The Bill Simmons Podcast - Westbrook’s Slide, the Phoenix Fallout, Celtics Rumors, and Half-Baked Ideas With Jackie MacMullan and Kevin Wildes

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Jackie MacMullan to discuss the Lakers' rocky start to the NBA season, whether Ben Simmons or Kyrie Irving plays an NBA game first, the Nikola Jokic–Markieff Morris melee, Suns owner Robert Sarver, the NBA rule changes, and more (2:24). Then Bill talks with his old colleague Kevin Wildes about his Fox Sports show 'First Things First,' crafting a "take," rumors of the Celtics trading for Ben Simmons, and more (1:05:32) before bringing back everyone's favorite segment, Half-Baked Ideas (1:27:24). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Jackie MacMullan and Kevin Wildes Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So we had Nathan Hubbard and Nora Princiati do a little podcast for the Ringer Dish feed called Every Single Album, where they went through Taylor Swift's albums one by one. And people loved it. They loved it so much. We're spinning it off into its own feed. It is up. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Spotify because Spotify is the best.

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New Rewatchables went up as well. Van Lathan and I did Ransom. Chad, it's 25th anniversary this week and we talked about kidnap movies and Van just said Mel, why? Over and over again. That's a good one that is up as well. Coming up,

Jackie McMillan and I are going to talk about basketball three weeks in and a bunch of subplots that have developed. And then my old friend Kevin Wilds from the ESPN Grantland days, he's now on FS1. He's going to come on to talk about the art of the take

when you're doing those daily talk shows. And then Half-Baked Ideas, they're back. One of the greatest gimmicks we've ever had on this podcast, dating back to the ESPN days. Kevin Wads is going to be doing Half-Baked Ideas. It's all coming up next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Jackie Big Ballen is here. We're taping this.

It is 1 o'clock Pacific time, so it's before the three games tonight. But that's all right. There's lots of basketball stuff to talk about. I want to talk about the Lakers. I think you do too. Always. A fascinating experiment of just a bunch of old guys that don't compliment each other. You have the Westbrook thing, and

something really fun happened. LeBron had a minor injury. He's out. It's not fun to not have LeBron, but then it opened the door for Westbrook to try to be Westbrook, And it's such a mess. And this is a guy I voted as one of the 75 best guys of all time. I don't 100% regret that. I don't. I voted for him. Yeah, I think he belongs. He won an MVP. I think he's on there. But man, you watch, he's hitting a version of his career that's really dangerous. And we've seen this go badly for a lot of NBA stars over the years.

I know you have. Are we hitting the danger point with him where he's just not a good player anymore? I know he's putting up stats, but you know what I mean. He's not like a winning impact player. You know what he is? He's a player, Bill, who's starting his decline and refuses to acknowledge it. Right? So the best players that live in,

stay in the league for a long time are the ones that are like, okay, I got to change the way I play because I can't, I don't have the same physicality that I had, or I don't have the same speed. I don't have whatever. And let's be honest. I mean,

Westbrook has never been a great shooter. So it's not like, you know, he all of a sudden lost his shot, never really had it, but he could kill you in so many other ways. And some of those ways are letting him down. I think he's being asked to do a lot.

Obviously, they've had so many people out besides LeBron. You know, we could list them all for you. But one of the ones too is like, and no one talks about him, but like, I just think Horton Tucker, you know, they haven't had him yet this year. And I think he's a guy, he's just a guy that gives you another ball handler just to calm things down a little bit.

And I think Westbrook probably, I don't care how old you are, you go to a new team, especially the Lakers, and you feel the pressure to perform. And I think he's just trying to do too much. The other thing is I was looking at his splits. He always starts slow. He's always better in the second half of the year, like significantly better. So I think it's a little too early to proclaim him, you know, DOA. But at his age, it's really, really hard to maintain.

Now he's in incredible shape. We know that too. But I mean, he is, he's leading the league in turnovers and it's not really close at the moment. If you look at the last... I was looking at his stats, and the rebounds and the assists, stuff he's always going to get.

But the shooting stuff is alarming the last few years. So you think like even in 2017, which was his best three-point shooting year, which was 34% that year. Yeah, right. But since then, just three-point shooting is 29.8, 29, 25.8. Last year, which was 34% that year. But since then, just three-point shooting is 29.8, 29, 25.8. Last year, it was 31.5. This year, it's 25.6. So you have that. His field goal percentage is 41%. So he's missing six out of every 10.

But then the free throw attempts, those have really gone down too. In his MVP season, he was 10.4 and he was a batter and was always getting in line. Now that's at 4.8. And then you mentioned the turnovers. He's at 5.1, which would be the second highest. Now you made a good point. He does start off slow sometimes. I also kind of think this is who he is.

Like you look at, even if you take his stats for the last four years, combine them together, he's 44%, 28% from three, 6.3 free throw attempts. So he's athletically, he's not doing the same stuff he did in the past. It's a little like what happened with Dwayne Wade. When as Wade got older, he never added the three point shot and he became this, he could have the moments, he could get hot, right? But then when he went to Cleveland that year and it was like, he could have the moments, he could get hot, right? But then when he went to Cleveland that year and it was like, eh, what is this? And then he kind of tried to reinvent himself as a six man. That's what it reminds me of. Yeah. And again, remember he went

to Chicago, had the brief thing in Chicago, it was a complete disaster. And again, that goes back to my point of the hardest thing in the world, and you and I have seen it hundreds, if not thousands of times, is watching an elite superstar, which certainly Russell Westbrook has been in his career, and watch him come back down to earth with everybody else. I mean, it is painful to watch. And that's why LeBron, to me, has always been so exceptional, because it really hasn't happened to him. And that's, I think, what sets him apart from almost all the others. Cause it did happen with Michael. I mean, we were there, I was there covering the wizards. In fact, I flew down there in his final days and talked to him and, and, you know,

I was asking him, I was sort of trying in a roundabout way, asking him if he regretted doing it coming back. And he didn't, because in his mind, they see in their minds, they're always the best. And by the way, that's why they are the best, because they're all about positive self-talk. So Russell Westbrook, I'm sure there's some doubt there, but he can't listen to that. Not right now, not without these other guys out, with all these other guys injured. But if you're looking at it and you're saying, okay, we took on Russell Westbrook and we gave up Kyle Kuzma, who's flourishing in Washington. We gave up Contavious Caldwell-Pault, who's flourishing

in Washington. Stop me any time now. Well, and Harrell, who's been awesome. I don't know if he was ever going to work with the Lakers, but he's been really good for the Wizards. Yeah, he's like his Clipper days. And then Caruso, he wasn't part of the trade, but he's in Chicago doing pretty well. So that's, I think, exacerbates the problem is that the guys that you were, you know, that they got shipped out so they could take care of you and manage you have really flourished in their new roles.

You know? I thought it was weird. I didn't like it when it happened. And I, you know, I've been on the record. I think we talked about that. Yeah, we talked about it. I was like, I don't like this trade. I didn't like it when it happened and I you know I've been on the record I think we talked about that yeah we talked about it I was like I don't like this trade

I don't see how it fits and it actually feels a little worse than even I thought it was gonna be because I did think Westbrook is has been a good enough

player over the years that he would figure out alright how do I fit in but you know when you're a one man show and you have the ball all the time and now you're at the point of the career that he's at,

I don't think... We saw Rondo, like, really have a hard time figuring this out. And then for whatever reason, the bubble, he figured out kind of how to do that. I don't see Westbrook ever doing that. I still feel like Westbrook thinks the three of us are going to be kicking ass. I guess the Carmelo being

such a good fit for them so far almost makes it worse for Westbrook. Because Carmelo, as long as he's going to shoot 50% from three, great fit. I mean, the moment that flips. Right. And how much, you know, the question there is, I can't imagine he's going to keep shooting 50% from three. I hope he does.

He's one of the nicest guys in the NBA. I always root for Carl Anthony. If he doesn't, as long as he's at 45, 40, he can drop off quite a bit and still be okay for them. We've seen the old guys. Remember the Knicks

in the 12 and 13? They had some old guys that would look great for about 50 games. Jason Kidd. It's like the longer the season goes, you're starting to play with fire. And I would say that once LeBron comes back and once they stop the nonsense and play Anthony Davis at the five, I mean, just give it up, people. That's what you need to do. That's your best lineup.

You know that. You have all the data to tell you that. Regardless of what he wants to do, that's what has to happen. You put him at the five. You get LeBron back. You get Horton Tucker back, who I really like and can't wait to see.

Then there's not so much pressure on Russell Westbrook. There's not this urge. And even if he wants to do it, LeBron's going to have the ball in his hands a ton. Right. So Russell Westbrook, since know, LeBron's going to have the ball in his hands a ton. Right. So Russell Westbrook, since 2016, his last year with KD,

he has only won one playoff series. He is one in six in his last seven playoff series. And the one that they won was that one with Chris Paul and Chris Paul had the ball in the last play. Right, right, right, right.

Ended up, couldn't, couldn't get past Houston. But you know what? That's in part because he's chasing it. He's chasing the new home. He's chasing the new place. You stay a year and you don't even have time to get acclimated. Then you move on again. That never works.

I just wonder, can he be a winning player if he's in your top three? Like if he was on the Celtics instead of Dennis Schroeder, would that help the Celtics? I don't feel like it would. Oh, God, no. That might be his next stop with the way both teams are going. No, that would not help the Celtics. I mean, because Jason Tatum already has the ball a lot,

and Johnson Westbrook would be taken away from him. And as much as we've been critical of Jason Tatum already has the ball a lot and Charles Westbrook will be taken away from him. And as much as we've been critical of Jason Tatum, I still would rather have Jason with the ball in his hands. Well, Westbrook just has to accept where he is at his career. And as I said earlier, Yeah, good luck. it's really hard. And that's why when players walk away,

and I mean, I can't, who's the most recent player that walked away? Probably, you know, probably had a year or two left and said, now I'm done. I can't even think of it because it never happened. Probably Wade. I think Wade was though,

like he could come off a bench for somebody his last year. But like if Bill Belichick was in charge of all these guys, he would say to them, you know, just like he said to Bruschi, like, okay, we can cut you or you can just retire and we'll tell everybody that's how it went. Right. Because once you start on that decline, man,

it's really hard to watch. I don't think they have outs, which is another reason I didn't like the trade when it happened. Because once you do this, there's no plan B. There's nowhere for him to go. There's no team that's taking him. You're basically looking at John Wall and Rusper going back to Houston and trying to orchestrate a buyout.

And now I have to deal with John Wall. That's not happening. Right. That's why I love the Buddy Heald. It was basically Buddy Heald for KCP and Harrell. Or no, Kuzma and Harrell. Kuzma, yeah. So they got to keep KCP, who was like $16 million,

and then they had the Buddy Heald contract. And then they were kind of still in the mix in case things didn't work out. Right. And I think with this one, this has to work out. And this will be a real test for LeBron, who is one of the smartest basketball players we ever had. How does he make this workout? Is Westbrook going to be happy if the solution is,

hey man, you just can't have the ball. The stuff's got to run through us. Right. And LeBron, you know, he's a really good leader too. I guess we're doing a little bit of a LeBron love fest here today. I know. But, you know, he is quite a good leader, too,

with exceptions. And I will always take exception to the year he was hurt and brought the wine to the bench that to me, I'll never get over that. But, you know, he he has a way of getting to these guys. And, you know, we've chronicled enough championship wins for him, whether it's with the Heat or Cleveland, where you hear the stories of leading up to the playoffs and the text or the phone call or the one time he puts his arm around you. And I think the greatest leaders do that. They're not effusive in their praise all the time. They pick their spots. So when they do it, it means something. And that's something LeBron has been pretty good at. So my guess is, and I don't know this, that he's having some dialogue with Russell Westbrook and telling him,

It's going to come, man. It's going to come. And don't listen to all those idiots. We know what you're going to do. We know what you're like in March and April, and that's all we care about. We don't care about any of this time now. We don't care.

All we care about is April, May, June, and we know you'll be there for us. It's weird that he doesn't really know how to play with Davis. And you watch the plays yesterday where it's like Westbrook brings the ball up and he, for people listening, they,

in a game, they probably should have lost. They ended up beating Charlotte in OT. And I think part of it was Charlotte just went cold at the, Charlotte played really well in that game. They went cold at the worst time, but it was weird to me. He brings it up and you could see he's almost,

it's like watching a little kid. Like, I don't want to screw this up. me, he brings it up and you could see he's almost, it's like watching a little kid, like, I don't want to screw this up. And he's passing up opportunities to go to the basket and carefully throwing passes to Davis on the high post, not really using Davis. It's not like they're playing together. It's not like they're running pick and roll. And he's figured out any sort of semblance of chemistry with them. They have no chemistry. And it's kind of like, all right, Anthony, go ahead, create something for us. And Davis, you know, he fouled out Palm Bay. He was able to win the game

for them. But I've been surprised by that. I thought they would figure out some chemistry. And it's like, who has Anthony Davis had chemistry with other than LeBron and Rondo? LeBron and Rondo, right? Those are the two guys that he's actually clicked with. Rondo had that great alley-oops. He used to throw them in New Orleans and stuff like that. We're not seeing any

of that. Davis doesn't seem, I don't know if this is just the face that he has, but. He's an odd superstar, right? He's got the weight of the world on his shoulders at all time. And it's like, why isn't this more fun for you? You don't know, right? Like, this seems like you should be enjoying this. Very interesting guy, too. And, you know, if you remember, before they won, a lot of criticism

come in his way, too, because he had games where you'd look at the box score and you'd like, you can't even get two rebounds? Dude, like, what's the deal? You know? So he has those lapses.

And again, the greatest of the great, they don't. They don't have those lapses. And that's why there's only one, two, maybe let's say there's three of them in the league right now that are like that. Maybe that guy, Curry,

in Golden State. I think he might be one of them. Yeah, I think there's a top four right now that stands out. And by the way, I don't know if LeBron is on it. I think he can play his way back into it. Yeah, he can. He can. Durant's been unbelievable. Durant, Giannis, Curry, and Jokic are the four best players in the league

and that's that. I don't know if LeBron has one more throwback season in him where he can play and make that a fivesome, but those four guys night to night, they don't have nights off. And if Curry's missing, it's just because he's missing. But you know he's going to come back the next day and do what he did last night.

It's funny. I was... Because he had that 50-10 game. it was just ridiculous. And seven rebounds. And by the way, the first thing I looked at was the minutes. He only played only 35 minutes, but that's pretty good. But I said, I wonder what his true shooting percentage is. I wonder what it is so far. I bet it's really great.

You know what? It's okay. It's good. Rudy Gobert has the highest. The big guys always have the highest true shooting percentage, but the guy who's second is Seth Curry. Seth Curry. Right. He's crushing it.

He is. He's like 71.2% true shooting percentage. I was just really surprised. I guess I haven't paid a close enough attention to what he's been doing because we're so mesmerized by Steph. But, you know, Giannis is the other one.

If you look at Giannis and what he's doing, and I know they're not winning, but Lopez has been out, Middleton's been out. Drew is out. Yeah. And I think the secret big story for me so far in the NBA that I don't hear anybody talking about is, oh, remember the bubble? We do it the right way. We protect all our players. COVID is destroying the early part of this NBA season. We could do an all-star team of guys that have COVID. Now with Joel Embiid as our starting center, with Tobias Harris, Middleton. I mean, the list goes on and on.

And I mean, I think it's really affected these teams. And it's almost like it's just become a fact of life now. Yeah, we're going to miss guys. We saw it in football too. Yeah, the Cleveland Browns today, all of a sudden it's like they're not going to have Chubb and Hunt. Oh, they're not going to have their two running backs? All right, well, you kind of keep going and you're just used to it.

Chubb was looking like all world, for God's sakes. So it's just to me, that's kind of one of the secret little stories. It's almost like I don't understand it in some ways. And I guess it's because, well, the players are vaccinated. So that is a big difference between the bubble when there wasn't a vaccination. But it is kind of interesting to me how everybody's just downplaying that.

It was the biggest story in the world. And now it's just like, oh, well, I don't really get that. I mean, other than Kyrie, which is a constant story. I think the big thing with that, there was more of a sense of doom in the early stages of this. But now with the vaccine, at least it's like, oh, I heard Embiid got COVID.

I wasn't thinking like, oh my God, I hope he's... Now it's like, all right, he'll be back in two weeks and then your mind goes to... Right, but he's struggling. They say he's struggling with it. Your mind goes to, will he be like one of those guys where like, Jalen Brown,

is he still using an inhaler? I think he is. He's still messed up from COVID nine months later. So you wonder like, what's going to be the effects? And there's going to be stuff that we learn,

what, eight, nine years from now, right? About the effects of this. I'm glad you brought up Kyrie, though. We're going to take a break and I'm going to throw a theory at you that I think you're going to enjoy.

This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things, too. You won't win the Super Bowl,

but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you could still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right, so Kyrie, you mentioned COVID. You mentioned this weird season with Kyrie, Ben Simmons. There's a lot of weirdness.

Oh, I know. Sky's going down. It's, and the fouls, which we'll talk about later. The Kyrie thing. Kyrie's going to be in the All-Star ballot.

And, what's weird to me is the NBA had a moment here where they could have, they could have gotten ahead of this. They could have said, you know what,

this year we're only going to have 60 people on the all-star belt. We're cut, we're cutting it. We're not making it. This isn't like, not everyone's on here. Now we're really cutting, cutting the lineup down.

We know who the best 50, 60 players are. We're going to pick them. And that would have been like a roundabout way of not having Kyrie on the ballot. Kyrie being on the ballot, he's going to get voted in the games in Cleveland. He's not. And it's going to completely overshadow All-Star Weekend. I'm

telling you, they have a moment here to get out of this. This is going to ruin All-Star Weekend. Not that that ultimately matters, but it will. A couple of things. So when it comes, I'm not a conspiracy theorist in general, but when it comes to voting'm not a conspiracy theorist in general, but when it comes to voting for the All-Star. Are you doing a rig in the ballots? A hundred percent. The All-Star game has been rigged forever. Forever. I can't tell you how many arenas I've been in with former PR guys. Most of them are gone now, retired or passed or

whatever, who are like, oh, I go, what's in the boxes? Oh yeah, All-Star ballots. I'm like, oh, you're hiring like an intern to check the boxes. I go, hell yeah. So I'm just telling you, and this will probably cause a commotion. But I think, you know, I've never bought into the all-star ballot as being anywhere near fair or accurate. Okay, let's say that. Now, a couple of things. Number one, you're right about one thing. The fans have 50% of the vote. There'll be an anti-vaxxer groups that will completely mobilize themselves, stay up all night, 24-7. It's going to be put aside.

Flooding the market for Kyrie. And I think there are a lot of people in China that like Kyrie's shoe. So there might be a lot of voters from China that are willing to do that as well. But here's the thing, Bill. So let's say the 50% fan vote gets him, you know, in good shape. 25% of the vote is in media.

He will get exactly zero votes. Zero. And then 25% are the players. He'll get exactly maybe two, like one from Andrew Wiggins and maybe Aaron Rodgers will steal someone else's ballot. You know, right? Shaylee Woodley is going to vote for him. Okay. All right.

Yeah. So it's not going to happen. Stop worrying. It's protected. It's protected. There'll be lots of stories about it. There will. Do you think we see Kyrie this year? I do. Okay. So walk me through how that plays out,

where Kyrie suddenly shows up again. I think something will happen, and it might not be until February, where vaccination rates continue to increase. Somehow we get new data, new information about the virus to temper it, its effects. And eventually New York rescinds its mandate. Oh, that's how he plays. Yeah. I don't think I see one thing I, you know, I've been around Kyrie. I wouldn't say I know him well, but I will say this. When he thinks he's right, he thinks he's right. And the one thing I can tell you for sure,

and so can every other coach or GM or even teammate, no one's telling him what to do. That's just not going to happen. And the more you try to tell him, the less he's going to listen. So I do believe there'll be a resolution to this, Kind of an organic one, I guess, is what I'm guessing. And then the question becomes, how much time does he need? You know, as you know, he's had injuries the last few years. So playing a season, let's just say for February. So how many games would that leave him? With 30, 40, something like that?

Yeah, 30, 32. That might actually suit him best, honestly. If he plays 32 games, goes into the postseason, and then I think they still can win the championship. I would argue that suits a lot of people best. Yeah, of course it does. We know that. Adande was on here a few weeks ago, and I was really jealous of this take about how the bubble, how great that was for LeBron, that he basically only had to play 10 weeks

and he's always going to be in the best shape in the league of anybody. That's right. And he comes in, 10 weeks, basketball, and that's, Adande was saying, that's as potent as he's going to look in a playoffs at this point in his career. At this point in his career, sure.

Because now it's like with the regular season miles you put on leading to the playoffs, you're going to be dinged up. That time he wasn't. And that's why he was so good in the bubble. I thought that was a really smart point. Yeah, he's right. And it's interesting to me because, you know,

right before this season started, LeBron did the whole, I'm playing 82 games unless they tell me, you know, unless something happens. I don't want to sit out. I don't want to sit out back to back. Everybody hates that, right? All the players hate that.

Chris Paul hated it when they did it with him. And nobody wants that. And now that he's had two kind of nagging injuries and we're only in November, I wonder if he's changed his mind. It's an old guy. Old guy injuries. Maybe he's changed his mind. You know, maybe he's going to look at it now and say, all right, maybe he'll use the bubble.

Maybe he listens to Adande and Bill Simmons on the BS podcast. Who knows? He definitely doesn't. And maybe he'll say, I don't know. There's some, there's, you know, cause I just know if LeBron is anywhere near full strength, he can drag these guys along. He can. I never count him out. I just don't. I'm not counting him out either, which is why I was very careful to say there's a top four. I don't think LeBron's in it anymore, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he ripped off 39-9 for the entire month of March. So let's say he's not in it night after night anymore.

But that's how I think you belong. Yeah, if we're talking peak, he belongs. But I'm saying when you're in that elite group, it's like every night. There's no nights off. But here's the thing. If he sees Giannis out there, you don't think he's going to bring it that night? If he sees Durant and those guys, you don't think he's going to bring it that night?

Well, did you see the Cleveland game? Because this told me like, oh, okay. So now this is, he still has it when he needs it. Because Cleveland comes in, he's hearing a lot of stuff about Evan Mobley. Right. And in the fourth quarter of that game, he's hearing a lot of stuff about Evan Mobley. Right. And in the fourth quarter of that game, he's like, come here, young one. Yeah, let me show you.

It's time. Let me introduce you to the high screen with Anthony Davis. Let's see if you're ready for this. And he wasn't. But it was a great experience for Mobley, who is my favorite rookie. I'm over the moon. Yeah, he's fantastic.

I am over the moon. You saw KG in the mid-90s. I talked about this last week, but I wanted your take. I feel like he's year three KG right now. Well, so KG was an interesting guy though in his rookie year. I don't know if you remember in his early months of his rookie year, he didn't play a lot. Oh, he was like a babe in the woods. Yeah, he really was. He was thin. And you know what he was too,

which is so funny when you think about his persona now. He was just respectful. He was too respectful in many ways. He's just like, all right, I got it. I wait my turn. I'm going to do what I need to do. And I don't see that with Mobley. I don't mean that Mobley's disrespectful. I'm just, Mobley's like, here I am.

Let's go. He's really fun. He's clearly been the best rookie. Defensively, it's ludicrous. I think you, didn't you write the first KG piece about like, hey... Oh, who knows? No, I think you did.

Because I remember I was researching for something and there was a piece for me. It was like year two. Yeah, I can't remember what I did yesterday. This Kevin Garnett thing is happening. Like, this is a real thing. Be ready for this. Yeah.

I can't remember what I did yesterday. So, I don't... I think you did. All right, cool. The Mobley thing, though... And this is why I thought he should go yesterday. So I don't know. I think you did. All right, cool. Yeah, the Mobley thing though, and this is why I thought he should go first. I'm wrong a lot. This was not wrong.

The stuff that he does at that position is more rare than finding a guard. And I'm sure Cade Cunningham's could be really good, but guards are the easiest things to find in the league. There's 20 guys who could make an all-star team who have the ball all the time at guard. I can't find anybody who can switch on the guards

and run the floor like Mobley and already has the touch and the passing that he has. I think that's going to be at least a playing team. The run, the run and transition. That's,

you know, you might be watching that, you might be watching Cleveland and then he gets the ball, you know, they have the ball in transition. And then all of a sudden you're sitting up because you're going to wait and see what decisions he makes. And my God, he makes really good decisions already.

That team is interesting. You know, they're an interesting team. And Sexton's out now, I think. Right. Because. Which is really good for them. Because they're kind of better when Rubio has the ball. Yeah.

The numbers with Rubio and Garland on the floor today are really good. And I'm not saying Rubio is going to have 37 off the bench. I mean, that was incredible. But, you know, we were talking before about being in shape, being ready. You know, the Olympic Games for him is the NBA championship in many ways. And he dominated during the Olympics. So not super shocking that that carries over a little bit for him. But they're a fun team.

Yeah, Sexton is like De'Aaron Fox to me where I get it. I enjoy watching him. I see the stats. But I'm not positive that can be your point guard if I'm actually trying to win

multiple playoff series. You know? And that's like, I would have traded Fox for Simmons if I was Sacramento. Like, before the Simmons tailspin. Maybe that's not a good idea now. In the moment, it's like Simmons is just

has a higher ceiling than Fox. Now, I don't know because Simmons has been so weird it's even hard to guess what his ceiling is anymore. The one trade that I always chuckle at is Kyrie for Simmons. Because can you trust

either one of them? Because if you can, they're both so talented. I mean, Simmons, lost in the narrative, and I get why everybody's so down on Simmons. It's impossible not to be at this point. He hasn't done anything right. But people are forgetting he is a dominant defensive player. I voted for him

for defensive player of the year last year. I thought he should have won. I did. I think I did as well. And so people are forgetting that because it's not as sexy. You know who's not forgetting is Daryl Morey. That's why he's... Oh, I know. Yeah, Daryl's not going to do anything

until he's right. I mean, but those Celtics Simmons stuff, like, are you for real right now? That was unbelievable. I was like laughing when I saw that. And it's still... You know, it's got residuals here. I'm in New Hampshire now.

I'm not in Boston anymore, but they're still talking about it. And I'm like, how on earth can anyone take this seriously? Honestly, I mean, you gotta be kidding. If you read it carefully, he wasn't saying that Jalen Brown for Simmons was being discussed. Shams wrote this. Right. He was saying they've talked. They kicked the tires, see if he was available.

And basically Philly said Jalen Brown would have to be involved in any deal. Right. But the way it was written was ambiguous. And it looked like they were talking deal and Jalen Brown might be on the table. Right. Which was just bad editing, honestly. Right. And in fairness to Shams, he said there's

no traction. So, right. But yeah, but you know how the, he knows how social media works and, you know, Hey, so do we, you get aggregated. It's over, you know, like that, that one, you have to write really carefully and it has to be edited really carefully. Otherwise what happens is what happened where the whole day it's like Jalen Brown for Ben Simmons. The Celtics are never doing that in a million years. They are never trading Jalen Brown for Ben Simmons. And it's like, oh, well, what if they throw in Tyrese Maxey? No, no, no, no, no, no. It's never happening.

Stop. So, so my big question is, do you think if Ben Simmons still isn't playing for the Sixers, he'll come to the Sloan Analytics Conference in March? Oh my God. What a bold move that would be. Wouldn't that be great? He just crashes it? He could do a panel on a defensive transition or something.

I just, oh my God. I mean, who blinks first? Like who plays first? Ben Simmons or Kyrie Irving? Who plays first? Kyrie, I think for the reasons you laid out. But doesn't Ben Simmons have to play at some point? Shams had something in that piece

about how he's been engaged with teammates and stuff. I've heard the opposite. I've heard he's not talking to anybody and there's like a lot of animosity about this whole situation. So what have you heard? Well, so it depends which teammate, okay? So Joel Embiid,

we'll never talk to him again if possible. You know, he's done with him because let's face it, these two are in this together. But a guy like Danny Green is a veteran. He's been around forever.

He cares about everybody. He's probably talking to, he's talking to Ben Simmons, I bet. Or if he sees Ben Simmons trying to engage with him, because it's not the same investment for Danny Green that it is for Joel Embiid.

It's different. Right. It's different. How do you think Doc handles this? I mean, Doc's is old school gruff as it gets, right? This is like everything he hates. Yeah, but he's also a guy

that is like, I don't know, he's a problem solver. Yeah. He had terrible problems with Rondo. They're fine now. They're great.

They're on a group text with Big Baby and Paul Pierce and KG and all those guys. They have a really funny group text that I actually got a little glimpse to thanks to Perk. But they, you know, in the moment, Doc doesn't mind saying, hey, why are you being

such an asshole? Like, I want to understand because I'm trying to help you here. So like, tell me again, why are you being an asshole? Like, I want to understand because I'm trying to help you here. So like, tell me again, why are you being an asshole? Just tell me so I can find middle ground with you and help you. You know, Doc can talk like that. Players respond to Doc. He's been around so long and, you know, just a real beacon of social justice for them. That goes a long way with those players, all those things, you things. What happens in New Orleans? How long before somebody's the fall guy, which I would assume would be David Griffin, the GM?

I thought they were going to let David go last year. Didn't you? Yeah. I mean, nothing has been right. And certainly the stuff JJ Redick said was not particularly helpful for David Griffin's career. I'm surprised that hasn't happened already. It's a shame, isn't it? That whole thing is such a shame.

Squandered assets, you know, where you're basically just starting out with Drew Holiday and Zion and Brandon Ingram and a bunch of picks and Lonzo. And now you look where they are now and they're just in a worse place. Like it's undeniable. And they don't seem like they can corral Zion

into staying in shape. Yeah, and that's a big thing. Although, you know, it's funny. I was watching the Celtics game with Donchish hit the game winner again. I mean, just an incredible shot. And I was watching him throughout the game. I'm like, man, he is too big. They were, you know, they, they got themselves back in the game by running them up and down.

And I'm like, man, he can't continue to play this. And then the guy sticks to whatever it was, 29 footer in their face. And I'm like, eh, maybe he can, you know, everybody like, like Shaq always said to me, Shaq always looked bigger. I mean, he's the biggest man on earth. He is anyone that stood next to him can tell you that. But even when he was in really excellent shape, he never looked it. He never had the chiseled muscles. And I said, why? So does that bother you? He goes, yeah, it's those damn salad eaters. You know, those guys that look like they eat salads all day. And like one of my best friends doesn't work out at all.

She's not an athlete at all. She's ripped. I'm like, how is this happening right now? I can lift weights all day in my new gym, by the way, which has some great memorabilia in it. Maybe next time I'll give you a tour. Yes, I just finished it today in my new house. Oh, congrats. Thank you. But I never look ripped. Doesn't matter. So, so maybe, maybe that's the case with Donji. I do think he's overweight. So he's got the Larry

Bird body? Maybe. Oh, I think a little worse, a little worse. Of course, Larry just needed Rick Robey to be trained. We've already covered this. He would stop drinking beer for the playoffs. Exactly. Once Rick Robey left, he cut down on his drinking by about 70%. I was laughing. Who was I telling this? One of the ex- players. One of the players is a player now,

but one of the younger guys. After games, all the teams would have beer in the locker room. If you were on the road, I can remember being on the road with the Celtics once. And, you know, there were beers and there were leftovers. And like, I can remember like Bird putting them in a like a pillow sack and taking them on the bus with them. You know, those were the old days.

We used to have beer in the press room. Maybe that's what Luke is doing. I'm with you. I'm disappointed he's not in better shape. Because I thought he was... I thought of all the makings of the obvious MVP jump season. And he might still. It might happen anyway.

He certainly has the second best odds. But he handles the ball a lot, but he turns the ball over a lot too. I mean, he's a little more careless with the ball than I'd like him to be for a guy. And I know he's a big guy and all that, but he's a point forward, a point center, a point, whatever you want to call him, point dump truck, but he's, he should be more careful with the ball too, but he's so fun to watch. So Jokic is somebody that I do feel like is slightly better shaped than he used to be.

And you can see it and he moves and it's helped him, you know, that might have been the Olympics too. Again, you know, the Olympic games, how about the Morris-Jokic beat? I know, I was going to ask you about that. The brothers are on Twitter now. I love it. It's two brothers who I've met who are every bit

as big as him, by the way. They're all just big, strong dudes. What's fascinating about it is it's probably the finals of I hope these two brothers

never get crossed with each other in a bar in the NBA, right? The Morris brothers, legendary. And the Jokic brothers, I wouldn't want to mess with them. And now this has turned into pro wrestling.

It's like serious beef. And Marcus threw down the gun and like, I'll see you, bro. And he will. Markeith. Yeah, yeah. No, no, but Marcus. No, no. Marcus weighed in and said to Jokic, yeah, I'll see you. I'll see you. I'll be waiting for you. Yeah, those guys, the Morris brothers, they don't mess around. And you Jokic, yeah, I'll see you. I'll see you. I'll be waiting for you. Yeah, those guys, the Morris brothers,

they don't mess around. And you don't mess with them. I'm telling you. I did a story with them. They are so close. I'm not sure I've ever seen any brothers, they're twins, obviously, that close. They would go to each other's playoff games.

Yeah, but they finish each other's sentence. They have the same, like when I was talking to him, I think it was one of the years we were doing a draft special, ESPN, and they were both in the green room. We were in New Jersey or New York. I can't remember. But I said something to them and it was,

whatever I said must have surprised them. And they both raised their eyebrows in the exact same way. Oh, my God. Uncanny. So you don't think Marcus Morris, he's going to just tell his team, hey, sorry, guys. Blood was uncanny. You don't think Marcus Morris is going to just tell his team, sorry guys, blood first, man.

In the first five minutes, he's going to do something to Jokic. You can mark it down. The league can threaten him and warn him. I'm just telling you, I know that guy. I know how he feels about his brother. He is going to even that score. I'll tell you this. That was a cheap shot by Marquis Morris.

I agree with you. It actually reminded me a little, everyone forgets the reason that our test melee started was because at the end of a game that didn't matter anymore, our test really, really cheap shot fouled Ben Wallace. And Ben Wallace was, that's what, Ben Wallace like lost his mind. He's like, are you kidding me? And the Jokic thing,

there's a good angle behind the basket that I put on Twitter today where it's like, yeah, it was, it was shoulder into the ribs. So he could have a cracked rib. But if you look at the legs, he actually like his knee goes into the side of Jokic's knee. That easily could have been like a sprained MCL or something.

I will say that was a bad play. It was a bad play, but Jokic's play was worse. He, it was, was bad. That was a bad play. It was a bad play, but Jokic's play was worse. It was. It was. It was a cheap shot that followed a cheap shot. Yeah, you can't shove

someone behind like that. His neck's neck. I didn't like that at all. Yeah. And Jokic, it's kind of out of character. But if he had punched him, I mean, if he had punched him,

would it have been any different? He was trying to hurt him at that point, which I think he was bad. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was. He wasn't great. That was a bad one. By NBA standards, that was one of the worst ones we've had in a while because

I'm with you. I think Morris could have gotten legitimately hurt. Yeah, agreed. But on the other hand, he does that thing to Jokic and he struts away and turns his back on him because this is that Miami Heat team. They're really trying to establish themselves as the bullies, right? And you see this is that Miami Heat team. They're really trying to establish themselves as the bullies.

Right? And you see this is the identity they want. So he does that. He's trying to prove a point because he knows they're playing him again. But you know what's funny about that? So yeah, that's Jimmy Butler. Bam out of bio. Can do that.

But not really. He's a really pretty sweet kid. He's a big, strong, physical kid. Like poor Duncan Robinson. You know? He's like, how did I get into this? Come on, man. Leave me alone. I just started at Williams College. Duncan Robinson, you know? He's like, how did I get into this? Come on, man. Leave me alone.

I just started at Williams College. All right. You know? Did you see Tyler Hero coming toward Jokic? Kind of like, what happened? What was that? Yeah, I did see that. He didn't want any part of that.

Yeah, but he had the little snarl. Like he's got a little bit of that in him. But I, you know, the heat's interesting to me. I think we said early on when we did the last pod, we did that we thought they'd have some traction, and they do. But again, you worry about minutes for Lowry, time for Lowry. But he's so tough. I love Lowry. The problem with Lowry at the age he's at

is he's just going to have the games like last night where he has like four points. Yep, that's right. And they have to figure out how do they ride that out? Because Morris, I joked on Twitter, he was their 11th man. He's actually probably their sixth man. They're not as deep as I think, you know, people would think. Because they had to trade a couple guys left and right to get people.

But I'm sure that's a buyout team. That'll be, there'll be two more guys on that team in February. Oh my God. Just all anybody ever wanted the minute the Miami Heat became an expansion team was for them to be sort of good. Kind of like the Phoenix Suns. Just be sort of good so I can go live there. That's exactly.

That's a good segue. We're going to take a break. Let's talk Sarver quick. 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 1,400 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. So the Sarver story, Baxter Holmes spent, what, eight months on it. And about a week before it comes out, somebody leaks on Twitter, hey, this story is coming out, which I thought, I know you didn't like that. I did not. That's kind of like what Morris did to Jokic. Right. Seriously.

Story comes out. It seems like there will be probably another story. My guess is usually when a big story like that comes out, there's usually the follow-up story that will have a couple more people who are now... Emboldened. Ready to talk, right. But you've worked on stories like that.

When you're in the process of that, especially when you're talking to that many people, at some point the team finds out they're going to be aware of it. Somebody's going to rat you out that you're working on it. And you also want to go into that with an open mind, right? You don't want to have the story written, as Sarver accused Baxter of, which I don't think he did. I had the premise before I actually interviewed anybody. How do you handle a story like that? What was like the biggest version of what you

worked on that was anything close to that? Well, we did, you know, a Reggie Lewis investigation when Reggie died. And that was the worst story I've ever worked on. And there was a bunch of us working on it together. I mean, Steve Fainer was incredible, who's two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, by the way, who I think still works for ESPN, although it's hard to tell. He does enterprise stuff. I mean, he's just an amazing reporter.

And we had to go around and talk to these players who loved Reggie. I mean, everybody knows I loved Reggie. I covered the kid. Literally, I literally grew up with Reggie Lewis in the NBA. I mean, I was covering Northeastern when he was there. But I literally, at the end of his four years, I got full-time promoted to the NBA. I was doing little NBA here and there. But when they drafted him, I went with him. I knew him. And so now I have to go around and ask these players that adored him and know that I adored him about his drug use, you know.

And those were difficult conversations that I didn't really want to have. But, you know, that was part of the job. And the reason it was important, like some of the people that I interviewed for that story said to me, why does this matter? Why is it even important? And I said, well, because Gilbert Mudge, this attorney, is getting sued by Donna Lewis, Reggie's wife. The doctor, not the... The doctor. The doctor, yeah.

Right. He was the doctor who said that he had a benign fainting condition, which at the time, I can remember when he said that at the press conference, I'm looking at Dave Gavitt, God rest his soul, and saying, you cannot be buying this. But it's what they had to do at that time to keep Reggie and Don a part of their, you know, whatever. But I'm getting off the rails here on this story. But the point of it was that these were difficult conversations. And the reason it mattered was because, look, I didn't like Gilbert much. I thought he was smug the day he had that press conference. I'm like, this guy is grandstand. But the fact of the matter is, he claimed that in private, Reggie Lewis told him that he used cocaine. He swore that in the trial. So this is not hearsay. That was his sworn testimony

in the proceedings. And that's why it matters. Whether we like Gilbert Mudge, whether we thought he was smug, whether we thought he was right or was wrong, he has the right to due process. So if, in fact, Reggie Lewis told him that privately and players and other people on the team knew he had done drugs, that's why it mattered. Because the truth always matters, right? Yeah. So that story was very, very difficult. I was living in Boston when that happened and it was, other than the Lisa Olsen story, the most polarizing newspaper story I think that we had. Yeah, and it was no fun to do it.

When his number was retired, some of the family members tried to get my credential revoked. And this is someone, I mean, I cared deeply for Reggie Lewis, personally and professionally, because we went through so much together. There was some Harold Globe stuff,

some back and forth too. There was, but that's because the Harold, with all due respect to the Harold, I mean, we spent so much time on that story, months. And we were talking to doctors and team members and coaches and people in his past and people all through the league. I mean, everybody had an opinion about that.

And we had to wade through it all and we had to make sense of it. And, you know, some of the interviews I did for that story, I will go to my grave with the names of the people that told me, yeah, I did drugs with Reggie Lewis and I'll go to my grave with those names. And, you know, he had an incident at Northeastern, as you recall, and, uh, you know And he tested positive. He had a failed drug test at Northeastern. That's a fact. And I feel like I'm besmirching Reggie Lewis's name all over again. And it's not my intent. Not my intent. He was a fantastic player. And you know what? If he did drugs, and I don't know how, to what level, he wasn't alone. He wasn't the first or the last. It doesn't change the fact he was a great kid

who did amazing community things and was a fantastic basketball player. All of those things can be true. And that was the part that I think is hard for people to understand. So when you get into this story. He passed out in a playoff game that I went to and you were there too.

Oh my God. And was sitting there on the floor. It was horrible. Like he could have died. So yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah. So those kinds of stories for me, you have to be really, really careful.

And I know Baxter well, he's an excellent reporter and he is very, very careful. And I thought it was important for this story to have somebody's name attached, not all sourced. And he got that. He got that with Earl Watson and some of the others, Corliss Williamson and some others. And that's important because those stories, you have to have that or you have no credibility, even if it's true.

You've got to have somebody coming out and putting their name behind it. So what happens to the Suns? Because as we learned from the Sterling thing, unless there's audio or video, people can get out of this stuff. Well, I mean, the league's going to investigate. It'll be interesting to see how Adam Silver handles this. He had a lot of courage when it came to Donald Sterling. That was a lot easier.

There was also a boycott that he had to deal with. Right. But you know, as much as, and you know I love David Sterling, I know you did too. And look, he was tough on me. He was tough on everybody. Tough on me. But he was, you know, he looked the other way on Donald Stern. There's no question about it. So will Adam Silver now look the other way on Robert Sarver? Because we've all been hearing these rumors and these innuendos about Robert Sarver for years, for years. Yeah. We've known about this. So now knowing it and actually reporting it are two different things. People always say, well, if you knew it, why didn't

you write it? It's not that simple. It takes months and months and months. And again, I go back to the idea, you have to have concrete evidence. You have to talk to people on the record who can describe to you what they saw, what they witnessed, because there isn't a video. It's like Ray Rice. I always go back to that. What if someone said Ray Rice knocked his wife out and then dragged her onto an elevator? And everyone would be like, ah, man, they were in a fight. They were probably both drunk. But then you see it. And it's just, you can't go back. So is there video of Robert Sarver somewhere or audio of Robert Sarver somewhere that can corroborate all this? Because I don't doubt Baxter Holmes for a second.

I just don't. That'll be interesting to see if it surfaces. I mean, there was, I don't know if you remember this, but Henry Abbott, who I worked with at ESPN, had a true hoop story regarding a service that Robert Sarver attended where he said some incredibly off-color things about his friend who had passed away. And they were pretty bad. And so I wonder if that will resurface because there was audio for that. Well, I was thinking the Hawks owner who got bounced out because he had allegedly made

these inappropriate comments on, I think it was a draft conference call. But then it was a question of whether they edited the actual audio to make them look worse. And it was the minority owners. Basically, this is a big cat fight with all the owners. They end up selling the team. Right.

I wonder what the Phoenix thing. I always, one of the questions for me is always what has to happen for something to push a story like this over the top? Because as you said, there's lots of rumors, lots of conversation. You have situations like Earl Watson, who I think a lot of people like. He had a bad experience. A lot of people had bad experiences with the Suns and the guys that blow hard. We all have a Sarver story. I told mine on my podcast last week. But still, I wonder, somebody's winning from this. And whether it's a minority owner or somebody who thinks they have a chance to buy the team if he has to sell, what that part comes in. Because I

do think this is a really valuable team. And if he sold it, he'd get a lot of money for it, which is complicated, the same way it was complicated with Sterling. But at the same time, this would be a really big deal if the sun sold, because I think that's one of the eight or nine best markets we have. I don't see that happening unless something new emerges. So we need an actual... I agree. Yeah, we don't have the smoking gun per se. Now, Adam Silver can't just gloss this over. He can't say, well, I've investigated and there's nothing here. He can say, yes, Robert Sarver acted inappropriately at times, said inappropriate, not acted, said inappropriate things at times, which Sarver admits in the article. There are a couple of situations involved in the N-word, which is so sensitive. And so, I mean, action will be taken.

A fine suspension. I don't really know what. When this stuff happens, the ones I always feel bad for are the players. Did you realize Chris Paul, again, is in the middle of this? Oh my God. I mean, he was in the middle of it with Sterling,

now he's in the middle of it again with Sarver. And the dude's had this amazing career resurgence and he's the leader of this franchise who's playing really well. And he's this wise leader and all this other stuff. And now this? I feel bad for the Suns fans too.

It's like a secretly tortured fan base and they finally had light at the end of the tunnel. They made the finals. They have a really good nucleus. Then they lowball Aiden. So now who knows how that plays out. And then you have the Sarver scandal and now it's like, wow. The Suns have had, kind of sneaky had multiple scandals over the years they were like heavily involved with the drug scandals drugs yeah that was a big one it was really bad

yeah yeah no question yeah so i mean i think something else has to happen with that and um and again that's not to diminish the reporting baxter did at all because like i said i think he did a really great job getting people on the record talking about some pretty serious allegations that should be taken very seriously. And I think it's up to the media to hold Adam Silver to that, hold him to the standard of, hey, this is one of your NBA owners. I've said this a million times, not a million. That's a lot. I've said it a bunch of times. I speak in hyperbole. Have you ever noticed that? I've noticed it about myself. But anyway, if I had more time, right? If I could go back to my younger self and when I was doing all these stories, I would have spent a lot of time investigating every single NBA owner. Because

every single NBA owner has something along the way that's worth looking into. And some really sharp young reporter out there should do it. I'm too old. I'm kind of semi-retired, so someone else is going to have to do it. Sounds like a movie where you're in your new house in New England. I'm planting trees I'll never climb, Bill.

You think you're retired, but then you get sucked back into one last big story. Yeah. Meryl Streep plays Jackie McMullin. Oh, or how about that really dark movie with Jack Nicholson? Which one? Oh, what was it called?

I asked him about it. This little girl would wear a red dress and the serial killer was killing little girls in the red dress. He was a retired cop. Oh, I know that movie. Yeah. I think he directed that. Yeah. I know what movie you're talking about. It's like The...

The Crossing Guard or something like that. I can't remember, but I asked him about it before a Laker game one night because I got to meet him and I was saying hello to him. And he's like, that's the movie you're going to bring up? It's like, I love The Shine. I go, I said, I had a bad ankle. I had sprained my ankle really badly in high school. I was home from school and I watched that and I was like mesmerized. And it was the darkest movie. And he said, oh, that was the worst.

The guy that wrote the book, we had to keep the ending. Like he wouldn't let us change the ending. And he said that that movie did really badly. And I can't believe you. I got him all pissed off. He's like. I can't believe you brought up that movie. What the heck? Why can't I remember the name of it? Oh, I love that movie.

Kyle's going to get it. Kyle, get it for me, man. Wait, before we go. Yeah. I got to talk about the rule changes because we didn't talk about that. Oh, yeah. I'm really enjoying this season. I'm not the only person saying this.

I love the physicality. I love that they got rid of a lot of the garbage fouls. I have no sympathy whatsoever for these people like Trey and Harden. Sorry. The pledge. There you go. Sorry. I had to get that out of my head.

Okay. Sorry. I have no, no sympathy for some of these guys who were basically gimmicking the system. And now it's not working the same way for them anymore. And we see this in every sport, like in football, the Belichick Patriots.

Right, right. Super physical with the Colts receivers. They switched the world. You got to audible. You got to figure out. And to me, it's,

it's done a couple of things. I love how much more physical it is. It really reminds me of other areas. It also, like somebody like Durant, who I'm just continually amazed with, like just watching that dude put up 38 points, getting his shot.

He's one of those guys that doesn't even matter what the rules are. You could change the rules tomorrow. He's like, cool. I'm still getting 35. Like what are the rules today? Oh, the other guys have six players.

Right. Cool. I'll score 32. Whereas some of these other guys were so dependent on some of this contact stuff. I'm actually surprised that I didn't realize it was such an important reason for their success. Well, you know what's funny to me about this?

The NBA is so smart. So they made those rule changes. And let's be honest, it's Harden and Trey Young. They are the two that have been affected the most by it, you know, clearly. But they've been really smart in not letting anybody go to the line a lot. So then it's like, oh, no, no, we weren't targeting these two players. Free throw shootings down all across the league. Nobody's shooting a bunch of free throws. And that was just really, really smart because you can't say it that way. There's a flow to the game that did not exist the last few years and was so frustrating for people like us. Russell and I would always talk about it because it's that

plus the challenges they've been able to cut down. It's still not perfect, but it's a little better. But now there's a flow to some of these things and things play out better and you just feel like you watch in overtime. It doesn't take 25 minutes. I'm really psyched. There's some stuff they still need to figure out. The clear pass stuff and the stuff where you prevent the fast break and all that

crap. I hate the clear pass. By the way, Chris Paul's another one we should have mentioned. Boy, did he max out. Chris Paul's another one. He was another one. But I think it's, did he max out getting contacted. Chris Paul's another one. Yeah, he was another one. But I think it's really helped. It's made the game more authentic. And I think one of the great things,

there's so many good players, especially this season. You see it in the Olympics where the rules are different in the Olympics. And it's like, yeah, you do this. And the refs just automatically decided I didn't like that technical foul. And the guy's like, wait, what? But then they adjust.

Then they realize what you can and can't do. And I think we've seen that already in this season. I think the quality of play, granted, we've lost some guys in COVID and we've had some injuries and things like that. But I think the quality of play is really good. I also think there's more talent than we've had in a long time, like probably since the early 90s. Where you look, even the teams like Houston

and Cleveland and Detroit, and it's like, Kelly Olenek's on Detroit. Like, that guy's a good player. He's been in the playoff series, you know? Every team has like six, seven guys that I kind of like.

Christian Wood. I mean, Christian Wood, it's too bad he's not on a really good team. People would really like Christian Wood. Yeah. He's another guy. And the rookies, I think,

have been good. Like, Jalen Green, I don't know what he's going to become. He has no idea what he's doing on defense. Like, zero. Yeah,. He's another guy. And the rookies, I think, have been good. Like Jalen Green, I don't know what he's going to become. He has no idea what he's doing on defense. Like, zero. Yeah, but that's all right. He'll get there.

He's got the basics. He's like Edwards last year. Oh, you have a first step. Oh, you're super athletic. You'll be fine. Yeah, he'll be okay. And Cade Cunningham, I mean, I feel badly for him

because he started late anyway. He wasn't ready to play because he couldn't because of injury and stuff. But then just everybody's watching, you know, he had that bad start. What was he?

I forget how many threes he missed to start the year. And so now everybody's looking at that, but he's going to be fine. He'll be okay too. I agree though. I worry about Suggs. Not, not because I don't know if he's good or not,

but the Cole Anthony thing was unexpected. Like not only is he playing really well, but he's very alpha doggy. And I think he took the Jalen Suggs thing. No, that part's not unexpected. But the fact that he took a leap combined with this is a guy who's been the best part of his team since he was 12.

And now you have Suggs there. And it's like, here are the car keys, Jalen Suggs. And Cole Anthony's going, nope, I'm actually going to take the car keys. And that's his team. I think Kim and Bridges should be the two most improved guys. I'm not buying the John Moran thing as much because he was so good last year. Right, he was.

But I got to see Cole Anthony over the course of a year because he's another guy that I'm not convinced is a great shooter. Is he a great shooter? I'm not convinced. I love his moxie. He gets it from his dad. I love the competitiveness. He's really competitive.

He's really, you know what he was really mad about? He was not all NBA rookie team. He didn't make the second. I voted for him on my second team, but he did not make it. And he blasted the world over that. Like he took that. He was really, he could not understand it. He's another one of those guys that we were just talking about.

Positive self-talk. I'm the best man. How could you leave me off this team? You know I'm one of those guys that we were just talking about. Positive self-talk. I'm the best man. How could you leave me off this team? You know I'm one of the best. So those guys you always want on your team, but you have to put it, you know, it's kind of like, you know, our pal Marcus Smart, right? Marcus Smart, he can shoot threes. Now, I'm not saying he's Ray Allen, but he can shoot them from time to time.

The key is don't take nine of them in a game. That's all. Take four and make some. That's The key is don't take nine of them in a game. That's all. Take four and make some. That's good. Just don't take nine. I think he broke me with the Donchich play. That might have been it. I can't bounce back from it. First,

calling out Jalen and Tatum during a game when he had zero assists was aggressive. And then you look at that Donchish play, which is one of the dumbest plays I've seen in a basketball game in a while. It's like, you're the leader of this team?

And then you see Udoka today. He now says, yeah, we're not going to have a captain. We have Al and Jason and Marcus and Jalen. They lead by example in different ways. You're not going to have a captain? Well, I don't think... That's weird.

I don't think Brad ever had one either. But you're saying you don't need a captain because all these players lead in different ways. No, you know what you're saying? None of these guys know how to lead. What are you talking about? What you're saying is you don't have one, so you're not going to name one just for the sake of it.

That's what you're saying. He's right, too. We have different guys. It's like, all right, well, you don't have a leader. That's why we don't have. Right. That's what you're saying. It's like, yeah, we have different guys that it's like, all right, well, you don't have a leader. That's why we don't have a captain.

That's right. Maybe it's a challenge. Maybe it's a challenge to them. Hey, you want to be captain? Show me you deserve it. I don't know. Do they still go for stuff like that?

I don't know. Let's, let's end on this. Kyle, turn the camera on. Is Jalen Brown on the Celtics in three months? Yes.

Okay, great. I'm relieved to hear that. Tell your dad. He's worrying needlessly for now. The only way Jalen Brown isn't on the Celtics if he asks out, which I don't think is going to happen. Are you feeling better?

Are you sure he's not going to happen? I'm pretty sure. Why would he do that? Okay. Is Marcus Smart still on the Celtics in three months? Better question. Not sure. Not sure.

Me neither. Yeah, that's a better question. Interesting. Although, well, see, Brad Stevens, the coach, would always want Marcus Smart, but maybe Brad Stevens, the GM, is realizing this is a little more complicated. The thing about Marcus is he does have the most value to the teams that have really great players because I think they think they're not watching 82 games of him. Right.

Right. Which is why I still feel like there's a chance if the Philly Ben Simmons thing craters and they're just trying to grab a package, then maybe Marcus is. I will say that. I mean, every time I'm like, ah, Marcus,

I remember, you know, the Charlotte game that they remember, they beat Charlotte in overtime. Also, do you remember the play at the end of the game? Gordon Haywood's going to like Gordon Haywood played with him. I used dumb.

I mean, I don't mean Gordon Haywood isn't dumb, but I'm looking at Gordon Haywood going, I'm the whole, before it even happened, I'm saying to my husband, you know better, you know better. And he, he tries to get at it and you know, Marcus Smart's going to jump that pass and only get the ball. And I'm telling you, he does that so often. And every time he does it, I'm just, it's like, you can't believe somebody fell for it. I can't, but I also can't believe it makes my night like it's so hard to do

and he does it over and over and it's it's pure effort and timing and so that's why Marcus Smart's hard for me to turn my back on

sorry the Celtics are I'm with you because I'm I'm sure I'll the Luka thing was tough that really yeah that was unfortunate

that really was unexpected I would say they are a top five watch out for this team when we get to mid-December when guys can start to be traded. Yeah, maybe.

You've been more bullish on them from me from the beginning. I just not sure about them. You're right. I homered it out. I was really good with my over-unders this year

in the Celtics thing. I just basically it's like What did you say? I think you said 48 over-under and you said in the Celtics thing. I just, basically, it's like... What did you say? I think you said 48 over-under and you said over, right? Is that what you said? No, it was 44 and a half.

Oh, okay. And you said... They're going to go 45 and 37. They have two guys who are going to average 53 points a game. Like, we're getting 45 wins. They're averaging 53 to 54 points a game and it doesn't matter.

It's a disaster. And Horford's been really good. He's been really good. Really good. And they're still not good. I worry about his minutes. I mean, he did kind of have a bulky knee, right? So I worry about his minutes.

He's been fantastic. He really has been. I just don't like their team as much as... I mean, Schroeder's been fun, but Schroeder shoots a little too much too. I just want Schroeder to go to the basket. Just go to the basket and be mean, you know? You don't need to shoot threes. Just go to the basket. I'll tell you, the Schroeder-Smart combo is not great for my dad. I can't imagine. 74, he's popping heart pills. And those two guys

out there at the same time with Richardson, it's like they're trying to torture my dad. Okay. I'm just going to tell you, I'm about to one-up you on dads because my dad is 96. Right. Okay. God, Fred, I hope you're feeling better., I'm about to one-up you on dads because my dad is 96. Right. Fred, I hope you're feeling better. My dad had a bad fall on the exact day I retired. God bless him. He's on his way back. And he and my mom, who's British, they watch the Celtics every single game.

It's unbelievable to me. And my dad does not like Marcus Smart, never has from the beginning. And my mom is fighting. They're fighting at dinner over Marcus Smart. I'm like, I never, my dad grew up, born and raised in Queens, Bill. He's been a Knicks fan his whole life. And now my British mother and my New York City native dad are fighting over the Boston. So I don't even know what's happened to them. I don't even understand it. Jesus. It's so funny when people get old and they have the, it's really a basketball thing where they have the one guy who drives them crazy. I remember when I was sitting during the

early bird years, we used to sit next to this old guy and he hated Rick Roby because Roby had bad hands, right? He would get a pass and the ball would bounce off Roby's hands. I'd be like, oh, Roby. And he would just scream. It was just Roby drove him crazy. Smart has become like that for a lot of Celtic fans. They don't see the good anymore because there's so many frustrating things he does too.

He is going to be a guy that if he gets traded, he's going to go to the new team and everybody's going to absolutely love him. Oh yeah, he'll kill it. He'll crush it. For me, at times, as much as I loved him personally and he had some great qualities, it was Kelly Olenek. I'm like, could you box out

just one time? Just once. You're seven feet tall. Just one time. You know, like, is Schmidt is out rebounding you? Like, come on, man.

So at times, Kelly was that guy for me. All right. Say hi to your dad. Good to see you. We'll see you in a couple come on, man. So at times, Kelly was that guy for me. All right. Say hi to your dad. Good to see you. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. All right. All right. One of my favorite people to work with at ESPN was my friend Kevin Wilds. We did a lot of good stuff together, including 10 glorious episodes of the Grantland Basketball Hour, which left the legacy of, I think,

the greatest set in the history of sports television. You can go look at it on YouTube. We did a whole bunch of other stuff. He also used to come on my podcast, even though he was a behind-the-scenes person, allegedly, and do half-baked ideas that you might remember from the old BS Report. And then there was a twist. Wilds becomes an on-air personality.

He's now on First Things First, getting up every morning on FS1, and he's in the take business. And I intentionally didn't watch the show for like nine months because I knew you'd have to get your feet wet. But now you're like a take guy now. You're doing takes.

You're bantering. You're getting up every day. You're doing stuff. Well, first of all, I thank you for waking up at 4.30 in the morning. Every day to watch me. You know you watch it live. You're a linear TV guy. I appreciate it. 4.30 in the morning, Bill's firing off notes. What do you think about this, about Ben Simmons Wilds? Hey, what do you think about Mac Jones' ankle twist?

Thank you, Bill, for being up at 4.45, firing off takes. Do you like being in the take business? We've had some juicy ones this week. We had Rodgers. Rodgers is still going. That's a week. Did Jokic excessively overreact to

Markeith Morris' clearly terrible cheap shot? Was it too cheap of a retaliatory cheap shot? And then we had the Mac Jones ankle twist. And should anyone go with Odell? It's just the stuff writes itself. It's fantastic. Yeah, I like being part of a team.

How about that, Bill? That's my, honest to God, that's my favorite thing. I like being part of like a new team. It's a new show, a new show for me. So I get to meet a whole bunch of new people and work with new people. So that was my favorite part. That's not the strongest take in the world, but that's how I actually feel. When did you feel comfortable as a guy on a show that the cameras are pointing at you and you have

to have energy? And I remember for Countdown, I didn't feel 100% comfortable until probably, I would say two thirds of the way through the first season. Yeah, so I would say the worst advice, and this goes out to all of your listeners too who are going out on dates or going out on job interviews or just meeting someone for drinks. Hey, be yourself.

Be yourself is horrible advice. Don't be yourself. Yourself, hate to break it to you, everybody. Yourself is horribly boring and uninteresting. Yourself is horrible. Don't be yourself. Yourself, hate to break it to you, everybody. Yourself is horribly boring and uninteresting. Yourself is terrible. Yourself is measured, thoughtful. Yeah. Yeah. Yourself is, is horrible. Yourself is, is very, very boring. You have to be a, you have to just be the shinier version of yourself. You have to be the best version of yourself, the caffeinated version of yourself. Just yourself with a little bit more of yourself, the caffeinated version of yourself.

Just yourself with a little bit more, I don't know, a little more opinionated. Like I got to this point, like I didn't want to give predictions for a little while. I was like, well, no one can tell the future. And Nick makes fun of me now about it, that I was like, ah, you know, I don't want to be that guy. And then I realized, I went out to dinner. And I was like, I was like, hey, what do you recommend? Steak or the chicken? And the waiter is like, Ah, you know, they're both really good. I'm like this dude, have a take buddy. And I'm like, Oh, that's me.

That's me. So now I'm just like the steak. The steak is one of the best steaks I've ever tried in my life. We've sourced it from Oregon. All I've been doing is eating organic grass. The farmer goes in and gives it a massage and then we feed it alkaline water. Oh, and then we slaughter it right there. We fly it right to the restaurant.

It's a great steak. Go with the steak. That's what you got to do. This was a steak take for you. I got takes on steaks. New show. Steak takes. Well, you were behind the scenes on Sports Nation.

This was a whole coward thing, right? Whatever the biggest... And I learned from this too. And I always think about it when I do a pod. Like when something happens, what's your angle? It can't just be the same angle everyone else has, but it also can't be a stupid angle. But come up with something that has some real thought

that's got a little twist on it. It's something that people used to do, I think, more when they wrote. I know I always tried to do it when I was writing columns. And now the column writing has become a lot more basic because it's so much is driven by the headline where it's like, Roger should be ashamed. And then the column just basically backs up the headline. The take piece of it of just not having a Rogers take, but having a take that nobody else has that's fun and interesting, I think is the art. Yeah. So we have, we're, I'm lucky for a few reasons. One, we go first. So it's not only a show is called first things first. So we get to go first. So a lot of times that doesn't, um, that doesn't poison the well

of what your take is going to be. Because a lot of times by 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, the media is actually responding to old takes. You see a lot of shows just become media criticism. You'll see the Joker thing you talked about is like, criticism of Joker fare? It's like, okay, well, that's not the take that you can have at 7.30 in the morning. That's a take you can have at's a five yeah yours is fresh you basically turned on this turned on the skillet and

you're making omelets and go yeah literally yeah and then the other thing is between nick and broussard and jenna like i get to play a lighter i get to play like a light role. I'm like... Nick does a lot of... Nick and Broussard are so good and so thoughtful. And so... You get to zag, as Rossello would say. You can do some zags. Yes. I can just be like, you know what? You know what you should do here? I can give out a

half-baked idea. I don't know if it's taunting, but you should have Juju Smith-Schuster. They should only do... They should have a special TikTok section of the field, so instead of taunting, you can go over there. I can say anything. I'm like, oh, that's a thoughtful thing from Wilds after you hear from Nick and Broussard.

I'm in a lucky spot. Well, you always had great takes when we hung out. It's so funny. It was me, you, Jacoby, and some others, but you and Jacoby specifically were behind-the-scenes guys who became personalities eventually. But you'd come on my pod

and we would do slices. You know, you'd throw one pitch, but now you get to use all the pitches. I'm with you on... Fantasy always says it's like you can't be you on a pod or on a tv show you can't be you specifically not you like what you were talking about where yes being yourself doesn't work you have to like stickify it a little bit energize it up but it can't be too much either

there's like it's got to be like 15 extra i think that's fair you know what i mean yeah it's 15 but a lot of times people like oh what's what's uh what's bill simmons know what I mean? Yeah, 15%. But a lot of times people are like, oh, what's Bill Simmons like? What's Bill Simmons? I'm like, ah, you kind of know Bill Simmons. Don't you think that is the further... Yeah. Excuse me. The closer you can be to your actual self,

the more successful you can be. It's always odd when it's like, oh, did you hear that? Yeah, so maybe it's like 8%. Yeah. You know what? I got to take, it's 5%. It's not 8%.

A lot of people out here are saying 15%. Those people are fools. It's 5.5%. Well, let's do some take stuff because you think the Celtics should trade for Ben Simmons and I think it's absolutely idiotic and I wouldn't go near the guy. Okay.

So Nick said this on the show this morning because I was fired up. I said, Kevin McHale's not walking through that door with Kevin Garnett gif-wra wrapped for you. You got to do something. Yeah. Nick says, the Celtics haven't won one championship since the Reagan administration. What? Is that true? It's like you got one championship since Reagan left office. God, that's a long time ago. So when you look at it in that perspective,

it's been this rebuild for decades. You got one championship that feels like it weighs more than other people's championships, but we got just as many championships as the Bucs. And the idea that this team is all of a sudden going to gel and turn into a championship contender is not going to happen. If it was going to happen, it would have happened. So the idea that you can get a three-time all-star, all-NBA guy, almost defensive player of the year on the Celtics, who, by the way, doesn't need the ball,

like we're talking about, nobody will pass it to me. Ben Simmons raised his hand like, that's fine with me. Go with me, fellas. I'll pass it to you even more. I'm shocked there was such a pushback from the Celtics faithful that wants to just tread water in the sea of mediocrity waiting for someone to save them.

So I'm surprised you didn't like it personally. It's a really strong thing. Literally, his name's Simmons. And if I told you, hey, the guy Simmons from LSU, imagine if he was on the Celtics, I feel like you would love it. And now you're like,

no, Daryl's trying to fleece us. Plus he has the same name as my son. So that part would be even a little crazier, more disorienting. I think he has a competitive disorder. Ben does. Can you fix that yeah my Ben doesn't

my Ben is your Ben is competitive yeah Ben Simmons Philly Ben Simmons I haven't liked the competitiveness and I do feel like the more

the older I get the more I do this for a living the more I think about sports and what succeeds and doesn't succeed it always seems to come down to at some point everybody is roughly the same talent. And you have your outliers, like you

have Giannis, who's a physical freak. You have LeBron, who's one of the great athletes we've had and is also like a basketball genius. And there's going to be outliers. But for the most part, all of these guys were really successful at some level and then the next level. And then they hit this level where everybody's as good as them for better or worse talent wise. And then it comes down to like, how are you wired? Wait, how do you shake off failure? How hard do you work? Do you try to get better every year and things like that? And I just don't see it from him.

Yeah. So the thing that struck me and I thought it was a huge deal. No one else thought it was a big deal, is that he bailed on the Olympics. I don't think he has a skill problem or a talent problem or he's not going to learn to shoot great in one summer. He had a big stage problem. So it's like, all right, I just kind of played horribly on the big stage. I wish there was another opportunity, but I guess I'll have to wait till next year.

Like, oh, hold on. I can play in a loving environment with Patty Mills and Joe Ingles. And they said all the right things. And Matisse played. And it would have been this great, sort of like very nurturing environment. Even though like, whether he decides or not,

Ben is still our friend and we still love him. I was like, this is perfect. He's like, nah, I'm going to work on my game. And then a few months later, we got some like soaking wet sweatpants and jumpers on a half court and half the court was like a putting green. So that, that, well, he did this with LSU too. Remember he bailed on the LSU team as that season went along. That was weird. I thought, meanwhile, for the Olympics, Devin Booker just lost the finals

and he rides the plane. He's like, all right, he rides the plane with the box. He's like, oh, it looks like we're going over, fellas.

He just played. He had every reason in the world not to play, but the dude loves basketball and he wanted to go play. So you're making my case for me. No, I know. You're agreeing with me.

I'm just saying, I also think Jalen needs a, needs his own team. I don't want Jalen to, Jalen is not, you know, I hate the Robin Batman thing, but I want him to be,

he's the Batman guy. It's like, let him be Batman on another team. So I want Jalen to succeed. I just don't, I don't know. My question is how can they get Ben Simmons while keeping Tatum and Brown? Now I'm interested.

Yeah, but at some point, at some point if you're Philly, you have Embiid who, who knows what his physical shot, every, does he, can he play three weeks in a row? Has anybody had more stop and starts

during the course of a career than him? And if you're Philly and you like the people you have around him, at some point, can I talk you into a Marcus Smart, Aaron Neesmith, and some picks package for him? And is that the best they could do? I don't think they're trading him for anybody that's not a top 35 guy. But I also don't know how long this goes.

Are they just going to have a staring contest for three years? Don't you think Daryl has drawn a line in the sand here? I do. I think he has. He refuses to. He's like, well, it's going to go on for four years. No, it's not. It's not going to go on for four years. Ben needs to get out and play. Ben can't play in

Philly. That's just not going to work. He cannot go back to Philly. Nobody wants him. So could Kyrie be where this ends? That's what, you know, this is my third Nick Wright reference, but he said that very, very early. But I don't think Kyrie, I don't know if Kyrie wants to, Kyrie said he's going to retire. He wants to play in Brooklyn. I was, you know, the funny thing, my strangest Kyrie take, I thought, I'll leave the vaccine stuff aside. I was like, you know the funny here though my strangest Kyrie take I thought I'll leave the vaccine stuff aside I was like you know what Kyrie grew up a Nets fan and once they started wearing the throwback uh the throwback Nets jerseys like the Keith Van Horn jerseys yeah oh Kyrie's gotta hate that

that's gotta that's gotta really I know he wants to put on the old school Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson Nets jersey. The McCulloch jersey. Yeah. I wonder if that just moves the needle, no pun intended, just one degree. Like, ooh, it would be nice to wear those old Nets jerseys. Jesus. I don't know how the Simmons thing plays out.

And it's one of the rare sports stories where I don't even, like if they had bets, you know, as you know, I like to gamble. I've heard. If there were like bets with odds, I wouldn't even have an instinct on what to bet. I have no idea how it plays out. I think a lot of it is going to have to do with a team ending up in an unhappy situation where they need to make a move, talking themselves into it. I still feel like the Darren Fox thing makes the most sense to me. Yeah, I guess so. He said he would go to the West Coast,

but no one has ever been happy there. No one has ever been happy there. What do you do with the Rogers? Yeah, Peja, that's about it. What do you do with the Rogers story as it develops? Because that's now a week-long story, but there's only so many, so many ways to

go with it. And it's like day six. It's like, all right, it's time for another Roger segment. That's where I would be in trouble doing a daily show. I don't, I, I would, I would start to get mad at some point. I even remember when I was doing countdown, just being mad about having to talk about the Lakers every time. It's like, I'm out of takes.

This team's not winning the title. They suck. No, I don't have anything else to say. What do you want time. It's like, I'm out of takes. This team's not winning the title. They suck. No. I don't have anything else to say. What do you want from me? No, we're very, if we're not into it, we don't have to talk about it. There's not like. That's good.

I also feel like everyone already has. There's not a lot I can add to the Rodgers story. Every single person who saw that or has a take on it already. You're not going to move anybody off of their position. You're not going to... I've never read anything like, oh, interesting point. It just becomes an argument about the topic. I think it's like a fool's gold of an interest topic for sports talk. How about that? I think way more people are interested in the actual Packers. I have a take.

You're going to be jealous of it. This is the first sports story I can remember where we didn't hear from the athlete after he screwed up for a couple of days. And then when we did,

it was to People Magazine. Was that... Well, he just went on Mac and Pete today, I think. But this was... People Magazine was first. Was that a real thing? I can never tell

it's like someone close it was it was one of those a source close to the NFL star come on so he this

this now is like how a celebrity would handle this not like athletes don't handle it this way like if something happens in the NBA LeBron's like

where do we go People Magazine so but it's going this whole thing, and this is part of the problem with Rodgers, right? He now thinks he's a celebrity, like he's like Tom Cruise or Channing Tatum or somebody,

and this is framing his interactions now, where he thinks he has a chance to be the Jeopardy host, and he thinks he can just completely submarine his football team and cause huge distractions, and that's okay, even though he's the quarterback and the quarterback's supposed to be the leader. It just feels like he's now a celebrity and not a football player as much, even though he's still one of the best football players.

People Magazine is weird to me. But I don't know if Aaron Rodgers is as big a celebrity as you think he is. Maybe he's not. Is my mom 100% sure? Rodgers is as big a celebrity as you think he is. Like if, does my mom, is my mom a hundred percent sure who I'm talking about celebrity. I'm talking about like the rock, like let's put the rock is like a celebrity.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a celebrity, normal people who don't follow football. Like, well, I always used to call this the mom test. I feel like he's a celebrity from the state farm commercials. No, maybe. Cause I always thought that was the Chris Paul.. I feel like he's a celebrity from the State Farm commercials. No, maybe.

Because I always thought that was the Chris Paul. That was the best thing Chris Paul ever did. If he doesn't have the State Farm commercials, he's just the guy who was better than Darren Williams. Who, by the way, is fighting Frank Gore. Did you see that story? I'm so into it. I think Frank Gore is going to get destroyed. I really do.

I think he's going to get his ass kicked. You scouted. I did. I did some scouting already. I think Frank Gore is going to get destroyed. I really do. I think he's going to get his ass kicked. You scouted. I did. I did some scouting already. I think Frank Gore is going to get his ass kicked. I might have talked to a couple of people. Darren Williams has been boxing. Van Lathan said Darren Williams has been boxing since he was like a kid.

And he's also bigger than Frank Gore. I like Darren Williams. You know what? That's funny. Darren Williams, first two rounds knockout that's a take you forget that

big NFL players are still might not be as big as what is considered like a small NBA point guard Darren Williams

was really physical like I remember the two guards and I remember asking a few people this like who are the people you just don't like playing against?

Like, it's just like the next day, you're just not happy. Your body hurts. And it was always Darren Williams, Baron Davis. Baron Davis, like, just physical. He's bouncing into you, and the next day, you're feeling it.

But Darren Williams was even worse than that. He was like 6'3", 220. Okay, but it doesn't work. So now he gets to box Frank Gore. I just, I heard your... So you like Gore. We should bet on that. I don't like any,

I don't like any, I don't like, I don't like celebrity boxing. And I listened to your, your, shoot, I'm going to get exposed here. Jake Paul or Logan Paul? Jake Paul?

Jake Paul. Jake Paul. I listened to Jake Paul pod. And I thought, I thought it was interesting that how he sort of figured it out. But I'm still not... You can't get there.

My wallet has not opened up yet for a celebrity boxing match. Well, your kids also aren't old enough, which is the real problem. Well, yeah, that's what you said. What's the name of your oldest kid? Russell? I mean, the age of your oldest kid? Oh, nine. Yeah.

So four years from now, guess who's telling you to get the Jake Paul, Frank Gore extravaganza on pay-per-view? Russell. Dad, we got to get Adrian Peterson. It's Adrian Peterson versus a kid from TikTok. Like, no, Russ, we're not. Get the crypto. We got to give

me, you know, one nine hundredth of a Bitcoin. Like, no, I'm not going to. It's funny you named him Russell and now it's the name of various polarizing superstar athletes. How do you figure? Russell Westbrook. Incredibly polarizing. Russell

Wilson. Starting like it's going to get there if he starts asking for a trade. There's going to be that little, hey, wait, are we sure he's worth four first round picks? There'll be a little backlash on him. That's all I got. The only thing that's polarizing about Russell Westbrook in our home

is that it's Russ's favorite player. I also indoctrinated him to follow this guy. This guy plays hard. It's just super fun to root for. So we went to a Thunder game at MSG. So we had a bunch of Thunder stuff. Then he went to the Rockets and we're like, all right, Thunder stuff's gone. We got the Rockets bedspread.

Whoops. Now the Rockets bedspread got, but you don't throw one of the bedspreads. And I'm like, I like the Rockets. They're in last place. Got to go to make the bed. They got stupid Rockets.

And then they got, all right, I guess we're Washington Wizards fans now. Got a bunch of Wizards stuff. We're going like Joe House. That's gone. So now we're going to get Lakers stuff in the house.

But we've gone through a lot of iterations. That's tough. Maybe hold. He might not be on the stuff in the house, but we've gone through a lot of iterations. Maybe, maybe hold. He might not, he might not be on the team in February, but I don't want to hold up. It'd be funny if your son was like, why do you love Westbrook so much? Is it because he's also named Russell? And it's like, no, I love low field goal percentage and bad decisions. So my two favorite things is the little kid.

I love a 27.3 percentage three-point shooter who also makes terrible decisions in the last two minutes. That's my jam. And just for the record, that is what children love. Just like you see them playing basketball, like, I'm going to chuck this up. I don't care. He is.

Russell Westbrook is better understood if you think of him like a nine-year-old child playing basketball. This looks good to me. I got to look at it. If I pass it, I'm not going to be able to shoot it. I only get credit for scoring. You're never like, hey, great, good job getting open, Russ.

Nah, chuck that thing. And then they make bad calls. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back, and it's the return of Half-Baked Ideas. It hasn't been on here in a while. It's my fault. I just don't reach out to you enough.

You're always like, I didn't know what was going on with your time clock and getting up early. You got a family to juggle the whole thing. I work 24 hours a day. And my phone only works one way. It's very difficult. We're going to take a break. Come back with Half-Baked. All right.

It's time. Half-baked ideas. So Wild started doing this on my old podcast, probably like 09 range. I don't remember. And the concept is these are not fully baked ideas. It's a piece of an idea. There's something really good in it.

It doesn't quite work. And yet you can't stop thinking about it. It's a half-baked idea. Give us your first one. Okay, so I'm going to give you the intro. Here are the half-baked ideas on the agenda. Hopefully, we might be able to get through them. Maybe we have to wait till the next episode.

All right, we've got Bed Bull, Dame Day, Larry O'Brien's The Bar, a gym that looks like a store, Marathon Coffee, The Living Room of Highlights, Gucci Flag for referees, Annoy Ahoy, set sail to where we annoy your troubles away, an invention called a telephone, WILB, Wild's Indoor Leaf Blowers, but we start with Chuck It Cheese.

So I got a dog, two dogs, got to chuck it. Love the chuck its who doesn't my chuck it confidence I actually I don't know if you know this but once upon a time I was the Pedro Martinez

of the chuck it with my first dog Daisy on the sidewalks of LA and I just felt like I was like Greg Maddox with that thing and have you ever been like oh you know what

I'm done with my chuck it if anything you want more chuck it time. Yeah. So this is chuck it meets Topgolf chuck it cheese. The tagline is this, good for man's best friends and your other friends too. And I also wrote a little radio ad. Kyle, you can put music behind this. Tired of the same old night out at the bar? Well, come on down to chuck it cheese. It's like Topgolf but with Chuck It's. Literally. There's just a bunch of Chuck It's everywhere.

Pick one up and Chuck It. We don't care. And that's it. And then we just throw Chuck It's everywhere. What are we throwing? Why is it cheese? Are you saying it's because it's a playoff Chuck E's Cheese? It's Chuck It Cheese? Am I actually throwing cheese at somebody?

No, gosh darn it. You're not throwing cheese, but you're certainly welcome to bring your own cheese and throw it. That's just we're just piggybacking off the Chuck E's Cheese branding. Well, who am I competing? Well, Chuck E's Cheese is going to sue, so I don't like that idea. They're not going to sue. Why can't you just call it

Chuck E's? It's like Chuck E's. Yeah, but how am just call it Chuckets? It's like Jesus. Chuckets. Yeah. But how am I competing? So you say it's like Topgolf. So we've got a few things. So... Okay. The way we're going to go through this is... You ever hear about engineers

like, oh, I think outside the box. When you build a college or you build an apartment complex, like, oh, we didn't put sidewalks in. We just put the grass down and we let the flow of traffic. We saw where people walked and that's where we put the sidewalks. Like, holy cow, that's smart.

So the first step of Chuck at Cheese is, we're just going to have a big open area, invite people and see what they do. And then that will be our business plan. We're not going to pigeonhole you in. It's not a one size fits all thing. Here is what I'm thinking though. Okay.

Maybe there's tons of dogs there. Maybe there's absolutely no dogs. Maybe this is just time for you and your friends to throw it. Maybe it's the skills competition, just like Topgolf, where there's targets that you have to hit with your chuck it. Now we're talking. Maybe it's more like paintball. I can see that happening too. A little Squid Games type

vibe where it's like, oh man, it's like dodgeball with the chuckets and all of a sudden you're with teammates and they've got all chuckets and you've got chuckets. The chuckets are dipped in paint and you're getting pegged with the chucket. That's a little more extreme probably. I think it's going to end up just being like Topgolf

where there's beers, there's targets, and you're throwing the chuckets at your buddies. Maybe there's a few Labradors running around. Maybe there's not. I think I have the key wrinkle. Okay, go. The dogs are already there. They're house dogs?

They're house dogs that are the best chucket dogs basically in the city. So you're house dogs that are the best Chuck of dogs basically in the, in the city. So you're going and you're like, can I have, can I have Amber the golden retriever? And they're like, well,

we have Amber's booked until you can have her four to five 30. You go and you throw and you go Amber and it's almost like horse racing. You're competing against other people. You've got to use their dogs. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if the jumping dogs in the water... I don't know what part of the outdoor game... I think there's a swimming

pool piece. I think you have to chuck the thing. Love it. There's a narrow part you got to do. Maybe it's an obstacle course. There's something here. This is a good half-baked idea. Good start. It also might be frisbee golf maybe. Maybe we're walking around and throwing our chuckets at...

We're throwing chuckets at like targets and we're having fun. We've got a golf cart we're in. Did I ever tell you what my first dog that do's who I ended up writing about on ESPN that somehow became the most read thing ever for ESPN when she died? Just warning to everyone. don't read that one.

Don't read that piece. It's really sad. Write some Kleenex. 2004, after I left Jimmy's show and I was writing for Page Two, it was really all I was doing. And I used to take her on the sidewalk outside where we lived and I would throw her the tennis balls and she would bring it back. I taught her how to drop a tennis. I would throw her the tennis balls and she would bring it back. I taught her how to drop a tennis. I would throw it for her.

She would go down the sidewalk full speed and she would bring it back full speed. As she was bringing it back, I taught her how to drop the tennis ball and I would throw the other tennis ball the other way. And she would just go back and forth for like 40 minutes. And the neighbors were like amazed. They thought this was like the craziest thing they'd ever seen. No video. No video exists. Chuck it. I'm all in. Okay. Chuck it. Fantastic. Okay. Now this is reader submitted. I don't know if I've ever done a reader submitted idea. Interesting. Wow. Sometimes I weighed in the compliments looking

for a little self-esteem boost. So who thinks Wilds is clever? Oh, that person does. And this person wrote something. I said, that's a half-baked idea. Now, the reason I usually don't do the reader submitted stuff is either they're so stupid that they don't reach the level of half-baked idea, or they're so good. I'm like, buddy, that ain't a half-baked idea, my friend. That's a business plan. Save that trash for Shark Tank. I need stuff that is at the intersection of plausible and ridiculous.

We had a couple of those in the Grantland days where people would be like, wait a second, that's actually a real idea. You guys should monetize. We're like, cool. No, that defeats the purpose. Those are thumbs down. For that reason,

I'm out. Okay. This one is from a reader or a handle or a listener called Stegowow. Stegowow has a charismatic stegosaurus as their icon. I don't know who they are. Maybe it's a stegosaurus.

One of the best stegowows out there. A place called Champions. I have since renamed it Larry O'Briens. I'm helping them out here. First of all, I love that. Larry O'Briens, great name for... Larry O'Briens.

That's great already. Keep going. You and your crew, this is quoted from Stegowow. You and your crew get car service to a locker room where you will be greeted with bottles upon bottles of champagne, goggles, and a killer sound system. Party like you won the championship.

All cleaning is taken care of. Buy as many bottles as you like from various price points. Great for celebrating intramural championships, your home team winning the cup. Maybe they're Canadian. I'm not sure. I don't know where cups are involved. Now you can celebrate like a champion without actually being one. A little bit of a downer there, which I have a spinoff idea. Stegowal also then commented in the comments, because people are like, wow, this is a big idea, my friend. They said, there's also a fake Coach Pop. I don't know if it's just an old man would come over to your table and say, you deserve this.

I renamed it Larry O'Brien's. So now I, then I added onto it. I try to augment this idea. So when we get, you got Larry O'Brien's here on the left. I tried to augment this idea. So when we, when we get, you got Larry O'Brien's here on the left, I also get the neighboring establishment and this place is called silver metal. Now this is just a wild exclusive. Silver metal looks just, looks just like Larry O'Brien's, but it's totally depressing. And you can hear the fun and you go to silver metal. If you're having a bad day you just you don't want to turn up at larry o'brien's you have to wallow in your own and jim gray is there on special nights to ask you what went wrong it's part bar jim gray's available and you leave there

and dedicate yourself to becoming a better person. Like never again. I'm going to work so darn hard. I'll never end up. See, I would call that place. Why can't you call that place Carl Malone's? Malone's. Let's go to Carl Malone's.

Malone's. Hey. No one's ever had that before. Carl Malone's there. Malone's. Smoking cigars. Smoking cigars. I have a slight wrinkle to Larry O'Brien's. So my son won the flag football title on Friday,

which I've now mentioned on Two Straight Podcasts. It would have been so cool if they won and everybody's so psyched and then you have nowhere to go. And it was like, it was late Friday and we're like, we'll do like a banquet thing next week. Just throw the kids in the car, go right to Larry O'Brien

so they can pour sparkling apple cider on each other for a half hour. A children's version. Just pour, they can do the goggles, we take pictures, they're all like jumping up and down. The goggles is great. And I think you can go in. Maybe that's called Little Larry O'Brien.

Little Larry's. Little Larry's. I also's. Little Larry's. I also have, I'm going to throw Jacoby in here too. I got a lot of sidebars for this one. Yeah. I don't know if this is a separate one or just Jacoby's just wandering around. I got Jacoby in a referee's outfit.

It's called Two Shots in the Ball. Jacoby, our friend Jacoby, who you know from Jalen and Jacoby, he's the Jacoby on the show. He's the king of, I don't really want to do a shot, Jacoby, who you know from Jalen and Jacoby. He's the Jacoby on the show. He's the king of, I don't really want to do a shot, Jacoby. And he'll bring over several shots. He's sort of the minister of fun.

So Jacoby's in a referee's costume. He's not sort of the minister of fun. He's the minister of fun. Minister of fun. And he's bought, I've single-handedly witnessed him buying more shots than any other person in my life. And you never want them, but it's always a good idea because he just always wants to turn it

up a notch. Come on, buddy. Come on, buddy. Just have this one. Just one. Just one. Come on, buddy. Eight shots. You see them all lined up. Come on. We're all doing one. Bob's doing one over here. Come on. It's called two shots in the ball. He's in a referee's outfit. And he goes around Larry O'Brien's. If you're not having enough fun,

he whistles you. He brings over two shots and he gets to decide who takes them. He's dressed like a footlocker employee? Yes. I don't know why he also has a ball. He's like, two shots in the ball. Like, all right, we got to go. Maybe it's like a big punch ball shaped like a basketball.

So he's basically a professional minister of fun. He doesn't like what's going on in the corner table. The date's not going well enough. He just comes over two fireball shots. He tees you up

two shots in the ball and he goes like, ah. He gets to decide who takes him. Those are great. I think Larry O'Brien's is almost a fully baked idea.

I mean, look, I got to shout out, you know, when dinosaurs have had a long time to let that marinate and they came out a big winner. So shout out to Stegowau. These ones now are starting to get in a real half-baked territory, Bill. Okay. Those were solid ones. These are the real head scratchers.

These are the ones that, man, what is this guy up to here? And these are a little bit shorter. These are a little more, you know, rapid this guy up to here? And these are a little bit shorter. These are a little more rapid fire. Yeah. This is a stupid idea. Marathon coffee. This is going to have to be a change in the way that we consume caffeine. Yeah.

So, all right, you can make coffee at home. No, not fast enough. I want to pick it up. You got to go to a Starbucks. Wait in line. Don't want to wait in line. Also, not fast enough. I got to do the mobile order. I want it to be there immediately. Guess what? Not fast enough. Marathon just happened in New York City and LA. You know

what's super convenient about doing a marathon, long distance race? Got all the water right there. You don't need to ask me if I want water. Just have a bunch of waters lined up. So in busy intersections, streets in New York City, there's just tables with coffee. Maybe you have some sort of fast pass. You're flashing like- Oh, so you have the fast pass on your car. You drive by, you stop quickly. They see the fast pass. They scan it and they're giving you a coffee. There's just coffee sitting everywhere in the country. We're like those stupid scooters that are all over cities now. No one gave us permission to have a table full of coffee here. But we're here.

We're on the sidewalk and no one's mad at us. There you go. It's called Marathon Coffee. I really like that idea. By the way, I think scooters might have been like a 2012 half-baked idea. We'll have scooters. Put scooters everywhere. Put a credit card in there and then just

take it to where you go and just leave it on somebody's lawn. I think you might have done that one. What's the business plan? You just then just leave it on someone's lawn? Like, yeah, we just leave it on someone's lawn. Who cares? Fine. Yeah. Well, they're all over LA right now. Anyway. Next one.

I like Marathon Coffee. Marathon Coffee is fantastic. I do feel like there is some sweet spot with mobile ordering that could go, could go larger. Like some of the food delivery services have experimented where they have the premium. It's like faster.

If you want to get it 10 minutes faster, it's $3 more. I'm like, sure. No, no, none of that. No, back to lines. I'm a lines guy. You're a guy. Lines are back in.

Okay. I just, what do we wait? Like, where are you going? All we do, so I'm trying to get on like a rant here. We have spent the last 30 years on this planet trying to make things faster and more efficient.

Where's all the time? Who's swimming in time? Everything is faster. Everything is more efficient. And there's no more time. No one's like, I was doing nothing all day. It was great.

Everyone's like, Oh, we're so busy now. Oh, we're so busy. Like, well, I don't know. We got It was great. Everyone's like, oh, we're so busy now. Oh, we're so busy. I'm like, well, I don't know. We got remote controls now. People need more time for social media. It's just enough. We just got to...

That was like a borderline Andy Rooney take. I thought your eyebrows were going to grow as you were doing that. It's true. Look, I'm okay with... People don't know who Andy Rooney is. Yeah. You know it's an Andy Rooney take saying it's an Andy Rooney take. That's true.

Oh, that sounds like an old... I'm making fun of you by sounding old with the reference that nobody under 40 will get. That sounds like a take from old Stuffy, Stuffy McTavish. He used to be on the old radio. Yeah, I remember him in the 70s. Then he was on Gilgamesh Island.

All right. All right, next one. Okay, this is called Annoy Ahoy. Okay. Set sail to where we annoy your troubles away. Okay, so

my personal stress is kind of very similar to like my jean buying experience. I might have a pair of jeans on, but as soon as I buy a new pair of jeans, the old ones are just gone. It's the same thing with personal stress.

You might be worried about something, boom, right here. All of a sudden, if something else happens, your old stress is like, whoa, what was I even worried about? That's gone. So this happened with me. We got a little water in my basement a month ago.

And not great. I missed the show. It was like a bit of a disaster. I got like two feet of water. Then I got to cut out all the drywall. I got to pull out the insulation. Everything's ruined. But my dad came down. It was actually like, oh, the Lord works a mysterious way. We had like a nice bonding session. And that was our focus for three days, to clean the basement, dry the basement, get the drywall out, get the insulation out. And whatever, I had problems. I had some sort of stresses.

And they were all gone due to an act of God in this flood. We were very lucky that nothing bad happened. So I was like, huh, I wonder if I can make that a little more planned. So rather than all these people that are trying to de-stress you and take a spa day, oh, come out here, put some cucumbers on your eyeballs. No, I'm going the other way with it. You subscribe to Annoy Ahoy. And I'm sure you got some problems, right? So everyone, think about whatever you're listening to this podcast,

whatever problem you have in your life right now. You had an argument with a family member. Well, guess what? And he patched up pretty quickly because now you guys own three ferrets. That's right. Annoy Ahoy just let loose three ferrets in your house. And you're like, honey, what were we arguing? He's like,

why don't you take it out? Like, honey, no time for that. The ferrets are everywhere. We've got 13 ferrets in the house. We got to get these gosh darn ferrets out of here. And it bonds the family. It bonds the group. It's good. You know, the ferrets are moving around. So a stressful

incident that ends up becoming a bonding experience for the people you care about. And there's different degrees. We don't throw you into ferrets right away. That's the orange level. We start you off with just like tons of crumbs. Almost like one of those rookie pranks in the NBA. Like you

fill up your car full of popcorn. Like what the heck? It's kind of funny, but also you got buttery popcorn. Rookie pranks. I was like that. Rookie. Oh, bad news. We gave you the worst haircut of your life. It's one of those NFL rookie haircuts. You have to figure it out. Don't try to de-stress your life. Re-stress your life. Holy cow, Wilds. That one might be too good. That might not be half baked. That might be fully baked.

That sounded like a read I would be doing for the next break. Don't de-stress your life. Re-stress your life. I thought you were going scheduled terrible things to do with family members. So ultimately,

you wouldn't call your dad and say, hey, do you want to fix the drywall in my basement? He'd be like, are you insane? I don't want to do that. But then he ended up doing that and you guys had a great time. So I have to go through my closet and throw out a bunch of shirts and get rid of t-shirts and things like that. I don't really want to do that. I don't want to do that. But maybe I call my mom and say, hey, do you want to spend six hours together and we could throw out some of my old t-shirts?

And that would be a bonding experience. Now, my mom would have like four glasses of wine during that and it would probably have a lot of sarcastic comments as we're doing it. I don't know why you bought this t-shirt. Yeah, maybe this would have worked for me. All right, next one. I think we have time for one more.

Unless you want to do two quickies. Where's the good one? The good one? Well, I've got a good one. You want to end her? All right. Want to end with your best one here? Save the other ones for next time.

I'm going to make you come back on. We'll do this tomorrow. The Gucci flag I'll save because we're in the weeds of NFL refereeing. That's college refereeing, actually. It's a flag that you throw when something awesome happens and you get positive 15 yards.

Okay, this is kind of wild. What kind of positive thing? The Gucci flag? The Gucci flag, yes. So like Justin Fields makes an incredible play where he scrambles out of a sack and... Alright, so I'll do this one. It's too good. Okay. So you got the challenge flag, right? You got your yellow flag.

This is the Gucci flag. It's a beautiful flag. Oh, it costs $1,000. So this is what happened. This happened in the Oklahoma-Nebraska game. This is better for video,. They're trying to get the first down. So they throw it up and the dude makes a one-handed Odell-esque interception and everyone goes crazy. But by the letter of the law and by any strategy, he should have just batted it down. Yeah. Because he actually just lost yardage, lost play. We see it. You see it every once in a while. And the coach said this, I might've been the first coach in yardage, lost play. You see it every once in a while. And the coach said this, I might have been the first coach in history to challenge a play we got an interception on. I was hoping it would have gone down. So that is just a fundamental flaw

in college football officiating. Yeah, we want to see great things. We want to see great things. We don't want it to be a strategy to bat the ball down because it would cost you field position. So for that specific play, the ref can reach back and it is a beautiful Gucci flag made by Gucci. Maybe it's made by Louis Vuitton.

We get Virgil involved, it'd be great. He throws that like, oh, the Gucci flag's out. And you get 15 yards, at least to the line of scrimmage where the interception was thrown or where the ball was snapped. And if we want to extend it with just like sick plays, like, oh, you know what? I appreciate you trying to hurdle that guy.

You only got two yards. Boom, Gucci flag, 15 more yards for trying to be awesome. Do you buy the Gucci flag? I like that. I think maybe it could be five or 15. Well, it depends how awesome the play is. 15 makes it really special. Five, I'd be throwing the Gucci flag all the time.

You only get like two Gucci flags a game. I like the Gucci flag. There you go. Those are your half-baked ideas for 2021. I thought you had one more big one. I thought that was the ender. I got a great one. All right, one more.

Last one. Okay, this is called WILB, Wild's Indoor Leaf Blowers. So when you go to a hotel, was the ender i got a great one all right one more last one okay this is called wilb wild's indoor leaf blowers so when you go to what do you go to a hotel why do you like going to a hotel oh is it because like travels unlocking a window to your soul is it because you got new shampoo it's like oh money oh the mini bar maybe i become a rum guy maybe i'll be like a distinguished pirate no it's just because none of your crap is there. And it's when you clean your house,

you're just moving your crap to different places. You got to go in. So Kevin's Indoor Leaf Blowers, Wild's Indoor Leaf Blowers, W-I-L-B. We send you a notice like, hey, we're coming through. If you love it, bolt it down. Because we're coming in here with industrial strength leaf blowers

and we're going to tornado your house. The magazines, books you're supposed to read halfway through, your kids' art projects, old sunglasses, that stuff is getting blown to high heaven. We are leaf blowing your house, all your crap

into a corner. We're coming in, we're taking it all out. So it's like a hoarders with destruction, basically. But it's not even a hoarder. It's just like everyone is a hoarder and they don't realize it. You've already got... Look around your house. You got stuff you don't need.

Why do I need this? I don't need it. Need three pens in your home. All of it's going with Kevin's Indoor Leaf Lowers. It's a great one. W-I-L-B. Those are your half-baked ideas, my friend. Wait, as tradition, I have to give you a quick one back W-I-L-B. Those are your half-baked ideas, my friend. Wait, as tradition,

I have to give you a quick one back. I'm ready for this. You use Venmo, right? Of course. Yeah. It's a subsidiary of Venmo. It's Ref Venmo. Okay.

So when you have kids, when you have kids, these umpires and referees ref these games. And it's the worst job in the world. I don't know what they're making, but it's not nearly enough. And it's people, you know,

yelling at some linemen on the sideline or the home plate up. Home plate up. It's in the Valley in California. It's 103 degrees. He's working a double header. He's making like 50 bucks a game and he's got some jackass behind him.

Just ref Venmo. I really appreciated the game you called after the game. You can only do it after the game. I really appreciate it. I'm tipping you the same way I would tip a bartender or a waiter or a bunch of other people. Here's a $10 tip. You guys

did a great job. Here. Thank you. This is ripe with corruption. So that's why it's a fake idea. Well, you could still do that. You could just give them cash. I also think we should be able to tip people who cut the meat at delis. Why can't I tip those people?

Great job cutting that roast beef. It was nice and thin. Deli cutter Venmo. I think Venmo should spin off. and tip those people. Great job cutting that roast beef. It was nice and thin. First of all. Deli Cutter Venmo. I think Venmo should spin off. I should be able to tip whoever I want. No one likes Venmo.

All right, come up with a new app. It's called Cash. Alexander Hamilton came up with it. You can't give a ref cash. It's got to be like... The ref's got... He's got his jersey and he's got his Venmo address

at the end. It's ref Venmo. And he just... Like, I really liked the game that guy called. I would have sent him $20. He only is accepting it after the game, not before. But the guy's going to coach, going to ref more than one game. Good. Maybe you're putting a little seed for later.

Ref Venmo. Ref Venmo is not bad. I do think everyone would just like Cash But that's also like Come on Ref You're not gonna get Cash feels seedy Like yesterday

The Steelers fans After the Steelers-Bears game They could have They could have Ref Venmo Tony Carrente Thanks Thanks for the 13 calls That went our way

Here's 15 bucks That's too much corruption. No, no ref Venmo. All right, Wilds, will you come on more often? I'm ready to go. All right, this was great. Kyle, did you think this went well? Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, he kind of paused for a second. All right, Kyle, let's do it again. Let's run it back. No, it's only because I'm not going to put the music that Kevin wants. That's the only reason. Yeah, you asked Kyle to do more work. All of a sudden, you're producing him. He's got a process.

You know, I like old-timey radio. My old Andy Rooney. All right, Kevin Wilde. It's great to see you. You can see Kevin on First Things First. And hopefully, I will see you soon. Thanks to our producer, Kyle Creighton. Don't forget about every single album.

The podcast is up. Don't forget about a new Rewatchables, Ransom. Don't forget about the Prestige TV podcast. I'm on there twice this week. And I will see you on this feed on Thursday with Million Dollar Picks and a whole lot more. I don't have a few years with him on the wayside on the wayside never

I don't have a few years