The Prestige TV Podcast - Recapping Episode 9 of ‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty'

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Wosny Lambre react to Episode 9 of the HBO docuseries about the 1980s Celtics-Lakers rivalry. The guys discuss events that the series has glossed over, the portrayal of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, impressive acting jobs, and predictions for the 10th and final episode. Hosts: Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Wosny Lambre Producer: Troy Farkas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, Rob Harvilla from 60 Songs That Explain the 90s here to inform you that we are back with 30 more songs because the 90s were super long and had a ton of rad music. Please join us every Wednesday for more 60 songs that explain the 90s only on Spotify. Winning time, episode 9. It's the prestige TV podcast. My name is Bill Simmons. I'm here with Chris Ryan, Wozney, Lambrey. This episode took a dark turn as Spencer Haywood tried to kill Ronald Reagan. And, no, that didn't happen. I actually enjoyed this episode. Well, you got your cocaine episode.

Got our cocaine episode. Got our answer to how are they going to speed through these last two episodes? And they spent through the last two episodes. They're getting us to the precipice of the finals. And they're setting up to Spencer Haywood stuff. They resolved the Jack McKinney stuff, which I think was pretty close to being accurate to what really happened with the, he couldn't really coach the team. What jumped out for you in this episode? episode wise.

The Spencer Haywood stuff did because earlier on some prestige TV pods, I was like, yeah, I wonder where this story is going with Spencer Hayward and Bill was like, oh, don't worry. It's going to get pretty ridiculous. And I tried to avoid, you know, finding out what actually happened, but I happened upon it anyway. And I was like, that is, that's great. That's like LaTrell Spreewell, but like way, way, way crazier. And the show I thought did a good job.

When Harris had some amazing scenes in this show. In this episode specifically, and that was kind of my favorite part, the Spencer Hayward time, you know, him just battling all of that stuff. Kareem sort of being his sponsor slash like caretaker. Yeah. And just his mentality. I thought they did an effective job of sort of explaining that character and his motivations. What do you have, Chris? I like the McKinney Riley Westhead stuff.

I thought that's been the best part of the season to me, honestly, is those three actors doing stuff together. And just the idea that McKinney is this guy who's been waiting his whole entire life for something like this to happen. And then he gets to the precipice. And it gets taken away from him. This really unfairly because of the accident. But at the same time, like, the flip side of that is that Westhead's been waiting his entire life for a shot like this. And Riley's been waiting his entire life for a shot like this. And just watching that all come to head and have to be bus who's deciding what's going to happen was just great.

Yeah. And West, like, just for some reason, refuses to get involved. The Spencer Haywood piece, I remember when I was researching my book, and I didn't know, like, the full Haywood story and just being, like, blown away. I remember there was, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, find this one quote where he said, hold on, this was from his book. So the Westhead stuff is real. Yeah. They changed the sequencing a little bit because when he passed out was during the NBA finals, they made it seem in the show like it was before the NBA finals. But in his book, he wrote, I left the forum and drove off in my roles that night thinking one thought that Westhead must die and decided over the next couple weeks to hire a hitman to kill Paul Westhead.

Yeah. And I remember I'm researching this. I'm like, how did I not know about this? This is the single craziest thing story I've ever heard in my life. It's essentially an Elmore Leonard novel because doesn't he get like his guy from Detroit and like their whole plan is going to be to cut his brakes? It's not even like I'm just going to hit this guy outside of a restaurant. It's like, no, we're going to have this elaborate car accident thing.

This is NBA Fargo. Yeah. Right. Well, the other thing was this was like their only power forward for the finals, which they make, they say that at one point in the show they're like, hey, this is our only four, which is like a legitimate thing. And they were trying to basically give him as big of a rope as possible as he was melting down. He's got a really interesting backstory. Like just, in my book, I called him the broken mirror where he just, there's bad luck all the way around, right?

he comes in, he goes to the ABA, he paves this way, he sues, he starts this whole lawsuit, ends up going there and has some of his best years, but nobody ever sees them. And then when he comes to the NBA, he's just basically bouncing around. Like he won rookie of the year, he won an MVP, he goes to the Sonics, doesn't get around with Bill Russell. They gave him like a fucked up contract because they had those contracts back then where it's like, it's $11d billion, but it was, you know, paid out in 25,000-star installments.

And then he just kind of starts bouncing around and becomes this poster boy of the 70s. You know, like he ends up on the Knicks. He's one of the many high-powered superstars the Knicks have. That doesn't work out. He ends up in New Orleans. They moved to Utah. All of a sudden, he's in Utah. And then finally ends up on the Lakers.

And it was like, this is going to be this guy's last chance. And then it couldn't have gone worse. And that's really it. I think he had a cup of coffee with the bullets. I remember him being at a sult. Bullets playoff series, but by that point, there had been too much damage. But I almost, I'm trying to figure out what the

comparison to a modern guy would be. Oh, God, it would almost be like, because he was like better than Carl Anthony Towns, right? It's, it would almost be like if this happened to like Embed. Not that they were the same position, but he was like that level of talent. Is Vin Baker still a modern guy? Because Vin Baker comes to mind.

Well, he's the next generation, right? Yeah. Yeah. As somebody who, you know, like super talented, famously battled a lot of demons, All-Star games, all of that stuff. Like everybody recognized how great he was and you couldn't understand what the issues were.

But you see, like back in the days when I was younger, like you couldn't pick announcers or analysts would say stuff like, yeah, he's just battling some issues or demons. And like a young person like me who didn't have drug addicts in their life, thankfully, whatever, I was too naive to sort of understand what, these euphemisms meant. And to see Spencer Hayward, like, dealing with this and, you know, just, I don't know what it was like to live in L.A. in 1980, but I know in 2022, if you're battling drug problems,

this probably isn't the city you should move to. Probably not. Just saying. Yeah. I mean, the idea is that basically, I mean, Spencer Haywood is the, basically, basically, symbolically, and the show is the drug abuse that was probably happening in Los Angeles, but by all accounts, it was,

I mean, it was really widespread in the NBA itself throughout, and obviously throughout Los Angeles where everybody was like, this stuff's not addictive. Yeah. And there's a lot of casualties, not just in sports, but all over the place. The NBA, I mean, losing Spencer,

I think it was probably headed that way anyway and the cocaine finished it off because I think he had played a lot of basketball in the first part of the seven, So by the time we got to the late 70s, maybe physically he wasn't the same way. It's got that whole conversation with Riley in the show about the knees. And it's just... Yeah, his...

But David Thompson was the biggest casualty, because he was the guy who was, you know, he was poised to be Jordan before Jordan. Yeah. And you go back and you look at some of the stuff he did 76, 77, 78. And it's just there was a whole bunch of other guys. Some of them have come out. Some of them haven't. But I think it's safe to say there's stories from back then.

In Spencer Haywood's on the record as saying, He thought 80% of the league was dabbling of cocaine at that point. There was stories written in the LA Times, you know, where multiple people estimated it was somewhere between 50 and 70%. And this isn't just like, I'll do this once. This is like part of the day-to-day stuff. And it becomes down the road in the Proman book, but also more in the Winning Time book that Steve Springer and Scott Asser wrote,

it became a big piece of the Norm Nixon story, where they thought he was on cocaine. They started trailing him with security guards. And it ended up, people always thought that was one of the reasons they traded him. It was never proven that he was doing anything. But in general, there was a big paranoia because they're painting out these big contracts back then.

And you know what these guys are doing. And a lot of them are just, you go to the basketball references of some of these guys. We're like, they're age 24, 25, 26. And they're just falling off a cliff. And it's like, hmm, what happened? they get hurt? It's like, no, didn't really get hurt. Yeah. So with the Spencer thing, it's, it's interesting that he passes through that vortex

on this team that becomes this, you know, the Celtics and Lakers, the two iconic teams of the Dixieck. It makes sense that one of them would have had a cocaine thing, but ended up both of them because the Celtics had Lembias. Who was the Sixers? Did the Sixers have a drug one? No, I don't really, not really, right? Nothing historical. I mean, like, obviously, like, there's, there's partying that goes on, but I didn't really ever remember like a really famous cocaine situation with the Sixers.

Yeah, I don't think so either. There probably was. We just didn't know about it. So the Spencer thing was the big thing. The other cool stuff was this was the best Kareem episode, right? He had the most to do. He had two really big Haywood scenes.

He held the team meeting to try to figure out if they're going to kick him out or not. Tell us Hayward, he cast the deciding vote. I liked when Haywood was standing up next to him. It seemed like he was going to punch him.

Kareem not afraid at all. Right. And then had the moment with magic at the end. But I think that Kareem, I talked in a earlier episode about I wasn't sure what they were doing with Kareem. I thought he was too stiff. But I think it paid off. Wise, you were vindicated. You were telling me it was going to pay off with Kareem.

Yeah. And they carefully just show you why this guy is the leader that he is, right? And why people were willing to follow him. And what I love is just the deference that everybody up and down the roster shows this guy, like, calling the cap and, like, just to respect. And then you realize, like, he had already won, like, three league MVP's by this point. Like, he was clearly already.

Oh, it was like, he had won, like, five. There you go. So, like, one of the best basketball players anybody had ever seen already. And you see the respect that he has. And what I like is how serious he takes it, right? Like, you know, he's not exactly Zion Williams singing. um this situation he's he's like no like this is my responsibility this is my charge i'm going to be the one that delivers the news to spence i'm going to explain to him exactly how it went down i'm going to

be the one even advocating on behalf of spence at first and saying look this is our guy like should we cast aside he's made promises and you know let the team decide democratically like i just thought that was amazing stuff um and yeah the stuff that he's building with magic and in the sort of ying and yang good cop, bad cop thing that they got going on is incredible. You know, with these workplace shows, whether it's like West Wing or whether it's NYPD Blue or whatever, there's just basically that balance between the stuff in the show that can only be in this show because of what the occupation is that it's following. So like in West Wing you'll have like all this like nitty gritty of how they're making a bill

or something like that. And then the other side of it is their personal lives and how you basically draw viewers in by being, wow, these people's lives are just like mine. like and then there's the whole other side where you're like I could never live some I never know would have any experience of something like this and with this show they're doing a nice job balancing like everybody's got a mom everybody's got a family everybody's got you know like relationship issues or whatever but my favorite part of the show is definitely like the really really nitty gritty like what if you could see kareem Abdul jabbar show magic how to shoot a skyhook yeah and that to

me like when for all this stuff that was good in this episode and I think you know John C. Riley and Sally Field are really good in the episodes that they had in the scenes that they had. When they get to the part where it's like, Kareem is showing magic how to shoot a skyhook and like the Fletch keyboards are playing, I'm like, yo, this is why I signed up for the show in the first place. And knowing that magic is going to use a skyhook to kill Bill's Celtics at some point? Yeah, that hurt. I don't know. It felt like he pushed off a little bit. If this show was eight episodes instead of 10, I think we lose all the Sally Field stuff.

That's my least favorite part of the show. I think it's well-acted. I get what they're trying to do. They're trying to do backstory with... They're trying to humanize a guy that probably... They're trying to give an emotional balance to a guy who I think... Is rich... ...who sleeps around?

Yeah, who's basically a rich womanizer... ...wucked himself into the greatest franchise or like one of the most valuable franchise. He's in his 50s. He's dating college women. Like it would be tough to humanize this situation. And look, John C. Riley, I think he should win an Emmy for this.

I think he's incredible. And the more that I watch the show, the more that I feel like Will Ferrell could not do this shit. No one of a different show. Fucking shot. He just could not do this stuff. Like these emotional breakdowns that seem like really believable. Like, there's just a tenderness and a sensitivity and just empathy that John C. Riley is

exuding that it's just like, I would be like, what the fuck is Will Ferrell doing? Like, what is Ron Burgundy doing right now? It would be a problem if Will Ferrell was doing this. It would have been closer to Eastbound. It would have been, it would have been a comedy. I think it would have been more cartoonish. I think that that might have been cool. Like, there's a version of winning time that you do where it's like a 30 minute kind of like. like elevated comedy that's like, and everything is really cartoony and maybe you even like pump the McKay stuff even harder. But this, they've decided to make it basically into a prestige drama, which is probably the smarter play. A slightly ridiculous prestige drama. I mean, we have moments

where Larry Bird's coming out of the TV talking shit to magic. Sure. Yes. Yeah. They still have absurdity. Yeah. Do you, do you wish they didn't have that stuff in this or do you think they need it? I think that they've done a really good job peeling it away. So like when the show first starts, it's so over the top. It's so like text on the screen, breaking the fourth wall, five different film stocks. You know, like all this stuff is happening. We're doing animation. We've got voiceover that's very 2022 voiceover about stuff happening in 1979. And as the show has gone on, I think that they've done a good job being like, what do we really need? And then this episode largely is very, very human. Like it's like pretty much like here are all the people that got. lost along the way to this championship. And it was like a pretty thematically pretty coherent episode about like the cost of this stuff, you know, and I thought that worked. But I don't, I wonder whether or not if you just do the first few episodes straight,

if it becomes as buzzy as it as it has become. Although I guess, you know, maybe like it seems like people like the show more now than they did when it first, it first premiered. Do you feel like it's fuzzy though? I can't tell. I don't have a feel for it. And I don't want to say like, oh, I saw stuff online because I don't, I just anecdotally to me, I feel like some people in my life are watching it.

I also have a bunch of people in my life that don't like it. Yeah, I think the Jerry West stuff has been so, it's been all over the news. Yeah. And so that's kind of generated some, and HBO is commenting and HBO's defending themselves, but also saying like, it's fiction, you know, we get to do what we do. and I think that stuff's been all over the news. But it feels like it's pretty successful. They re-upped it for a second season,

which I don't even think was even a question. I don't see how you only do this in one season. It's also like impossible to tell right now with like 45 shows on at once. Like what's buzzy? I know. I just watched the first two episodes of Gaslit, and I think I might have been the only one.

Yeah. Or it's like Julie Roberts and Sean Penn wearing a fat suit. And I don't know a single person who's watching it. I reached out as Chris and Sean. Sean said he hasn't gotten to yet. Sean watches everything. He doesn't sleep. He's a vampire.

He hadn't even watched it yet. When I think big picture, especially as we head to this last episode, which is clearly going to be magic, you know, we know what happens in real life. Kareem gets hurt in game five. It's actually the best game of his career in a lot of ways because he's awesome in the game. It's a two-two series. Kareem gets hurt, goes off, comes back,

and heroically carries them the last five minutes, which, you know, I think Kareem's the third best player of all time on any list by any calculation. If anyone else in the top 10 had a game like Kareem had in game five of the 1980-Dity finals, like if Kobe had ever done this, we would just like every Monday would have to be like, we're all going to spend an hour talking about this. With Kareem, it's just, it goes kind of,

with, you know, and some of itself inflicted because he was a guy that never wanted to play the game. He never wanted to open up to people. He had the goggles. He was the most methodical player we had of that era. People just couldn't connect to them. And I count myself as a little kid from that era. Never felt like, it wasn't like,

oh, cool, Corim's coming to town. It just wasn't like that with him. That game might have been taped delayed. I know game six was. But I'm pretty sure game six wasn't on live. But game five, I think, was taped delayed, too. So a lot of people didn't even see it when it happened.

And it ended up being the greatest moment in his career. So they're going to have to handle that. And then they're going to have to figure out the magic jump in center. Chris Ryan, how old were you for that game? Like five? I was three. Yeah. Yeah, no memories probably.

No. Magic jump and center. So this is some real NBA IP here that you can't get too creative with. And yet, Wes, how do you think they're going to get creative? The suspense of this show of like, what are they going to, like, actually do accurately and what are they going to take to Spencer Haywood's rolling up with the Hells Angels. It's like the Boogie Nights drug scene.

Yeah. It's got somebody throwing firecrackers. What are they going to be true to and what are they not is so hilarious. But I feel like the magic, the magic playing center in the finals clitching game is like his origin story. Like straight up. Like this is this is Batman's parents getting smoked. in the alleyway. This is, you know, the radioactive Peter Parker shit.

Like, this is his origin story. He played center because the greatest player of all time to that point could not play. And they won. And he was a rookie. And like, you know, like this is where the glory starts. So I don't see how to get that part wrong. Maybe the Kareem stuff, they fudge a little bit. But magic taking them home is the story.

They don't have to. I mean, I think that there's been parts. where they've changed things at least based on like, so for instance, like in the newspaper accounts of the decision to go with Westhead and Riley instead of McKinney, I would not say that bus comes off as sensitively as he does in the show. You know, like he's more like, I bought this team to have fun. I just really wasn't having fun with Jack McKinney. So I just went with my gut. And it wasn't like, oh, man, this is like the hardest decision I've ever had to make. It was just kind of like bus being bus,

they've changed certain things to make certain characters feel a little bit, maybe more like three-dimensional or human. But when it comes to the basketball, like on the court like this, in the finals, which is something that like, yeah, maybe some people don't remember a January game in Detroit, but they're going to fucking remember the NBA finals.

Like, they should just play it straight because you can't beat, the truth is better than fiction in this case. Well, they also, that McKinney thing where he didn't recognize bus was the thing that happened. know if it happened the way they did it in the scene. But that's an important piece of why bus was like, this guy didn't recognize me. He probably can't be coached my team. And he also,

he has quotes, I think during that year where he's just like, this is my entire life. Like, I can't mess around with this. I need to make sure this team I'm passing it off to some good hands. There's some stuff. I want to talk about the Jamal Wilkes piece of this. Sure. So Jamal Wilkes, who in Magic's game six, is the other hero of that game. He is 37 points. He makes a ton of big shots. It's basically Magic and Jamal Wilkes together beating the Sixers. They scored, I think, 79 of the points and made every big shot.

It was the best game he ever played. James Worthy did a similar thing, 1988 game seven, and became big game James, basically off the game seven. Jamal Wilkes did the same thing. Nobody cares about him on the show. He has no lines. You wouldn't know that he was either the third or fourth best player in this name. Him versus Norman Nixon. Bill is because his son is portraying him and looks exactly like him.

Right. But he doesn't have lines. There's no backstory. What do you think made, was he just boring? Like should he be offended by this? What do you think made them say, ah, Jamal Wilkes? and just toss them aside. I don't really get that.

I just think that they make their decisions based on like they just picked six characters or seven characters and they're like, we got to ride these guys. We can't just make, oh, here's this Jamal Wilkes detour that we're going to do. There's a couple of guys in the locker room who I'm like, they talk every couple episodes and then I'm like, who is this guy again?

But like, you know, I think that for the- The white guy, Landsberger, who I think was like a big doofist comedy relief in the books. But in the show, he barely has. any lines. Yeah, so I just think that ultimately, like, every, every show that's based on a true story or is based on some sort of historical moment ultimately has to make their choices. Yeah, they have to make sacrifices. And maybe, you know, do you think they had meetings about how to make the Jamal Wilk's character work? Their election. What trait could we give him? Could we make him

like a cousin? I don't know if you're Jamal Wilson. Maybe you're kind of like, yeah, I'm glad I didn't get much of a winning time. I think he might be a winner. Yeah. He has people in his life who are like, like, hey, what happened? Why aren't you in winning time that much? She's like, who, thank God. Everybody else seems to be bitching about it. So, yeah. Yeah, because here's the thing with Jamalilks,

like really famous UCLA player, played on the Bill Walton teams, gets drafted by Golden State. He's in the NBA finals in his first year. They win the title with him. He's, at that time, he's Keith Wilkes. He's in a movie called Cornbread Earl and Me, which was a very, like,

movie for me when I was a kid, and he plays this basketball high school star who gets shot, and they end up being a big trial about it. But it was like one of the first times they used a real-life athlete and just kind of threw them into a TV or movie. Then he becomes one of the first free agents ever. He says, he goes from the Warriors, jumps to the Lakers. And he was good. Like, you know, he was, I would say the small forward position was like legitimately loaded back then, but he was good. You know, he was, I think, one of the best, maybe 25. 30 players in the league. And they just punted on them.

They were like, cool. If you think I'm going to shed tears for Jamal Wilkes when the Sixers have gotten, they got one Dr. J-Cene, and then it's like, oh, yeah, the Sixers beat the Celtics. It's like, what? I know. I can't get a montage. Well, that was the other thing I noticed where they gloss over the fact that they beat Seattle. Now, this is hardcore NBA nerd stuff, but Seattle had made the 78 finals.

They won in 79. They were the favorites in 1980. then the Lakers, they became the co-favorits. And that was like a big series back then. It was like Seattle, Lakers, this is, you know, it's the equivalent of like Golden State Phoenix playing this year. And they gave no bad, they just kind of punted on that one, too. They didn't even give the last year's champs, any of that stuff.

They're just like, hey, they've beaten, they've gotten their revenge. I would be really curious to know in the making of this show, because like in the first few episodes, it's almost like painstakingly, like, we're going to go through, like, this is an entire episode about how they, like, I mean, we don't even get to the key. Yeah, the preseason. Right, but we get like Tarkhanian. Like, preseason is like episode four or five.

So it's interesting that they'd spent, like, I wonder whether or not they had gotten through some of the series. And they were like, we kind of need to speed things up a little bit here. I think that's 100% what happened. That's why I brought it up. I think it's crazy. There's a world in which like the, you know, like the second season starts with these playoffs or something at the pace that they were going.

Like, the season didn't start until like episode five or six, I don't think. And it's been like three episodes of them. it. I'm way more interested in the Seattle series as Spencer Haywood's completely falling apart. Seems like there's more drama than, hey, what happened in that third preseason game in Palm Springs? I think you're right, Chris. I think they probably moved a certain pace and they realized like, oh shit, we only have 10 episodes. Yeah. And now they're cramming in a bunch of stuff for these last days. And I wonder how, like, because Adam McKay is the executive producer, right? But I wonder how, And I've actually spoken to him before about his like hoops addiction or whatever, right?

Like he's obsessed with basketball. But I wonder to the extent the showrunners and the people who actually make the show are because people like us can make drama out of anything sports related, right? Like we could see the story in our heads because we're so obsessed with this shit out of every single little detail. Oh, yeah. I wonder if somebody who's not, you know, day-to-day living and dying with NBA basketball and stories kind of sees certain things be like, I don't know if that's so interesting.

And that's why we don't get something like the Seattle and Lakers series, you know? Yeah, because one of the things with the Seattle series was Kareem, it was always about protecting Kareem, having the right power forward next to him who could, because these teams would just beat the shit out of Kareem. That was always the strategy. Occasionally he would snap. Kent Benson elbowed him Kareem got mad, whirled around

cold cox them and breaks his hand. And then a couple months later Kermit Washington punches Rudy Tom Jonovic and Kermit was like Kareem's enforcer. It was always about we got Kareem and enforcer which is why they got Spencer Haywood, why they had Jim Chones. But that Seattle series, Seattle

was this big physical team that's beating the shit out of them as Spencer Haywood is in a spiral and they don't have that physical presence next to them. So I don't know. You could have spent 10 minutes on it, maybe. I'm just right now, I'm just like going through my head of winning time season one,

the Bill Simmons cut. We got to get this on HBO Max. It's just Jamal Wilkes and the Sonic series. I was like, guys, I need a little more about DJ picking up magic full court in the first two games in the series. A much more thoughtful depiction of Larry Bird. Can we have Larry visit a charity? Yeah. Maybe talk about how great he is.

they took Larry and I don't it's almost funny he's like Jennifer Lawrence and Winter's Bone They just I'll see you next year Fucker Like honestly he's added deliverance They might as well have him on a porch

With two guys playing the banjo They didn't give him a snaggle tooth So that's nice True And there's no references to incest. So that's good. They cut up some slack there. Predictions for the last episode, Wes.

Man, I really want to see magic sort of, you know, become magic, right? To the team, because to the team, he's still this young, duffy-ass young player that nobody respects, for real. And I would like to see how they handle that transformation from him being. the buck, as Kareem called him in the meeting, to, yo, magic is the guy, you know, and he needs the respect and the deference from the team. So I would love to see how they handle that because right now he's still largely just the young guy who was getting punked, even by marginal players. It's just like, bro, I don't respect you.

You might be out of the league in two years. I don't even think about you. So I want to see how they handle that. Chris, before I get to your prediction, I'm really impressed by the guy who plays magic. I wonder, like, and we didn't really love, we thought they relied on him too much the first couple episodes.

Now it's the right balance of him, but, man, that's hard to pull off the Magic Johnson part with the kind of charisma. And I just think he's done a really good job. And Karim's growing on me too. They hit the two parts that they needed to hit. Nobody else really, you know, he needs actors or whatever.

Those two. Count John C. Riley, I feel like I'm in this guy's agent at this point. But he's nailing his doctor bus. So, Chris, before I get to your prediction, I just want to point out, I have not seen the 10th episode yet. Game 6 was tape delayed. Okay.

I don't think this is going to be at a plot point. Well, they're probably going to bend the rules and have everybody watching the game live of guesses. Oh, okay. They're going to look the other way on the tape delayed part. But this was a game that started at 1130. basically all around the country unless you're on the West Coast.

How are they going to handle that? We'll see. What's your prediction for the finals, Chris? I was just trying to figure out who they're going to have played Billy Cunningham. Do we get, like, Ron Howard? Oh, wow. You know, like who...

Ron Howard would be good. Yeah, well, then they have the... I don't know what they're capable of with the Spencer Haywood piece of this either. Yeah, right. Because in real life, we know he tried to hire a mafia people to tamper with Paul Westhead's breaks.

What that means on this show, I'm prepared for anything. No, I guess my prediction for this last episode is definitely in a champagne bath, we see Riley with the hair slicked back. And like the moment where like, okay, he's stepping into it now. I would love to see them say fuck it

and say magic scored like 60 points with 20 rebounds and five assists in the final game. Like, why not? Betting the stats. a little bit. Jerry West walks out and pulls his nuts out. You know? I think, by the way, I was thinking for season two,

they should just go a whole other level with West. Yeah. Making the Zodiac killer, whatever they have to do. Just to troll them because, like, yeah. People have gotten way too bent out of shape about this Jerry West stuff. It's kind of ridiculous. It's funny. I always thought his reputation was always like major curmudgeon, like major.

It was always heard that about the- You know, the part that I didn't like about this episode was Jerry West not having the courage of his convictions. Like, he refused to just say who he thought was better. That doesn't seem like that doesn't job with the Jerry West who was just like this magic kid's trash. Like, what are we doing here? You know what I'm saying? Like, he just can't bring himself to say that the coach who fell and broke his freaking head and face shouldn't come back after these guys brought this team to 60 wins. I thought that was a little bit annoying.

I noticed they had West in the trailer for the Magic show that's on Apple and Wes is like, he's smile lit up the room and I'm like, you're right. Jerry's like, can you pick the happiest sound bite for me

for the Magic trailer? What's interesting is I'm way more interested in Winning Time than I am in the Magic Show. I haven't watched one minute of the Magic Show. It's just freaking, you know, you know, propaganda at this point. Like, yeah.

We know magic story. Like, give me a break. He's been in three documentaries already. Come on, I'm good. There's no rush on that. Just a couple of other things that I thought was cool about the episode. Yeah. There's a part in the locker room.

Some of these details are just so dope. Like, Kareem is wearing his UCLA warm up, which I thought was fire. And Coop is wearing a five-star basketball camp. T-shirt, which I just thought was an amazing detail to nail because, you know, people who don't know about five-star. It's like this really famous camp, Jordan, a bunch of people went there. Like, it used to be a right of passage for all the biggest hoopers in the world. This is before ABCD and all the crazy shit, Nike Hoops Summit and all of that.

Before all of that stuff, five-star camp was like a big deal. To have coop rocking a five-star shirt, that was a. beautiful detail right there. Coupe, who gets way more screen time on the show that Jamal Wilkes was way better. Coop's backing them up, basically. Whatever. All right, episode 10, the final episode will be on Sunday night. We're going to be on Monday morning.

Yeah. Maybe we'll bring a fourth. That might have to be a four person. Will it be Jerry West? Maybe it would be the logo. No, Jerry West is in jail. committed multiple crafts.

I think God only knows what will happen to Jerry. Very excited for Jerry's season, too. Very excited for the season for now of this. And if you want to listen to us, talk about we own this city, we might be doing that tomorrow. So stay tuned for that.

This episode was produced by Troy Farkas. Thanks for listening. We will see you next time.