The Bill Simmons Podcast - Why Did the Knicks Fire Thibs? Plus, a Belichick Debate (and More) With Pablo Torre

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons reacts to the news of the Knicks firing Coach Thibs, and he makes his NBA Finals predictions (3:33). Then, Bill is joined by Pablo Torre to squash their Bill Belichick beef once and for all before discussing journalism, conspiracy theories, and Tony Kornheiser (29:21). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Pablo Torre Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I made pop culture appearances on two of our podcasts. One was the rewatchables, me and Kyle Brandt broke down out for justice with Steven Seagal. It was the most fun I think we've had for any of the four Steven Seagal movies we've had. This is great. Producer Craig was great. Everybody was great.

Really fun episode. You can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well as a video podcast on Spotify. Listen to it wherever you hear your podcast. That was one. I was also on the Prestige TV podcast because Joanna Robinson and I both watched The Better Sister with Jessica Beale and Elizabeth Banks. A murder mystery. I kind of liked it. Had some thoughts, had some critiques, had some nitpicks. We broke all of it down. You can find them in the Prestige TV podcast, which is also on the Ringer Dash TV YouTube channel. Hey, you know how I've been working with Fandul? We've been doing Tail or Fade, doing it either Wednesday or Thursday. We won last week. Basically, I pick a player prop. You decide whether you want to tail me and back the pick or fade me and go against it. Either way, if you win, you get a 50% profit boost token that you get to put

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Tom Thibodeau, who we'd been talking about that possibility on this podcast since April. So a bunch of things that I found interesting in this, I'm going to talk about that on top. And then Pablo Torrey is coming in after that. We're in a huge beef. Just we had to be security guards on both sides. Uh, really making sure that it was like in UFC when the two guys are coming in on the way in and they both have their teams, just make sure we don't start fighting. Now it's fine. Uh, I've known Pablo for a long time. I'll explain at the very top of when he comes on why he came on the podcast, but I had a great time, uh, and it was fun to have him on.

I appreciate that he came down. So that is the podcast for today. Uh, we're going to take a break. We're bringing Pearl Jam and then my thoughts on the Knicks. This episode is presented by State Farm. It's no secret that great teams need great teammates. I've been saying this for years. And when it comes to insurance, State Farm is there to help you find the right coverage

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It's about two o'clock Pacific time. The Knicks relieved Tom Thibodeau of his duties as head coach a couple hours ago. I was going to have a guest, but you know, honestly, there's a bunch of stuff I wanna hit. I feel like I can do it in 15 minutes and we're just gonna go for it. I wasn't surprised. Zach Lowe came on this podcast in April.

We did all of our, we did a most intriguing playoff people draft and we got to the hot seat category. And this was, I think, Zach's first appearance back on my podcast. And we had a hot seat category and he had a, I forget who he had. And then I had. I had Tibbs and Zach did like, it's like cold body. It was like, he got electro shocked and I was like, look, I think there's a chance. You know, I don't, I don't know if it's going great.

And, uh, you know, if they lose to the Celtics in five or the first round's rocky, whatever happens, I think this is in play. And there were reasons I thought that. There was stuff that I heard. There was stuff percolating around. But then they beat Detroit in six. They beat Boston in six. And Tatum goes down at the end of game four.

They're about to win game four. They're going to take a 3-1 lead against a 60 plus win team. And then they take Indiana to six and they were one of the four teams left, basketball is reignited in New York. And the question is, well, then why would you fire your coach? Well, I think there's one, two, three, I'm going to give you five reasons. I'm going to give you a couple of conspiracy theories as well, just for the hell of it. Five reasons TIBS got fired. Number one, this is an admission that they actually weren't as close to winning the title as maybe you think you were if you were one of the final four teams left.

There's previous examples of this. The Warriors in the Mark Jackson year before they hired Steve Kerr, where there was a feeling like Mark Jackson took us from here to here. And now we need somebody to take us from here to here. I talked about this on my podcast on Sunday with Bannon Rissola. Um, the better example. And one that I think is weirdly applicable in a bunch of different ways here is the 2003 Pistons who moved on from Rick Carlisle.

They hired Larry Brown and people were really surprised because Rick Carlisle had done a good job with Detroit. He's a good coach as we've seen. Won a title in 2011. He's in the finals this year, ironically beat the next. But the question was, did Carlisle take this roster as far as it could go? And on top of it, could Larry Brown bring us up an even further level?

Well, a guy who was intimately involved with that Pistons team, behind the scenes, back when he was very shadowy and nobody really understood what he did or what his role was, was Worldwide Wes, William Wesley. He was a confidant, he was a big Larry Brown guy, he was behind the scenes with those Pistons guys in all these different ways, still close to a lot of them.

I'm not saying he was responsible for the decision, I'm just saying he was there watching the effect of it. And I find it hard to believe that him and Leon Rose, who run the Knicks team right now, weren't thinking about that specific example when they were thinking, did TIBS take us as high as we could possibly go? Is there another level for us to go? And what has to happen to get there? Did we max out with tips? Um, in the case would be season played the starters too much, trailed by 10 plus all the time in the three playoff series. As we talked about on my

podcast on Sunday, this, at some point you are who you are, and if you're down 10, 12, 15, in 75% of the playoff games you're playing, that's a really bad sign, that you have to always constantly claw your way back. And then you gotta think about circumstances too. You're gifted a Cleveland collapse. Cleveland has home court throughout the playoffs,

and they won 64 games, and Indiana just thumps them. You're gifted Boston's inexplicable collapse in game one and game two, which I may or may not look at the box scores once every two days. The Celtics in the third quarter with a huge lead of game one took 20 shots, and 19 of them were threes. And you just think back to some of the decisions Boston made offensively in that series, how slow they played, how many threes they took, how they didn't

use some of the Knicks weaknesses against them, didn't push the pace, didn't constantly hunt Brunson and Townes. And those two games are just two of the worst losses combined as a loss in the history of Boston's franchise. And it's going to be a long time before you get over it. And that's before you get into what happens to take him a game for. But just how they played those first two games was such a gift to the Knicks who then went and grabbed it because they're a tough team and they have a lot of talented players. You also lose out on Milwaukee and Philly or Lano gets hurt, all that stuff.

Um, so a lot of things broken New York's favor and yet. I don't think they would have come anywhere close to beating Oklahoma city. Right? So the line for that, uh, finals is I think it's minus 700 right now with Indiana. I think, I think it would have been higher if it was the Knicks. So at some point you have to have an honest assessment. Are we trying to be good every year?

We're trying to win the title and could we win the title with what we just watched, um, with the coach we have with the way the players responded to him and they obviously looked at it and said, we can't, so that's one second reason. I think Tibbs, um, who I really like as a coach for the most part, and I appreciate how much he cares and you could feel with some of the reactions today, um, the press The press was really shocked and in a lot of cases upset that it played out this way He's an all-in all the time basketball maniac Like a real obsessive and he lasted in the Knicks for five years in a players league Which we'll get to in a second why that's an important number

Didn't really listen to anybody on lineups Played his guys as much as possible. There was real dissension that you could feel from March on. The Bridges stuff was always weird with Mikhail Bridges and him talking openly about playing too many minutes and then, oh, we hashed it out behind the scenes. That was never a good sign. And then you could see as he started to kind of change stuff, change his defense in the Boston series, which worked, started experimenting with these big lineups in the third,

in the third round against Indiana, because he realized his players couldn't play seven guys against the pace that you could do against, uh, uh, with how Indiana wants you to play. Um, and then all of a sudden Shamitz out there and the one, right. And guys that really should have been playing all year. And it's just, when you start changing stuff that drastically in, uh, the end of May, that's a sign, like maybe you didn't use the regular season to your benefit correctly. And I think that's just undeniable.

We were saying, we were talking about this on this podcast all the time. Like didn't understand the rotations, didn't understand the minutes, didn't understand why there was any, no desire to develop a bench at all. See, of that, I don't think that helped them once they finally flamed out against Indiana. Here's the third reason. He was there five years, which doesn't seem like a long time. Well, you've heard about the 10 years of the remaining coaches, the longest running coaches in the NBA right now.

2008, Eric Spolstra. 14, Steve Kerr. 2020, Billy Dunovan at Chicago. 2020, Tyronn Liu for the Clippers. And then Mark Dagnaut and OKC. 2020. So three of our five longest coaches showed up in the NBA on those teams five years ago. And all right.

So what is that? Our owners and patient. This is the league now the players run the league, the players run the league more than ever. The money is so high and so crazy. The turnover and the musical chairs. If somebody's unhappy with their situation, their teammates, their coach, they're complaining, they have more power

than they've ever had and it's just a fact. Like this is the dark side of player empowerment. You have guys making crazy amounts of money who if they don't really like their coach, guess who's not gonna win that battle? The coach. The real eye-opening one for this was Brad Stevens in Boston because that last Celtics year he had, the team basically

packed it in on him and really seemed like they just were starting to tune him out and he wasn't reaching them in the same way. And Brad Stevens was an incredible coach. He only had a seven-year run for the Celtics. Think about that. So the run is usually five to seven years unless you end up with a Spolstra situation. By the way, Spolstra didn't have a great year this year either. Steve Kerr, I think Dagnall will be at OKC for a long, long time. Other than that, we're going to hit a point where Doc Rivers is like the seventh most tenured NBA coach. And I think he got to Milwaukee five minutes ago. I just think this is the league now. I think that there's too many outlets for guys to push.

Unhappy buttons. The league is hyper covered. Every sort of interaction on the bench, um, every quote that comes out of, uh, any sort of press conference, it's just, there's just a big spotlight on anything. And once there's any unhappiness at all, you could feel it blow up. And I just think it's really hard. The Knicks didn't seem that happy the last four months, I would say.

And I thought, we talked about this on Sunday, it was so interesting that they lost game six and the athletic immediately had this long, long, as Brian Curtis would call it, the now they tell us piece, which seemed like it was just in their archives for four days waiting to get published. And it had a lot of stuff, and the two big losers in that piece were Townes and Thibodeau,

as we talked about on the podcast on Sunday. So there was clearly a lot of smoke here and some fire, and that's why I wasn't surprised. It's why I first mentioned it in April. That's why I mentioned it on Sunday's pod. I thought it was 45, 55 that he stayed and now he's gone. But there's two other dynamics that I think are really important for this.

Mikhail Bridges, he makes $24.9 million next year. They traded five first round picks for him. He can leave and sign with another team 12 and a half months from now, basically 12, 13 months from now, July 1st, 2026. If they don't sign him to an extension, they traded the five first round picks for him. They got the Villanova connection together. He's the one that we're pretty positive wasn't that happy this season.

Um, talked about the minutes, um, was just an afterthought offensively. They were like begrudgingly get him involved. I thought he had moments in the playoffs, but also moments where he disappeared. I can't say they ran a lot of offense for him. I thought he was a better offensive player than they used him. Um, and then you saw the way he was harassing Halbert and especially in game five, maybe they should have used them a little more like that. But, uh, there was a lot of times where he just felt like the odd man out. He felt like the drummer in the rock band or the second guitarist. And, uh, listen, this is a league where players butter each other up. Players text each other, you should come here. Um, people wink, wink all the time.

Agents have off the record conversations with people they should be having. And the moment other people feel like, yeah, that guy might be a little unhappy. Um, you just, you kind of have to monitor it. And he's in a situation where I think he's the ideal third piece for San Antonio, right? A team like that in San Antonio is going to have some flexibility and they have a bunch of picks. And it's a team like that in San Antonio is going to have some flexibility and they have a bunch of picks and it's a team like that,

that could start batting their eyelashes at, at bridges in a different way. And for the Knicks that matters because if he doesn't sign an extension this summer and bets on himself, um, now you're potentially screwed. And I think they have to extend him this summer, period. They have to keep these five guys together, these four guys and the town's asset, whether they trade it or keep it, they have to keep that nucleus together. And he's a huge piece of this. So if you sign him to an extension, it still helps you this year going forward, you know how much money you have and he likes playing

with these guys. And obviously, I just refuse to believe that wasn't a piece of this. I'm not saying he demanded they fired the coach, but you can tell if somebody's all in on their, on their coach or not, just as a, as a unit, as a player or whatever. And this gives them a better chance to figure out this Bridges thing, which brings me to the fifth piece, the extra dynamics. I think one of the things that was, I don't want to say underreported about the Knicks because people do about it, but there's kind of quietly a lot of

people in the kitchen and I'm not going to say there's a lot of chefs in the kitchen, right? There's Leon and Wes built this team and they work for Dolan who's the owner who I think really loved the Knicks Renaissance. Um, there's been reports about him handpicking where every single celebrity and everybody sat courtside every game. And I think he really was re-engaged, especially when you think like from. 2000, 22 or 2002 all the way to, uh, maybe 2021 wasn't a fun 20 years to own the next

and be named James Dolan. So, you know, he's in there, he's got his buddies in there. He's typical rich guy owner. So you're worried about him. If Jaylen Brunson's dad is an assistant coach, Rick Brunson, and tapes can say all that he wants about, no, no, it was great to have Jaylen's dad there. Was it?

Was it awesome to coach Jaylen Brunson, but also have his dad be your assistant? We see so many times in the NFL and NBA specifically, when you have people coaching staff and then somebody leaves and somebody gets the job and then you hear afterwards like, Oh man, that wasn't great. And that person shanked this person. I'm not saying, I'm not saying Rick Brunson shanked anybody. I'm just saying that's a weird dynamic. When you then add Carl Anthony towns comes in, his dad is super involved. Right.

You have the Villanova guys as a group. These guys have all this history together, right? Jalen, uh, Josh Hart, Bridges. So you have all these different little factions. You have family members. You have people that have real connections to Wes and Leon, like Rick Brunson, who's one of Wes's oldest friends. Um, he's got tentacles going everywhere and tips is growing the same, in the same

way on the boat with a lot of these people. But then once that starts to shift, that gets a little dicey, right? And the Knicks again are locked into these five guys. Once they do that town's trade for Rando and DiFincenzo and they break up those contracts and they break up the flexibility of them and trade them. Now they're in the town's business. Now they have to figure out, how are we gonna have a team built around five guys, two of whom are the really smart teams

are gonna attack constantly. See that as well. And then I just don't think that was great. And I think they did a nice job of pretending that everything was hunky dory, but obviously not. Cause Tibbs just came within two wins of the finals, it got fired. So there was some real stuff going on here.

There's some conspiracy stuff too. Again, I'm taping this as two 15. It might've already been emotional, but Johnny Bryant, who I think is an assistant that some people like there, he may, he was named one of the two finalists for the son's job that happened five hours later. Tibbs got fired. I'm just flagging it. Um,

there's a J right possibility that I think I floated on my Sunday podcast, the old Villanova coach does he want to coach again? I don't know. Um, Mike Malone sit in there, but the Johnny Brian one, I think that's the one I, I would probably shove the chips toward that bet. Whether that's a good idea. I have no idea. Um, but if you're trying to get everyone on the boat, rolling one way and you're worried you're going to lose them, the sons, maybe, um, the deeper conspiracy stuff is they're about to trade towns for Katie and Katie doesn't want to play for tips again. Don't aggregate that. Do not aggregate that. I'm just saying it's,

if you're trying to figure out why would they fire a coach when they're two wins away from the finals, if they think they have a move coming Did Katie want to play for a certain coach did Yannis want to play for a certain coach? I have no idea do not aggregate it Just pointing out like maybe a month from now that part will make way more sense like oh of course Because this guy was coming in and he wanted this guy. That's how the league works, unfortunately. My guess would be Johnny Bryant, but in general, like, TIPS lasted five years.

There were real cracks there in the last year that you could feel and you could hear when you talked to different people. And I think this is a complicated team to coach, because you have Brunson, who took less money to stay with the team at least for two years, whose dad is one of the assistants who I promise you he's not going anywhere. You have this huge towns contract that's got four years left after this, after the season

that just ended that ends with 61 million. Do you keep that? How many teams would even want it with the second apron stuff? You have all the second apron stuff looming, repeater tack stuff. And you don't really have a ton of ways to make this roster better, except for some of the lower mid-level exemption stuff and whether potentially they would want to trade Mitchell Robinson, which I would not do. And could they be a Yanis team?

Anyway, there's a lot going on here, but this is the NBA in 2025. You can coach a team to a four seed. You can win 10 playoff games. You can look back at an Indiana series and go, Holy shit, if we hadn't blown game one, we'd be in the finals right now, which I think is a fair thing for the Knicks to think. Um, and you can still lose your job. And I have a ton of Nick fans in my life and they're pretty split on this. I have some people in my life who were like, thank fucking God, this is Mark Jackson, Larry Brown all over again. Thank God they did this.

And then I have some other people in my life who were like, this seems super dysfunctional and every the Knicks. We love that team two years ago. And since then they've traded for Carl Anthony Townsend. They fired Tibbs. So in the span of 13 months, we went from, we love this team to what are we doing? We'll see where it goes. But the most important thing is the Knicks are relevant again.

Not only are they relevant as a team that wins games and has really good players, including one of the best 10 players in the league, but, uh, they're making news and it's not news like this terrible thing happened. They did a stupid trade. Oh my God, why'd they do this? Although I guess why you fire your coaches away to do this, but you know what I mean? The Knicks are relevant in a different way. And there's a moment here and the best case scenarios, this is Oh three Larry Brown in the piston. So, um,

one other thing I wanted to say for, uh, the finals before we, uh, take a break, cause I wanted to make a finals pick really quick and I really wanted to do OKC in a sweep. Even though I, as you know, I respect Indiana, I've been picking them every round or picking them as a possible upset or saying Pacers and Six are the best bets, et cetera, et cetera. I think OKC is an absolute freaking juggernaut. To have a chance to go 84-19, you were in a list of six, seven teams in the history of the league.

They have a chance to have one of the best seasons ever. I don't think any of us would say that's one of the greatest teams ever. There's a performance slash in their prime slash they don't have one of the greatest teams ever. There's a performance slash in their prime slash, they don't have one of the best seven, eight to nine players of all time at the absolute peak of their powers piece that they don't have. They might have it two years from now. But this is a truly great team.

And I broke down on this pot a few days ago about all the way they're just torching people at home in the playoffs. There are eight, one in the playoffs. The one loss was by two points and the other eight wins were like by 233 points. So they just kill teams. And I really wanted to pick a final sweep because I thought everyone's going to pick, okay, scene five. Can I zag?

Um, is there a smartzag actually? But man, you go through the history of final sweeps. There's been nine in 78 years. Let's start there. Uh, so you're batting about, uh, 11%. I wasn't good at percentages. Last one, 2018 gold state over Cleveland. Think about that series.

Um, Cleveland should have won. Cleveland could have won. LeBron played the best game I've ever seen him play. Uh, they squander that one and then ended up losing in four. Um, but that first game was pretty close. Like to sweep somebody in the finals, you have to be so much better than them. Uh, 2007, St. Antonio over Cleveland's a good example. LeBron drags Cleveland in the finals. The team sucks.

St. Antonio's last really great spurs here of Duncan's prime. They kill him. O2 Lakers over the Nets. That was the last gasp of that awesome, awesome Shaq Kobe run. They had just snuck by Sacramento. There was some buzz with Jersey

that maybe watch out Jason Kidd and then the, the Lakers just killed him. Houston over Orlando, which was an upset. Houston wasn't even favored in this series, but that was yet another, it was like the J.R. Smith game. A fluky moment of Nick Anderson missing four free throws in a row and swinging the karma of that series in a way that I've almost never seen anything like that.

You really have to compare it. It was like that first Indiana New York game from a, that was so amazing that I actually think the series just swung. So anyway, they ended up sweeping. The Pistons killed the Lakers in 89 and that was a, we have arrived as the new champs. The Lakers were on their last legs in a lot of ways. They had some injuries. I don't think that necessarily should have been a sweep.

83 of the Sixers killed the Lakers and then pre-merger warriors killed the bullets. The Bucks killed, I think the bullets and then the Celtics, that was in 1971. Warriors were 75 and then the Celtics,'re one sweep during the Russell era was 1959 against Minnesota, um, in all of those cases, pretty great teams, um, see that piece. 18 series have ended four and one. And then if you're talking about like biggest odds and how it played out, um, just this century, teams that were favored by minus 400 or more.

Denver minus 430 and 2023, they went in five. Golden State was almost 1100 and 18, they swept. San Antonio's minus 450 and 07 swept. Lakers were seven to one favorites against the Pistons in 04 and lost the series four to one. The Lakers were minus 750 against the Nets, and they swept minus 2000 in 2001 against the Sixers. They lost the overtime game, won the rest. That was four one and then four two against Indiana, which was a dumb line. LA was minus 800 in 2000.

800 and 2000. Um, I think four to one is the move. I hate doing it. It feels very bandwagoning. It's, um, plus one 90. I think I'm Fandel. I think it's the move. I think Indiana gets one of these games.

Um, and maybe even on the road, but they're going to play zone. They're going to push the pace. They're going to do that thing that they love to do where they, they play with such a fast pace. You get caught up in it. I'm like, we could play this too. And now you're on a track meet with them. But I think big picture, this is just, just such an awful matchup for them because, um, their best thing is their guards and the ball handling goal. And okay. See that's their best thing is basically making life miserable for guards.

That's the number one thing. That's how they killed Minnesota with Mike Conley. That's why they struggled a little bit against Denver because Yocage basically became the guard. But just in general, this is like, OKC does everything Indiana does way better. And this for Indy to win even more than one game, they would have to have, win one of the first two, have a game three or game four. Because OKC is a little more vulnerable on the road because they're young. We saw that in the Minnesota series, the Denver series, even in Memphis when they fell behind by 20

plus. So I think, I think OKC takes one kind of haymaker from Indy in the first two games, maybe fights it off, kills them in the other game. Like kills, they'll win one of the first two games by like 28. Then game three, maybe that's the one Indy gets. Come out. Indiana is going nuts. Okay. See, he's feeling it a little bit. Indy's playing with crazy pace.

Then okay. See, he figures it out and they win in five. So I'm going to say, okay. See in five and it's boring, but that's my official 2025 finals pick. I'll be rooting for Indiana because I want this to be a long series. Anyway we're gonna take a break and come back with Pablo Torre. This episode is brought to you by Virbo Private Vacation Rentals. Virbo you can save over $200 on select homes when you stay for a week or more say if you wanted to

Go catch a couple baseball games in Boston take some time off work flying to being town watch the Sox play After that you can do anything. You can go book a Virbo and Cape Cod for a week The world is your oyster or your lobster roll or clam Trader. Really? It has shells gills and it's indigenous to the Atlantic. It's your edible metaphor of choice. They're crustacean crazy around there. Guess what? Since you stayed longer than a week,

you saved over $200. You know what that means? More shellfish. I love shellfish. Hope you're not allergic. Next vacation, stay longer and save. Make it a verbo. All right, we're taping this Tuesday morning.

Pa Votori is here. We're beefing. Big beef. What camera can I look into just to stress how angry I am? Make it a verbo. All right, we're taping this Tuesday morning. Pavel Torey is here. We're beefing. Big beef. What camera can I look into just to stress how angry I am? It's such a beef. Hello. We know a lot of the same people.

We have a lot of mutual friends. We have a disagreement about this Belichick thing and I thought it would be fun just to argue about it. Embrace debate like old school 2010 ESPN. Jamie Horowitz. Oh my God. Yeah. We can do PTI from hell and make Tony Kornheiser disappointed in both of us.

I do want to stress A, thank you for having me in your lovely studio. Yeah. Brand new. We got Sly. We got Swayze. Yeah. I wish I could say that I flew here for this specifically if people are wondering why I'm in LA.

I was here for other things, other fancy highfalutin things. You were here for an award show. I was here for this specifically, if people are wondering why I'm in LA. I was here for other things, other fancy, highfalutin things. You were here for an award show. I was here for the Peabody's. And so when I was alerted to the beef that I had yet to engage in. From a podcast that was six days ago? That's right. That nobody said anything? That's right. Not a great investigation by my part.

Yeah. Just to figure out when and where this was set. But I was there like pathetically like looking at my phone as Very serious journalism was honored and I was like totally distracted. So fuck you for that. Yeah, I'm sorry, you know ruining I'm sorry, I'm ruining the people. journalistic nomination of my life while being questioned for being a real journalist which is what bothered me. I know but let's talk about that, because I didn't feel like I was doing that.

I felt like I was questioning. Is this the table? This is the table, by the way, where Chris and Van were like, Bill. This is the table. This is the desk. It's funny, we're right in the scene of the crime. I was questioning the story more than the journalism,

but I think that was probably my disconnect with it, was you were doing real journalism. That's the point of your show. My thing was I thought it was stupid. And, well just like Belichick, ultimately he's a guy in his mid-70s. I guess he's never coaching in the NFL again at this point. He's dating this 24 year old.

And it kind of feels like he's lost the steering wheel a little bit. Well, you said a number of things that I think are very interesting. Right. And which is kind of why I've devoted a disturbing percentage of my life admittedly to this. Like Jordan Hudson, this is a sentence that I'm not proud of saying either, but Jordan Hudson tweeted or retweeted about me saying I need a hobby, a new hobby. She's not wrong. So you, so it's pretty polarizing even within your circles. Like why do you care about this so much? On the episodes we did, we've done two of them in a docu-style, you know way in which I basically unboxed journalism for friends.

They made fun of me. So this whole thing of like, I, of course, I'm here to acknowledge the absurdity of guy who won an Edward R. Murrow award for an episode about trans athletes also being the guy who has like this. You know, the reason I'm like a dog with a bone on this speaks to some of the some of the things you just said. And one of the things that I found baffling is that you just depersonalized Bill Balachek into a guy in his 70s.

I'm like, Bill, you more than anyone else know why Bill Balachek is fascinating. And why the archetype of him, who was the paragon of discipline, privacy, do your job, defensive strategy, public relations mastery. The guy had in his office at Gillette, sun, zoo, the art of war. You know, the war, the battle is won or lost before it even begins. Right.

And so just him as this unique archetype in American life, not just sports, but American life that you personally, of course, have a deep understanding of. Six Super Bowls. I'm told he's the greatest coach of all time. I think he is. Well, in that case, we should consider him significant enough to fact check, certainly interrogate when it comes to why is he acting the opposite from the way that Bill Simmons remembers him. Well, I think the thing for me is it felt like you did the podcast for whatever reason,

and it's a dopey thing, but I'm the same person who just did a rewatchables episode about Out for Justice with Steven Seagal. I was gonna say, you did criticize me on a Heaven Can Wait centric rewatchable. I did, a movie that came out in 1978. So, and also like when I was doing my mailbag once upon a time, when we talked yesterday, it's like, yeah, I used to obsess over a bunch of dumb shit

and try to answer questions like this. Well, you used to? Well, maybe I still do. We both take stupid things seriously. But I guess the difference here is I felt like you were then dining on it and doing a bunch of things. And that the media tour was what bugged me more, which I'm happy to discuss. So I have questions for you. One of the questions I have.

Because now I guess I'm part of the media tour. I was going to say, which camera can I break the fourth wall into? Why did it bother you? The media tour. The quote unquote media tour. And I can explain what that was even from my perspective, of course. Okay. Because I think if you're going to do a story like this, to me, there's kind of a fun element,

right? This is like in Nicole Smith. What was that guy's name? If one of your producers can yell the name of that older man in the wheelchair who looked infirm. It seemed like you were so serious about it. I was like, why is he treating this like Watergate? Ultimately, who fucking cares that this guy is dating somebody who's 50 years younger than him, who wants to be on his work emails? Is this actually an important story or is this just a fun story to get clicks?

I feel like that was my issue and that fair you are not alone in that yeah more than more than a fair it's I would say a Popular perception of what it is that I've done if you only consume it via the aggregated and this is now where I sound like you Yeah, I am bothered by the aggregation in so far as it did not lead people towards the story, which was exhaustively reported, citing 11 sources in which we are in fact laughing at the story and ourselves in so far as of course, part of what I do in taking stupid things seriously

is apply real award-winning investigative journalism, but to stories that real people find fascinating. Yeah. So the thing I'm bugged by with you beyond the... You're still bugged? Well, beyond the credibility. I thought this was like a beef squash. Well, we'll see by the end.

We'll find out together if the beef is a squash. The thing that I am baffled by more than bugged. I'm going to have David Chang come in and throw some kimchi at you. He has knives. He's cooking in the back. He's going to cook for us after this is done. Chang is very, I'm sure, bothered that the two of us are... No, not only is he not bothered. Bulgogi beefing.

First of all, Chang loves conflict. Yeah, he does. He's a dark guy with a lot of dark things inside him. But he's also like, you guys should just do a potter. It'll be fun. Okay, so to torture the metaphor here, right? The recipe of why I actually wanted to do this. Yeah.

It was important. It is important. So I'll just give you the very brief log line of this. Well, tell me what you think the most important thing is before you do the log line. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you think this is important because you feel like this guy is losing his marbles, but he's also in charge of a North Carolina football program. I think this is important because Bill Belichick himself is a significant figure and he is the highest paid employee in the state of North Carolina.

He makes $10 million a year in taxpayer money and also might be making that money back for the school. Well, we shall see. But did you watch a lot of North Carolina football last year? But this, this speaks to actually the real reason why I'm interested is that this is not merely a wow an age gap relationship story because frankly this is not my podcast is not a puritanical one in which I'm saying they should find someone more in their age range. That's not what it is at all.

You're not being the moral authority. No no no no. What this is though is to me a story in which one guy who we understood to be the actual archetype of one way of living life in America as a public figure. Yeah, deeply private. Do your job. PR fuck the media is now pivoting after he's thrown out of the NFL bill, as you well remember. after he's thrown out of the NFL bill, as you well remember, right, and has to launch a half dozen media enterprises that he hands to a woman that yes, he met as we reported on a plane when she was and this was not known until we reported 19 years old. And he says,

you're going to be my gateway into public life. And then the CBS thing happens. And that's when the floodgates open. So to me, there is a media story. There's a business story. There's a college sports story. There's a public money story. There's an NFL story. The question, by the way, of why didn't the NFL want Bill Belichick?

What we reported. Well, please, I don't want to filibuster the whole time, but like, why do you think Bill Belichick wasn't brought back? He ran his course. I think Kraft probably shit on him to the other owners. And the question of, if I bring in, you own a team, it's a $5 billion, $6 billion business. You bring this guy in who thinks he's better than you, who doesn't

want your opinion on anything. People just don't want to do that. So what I have been reporting is that it's also, it's also the case that people did not trust who Bill Belichick wanted to bring in to their building And so this question which you know of what you think that was the case a year ago or what we report in the second episode Is that and I found I mean this is there's a thing on the website of? England Patriots Gillette Stadium called a fan camp Okay, and we found

the Patriots, Gillette Stadium, called a fan camp. Okay. And we found Bill Belichick's seats. He has a row of seats right underneath the overhang near the 50 yard line. And they're his seats. And we found Jordan Hudson sitting there in November, 2021. So you could say- I can't think what the record was that year. It wasn't good.

Year after Mack Jones. It wasn't good. And so what I've been hearing parallel to this is that- Cam Newton season. I can't good. Year after Mac Jones. It wasn't good. And so what I've been hearing parallel to this is that- Cam Newton season. I can't remember. We weren't good. I refer to you on how she was to be you at that time. I've tried to block out the entire 2020s.

Yeah. I don't think about 2020s. Yeah. And by the way, parallel to this is that I've also heard that by the end, Bill Belichick wasn't exactly dialed in in the way that even people on the Patriots wanted him to be. And I mean from above and below. And so the question of, and this speaks to the larger question of Bill Belichick, the guy is a football genius without question.

Without question. But his coaching tree, right? Think about the branches on it. Who does he got? Seriously, who does he have? Well, he does a lot of his own shit. I think a lot of people have gotten jobs because of him. Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. But it worked. So I don't know what's the criticism. But this is the story. Is that Bill Belichick, freed from the NFL, in which he has been terrible at picking people around him to support him, who could stand on their own two feet. And in fact, are these remora fish, right attached to him and his business. So you don't like third place Miss Maine?

Well, second runner up, I believe. Second runner up, that's what we say. That's what we say in the world of beauty. Tough loss. I was rooting for. The betting markets. The betting markets. Were there odds?

I was, I was hoping that there would be a Bill Simmons super boost on Jordan Hudson. Same game partly. Could have done her with what other word? I would have tried that. But the question is, okay, this guy who teams already knew to be bad at developing, supporting talent from a just managerial perspective. I will name them so you don't have to, right? Matt Patricia, right? Josh McDaniels.

He was terrible. Josh's overqualified offensive coordinator, underqualified head coach. Your guy, Mike Lombardi. Yeah. I mean, he needed Bill to get this job at Carolina, to get a job of some promise. Yeah, but that's just people taking care of whatever.

I mean, we know a lot of people that do Yeah, but that's just people taking care of whatever. I mean, we know a lot of people that do that. No question. Maybe even in the media. Maybe even people that we both know or used to know and like. Right. So, no question. But the point is, when it comes to Bill Belichick now leaving the Patriots

and being trusted with staffing a building, teams didn't trust who was around him. And one of the people who was around him, I'm saying, as early as November 2021, and certainly by the time of the Ring camera, which was released in November 2023, but happened to be taped because, again, I took a stupid thing seriously and went to the Airbnb after summoning an army of geoguessers.

You know what a geoguesser is? Like these guys were like... I didn't listen to that podcast. I know. I don't think you listen to either podcast in full. Well, I'll say this. Can we just establish that? Well, first of all. It's okay. It's okay. But I just want...

I think the disconnect here is I didn't understand part of the point of this podcast is you will investigate something no matter how stupid it is. But also I will make the case as to why it's actually worth your time. You think this one wasn't stupid because of all of these things, the case you're laying out with Belichick. My thing is, where's the line when you deep dive something like this? Where's the line where it's like, all right, I probably shouldn't do that versus, no, this is fair game. Like, let's say Popovich. Like, Popovich has, I think, a stroke, right? in October, November. And then it's like, is he coming back? Is he not coming back? If you would just dove into that, why aren't they telling us the truth about Greg Popovich?

You could have done good journalism about it, but is that a story you would want to do? I would say no. And we have it, incidentally, although there have been rumors that I think both. So I think this is an important distinction, actually. And I thank you for letting me articulate what journalism even is anymore. Because you're right, like the Columbia School of Journalism might not co-sign everything I'm doing from a just topic selection perspective. Right.

But that's why I launched this independently. You know, like I wanted to pick the stories and investigate the stories and prove that these stories, according to my own curiosity in journalism, were worthwhile. So Popovich, for instance, yeah, I don't think that private medical records for a sick man alone justify a deep dive multi-part investigation. I would agree. But give every other ingredient that we've been talking about with the Bill Balachek story in there and it's like, yeah, I want to make a docu-style treatment of something that

legitimately, I think, has connections to real stories that we've been covering without full knowledge for years. And so a parallel one to this, by the way, and I'll bring it up because people have criticized me for it as well, is the question that was at the heart of the whole Stephen A. LeBron beef. That was the, that was the other time I felt like, ah. So to me, right?

I don't should, cause to me that's about Kobe's widow and maybe decisions that she made at the funeral and why are we talking about this? Well, I think to get to that impression, you gotta explain why it's plausible that that might be the takeaway from any understanding of this beef between Stephen A. and LeBron, what really happened. And so to me, like what I like to do is because I know that you know lots of stuff you don't

say into a microphone. Right. Me too. Well, you're doing the curious thing. And it's important for me to use this network of strange weirdos that I've gotten to know famous people and GMs and owners. And you do know a lot of weirdos. My Rolodex over, I mean, I started Sports Illustrated as a fact checker.

Yeah. I've collected since then through ESPN and otherwise, a bunch of people who, for some reason, trust me. And what I want to do is take these nuggets that you both, you and I both find fascinating. Yeah. And turn it into reporting in so far as I can actually report them out. And so the LeBron thing, LeBron not being a Kobe Bryant's memorial, right? On paper, in isolation as an aggregated headline is so beyond the pale, right? Like it's bad taste.

Anybody can mourn how they wish. And all of that is true, right? On some level in isolation, that's true. But to me, the story was, wait a minute, how is it that the most public celebration of a man's life at Staples Center, live Beyonce, Jimmy Kimmel, right? Every celebrity, every, it was a royal, it was a state funeral. And so the question of, well, not so there was reporting that he was there. And there was reporting specifically that he was there. That was strange because no one could provide any indication that there was consensus around it. It was all very confusing.

So the hook for you is you felt like this was a piece of the Stephen A. LeBron thing. It was a thing that everybody was arguing about in public, but no one had reported. Right. And so I was like, I'm going to report this out. That's when you're like, that's how it feels like an episode for me. And in the episode in full, just to be very clear on my show, I do explain all of the context and the reasoning such that people who are skeptical about my ethics or my motives understand why I think it's interesting.

And all I can do is hope that they find it persuasive. And if they don't, that's okay. The ethics are one thing, because you're doing real reporting. Yes. The motives are where you open yourself up a little bit, because from afar, somebody could look at it and go, you're just doing this because you want clicks.

Okay, so I think- And I'm sure you've heard that. But Bill, I think everybody who's ever made something online has heard that. It's true. It's like, unfortunately, the death of the classifieds in newspapers, the death of the cable bundle in television has led us as independent media people to have to subsist by basically

putting onto an altar your content and hoping that the sun god that is the algorithm shines upon us. The algorithm is getting worse. And it's worse. And so to me, it's like, yes, we have to play the game. And it's not look, it's not Hollywood where it's one for me, one for you. That's not what I'm doing here. I believe in every episode to a degree that is almost disturbingly sincere.

Yeah. But to me, the whole game here is if I'm going to do a Peabody Award nominated episode about why it is at the end of their lives on death row, all of these sports fans spend their last words, literal last words, shouting out their favorite sports team, which leads us to an episode in which we go to a Supermax facility in Texas

and a man named Charles Flores who was unjustly sentenced because of police hypnosis ends up being the character. Like that's not going to be as popular as the Belichick stuff or the LeBron stuff. You're doing the Belichick stuff to get people to listen to the... We need to be... That's how I feel with the Star Wars rewatchables setting up out for justice. I just want you to acknowledge that you just compared my Peabody nominated journalism to your Star Wars rewatchable.

I was using an analogy. Note it, I'm a Star Wars fed. So I have- No, I get it. So one for us, one for you. But it's not even specifically just that because it's not, look, you know, I'm trying to think of the Hollywood example.

Gosh. But wait, are there, I mean, are there ideas you went down the road with and you backed off? Absolutely. For whatever reason it must have been, right? Yes. So what are the reasons you back off? Because I don't think I could get it on the record.

I don't think I could report it. So even more troublingly, I think the question of like, what is journalism today? To me, the fundamental question, the difference and key distinction between gossip and journalism is that we are definitively saying we have reported this and we believe based on all of these sources and facts and bits of research that it's true. It's not, I heard this thing might be true, might not be.

No, we are rigorously investigating something in order to say, we are here to publish this as true. So for Belichick then, you're reporting, and you're trying to determine these things are true. So the things that are true are teams backed off from the NFL partly because of this weird Jordan Hudson situation, you believe? They were aware of this, had questions about the Ring Cam video. I don't think they knew necessarily that she was at a game in November of 2021, but I do

know that lots of people around the Patriots knew that, that she was around. See, I would say the thing that was more, I'm not to sidetrack you, but the thing that was more troubling with Belichick was the way he was doing that job. And I've talked about this in the pod where he's basically doing everything at some point because of your age does not become sustainable. Correct. And he's trying to do all the draft, all the free agency, every single aspect of everything and the proof that he couldn't do that was in all the moves from

basically like 2017 on with the roster, the draft picks, the free agent signings. It just felt like, and that was, I still felt like he was an excellent coach. But the other stuff was Submarine and the coach, which was him. And this is why I think this is a story. So I should say this on our call and we're going to jump around here. So forgive me. But like when you called me saying you should come on my show, I reminded you that I emailed you. Right. So the media tour, just to close the loop on that briefly,

I responded to incoming requests because people found the story fascinating. Because the New York Times, Vanity Fair, certainly every NBC, Good Morning America, everybody wanted a piece of the story. I mean, Belichick, my own, it was right hand. But it actually seemed like some people just took the story and didn't credit you for the reporting.

Also that. Also that. I thought that was an interesting wrinkle to it, where you started the ball rolling and then it just became its own story, but people would have mentioned the podcast. So part of what's weird about doing investigative journalism in this way on a podcast is that people sometimes

just assume that I am also simply aggregating. And so they're just facts that are exclusive to my reporting that people just started reprinting in papers of record. And I'm like, this is strange. Again, I asked for it. I'm doing podcast investigative journalism, but it's not, it's, it's, it's been funny to watch how that stuff gets That's the last seven, eight years thing. You think so? I do. I do. I think that's a... I think social media plays a big part of that.

The Apple News, where, you know, people just click, oh, what's that story? And like some pick a generic magazine and they basically just have the bones of a story. I think AI grabs some of that stuff too. Well, I know that all of this feels harder to fact check.

And so fundamentally for me, the question is, what am I fact checking? Is it interesting? Can I solve this mystery? Can I advance public knowledge, even if that knowledge is mostly interesting to sports fans who take sports very seriously? But politics are like this, by the way.

So there are lots of Trump stories, for instance, where the story itself is deeply stupid. Like the actual thing happening is stupid, but if you consider the people important, you're like an interesting development in our understanding of this very significant American. And that's my perspective on how sports is both smart and stupid.

And you know this. I'm in a building that is premised on your empire doing something very similar to that. Yeah, so I still am staring at you right now. I mean. I mean that is a great one. I feel many great Americans gazing upon me as I try to figure out, am I doing something that is worthy of attention or cravenly seeking it because I'm a creature of the internet who wants the algorithm to love me.

Right. I am not unselfaware about the way in which it's really hard to disentangle those two premises. But what I told you in the email was like, Bill, I think you'd be uniquely qualified to have a view on this. And it's because of everything we've gotten to, unfortunately, because at this table, while talking about heaven can wait,

you said I was pretending to be a journalist. So I didn't say, that's not what, you know what I meant though. Now I'm just making fun of you, I'm sorry. But my thing was, if you were approaching it like this was like important journalism, I just didn't feel like it was. But do you understand though, why the story is- I understand it better now, that's why I wanted to talk to you about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I get why you're doing what you're doing, but you have to understand how I was seeing it, where it was like, it just seems like you're thirsty and you're trying to get quicks and then doing a bunch of interviews about the podcast. And I like Belichick and there's a small piece of this that felt a little mean to me because I don't know what's going on with him. Because that's over here.

Shall we talk about what's over here? I think we should. I think this is kind of alarming how this has gone for the last couple months. And again, I mean, obviously I'm a lifelong Patreon fan. I've really admired everything he's built and stuff. And something about this makes me uneasy. I think this is really weird,

which I guess is the whole point of why you did the podcast. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. But I think there's other stuff that was weird that happens in sports where I'm like, eh. Maybe leave that on the pockets. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. But I think there's other stuff that was weird that happens in sports where I'm like, eh, maybe leave that on the side. So the question is whether, but you're making the fact that he's the highest paid employee in North Carolina, like those, all right, maybe. But what if I told you now, again, not to quote 30 for 30, you know, language back at you, what if I told you that Bill Belichick's own family has been deeply concerned about this?

What if I told you that his inner circle of actual coaches on staff, including a certain Mike Lombardi, is deeply concerned about Jordan Hudson and her presence in the building? Who's the one? Edelman or Gronk, one of those? Somebody said on a pod? They've all... Somebody who was kind of in the circle, talked about it being concerned. I thought that was, and then there was some Instagram stuff too with, uh, who is it like somebody's wife or somebody's. The people around Belichick professionally, personally, as well as the

administrators at North Carolina, their life behind the scenes has been shaped, reshaped, blown up by having to deal with Jordan Hudson. And when they hired Bill Belichick to this job, they thought they were getting New England Bill Belichick. They got, I cannot stress this enough, something like the exact opposite. When it comes to PR in this way is now the thing we're stressed out about.

This guy who could handle the media alone by saying nothing has this person who's on tape at CBS. And I can tell you, by the way, I don't know if I've made enough of a deal on my own shows about this. Wherever she goes. Shows? Well, what I'm trying to say is wherever-

You mean episodes. Episodes. Okay, I didn't know there was a show out. We're doing a spin-off. We're doing a spinoff. It's me stalking. How about Tori finds out what life is like in jail. That'd be good for algorithm. Yeah, it would. Yeah, and ironically it would work. But I don't want to do that. But what I'm saying is every time she shows up at an interview with Bill

like what she did on the pivot podcast. I'm so deep in the lore here. So forgive me if I'm just like. Part of what happened after my reporting was that North Carolina had to clarify. She doesn't work for us. She's not going to be around here. She is only handling Bill's personal stuff. And I ask you, right in this era, can there possibly be a distinction between in this era, can there possibly be a distinction between Bill Belichick person and Bill Belichick the face and head of North Carolina football? When you're promoting a book in which, nope, that's Bill over here, of course it's also

Bill Belichick, the North Carolina representative. And so the idea that there is any sort of dividing line, some wall between the two is part of the farce. And when it comes to her in interviews, what I was trying to say is everywhere she goes, CBS, these media ventures behind the scenes over that off season at NFL Films and Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

Yeah, blew up the hard knock steel. Everywhere she goes, there's a trail of wreckage that suggests that the man who was basically undefeated against the media and press conferences is not only losing the public relations war, he is self-destructive and he hasn't coached a game. And so behind the scenes, all these people are like, again, family coaches, people around the building that hired him. And again, the chancellor at Carolina wanted him.

A.D. Bubba Cunningham did not. That's his actual name? His real name is Bubba Cunningham. It's a bit on the nose. Sounds like a movie script about Belichick and A.D. Bubba Cunningham as an issue. A lot of the story is on the nose in terms of like, wow, it's really like that.

Yes, so there is a power struggle. But it goes back to the last couple of years of the paths when it felt like the wheels were starting to come off a little bit and they bring in Jared Mayo and, um, craft annoyance Mayo is the successor. And it's still on, on Belichick staff. And it seems like it's going to be one year, two years, three years, whatever it is, and Belichick stops talking to Mayo basically by all reports and it's just super weird. And at the same time, apparently, he's with this Jordan Hudson.

These are the things that are all happening outside of public view. Yes. Yes. When Kraft says- But I think it was weird with them. And look, I mean, Wickersham wrote about this in 2017. I got mad at my podcast about that. Because we're protective about the Pats, right?

And Wickersham's reporting was dead on. I've had them on many times to talk about it. But the Garoppolo thing, Alex Guerrero, there were all these things. Kraft versus Belichick. All these things where people were like, there's a problem, there's a problem. And everybody was like, we're fine, we're winning, we're fine. And then it all leads to the dynasty and Belichick writing a book where he doesn't mention Kraft.

And also the Apple TV documentary. That's on method that it's called the dynasty. Yes, yes, yes. That Apple documentary. In which it's, so the public relations war, right? There's Kraft, there's Belichick, now there's there's Jordan Hudson is everybody trying to control a story that has been deeply embarrassing for everybody involved and it reminds me of something that Seth wrote in his book. Seth quotes Bob craft saying. Bill Belichick was an idiot savant.

And I believe that the more I learn about Bill Belichick outside of football, there is this notion of a guy who is a total genius at football, who has proven in terms of who he surrounds himself with, the decisions he makes, how the people around him are afraid to deal with him, even as they are literally in the same room watching Jordan Hudson rolling their eyes, some of the coaches on staff.

Uh, I believe that there is a great deal of this man being a genius and also a fool. And if that feels rude because Bill Belichick is someone you revere, I just asked you to do the thing. Revere strong. But, but Jordan Hudson is trying to do this thing where it's like there's personal bill and professional bill. And for right now

I will do the same. Yeah football bill genius personal bill Otter superfund disaster and that's what the story is well, you could feel some of it last year with all the The media of stuff that he did we're all saying he was on like five six different things. Is it good in your view? of stuff that he did where all of a sudden he was on like five, six different things. Was any of it good in your view?

I thought there were some inside the NFL stuff that was interesting, but for the most part, he seemed to me this is a problem a lot of times when coaches do media for a year or two years, they don't really wanna say anything because they might be coaching again. And I thought he was very safe, which was, we talked to him about a podcast.

My fear was, you'd be too safe. Because we've seen that over and over again with people. That's why Doc Rivers was amazing to have on pods. Because he didn't know if he was coaching again or not. But he still said shit. He still was like the Doc that you would hang out with if you weren't doing a pod. I never felt totally that way with Belichick.

What I've been told from people who work for me, I mean, at this point, I'm talking about a half dozen humans that dealt with Bill and Jordan together at these media ventures, right? Yeah. I mean, I talked to 11 sources in total, but I'll be more specific to these media things that launched last off season. They explicitly encountered Bill Belachek and Matt Patricia using the media to audition to get back into the NFL.

And they were deliberately de facto tanking. No one understood why Bill Balachek in the pre-production meeting was one thing. And then on Mike, he was so bland as to destroy the very premise of why they were paying him all of that money. And it was very clear by the end, he and Jordan Hudson had a plan for what this was gonna be.

And throughout that, it was so bad as to, I mean, be admitted by the people who were responsible for the idea. Like talking to them now, they all know this was disastrous. And in fact, they found it fascinating that like, paid mangas on having Bill Belichick back. That was just announced this past week. I thought he was bad on the manny cast.

He's gone. He's off now. Where he was good was when it was talking about in the past, when he could talk about like LT, Ed Reed. And that's when he really opened up because those guys were retired and they weren't somebody he would potentially be coaching or coaching against, which I thought was planned. And where was long snapper monologue Bill Belichick, the guy who loved the minutia of like, oh, wait a minute, a left-footed punter? He's charismatic almost, right? The stuff of the specifics and the history of football.

He's so good at. But what we saw was a guy using the media to get back into the NFL. And now at Carolina, Openly using it. I mean, so I would say even frustratingly and almost irresponsibly, given that he was entrusted as the host of shows. In one case with Matt Patricia as his co-host speaking to like the remora fish kind of dynamic of like neither of them wanted to be good at media.

They wanted to be NFL coaches. I thought there was an idea for him if he really wanted to have an awesome podcast and committed to it. I think it would have been amazing. What's your pitch? No, I just think when he was doing all these different pieces of what he was doing, but what he really cared about was the NFL Films footage, the breakdowns,

kind of teaching people about football and what was happening in the moment. I think it would have been really good, but I also don't feel like he wanted to do it. He wasn't gonna talk about weaknesses. He wasn't gonna be like, here's the problem with Trevor Lawrence. Here's why he wanted to do it. He wasn't gonna talk about weaknesses. He wasn't gonna be like, here's the problem with Trevor Lawrence. Here's why he struggled for five years.

Look at his mechanics. Here's how I would attack him if I was playing him. He wasn't doing any of that. So once I realized that, like in mid-September, I was like, I'm not consuming this anymore. But I think, you know, you could argue it worked. Like he got like four or five different paychecks, right? Like it seemed like his goal was to make a ton of money for one year and then come back and get an NFL coaching job in February.

And that did not happen. Well, in fact, the contract with Carolina has this fascinating buyout clause that just passed. So congratulations to Bill Balajek for not exercising his $1 million buyout clause to get out of Carolina. It dropped after June 1st from $10 million to $1 million buyout clause to get out of Carolina. It dropped after June 1st from $10 million to $1 million because he was trying to engineer an escape hatch. If the NFL said, you know what, we watched a half dozen Bill Belichick media ventures in which, by the way, the COO of Bill Belichick Productions is Jordan Hudson.

So is that your reporting? That was out there. That was on LinkedIn. That was her on her bio being like, I'm the CEO of a company that's not incorporated as an LLC anywhere, but was de facto the person you had to negotiate with. And in fact, Bill Belichick requested after calling her brilliant to various media partners, hire her for six figures. Like this was not just she's the girlfriend and she's very young, it's she's running the business and his, even more crucially, his public persona, which is the key evolution here.

Private man becomes public figure and how he does it is so illustrative of, again, all of these industries, media, business, college, the NFL, on and on and on that we've been talking about. Can we go big picture on journalism stuff? Please. Because these were your bones initially. Where'd you go? You did Columbia grad? No, I went to Harvard and I was a-

Where'd you go to grad? Or you didn't? You just went right in. I went to the Sports Illustrated Fact Checking Department after college. My origin story is that- Well, I just remember hearing from you when we were doing Grandland

and you were doing Jeremy Lin stuff. And I was like, who's this guy? And then it was like, he's 23. And I was like, Jesus. It was one of those. It was one of those. Frank Isola still, you know, makes fun of me because I was the guy, like with this story, who emerged kind of out of nowhere for a bunch of people and had these scoops that were beating

the certainly for Jeremy Lin, like the New York media ecosystem, but also the national. Cause we had Kang at Grand Lin who was doing great stuff and you were doing great stuff. And it was like, the two of you felt like you kind of owned the story for, I don't know how long was that story a month? It felt like- It felt like two years.

It felt like it's still going for me actually. No, it was two weeks and change in terms of his actual run, but in terms of his like actual significance as a figure. Yeah, a month, a couple of months. But Kang was writing, I think very thoughtful, like some reportage, but like a lot of essayistic stuff. And I was the guy who had the Jeremy Lee. Wired in. Yes, because again, I have this weird Rolodex of people. He was a freshman when I was a senior in college.

Right. because again, I have this weird Rolodex of people. He was a freshman when I was a senior in college. Ryan Fitzpatrick was there when I was there. One of the first interviews I did in college, I was covering the heavyweight crew team and I interviewed then Olympic rower, Tyler or Cameron Winklevoss. I don't remember which one I interviewed. Social network guys?

Yes. Wow. One of the Winklevi, one of my first interviews. Winklevi. So anyway,'t remember which one I interviewed. Social Network guys? Yes. Wow. One of the Winklevi, one of my first interviews. Winklevi. So anyway, the point being, I went to Harvard, I wanted to go to law school, I did the thing where I had a panic attack taking the LSAT because I wanted it too much. And you had a panic attack? Yeah, man.

Like for like an actual one? I need I need there's an Asian person in here and I just need them to affirm me as somebody who is reasonably having panic attacks during tests. I need, I, yes, yes. But you were taking the test. Yeah, yeah. I don't think that's ever happened. The only time, I don't think that ever happened to me taking the test. Probably because I felt like it probably wasn't going to turn out that well.

I was going to say Holy Cross playing, I don't know, like beer pong. You didn't like have a... I had two-five freshman year. Hahaha! Wait up though. Oh, God. Uh, yeah, look, I care deeply about school. So you're gonna be a lawyer or like what? There's an alternate world in which I am a lawyer right now.

So if you don't have a panic attack during the LSATS... I'd probably go to a law school that I had dreamed of. And I never do journalism full time because I did not. First one of my family born in America, parents from the Philippines, like structure and a roadmap towards American success in some conventional graduate school way was absolutely the gravitational force in my life. And because I failed, not failed literally, but like because I bombed a test, which is a nightmare for me, I had to figure out what do I do in this gap year?

And in that gap year, I said, the thing I've been doing for fun this whole time is writing sports. And I'd been in Internet Sports Illustrated because I love sports and have always been a sports fan and nerd and fan of writing. I mean, I'm also somebody who read Sports Illustrated growing up and like worship these long form bonus writers.

So fact checking Gary Smith and Scott Price and Tim Layden and all of these guys, Tom Verducci, like that was my job and I nerded out on it. I had to cross out every word in their stories to make sure it was true. What an incredible like dissection of how to do this job at the highest level. And so for me... When did you go to ESPN though?

2012, the fall of the Jeremy Linear. ESPN.com or man? Magazine slash dot com but Chad Millman... I was doing five jobs. I don't have a lot of long-term memory from that era. We were living very different distances at ESPN. Mine was just tired all the time. That was one of my existences.

Two small kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, yeah. But to be clear, I also grew up reading you. Thank you. I mean, I didn't say it was good. It was really good. Genuinely though, like the idea of, wait a minute,

I could evolve a medium into something that feels more like me and my sensibility, like the progression of what I went through from like Harvard to sports illustrated to ESPN to getting onto around the horn. RIP and then PTI and then doing like cable political news now and doing other stuff like I've been waiting to do something that feels more like my own sensibility. And so to get from wherever I started, guy who didn't want to do this professionally to guy who cannot imagine what it would have been like if I had

gotten the score I wanted on the LSAT, in which I'm not in this room right now, terrifying sliding doors possibility that I never got to do this. Why couldn't you have done what you want to do with the ESPN daily? I don't understand that part because that was a daily podcast with a lot of resources So did you like make a mistake with how you attacked it or you felt like it was too entrenched with the idea? I wanted to do as soon as I realized what So to credit the New York Times daily as like the original sort of format that ESPN daily Essentially looked at and said we want one of those. The idea of a two-way conversation

into which you slide docu-style elements in your view tape, scoring, editing structure, all stuff you know from documentaries, that was so eye-opening to me as a host and producer that I realized I wanted to do this for stuff that I reported instead of stuff that other people did. So you just basically have reporters coming on and you're just setting them up and they're talking about their reporting and you're basically just a

cruise director. Yeah, cruise director. Uber driver. It was like, but by the way, and part of it is. But why couldn't you have changed that though? So I I really liked doing that because I was truly like getting to do a, in my ambition, an even better execution than the written piece was because I would pick, like this story could be something that's three dimensional and has like interview tape and can make this into a docu-style. I started calling these things, and this is very lame, but documentaries, like conversations that also felt like documentaries. And that was the sort of medium that I still work in now. But I found it to be something that left me too busy

to do the passion projects where I was like, man, this format is so perfect for me. If I can evolve it and report these myself and being a cruise director in which I have to bring energy and smiling and selling stuff that sometimes I didn't want to do as much as the other stuff. That became something that I would have done, frankly, if, I think, to be very blunt, ESPN cared more about it. Right. And it was just sort of like...

But in their way, they care about it because they gave it resources, but that doesn't mean they cared about it in the correct way, I would say. I believe that they liked the idea of it. gave it resources, but that doesn't mean they cared about it in the correct way, I would say. I believe that they liked the idea of it. They were like, no, this is it, and you have resources for it, do this. Yeah, and by the way, it no longer exists, right? So Mina did it, then I did it, and then there was a rotation of people who did their best with a staff that was overworked, and in the end, it's not around anymore because I don't think they ever fully understood the potential.

And so for me- You're saying Ace Payne didn't understand the potential of a podcast? In that way our lives are quite similar. In that way you and I are not so different. No, it's crazy. It's crazy to see what has left ESPN in the world of podcasting from a pure, cynical, self-interest perspective. The podcast you have now, did you spitball with Rydeholm at all?

Yeah. Oh, Eric and now, did you spitball with Ride Home and all? Yeah. Oh, Eric and I, I mean, look. Cause what you're doing, I don't know if he told you this, but he wanted me to do this show in 2009 called Bill Simmons Investigates. And I still have the email. He sent me this long email. He was basically like, we're taking your mailbag

and just investigate the dumbest things. And I think this could be a TV show. And at that point, I kind of knew where I wanted to do Gray Lane, I think this could be a TV show. And at that point I kinda knew where I wanna do greatly and I wanna do a bunch of- I didn't wanna do a TV show. But I always thought it was an interesting idea and it was a great email. And I didn't know if that was what led to part of

what you're trying to do. Not the idea, but a piece of it. Eric mentioned this to me, like maybe a year into the show. Cause it was a great idea. Dude, the whole idea of using journalism to solve stupid and or serious and our smart, funny mysteries is, it's funny, like I talk to people, like I'm using journalism

to solve mysteries and some journalists will look at me and be like, you mean do journalism? And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm kind of just rebranding what journalism is. But that's kind of the point. It's a great, I mean, look, my brother helped me come up with my younger brother who is not sports fluent really at all, except Tottenham Sports, he loves Tottenham football. He helped me come up with the name Pablo Torre Finds Out.

And I think that only once the name crystallized, did it become clear that this was a through line through my curiosity? And so the whole idea of, yes, I'm going to investigate something, solve a mystery, that man, I think the name ended up crystallizing the ambition in a way that I only realize in retrospect. But I would have loved to have subscribed to Bill Simmons Investigates, in which I don't know what mysteries you would have done. I don't know how I could have done it for ESPN. I don't know how I could have written my column.

I can tell you that this thing is my second child, this show. I think that's the way you have to do it. Honestly, that's the way you have to do anything. It's probably unhealthy, honestly. But the Belichick story to me is such a thin slice of my brain, but the thing that everybody wants to talk about. And meanwhile, I have these other things that I'm working on right now that I find to be, in many ways, so much weirder and more important. But by the way, I. I reached out to you. When we did the Lebron tape.

The next video to recruit Lebron, the Sopranos secret video. I already knew that story though, but I, I got the tape bill. You can actually watch the video. You can see James Gandolfini and Edith Alco in this weird apartment acting. Like a super sweet 16 video for LeBron James at the behest of James Dolan in which the next face you see after they play this scene in which by the way, yes, turns out the soprano subreddit was very excited about this. They're alive. Like they're in the cinematic universe somehow looking for an apartment. The soprano subreddit is still going? I mean as a metaphor maybe for the topic at hand. Yes. I didn't even know it existed.

I've been to black and still went going. It sounds great. So the point being though that like that video in which by the way the first face you see in this episode and we got the whole video is Donald Trump. James Dolan assembles a murderer's row of people. And in that list, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Harvey Weinstein. Like, you see all of it. And then we also got the... Harvey Weinstein. I mean...

Wow. Yeah. We also got... My favorite part is that they also, and no one had known this before, they did versions of this for Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh. And so we have the alts where it's like the same script, but they swap out the names. And it's just like the comedy of again, behind the scenes. How does the team that has everything, Laura LeBron James. And the reason I reached out to you was that you've long been on this thing

with the Knicks and LeBron where the Knicks messed it up. Well part of it was, I think they, Donnie Walsh was running it. He was in a wheelchair. He was in a wheelchair and they wheeled them in and it, and it just was, wasn't great. Well, I think they were like, wait, this guy's running the team. He seems old and weak. But the missing piece is that enrolls Donnie Walsh in this contingent. And again, LeBron has everybody visiting him in this hotel and this, sorry, this building.

And into the boardroom, it's these delegations. The SUVs roll up and it's the Clippers and it's all these teams, right? Sterling. Didn't really win the room over. Did not. It was tough for him. Did not. But into the room, I walked in New York Knicks

and the lights darken and they press play. And this video starts. And so the missing piece was like, what's it actually like to have seen this? What I can tell you is that after I published the episode, people in the Bronze Camp were like, thank God people finally understand what that was like. They didn't have the tape either. But again, because I'm a kind of unhinged dog with a bone on these like sports culture mysteries,

I take it as a point of pride that I got to finally close the loop on one of these ongoing, yeah, like urban legend, but actually real stories. So like the lottery stuff, the frozen envelope, have you done that one yet? So I've been doing reporting around this. I'll spoil a little bit of it.

I just know that there was one NBA owner I talked to recently who was absolutely convinced this is rigged. It was the easiest one to rig because it was seven envelopes. I studied it. I remember doing a mailbag thing about it at some point. I studied it. There was one that seemed a little bent but at that footage was really grainy and The the way apparently he could have done it if you were gonna do it

I don't even know if that you could do it and but by the way would be Massive fraud and a whole bunch of terrible things that come out of it But if you froze one of the envelopes and made them Extremely cold and your finger like you can see his hands going in there and if you just felt the one and you would know that's the one that's how you would do it. I think with now at the ping-pong balls I don't know how you would do it. Well I think they're still, well on the frozen envelope theory I talked to David Falk who was as you know Jordan's agent, Ewing's agent also and I asked him about NBA conspiracies specifically that and the gambling you know, alleged suspension Michael Jordan, you know, which you've talked about also endlessly.

It's very surreal, by the way, to get these conspiracies directly from you at this table, having heard you. Well, those are, I mean, those are the two most famous ones. But so I asked David Falk about them. He's the agent for both men, a unique perspective. And he says the Jordan one, that's bullshit. Doesn't make any sense. But the Ewing onewing one he says I could kind of see it and I'm like okay and so we have this conversation and the whole thing about conspiracies in the NBA and in life and the trigger conspiracy bill by the way I've noticed right now I felt

the temperature yeah hair standing on my arm the barometric pressure in the studio has has shifted. They didn't realize he was gonna show up today. It's an honor to meet you, Conspiracy Boat. He's right here. The thing about NBA conspiracies and conspiracies in politics and life is that the difference between truth and plausibility is an interesting distinction.

Because if you have either truth or plausibility, people care. Yeah. And so now we've come all the way back around to the difference between gossip and journalism, between clickbait and something that's popular, between algorithms and curiosity. Like yes, these are hard things that have eaten the brains of everybody in America because there are incentives to be dishonest in the service of some larger conspiracy. But sometimes, sometimes there is truth and that's what journalism is trying to get to.

Sometimes you learn things as the years go on and you get a tidbit and you go, and then it makes you revisit. Like for me, I forget when Shaq did this. Shaq told the story, might have been on a podcast, about how David Cern asked him if he wanted to be warm weather or cold weather before the lottery. And he said warm, and then Orlando, and he's like, just, that's something that happened. So then you hear that and you're like, wait a second. And now you have to go backwards and revisit,

especially 84, or 85, the lottery. So then you hear that and you're like, wait a second. And now you have to go backwards and revisit, especially 84, or 85, the lottery. I think that- It's by far, if you look at all the teams, by far, you into the Knicks was the best case scenario for them. The Jordan one, here's the part that's never added up. Yeah. And if I had to put a ratio on it, I would go 80-20.

I think he actually, like, there was no chicannery. He just, he was upset about his dad and retired. Every story about this dude, which we revisit now because we have to argue about the goat contractually, all of us, like once a month. Every story is about what a homicidal competitor he was. The most competitive guy ever. Competing on everything. Being in the airport waiting for bags and he would pay off the baggage handler because he had to win that badly.

And we're all supposed to accept that he just shut that off and left basketball after he'd won three straight titles because he had nothing left to prove. So were you homicidally competitive or are you the kind of guy who can just shut it off because you have nothing left to prove? I've never reconciled those two things.

I think that is one of the things that's most fascinating big picture about sports to me. Yeah. Is that here you have the greatest winners, right? So we start with Balachek, we get to Jordan. The greatest winners who have assembled everything that everyone else lusts after.

Yeah. And still there are these gaping holes in what makes them feel fulfilled. Right. And that to me is why sports is both the perfect metaphor for everything else. It's also just on its own fascinating. And the Jordan stuff. I mean, look, I think that when it comes to, I'm the type of guy who found this is this is the other story that I did, where people were like, this is beneath you. And I'm like, I got bad news for you. This is eye level for me. For months, right? I'm seeing these stories about Marcus Jordan dating Larsa Pippen.

And I'm like, on one level, unbelievably superficial, empty, vacuous tabloid trash. For someone who's an NBA fan, who grew up watching the Bulls, the idea that Scottie Pippen's ex-wife is dating Michael Jordan's son and everybody around them is like having to deal with this. And on top of it, Pippen and Jordan had the fallout after the last dance. There's some layers. Exactly. And so the timeline was not merely, wow, interesting through the lens of history, actively contentious now, informing our understanding of how Michael Jordan operates,

how Scottie Pippen operates, who cares about what? The power dynamics on a team being relitigated decades later in public through their loved ones and former loved ones. So what I did was, and this is again my insanity, is that I listened to every episode of the podcast that Larissa Pippen and Marcus Jordan were hosting together, which very few people remember.

How many episodes was that? I think they did about a dozen. It was called Separation Anxiety and it was horrible. You listen to all 12 episodes of that? I'm a journalist. Oh my, were you doing other stuff? Were you playing like video games? I knew you just concentrate on that.

That sounds horrible. Just know that parenting a child while having that in the background is probably something I'll get sued for by my daughter. Yeah, yeah, fair. But what happened was we did all of that. And then the coup de grace was I invited Marcus and Larsa together onto my show and interviewed them

and got to talk and confront them about this story. And it resulted in a number of New York Post headlines in which they called me miserable and that I was unfair to them and all that stuff, which is okay because they shouldn't necessarily like what I have to say to them. But the question of is it true and interesting and significant for a certain quadrant of people

that actually is in my audience? I think that's kind of, that's what I enjoy. Is like, yes, it is kind of envelope pushing to take this seriously, but if I can prove to you that it's worth your time, then I think everybody got what they wanted here. So you're basically taking somebody's on a text ride with four of their buddies who love sports and there's this large, some pimp and things happening like, what the fuck is going on with this?

That's an episode for you. For me, group chats and texts from people who are like, I don't know if I can say this or I heard this is a huge source of just incoming ideas. And the question is always, can I do this responsibly and accurately and rigorously such that I can still plausibly be considered a journalist by the Murrow and Peabody people while also satisfying my friends, who I use as like these proxies for my audience. Like I like to take stories seriously, but not myself so seriously.

And that's why I'm here, is to say like, yeah, please do laugh at me. Like I am not here to be insulated from criticism. Just know that I am so bizarrely prepared to discuss it if you have questions that all I ask is the ability to explain maybe what people did not hear or listen to because it got clipped out because that's the game too. And I am not fighting it. I just want people to look at the stuff in totality. So if somebody wanted you to do an episode

about how Kornhäuser didn't leave his house for four years other than to play golf once a week, do you bat that around with somebody else or is it just like an instinct, like I can't do that, that's not gonna work as an episode? The first question I ask myself is, does voice modulated Bill Simmons still discernibly sound like Bill Simmons? Bill Simmons, AI in French.

Can we get you a spot shadow? Different languages? It's going to be great for a lot of us. I can't wait. We turned down, I mean, not that this is a noble position, but we turned down, there was an offer from a tech company that will remain nameless, to like, hey, you have an archive of shows with people talking in this conversational way. Can we pay you to train our AI bots? We were like, no. Yeah, that sounds no, you can't. And by like parallel to that is this media tour

thing. Like Harvey Levin and TMZ asked me to talk to him about Belchick. And I said, I don't think I can do that. I think my standard for the lowest brow program I can do is the Bill Simmons show. And so that's why that was a dig. We were getting along so well. What the hell? This is a higher end of show. What you've done at Grantland wasn't that fun? That's that's the spirit of what I do is honestly like we have so many friends in

common because your coaching tree, to now do the compliment thing, right? Your coaching tree on my belly checks. It's a tree, I don't know what. What kind of tree is that Bill? I don't know. It's a lot of great people have passed through my life. And I have become friends with them

in part sometimes because I first encountered them through things that you had made. And we then went on to become friends who then text me what the fuck's happening with you and Bill and which I say I don't know I'm not sure he knows what my show is but I'm happy to explain it but then also it is the recognition that who you choose to surround yourself with is kind of the through line in all of it. In the reporting I did with Belichick, in why I'm here with you, and to the degree that, you know, the media is a bizarre, chaotic industry

that I now am trying to navigate as an independent training wheels entrepreneur with a show. Yeah, man, I'm like, I could use good ideas, I could use help, I could use people just saying, hey, they do stuff that is like this that you might enjoy. So you getting pitched ideas and concepts and you're like, eh, it doesn't pass. Ah, maybe.

Like what's like the incubation process? I am, my staff makes fun of me. Like we have a- You have a staff? We, you do realize you have two producers over there who are like- No, but I mean, what's the staff? I mean, we have them in the credits of every Friday episode in which we shout them out, but I tried to make- Is it like researchers?

Like all kinds of people? We have a couple of people who are devoted. Everyone does more than one thing, but yes, I wanted to make a mini newsroom. Because what I can't do is we do three episodes a week- Should be called Pa Votorio's deep pockets. I mean, Dan Lebatard's deep pockets, man. I'm using his money to fund a weird project that no one really asked for. But is the thing that I'm like trying to make sustainable.

I am somebody who wanted to hire people to simulate what feels like a modern newsroom, tongue in cheek, but not in which. Yeah, I get tips. But more than that, I'm like perpetually pressure testing these ideas that I have. So my phone, my Slack channel is just an endless stream of me pitching my staff ideas. Like, I think we should do this, but we got to make these calls. Can we do that? I found this weird nugget buried in this other thing. There was this bankruptcy filing. This is a bread crumb for a future episode. There's this bankruptcy filing that I think everybody would find fascinating if I can get to the bottom of it.

These are my skill. If I have one is hopefully trying to discern whether someone who's not me would find something that I find interesting. Chang's golf career. You know, I wanted to do when you got, you, were you with him at Augusta? Chang was supposed to be, I was with Chang. Chang was, his dad wanted him to be a PGA golfer. I was walking around with like torn rotator cuffs getting like Tommy John.

I mean, he'd film 35 straight weeks of Netflix episodes and his body like literally broke down. I wanted to do the episode. Uh, and I've talked to him before about this and I'll just spoil it. Cause you have first dibs. Uh, yeah, like the secret world of food at Augusta beyond like the stand in front, but like the secret, you know, I'm talking about. They don't, they just don't do, I mean, I guess you could, they're not, you're

not going to find any of that from Augusta. Oh, that this is why, this is why I do what I do. Oh, so you think you could. I think I'm going to wear a trench coat from Augusta. Oh, this is why. Yeah. This is why I do what I do. Oh, so you think you could. I think I'm gonna wear a trench coat and David Chang's gonna be the top part and I'm gonna have a mech suit underneath. Where like Mission Impossible, like a David Chang mask.

One ticket please. Yeah. And we walk into Augusta together. Yeah, man. I'm, yes, by the way, I love doing stuff and this is gonna sound very retrograde and edgier than I think. I love doing stuff that people can sound very retrograde and edgier than I think. I love doing stuff that people don't want me to do.

Like if I find something interesting and the people in charge of it are like, no. Now I'm like, well, what do you got to hide? Why don't you want people to know that there's a secret special like food court for rich people, the Illuminati in the back of Augusta. You know, it would have been a good episode that you can't do now? I was obsessed with this for like two years when Stern was commissioner. Apparently at every NBA party, I think I've talked about this,

he loved pigs in a blanket, and they had to be at every NBA function and party, and there was this one party where they didn't have NBA pigs in a blanket, and he freaked out and was really upset about it, and I was like, this sounds amazing. I don't know if that's quite an episode, but David Stern's obsession with pigs in a blanket

feels like the formation of something. I hesitate to inform you that I would have greenlit that. I don't know if there's a note, it feels like there needs to be a second piece to it. Well, what kind of pigs in a blanket? We're talking about the microwavable kind. Does David Stern want like super bespoke like... So somebody told me that and then it like, I don't know, nine months later I was at one of those functions and they had pigs in a blanket and I was watching him eat it and I was the most

riven I've ever been in my life. I was like, he's eating the pigs in the blanket. It's true. And there's a metaphor there for Scott Foster somehow. I was like, yeah, you got a. By the way, I I'm sure you've had this experience, but like when you do stuff that the NBA doesn't love sometimes. Oh, I hadn't had that experience ever. Never.

Yeah. The number of calls you get, like just even uttering Scott Foster in this microphone, I'm going to like Tim Frank, if you're listening, I'm sorry that I did this, but like, yeah, man, I would love to make a pigs in a blanket metaphor for, uh, MBA officiating and the dial they turn to get an outcome, not explicitly to conspiratorially rig a game, but just like more scoring, less scoring, more fouls, fewer fouls, just like big picture stuff. This has been out there for a bunch of years now

and I think people are at least a little bit aware of it. You know, there's a reason they released the ref assignments the day of the game. There was also ref stats that I think some gamblers took advantage of in the 2000s. But just in general, teams can complain. This is the big thing people need to understand about officials.

Teams can complain about how a game was called. They'll send the things and then the league will tell the officials for the next game, like they're getting away with too much stuff. They can't do that. Or they'll give them some sort of directive that will then shape the next game. And it's one of the reasons the games will feel a little differently. Like if Neesmith, and we're taping this for game one of the finals, if Neesmith is just hounding SGA and he's just bumping them and touching them and it's like crossing the line, but they let it go, the league will then tell the rest for the next game, like, here's footage of Neesmith, you can't let him do this.

Point of emphasis. That's the good version of this. There might be some more sinister versions of it too. So I think it's true. In the past, maybe not now. Well, I think it's inevitable that the NBA, because you officiate games at the end differently than you do at the beginning, is inviting an arbitrary, I know it when I see it, standard,

which is up for interpretation, judicial interpretation that varies depending on what the instructions are that game. The thing though about, and I love this, this is a thing I have looked into and that I want to do something with, but again, I'm happy to just talk about it a bit. The complaints that teams make to the league. Pointed with video.

What I've been told is that the teams that complain the most often, I'll name two of them, I'm curious if you're surprised. One is the New York Knicks. The other is the Oklahoma City Thunder. Just like which teams file the most complaints because of stuff that causes them to think we got jobbed and it's, I'm told reliably those two teams are among the most offended and yeah, liable to file paperwork. Conspiracy Bill was on alert for game six of Nick's Pacers.

And it was interesting. They let Brunson and Halliburton get manhandled the whole game. So they basically just, because Halliburton was dripping the ball up and their bridges and in and over were like clubbing him as he's just dribbling a straight line. I was like, Jesus. But they were just as physical with Brunson. I think it's better. I think social media has really evened it out because the darkest moment other than Donahue and other than the artest melee of the 21st century for the NBA, I

think was that oh six finals and how appalled everybody was by how I was officiated. Sure. And I think Wade shot 25 free throws in game five, but it just, it didn't sit right. Cuban staring down Stern after a loss, which has never happened before since in the history of the league. Him just from the court staring at him, stink eye.

Do you miss David Stern? I do. I think he was starting to really lose it at the end and it was time for him to retire. And obviously people come and go. From the planet or for jobs and from the planet. There was something about how he shepherded stuff that I thought was maybe it belonged to its own era.

He just didn't put up with shit. I think Adam Silver has succeeded in ways that are indisputable financially. Not with this last CBA. Although maybe that's not his fault. Wait, what's your take on tripling the CBA? No, it's not the money they made. It's what it did competitively to the league with all the aprons. I think it's really going to badly fuck up the league.

So to that point, by the way, as we're looking at the second apron, basically doing something that the NBA has always needed more of, which is reduce the platform in the most expensive settings for superstars to be even more important, right? Like that's the thing about Second Apron and Adam's tenure, I think, is that it's just very funny that he learned at the knee of David Stern and operates behind the scenes so differently. And I think David Stern, what would WWDSD, what would David Stern do, is a question I ask myself very often when it comes to- It's funny when people get to that point. Because I actually think Belichick was at that point. How people put together their roster was almost like, would you sign this

guy for 85 million? Well, would Belichick do that? Probably not. And he had hit that point at least through the mid 2010s and then it kind of faded away. But I think Stern was, for the most part, had really good instincts. I thought near the end, I thought he'd lost. I will never understand the OKC Seattle thing. Oh, sure, when he was running the team? Or when he relocated the team? No, when he let the OKC guys buy Seattle to steal them and steal them away.

I'll never understand why the conflict of interest with the New Orleans owning that franchise. Ask if all reasons remain just an amazing thing that I still marvel at, man. Yeah. Wait, we don't have a lot of time off because you got to fly to LA. I have more topics for you though. We had Todd Kornheiser. Yeah.

Because I've never really talked about him on a podcast with somebody who's actually worked with them and spent real time with them, because I think it's hard, he's a hard person to explain. And it was interesting to think about him in the context of around the horn ending, whether that show would go to an hour. And I heard those rumors and I was like, there is no way in a million years, Tony will go to an hour unless they pay him some ungodly sum. And even then, I don't even think he'd wanna do it.

Dollars per minute is the stat that Tony Korn has or values. Yeah, he's like, I'll do it, but here's the prep. But anyway, you know, I first did TV with him in 09, and I'm sure you remember losing your PTI virginity as well when the date, the day I was September 09 When were you oh my gosh, I think I filled in This must have been five or six bill. I'm old now, man. I don't remember the exact 2010 somewhere

Yeah, exactly. No, no, no, it would have been 2013 14 probably 2014 so I did Four days I flew to DC. I'm still writing my column and I was completely terrified. And Kornheiser basically walked me through like a young puppy on a leash on the sidewalks and helped me kind of, and just sold everything I did. And by the end of it, I was like, all right, I think I actually understand the mechanics of this now. Now it's going to take years to figure out how to do it. But I get it.

It was like one of the best educations I ever had in four days. He's my goat. Tony Karaniser is to me the greatest of all time. And I say that not because, whatever, he would appreciate that. I say that because when it comes to a teammate on TV who presents as very hard to win over.

Right. Once he agrees that he can trust you, Yeah. he is the best salesman of the person across the desk from him in the history of television. And he's smart and he's funny and he's quick. And for all of the things we've been saying, the through line of this episode is also what happens when you get older. His fastball is still humming, man. I know it's I don't like when he says like,

oh no nobody wants to see me on TV. They want to throw me over the side. They want to get rid of me. I'm like, Tony. You're saying that in 2015. And he's wrong about that. He is so sharp still and in not a I'm grating on a curve because he's like my TV grandpa sort of a way, but merely in the way of I've done a lot of TV at this point and he is still so fucking good at it and see that's the age difference between us because I was called him uncle Tony I'm Graham and you called him grandpa because we're a different generation yeah he went to my wedding. I'm not surprised. I invited him and he said, I'm going to leave at 9.30 and he left at 9.29.

And- I'm amazed it wasn't 9.30 exactly. Well, so he went around and shook everyone's hand because it was also kind of like, he was the guest. He was the celebrity guest. Yeah. And everyone loved it. Tony Kornheiser to be as just what he is in real life is so much...

Anyway, he doesn't want me to say too many things in public about what we talk about personally, but my God, he's so fun to talk to. And the fact that we share him in common as a person that we adore and will be both confused when we have to recap why we did this show. We probably should've done it sooner anyway because I've had a good time. Yeah, man.

But yeah, the thing with Tony, I think my favorite thing about him is the phone will just ring. If you have very few people where you just get a call and I'll be like, all right, I know this is gonna be 30 minutes but I'm excited for it. And then he's just, there's no hello, how are you. He's just right into the conversation.

It's always cold open. It's like, what is going on with dot dot dot? And then it's just, you're just kinda doing a show with him. It's the best. But that's why, like, you know, I actually think PTI is now underrated for... People don't understand from a pure metric perspective, the highest rated show in the daytime lineup, still, still, we talk about all the other shows a lot, still number one.

Doing stories that are like 10, 11 hours old, compared to like the advantage get up and first take have. doing stories that are like 10, 11 hours old compared to like the advantage get up and first take have. By the time it gets to those guys, the story's like done. There's been, now in the podcast era, there's a million podcasts that are out every day and people have already reacted and done their thoughts and then those guys come in and they're,

to me, the two of them together, it's like an old married couple that still works 100%. Inside the NBA it's the same way. Those guys just still work as a group. And that's just the way it is. It's chemistry. It's chemistry. You can't fake it.

Again, you do know it when you see it in that regard. And Eric and Matt, producers of PTI, and the staff, and Tony and Mike, they take it, again, they take it seriously, but they don't take themselves in the way that they do the show so seriously. And Tony and Mike- No, but Tony takes one thing seriously, and I can't speak for Mike because I think Mike's easy going.

He would have gone to an hour and been fine with it. Tony's very committed. He's pot committed to the structure. Oh yeah. He's pot committed to the structure. Oh yeah. He won't change. What's really interesting about that show, they haven't really added anything to the structure.

It's still done the same way, that fourth segment with the birthdays and racing throughs. That's from 2004. I don't know how many years it took them to figure it. Tony will not touch that and he will get mad if you even suggest it. Tony refuses to say the words, pardon the interruption. Because he just never liked the name.

He always says, welcome to PTI boys and girls. He noticed just like he is. I mean, when I say he doesn't take himself seriously, I mean in the sense of he's willing to be laughed at. And will be the class clown and perform. And that is a key trait I find in television. But he's also so deeply devoted to why PTI has worked. And I think it's because he and Mike see this as an extension of their

journalistic selves, you know, they're not in locker rooms anymore. They're not at press, but Mike still does. No, but they still not in locker rooms anymore. They're not I press Mike's know but they still but but they thought the DNA of it I mean Tony wrote some of the better features of the late 70s and early 80s Like he has a whole era that nobody even remembers anymore I was talking to somebody who is not a sports fan, but just read randomly they were doing research the Rick Berry one No, but Rick Berry being an asshole and that being a sports illustrator feature is an all-time great story That I thought that was probably the best thing. What were you going to say?

So I didn't know about this one, but while in LA this weekend, someone who's a big, bring it full circle again, a Star Wars fan was like Tony Kornheiser for the Washington Post for the style section did a piece about the Empire Strikes Back. And I'm just like, and it was this person didn't know that Kornheiser did this and like got this column that was so funny and smart. So like from like 1980? Yes. And like Tony has been out here doing the shit that we say we're innovating new forms

of media and it's culture and sports colliding. Tony's been out here doing stuff for whatever year. I mean, it's crazy. 50 years. Yeah, he had, I remember the last couple years at ESPN, he had this whole thing, he kept saying like, and I was like, you know, pretty close to him at this point. And he would always be like, well, when Tony,

when Mike and I turn it over to you in LeBotard, and I was, and finally I got mad at him, and I was like, you gotta stop that. I don't want to take over PTI. It's your show. You guys are gonna die with that show. Nobody wants to take that show. Nobody wants that responsibility. It's your show.

Like stop even thinking that. That's the thing. Is that as much as Tony likes to talk about, oh, take over the thing. The show should die when they don't want to do it anymore. I think- Nobody should take the show over. I agree.

Come up with another idea. I also fully think that the show will die when they die. They literally had to say it. I mean, they're not going to stop doing it. Wilbon was doing Get Up the last couple weeks. Like, Wilbon's available. Wilbon's motor is a remarkable thing. As a prospect, Wilbon, I don't think there's been a lot of people at that age who've done

it this way. I was always, though, year I was doing the countdown with Willbond and Magic, those guys were just machines that could come to life on camera. And we could have, we would be, like, they would give us like this big meal, you know, they'd give us, because we were taping the show, it would be like 4. give us like this big meal you know they'd give us because we were taping the show would be like 430 5 o'clock West Coast time and then we'd have to be there for the basketball come back in so they'd have food and those guys could eat like entire dinners and go out there two minutes later and just just light up yeah I was like that's a skill I'm not

sure I'll ever have and by the, I'll just have a small salad because I don't want to be in a food coma and seem like I'm luggage on this. Yeah, farting on air is probably not the best career choice. Anyway, so you agree with me that show should die with them? Look, I... When they don't want to do it, I think that should be it for the show.

I don't think there's any following them. I don't think that that show could be done without, I think as a fill in, love being a substitute teacher. Have no illusions that PTI should be mine or whoever else's once those guys leave. I wouldn't want that burden. Like, talk about being set up to fail. You know, just being set up to disappoint people.

Like, yeah, I'm not Tony and Mike, and I miss them too. Would be how I felt every time I would fill in as the hypothetical replacement. I'm sorry I'm here. Yeah, like I also wish they were still here. Yeah. It's better when they're in person though, which we were talking about before we started. And that was one of the things COVID really fucked up because the Zoom made it easier.

I used to interview everybody. We had all these people coming in and then people ask why I don't do the interviews as much anymore, which I think we're going to change because we're building a couple of studios. But I just didn't like doing it on Zoom. It's hard. Even like you and I talking today, it was like, we could have done it on Zoom, but as you were here and it was like, let's do it in person. It would be way better.

Yeah. It's like we could have a phone call in which both of us immediately start yelling at each other, which is what happened. Yeah. But then it led to a conversation that to me, I think clarified that even if Bill Simmons, guy I grew up reading, may not be a subscriber to my show, Conspiracy Bill absolutely is.

And I'm so glad that Conspiracy Bill- Conspiracy Bill's now, he's aware of- Like and subscribe Conspiracy Bill. He's intrigued. Like and subscribe, yeah, I can tell. Well, what show, what episode would you want me on? Would be like- Oh, I like the way you're thinking Conspiracy Bill.

No, what episode, like what would be the best use of, I don't think Conspiracy Bill could be Bill, but what would be the dream episode for you? There are actual answers to this that I will tell you about as soon as we're done recording. Oh, interesting. Because I don't think that I'm not going to take you up on something that might actually be worthwhile. I'm like corn hazard. up on something that might actually be worthwhile. I'm like corn hazard. I don't really like to travel anywhere. I've noticed. You may become to... Can I say the neighborhood we're in or is that my doxing you if I say that you may become to this part of LA?

Well, we're at the Spotify studios in downtown LA. Very convenient. Well, that's why we're building studios elsewhere to try to fix some of this. In all honesty, I am very glad you asked me to do this. I'm too. You know, cause I felt like, you know, when we do like any pod, we have these little asides. You get caught up, you're trying to make the host laugh,

whatever, and then sometimes, you know, as I explained, I didn't love the Belichick stuff, but I get why you did it. So I think I have a better understanding of the whole thing Which is the whole point of why we wanted to talk what you're saying is that Bill Simmons finally investigated? No Simmons investigated Pablo Torre. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it. You're very welcome. All right, that's it for the podcast Thanks to Pablo Torre for coming to downtown LA to talk to me thanks to the Knicks for doing something interesting

for the top of the podcast. And thanks to Eduardo and Gahal as well. You can watch this as a video podcast on Spotify. You can watch on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel as well. And don't forget new rewatchable, as new Prestige TV podcast, I'm on those as well. I'm gonna be back on Thursday night with a big juicy fat podcast right after game one

of the NBA finals. In the meantime, if you want more basketball, listen to Zach Lowe. I think he has a new podcast. I think we moved it up to Wednesday and the Ringer NBA guys as well. The mismatch, we're still going to be on Friday. So we got a lot of basketball content for you this week. A lot of stuff on the website as well. I will see you on Thursday night. Star Casino or 18 plus and President DC gambling problem call 100 gambler visit RG dash help.com call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut

or visit MD gambling help.org in Maryland hope is here visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY, or text HOPENY in New York.