind me.

So we have that for sure in common. Well, he's also extremely direct, puts it out, cards on the table, and he's just like, they're not going to, and he's like other guys, they're not investing in something unless they can make

at least 10 times the money from it, right? You know what you're saying, right? So he asks questions like, how do I get from point A to point D where I can get 10 times my money back? That's his end game. That's it. But when you say,

the thing is, Kyle is so great, Kyle Chandler. Like you said, I mean, he does, even though the height thing isn't there, he does capture the essence of what makes Gurley so fascinating. Yeah. Which is like, you know,

a guy who's going to make these giant decisions of, you know, our culture, we hear these things VC, but they're making bets. You know, they're stepping up to the craps table, man. And they're just making gigantic bets. And not counting on betting, batting 100% on them. Yeah, they're not making the bet where they're betting pass and then they're backing up their bet. I mean, they're putting points.

They're putting all this money on all the points on the board, right? There's a line where Gurley says, this will be the one that pays for all the others. The idea that there's going to be a lot of losers in these bets you place. So you need a huge payoff to make it all worth it. And that's what a company like Uber represents. Yeah. If he's going to double his money, that doesn't interest him. No. If you're going to only double, you got to be right every time, right? Otherwise you're going to run out of bankroll. You got to be, you got to get paid like a hundred times.

On one. So you're handling Travis. He's unraveling, I'm sure, as the season goes along. Did you ultimately want people to like Travis or like, at least like the character? Like, how do you balance that? Because ultimately, he was an unlikable guy. We recognized this guy as a super charismatic figure who enlisted tons of people into his

vision. So we wanted people to feel like they were leaning into his point of view in the early episodes. Because how did all those people go to work and do what he wanted them to do? And then like Brian was saying, as it goes along, there are moments of separation for the audience and for the people that work with him. Yeah. Like Dave's saying, you want to understand why he's so effective and how he galvanizes people and how he's charismatic. If you come away understanding him and understanding what drives him and understanding why people are taken with

him. You don't have to come away from it, liking him. And I think plenty of people won't and plenty of people will. And I think that'll really say something about them more. And, uh, you know, by the way, it's Kyrie really that I have problems with not the nets. I, you know, as like you, because like you, like, you know, having now known a few, like I'm, I'm, that I have problems with, not the Nets. You know, as like you, because like you, like, you know, having now known a few, like, I like people involved with the Nets, and I can't really, like, I like the Sixers, you know, I like Daryl Morey, so I'm rooting for Harden to play well. Koppelman's always hedging his bets in real time.

Just want to make sure nobody's mad at him. What do you think, like, the Nets GM is going to text you? Like, I can't believe you slammed us on the Simmons pod. What the you think? Like, like the Nets GM is going to text you. Like, I can't believe you slammed us on the Simmons pod. What the fuck? Let me ask you a question. Would Sean,

is it possible that Sean would text and say something like that? It's possible. That's it's possible. I'd rather not get that. You don't want that text. Can you, can you explain to me the scene in the pilot when, um, when the lady who works at the Russian Poker Club goes over to sleep with Travis and he turns her down

because he's watching Johnny Chan in the World Series of Poker, what you were thinking there? Because I feel like he would have taken a crack at her. I don't know. Yeah. No, in this series, he would definitely take a crack at her and then he would ask what she wants. After all, Famke back.

Famke should have been in this. Where was she? She could have been in this. Jesus, she couldn't have played Ariana Huffington as a backup? When you produce Rounders 2, we'll get Famke back in. I'm sitting here waiting. I don't know how many more times

I have to kick the tire. Now you guys are doing this anthology thing. You got 20 billion seasons coming. You don't have time. What are you going to do? gonna do no it's tough it's a tough one now uh you're you should be you'll be in whenever we do it you'll be in it we should do it when we're all just too old we should do we all know it's just that we all know we're fucking it up as we're doing it like standing on set just like we don't even remember how to play Hold'em anymore. It was like the second De Niro, Pacino movie. Well after we were like over the moon that they would make a, what was that called?

Like 15 minutes where they're both cops. Oh yeah, that's a terrible. It was like eight years too late. No, Ed Burns. That's Ed Burns and De Niro. That's a different one. What's the one where the two of them were in? No, they, or maybe it's-

Oh, is Pacino in that? Is Pacino in that too? There's one with Pacino and De Niro. They made another movie together that we all pretended didn't really happen yes but both of those guys

keep coming back like every time you write them off all of a sudden are you going to read The Irishman I love The Irishman god I love that movie am I going to read what

The Heat 2 are you going to read The Heat The Heat sequel I'm probably going to wait for early buzz and if it's like it's a prequel isn't it oh my god whatever it is yeah I probably going to wait for early buzz.

It's a prequel, isn't it? Whatever it is. Yeah, I'm going to wait. I'll wait to feel it out. You'll let Chris, basically Chris will read it and tell you? I think Chris will wait for the early buzz as well. Heat's perfect.

I don't want to mess with heat. If there's like some bad, you know, there's certain things you love and it's, I don't need to add possible variables to something I already unconditionally love. I think that Chris Ryan reads it like the day it comes out. I mean, he's watched the TV series and everything. That is true.

He did go on YouTube. He watched the series. I think he'll read the book and then you'll start reading it probably alongside them. So with super pumped, I did there, there was that one narrative that I, it's just the way the world works now where people have to get mad that, um, the show didn't say anything way larger about how tech has infected our live and stuff like that. And it's that you had, I, to me, that's not what the show was not to defend you guys. Cause you're here and you're my friends, but like show is about what happened with Uber. You're telling a story about the rise and fall of Travis

who flew too close to the sun. And I don't, any sort of big picture, giant whatever, I don't know if I need that in this. And also you can kind of read between the lines from some of it. But did you feel a pressure to try to say something bigger than the show? I personally did not think that it was my mandate to go out and talk about the ills of tech in some big metaphoric way. I think if you watch the whole seven episodes and you see the power these people gained by virtue of the apps and all the stuff that they created and the way they used it, you'd be a fool to miss it. But we don't need to go and

editorialize that tech has downsides. I mean, that's not news. Yeah. Yeah. Take away your emotional reaction and then go and think for yourself about what it says about how we order and prioritize things. Look, it goes back to the Wolf of Wall Street question. You could show Wolf of Wall Street to 100 people and 50 people will say, holy fuck, man, that guy had everything. I want that life. I love him. And half the people will go, what an indictment of the capitalist system. And it's to you to decide what the fuck Marty Scorsese was trying to do there. To me, he did all of it, right? And I think that Wolf of Wall Street in a way is a North Star for this, which is like,

we're going to show you this thing. You bring whatever your baggage is to it and you decide what it means. That's how life used to work. We used to, you know, not everything had to have an answer. Things could be interpreted one way or the other, and it could be up to you how you interpreted it. And what's underneath it. We're losing that now, which I don't love as a society. Well, like first- Everything has to be laid out perfectly with a black or white, you're on this side or that

side. And sometimes that's not the way it is. Well, like first blood, to go back to something that we love. Like at the time, yes, there are these little moments, the first moment, but is it anti-Vietnam? Is it anti-war? Is it about what the things men have to do to prove themselves? Is it about toxins? Or is it a story about a guy who came back? You know what I mean? And it allows you to feel that. That's why we watch it over and over and over again to try to understand why it makes us feel

the way that we do. Like Rocky IV, it just seemed like a boxing movie, but it was so much more. It ended the Cold War. Now we need Rocky back. But yeah, Dave and I, you should have seen, Dave and I watched that movie together in the theater, Rocky IV.

We were like 16, standing up, just cheering. I can still picture Levine watching that movie with me, acting like absolute idiots, ruining the movie for everybody else. I mean, I remember it so clearly, just screaming at the fucking screen, the two of us, like morons. Oh my God. How can you remember that? That- What an era for sports movies. Now sports movies have moved into this really smart version of themselves. I'm sorry, I really am remembering Levine. The old days of just like fun

sports movies. You're reducing Rocky IV to a sports movie? Not a political statement. No, not anymore. No, now it is a political statement. It's where it eventually ended up. But in the old days, it was like, alright, here's my character. Creed II picked it up. Creed and Creed II picked it up. Creed II picked up the... Oh, the Russia thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think... I mean, I love those movies so much. God damn, I want to have a Rocky festival this weekend. Just watch all of them

and the Creeds, except Rocky 5, which I will never watch. Rocky 5, I refuse to acknowledge. Rocky 2 really gets grim for about 20 minutes.

It's... I mean actually maybe more there are some of the slowest stretches of any movies of the last 45 years like her in a coma yeah them deciding whether they're getting it's just going on it's like

deleted scenes that you wouldn't even want to watch on YouTube but they're just in the movie for 35 minutes but then the last 20 minutes are unassailable unassailable. Unassailable. That's just so good. And it just led to all the rest of it.

It just led to the rest of it. Like you had to get through that to get to three and four. Chris has been circling Copland. He's been scouting it. Like he's a GM in, in Latvia. There's a lot. There's a lot there. There's really a lot there. You could unpack that. There's a lot there. There's really a lot there.

You could unpack that. There's a lot going on. He keeps texting me. I watch Copland again. It's funny. We scout. We kind of circle movies for a while before, you know, for some reason Kramer versus Kramer was like that for me.

It was the inspiration for Fucked Up Family February, the rewatchables right now, where you're just kind of like scouting it for a while. Like, could we get a podcast? Oh, yeah. We'll just do the divorce thing at the top. Copland's got a lot in it. Copland's worthy.

Really worthy of doing. Leota, whether it was method acting or real acting is absolutely- Diagonal Freddy is the greatest thing ever. No, whatever acting, whatever he's doing in there is the most manic we've seen. All right, you're going to love this. You want to know something?

And Stallone playing the deaf left ear. Fat Stallone. Brian has an impression. I do. Next time I see you, I'll do my Stallone in Copland. I have a very particular, it's just the way he listens. But here, you want to know something sad? People always ask us, constantly, like whenever I do those stupid question things on Twitter,

people are like, was there ever a song you really wanted to get for billions that you couldn't get, or even for Super Pumped? And the answer is no, we've gotten every song we've ever wanted. But there is one thing, the only thing we ever wanted that we were not able to get for billions is the pinball machine from Copland in. Oh, wow. In Mathia. This just happened in Mathia and Dollar Bill's office. Cause you know, they left, you know, when Axe left, they left and they get their own

office and they have a pinball machine. High Plains Management. There are things called high planes. And we tried to get the Robocop pinball machine and they, we couldn't clear it. And we tried and like, I wouldn't let us shoot in there until we had it. And we ended up getting the back to the future pinball machine and we couldn't clear it. And we tried and like I wouldn't let us shoot in there until we had it. And we ended up getting the back to the future

pinball machine, which is great, second. But we begged. I was like, no, no, no. We left it in the background, didn't even turn it on, I think. We were so upset.

I'm still so upset because I wanted that fucking Copland pinball machine for the two people in the world. Like Chris Ryan right now. He would be like,

wait, did they have the fucking Robocop machine from Copland? And we couldn't get, it's the only thing we ever weren't able to get. It's killing me. Well, now you're really in my wheelhouse. When I lived in Boston in the 90s,

at the Red Hat, my favorite bar, which is currently in a coma, they used to have this pinball machine called No Good Gophers. It was this golf machine. It's still the greatest pinball machine I've ever played. I thought that was the place with Golden Tee. Well, eventually Golden Tee.

I'm going back to the 90s. All right. I looked for it for 10 years, and then it was finally on eBay. I took it down. It's in my house. Oh, you got it. Oh, my God. That's incredible. I looked for it. It was one of my saved bookmark searches, just like week after week, once a week.

Maybe this will be the week. And then finally, boom, no good gophers. Now it's in my house. Are you going to now, are you going to donate it back to the bar? Well, because somebody, the bar went under during the pandemic and then somebody bought it and we'll see if it comes back, but it was the best bar in Boston. That was like a Caddyshack inspired pinball machine? A little bit, yeah.

But like way later than Caddyshack. But it had multi-ball. To me, it's like the true pinball, it has to have multi-ball. I need balls flying around and just trying to fight them off. But yeah, there's, I don't know, there's this whole pinball world where they argue about the greatest pinball machines of all time.

Like we argue about the NBA Top 75. It's pure lunacy. That's a rabbit hole you cannot come back from. People have been the Addams Family. This is Leota. No more whatever. Leota, there's two kinds of people, Freddie. Pool people and pinball people.

And you, Freddie, are pinball people. I love that movie. I'm so glad you guys are going to do it. What about pool and pinball people? I feel that movie. I'm so glad you guys are going to do it. What about pool and pinball people? I feel like I was both. But probably not great at which you were better at one. You were better at one. No, I was good at both.

I was bad at it. I was not great at darts. Pool was bad for me. I always thought I was better than I was at pool. Pool's bad for me. I lost a lot of money playing pool in college. Pool's bad for people like us. It's like poker where you think you get irrational confidence from it and you decide.

If you have good hand eye, you think, oh, I could play pool. And like in college, that's just a devastating mistake. Levine, what's Mike McD doing right now? Where's he live? Right now? Yeah, where's he live? He's- See, like in Summerlin, Nevada, like 20 minutes outside of Vegas.

He's on the outskirts of Vegas, huge house. Probably, you know, the decor is fading. It was really sharp like 10 years ago, but he's like forgetting about it a little. He's hoping to get the call to be on high stakes poker that they now have up on PokerGo. They started a new season. Did you see two nights ago they started a new season with Gabe and AJ? I will say this. There is nothing better now.

I bet you haven't watched it in five years. Like, if you go on there, it's like Gabe and AJ Benza do not know that anything has changed in the world. They're just there commenting new episodes. It's the best thing ever. It's like being back when you could just sit around, like, smoking a cigar and not knowing it's going to give you cancer. It's, like, crazy. It's like crazy. It's amazing. Where is poker right now, do you think?

Feels like it's in a little between eras right now. It's waiting. It's Biden, it's time. It's just for something. It's bubbling under the surface. They got to just legalize. At the moment, the instant that they legalize it in all 50 states,

it becomes the biggest national obsession again. As soon as you can just play internet in California and New York and Chicago, it's over. Everyone will be playing again. There will be shows and all the shit will happen again.

Are you in a game now or no? What do you mean? Do you have a regular poker game or you don't? I don't. I have a weird thing. I don't love gambling against my friends. But some people love it. For me, it's like I'm not 100% in on it.

I'm too competitive. I have a regular game and I really still get something out of that game. Really? Yeah, I still play whenever I can. I play, it's once a week. I don't go once a week, but I go close to, like whenever I can and I still really love that. And those guys are mostly my friends from poker,

except one or two of them. Yeah. I know separately. And I really like, really care about these dudes and I really enjoy trying to take their money. That's fun. You still in Levine or no? No, I haven't played in years.

I mean, I'd be such an easy mark now. I don't even know my way around. The six iterations of the game have passed me by now. I'll have to study up for rounders too. It's a little like golf. You can't just go away and then come back.

I'll tell you guys this. Then you have to go. No no i mean no i'm here with you but but no i i right before pandemic like i was really winning in the game and i thought those guys kept playing at a certain point and i just have gone back now three or four times and i just got i just got destroyed last monday night and i came home and i sammy texted me from wherever he was and he was like how'd you do and i go i lost and i suck now like i just have i in a year and a half i got much fucking worse at poker i made three moves i can't blame the deck i can't blame anything other than like, I literally was just like, here, big Russian Arthur, take my money.

Just fucking take my money. I handed it across the table, like my whole stack twice. It's an anti-bad beat story. It is. It's an I suck story. I'm a moron. It's literally like I lost 30 IQ points.

I was like, I guess two pairs better than a straight. I feel that way with driving. Cause I really felt like I was one of the three best drivers, like probably in America. I'm not counting like F1, but just if like, you needed to get drivers. If you need to get to the movies in 10 minutes and it was 18 minutes away, like I was your guy.

If we needed to go, my daughter overslept and we had to get to a soccer game and it was an hour and a half away, but we had to be there. I'm your guy. Last like, I don't know, a year or so. I just, I don't have the same confidence on the highway anymore.

Yeah. If you lose a little bit of aggression, you're a disaster. I've lost the edge a tiny bit. Little days of thundery, you know, coming out of the hospital, cold trickle. I think you need the cream and the clear, man. We got to get you going with the cream. I feel like my eyesight, maybe I need to check the, maybe my eyesight's just not there, you

know? It happens. Go get the glasses like Newman in Color of Money. I got to ask you one basketball question about the 75. Yeah. Just, is it right that Chris Paul

was that many places ahead of Allen Iverson? No. Wait, did they actually have real rankings? No, like ESPN

did like these rankings. I know, but I don't, I don't take those seriously because most of the people doing those don't actually put the work in.

I agree. I know they did this big ranking where they tried and I those don't actually put the work in. I agree. I know they did this big ranking where they tried, and I was like, that seems crazy to me. They seem much closer together. I have Paul in the top 30 based on how he was able to redo it the last couple of years. I think Iverson's drifted into the high 40s,

like the 41 to 45 range, I would say. And Chris Paul's somewhere around, what, 30? No, I would say he's like low, like in the, I forget where I had him on the list, but like the 25 to 29 range. Iverson gets a lot of penalty points for, and I was like his biggest defender.

I wrote a whole giant thing about him. But like, if you're really going to start to compare him against the top 50 guys, playoff performance starts to matter. And other than the finals, like he flames out every year and then his career was just too short. You know,

he, he, he didn't have those last few years when he was still good, but not great. Like it was, he went from, I'm still good to I'm out of the league. So,

whereas Chris, yes, it would be like, if Chris just left the league in 2016, we wouldn't be saying he's a top 30 guy. It's like the extra stuff from the last couple of years really made the difference. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, to me, I guess my, and hearing JJ talk about Chris, I've never, you know, he talks about him like so highly. It's like, you know, if you don't play basketball, you can't really understand. So I know that Chris Paul's top 30, but in my head, Iverson's top 32. But I guess not. I guess he's not anymore. All right. I think in the Twitter, YouTube era, guys like Iverson do really well as the distance passes and people start to forget the facts and stuff.

And so in one way, it's better for him. In another way, it's worse because I always thought the best case for him was the impact of seeing him in person, which I know both of you guys saw. He was just one of the most incredible in-person basketball experiences, and that's why I rated him so high. But as the years pass, you can really start picking apart his stats and the playoff performance, stuff like that. But I still feel like him even winning a game over the 2001 Lakers, which is probably one of the best four teams ever,

single-handedly just beating them for a game is like the greatest thing he did. Yeah, it was incredible. But then he got, and then he got stomped, you know. Yeah, but I mean, Jesus, nobody, that was the only time that team lost. So anyway, I think we all, we're all aligned on Iverson.

Like we revere the guy. He was amazing. But I think there's just a lot ofverson. We revere the guy. He was amazing. But I think there's just a lot of good guys now. And guys are moving in there. Like Jokic is climbing up. You know? Of course. Giannis is already there.

Of course. And we could have Embiid coming this year. Who knows? And there's always going to be more guys. Magic and Larry fall out of the top five, six at a certain point. Or not. I mean, not yet for Magic. I think Larry's probably six now.

Right. Larry's probably six now. Because Kareem is now, luckily, everyone's come around and understands that you got to put Kareem at three. There's no not putting him at three. He has to be at three. The thing that sucks for Kareem is the four years in college, basically. You just have to factor that in. He's four fucking years in college.

Right. Whereas LeBron... Short in the career. LeBron comes right out of high school. He gets... Now, you could argue, well, he also had more miles on him from those four years.

But just like the fact that Kareem and Duncan, their careers don't start until year five of the normal career. But Jordan still has... Jordan had three, right? Jordan had three. Three years of college. You can argue he needed the three though.

He got way better that third year. Yeah. Obviously way better, entirely different sort of thing. But like Kareem could have come into the NBA. Dominated. In 1966 and been one of the five best guys. Of course. And I think that's, you have to factor that in so much so you would put but but but it's hard to make the number for

i i definitely have him at three no for sure at worst he's at three i'm at three as well i think he i think there's a real lebron versus kareem argument you could have but lebron's gonna keep playing for five more years and blow that out of the water. I think Levine flatlined. No, he's right in here on this combo. He's afraid to wade in. He's like the guy sitting in the pool with his ankles in the water.

Well, I'm not hearing anything so controversial that I need to get in there. I mean, so who are the top five in this conversation? Jordan, LeBron, and then you're going Kareem. So I'm not going to start an argument over this. Jordan, LeBron, Kareem. And then?

And then you said Magic. Magic. But who's before Bird? I feel like I'm blanking. Oh, we forgot Russell. Jesus Christ. Russell and Russell's. No, I have Russell three, Kareem four.

Sorry, Bill Russell. I know why you have him three, but he's not three. Kareem's three. He was 11-1 in the finals. In the only finals he lost, he had a badly sprained ankle that he shouldn't have been playing. And still took the Hawks to six. He's three.

Do you do some kind of waiting for the older generation, or it's just apples to apples, like the game's the same? I did all this when I did my book. It's like you can't compare the generations past a certain point. But Russell gets in there. You have to compare the impact when they played versus everyone else they played against, how crazy it was.

Russell was everyone left back. Some people get you know, Russell was, everyone left that. Some people get hurt by that though, the generational thing. Like if Lloyd B. Free, if World B. Free played now, he would be a max contract guy now. Yeah, Russillo has the whole thing about if Eddie House was in the 1950s, he would have been the best player ever,

which is one of the best Russillo picks. That's fantastic. Time machine Eddie House, as we're telling stories about him and George Michael. Because World B-Free, when he was a kid, all the people yelling at him not to shoot 30 footers instead would have been like practice. So he would have been so much better at it. And his natural inclination was that. And that guy would have been lighting it up. Well, you know who would have been amazing for that is the busher. Because the busher was shooting

22 footers anyway. And he was in the corner a a lot anyway but now he just would have two steps back he would have been like the most amazing stretch forward like everything a lot by the way that team bradley was in the corner shooting jerry lucas all those guys all those guys could shoot i still feel like maravich probably of all those guys probably the great i sometimes he's a he's the all-time born too soon guy because he was shooting 30 footers and there were two. But it's part of like his game. When you watch those, I sometimes just show people those highlights.

As I know you do, the Maravich highlights. It's crazy. It's crazy. Did he get paid in his day? Because he'd be a max contract guy now. He made money in his day though? He was always one of the highest paid guys to the point that it was hard for them to put a good team around him.

But I didn't pick him for NBA 75. Why? I left him off. Why? It wasn't a snub. It was just I had like 85 guys for 75 spots. He didn't make it. You put Girvin in there.

Oh, Girvin was incredible. Yeah, I think Girvin's one of the best two guards ever. Maravich, like his teams didn't win. Where did you put your whole list? Is your whole list up on the ringer? No, I'll send it to you though. Send it.

All right, I'll send it to you guys. Yeah, let us review. As a thanks for being on the podcast. Super pumped. Showtime. Sunday night. Showtime Sunday night. What time Sunday night? 10 o'clock. You can watch it anytime starting midnight the night before.

Watch it whenever you want. Oh, so they did the, the app thing. It's going to be everywhere that night, you know, whatever it is at 1201 on Saturday night, Sunday.

Yeah. You know, when it turns to Sunday, if you have Showtime anytime, if you, if you have any app, anywhere you can watch Showtime, you can watch and on demand, you can watch Super Pumped.

This is great. The first episode. Showtime's back, man. Yellow Jackets, Billions, Super Pumped. What a run. They're firing. You got to figure out how to do a Billions, Yellow Jacket, like those NBC Thursday Night crossovers.

Yeah, that'd be amazing. Just get a Billions character, throw them on Yellow Jackets for one hour. They just kind of in there playing whoever. Work on it. Talk to the Yellow Jackets people. I think it's a really, really solid idea. Just talk to them.

Get on Zoom with them. Koppelman, Levine, great to see you as always. Simmons, talk soon, buddy. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Koppelman and Levine. Thanks to Zach Lowe. Thanks to Craig Horlbeck for producing. Thanks to Dylan Berkey and Steve Cerruti.

And I will see you on Sunday nights, the return of Ryan Rosillo. Sundays with Rosillo. We are back starting this Sunday. So I will see you on Sunday night with Priscilla.