The Bill Simmons Podcast - Zion's Trade Value, Wade's Farewell Tour, OKC's Collapse, and Gym Nudists With Ryen Russillo | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to talk Zion Williamson's optimal NBA team, Dwyane Wade's farewell tour, playoff check-in, the Thunder's dismal stretch of games, mailbag, Gym Corner, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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As you know, DAZN is run by my old boss, John Skipper. He's going to be on this podcast later this week. And we're going to talk about not only us reuniting, even if it's only for a couple months here, but also our relationship over the last 20 years and all the stuff that happened, good and bad, that's happening. It's going to be out later this week. This is not an April Fool's, even though we did tape it today on April Fool's, which I thought was kind of fitting. So anyway, that is coming up later this week and definitely one of the more interesting podcasts I've ever done. So stay tuned for that. We also have Colin Farrell, which we taped late last week. That's coming and some basketball

stuff. I think Brian Winhorst is going to come on as well. So yeah, a lot of good stuff coming up here on the BS Podcast. This is our kind of year. March Madness, NBA. Baseball just started. Pop culture is in rare form. Check it all out on TheRinger.com. Coming up, Brian Rossello first. Our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, taping this late Monday morning.

It is 1043 Pacific time. Ryan Masilla is here, as always. Every week we're going to do this. this is this week and next week are the last two weird kind of it could be at any point during the week podcast but when the playoffs start we're doing the Sunday nights Sunday nights I'm ready for Sunday nights

okay so the first playoff weekend they start one on a Saturday yeah they start on a Saturday or I guess we could do Monday morning but it'll be consistently either sunday night or early monday morning i think sunday night will work yeah sunday night will work once you get in the meat of it but that first that first that little gap there remember we were talking about ryan trying to get out of here for a couple days oh yeah yeah is that

happening yeah i'm not confirming where though okay yeah well at some point we'll be it's not in europe so i'll be back i'll be back back. It feels like the regular season has never lasted longer. I'm starting to wonder about this product. I worry about it. I'm just ready for the playoffs. Can we just go? I think that's also our lack of patience with everything in the world. But there's nights I sit at home and go, did it always feel this pointless the last month of the season?

I shouldn't be this excited about the Hawks. I watched that game. It's like any, any young team that is playing with some, did you watch that game yesterday? Yeah. The Trey young game winner, which one?

Well, the one where he too, right. Where it's basically a botched alley. You that he has the wherewithal to drift toward the basket just in case. And then the ball hits him and he's able to quickly turn it and make it. That was a major, major play. I'm really starting to buy in.

If I did the trade value list again, I think he's top 25 now. I still wouldn't trade Donchich for him. Yeah, no, I don't think you should. And it was a weird game for him because he was so bad shooting. He was 3 of 17 at one point. And then at the end of regulation,

watching that game, you could see his own team kind of didn't want to get the ball back to him in the last four or five offensive possessions. And he had one of those, and guys do this, the Auburn guard Brown did it too, where they want the ball back immediately and they get like super pouty. And Trey started doing the pouty thing where you go okay you're you're out of high school like I'm not going to freak out about this but he has a chance like first of all he shattered through all the bummed out expectations we've been over all this stuff before but I actually think as bad as he was it's a huge compliment I know he had a huge assist numbers like he was he was actually getting freezed out a little bit in his own game and then had the game winner in regulation before the Bucks hit their thing. It's also important to point out Giannis. They just decided, you know, whatever, no big

deal. It turned into the Sterling Brown game. Yeah. Early West Coast AM Hawks games. I don't know. You guys had it this good. And the Kings who are now playing for nothing remain entertaining for me as well. And I wish, going back to that 7 versus 10, 8 versus 9 single game thing, it just would be fun to have the Kings somehow involved. I know we can't. But even if we had,

if they did the 1 through 16 format and threw away the conferences, I would just rather have them in the playoffs than like three of these teams. Well, no doubt. Do we need Miami and Charlotte and the Pistons? Maybe. I don't need Orlando.

Do you respect Orlando? Respect the Magic. I don't respect the Magic. No, you're right on the surface. I'm just anti like so much expansion for all of the playoffs. Like baseball, the wildcard game. Yeah.

Do you feel like if that was your favorite team and they lost the wildcard game that you'd be like, well, at least we made the playoffs? No. Would you say that? All right. Well, that's okay. Like I just'd be like well at least we made the playoffs would you say that all right well if you that's okay like i just don't want organizations to say we made the playoffs if the rules were that you're in the 9-10 group that's not an official playoff

you can't make shirts you can't have a coach that says well i made the playoffs for the last five years when half of them were the play-in game so maybe i just want you to know i watch every baseball wildcard game which which I enjoy fights my, which speaks to my point. I enjoy them. It's not about watching. I like just single game elimination moments, but it's like when a program,

you know, a guy gets fired and they go, Oh, you know, made, made a bowl game for the six seasons. You're like, yup.

Great. And you beat four terrible out of conference teams. Yeah. And the two worst teams in your division. Um, let's talk about college and March Madness because Zion got knocked out yesterday. I miss him already. I can't believe he's not in my life.

He'll probably show up at Summer League, right? Yeah, I can already see a load management issue there, though. Load management for Summer League? He's almost too good for Summer League. I actually think that would be the hottest ticket in the history of Summer League. And we've said this before with a couple other rookies, but this is by far the hottest ticket. You know, LeBron was in Summer League, but it was in Massachusetts. Where was that?

UMass Boston? UMass Boston was by the old Globe building, wasn't it? Hot ticket, by the way. Yeah, no, I went. 16 years ago. And then Lenny Cook was on the other side for the Celts. We were hoping to get that LeBron-Lenny Cook matchup. Then that Lenny Cook doc references that. And then Lenny starts singing.

Did you see the Lenny Cook documentary? I did. It was incredible. I remember. Was that? That would have been a good 30 for 30. It was kind of like one of those that I wish had been in the series. I'm trying to remember the story we like to tell.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember the song he was sitting when they're all getting hammered in his kitchen. It was like Usher or Bobby Brown. I'm sorry if I'm getting that wrong. So Zion's out. Yep. How upset are you? Coach K took a big hit. Our One Shining podcast crew really did a nice job of picking them apart.

It just seemed like a rudderless team. Really strange when you have that much talent and you could just tell really the whole season they just couldn't kind of figure out what they were and who should be, what shooters should be out there and defensively, like Titus was doing a whole thing about how they would just switch on every screen

versus fighting through the screens and stuff like that, which I agreed with. It really did make me think Coach K this decade becomes the one and done guy. We don't think of Duke as the one and done school, but they're the one and done school. He kind of became what he despised. Lot here, okay. Yeahised a lot here okay yeah

all right first of all to meet on this bone the switching everything on defense it actually worked though okay because everybody was so long and so athletic like defense was not the problem for this duke team they were an unprecedented uncharacteristic non-shooting duke team no one can shoot on this team yeah it's nuts i mean to think that he couldn't do anything. In 2019. Right. Yeah, right. You guys can't find a couple of dudes to knock down shots. So despite the talent, and wherever Reddish or RJ Barrett go after Zion, which could still be like Barrett three, Reddish in the top five or six, I mean, it could happen. How many times did you forget Reddish was on the floor this year? I've said this all year and KOC and our ringer draft people, I was just like,

I just don't get it. When I watch the games, I forget he's out there. He's like, it's like a Wiggins type thing where it's like he's reddish. Oh, there he is. Right, right.

Is he two or five? Oh no, Barrett's five. I mean, how many times? So look, Barrett, I think with spacing of the NBA game and his vision, I think he's going to look so much better away from this.

So I'm actually in that camp as well. Right. So I'm not necessarily dumping on his prospects, but watching him this year, yes, we can just rattle off the recruiting rankings. We can rattle off where they're going to go in the draft. But I think anybody that watched Duke as much as we did, because it was so much fun to check in on Zion and not only his improvement and I'm all the way in and you know there were times before where I was like is he just the specimen or does he understand what he's doing that started the passes off the doubles and some of the stuff I saw this past week I'm like god I love this kid his competitiveness answers the bell all those like cliche things really seems to care there were games where as great as Barrett

and Reddish are supposed to be, I don't know. I'm not saying K did a great job. I thought against North Carolina, especially when Zion was out, not in the ACC title game, I'm like, man, Roy is just working K right now. Roy's team's way more prepared and decisive and knows what they're doing. Where there's so many times in Duke possessions where it felt like because Zion was so good, the other four guys or maybe even the head coach was like, just go get us a bucket and save us. And he actually did it a lot. What was Duke? Weren't they like, they were by far the favorites. Weren't they like plus

250 or something heading into the tournament? Is that like a public money thing there? It was some, yeah, but I mean- That's what I wonder though. Over and over again, we see this and the team team, the much-hyped team of 19-year-olds somehow, oh, my God, I can't believe it. They didn't come through. But it seems to happen almost every year, and I never bet it for some reason. Yeah, well, look, I think a lot of that money

was everybody excited about Zion, excited about the name brand part of this. They were very public. Right. So I think that's part of it. If they were such a massive favorite, they'd be more than what a two, two and a half point favorite against a Michigan State team that doesn't have a lottery pick that's out there. Well, I think the taco game, I think, was the big.

Was the wake up like, yes, they really can't shoot. Wow. They almost lost to this team that had like a seven foot six guy and a couple of good athletes and really probably should have lost the game. That tip-in should have gone in. Yeah, and the free throw miss on the other side that puts them up. I will say, not to sound like a basketball snob, which I always do when I talk about college basketball,

but I thought this weekend was so much better than last weekend. I think it was honestly a case of just better. It's not rocket science. They're just better caliber teams. And the basketball was better. I actually enjoyed rocket science. There's just better caliber teams. And the basketball was better. I actually enjoyed it. I enjoyed the games this weekend. That first four days is usually my favorite stretch. And after those four days- And for some reason, it wasn't good this year.

After those four days, I was like, what the hell did I just do? Yeah. Like that kind of sucked. But everyone had said all year that college basketball is top heavy. And I do feel like it was top heavy. And once we got to this weekend that just passed, those games are good. I really enjoyed it. I love the Purdue kid having one of those classic old school pickup, pickup, he check things, or he's not even that good of a dribbler. He's just a great shooter. And they, they just over and over again, trying to free him up so

he could take a 26 footer Edwards. I loved it it was so ridiculous though and i still think this is part of the steph thing is that steph's influence on other basketball players is that okay you know what i'm just gonna pull up from 30 here i mean and carson's hitting some of these shots so you can't really fault him but i don't know long term and produce still almost won this thing i mean they they get the bank shot you know is this really gonna happen here? What do you do if you're one of these Virginia kids going, these are good shots. That was a brutal loss. Because you get the free throw miss,

you have the back tap, which nobody does with five seconds left ever, but somehow that works. And then just everything falls apart and they somehow leave somebody open from 10 feet. But that was such a mad scramble. It was almost like watching on the kickoff return when people start lateraling it around

and the defense isn't ready for it. They basically left somebody wide open from eight feet for a jump shot. I mean, it was a hard jump shot, but... Yeah, that in-between thing's always tough because it's never a shot that you ever practice. But when I think about the close of that game, UVA couldn't really do anything.

They'd gotten away from Kyle Guy until they got it back to Hunter when he started kind of getting this switch matchup for him to drive. But he's supposed to be a lottery pick borderline. And you're like, I don't know. Purdue, it was one guy, which I think always ends up kind of bumming out the other four guys, even if some of the shots are going in. Yeah.

Texas Tech, I mean, even back to the Gonzaga game, out the other four guys even if some of the shots are going in yeah you know texas tech i mean even back to the gonzaga game you've got you know one definite nba player for gonzaga but no one could ever figure out in gonzaga like hey guess what when you stop with the ball in your hands texas tech knocks it away from you it's going to happen you have to be quicker you have to process this stuff quicker uh this is like a theme here Kentucky it basically was PJ Washington bail us out figure out something here and Auburn had had a second guard instead of just Bryce Brown um I I gotta tell you it just a reminder of everybody that shits on all these college teams and college coaches and they'll say oh they don't run anything

or these guys are all stupid or look at it. The kids freak out. I think the coaches freak out a little bit. So if I can point to eight, maybe 10 games in the last four days where it looked like no one was running anything and everything was a mess, is that because they're all stupid or that we're forgetting that 95% of them are never going to sniff a paycheck in this sport, meaning the kids, and that it's it's a lot easier to play hard defense than it is to have these crisp cutting like you throw in an nba game

later that night and you go my god the gap is so evident here between what these two versions of basketball are i just thought it was something i kept thinking about because these are great coaches we have this great group of four coaches in this final four and there's two three minute stretches where you're watching going, why can't you guys get a good look? And so many teams can't. I thought this last week when we were talking about Murray State a little, how, you know, pretty good team, but that was a big moment for them.

And Morant showed up, and nobody else played well. And it was like, all right, why did that happen? Well, the game is on primetime on a Saturday, basically. Hartford. I mean, you freak whenever you go to Hartford. You're not ready. The bright lights of Hartford, Connecticut. But yeah, these guys are 18, 19, 20.

I mean, the most famous fuck-up probably in the history of college basketball, C-Web calling the timeout. But if you watch that whole sequence he gets the rebound he takes four steps he travels right he's already panicking yeah and then panics the second time and it's just like that's a big stage when you're 18 19 years old have you seen the weber thing where when he's asked about it it was was it a 30 for 30 where it's it makes me like Weber in this spot where he's basically saying, hey, someone on the fucking bench was yelling timeout. And they go back and you look at it.

And I think there's like one coach that jumps out that's going timeout, timeout. So it's Weber being like, I've gotten shit on here for a few decades. Not everybody was on the same page. Let's just say that. But it's a recurring theme in sports too where you always hear like we told them in the timeout we have no timeouts left or we told them we have one timeout but then when you get out there you just forget that's why i've always been i mean i think quarterback's the hardest job of all the all the positions in all the sports

the wherewithal you have to have and how locked in you have to be when you're in the fucking AFC title game in Kansas City and it's 18 degrees outside, the crowd's loud. You've got to remember the 17 checkdowns for every play. All the little ways the receiver can be like, oh, the cornerback's doing this.

I'm going to do this instead. To be able to process all of that, it's fucking, is that, what's harder, doing that or driving a fighter jet? No, well, actually. I don't know. Like being Maverick in Top Gun, is that harder than being quarterback? The way fighter jets are today, they basically fly themselves. But then, so you go to college football,

and you're putting the 19-year-old kids in that position with not as many of the checks and balances as the NFL guys have, but it's still, you know, it's a lot. It almost makes me harder to be like, okay, yes, this coach absolutely sucks. Like, you don't hear me say that much because I think it's hard for us to really know

unless you've played at a high level, you've coached at a high level. And then even then, when other coaches are talking talking about college basketball coaches don't ever call out anybody like that's the most they're all at each other's banquets and they literally are the most protective people like any one of these guys gets big time guys gets fired then the college basketball world like as assistants let them down just go yeah it seems like coach k and bayheim like secretly hate each other but are very friendly. Yeah, but I mean... But they're still competing for this,

although I guess it's over because Boeheim lost some weights. If I tell him he's asking for Patino to get the fucking UCLA job, okay? That'd be amazing. Right, yes. It would be interesting, but it'd be during an incredible ACC game. Like, and by the way, Rick Patino, you got to hire him out there. And you're like, what? So whenever I think about everything you just did with the quarterback breakdown,

another thing that's very common is you just go, oh, all these GMs suck. They suck at picking quarterbacks. No. What you just described is impossible to try to figure out the kid leaving college if he can do those things. I don't know what you can. Wonder look, great. When's the last time you cheated on your girlfriend weird combine questions hey straight none of the combine numbers

mean anything and when you look at the different college offenses there's some of them that there's nothing there there isn't any of the decision making that you just talked about so whether it's it's just it's just hard to figure that stuff out and also a lot of sports as you get better and better at stuff is learning how to calm yourself down so you're the best version of yourself no matter what's happening around you and by the way this speaks for you know anything it could be like when going on when you haven't been on tv before you know and the first few times you go on tv like doing what we do and it it's like, everything's coming fast. You're nervous. You got adrenaline. And learning how to like channel different things.

What's a sock toss? What's that big jib camera thing you keep coming at me? But like I was watching Zion last night. And it's weird because I obviously loved watching him. He was so, he was so hyped. And had so much, it was almost like he couldn't channel it. Like you watched him be in the second half. He had like 10 straight or whatever he had. And then he like kind of needed the 16 minute timeout.

He had like shot his wad, like he was exhausted. And I think one of the things I can't wait to see him at the next level is when he learns like what LeBron learned, like how to channel the athleticism. How to channel like, oh, I can take this guy off the dribble anytime I want, but I'm not going to do it right now. I'm going to wait. Or, oh, I got this screen, but let's do it two minutes from now. Once he starts, especially if he plays with the right point guard. And that's, I'm starting to think about that a lot.

I'm so worried about it. What kind of team he should be on. He needs to be with like the Mike Conley type of point guard, right? Like somebody who would just be like, dude, I got this. You're my dude.

I'm going to fucking get you awesome shots all the time. The worst case scenario would be, you know, some shoot first point guard, but a bad one about, yeah, right. Not, not Lillard necessarily.

Like him playing with Devin Booker is actually not that great of a thing. No, I don't think it is at all. I think Devin Booker is kind of a me first offensive player. I want to see him with the point guard who's like, all I care about is making everybody else better. And now we have to start thinking about who gets him.

So not Neil Aquino? Not Neil. thinking about who gets him so not neil akina not new well so the whole thing shoot first at least with him so also be interesting right yeah it would be you know that's weird though as you mentioned phoenix and you mentioned atlanta like is ayton good for zion is collins good for like collins you can move around more than you can Aiton. And I like both guys. Like to me, the Aiton thing, like as far as a year is concerned, you go, okay, you know what? Like we we've got something here and we've got a big that maybe we can keep on the floor late in games, but I am enamored with the idea of Zion finishing as the

big. Well, so there was a team. There was a couple of moments in the MSU game yesterday. I hear MSU a lot. That 6'11 guy they had, the guy who could shoot the jump hook with either hand. Right. And there was a couple of times it was like mouse in the hole with Zion. And he just overpowered him and got whatever shot he wanted. And now Zion was expending a lot of energy on both ends and whatever. But it's the same feeling I get like when you'd watch that happen with Draymond Green sometimes,

especially on like the 15 Warriors, like the two times a year a team would have the right kind of player to do that. Where you go, oh yeah, you're 6'7". You're not going to be able to stop that. So I do feel like there are more centers than there used to be in the NBA. There's more big guys who at least

are crafty around the room than there used to be. I don't think he could guard Jokic. So he is going to have to go to a team that at least has the flexibility to also go big. Does it make sense? Yeah, it does. I think it's just always funny that growing up, a guy like Zion, we go, oh, it'd be great if there's this other big over there to protect him. For years, I felt like every team I'd look at that had issues with their roster, which is most teams, you'd go, oh, it'd be great if there's this other big over there to protect him. For years, I felt like every team I'd look at that had issues with their roster, which is most teams, you'd go, oh, you're going to be great as a Tyson Chandler. Tyson Chandler seemed to be the wishlist for half the league every summer. Lanky, seven foot, one guy who didn't need the ball. And then you started

thinking, well, wait a minute, is he just going to kind of get in his way? You have to worry about it. Who's your dream team for him right now? I'm saying as a basketball fan, not a market. I think the Celtics, he and Horford would. Come on. I was doing that for you, man. I was expecting you to say that. People are like, fuck, they're fucking talking Celtics again. They did it again, assholes.

God damn it. Go talk about Tatum for 20 minutes, you dicks. We've done some deep dives on Tatum this year. I do want to talk about him later. But just basketball fit only, what would be the best lottery team for you? Because I feel like it would weirdly be Memphis.

And I don't think they have a chance to actually win it. No. And everything, by the way, everything you just described in the point guard

you would or wouldn't want is not the Bulls. It's not the Bulls. It's not the Bulls. You're fighting for shots with everybody there. Unless they just called everybody and they said,

here, we got Zion. And now we will take your B star for two of the any four guys you want. By the way, so the Clippers, the way Lou Williams and Harrell use each other on those high screening roles, Lou Williams isn't a traditional point guard, but he knows how to run that one play.

The way I want to see Zion used, you could ISO him, but I really want to see him used exactly like how the Clippers use Harrell, because I think he'd be the most unstoppable guy. And if you put shooters there and his ability to set a pick and roll, but also his athleticism and the alley-oop component, he's basically blending all the things I like about watching Harrell. The Anthony Davis, when he still played basketball, alley-oop potential. Just all these different things and his ability to do those crazy spin moves, but keep control.

And the move where he does a spin move, but jumps into you, and it's kind of an offensive foul, but they're never going to call it. And then hangs in the air for the extra second for the bank shot. I think he's going to be unstoppable. I really want him to go to the right team. Because LeBron was not on the right team for the first seven years of his career. And we don't think of it that way, but if you look at the teams he was on, he was never on the right team. Yeah, but if we're going to do the LeBron thing, all of this talk about what's the perfect fit or how should you play? LeBron's ultimately always going to do what he wants to do. And he's going to stop the ball. He's going to dissect you visually. And then he's going to go ahead and make that move.

But is he like that because of the experiences he had from 18 to 25? Had he gone to a team that... Now, basketball is also played like that more. Based on the way he tweets and posts on Instagram, I think this is exactly the way he would be no matter who was playing around okay i'm serious yeah like every every oh the coach wants to do this oh this is the most athletes he's ever had oh there's a younger team this is spacing this is tough for another or he's just gonna dribble the fuck out of the ball and i'm not knocking him for this and going sounds like i'm just no i'm not i'm knocking everybody that expects that lebron's gonna be this completely different version of him as a basketball player. And it's worked.

It's worked. It's worked up until this year. So, look, back to the point of the Zion thing. As you compare him to Montrez, I liked Harrell a lot at Louisville. I love what he's doing here with the Clippers. But the cap on what his abilities are as a player are so far below what Zion's are.

That's that. That's my point. I like Zion's playmaking. Like not only does he check all these boxes and all the year doing all my draft stuff. Okay. We can get excited about the physical specimen shit with him. And it's off the charts.

The numbers are incredible. But after some mistakes, like I'd go, why the, why do I like Earl Clark? Don't like Earl Clark. Like, he's not going to be that good.

Louisville, really long, lanky. Like I had this love affair with the six 11 Earl Clark. He was so, yeah. I'm like, Oh,

he can handle Phoenix suns traffic. I like them too. Oh yeah. Yeah. Mid range. You get, you know, yeah.

You know, back then we're like, Oh, he can pull up from anywhere, but you could always tell he never cared. He didn't, he didn't really, I don't know.

Look, cared, whatever, however you want to phrase it. I know what you mean. It wasn't life or death for him. And when I watch Zion, I go, this guy cares the whole time. The whole time. And that's my favorite part of him. But also not in a selfish way, not to just turn this into a jerk circle, but genuinely happy when other guys do well.

Yeah. Doesn't need to take 30 shots in a game. I love him. I was on Francesa last week and Francesa has, and I was making fun of him about it. He's painting himself into a corner with the Zion thing. And I was just like, Mike, just admit defeat. Here's your get out of jail free card. Like Zion is a transcendent player.

Like this is happening. It's going to happen. I'm too distracted by Francesa now. Can I ask you about him? Can I ask what's going on? Yeah. Let's take a break first. Let's take a break to talk about ZipRecruiter.

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way to hire. All right. What gonna ask about francis i like you yeah grew up on it yeah he and the dog that was the iconic radio duo that was sports right it was incredible um and now it seems like everyone hates him and i can't tell if it's just the natural course of events or if he's just whiffing on stuff, but being incredibly arrogant about it in the process. I don't know him. I've never met him. I haven't listened to the show enough. You haven't seen any of the clips floating around?

No, I've seen some of the clips. What's going on? I don't know. Maybe he's having a late life, whatever. What about the tweet the other day where he's like i've had it the lies i'm gonna make an announcement and then there was no follow-up i i don't know what to tell you am i putting you in a tough spot here no i don't understand like the zion thing we had a great argument about it but but I was kind of in disbelief because to me,

this one's as clear as day. There's no debate about this. There's no question Zion's going to be an unbelievable NBA basketball player. So we ended up making a bet. We did a, will Zion make first team NBA in the first five years of his career? That's lofty. I mean, you got to be. It's lofty, but it's not lofty because if you go and you look at the best 20 guys

ever, pretty much all of them made first-team NBA within the first five years. He's gone down the line. Is Chris Bosh on that list? Chris Bosh, I don't think, did it. Jason Tatum, he hasn't done it yet either. You go through the lottery picks. Knicks, Suns, Cavs, Bulls, Hawks.

Dallas would be weird. Memphis, New Orleans. And then the worst case scenario is Washington. Let's make sure Washington doesn't happen. It's like, hey, good news. John Wall's rehab's going great. And we re-signed Dwight Howard. Dwight's back.

Do your Dwight Howard thing. Yeah, so when Jokic got thrown out of the game the other night, Nuggets lost to the Wizards and there's some Nuggets talk. We can talk about them struggling here.

I can't wait for the Tuesday game against the Warriors. But Howard's on the bench and I'm like, oh, look at Dwight. Superman. He's back. And he's doing this big,

like, Dwight's like, I can't wait. I'm going to do all these jokes and make fun of Jokic and point to the tunnel and laugh and yuck it up over here on the bench. While Jokic is arguably all first team NBA. One of the strangest and least self-aware basketball superstars we've ever had in his career. He's the least self-aware basketball superstars we've ever had. In his career, I heard-

He's the least self-aware person. So the 2012 Olympic team, which he was not on, and he had had back issues at that point, but it was when he was getting traded to the Lakers. And I had always heard that everybody was so frustrated and annoyed by him in 08 when they had the Olympics that year, that guys were like, is Dwight going to play? Because if he's playing, I'm not going

to play. It was that bad. Because I was in London for the Olympics and talking to a lot of people around the team and everybody was like, they're so relieved. We don't even care if we have a center. Nobody want to deal with him again. I was like, is he that bad? Is he a bad guy? No, he's just annoying.

He's just an annoying guy guy just not fun to play with like just couldn't figure couldn't fit him into the team concept like uh so that always stuck in my head and this was like coming off like he some people thought he was the 2011 mvp remember that i remember zach voted for him that year when Derek Rose won. The year later, he got traded, but he ripped off this stretch where he was by far the most important center in the league for like seven straight years. And now his career is going to end soon.

And I just feel like, what do you play? Finish your thought because I'm queuing up right now. We don't need the audio of it. Well, his career is going to end soon. He is unequivocally a Hall of Famer. Shouldn't be. He's going to make it. No, he's going to, but he's not.

Like, that's where we should just go. I actually think he might be a Hall of Famer. And you know I'm in the camp of don't put people in the Hall of Fame who don't deserve it. But you could say he was the best center in the league for like seven years. He made the finals. He was a 2015 guy, basically, for a pretty long stretch. You could make the case he was the MVP in 2011. Look, I know everyone listening to me right now

says I'm wrong. That's fine. But this is how I look at the Hall of Fame. Does every team you go to feel like, you know what, this is actually I look at the hall of fame. Does every team you go to feel like, you know what, this is actually better. We don't have you. And that's the second half of his career. Yeah. And you know, the Orlando stuff, all the frustrations like back then, dude, I was all about Dwight. Okay. I mean, I made some stupid arguments on radio shows going, you know, you could argue that he's the number one guy you'd want to build your team around back when we weren't

obsessed with threes. And we still thought centers were the keys to winning championships and that incredible run when they got to the finals, you're like, okay, this is a preview of what's to come. But back then we thought he was playful and fun. And we didn't realize that he was just sort of an asshole of a teammate everywhere he went. And so remember he couldn't ever, I don't think he's mean spirited though. That's, that's like the strangest thing about this. No, I don't think he's mean. ever really stay. I don't think he's mean spirited though. That's like the strangest thing about this. No, I don't think he's mean. You're right.

I don't think he's mean, but I think there's an immaturity level with him that has gone on for everyone that I've ever talked to that's been around him. Everything you just said with the Olympic thing, nothing you've said hasn't been said before about him. So my point- Like he was Charlotte, Atlanta, back to back years, near the end of his career, but still.

And both teams were like, we got to get this guy out of here. right it's really weird it is but that also tells me like I know what the rebounding numbers are going to be but we're still talking about somebody that at the end of games and Stan Van Gundy you know you can say whatever you want about his executive the guy knows how to coach a basketball game yeah and he knew I can't give it to him because nothing's polished there's no finished polished move there that we can say let's throw it down to our star coach a basketball game. Yeah. And he knew I can't give it to him because nothing's polished. There's no finished polish move there that we can say, let's throw it down to our star and Dwight. So he was a star that you actually couldn't go to in a close, tight game. And I know what the

overall numbers are going to be and all these different things. But like I start, I just wish the Hall of Fame were stricter in that. Do we really feel like Dwight through most of his career was this dominant NBA force? And if anything, he's been a guy you want nothing to do with the second half of his career. And that's going to make the Hall of Fame? That's insane to me. I think he was first team on NBA five straight years. He's definitely, yeah. I mean, he's going to be in. There's no denying that. I think the 2009 Magic thing is one of the best things for his resume because that team was ahead of its time.

And if you watch the clips from how they played with all the three-point shooting, and they didn't even take nearly as many three-point shots as people take now, they're basically doing a version of what Milwaukee does with Giannis now, where you have the floor spread for the guy in the middle. Giannis is way more talented than Dwight Howard is, but same kind of principle, right? Space it around, keep the one guy in the middle, and it's just going to be really hard to deal with him

because you're so worried about the shooters. It was great, and it was what beat that Cavs team because the guys that were playing outside on the perimeter were so much bigger. I remember that was one of those things where we were so were so hyped up i remember actually talking with you about that and i loved it i said hey are we going somewhere and it was like the whole lebron kobe thing's gonna happen yeah and you watched one of those games with orlando and cleveland you go wait a minute this is a this is a problem he made he made five straight all-NBA teams.

And then was two-thirds and a second. Eight all-star games. And I think he was number two in the MVP one year. I know he's making it. And the best guy in a finals team. No, I'm saying he's just got a resume. But this is one of the reasons I wrote my book. Because as the years pass, people just look at basketball reference and there's no context to anything.

Vince Carter now, who has a ringer podcast for us, as the years pass and he's done such a good job, he's an awesome teammate. He's a great guy. Everybody loves him. But like he quit on the Raptors. Like he did. It happened.

And we didn't have the internet and social media the way we have it now. That goes on his resume. It just does. He was going to be a Hall of Fame player then, not based on just stats, but without any significant playoff moment. And that's when I think about Vince, I go, look, this is just me at home thinking of all the stuff in my head

as I'm watching all these guys for thousands of hours and all the years. And I don't think you should just pull up basketball reference and be like, are you kidding me? Look at Dwight's resume. Look at all these numbers. It should be real. It should be in the moment. But that's why the 09 finals is important for him. Right. My favorite Kobe thing is you brought up, seriously, the thing that makes me like Kobe was that game in the fourth quarter, Lakers down to Rockets, and Dwight and he got tangled up. And when he was like, try me, try me.

Soft. Yeah. Soft. Yeah, that was good. And I went, Kobe just confirmed everything I've thought of Dwight the last couple years. And this is also like, I didn't hate Dwight the whole time.

I loved him in the beginning. Who do you think out of those guys that came up, Vince, T-Mac, Kobe, Iverson, like the post-MJ guys. Who do you actually think was the most talented out of those guys? Not saying best basketball player, not saying best career.

Just the most talent, most gifts. Grady, probably. It's funny. I would say Vince. You think he was the playmaker that McGrady was? I saw all those guys in person multiple times in the 00 to 03 range.

That was peak you. That was probably you at your peak. Definitely me at my peak with that. Not a lot to do. I just remember Vince seeming like the most unstoppable out of all those guys. And meanwhile, we should mention Kobe has scored 81 points in a game. I know how good Kobe is at 30 points in a year. And we're not talking resumes here.

I'm not talking resumes. I'm just talking about just pure experience of watching them in person. Kobe had a moment. It was game one or game two of the finals in 08 in Boston when they were down like 17 and he got hot and he got in a little bit of a rhythm and everybody was kind of like, holy shit. And that was one of the few times I really did see the Jordan parallels, even though I think Jordan was better. Vince, just his natural gifts, like ridiculous 25 footers. He was above the rim, spin moves. Like it just seemed like he had the most,

kind of the most everything out of all those guys. But I'm willing to hear any other examples. The Vince thing at the beginning was incredible. It was like, holy shit. We were like, oh my God, this is Jordan again. Great. And even though as Boston guys, you're like oh my god this is Jordan again great and you know even though as Boston guys you're like

look I can't believe the team got Pierce but you're sitting there and you're watching if anybody had ever said at the beginning of this like hey guess what Pierce is going to have the better career you would not have thought that going into the games not a chance so Vince became this in this post Jordan malaise that was so stupid

every single year thinking there was this other guy it felt like Vince was actually going to be the guy but I don't think he had I'd have to look at the numbers but I feel like the playmaking part of McGrady was was the most impressive in that size yeah it seemed like the game came the easiest to McGrady those first two Orlando years. I remember I wrote a piece about him for Grantland. One of those years where he was like 32 a game, but he could do every single thing on a court,

but was also really good in the other end. But as we were just talking about- And had size and could play three positions. With all the stuff though like the zion and my earl clark thing like kobe would be dying laughing right now listening to this going but so fine those other guys are more gifted or more talented but like when it mattered but but the thing is kobe athletically was i I mean, he was like 98% of Vince. It wasn't like he wasn't an unbelievable athlete.

I just feel like Vince had a slight extra something that really stood out when he was young. The beginning of Vince was as much fun as I've ever had in any NBA thing. Like, oh shit, the Raptors are on. That kind of thing. Like, I know it sounds simple now, but when you can't afford and you know where i was when it was first happening and my electricity's getting shut off all the time like when vince would be on you'd be going okay this is like i don't want to do anything else except watch vince carter the thing kobe had is the same thing zion has to bring this around kobe really gave a shit a shit at all times. Past tense. Well, he's retired now.

Oh, the way you just swore. Oh. He played with a ferocity that Vince never had. Vince was always like, I am the coolest guy in this building. I'm awesome. Watch me do my thing. Kobe always had that. And I think part of it was Shaq was on his team and he's always trying to prove himself.

You know, I'm not just a little brother. I can be as good as Shaq. Like he just had this frenetic energy to him. Vince never had it. And T-Mac was always the coolest customer in the room, but never was like a crazy alpha dog like either of those guys.

No, I think McGrady was almost, like Kobe expected to come in and kick ass and was annoyed immediately. Yeah. Whereas McGrady, maybe he didn't know how good he was. And not until he left Toronto. I don't think.

I think I was silly. The, uh, the Kobe, I don't know how you felt about this, but I know I've referenced the KG stuff, just how we evolve and the way we talk about players. And especially as we talk about young players,

but you know, the dumb K dumb kg conversations like it's it met with initial it's automatic national media resentment yeah like this who's this kid thinking you know like what's kg gonna do and i'll never forget this i don't know if i shared it with you before i know i've repeated this a million times but i'll'll never forget it. Mad Dog actually said, maybe KG should just play home games. Just play home games. Wow. Okay? I remember Kobe announcing that he was just skipping it.

And I remember being like, are you kidding? A wing player thinks he can go just from high school? It did seem crazy. Yeah. And that's... I always think those are really... He yeah and then i hear these stories like oh he kicked all these nba players asses in a workout i'm like shut up and then i guess apparently it was true yeah but it's always a reminder like whenever i have something happen now where i'll initially go wait a minute that now

that seems stupid if you go back and look at how we talk about the first or the thing that's new or the thing that's different or the thing that's challenging, we do a bad job a lot of times in the moment with that stuff. And Kobe's always a great reminder. Vince and T-Mac staying together is an underrated NBA what if. If they had figured out how to keep them both in Toronto, because I think they were actually kind of perfect for each other. And they were cousins. There's a lot of ways the NBA went wrong from 1999 to 07, and that was one of the ways.

Splitting those guys up, they each have their own team, disaster. Hey, we're finally going to do the thing that we've teased for two weeks. The Zion topic. People thought this was a fake topic that we don't actually have a gimmick for this. But we do. And the question is this, based on my old trade value column. Who would you not? Who would you trade? Who would you not trade for Zion?

If I put Zion in the trade value list right now, the rights to Zion Williamson, not even Zion Williamson, the rights to Zion Williamson, where would he go? I have him seventh. Meaning I wouldn't trade him for everybody in the league right now, but six guys.

Here are the six guys. I'm surprised you have that many. I thought this was going to be like one of the crazier things that you had put together. But you think about with a trade, you also have to look at it from the other team's perspective. No, I understand. So they also have to look at it from the other team's perspective no I understand so they also have to be like

the whole trade value game comes to I call you and I say I want this are you more or less likely to be intrigued by my offer and then vice versa so if you come to me and you say hey I'll give you

I'll give you Van Pelt for Dan Patrick. And I hang up right away. What's Dan Patrick's contract? But if we're like, oh, let's talk. Now the value is somewhere even. If I'm hanging up, I'm like, fuck you. I'm not doing that.

Okay, can I try to guess the six then? Yeah. Is that the best way to do this? Let's do it. Okay, Giannis. Yep. Steph. Yep. Giannis. Yep. Steph. Yep. Harden. Yep.

Durant. Nope. Wait a minute, are we talking about I think the Warriors would not only do that, but throw in draft picks. Because they think he's leaving anyway. If you could turn him into Zion, they'd do that today. Embiid?

Embiid, yes. Don't tell me Doncic is on that list. He fucking A is. No way. Yes. So you still have Doncic ahead of Zion. This is tough for you. Only for this reason.

I think he's so embedded in Dallas already and they're so all in on that dude. I don't see them upgrading to Zion. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Haral Bob's there. Haral Bob's cutthroat. But I just think Luka, they're not trading him for a college guy.

Okay, so then if you're doing the Durant because of this... The other one is Jokic, he's sixth. I think for what he means to Denver, the fact that they're genuinely succeeding with him and how great he's been, those would be my six. In this order, Giannis one, Curry two, Harden three, Doncic four, Jokic five, Embiid six.

And I think the relationship between Philly and Embiid and the fans and what he means there, I actually think he's untradeable. I mean, I'm sure they would trade him for Giannis if Giannis was on the table, but I don't even think they'd consider anybody else. Well, the fact that this health thing where I couldn't believe,

you know, if you just go, yeah, usually if you play 30 games total of the first three years, you're available. Like how many happy endings? It's going to go badly. Yeah. Right. Like, oh yeah, that if you play 30 games total of the first three years you're available, like how many happy endings? It's going to go badly. Yeah, right.

Like, oh, yeah, that'll work out and he'll be awesome. And I was wrong because I remember calling around teams being like, would you be freaked out about this? And some were like, no. And others are going, yeah, absolutely. And then they even did some weird language in the contract. But if you really dug into that Embiid contract, it was going to be like something devastatingly different was going to have to happen for him to not get the money yeah and yet i was still worried about it even though i loved him as a player and i ended up being totally wrong about like if you're philly do you even look to to see what's out there for him because he just wasn't playing much but and just so everybody

listened to this i kind of initially looked at it as if you just threw Zion into a pool of players with everybody else in the NBA, you would draft more players ahead of him. Yeah. You would probably draft Durant ahead of him still. Yes. Maybe Lillard. Davis, I think we could draft it. Yeah. Even though I have four year age, five year age difference or whatever.

I know Davis is still so young. Maybe Towns. whatever. I know. Davis is still so young. Maybe Towns? Maybe? I know. But let's say Chicago gets the number one pick. Yeah. And they call Minnesota. They take RJ Barrett.

They call Minnesota and they say, we'll give you the number one pick for Towns. I think Minnesota, 100 times out of 100, says yes because the Zion contract will be $8 million, $9 million, $10 million, $11 million, something like that. Towns is making like, you know, what's he making here? Well, he signed a new extension. Yeah, he's going into the extension.

So it starts 26, 27, 28. So you're basically getting the second player with the cap space, I think, as part of this. Then you're basically getting the second player with the cap space, I think, as part of this. Then you're talking about the new car smell of Zion when you get him on your team. So man, it's nice and fresh in here. I think even though the rookie contract stuff is so valuable, I think sometimes it can be

like a little overrated where everybody be like, oh, Zion, but it's on the rookie deal. It's on the rookie deal. And you're like, yeah, but you're still going to have to pay 90% of the floor anyway with all this stuff. So who's the other guy that you're getting with the savings of the guy that you're moving out but and then the marketing part of it right durant right now if you were if we had some stupid thing where everybody were available this summer and you could make a phone

call the rent probably goes ahead of them right okay so i just i thought it was important to kind of point that out a little bit i heard i your boy Will Kane driving home the other day talking about Durant. He had this nice hard take on Durant that I enjoyed. Will's not afraid. He's like, Durant is the best player in the league and here's why. And he did this eight minute case. I kind of

liked it. Basically his case was out of all the guys in the league, Durant's the only one who could be the best player on his own team. Like his own situation where he's just a guy, 50 wins, but also somebody who has now proven he can play with all these other assets and also fit into that. And he's like, LeBron's never done that. James Harden couldn't do it. James Harden has to succeed, but it's got to be on his terms. I was like, this is a great take. I'm in on this take. I don't know if I agree with it, but I like it. Do you want me to get you Will Kane? No, no, no. I just, shout out to that take. But I do think that's an underrated Durant

talking about like his place in history. Cause Bird was like this too, right? Bird, throw him on any team. He'd be like, oh, we have enough shooting. I'll just get rebounds or, oh, we need a playmaker. I'll just hook dudes up. Durant can kind of fit into whatever is going on. I think that's an underrated trait. I had the weirdest Larry Bird dream last night. Oh, Jesus. Hold on. We're going to hear about it right after this break. Let's take a break to talk about Simply Safe. Nothing is better than going to the game of the family once you've settled in your seats. Thoughts of home can get a little distracting. Did you remember to lock the front door or shut that window in the back that you forgot about?

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people. Try SimpliSafe. See how good it feels to fear less. Go to simplisafe.com slash BS to learn more. That is simply safe with two eyes, simply safe.com slash BS. So what was your Larry Bird dream? It's so fucking weird. I don't know where it's coming from. I'm not reading about them. Like there's nothing, maybe, maybe I was prepping for this pod and I was thinking about you, but I don't know. It could have been something I was eating, but for whatever reason I had all these handguns with me and they

were, yeah, but they were registered. So it wasn't like some sketchy thing. And for whatever reason in the dream, I was back in Vermont and I needed to hide them. And Bird helped you? No. And somebody's like, oh, we'll just put them in Larry Bird's house. Yeah. And I was like, Larry bird has a condo in burlington and be like yeah duh why wouldn't he live in burlington vermont and so we went to larry bird's house and i put all my handguns in his closet and then he caught me and he was like get out of here i was like i'm so sorry i was like they're registered and he's like i don't care don't hide your handguns at my condo in burlington good advice so yeah i'm not quite sure what that one is talking about the celtics so much so the durant no but that's that's a really interesting never heard that before that durant deserves credit for simulating yeah he's an

assimilator but could also be the lead prime i was kind of jealous of it a prime assimilator, but could also be the lead guy. He's prime. I was kind of jealous of it. A prime assimilator. I'll tell you what's a little deeper into that Will Kane thing there, is that he's done a huge anti-LeBron run now for about, let's go, 16 months. Well, and also what helps in that, what you just said, is the one time LeBron tried to assimilate was the 2010-11 heat, and that's when he fell apart in the finals. Against his Mavs team, by the way. Yeah.

So the anti-Harden thing is probably a little pro-Mavs. Yeah. And the pro-Durant thing is just an anti-Max Kellerman. It's great. It's a triple crown of antis. I just broke it all down for you. Fantastic. Anyway, Zion, it's weird to me that,

because I've heard people go, well, they could trade that number one pick for Anthony Davis, like for the Knicks. I think that's insane. I would much rather have Zion than Anthony Davis. Cause now here's where the rookie scale does matter because I need money to pay for other people. For that one with the Knicks. I would rather have Zion at eight than Anthony Davis at 28.

Sorry. Plus I have no idea if Anthony Davis is going to be healthy. Do we know he can play 100 games in a season? Because we haven't seen it yet. He might be able to. I don't know. No, the Davis health thing is totally legitimate. I don't want to rant about this again, but I hate the

this Davis season. I hated so much. I really absolutely detested it. Especially from where it started. Like if they were 500, I would have thought about him as MVP. That's how good he was. They actually would have had a chance to make the playoffs, potentially. The whole thing's a mess.

It sucks. I'm with you. It bums me out. We're not talking about that. Let's talk quickly. We have some... What, Tom Brady? April Fool's joke? No, I have a bunch of good stuff left here. Playoff matchups right now. Bucks I have a bunch of good stuff left here. Okay. Playoff matchups right now. Bucks heat. The Bucks still losing,

still losing, guys. Are you coming around a little bit on maybe... The Celtics? No, maybe not great to play the Heat if you're the depleted Bucks. Not that one, no.

Okay. Because... But it is... I still think the Heat are stinky. No, that's that Celtics. Like, this Pacers thing fell apart predictably. Maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves here a little bit, but I'll save it. That's your four or five. I still think the heat is stinky. No, that's that selfish. This Pacers thing fell apart predictably.

Maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves here a little bit, but I'll save it. That's your four or five. Right. Bucks heat, one eight. Raptors nets is your two seven. Sixers pistons is your three six. Kawhi's missing a game, personal. They changed it from load management.

Yeah, what's going on with that? What is personal? Can you get a personal day in the NBA now? He's like, I... it'd be amazing he's like look guys i haven't seen us yet and there's a 7 30 screening today you're gonna have to skip today's game we're calling it sick uh celtics pacers is your four or five coming off a dramatic celtics win on friday night wanna make her forever uh so that's your East. And then the West. I'm going to go.

I'm going to give you the 1-8 last. Denver Spurs is your 2-7. A lot of ball movement. A lot of ball movement. A lot of mutual respect with Mike Malone and Greg Popovich. Where are you with the Nuggets

right now? I can't wait for the game against Golden State because I think it's going to tell me a lot. Yeah. I'm not anywhere yet. Houston Clips is your 3-6,

which has a lot of, I used to play on that team and now I'm on this team. I miss when everyone hated the Clippers. Every team hated the Clippers. Portland Jazz is your 4-5. Everyone wants to play Portland now

because of this Nurkic thing. I actually think they're a little underrated now. Yeah, the Canada thing. Nurkic is really good, but it's not like, I'm not crossing Portland off because Nurkic broke his leg in seven places no because there's other nights they have like seven other big guys on their bench it's not it's not a disaster i was pissed

henry ellison like why are you guys you can't get off what are you doing like can you ask can you call the spurs about yaka pearl so no they've just stockpiling massive white human beings i'm with you on the portland thing like just yeah you shouldn't be writing them off here but utah with that schedule we thought they'd start putting together their nine of the last 10 so and then our 1-8 right now might change but boy would this be fun warriors thunder okay we got to talk thunder. Holy mackerel. Well, I'll just start here. Chris Vernon and KFC do a very good podcast for us in the ringer NBA show on Tuesday. OKC blew one of the most reprehensible games of the season to the Grizzlies on, I think last Monday.

So a week ago, the Grizzlies were resting absolutely everybody in the team. I watch all the Grizzlies game now because the Celtics have their pick and I'm rooting for it to stay in the bottom eight. So it rolls over next year. OKC loses. It's clear that Paul George, there's something wrong. Verno, who was behind the scenes before the game, said they were working on Paul George's shoulder

underneath the stadium for like a long time just to get him ready to play in the game. And there's been all kinds of rumors about what's wrong with him. And does he have a torn rotator cuff? Does he have a strain rotator cuff? What's going on? But he's just not healthy. Adams looks like he's not a hundred percent healthy. There's a lot of Schroeder, just a lot like in these games guys like all of a sudden he's prominently involved in crunch time stuff and uh i don't know what the f's going on with them and yet i wouldn't totally want to play them in the playoffs so we have both spent a good chunk this season talking about the thunder the upside of the the upside of the thunder and that

from a mentality standpoint, there'd just be this emotional stuff that I think would be good for them. It might be the one team emotionally that could affect Golden State. Yeah. All right? Because now that could also be the worst thing for them, too. Adams has always been a problem. Right.

Westbrook is really physical for Curry, et cetera, et cetera. So the Thunder. Durant going home. Six and 13 in their last 19 games. That's brutal. I mean, that's... Since we started talking about that, they've been horrible.

Six and 13 is... I mean, usually we would talk about... There are a couple Celtic seasons during the KG era where they were like 20 and 20 in their last four. And it's like, oh, that's alarming. Six and 13 is like red flags. Right it's like, oh, that's alarming.

Six and 13 is like red flags. Right. Okay. So there's one part of that. There's 13 and 19 games heading in the playoffs. Like that's a disaster. And everybody's healthy. And the weird thing is too, is that in there, I go, all right, well.

Everybody's available, I should say, not healthy. What's going on? Like, well, wait a minute. They beat Utah. They beat Brooklyn. So when i looked at the pacer stuff and we'd be really excited about where the record was maintaining post oladipo and i dig into it and be like you're really good for you for beating the teams you're supposed to beat but you're only beating bad teams like you're not really beating anybody good and this record's actually getting worse and worse so the pacer's thing has played out a little bit the way i thought it would with the thunder even with

george trying to figure out if he's hurt he's still 40 from the floor which isn't great but actually getting worse and worse. So the Pacers thing has played out a little bit the way I thought it would. With the Thunder, even with George trying to figure out if he's hurt, he's still 40% from the floor, which isn't great, but he's 35% on 10 threes a game. He's taken 10 a game. The free throw numbers are still really good. So what do we think is wrong with him, though? They're offensively, collectively, they're a mess.

No, I'm saying, what do you think's wrong with George? Have you heard the same stuff? I've heard the same shoulder thing. I thought he had another shoulder that was hurt like a couple weeks ago, so they saying what do you think's wrong with George? Have you heard the same stuff? I've heard the same shoulder thing. I thought he had another shoulder that was hurt like a couple weeks ago. So they ended up working on the different one. Something doesn't smell right. Okay, let me give you these. In the first 36 games, I got this from

this Thunder stuff I was doing this morning. They had the 10th worst offensive rating, but we knew they were awesome on defense. Okay? But they also were the worst three-point shooting percentage team in the league at like 32%. And they also were terrible from the free throw line. Okay. Throughout all that, there were 23 and 13. In the 21 games from January 1st of the all-star break, the offense was seventh overall, second best from three. So they were completely opposite team offensively and from three. But that three, that three isn't realistic. That just sounds like a hot streak. No. And that's when we started doing the Westbrook

fixes jumper thing. Yeah. I never did that. For a high usage guy like Westbrook to shoot it as poorly he did, it would be illegal in the 29 other NBA cities. Yeah. But I get it. Thunder fans, you had to hear for two years that Westbrook was leaving, that he liked fashion. Look at his funky sweatshirts. He's definitely going to move to LA because he likes sweatshirts and he stayed so I get why you're not angry he's intense no you guys are wrong since the all-star break they're right back to being a team that still had a winning record with these terrible shooting numbers to and now a team that is the second worst offensive rating in the NBA, a league worst 42% from the floor, 33% from three, and they can't hit free throws again. So there you go.

Well, and the free throw thing, I always look for this with the free throws because it's amazing how that pops up. The shitty free throw shooting team versus, I always call them the coolers, the teams that have like the Ray Allen in the last minute. Like, it's like, if we're up three and you foul us, we're winning, that's it, the game's over. OKC is the opposite of that. They do not have the coolers. No, and they lost to the Mavs at home, no Doncic.

The Memphis loss, that was the Bruno two years away from being two years away game. And he had the 24 and 10, but like, they lost to a bunch of dudes who weren't even playing four months ago. No, that Memphis roster consistently is one of my favorite things to watch every night. So back to the Thunder, like as a whole, I don't feel wrong or stupid for looking at them and collectively saying, you you know that might be the team that could that could just match what the warriors are when i think of some of the smartest stuff you've ever said thank you one of my favorite things you said about i appreciate the comment

but you were right about this i hadn't heard anybody else say it it was the best way to explain mellow because you know for all the as much as everybody loves shitting on mellow and it's deserved at the end of this he actually had some really productive years there yeah he's really good you said about mellow when he goes up against lebron or chris paul or these other guys like he just sees himself he sees he sees his peers yeah so that's a positive for him if that happens the problem is he never really got far enough of playoffs like he wasn't ever gonna go oh my gosh i'm going up against these guys like no no these this is the neighborhood i live in the problem is as a player he's compared to those guys and he was never those guys yeah that's what i thought was the positive about okc is that they weren't going to look at golden state going oh

shit like how are we going to do this they were going to they were going to appreciate the chance to take them down but they're playing so poorly. This thing's a five-gamer. I don't know how I can talk myself back into them right now. It's funny because I like the Schroeder trade, and I thought Atlanta was stupid for doing it. And I still don't understand the wisdom of trading for a $28 million contract,

just to take that kind of hit, versus Schroeder, who's somebody who could be in a playoff series. I just think they want him away from Trey Young. It seems like it. But bad Schroeder could actually also shoot you out of a playoff series. And we've had bad Schroeder now for six weeks.

And when I watch him, he's just too involved. You know? Yeah, it was fun when he was hitting shots. It was going to lessen the burden. Westbrook was going to play off of him. To me, basketball guys are the same as people. The people never change.

Like, what are you like in relationships? What are you like with your friends? Basketball is the same exact thing. Well, it's like I've been rewatching Thrones in season two. There's this whole thing with Jon Snow. They pick up that wilding lady. Just long scenes with them walking in the wilderness

it's kind of the Dennis Schroeder of that season 2 where it's just like alright we get it they're walking in the wilderness if you were like a horde of half man beasts running around in the cold

and there was like a 7 and this rando a horde of half man beasts running around in the cold. Right. And there was like a seven and this rando from 25. Right. Yeah. I feel like a 25 out of 10. In reality, Jon Snow would have been barbecued that afternoon. Just looking at.

Whereas, okay. See, it was so much more of a fun idea five weeks ago. Yeah. where is OKC was so much more of a fun idea five weeks ago yeah it sucks now when Paul George was healthy and OKC could shoot out of those

eight series I think Houston Clips would be the most fun I think the Clips are a really hard team to play they have multiple heat check guys they're going to have guys

who have a real ax to grind because they were given away in that Chris Paul trade as like afterthoughts. And they've turned into kind of the heart of this Clippers team. And they have a lot of guys

to throw at Harden. What if Harden wins the MVP? They have like 30 fouls to throw at him. What if Harden wins the MVP and loses the Clippers? And loses the Clippers in the first round.

He pulls the 0-7 Dirk? I used to think there was no way. I feel like playoff performances that are that feel like, okay, this is actually really who you are as a guy, as a player. And Harden's had a bunch of bad ones. Yeah. Where I always felt like

there were hangovers the voters would never get over. The voters would be like, okay, I'm never going to do this again with you. But Harden's been so insane this year that it's almost like the voters will have had an IV and they're thinking, okay, we can do this. We can do this. We can vote for him again. But if they were to lose the first round, he won't ever get a fifth place vote or third place vote. You're right. The overreaction. It'll be like the year Jason Kidd almost won and then finished ninth the next year and had basically the identical year he had the year before but

people were like oh man we lost our minds what were we doing i think that happened to carl malone too after when he beat mj that year they never was mad at themselves oh my god but like it was like a drunk dial vote i love watching i wish people could see you put your hand on your face. It's like the morning waking up being like, my God, we had kids second? What? MVP checkpoint right now.

Who ordered this noodle thing? MVP checkpoint right now. Harden 1A, Giannis 1B, or vice versa. I think Jokic is three. I mean, Denver has a chance to be the one seed still. Their schedule's brutal. I don't think they're going to be the one seed. I'm just saying they have a chance.

I'd expect Golden State to... We didn't really do enough Denver there because they're starting to slip a little. Do you... Embiid 4, Curry 5 is what I have. Oh, okay. I have George out of the top five now. The 6th and 13, you're out.

Sorry. I'm sorry you're hurt. George isn't even of the top five, though. The six and 13, you're out. Sorry. I'm sorry you're hurt. George isn't even in your top five? I have Curry in fifth now. If they're going to be a one seed and there's no definitive fifth choice, I just think Curry's been amazing. And when he plays, that team is awesome.

No Kyrie? No, Kyrie's not in my top five. How do you feel about yourselves right now? We didn't do anything. I'm not talking about them in this podcast. I have Embiid, Giannis, Harden, Curry, definite first team NBA. I think George versus Duran is at least now an argument.

Have you noticed a bunch of, I don't know if you've noticed it, but a lot of jazz fans have been chiming in upset that Towns is over Gobert. Yeah, for third team center. Really? Get a lot of that. Yeah. Jazz fans have been chiming in upset that Towns is over Gobert. Yeah, for third team center. Really? A lot of that. Yeah. Towns is like 31-15 since the All-Star break.

So I might actually do the thing this year where just vote playoff guys for the first three All-NBA teams. It would be an interesting move. Because then that bumps towns. You put Gobert in. You're just basically rewarding. Your team had to have been good enough for you to make this list. I don't think LeBron, I don't think I'm going to vote for him.

So we're back to this. This is quite the swing. 55 games, you're out. I just have a track record as somebody who's done this, who had to vote for, I don't know, 10 years. To me, now you've missed a third of the season. Your team's not a playoff team. Why do I have to put you on the NBA?

Would you have voted Embiid? Did you vote Embiid Rookie of the Year that your Brogdon won it? I did not. I thought that was absurd. For him to play 30 games and win it? It was like 31 games. I'm like, what are you guys talking about? You played 800 minutes.

I'm not voting him rookie of the year. But what about the fact that the release and LeBron thing was that it actually is the injury? And it's to just make sure there's no lingering. He did have a torn groin this whole time? I just, the Lakers thing, now being out here every day. It's unbelievable.

And seeing the amount of nonsense that goes on with this team. Like, I knew it was crazy, but I didn't appreciate it enough until I've lived here where just every day. And then there'll be like a release. And then two hours later, it's like, no, actually this is what, no. And then tip later that night, you're like, no, this is actually kind of what's going on. That team finds a way to create stuff about itself. That's so pointless and nonproductive. It's fascinating seeing it now, like in the actual area code. I hope and pray. I remember one year after the Patino, one of the Patino seasons, Michael Hawley was the beat reporter. And after the season wrote this

giant long piece about this is what a disaster the season was. And here's some inside people. And I've talked to this and here's some stuff I wasn't able to write before. And it's honestly one of the best. Here's how fucked up the season was pieces. I can remember. I know I want to read it right now. It's great. I hope it's,

if it's online, Google it. And, and then it was a whole thing about like Bruce Bowen might've been one of the sources. So they traded them. It was like that. Yeah,

that worked out great. I hope somebody is working in that for the Lakers. I hope it's like one of those, that Orange County register, like one of those news, I hope that somebody just has all the notes. Yeah, non-ESPN person, right. No agendas, no ESPN agenda,

no we can't run this in its entirety. I like Genie, I don't like Magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Genie's my best source. I can't write this. I just want somebody who is not affiliated with anybody to write the proper piece of what a nightmare this season's been. I have another episode of The Rereadables.

I might get to work on that. Go, go. I might be the guy. Do it. You're the guy. The Rereadables. America liked this segment, apparently. I wrote this in April 2006 in my MVP column.

I can't wait. Pull up a chair, Kyle. Hey. This is what I wrote. Is that Jewel Fresh? Is that mango? All right, here's what I wrote. I'm starting to wonder if LeBron slash Wade slash Carmelo could become the most

important sports rivalry of this generation. Each is great in his own way. Each brings something different, unique to the table, and each seem to feed off what's happening with the other two guys. For instance, the Wade-LeBron duel two Saturdays ago, LeBron finished with a 47-12-10, Wade with a 44-8-9. This game sounds amazing, by the way. Wasn't just the most thrilling game of the season. It was a significant experience for anyone who truly gives a crap about this league. Two young, fantastic players absolutely killing it,

doing everything they could to win the game, bringing out the absolute best of each other. This was Pacino and De Niro sharing a scene in heat. I remember this article. Only if they made the movie together in 1974. This was Pearl Jam and Nirvana saying in 1992, screw it, let's go play at the same tiny club in Seattle

and see who the crowd enjoys more. A little Temple of the Dog right there. Yeah, going a little further, fast forward. What's the ceiling here? Do we even have a ceiling? Ali had Frasier, Bird had Magic, Russell had Chamberlain. Is it possible that LeBron, Wade, and Do we even have a ceiling? Ali had Frazier, Bird had Magic, Russell had Chamberlain. Is it possible that LeBron, Wade, and Carmelo all have each other?

And do you realize that these guys are a combined 68 years old? Fast forward a little bit more. The collective emergence of LeBron, Wade, and Melo could eventually become the most significant thing that ever happened to this league. Bigger than MJ, bigger than Bird of Magic, bigger than everything, I guess we'll see. The re-readables. I'm going to say I went a little over the top on that one.

You think? Whoops. Okay, but. But I really felt that way. That was all 100% genuine in 2006. Of all the stuff that's out there, that's not terrible. Did you feel that way in 06? Like these three guys are our guys for the next 15 years?

Because I really did feel that way. And by the way, Wade went on to win the finals that year and had like the real full Dwayne Wade breakout that I don't think everybody really fully saw coming. For all the automatics in that draft, I remember going like, love wade i love him yeah and even though he was you know he wasn't as big as he was supposed well he went fifth because he's old insane group of guys in front of him yeah when you watch bosh that freshman year

you go this is this is gonna be nuts i i was so in on the lebrron thing because I loved it. I just loved it. I love the freakish part of the athleticism and size. But when you're a great playmaker, it just makes it different because now I don't know what to expect. Like it's one thing to be this great shot maker. It's one thing to just be Jason Kidd. But when you have a little Jason Kidd on that end, you can overpower everybody.

And you have the switch where you could, and the following year he did the 48 points against detroit the detroit 24 in a row right the detroit thing was my 10-year anniversary for a 10-year reunion not anniversary obviously not married um and i remember all of us like i was like i don't really want to go to any of the events because i i just want to watch what he's doing here and rashid was guaranteeing they're going to win yeah and they lost and they'd lose again and they'd lose again and I always joked that I thought LeBron deserved like half a ring just for getting that team to the NBA finals because that was it was awesome I just it's kind of like the Zion thing again when you're so hyped up and you're supposed to

be this thing and you actually deliver sort of exceed what we're expecting from you yeah it's the whole reason we get too caught up and it's the whole reason we keep coming back i remember nike stock was up like one and a half percent after that 48 point game great earning opportunity it was good are you it was really volatile that day are you making fun of my rage on the n stock? No, that's one of my favorite Rosillo Twitter, running Twitter things. I want to get David Faber on my ESPN pod. I want to just- David Faber. I'm a huge David Faber.

We're going to take one more break and then we have some meal bag questions. One more break to talk about Bud Light. Did you know not all alcohol products are required to list their ingredients? That was news to me. Bud Light, changing the game. They believe that we deserve to know our beer's ingredients, so they put an ingredients label right on their packaging. Bud

Light, brewed with hops, barley, water, rice, no corn syrup, no preservatives, no artificial flavors. Find out what ingredients are in your beer. Bud Light, enjoy responsibly. And since we're here, don't forget about the new Rewatchables episode, Fast Five. Vin Diesel, The Rock, Vin Diesel turning seven times to his left in the same scene. It's all there. We're breaking all of it down, including who won the big fight between The Rock and Vin Diesel. A two plus minute extravaganza that really could have been shown on DAZN as a pay-per-view. Check all that out. Me and Shay, we're waiting to do this for some time. So that's happening. I think next week

we got Major League coming. Yeah. 30 year anniversary. I think. It's almost 30 years. Anyway, we're doing that. So if you want to catch up on the next one, watch Major League. All right, back to Ursula. Okay. duane wade john white asks is duane wade's career really deserving of this hero send off at every arena he travels to quick strikes here definitely annoyed by it that might be more of a me issue i don't know what's up with lebron when these heat guys are so insecure after the fact bosh's whole thing like i'm definitely one of the greatest to ever play. Like, dude, you're pretty good, but you're not, you're never going to sniff a top 20 player.

That's not who you are. Or top 50. Yeah, or that. I was trying to be nice. Oh, he was great. He's a good player. Really, really, really memorable player. But Wade has done this thing, like when everybody was doing the two,

when they won their back-to-backs with that group, and then Wade's like, check out my three, though. There's this odd insecurity about these guys, and I don't know if we can blame LeBron for it, but someone else should. I'm not going to. Will Kane. Will Kane.

You can have this. Will Kane, Thursday, 4.30 Easter time that's just a mental drain on you man I so the farewell tour has been in our lives my entire lifetime

with the NBA the worst version of it was Kareem who by the way who I thought I had him as the third best player of all time immense respect for Kareem, who I thought I had him as the third best player of all time. Immense respect for Kareem.

Was not somebody that people really responded to when he played. He was not friendly. He was not really that fun to go watch. He was Mr. Jump hook. Had the goggles on. Was somebody that you just felt like you didn't really have an attachment to, but respected. And then had this season long farewell tour. We were all supposed to pretend we were like really bummed out that he was leaving.

It was like, all right, here's your rocking chair. Dr. J a couple of years before was definitely a little more heartfelt. Now as this has evolved, I think Kobe took this model and blew it into something completely different. Well, Kobe's a fascinating one. Kobe turned it into a content machine, which is now what Dwayne Wade is trying to do. And if there's something that doesn't feel 100% genuine about it, like the jersey swaps, it feels like Dwayne Wade had a meeting with all the people around him. We're like, all right, can I have some ideas for my farewell tour? What are some things I can do that nobody's done yet?

What if you swap jerseys with somebody and they post it? Great, brilliant. Get a photographer. It just feels calculated in a way that I'm slightly uncomfortable with. Right. And the fact that it goes this long and the fact that our attention span is this, for Wade, for Wade fans and for the heat and for him to go back there, if you enjoy it, it's kind of like the kobe the last game like that last game where he put up a million

shots it was a travesty what do you mean how many shots he took took fucking 60 shots for us you know what i mean like i'm all i'm okay with trying to play like the fair game with kobe but to go on tv the next day and shit on his efficiency, like, shut up. Because that was, I think, that was for Lakers fans. That was for that building. That was for everybody to give him this massive sendoff. Now, yes, the final year for Kobe was also very calculated. And I think Wade played off of that. I've never been able to decide, was that a great moment or an atrocity of a moment? Because he did score 60 points. I just thought it was, who gives a shit? Kobe's out of here and he's gonna drink like he got 60 and i know it wasn't efficient but i'm sitting there

at home i had a smile on my face and i'm the i'm not a huge kobe fan but i had a smile on my face but i think i'd guess but i i think what you're saying here is is important because this will get farmed out and then in 10 years, we're going to have a retirement tour for like a Lou Williams type. And you're just going to be going, dude. Well, we've already seen this with the farewell video, which has become bastardized.

When the Houston Rockets did a, hey, here's a tribute video to Dwight Howard. I'm like, okay, this is over. This is, this is. I thought one of the few times it seemed... We both love Pierce. He was guilty of this too. It was like he'd been retired for three years.

It was like, this is your last chance to see me, even though I basically retired last year. Well, how about when Wade hinted that he'd come back? That would be awesome. Well, he did the whole... I want a two-year one. Yeah, I'd rather leave a year too early than a year too late. There's also like, as usual with LeBron these last few years, there's just questions we're

not supposed to answer or pursue or dig up. But what happened with Dwayne Wade in Cleveland? When they just traded him halfway through the year, LeBron's best friend was coming to Cleveland to help him win the title and then they're basically like you gotta go never never really understood

that whole thing no there wasn't very it's a little weird right my informed guess on this is I think Dwayne still felt like Miami owed him some money when he opted out

and then didn't get the money and they paid Hassan Whiteside I think he was a locker room issue though I think it was like LeBron and Wade oh with Cleveland right yeah I think

I think there was like some leadership stuff going on too something weird happened but i just think like if if joe house joined my team and then like two months into it i'm like hey we've traded you back to washington it would just be weird they're like best friends yeah and i think what you're saying here is it isn't so much weird that it happened. It's weird that no one's ever talked about it. Yeah. We just, we're not, I was like, oh, that happened. Because it felt like they were doing him a favor to go back to Miami.

Or like when LeBron came back to Cleveland, he's like, I had this flight with Dwayne Wade. We flew to Vegas. Vegas to Miami. Yeah. And Vegas to Miami. And they were like, did Dwayne try to trade your mind? He's like, no, man. We didn't talk about it.

We didn't talk about it at all. It's like, come on. Am I just the, are we all idiots? We all have 70 IQs apparently. You guys in six hour, you know how long a six hour flight is when you're in like a private jet? There's like just you, the fucking flight attendant, like your two buddies, like at no point you'd be like,

hey, so what are you gonna do in Miami? You're gonna talk about your next contract? Didn't come up. I always love when athletes- Who is this stuff for? When athletes do the thing where it's like, you know, we're really close because we don't talk about sports.

Like you guys never talk about- We talk about wine. This new Pinot's out that I told LeBron about. We're just talking about family. We're FaceTiming your family. I don't talk to my friends. I have a lot of close friends who have kids. We never talk about our kids to each other.

Like what's going on with your third grader? Yeah. Imagine if I had ever said like, hey, you're getting along with Bill. Yeah. But you know, the great thing is we never talk about the industry. We never talk about sports.

We don't talk about sports media at all. We're like a different level. I just, I just don't, my question is, who is this stuff for? The retirement thing? It's for Wade. It's for Wade. It's for Wade. The LeBron groin is, who is this stuff for? The retirement thing? It's for Wade.

It's for Wade. The LeBron groin thing. Who is this for? It's like, LeBron, let's give him time to rest his groin. Who are you trying to win over with that? Because it's not anybody who has an IQ of over 90 who follows basketball.

Who's like, well, LeBron's groin. It is time to shut it down. But it is... Just say we're shutting it down. The season sucks. But was like, well, you know, LeBron's growing. I mean, it is time to shut it down. But it is. Just say we're shutting it down. No, okay, but the Anthony Davis thing, think about the outrage in the beginning

and then it was sort of the Anthony Davis watch. It's like, wait a minute, they're not going to bring him back in the fourth quarter against the T-Wolves. Like, I remember caring about all that stuff

and then eventually I just didn't give a shit anymore. Like, I didn't care. So I think at the end, it's this outrage of like, play everybody, play everybody, play everybody,

and then it gets to the point where we're just bored enough with the topic and we don't care enough about it that everybody can kind of get away with shutting everybody down so i think that's clearly what's happened with the lebron thing well you know why we didn't care because the pelican fans didn't really seem to care this is the same thing like with the sixers fans in the process when they threw away all those seasons and it was like wow that sucks if you paid for season tickets and your team's losing by 30 every night, that would suck. And the Philly fans were like, stay out of it.

We know what we're doing. Fuck you. We got the process. Stay out of it. We don't need your help. It's like, all right, guys, sorry. Just thought maybe, you know, you're paying for tickets every year.

This team's 10 and 72. Thought maybe you need some help so you don't need help. Fuck you! Somebody asked, I can't find the email, but somebody sent an email asking if, sorry, I can't find your email, whoever sent this. I just remember it. If the Davis trade had gone through,

and let's say it was Ingram, Lonzo, Kuzma, Rondo to make the contracts work, couple first round picks, whatever else, for Anthony Davis, would the Lakers have made the playoffs? So it's basically like Caruso, Josh Hart. Daniel? Daniel? LeBron and Anthony together. LeBron, I mean, we don't, you know, his grind, obviously he would have to play through that. He would have found a way, I think.

Maybe found a way. Is that an eight seed? I don't know how everybody answers that definitively. Like, no way. Well, are you sure? I would think so. That'd have been worth 10 extra wins because that's what they would need it i'm sure there's some statistical approach it would tell me it's only yeah it's only 4.6 wins so there's no way they would get in uh i don't know is there a game they would have played where they wouldn't have taken 23 more free throws than the other team down the stretch as the league tried to shoehorn them to the eighth spot. I do think my instinct would be that they would get in because by the way, absurd, not real, whatever.

The number of injuries, like as much as people want to just pin this on LeBron and he's clearly not blameless or anything, this is a pretty ridiculous collection of guys being hurt to close out the last two months of your season. Did you hear Kobe's thing? Which one? Well, it's funny because people are always like, they were the four seed. It was like, well, I was like 12 games into

the season and they're 19 separated by a game. But yeah, sure. They were the four seed. And then all these injuries, I don't know. We always said for years and years and years that LeBron and anyone was 50 wins. So what did Kobe say? Well, Kobe was like, they were doing really well, and they had injuries, and everybody needs to calm down. Yeah, it's not a great team. Nobody's arguing this is a great team, but I don't think it's as bad as this. And then it's compounded by all the stuff

that we just referenced minutes ago, where out here, it's just, it's so weird to see how different a feeling, like, oh, you don't want to go to the Knicks. This Laker thing here is, as far as my first year experiencing it, the intensity, the emotional attachment to it, it matches any other professional city relationship

with any other franchise. I agree. It's right up there with bitchy Red Sox pitching staff stuff come May. It's basically, it goes back to the generations which they have here the dodgers too and this is why la is defensible as a sports town those two teams the lakers showed up in 1959 and if you're like 80 and under you probably like the lakers if you live in the la area like that's a lot of people they have a big- Do you meet a lot of guys that are over 80 that resist it still?

You're like, man, I could never get into it, man. Never liked that Jerry West. Not for me. But Dodgers, same thing. Dodgers moved to their late 50s and it's legit. And it's really hard to break into if you're the Clippers, which is why I kind of admire Balmer that he thinks he's going to break through with the Clips. I just don't see it. I think it's the same thing with Nets and Knicks. Like at some point you can't mess with the DNA and the DNA here is Lakers.

And I'm glad you saw it. The one thing you haven't seen yet is when they're do well in the playoffs and the fucking Laker flags go on the car. Cause that's the worst. They put flags on their car and they drive around. I've driven around SEC towns. But you haven't seen them this year because they haven't been good are you saying that they won't i'm saying if they made like the conference out here we're conference finals the flags come out and you're just uh they're at half mass now this is

a really important question from der Wright, who enjoyed the vintage matchup watching the Lakers' Alex Caruso matched up against the Kings' Costa Cufas. The mustaches, the male pattern baldness, and pasty jello bodies was like watching Chris Ford take on Mark Landsberger in 1982. Besides

Caruso and Cufas, who else in the NBA looks like somebody from the 1980s? Oh, man. I need better prep on this. I know. Maybe we could come back next week and answer this more in full. We could do a team. I'm going to do my first team.

I'll first NBA 80s team. That's a great question. It's a good one. Because when you're bringing up Kareem running up and down and the balding patch and the goggles and everything, and then I'll see see it it'll come up and i'll i'll look i'll go on basketball reference and try to like see because i'm always it's amazing how guys that are awesome and you go that that fucking guy still did that in his last year yeah and then i'll look and be like hey kareem's five years younger than you are right now i Off the top of my head,

I think Baines would have... He would have had a different haircut. But Baines is... There were just a lot of Baines back then. I was watching this... Yeah, but they weren't thick. Joe Klein was in an NBA rotation for six years

in the Celtics. And if you watch the clips of those, and you ask me what Joe Klein did, I wouldn't know what to tell you. It's like, what, what were, what was he good at?

I just remember his elbows out a lot. Good picks, um, low post defense. Like if we had advanced metrics for back then, some of those guys would have been in trouble, including like every center, basically. Um,

Kevin B from West Hollywood brought up something that, uh, does not get brought up enough. guys would have been in trouble, including every center, basically. Kevin B. from West Hollywood brought up something that does not get brought up enough. What if the Bucs took and beat over Jabari Parker in the 14 NBA draft? Now, this was never on the table because from day one, they were taking Jabari Parker because they really wanted the Chicago Cade. It was 90

minutes away, all that stuff. Remember how weird it was, too? Jabari was like, good, I want to go to Milwaukee. It was the first sign that maybe Jabari's not programmed the way everybody else is. But had they taken Embiid, they could have had Embiid and Giannis in back-to-back drafts. That is an unbelievable what if

that I feel like we should mention once a month. Embiid and Giannis together? I don't even know what that looks like. It's crazy how we get so stupid around draft time, too. Because when I did my Wiggins stuff, when I did it for Grantland, there were guys that were like, hey, at the very minimum, Wiggins is going to be a really good perimeter defensive player.

Yeah. If all the other stuff doesn't work out for whatever reason, not going to happen, not going to happen, but we know you can throw him out there he's gonna be able to play nba level defense is a young player right away and that's something you never get from rookies and it's been the complete fucking opposite of that since he's been in the league and now it's to the point where and by the way he wasn't in the game when they came back or held off the warriors he was fouled out of that maybe it's maybe it's time to stop overreacting, 19-year-old kids. So there's that.

But Embiid was the better player. I mean, he was the best player in that draft. This isn't hindsight. I said it then. Embiid absolutely would have gone first. He had the knee thing. People got scared. Or back thing.

What was that? It was a back thing. But I know- That's filthy. What? Because you could have figured it out with those two because you wouldn't know who was going to be in or out depending I feel like they would have gotten along to uh Daniel Hartman was the one who wrote about if the Lakers had missed the playoffs would they have missed the playoffs even if they traded for it all right a couple people asked this question. I'll give credit to Gio from Dallas. Let's say Zion forgoes the NBA draft right now

and declares for the NFL draft. What round does he get selected in? He refuses to work out for anybody. He just says, I want to be a tight end in the NFL. I've changed my mind. I don't want to play basketball. Basketball, I don't want to deal with teammates. I want to be a tight end in the NFL. I've changed my mind. I don't want to play basketball. Basketball, I don't want to deal with teammates. I want to be on a football team.

And I either want to be a tight end or an edge rusher. And you guys can figure it out after you draft me. What round does he get taken? Belichick spends a second round pick on him, I feel like. Yeah, I had a third round grade in my head. Third round grade. Right. But because you say third round grade, the other teams go, if we like him, we like him.

We get a jump on him. Take him. We get two seconds. Yeah. I bet he goes in the second round i'm totally serious right now and i hated pick 40 right i hated the lebron would be an all-world tight end because he actually doesn't like contact the way he played basketball told me he wasn't a football mentality guy so even though i'm sure he put up huge numbers in high school because he was just huge. Receiver, maybe. No, he was. He was good. But when everybody built LeBron, like, oh, he'd be this.

Zion, to me, looks more like football, the way he plays basketball. Would you make him an edge rusher or a tight end? I'd put him on the edge. I may go Gordie Lockbaum on him and just say, yeah, you're playing both. BR, who didn't want to use his real name, said, Buck's Twitter is currently in the third year of a civil war fought over Chris Middleton. I've actually been a little aware of this. Who, despite being red hot in the Celtics series, is one of the most fraudulent con men I've ever seen.

Every year, he arrives out of shape. He's one of the streakiest players imaginable. He never shows up in big games, except for the Boston series, and tends to coast at crutch time. What other big games big games except for the Boston series and tends to coast and crunch time. What other big games have they had besides the Boston series? Everyone in the media loves him, but he's been benched a few times this year for lack of effort in a contract year. Please don't use my name as I fear reprisals. And he realized Chris Middleton, so polarizing. The Bucks guys, it's always kind of fun when there's a little bit of a revisit of nasty different fan bases. And the Bucks have some nasty dudes. When of fun when there's a little bit of a revisit of nasty different fan bases.

And the Bucks have some nasty dudes. When I started tweeting out about the Hawks, one guy in particular was like, yeah, whatever. They beat the Wisconsin Herd because they benched their guys at the end. Use your brain, man. This isn't a swipe at the Bucks. You fucking idiot. The Bucks internet is a thing. Yeah, totally.

Good blog, good Twitter, some celebrity tweeters like Ben Thompson from the Stratechery blog. They have great logos, a lot of good design team people. So overall, a really good grade on the Bucks. But this is an awesome question because I too find myself struggling with Chris Middleton. Chris Middleton leaves you cold. Oh, wow. Okay. He's going to be fun when he's on the Knicks. But he needs to be there. Like he needs... The good version of him is a perfect fit for a guy like Giannis, is my point.

I'm biased because he murders the Celtics, so I can't even look at it properly. You know what would be a good project for somebody in Grantland? Who? Is to identify... What about the ringer? Oh, way better idea. Identify all 30 NBA fan base

civil wars hmm some don't have them like the Clippers love their team right now Celtics have a few so who's the number one

Celtics civil war right now it's gotta be Kyrie right but Tatum is like the there's we have like multiple wars going on. Then there's always the Marcus Smart. Right. Marcus Smart's a good one.

Brad Stevens. Andrew from Seattle says, in 2012, you wrote a column about MVP trophy size as a way to capture the season and the transcendence of the MVP season yourself. I think it was 40 pounds

was the heaviest, meaning with the best MVP season. 20, I think it went 15, 10, 5, and then 1. Like Derek Rose's 2011 MVP. High rep. One pound trophy. Yeah. LeBron, the first year in Miami that they won the title, like clear 40 pounder. I feel like these are 20 pounders I would go with. I would go with the level below the 40 pounder for the Harden versus Giannis. But I think the race of those two together feels like a 40 pound race. So together, they're two 20 pounders. But you don't think the winner of this will be like a 40 pound season?

Am I not understanding the concept here? I don't feel like 40 pound season to me is like, this is one of the best seven or eight players of all time having one of their best seasons ever. That's like the top of the mountain. Do you still not know what you're going to do? That's like Magic 1987. 40-pound trophy. So do you not know what you're going to do here? How is Harden not a 40-pound? I still don't know what I'm

going to do. Because that team's going to win like 53 games. And I don't think he's one of the best seven or eight players of all time. I don't know who I'd vote for. It sounds like you're leaning to Harden. I guess we'll find out on Zach's podcast. I change my mind every day.

Yeah, Zach and I have a big two-parter coming up. We don't. 20-pounder, I would say. Although, if Giannis is going to sit out games down the stretch, and Harden is still going and going and going and trying to hit these different benchmarks, he might actually swing it the last week. Whatever, dude.

LeBron took breaks. Bucks Twitter. Bucks Twitter. Chris Middleton, Civil War. Gotta love the mailbag. I love the Civil War idea. It's good. Maybe there aren't 30, but what would the Heat one be?

Table that. We'll do that one next week too. The heat one would be, are we sure Justice Winslow is good? Point guard Justice Winslow. Yeah, point guard. Are we sure? Are we a little too excited

about this Justice Winslow thing? Detroit Civil War is clearly Andre Drummond. I don't know. Can we build around him or not? Can it be Reggie Jackson too? And that's like, who's on the Reggie Jackson? No, no, he's actually good side.

Uh-huh. You'd be surprised. Yeah? Yeah. What about Kawhi? Who's Toronto? Should you build around Siakam or Kawhi? We don't need Kawhi.

We have Siakam. That'll be awesome if he leaves. Siakam's fucking good. Yeah, he is. I mean, the thing is, is who knows with that guy? The funny thing is there's a reboot for toronto where they could make the finals this year or come close and then trade lowry in the final year of his deal and let kawaii go to the clippers and then have all this cap space that they just created to get rid of gasol like they could they could reboot pretty easily or you have gasol and abaca for one year

with lowry bring back make one more run br Bruno's now two years away from being two years away from actually being four years from something. Yeah, Toronto will be an interesting summer team because I think Kawhi is going to leave. I think he's one and done. That would be my bet. I agree with you. I think he's gone.

Still waiting for him to say, I really love Toronto. This is my place. That wouldn't be the reason why I think he's leaving because he hasn't said anything. There's been no signs at all. You think it's the personal day to see a movie? No, but Paul George last year, there were

breadcrumbs during the season. Like, hey, I didn't realize I'd like it so much here. I love fishing. I love Russell Westbrook. I love the smell of dog food next to my practice facility. There were breadcrumbs. He left. Aiden has a gym corner thing.

He wants to know your thoughts on an old naked guy when they walk from the locker to the shower with a towel, but the towel is over their shoulder, not over their body. What is the point of the over the shoulder towel in this day and age? Look good, feel good. Okay. Do you support the over the shoulder? Well, I knew. You didn't even have to finish the email. I made the motion, the towel over the shoulder. I knew exactly what Aiden was talking. Aiden's putting in time at the gym i can tell just by that email so john from san francisco i think it's a really like it's a real it's like a leverage by power play yeah like here are my balls and here's my towel yeah i could have covered up my balls but i chose that this isn't about

not having what i need i have what i need i just don't want to use it john from san francisco says thanks for making gym corner recurring recurring segment in the BS pod. For years, my dad and I have talked about starting a blog to document the weird shit we see in locker rooms. The list includes, parentheses, it's almost always old guys,

blow drying their balls in front of the mirror. Does that happen? All the time. Drying clothes in the sauna? That's why I shaved my head. Drying clothes in the sauna? That's why I shaved my head. Drying clothes in the sauna? Seen that?

Done. Eating a foot-long Subway sandwich on the bench in the midst of people changing. That's weird. Yeah, you bring in a sub in. We don't need that. Singing in the showers? I'm going to guess that's not Equinox. Sub.

I haven't seen a sub. Singing in the shower. I'm starting to wonder what kind of what kind of monthly plan this sounds like a non-initiation feed jim uh shaving in the sink and leaving behind mounds of facial hair yeah dudes do that using the phone that's supposed to be reserved to call the front desk to make long personal phone calls while naked yeah this is a non-initiation. Yeah, this is 25-hour fitness. And of course, pervaso, lounge around naked, read the newspaper,

watch TV, et cetera. He also says, on top of all that, my dad just started chemotherapy last week. Listening to the pod has been a great distraction and way to pass time while he's trapped in the hospital.

Good luck to John and San Francisco's father. Yeah, absolutely, John. Thanks for that. But yeah, I thought, anything left out there? Blow-drying the balls? I haven't even heard of that. Who does that? But yeah, I thought anything left out there? Blow drying the balls?

I've never even heard of that. Who does that? Do you go to the gym? What's your gym routine? I don't go to the gym. Do you work out? Is there any physical fitness out of you at all? I do a lot of walking. Walking and thinking.

Yeah. I'm old now. Play golf. We're going to get you on some kind of thing. Playing golf. There's nothing you're interested in? Maybe when I turn 50. Maybe a little tennis?

I like tennis, golf. How often do you play? retired from basketball four years ago. You retired? Did you get hurt? Nah, it was time to go. I got out intact. I'm playing tonight. Are you?

Yeah. It was all sorts of shit I picked up this weekend. I'm trying to apply it to the game. It's time for Gym Corner, unless you want this Orlando Magic email that somebody sent me. It's your call, man. Ching just wants to know,

would you rather tank or fight to be the eighth spot if you're Orlando and just in general, what the value is? I'm already on the record as saying, I'm all for trying to make the playoffs versus the difference between the 10th pick and the 13th pick. I would just rather make the playoffs,

get experience from my guys, have some fun with the fans like i just think that's more valuable than moving up three spots but some people don't agree i'm now almost every position i have is did someone who i think is dumb say something i think is dumb and then i kind of formulate off of that right so when somebody says like that experience is invaluable you get your young guys a little taste of the playoff thing and all this shit i think a lot of that is so overrated i don't think there are moments where guys go like hey remember we get

our asses handed to us last year like dig deep remember that yeah but it's different right this isn't the same you can't just apply it for every team you can't just say because we get so obsessed i think a lot of writers a lot of analytics people were like oh it's so stupid just tank tank tank tank tank and you felt like you had a third of the league tanking before the season even started. So a team like Orlando, I think teams that haven't had any of this in a while and want to feel like they're,

even if it's a fake right direction thing, I'm all for Orlando making the playoffs. Me too. It's different. It's different franchises. The Void, how long has it been? They got a new leadership group in there. I like their front office a lot.

I really do. I think Orlando has a great front office. I think from an evaluation standpoint, I still like watching my guys on a stage. I think it's one thing to be able to evaluate somebody like Aaron Gordon, who I've had on my team for a while. But to actually see him in a playoff series,

guarding Giannis, like let's say they split with the Bucks 1-1 and he goes back to Orlando for game three. The crowd will be into it. That'll be like a thing. And I kind of want to see how my guys respond. So I'm pro. Go for it. All right. Oh, and Lee Jones wants to know. The Lee Jones? Not the Lee Jones, but all these horrific broken leg, ankle, dream injuries. What is going on? Is this like a few random things

that have just happened next to each other? Or is there some bigger reason that this is happening and he blames compression pants? I don't think that's what it is. That would be controversial if it was compression pants. I just think that big guys move in ways we've never seen before and that you know some of the stuff's just landing on other people but uh i think it's fluky because

each one is explainable the hayward thing explainable paul george the basket support was closer than he thought to the court uh the nurkic thing was a fluke like i i don't think i don't see anywhere do we know for a fact though, that this is happening more often? Do we even know that? We've had four in the last like four years, right? Pretty, I remember when I was a kid, like Bobby Wilkerson broke his leg in the Indiana championship game. It was, that was like the only time I remember that happening, like my entire childhood, somebody like breaking something.

All right. Gym corner and then we're off. All right. I love my gym. really happy about it um but there's some guys there and when it's old people that don't put their stuff back like this was happening in west hartford a lot yeah but it was just everybody who's old and we've been over the old thing there's a pact at 70 they get together and they go fuck them kids and that's the whole plan blow dry their balls right and you don't ever put anything back tens on a squat rack fuck them yeah leave them leave them on there two and a half's fuck them so there's some younger dudes doing it at the equinox

and i hate it it bums me out there was like a squat set up the other day and it was left with the clip-ons and the whole thing. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm supposed to. And so I did a little bit of a, are we done here? You did that? Yeah, I'll do it every now and then. Wow, you're recognizable too. That's a bold move.

But you can't have, you're not ready because you don't know what's coming. I'll just kind of look to the room like, we done here? And then I don't I no one's ever no one's ever said my bad maybe maybe and the person could not even be in the room which makes me a total jerk because it's like everybody's like whatever dude but it's just I hope the person who left it behind feels just a little just a one% of shame and my job is done. So there's no way it's an accident. No.

You're in the mode, you work it out on this machine, you finish the machine, you towel the bench, you fix where the weights were before, and then you go on to the next machine. That's the process. If you don't obey any of the points of that process you're just being an asshole look if you don't towel down it's somewhat forgivable i mean unless you're disaster if you're patrick ewing towel down all right but if you don't you know you know i'm

pretty meticulous about it like i try to be really good about it like if it's if it's a sweatier high tempo day kyle knows what he's we're locked in right now he knows what i'm talking about and i'm gonna be sweatier i'll go over i'll do a little menthol towel wipe down the towels yeah they have like a menthol eucalyptus thing at equinox it's incredible i sniffed like three of them but it was this really complicated kind of weird deadlift thing where it wasn't just straight 45 bar it's the bar where you stand in the middle of the actual thing and the clips were on and the plates and i was like god it's an exercise it was one set just to get all the stuff off but if you're younger and doing it i i start to think you're the worst like i think you actually still use a calculator for tip we're like oh 12 percent

you know she didn't bring our waters out you know or you're like bad advice dad in the car where like all the kids are coming back from little league and you go you know the the most important thing is learning a trade and and you know so i i think you're the worst human being not that trades aren't really important but you know maybe maybe it is now in the future there's an argument for it but during the atlantic i really think that you just suck as a guy and there's a guy in my gym who I think is kind of cool. And I've caught him twice leaving shit behind. But I also think he might be confrontational as I am about it.

So I don't know how to handle it right now. Hopefully he's listening. Hopefully he listens, yeah. I don't think he listens. What is the most important piece of gym pop culture content ever? Is it the Seinfeld episode when George P's in the shower? I don't know.

I've never run into that. I saw that guy at the airport the other day. Although, wait a minute. I don't want to do that. Shower peer? No, no. One of the other guys. The guy with the thumbs.

Oh, Jesus. Remember? Which guy? The short guy where he gets his thumbs and he's like, he's the guy that Jerry thumbs oh jesus remember which guy the short guy where he like gets his thumbs and he's like oh he's the guy that jerry calls a phony yeah and he's like hey jerry how's it going man killer set oh yeah yeah and he was great he was so good at being a phony in that show and i saw him at the airport yeah but i didn't say anything like hey that show you were on 20 years ago that was hilarious that bit should they have gyms in the airport? Just talked about this with somebody.

Yeah? So you'd say yes. Yeah, but I also look around. Like in Equidox. I look at airports and look around sometimes and I go, I don't know that we, is there a business model where they know less than 5% of the people

would ever use the gym there? Because most of the people walking around airports, I don't think are going to be using a gym. They're in line for a pretzel. It'd have to be like a lounge situation, right? Maybe it's part of like the Delta Lounge or like the fancy lounges they have. That'd be awesome.

This is great. So next week, which I think we're going to tape potentially, we have to decide whether we're going to tape after the season ends, heading into the playoffs, what we want to do.

But we'll be on middle of next week, probably next week. All right. There's not really a lot at stake here the last week. There's some playoff jacking, but ultimately, does anybody really care if Charlotte or Miami or Orlando makes the playoffs? I'm not going to be on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what 39 and 43 team is going. No, I don't know.

I don't know what to learn. Like, I think the Thunder thing is a problem. I watch Philly all the time. And I think I know. I have a good feel for everybody. I'm ready for the playoffs. You have a good feel for the Thunder? I have a good feel that I don't like. I don't like what I'm seeing.

Yeah. All right. Yeah, yeah. I don't think there's a lot of surprise yet. The Denver thing, I just think the season's long and teams have ebbs and flows and I don't make anything out of what's happening. So however they finish, because of how tough their schedule is the rest of the way, nothing. Well, I think we already know.

I mean, Denver's, you made a good point of this with the road record there's eight playoff teams in the west to have non-average road records Golden State's terrific San Antonio's terrible and everybody else is basically 500 terrible is a bad sign terrible is a bad sign and Denver has this weird 13 in the three I think is the last time i looked at it one or two point game thing it's like the best record and some of those wins are at home on stuff and then it's like oh they know how to close or the ball bounced the right way it's just a short sample size i'm wondering if am i tricking myself into thinking that if denver gets the one

seed like i'm supposed to take him seriously and take pick him come out of the west because i know i'm not going to but what is that like how far will i pick them i still think like even milwaukee last year with the controversial chris middleton they i need a second guy in that team that i know is gonna fucking kick ass in round two against whoever so is that milsap it's uh yeah is that Millsap? It's, yeah. Is that Jamal Murray just like making a jump? Is that somebody we're not expecting like a Will Barton? But you need the second guy who's like, guys, I've arrived. Or guys, I've been here before, come my way.

Especially when your first guy, as great as he is, is still a reluctant, okay, everybody get out of my way, take over guy. And it's not a knock on Jokic. It's just his NBA DNA. Yeah, he's the flow of the game guy. He's unbelievable. I mean, how much fun would it be to play with? That'd be a fun game for us. The top five most fun guys to play with. Jokic would have to be in there. See, if I'm cutting, I'm getting the ball.

And the thing is- I'd just be cutting constantly because I'm like, he might see me. I'm making a layup. This would be great. Hey, Jokic. I'm out of the league. No, I signed with the Nuggets. It's just, I love those backdoor cuts. All right, Rosillo, check out Dual Threat this week. Jason Witten coming on?

Jason Witten, about to tape him momentarily. All right, there we go. Thanks. All right, thanks so much to DAZN. Don't forget to download their app in the Apple or Android app. Sign up by creating an account. Start watching across nearly all your devices. D-A-Z-N. Check it out. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ziprecruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to Mercari. Mercari is a selling app that makes it fast and

easy to sell almost anything. Take a few pics at a description. Boom. Your items listed with buyers in all 50 states. Stuff really sells. Everything ships easily. There are never any awkward meetups. Find Mercari in the app stores or on mercari.com. That is M-E-R-C-A-R-I. Mercari. Back later in this week. This is a good podcast week. Until then. I want to see them on the way so I never say I don't have feelings with them.

On the wayside, on the way so I never say I don't have feelings with them.