The Ringer NBA Show - Ep. 80: The NBA and Other Things With Shea Serrano

Episode Date: March 3, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Vernon and Shea Serrano discuss the Warriors' recent loss (1:00), wonder if the Spurs are actually good (3:15), and debate which Wilt Chamberlain myth is more likely to have happened (9:50). Later, they chat about the Cavs vs. the field in the East (24:40) and Shea’s upcoming book (28:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by the Ringer MLB show. This week, Ben Lindberg and Michael Bauman talked to Padres catcher, Christian Bettencourt, about being a two-way player. You can subscribe to The Ringer MLB show at iTunes.com slash The Ringer or wherever you get podcast. Welcome to The Ringer NBA show. I'm Chris Varnan and joining me today is Shea Serrano from The Ringer.com. Shee! It is so nice to have you on a podcast. I know that this has really been tough on you, not having your own podcast for some time now,

even though that you've been at the ringer for a good amount of time. I'm going to answer every question in Spanish. I just want to you know ahead of time. This is going to be really rough. Okay. Did last night, I want you to do this. Answer this in Spanish. Did last night's, or was last night's Warriors lost to the Chicago Bulls meaningful?

No, it wasn't. It wasn't meaningful. It was just a bad time in it was. That's in English, by the way. You don't think that there is something to take away from, okay, yeah, those guys shot poorly last night, but this may go rougher than some suspect without Durant. No, I don't think. It's like weird.

I do want to figure it out quickly because I need a San Antonio Houston matchup in a second round. Why is that what you want? Why do you want San Antonio Houston so bad? They haven't played in a playoffs against each other in over two decades. And I just, I'm ready for it. I'm in Houston. So I'm just ready to talk so when we beat them that I just need it. And I feel like if the Warriors end up second and they play the rockets in the playoffs

in the second round, they're going to beat the rocket. And in San Antonio, we need a time. All right, but even is an easy, even. as a San Antonio fan, wouldn't you sit back and go, all right, if we can get to one, that second round series is going to be, A, the first round series is way easier, and the second round series is going to be an easier matchup for us than, say, the Rockets, right? Like, I don't know. It kind of goes against fandom.

Wouldn't you want the easiest trick, or you just, you want so badly to talk shit to Houston fans that you would rather have a harder road, if that means having to play the Rockets? I would always rather be the hardest road possible to get a championship. I want this first to just John Wick, everybody in the playoffs. So if they go first,

keep Houston and Golden State. I want to be able to beat Houston and Golda State. It's just better that way. It's always more fun when it's more dangerous. You know what I'm saying? All right. Well, there are two, you know, people are all citing that there's a couple

matchups left between San Antonio and Golden State. and I think the number's three right now. San Antonio's three games back, but as a Spurs fan, you will actively root for San Antonio not to catch them. I will. Regular season.

I need a minute back again. I love having you on today because the Spurs, they've always been the team that doesn't get as many highlights shown of them and consistently underrated or certainly doesn't get the press that all the other great teams do. you know, Oklahoma cities, you know, on TV and certainly in the highlights way more than San Antonio. And this year feels like even different than other years. Like the fact that you don't hear about the Spurs virtually at all.

And there they are as the two-seed overall. How good are they in your mind? Like is this version of the Spurs, and it's the first year without Duncan, as you compare it to say the last couple of decades, do you think this is one of the better teams? No, I don't. I think they lose to the Rockets in the second round in like six or seven games.

Yeah, I think that's what happened. But, right, they're good. They're obviously good. All the teams they need to beat. When you talk about, can they beat, can they beat Cleveland? Those three teams are, the rockets are a tiny bit better, three notches better. What has it been like rooting for the Spurs without Tim Duncan?

Because this is the first experience in what, like 20 years? Yeah, it's been a good long while. You know what I do? When I watch the game is I just pretend like he's on the bench. I don't know. I'm talking about him not being there at all. I'm just waiting for him to check it. All right.

All right. Kauai is obviously number one by a wide, wide margin. And I would imagine your favorite. All right. I want you to list the next four spurs. If we're just talking about love, like we're all right, we're to the moment in the movie where you've got to start chucking people over a cliff, right?

And Kauai's obviously the guy that you're, keeping. All right, but if we're going from five to one, right, and we're saying Kauai's number one. So I want to go to the next four that you would want to hold on to. The next four I'm definitely saying. I'm just going to push Lamarcus off the clip by him. He's gone. I just shoved him in the back. I'm like, look at his view. And then I shove him. And then he's gone. Left to save. I got to take my guys who want it for me. give me Manu and Tony

and I know that they're by this point but they earned it. They earned a seat in my rescue chopper. So give me those two guys. Give me Monu. Give me Tony. Through it right now, I think I have to take Danny Green, who should have been the finals

MVP in 2013, and give me Patty Mills. Those are my guys on Steven. All right, so who is the one standing next to Kauai? Like, who makes it the longest? Mills? No, no. Tony Parker. Tony Parker makes it the longest for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He, him and I have, I think, the most intense relationship. It started out really rocky, and I hated him for a good long while, and then just building a team, give me Kauai, give me Johnson Simmons, Kenny Deadmond, I guess, oh, Murray, give me Murray team. Like, when I watch the games and I want to see a lineup, that's the lineup I'm watching to see. Why did you immediately shove Lamarcus Aldridge off the cliff? I just hate him.

I basketball hate him. I don't real life hate him. He seems like everything he does makes me mad. Even when he does a good thing, even when he makes a basket and he shoots it, this thing you ever did. And then when he does something bad as he. He feels to me like,

he feels to me like if we're in a war movie, he's the guy who is going to just let some people die without it having to be. Did you hate him in Portland? I didn't pay any attention to him in Portland. I just knew he was good. I was like, oh, he seems like a good guy. And then when they announced that we got him, I thought, oh, this is going to be great.

And then he showed up, and it was just like, nope, not great. Every time there was a big, important moment, I feel like he let me down. Every serious, serious time. And it started, you know, it started with a very four years played after we got Lamarcus. And it was like, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think Timmy was out that game. So it was his chance to sort of step up. And he didn't do anything. He just went in the playoffs, every big game we needed him to do something great.

Let's get him out of here. And that's tough because he's probably the second best guy on the team. Yeah, he's definitely. He's also the first word. Where are you at on Powell? I mean, he's been injured. Is he still on his first? I don't even know he's still on his first.

If you get injured during a lay-up line. You wrote earlier this week for the Ringer.com about who could break or who could beat Wilts Chamberlain's 100-point game. This was the anniversary week of it. What was it? Like 55 years, I think it was? Is that right? 55?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was yesterday. And so what you did is you tried to whittle it down until you got to one guy on the list. And spoiler alert, you ended up on Clay Thompson. I will tell you that this was a – this was very shocking to me, Shea. I was 100% sure that at the end of that article, once you started off and say you're going to whittle it down, I was 100% sure there was going to be Russell Westbrook artwork at the end. end.

And that he was going to be the guy because, like, I kind of feel like Russell Westbrook's the only guy that could take 75 shots and no one would bitch about it. He definitely could. That's what I was, no, it's got to be Clay. He's the only guy capable of getting an shoot. He would probably score like 85 points on 75 shots and get 10 rebounds and 10 assists. Clay can just fill it up, man. He just decides that he's going to show.

on everyone. But what about last night? So let's take, for instance, Oklahoma City lost to Portland, and Westbrook was 12 of 36 from the field. Okay? So Oklahoma City took 86 shots as a team, the entire game, right? If there was a game where Russell Westbrook took 75 of, let's say, 90 shots, that would not shock me. I mean, it would be shocking. But like the idea that he would take,

75 of 90 shots, and then the other 15 would be like, you know, somebody got an offensive rebound or some shit. Like, that could happen. Whereas, like, here's the thing. I don't think you, like, I don't think that playing with Durant and Curry would enable Clay to do it. Like, I don't think they would ever be that passive. Because you need, like, everybody else on the team has got to do shitty, like, scoring-wise.

No, no way. 60 points in the halfway to the third quarter. By that point, the other team is just going to be like, fuck it. We're not letting him get to 81. We don't want him to set a rubber and nobody else is going to do anything. But with the Thunder, they've got all, you can't triple team, you can't double team anybody. When Clay, Clay had that 60-point game, like two months ago, he barely dribbled the ball. He had the ball in his hand for like nine of game time.

He played a game. He dribble the ball 11 times. If you only played 29 minutes, he had to have. averaging over two points a minute. That's the kind of guy you need for that, and you need him in that situation to do that thing. You have to be able to move all these other pieces around to just get this guy open.

And that's what the Warriors did. Like, they realized really quickly, Clay's got it going, and they just kept feeding him the ball. His usage rate was almost double in that 50-point game. I'm feeling like if they're in a close game, Kirk can just leave him out there, if he can't just finish it out, can do that because he doesn't have those other pieces around it.

You can't be the main guy and put up 100 point. But don't you like? All right, well, here's what I would say. My first argument would be, all right, the whole like double team, triple team, whatever. Like, every team in the league game plans against Russell Westbrook every night. Like, that's literally what they game plan against. And he still goes off, like, every single night. On the other hand, I think the most persuasive would be Westbrook won't hit enough threes.

Like, you got to, even with. with Kobe's 81 or within the clay thing, like in order to get all the way up there to those insane numbers, you've got to hit a huge amount of threes. And I don't think that Westbrook are going to hit that many threes because I don't know what percentage of your points need to be from threes, but it would be immense. Yeah, you're probably going to need. I mean, that's 15. 15.

Clay Thompson can hit 15 three-pointers. Clay Thompson can hit 15, three-pointers in a quarter. Like, that's the kind of guy we're talking about here. He could put up 45. How about this? Let's forget about the 100, right, with the Will Chamberlain 100. And I thought it was funny. You chronicled some of the things about, oh, well, here, let's start with that first.

Okay. A, there were some odd circumstances of that particular game when you went back and researched it. One of the guys that was supposed to be playing was hungover. The other guy was like a rookie and in foul trouble. And so there were some extenuating circumstances as to the matchup that Chamberlain had. and people weren't, people didn't, it felt like people didn't really know what was happening at the time. But forget all that. Yeah, they didn't have a, yeah, there was a whole bunch of crazy stuff going on.

But go ahead. Okay. There is a story that you chronicle about him having scratches on his arm. And Will Chamberlain says he fought a mountain lion and choked it out, right? So amongst the great tales of Wilk Chamberlain. All right. So amongst the great tales of Wilchamberland. In your mind's eye, which is more believable, that he banged 20,000 women, as he once claimed,

or that he killed a mountain lion with his bare hands? I'm going mountain lion. 20,000 is like a big number, man. I don't even, I don't know how you even meet 20,000 people. It's an arena. Yeah, to have sex. Yeah, he had, he filled the Toyota Center with women and then just had sex with every single one of them. I don't think you could really do that.

I think that's just, people have killed mountain lions before. I'm pretty sure we'll do it. Wait, hold on now. Hold on. Like, all right, so here's the thing. I guess the question would be, I don't know of anybody, I've never heard of anybody killing a mountain lion with their bare hands. So let's, he doesn't claim he had like a knife or a dagger or a gun or anything, okay?

No, he just, he just fucking boxed the lion. No, it would be. But here's a, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. But here's the thing. It's possible to have sex. We know that, right? Like, you can have sex. And really, now we're just debating a number.

The question would be, you believe it is feasible that he could have fought him out and locked him out. Like, come on. I think he could have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I think you can definitely, he's seven feet tall. He's got a long reach. maybe the lion jumps at them.

Have you ever seen a mountain lion? Yeah, I did. When I was researching an article, I looked at pictures of a gigantic, like 200 pounds, something goofy like that. It's a big guy. Matt Barnes could do it. That's the end of the list of guys in the NBA who could kill a mountain lion with their bad. When I was researching for all this stuff, I started reading about people fighting animals. I read a story about a man who fought a bear.

with a water bottle. Like, that's how he beat the bear up. And then another story. That's ridiculous. And then another story about a man who punched and kicked his way away from a bear. Like, he boxed a bear. I get the, I can buy, I can buy, the second story I can buy. Nobody has ever beat up a bear with a water bottle.

That is ass on that. That's what it. It was on the website. I was researching about, I was researching black bears in Utah, and it's on the website. But when I was recent to think, this is what I was thinking about. Imagine you're the guy who, fucking, he beats up a bear with a, and then you mean another guy. It's like, oh, when you beat up a bear with a water bottle, that's just ridiculous to me.

The only chance, listen, obviously if you went to, like, the convenience store or something, your only chance would be with, like, one of those, like, Fiji bottles. Like, those things, like, the Fiji bottles are, like, bricks. So in the case that I am to accept this, I would not accept that he did it with like a Dasani bottle or an Aquafina bottle. Like I think a Fiji bottle is the only one that could, you know, the square one, right? You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I know. Yeah, the big pint or whatever it is, or leader.

The one that's the only one that could be used as a weapon. Or except for those like, what is the one like Vox or Vos, V-O-S? and it's like the tube. Right? Those are the only two, because that could almost be used as like a baton or something. But even then, I can't even believe I'm talking about this.

Nobody beat up a fucking bear with a water bottle, okay, Shay. He said he did. I believe him. I believe the guy and I believe Will. If you have one day, I mean, one time a day, for 54 years straight. Even if you do it twice a day. You have sex twice a day for 27 years straight.

Much, dude. I have sex like one time a week and I'm done. I'm like, don't talk to me until sex night is going down. Not Tuesday. Not Thursday. Like, wait until Saturday. I got to get my energy back up. Twice a day for 27 years, no chance.

No chance. But like nobody is out there going like, I can beat the shit out of a bear. I don't know. I don't know, which is more likely. I don't know. I guarantee you there's a group of people listening right now who said I could kill a mountain lion I could kill an 80 pound mountain lion somebody is listening to this right now and and they have a way in their head that they're going to kill it but nobody is saying hold on they're 80 pound what do you talk about like a fucking baby mountain lion like I thought we're talking about a full grown a full grown mountain lion but coming up with weight you got to put parameters on an adult mountain lion but I could probably kill one that weighs up to 80 twice a day

every day for 27 years. Nobody is saying that. Sometimes a week do you have sex? I mean, the over-under would be one. One. Yeah, but if you were going to, like, if you were going to, like, if you were sitting around gambling on me, like the numbers won every week. And so you can just decide if you're going to take the over or the under.

Right. No, and it's going down to the wire. Like, you are going to be sweating out this bet big time. You're going to be like, come on, Chris. You can be like, come on, Chris. Chris, let's go. Chris, that means it's going to take you 384 years

to have sex 20,000 times. But I bet, I bet you could have a better shot with that mountain lion. You could probably put up a fight. So of the Will Chamberlain myths, you certainly actually believe that. You believe that he really fought a mountain lion and choked him out.

No, I just think it's more likely that he... More likely. The whole genesis of this conversation was who could beat Wilts 100-point game somehow. You ended up on Clay Thompson, and he was the guy that you said, if anybody could do it. And the players that were remaining prior to were Durant, Curry, Hardin, and Clay. That's how you whittled it down, right? Okay.

So if I'm giving you a second pick, if it's not Clay, I'm going to give you two picks, because you had three other guys. You had Hardin, Curry, and Durant. Clay was the one that you ended up picking out of this group. So of those other three, Durant Curry Hardin, who would you pick second? I'm going Hardin. I think he can make it happen. Remember the game when he had like the goofy triple double of 50-sundered point,

16 rebounds and crazy like that? In that game, he was responsible if he were counting his assist. He was responsible for 95 points. So I'm just assume I think he could get there. He's my second pick. if they could get it done for you. If everything broke exactly right. All right, Shay, I'm going to ask you about other things going on in the NBA,

including who you think could mess with the Cavs and the Easter conference. But first, we remind people that some people don't get podcast, what's out there and how to listen. You can help change that with a click. Right now, think of someone you care about. What podcasts would they really love? Got it? Now do it.

Hit the share button on the bottom left of your screen. If they don't know how to listen, offer to show them how. Tell us what you shared with the hashtag Tripod, T-R-Y-Pod. Thanks for spreading the word. Shay, let's move to some of the stuff going on in the NBA. In the Eastern Conference, is there anybody you believe can challenge the Cavs? I don't think anybody's winning more than two games against the Cavs in a seven game. I just can't see it.

I can't see it. You don't think when they're fully healthy that they, you don't even think we see a Cavs game. seven before possibly the finals? No, I don't think we see it. We'll be doing good to get the game six. Is there any of those teams? I've got all the pieces, man. Are there any of those three that are behind them, Celtics, Wizards, Raptors?

Who do you like the most? Who do I like just to watch or who do I like? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, who do you like? If I'm given, if I say, all right, Shay, you can have any East Finals that you want. Give me the Cavs and Celtics and let me watch Isaiah go nuts for five games. Let me watch them average 17 points while they just get destroyed. I can you not love Isaiah?

I will say this. If you met somebody that was like, I hate Isaiah Thomas, like, I would really judge them. I agree with you. I don't know if that's necessarily fair. I guarantee it's fair. You think there's nobody that hates Isaiah Thomas that voted for Hillary Clinton. They might say that, but secretly, if you don't like Isaiah Thomas, you probably find this person on Facebook, and there's one of the pictures from two years ago,

and they're right. Do you think that James Hardin can beat Russell Westbrook for the MVP? Yeah, I think he's going to. I think the rockets are just too good. What Russell is doing is incredible. And you're going to have that whole big old conversation about, well, if we switch players on teams, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think if you put James Hardin over there, Eric Gordon all of a sudden, like, wait a second, is Eric Gordon named Eric Gordon two years ago, but it's impossible for me to deny how great he has been this season.

One, only because of their records. And you love Russ. I love Russ. Russ is probably my favorite guy I watch in the NBA. It doesn't make any sense. What do you not like about James Harden? You know, I think a big part of it is he's just not on my team. That's really all that is.

It's usually how it works. The guys on the rival team, you just hate them. You're writing a new book that you have been hawking, and it wasn't until, I believe, this week, that I realized that the book doesn't come out for like another seven months. I was like, I see it on Twitter all the time, and you're like, yo, go pre-order this book. pre-order this book. And then you, like, did the whole cover bit. Like, I'm not even, I won't send

Amazon the cover to this book and all this, all this and that. And you could pre-order this book. And then, like, I think, like, maybe like a day or two ago, I realized something you posted where it was like, it doesn't come out for another seven months. And I was like, wait. And then it dawned on me, when you were talking about chapters and whatever, I had never put it all together, right? That when you were talking about chapters, you were actually talking about writing chapters for a book that you are telling people to order

and, like, you haven't even written the book yet? No, it's not. I'm not done yet. I'm not done. I'm about 80% of the way there. Yeah, Amazon posted, they posted the link early. I wasn't expecting it to go up that early, but Twitter, hey, I said, what the hell? I went to link, and I posted

it, and it's like a funny thing to me to do that. And it's especially funny if somebody hits me, because I maybe started like a month ago and then somebody will like yesterday a guy orders it and he's like hey my bad for waiting so long like no what are you talking about

waiting so long you don't even come out until October it's it don't make it sense yeah but it's just because Amazon put it on there I don't know man but it's doing well which is crazy or the thing that I'm working on right now do you think people realize that the book

what percentage of the people that have bought the book realized that It doesn't come out until October. Oh, 100% of the people because everybody says it. Oh, they do it. It's like, yeah, it's part of the thing. That's why it's funny. Ah, look, what we just did together.

I'm going to forget. I ordered this. I think everybody, we're going to do it. What's the book? The book, it's called basketball and other things. After it's a different question I'm trying to answer. Similar to the Will Chamberlain thing. People are going to get, and I can go, what the fuck?

Why is this in this basketball book? That makes sense. Give me an example. of like one of the questions? Do you want a serious question or a not serious question? Goofy, goofy. Okay, we were talking about the bears thing earlier. The reason I was researching about bears, I spent a week,

I fucking a whole week reading about black bears in Utah. Because one of the chapters is if we take 1996 Caram alone off the jazz and we just drop him in the middle of Utah forest, the same time we take a bear out of the Utah forest and put him power forward for the 96 Jazz better season that year. The bear playing power forward for a season or Carl Malone living in the forest for a season.

And then there you go. Let's figure that out. It's going to be so disappointed when they get the book. Because there's a bunch of stuff like that. And you treat that particular question extremely seriously, I can imagine. Oh, yeah, yeah.

See, that's the thing that I think is the most fun for me when you're writing. You can take a silly blackbird now because I legit research hardcore about Blackwood. Like I'm watching documentaries and I'm reading books trying to get this information. I can treat it very serious. Like you would any other project you're working on. And I think that's what makes it. For me, that's what makes it fun. And I think that's, if I had to guess, that's part of the reason people appreciate reading that sort of stuff

because it's never just like a quick explained. I just wanted to be real careful not to be one that hadn't been asked. Yeah. I don't want to be like, oh, magic or bird. I'm like, these conversations have already been had. Let's go a different direction. Let's come up with some stuff that hadn't been talking about you. It's crazy you say that because I hate to break this to you.

I was just reading this book the other day. And one of the chapters was that exact Karl Malone question. And I was like, God damn it. I know. Wait, no, it was actually, it was actually could we replace Kevin John. from the 93 sons with a cougar from the mountains of Phoenix. With the mountain lion. We were placing him with a mountain lion that will killed.

All right. All right. Last thing. You always talk about, you know, you're always watching basketball, keeping up with what's going on in basketball. And obviously, it's a passion of yours. You tweet a lot about movies. But one thing I went to ask you,

I never see you tweeting about any TV shows, and I wondered to myself if you ever watch regular television shows. Yeah, we watch a few shows. My wife and I have a couple that are just, you know, you got kids, you don't get to watch TV that much during the day, so we just DVR everything and watch it afterwards. Like, we watch Blackish every week, which is a really funny show. Agold Ranch, Steve Austin, do you watch this show?

Broken Skoll Ranch. So you just shout that over and over. again is these people. It's like the real world challenge where they battle each other, except they just don't do anything except fight the whole time. And it's fantastic. We watch that show

together. She hates it. She does not like it. Because the whole time when it's on, I just pretend like I'm don't cold Steve Austin. I want a sandwich of Broken Skull Rens. We got the baddest sons of bitches at Broken Skoll Rans today. And I just keep doing that for like 30 minutes after the show. So, yeah, we watch, we watch TV together.

We watch them TV. Is that what he sounds like? That's exactly what he sounds like. I hope that you can have your producer bring up a clip to hear him shout in it. You're going to be confused. You're not going to know which one is me and which one is Steve Austin. 75 pound log on his back. That ain't no chopstick.

We don't do chopsticks at the Broken Skoll rant. It's a great show. It's a great show. It doesn't make any sense. He's like, oh, we're going to find out who's tough sons of bitches are today. We're going to flip this box over a hundred times. And that's it. You're just flipping the box.

Oh, okay. Let's do it. Let's do it. We're going to put both y'all sons of bitches in this moat. And you're going to wrestle in a moat. Oh, my God. They're wrestling in the mode. This is great.

And it's not just, it's not just dudes either. It's women, like men and women. And he just, it's the same thing every time. We've got the baddest sons of bitch women today. They're going to wrestle in a moose. I love it. It's great. Don't close. DeVoson is the best guy in the world.

So, yeah, we watch TV, Chris. I'm going to have to watch it. Broken Skoll. You can't watch it. Sounds right up my alley. I can't wait. It's great. Che, you're the man. Thanks for joining us on the NBA show.

Yeah, we got a lot done today. We did. We really did. I'm very proud of this episode. Yeah. Later much. Thanks for listening to another edition of the NBA show. If you dig what you're here, go give us a rating and review on iTunes. we will talk to you next week.