The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Magic Makes Lakers Situation Worse, Mikal Bridges on the Suns’ Dominance & DPOY Buzz, Plus ‘WeCrashed’ Creators Drew Crevello and Lee Eisenberg

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Russillo shares his thoughts on Magic Johnson’s critical comment about the Lakers and the big question of what is next for the team (0:32). Then Ryen talks with Mikal Bridges of the Phoenix Suns about the Suns’ regular-season success, defending Luka Doncic, Chris Paul’s leadership, last year’s postseason run, and more (12:00). Then Ryen is joined by the cocreators of the AppleTV+ show ‘WeCrashed’ to discuss the show’s inception, working with Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway, the challenges of making a show based on true events, and more (33:09). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitter Life Advice questions (1:06:22). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Mikal Bridges, Drew Crevello, and Lee Eisenberg Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's podcast we dig into magic's role with the lakers other than just torching them on television and what the offseason could look like mikhail bridges from the best team in the nba one of the stars the phoenix suns we works the. We crashed as a television show on Apple and the co-creators, Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crivello. Join us, and we've got a really weird life advice. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Winter is here, so be prepared and get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost anything? Well, you can't get a ski slope, but dish soap, definitely doable. Sunshine? That's no. A bottle of wine? yeah. And a snow day, again, no. But blueberry muffins with the delicious crumb topping,

total yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. I want to start with a tradition unlike any other, and that's television stations calling on Magic Johnson

saying, hey, do you want to pour some jet fuel on the fucking Lakers? And he's like, yep. How many shows can I do? So let's run through some of this Lakers stuff, which is going to be news, and it's going to continue to be news throughout the playoffs, the draft, free agency. It's just not going away, so why don't I jump in as well? So Magic goes on a bunch of the ESPN shows, and his basic goal is one thing. When things go wrong with the Lakers, he wants Lakers fans to know that he would have done it differently and that none of this is on him.

And in a weird way, I guess it isn't, but at the same time, he's still advising the team all the time. It's a very different role. And I just think it's odd in general. We're so numb to it because he's been doing it for such a long time. And yeah, he's got a big ego. If I were Magic Johnson in LA, guess what? I'd have a massive ego too.

If there's somebody that's allowed to have a big ego, I think magic Johnson is okay to do it, but that's also what drives a lot of this stuff. It's just very odd. And I can think of like a comp that doesn't make any sense. It's being possible to imagine it, but imagine if Larry Bird lived in the Boston area and every six months would go on ESPN and be like,

I don't know why they took Romeo Langford guys sucks. Like, I don't know about this trade. Derek White gave up another first back-to-back years. If the Celtics weren't playing well, like that would just be so weird, but we're just so used to it with magic. We're like, oh wait, he's doing this again. And he did it and he did it big time. And he actually got a lot of stuff wrong. So he said that he got a call from, uh, DeMar DeRozan's agent, that he would have brought in DeMar DeRozan. He would have done that deal. The Lakers would have brought him home. He wanted to come home, but it was LeBron's fault because Westbrook's there,

which it is LeBron's fault that Westbrook is with the Lakers. So part of this is that Magic's telling you that he gets the call from the agent. As if the agent, an NBA agent who has a client like DeMar DeRozan doesn't have a cell phone number for anyone that makes decisions with the Lakers, but that's also part of the cell job here too. First of all, we know the Lakers had no cap space. The most they could offer DeRozan was $5.9 million, which is the taxpayers' mid-level, which was not going to happen

because DeRozan was going to get over $20 million. And by the way, he ended up signing over a three-year deal with the Bulls, $82 million to $85 million with some of the bonuses

or incentives. So that wasn't going to work, right? I'm just throwing it out there so that we understand. And by the way, with DeRozan, let's not have,

because he's been awesome this year, most of us thought that deal didn't make any sense. Three years, 82 million for someone that much older. Not many of us liked that deal. So now everybody's going back being like, oh, we should have brought in DeRozan. And by the way, there's still years left on the deal. It's kind of that weird thing that'll happen in baseball sometimes where a guy gets like a six year deal that all of us think is terrible. And he goes three for four on opening day people are like well no thought this was a bad deal and you're like you know we got like six years to go on this one guys let's see how it goes but so far DeRozan has proven everybody wrong and the sign and trade the Bulls made with San Antonio wasn't exactly like a war chest of assets it was Thaddeus Young

the first couple seconds so maybe the Lakers could have done that not impossible, if they wanted to include Kuzma in some kind of deal. But then we've got to ask ourselves, do the Spurs want Kuzma? Kuzma's money isn't crazy. As soon as he signed his contract, they're like, actually, you're going to get traded now because it's a very tradable contract. Kuzma on his best days is a really good player. On his worst days, you're not quite sure how he fits in. So maybe San Antonio would have done some sort of sign and trade with the Rosen.

The picks part of this is pretty light, though, for the Lakers, because we understand all the picks they include in the Anthony Davis deal. So let's say that's a possibility. The part where Magic continues on, he was like, yeah, but I also would have done the Buddy Heald deal. We're like, well, who the fuck are you trading for Buddy Heald if you were doing a sign and trade with the Rosen? And then he said he would have kept Caruso and contavious caldwell pope you're like well wait you can't do these things at that point they'd been hard capped um with the the ad and lebron deals and then just sort of magically keeping everybody and some de rosen extension that would have been in the 20s so none of that made any sense and he had no problem just saying all the stuff that would have happened uh but this isn't new this isn't new and if i'm a lakers fan i wonder if you go

i think he thinks that people will go and maybe a lot of lakers fans do they're like yeah he's right we could have had to rosen like do you see what magic said man we screwed this up too bad magic isn't in charge again and you're like yeah but the guy that just said he would have done all these things, I think he just was talking. I don't know that he doesn't understand what some of the rules are. That seems to be a little aggressive, but I don't know. I checked with a cap guy, too. I'm like, wait,

none of this makes any sense. He's like, collectively, no. It doesn't. It doesn't make any sense. And to add to the Magic conversation, do you remember what he was saying when the Lakers did get Russell Westbrook? Let's go over some of the tweets. Laker Nation, a blockbuster trade that's bringing Russell Westbrook to the magic conversation of this, do you remember what he was saying when the Lakers did get Russell Westbrook? Let's go over some of the tweets. Laker Nation, a blockbuster trade that's bringing Russell Westbrook to the Lakers is very exciting.

It will definitely make the Lakers a championship contender next season. With Westbrook joining LeBron in AD, the Lakers now have their version of the Big Three. All we need now is a couple shooters that will be tough to beat. Actually, I'll agree with that part of it. Also in July of last year,

Russell Westbrook is the most electric player in the NBA today, and Staples Center will be on fire next season. Well, on fire may actually be correct for a different reason. Let's look at the rest of the roster, at least the pieces that we can talk about here. Anthony Davis trades. I still like Anthony Davis. I feel like less and less people agree with me on that one. If you want

to say that he's inconsistent, he's hurt all the time, he's soft, he doesn't quite have that alpha edge, I'll agree with you on all those things. But the best case scenario for the Lakers is to get Anthony Davis back, which I don't think at his age is impossible if he figures out the right training regimen. Or maybe he'll be hurt the rest of his days and it'll be a huge disappointment and a career unfulfilled and all those things. LeBron doesn't win a title without him. And we know that AD didn't do anything down in New Orleans without a guy like LeBron. So they

needed each other. Everybody needs somebody in the NBA. But if you're thinking of Anthony Davis trades, it's a little bit more complicated because of the LeBron factor. You can't just trade Anthony Davis for picks to recoup some of the picks you sent to New Orleans or young players coming back. LeBron's not interested in any of those things. He's not. So that limits kind of what you're able to do. There's one very consistent rule that can be broken at times, but it's fairly consistent in the NBA that teams, when they have established players, do not like to trade their established players for other established players that may be dealing with some sort of problem. When Paul George was available to everyone, the Pacers back then, when he wanted out Indiana,

they called everyone in the league. I talked to multiple teams about it and they were like, yeah, you know, Paul George being offered everybody here because they know that they're screwed

and he's telling everybody he's out of there that he wants to play for the Lakers and, you know, it's not going to happen. A couple of trades that I heard about,

I remember talking to one team in particular where I was like, well, Paul George is better than the guys that you'd be sending out. And they go, yeah, but here's the thing is

we're adding Paul George to our crew that's already established. We are not trading our non-problems that are established for a new problem that isn't established with us. And who knows what Paul George is going to do? Because that guy changes mind like three or four times within a few months. Let's be fair, maybe a year and a half, right? So if you're saying Anthony Davis isn't healthy, LeBron wants to do something else, where's the trade where you're trading him for established pieces that are coming back so the other team is restarting what they're doing with somebody that has injury concerns?

So yes, there could be a third team where the picks go to the other team, Davis goes to one, and then some established guys go somewhere else. But those trades kind of don't really happen that much. Again, not impossible. Impossible is not a word that we like to use in the NBA when we talk about trades. And that segues perfectly into Russell Westbrook. Because at $47 million and one year left, there's some stuff you could do. But it's really difficult because you're probably adding an asset on top of everything else to send Russell Westbrook out. So what do you have that's ready to compete and who's

established that exists that a team is willing to trade? Now, I think LeBron and the crew wanted to do the John Wall deal because they felt like just getting Westbrook out of here is an improvement. And I would agree with that part, but again, it's still their fault he was there in the first place. But that's the other problem with the Westbrook trade.

It's not just that you're trading this guy with an incredible individual resume, right? You're trading somebody who looks in the mirror and still sees a superstar. And his stubbornness is what has made him such a productive player who will one day be in the Hall of Fame. But if you have a young team, and Orlando always gets brought up all the time, right? Like think of the stale teams. Hell, we could even throw Houston back in this. OKC would be part of this, too, because some people wonder, like, would Presti, if you threw in a pick in 2027, would he be willing to do this? Would he figure out some way, like, hey, bring Westbrook back? Westbrook, with a bunch of young players, you're actually, like, on year two or three of your rebuild.

Doesn't make a lot of sense, either. To have all of your young players that are lottery picks watching him run up and down the court and chuck it up 20 times, is that really what a lot of teams will want that feel like, yeah, we might not be any good, but do we want to disrupt whatever development we hope to build here with somebody like Westbrook? So that complicates that as well. It's going to get weird, all right?

And LeBron has already hinted at some of this stuff where he said on the shop, he wanted to play with Steph Curry. He said that he wanted to play with Luca. This is, I imagine some version of him presenting leverage to the Lakers because LeBron has consistently done this at every stop.

He wants to put pressure on ownership and management. He doesn't think that anybody will ever act to the, to the limits of, of their abilities, to the absolute ceiling, pushing it, being like, we need to win, we need to win. And I disagree with this, by the way. I think teams all want to win.

But he feels like unless there is a threat of him deciding to do something, that owners will not be as all-in unless they feel threatened. And that's why he hinted at the Steph stuff, which I don't want to make a ton of sense. The Dodgers part, it's like, wait, do I want to bring this guy in? I know Windhorse had a thing about the Clippers. Look, when LeBron tried to recruit Kawhi to come as a free agent, Kawhi wasn't really vibing with LeBron whatsoever

and didn't want to go with him and decided to do his own thing. And the other thing, when you start talking about certain players that you build around and say, okay, I'm going to dump all of these draft picks in the future because I want to bring in players now to support our current guy. If LeBron's in his early 30s, you can kind of understand that. But even with LeBron, there's some kind of risk. There's a version of this Clippers thing, which I completely understand and everybody would do, getting Kawhi and Paul George. But down the road, they may look

at this going, look at these unprotected picks and what a disaster this ended up being. That could happen to them. When you look at Milwaukee training for Drew Holiday, that one makes a little bit more sense because I think you get the feeling that Giannis is a more content player. And that's also another weird topic that's entirely different. But we have a lot of the American players that seem to get really unhappy very quickly, where it feels like some of the foreign players are better bets to build around because you feel like there's less of a threat of them deciding they want to bounce. I mean, look at the names and look at the history of the players of the last decade that have forced their way out. A lot of the foreign guys seem to be a lot more happier about it. So I don't even know what that means. But there's a summary on all of this, right, with

LeBron James. And it's simple. As you get a little bit older, he's going to make a push here for the scoring title. And he sat out games. I'm a little surprised by this because he's going to end up getting crushed by it. And I think a lot of times that they calculate their moves, they try to do things that gets him the least amount of criticism. And in a way, him sitting out games

where they were still eligible for the play-in but now eliminated and now he's going to push for the scoring title which is now behind Embiid as Embiid's continue to be on this tear for the MVP.

He's going to end up getting crushed for this stuff if he's playing specifically and loading up and trying to get points at the end of the season. He's going to get crushed but maybe he's only going to get crushed by the end of the season. He's going to get crushed,

but maybe he's only going to get crushed by the people that are already crushing him. But it's a lot like a relationship. And unfortunately with Ron Lakers, this is getting towards the end of the relationship. We're in the beginning of a relationship. All the weird stuff is still kind of cute because you're so excited. But at the end of it,

you get sick of it really quickly. And that's going to be the standoff between player and franchise. quickly. And that's going to be the standoff between player and franchise. Mikael Bridges of the Phoenix Suns joins us. This podcast has been very pro-Suns. I have always been a longtime Chris Paul fan. I think your team is terrific. We know the numbers, the clutch numbers and all this stuff, the one seed, the record, all of it. You were in the finals last year. How good is this year's team compared to last year? Even better. And I remember kind of saying that preseason and kind of beginning of the season,

I'm just looking around. I'm just like, all right, just the vibe and just people getting better. And adding more people, I was just like all right this team got better than last year and it's crazy to say that because we were really good last year so um but now especially like getting craig back for a deadline and aaron and stuff like that is just this year is crazy how we're a better team than we were last year.

Pretty damn good. Yeah, you are that. Was there a goal to play all 82 games for you this year? Because you're on pace for it, right? Yes. I mean, that's a goal every year. Go

wherever seat I'm in, wherever I'm at, just to play every game. Go wherever seat I'm in or wherever I'm at just to play every game. I think that's just normal just to play and be available. Obviously, injury is part of the game, but if I feel like I'm

fine enough to play, I'll play. Were you like, hey, how come everybody got to sit against the Clippers except for me? After everybody played against the Lakers? No, no, no. I was just coaching them. You know, obviously, you know,

the streak is alive. Just keep me, let me play. Which, yeah, I mean, if I'm not injured, I don't see why I wouldn't play, but obviously minutes is low, but I appreciate Coach's staff and them just keeping me out there. AD had said some stuff about, hey, if we weren't hurt,

no team wants to hear that on the other side, and you guys were really good last year, so we're not sure what would happen. Was there an extra motivation maybe to have everybody play in the Lakers game and then sit against the Clippers? I think everybody got their own added motivation, I guess, when we played them

or any other team, but no, I mean, that's just – you say that about everything. It's just injuries. That was part of the game. You go back to every year, play all the championships and stuff when people go down. You never know what could have happened with things like that. So, I think it's just part what could have happened with things with that. So they,

as part of the game, um, and he knows that, but I mean, I don't, I don't blame him for saying, I feel like if it was a situation like that here, and I feel like a couple of my key players on the team went down and,

you know, we didn't have them for a whole year. I feel like I would probably say the same thing What clicked for you? Was there a moment where you get in a league, you're a lottery pick and you're finding your way, it's clear right away like okay, this guy's going to have a long career

but was there a moment in your career was the specific stretch of games during a season where you're like, okay, you know what, I'm actually going to be good, like this is going to work out um i i think maybe my rookie year at a stretch where um i was playing pretty well maybe like a little road trip game where I was just like constantly scoring a good amount. I think defense, I'm always mindful about defense every time I'm out there. So that's not really stress. Just try to, especially when I'm working,

try to find shots and make shots and stuff like that. And I think there's a little stretch when I was on a roll. I think we played San Antonio, Toronto. I think it was a couple of those games. Actually, the Toronto game, Siakam gave me a game winner too, so I always remember that.

That just ruined all the scoring I had that day. It was just defeated because I gave up a game winner. So I think it was a little stretch there where I was scoring a little bit. It kind of made me feel pretty good. And the defense has always been there too. Draymond Green said recently

he thinks you should be defensive player of the year. What was your reaction to that? Just being a big fan of Draymond and um you know actually you know getting to know him a little bit more now and being cool with him is dope but I just it's just funny how people will always go against him because of his knowledge and they don't face the game like him. And I just remember tweeting something during the USA where I think he had a shot or whatever,

withdrew and it created for KD or three. And I remember I think maybe some social media account posted it and was trying to clown Draymond for not taking an open shot or whatever. And I'm just like, how can you even say something like this when you just watch the whole clip and everything he did led to

Kevin Durant shooting a wide open three, catching a shoot three. So I'm just like, I don't know how you're going to clown a person for his IQ. So I've always been a fan. And I feel like that's just, you know, he knows. I mean, he does it all.

You know what I'm saying? I'm actually, he's just, he's part of it for even, for me being in this convo for how many games he missed. So he's kind of helped me, you know, be up there in the race because he's really not eligible right now. So, but it's just, I mean, it's dope for him to say that, man. Definitely means a lot.

I was, in prepping for this, I was like, okay, I want to look at some of the defensive stuff specific. So I was watching all your Donchik matchups in the most recent game that you played against them. I think it was the most recent one. And, you know, he's, he's your primary assignment when you play them but obviously

you're going to get switched off of a million times is that is that accurate like when when you're lining up and saying who do you got like donchich is yours but they're going to run so many high pick and rolls with them like you kind of have to figure out how many times you're going to be able to stay with them and how you're going to get switched off of a bunch correct yeah for sure okay what do you do when it's somebody like Donchich knowing that, okay, I'm going to get screened all night. And what I do love about you, and I've always noticed this, and maybe you'd agree with me, I'm shocked how many defenders lose their man still, even at the NBA level.

I know you play a million games, guys can have some lazy habits. You are constantly, when you get switched off of him, you still always kind of keep yourself, you know, man, you ball, that kind of stuff where you're like, all right, I'm still not going to lose track, and I still have to maybe help back to dodge it, even though I get switched off of him. What do you kind of run through your checklist of, hey, these are all the things that I have to remind myself

being matched up against somebody like that? Yeah, that's what makes it so tough to do. Guys like that, like Luka and them, you got to always be aware of them on the court. I don't think it's... Obviously, I want to guard him and be the guy, but at the same time, just how we are as a team and we're trying to win.

I know he's the key player. He's ahead of his snake. And the team defense is knowing, like, all right, even if I switch off of him, I want to be guarding him. But I just got to always keep an eye because in a shot clock or something like that, it's going to come back to him. And he's going to make the play. And I just, you know, rather have somebody else, you know,

make that play rather than him just because how really good he is. And it's just all team defense, man. Just knowing what we have to do and just our coaching staff, helping with the scouts and kind of us as players taking the game and knowing who we – what guys would rather shoot, you know, at the end of the clock than not. He got you in the post, and I'm not saying as a criticism,

it's Luka, the size, and you got him a couple times. It looked like he wanted to go right back at you. Did he say something to you? Because he always thinks he's fouled, which we both know. But when he finished, did he say something to you after he finished you,

after you had stopped him the previous time? No, not that I know of. I think he probably was hyped up. I think I remember what you were talking about. But, I mean, that's just part of the game. Just, you know,

he got the and one. He was, yeah, like all teed up, which is fine. But, yeah, I just, yeah, I just kind of, it's always just great battles between me and him, and it's always a respect thing where I just make it tough on him, and then he'd make it tough on me.

And there's plays, you know, I would play really well, you know, get him frustrated. And then there's times where he's Luka Doncic, and he's going to, you know, get a bucket how he is in any way. It's just the spirit. I'm competing in both of us. He probably scored and got hype and yelled, which is pretty fine because on the other hand,

if I get a key stop or do something, I'm the first one to yell on the screen too. I already know how that goes. I wanted to make sure I pointed out that you had gotten him on the previous ISO. Cause he was trying to just hammer you. Right. I just,

I didn't want to be like, you're talking to PR people being like, this dude woke me up this early on the West coast to tell me I got fucking beasted in the post by John. Who's this guy? Because look, we know how good you are defensively. But if you look back to that bubble stretch,

you're terrific, you know, to close. We're not sure if it's real or not. You know what I mean? You're like, OK, they were fourteen under five hundred, something like that. The whole season's weird. We get it. And then Chris Paul comes in.

What's what's the most impressionable thing that Chris said to you once he shows up? He's your teammate, like something that maybe you you'll never forget a story you tell your buddies about the first time you get to experience playing with Chris Paul um oh my biggest thing with

C is just what he especially first got here is how much he talks you know like I've never been around a player that just simply talks throughout the whole game and just on defense on on offense. He's just, man, he's just, I don't know,

maybe like a perfectionist. He's just, he wants to every single play. Like, it's crazy. I was just like, dang, he's, I don't know how he's doing all this. He's still talking. And even if you mess up once, he's crazy. I was just like, dang, he's – I don't know how he's doing all this. He's still talking. And even if you mess up once, he's letting you know. And I'm like, I like to keep guys accountable and stuff like that. But, yeah, I've never been around somebody that talks so much

and is constantly just knows so much about the game and what he's saying. Just stuff you don't maybe think about sometimes and it makes you think the game even more and you know I think I feel like I'm

a pretty smart player and just understand the game but he'll come with some stuff where I'm even to myself

just like that makes so much sense I don't even think of it like that and like how he thinks is just so simple to him

so that's probably the biggest thing. Is there an example from a game? Is there anything you can share with us? Like something you were like, oh, wow. Like, you know, only he thought of that. Oh, my God. No, right now I can't think of something.

Because right now it's kind of... Now I'm at the stage where I've been around so much. So now my mind is starting to think like him. So it's like, now whatever he says, I know. Because he's been telling me for a whole year, two years now. So now I'm starting to think like CP. I feel like I got smarter dealing with him, so that's a big compliment to give

to him, but it's so hard because it was really last year. He would say some stuff I'm just sitting there like, dang, that does, but now, stuff he says now and even more, I'm like, hell yeah, I know that now because of you. He says little stuff that I didn't know before,

I'm the one maybe when he was out or something like that, I'm the one telling somebody what he usually would tell me. I learned from him, but I really wish I had something that really

he told me something. I was like, damn, I didn't even think of something like that i really i think of that i'm i put you on the spot it's early too so let's uh if something pops i i i watch it comes back to me later don't make me think about it and i'm gonna see him later and i'm gonna look at him it's probably gonna pop up i already know all right well look if it interrupt me if something comes up that you want to remind us of um a few more

things I want to get to here, but you mentioned, I can't imagine playing in league and then checking social media. I just can't. I know you guys do

it. I know you guys do it at halftime. How hard was it for you to check out anything after the finals last year? Not crazy.

I just feel like, I don't know, just owning up. I think't know, just owning up. You know, I think that's the biggest thing. Personally, I ain't going to speak for everybody. But I feel like just in a world, owning up makes things a little bit better. If you kind of try to put it to the side and not try to look at things, it's kind of just going to do on you a little bit more.

And obviously, I was upset when we lost, but I just feel like, you know, like nothing to really obviously be upset and take it to the next year, but nothing to really hang our heads up on. You know, I don't think we had a hell of a year, you know, but something we did was very special. And how close we are as a team is just not usual. So even when we lost, I was upset, frustrated. But sometimes I just realized, man, we had a hell of a year.

We had fun. And it's life. I've been in championships, and I've won, and I've lost. And it's just a part of life, man. You just try your best and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And it's just part of life. And I just kind of know that. And life goes on.

But you can learn from it. And I think that's what we're doing right now. How motivated then do you think this group has been? How much do you think this year's play? It's a really good team. You're deeper. It's another year of everybody understanding their roles and everything, but the bitterness of losing, even though it was a great season,

how much do you think that has fueled what we've seen from the team this year? For sure. It's just a lot of added motivation and you've got a lot of players, man. Just a lot of proof, a lot of proof. And we're just, I heard playing for each other. I just feel like it's not obviously that simple, but I think it's simple to us,

but we just got there. We play for each other. We play hard and we let it gain. And we let it compete. You know, we try to be the but we just got there. We played for each other. We played hard. We led a game, and we led a compete. You know, we try to be the best team we can be, and obviously our end goal is to win it all, but, you know, it takes steps. You know, regular season is step one,

and then just preparing round by round. But, yeah, we're all motivated, man. We all got something to prove and we we just all want to win you know i think that's the biggest thing is there's nothing obviously we all care about what each other do you know this is about stats or stuff like that but our whole thing man is every single guy wants to win and it's not one guy that just wants to go out there and just be selfish and get the numbers and that's it you know they just everybody wants to win and that's what makes it so close and makes it so much fun to be out there yeah and that's also why you know jay has his role

booker's been amazing and ayton is is the kind of modern big that you can keep on the floor which is a big part of it and he had some stretches last year to play what's this guy's ceiling this is going to be incredible coming into the league and being teammates with Aiton for this long how worried are you about where he could be after this season's over

um yeah I mean I can't really talk too much about it but obviously my biggest thing is that he should be here and uh starts to do whatever it takes to keep him here um he just got better you know all throughout everything as a person as a player i really matured and um i know he wants to be here as well so that's that's not to really speak of all i took a swing at it i had to so uh i you know look i i totally get it though all right final thought on this everybody knows the story about being drafted by the sixers the family connection of the whole deal your connection

of the area and then you know it was like, oh, no, I'm on Phoenix. We've been over this. Do you ever have moments like, I'd imagine in the moment you probably weren't thrilled, but then to see how it worked out. Can you kind of take us through that as we finish here, the full circle of emotions of maybe not getting what you thought you wanted at the time to now being a situation where it probably couldn't be much better?

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah when i got drafted i definitely was frustrated um you know i kind of looked myself in the mirror days after just because i felt like i wasn't being as grateful as i should you know i always dreamed about being being an NBA kid and not to just be the NBA, but being a green room and to go top 10 is just something I couldn't even think that would ever happen. And me being just so caught up with my feelings and my heart and wanting to be home got me all screwed up when I got traded because I didn't think that would happen. got me all screwed up when I got traded because I didn't think that would happen. And yeah, man, I had to look myself in the mirror, bro, and just tell myself just like, you know, what am I really upset about? You know what I'm saying?

Like, yeah, who cares? You want to go home, but it's like, you're top 10, you're going to a city where a team traded for you and they want you here. Like, why are you even, why are you remotely upset about this?

You know, like this is a dream. This is top 10. And they made me realize like, bro, I gotta be more grateful. And obviously I'm grateful in life for other things, but stuff like that.

I'm like, it kind of, I had to look myself in the mirror, but come on, man, you can't, you can't, you can't be upset about not going where you want it to go. You know, you went top 10 as a blessing, you know, people fight every day to even get just a 10 day or, or being a G league or stuff like that.

And, um, I was, I was, I was, I was upset with myself for that, for even letting that get to me. But yeah, man, I was upset. And then once I realized everything and how much they gave up and what they wanted to do, I was excited. Did I think we were going to be where we're at this fast? You want to be honest?

Hell nah, but hey. That's the that's the james jones up there and bringing in my and how he changed the culture so fast and getting the pieces drafting you know you know getting cam johnson and then he pain coming out of nowhere coming back to the league hooping and you know obviously getting obviously getting CP and Jay is just credit to them, man. I'm just happy I'm a part of it and I wouldn't want to

go back to draft night. I'll let the same shit happen again, bro. Trade me, let me go to Phoenix. This is great. I love how the story's getting written right now and I'm enjoying every moment of it. And yeah, man, you deserve it. You got that extension.

You're putting up numbers. People are taking notice. And I love watching this team play. So I'm happy for you, man. Thanks for the time. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. Earlier on this podcast, we talked to the authors of The Cult of We,

the story of WeWork. We Crash is now on Apple TV. Five episodes in, three more to go. It comes out every Friday. I encourage you to check it out. The co-creators, Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crivello, join us now on the podcast. All right. Look, I love the show. I love the story. I love all this kind of stuff. I feel like we're in this kind of like sinister CEO phase of content that's been going on for a couple of years. And this is one of my favorite stories. So honestly, I'll let either one of you jump in kind of at the start here. Let's start from concept. Like give me the idea

of either reading the book, the podcast with Wondery, the whole, all the IP that's out there and then going like, okay, this is a show. How do we get this made? So Lee, I'll start with you. Yeah. I mean, I, uh, I know the Wondery guys for years and they called me out of the blue and said, Hey, we have a podcast that we're, that we're putting out about, uh, about WeWork. Uh, we'd love for you to listen to it early on. If you're interested, let's try to set it up as a TV show. And I was like, great. And I had read a few articles about, uh, about WeWork at that point. And I devoured the episodes that they were sending me. And I was like,

the thing that I was kind of most excited about was this love story at the center of it between Adam and Rebecca. They just seem like such fascinating characters. And I was kind of rooting for them at times. I was laughing with them. I was laughing at them. I was just like, there was just so much there. And Drew's one of my best friends. And we, we've been looking to do something together. And we ended up taking

this walk in Beverly Hills and I had sent him the podcast and we both just started talking about it. And it was just one of those things where it just, we had been reading each other's scripts. And, you know, again, we obviously shared very similar sensibilities. We just kind of kept coming back to this core relationship at the center of it. And it just felt like it clicked. And so I have a deal with Apple. We brought it into Apple and they were just, they were just excited about the podcast and kind of the IP.

And we just kind of went off on our own and started working on it. And it was right, that was January of 2020, right? Yeah. And then, and it just kind of went from there. We just started working on it. The pandemic happened. We started working remotely. I mean, it was a crazy, weird way to kind of get a project off the ground,

just the timing of it. And Lee and I have worked in the business for 20 plus years. We turned in our pilot, right? Our first episode and our story Bible, right? Which kind of lays out what the series is on a Friday and Apple greenlit it to series on a Monday. So it was just the whole thing's been kind of a rocket ship from that walk. We took till now is as about as fast as a process as a project can move through uh through hollywood how different is it writing for a pilot that we already know the story versus just something you're creating

out of thin air other than it's a way easier to get it made when everybody knows but like the creative process of telling a story that's been told versus one you're making up you know it's both um it's both easier and harder right right? It's easier in the sense of you've got these kinds of milestones, right? Like even when we looked at the whole series, the whole, uh, you know, the whole story we knew from day one, when they get that $4 billion, that's the midpoint, right? That's like the hinge that this whole story can turn on. So you kind of have these posts that you can put in about this is the beginning, this is the middle, this is the end. That said, since we're trying to roughly stick at least to an artistic truth,

you also can't just put in any event or scene that you want. So you have to be kind of creative within these constraints. So anyway, it's both easier and harder. I would also say that, I mean, you have these, like Drew said, you have these moments that you're kind of barreling towards. But what's different from a podcast or from a documentary versus what we're doing is you're filling in all of the scenes that exist where like, but why did they do that? Why is he someone that like a billion dollars is enough? He says he wants to be a trillionaire. Why is she someone that's like this? And when you start kind of creating those psychological profiles, those are the same exercises that you

end up doing with, you know, if you're creating a character from whole cloth. And so for us, as much as much as there exists of Adam, you just you keep you have to keep scraping underneath the surface to kind of find the emotional truth of these people. And we weren't interested in doing something where it's like, oh, every we're trying to do a hit piece on them. And we're kind of trying to say,, Oh, every, every story should be, we crashed that, you know, look at Adam, what,

what, what the genius he made 47, you know, his company was valued at this crazy valuation. We want it to be three dimensional. And to do that, it just takes a lot of work. What I really like about the pilot,

maybe I'm guilty of, you know, consuming so much of the content already through wondering the book. But I think sometimes when you're writing a pilot, you're, if you're trying to sell the story that hasn't been sold before i'm not just talking about like the economic part of selling but selling the pitching it where you're like okay how do i balance all these great things that i want to put in pilot because there's no point in saving something for

shit that's not going to get made versus i i don't have to you know what i mean like i don't have to do and what i do like about the pilot is that yeah in the beginning we get a sense of them forward in the timeline of like this is where we're at now we're going to back it up and so i i know that's that's a process that's used a lot but i'd have to think that there's some kind of storytelling advantage knowing we don't have to we don't have to swing it like every single scene to get somebody to buy into this and clearly that's not the case because i i mean to have it turn around that quickly is amazing yeah you're saying given that it's a true story that you kind of can can that you have that to kind of draft off of yeah exactly yeah well what's interesting is um you know not everyone is completely familiar with this story right both in the audience and even at apple so

we really kind of went in presuming people knew nothing. So we kind of approached the pilot, assuming that even the executives, we were trying to kind of get to green light this, let alone the audience, that they hadn't seen the doc, that they hadn't read any books, that maybe they caught a headline when this was going down, but maybe they hadn't. So we really kind of looked at this as, if you know nothing about this, how can we still tell a fascinating story that anyone would enjoy? I think we covered it then because I feel like I asked the same question twice. Getting Jared Leto to sign off on this, how did that happen?

Leto to sign off on this? How did that happen? WME, our agency, my agency sent it to him and it was kind of one of those things where when you're starting to write something and writing is really long and tedious and filled with uncertainty you often fantasize about the future because

sometimes it's easier than actually doing the writing. So it's like, well, if we ever get it made, you know, it'd be incredible to be, you know, Jared Leto, you know, you start kind of putting together the pieces and you're like, oh, well he can do this and he can do that. And, um, it's more fun to cast it in your head than it is to actually write. Yeah, exactly. And so we, we talked about Jared from, I mean, we talked about Jared probably on that first walk. I mean, it was just kind of something, he ticked off all the boxes for us. It's like some of the adjectives that we were talking about with Adam,

it's like, Messianic. Yeah, he's Messianic. He's a rock star. He can, you know, he's charming. He's charismatic. He's handsome. And so it was like all of these things, and it was like, oh, okay, Jared Leto, sure. And the thing about Jared is

he just disappears into every role. He just takes these crazy swings and just become somebody else. I mean, it's really, it's incredible. And so he read the script and Jared is, you know, in his own right, he's an investor. Like he knows the tech world more intimately than we do. And so we started talking about it and it just became one of those things where all of the conversations were so aligned. I mean, he was like, I'm not interested in taking down this guy. I want to kind of find the humanity behind him. And it was so in line with where we were. And the interesting thing with both with Jared and with Annie is that they sign out to a movie script and they read the whole script with this.

We send them 60 pages and a very, you know, a pretty looking Bible that, you know, we hired a graphic designer to add some pictures, which they ever read, by the way. Yeah.

So he read 60 pages, which ultimately ended up being a 480 page. If you're talking about like the number of pages that Drew and I and our writers generated, it's close to 500 pages. He read 60 pages. And then me and Drew talking, somehow he was like, okay, I believe in you guys enough

that I'll go on this journey and do TV for the first time and sign on to it. It's the same thing with Annie. It's like you really had to make such a leap of faith. And Ryan, you were talking about the pilot as kind of like, it's kind of a sales document, right? It's a sales document to the company that you're trying to, you're hoping will greenlight it. It's a sales tool to the audience that you're hoping will go on this journey with you. But it's also kind of a sales tool for the actors, right? That this is what they're using to base their decision on. And the one thing I think we did right was we were able in the pilot

to give a glimpse of these two crazy, fascinating, flawed, strange people that Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway were like, I want to know more about them. Who are these people? And that really began this conversation. Yeah. Before I get to Anne, because she's in a way, she's, I don't want to like rank them, you know, sports guy over here, but like I have her one of my power rankings for recrash. Jared's a solid two. But Jared, you know, I don't, I don't know that much about it the only jared little story i have is i was doing a remote from the national championship for college football in arizona and we were doing it before the pre-game so it was me three hours live and his band played in the parking lot

and he was swearing non-stop and then we're at disney company so that's a huge fit and you could hear it over the like he didn't know what the hell was going on. We're just a tent with some ESPN logos up. And then they were like, hey, we got to figure out some way on the feedback on this because like they're not supposed to be on right now. I was like, I have a hard time believing that a PA from ESPN radio is going to be able to tell Jared Leto's manager to like, hey, could you guys give it give us another hour over here? So I hear these stories about him as an actor, you know, how engrossed in all of it he becomes, the method part of it. This is different than playing the Joker, certainly. But what is your experience? What's real about how much he invests in a character that definitely

is a character in Adam Neumann? Well, I mean, Lee and I talk about this all the time. You know, we spoke to Jared in the development process when we were talking him through what the story would be. We spoke to Jared Leto for about four months until the day we started shooting. And the day we started shooting, we started with a couple of Annie scenes that day. And then Adam Newman walked onto the set

and he was not Jared Leto. We did not address him as Jared Leto. And we did not speak to Jared for another four and a half months. And then we spoke to him again on the day we wrapped. So that's how immersive it is. Lee and I, we would do Zooms with him on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday night and talk about script and it would be accent full character, either the video was off or he would be in full character with the video on. That's how sort of uncompromising it was. And also, I mean, I'm, uh, I'm half Israeli. My dad's from Israel and he just, I mean, mean he speaks he was speaking English with an Israeli accent and which is what I grew up with I mean all you know all my parents friends were like that

and it was just as well you know he'd come on to set I'd say shalom to him he'd say shalom back I mean I don't think Jared speaks more than eight words in Hebrew but like we were just it just kind of felt like it just kind of felt like okay it just kind of felt like, okay, this is like an Israeli guy. He had a scene partner who was Israeli and they would just run through lines. And then he was always kind of looking for like those little like specific touches. And the amazing thing is like,

now that the show's out there in the world, like A, when I had to show it to my dad, that was terrifying. And he gave the seal of approval. And then just like getting the feedback from all of these Israelis. It's funny, like people people aren't there's a few people on twitter that are like his accent sucks and it's like all my israeli friends are like holy shit how the fuck did he pull that off like it's incredible like look when you watch adam newman in interviews which i've

done also when i was doing the other stuff the the cadence the pacing the emphasis on the beats like he i was like, all right, we'll see how this goes. You know what I mean? Cause this can go really bad as a guy from Boston, as you know, like every now and then you're like, what's John Malkovich doing right now? And I'm not, I'm not sure. Or Ray Donovan, like where, what town is his wife from? Like I've definitely, having grown up in Boston, I've definitely had the experience more with Boston accents where actors are taking swings and they're like doing like, you know, the Casey Affleck and Goodwill hunting impersonation for like for everything. And what Jared did is like really subtle and deft. It's not every word.

Like, that's what everybody has to understand. Like, whenever you're doing accents, you can't do it every word. You know, that's always been the Boston one. I thought he look, I think is his pacing. A lot of it. I think it's a lot of Adam Newman. And it's funny you know that's always been the boston one and i i thought he look i think is his pacing a lot of it i think it's a lot of adam newman and it's it's funny because yeah research of the interview then it's like you know some were critical of the accent i was like oh no shit i'm like no kidding like of course somebody's gonna get mad of it like there was a colombian buddy of mine at espn that was like hey that that pablo escobar show on Netflix sucks. And I was like, what? Like he's from Brazil. And I went, okay. I'm like,

I apologize for, I did not notice that I was, I was not able to tell the difference between the Brazilian accent. Um, anyway, so, uh, Anne Hathaway, all right. Legendary the whole deal. Uh, but she doesn't get the toys to play with, you know, she doesn't get the same toys with the, the physical part of Jared's character and the accent and all that. She doesn't have the same toys, but I feel like she represents the Rebecca that I learned about through all this, as well as any character in the show. Absolutely. And I think she is doing some, some things with her voice. It's super subtle and it's, I mean, she did a lot of yoga study to, you know, to kind of because Rebecca was a yoga teacher. I mean, she she committed just as much, if not more than Jared, just in her own way.

And I mean, I just think her performance is is jaw dropping. I think the other thing, too, is to to add to that, is they both find their own access points to characters. What she does with her hair and her wardrobe. My wife, I just got married on Saturday. I haven't said that a lot. My wife There you go. Congrats.

Thank you. Works at Vanity Fair and is a real fashionista and follows all the blogs and stuff like that. And getting the feedback from that side of it, where like all these women are talking about like, oh my God, that is exactly what Rebecca should have been wearing in 2013. Like Annie was obsessive about, uh, wardrobe and costume and like what, um, what props would like, what toys the kids would have and, you know, what type, what type of glassware they'd have in their kitchen. So both Jared and Annie, in different ways,

approach kind of, like, the creation of the characters. They have their own ways of doing it, but it's still, they're both incredibly immersive and just completely, you know, envelops them. What I really like about the way you write it and the way she plays it out too is that the incremental and annoyance would be the wrong word because that's only a sliver of it it's it's her kind of finding her identity with this new role of this business

blowing up and she's both supportive like you don't spend an hour of her oh this is the episode she's mad because in the episode when she's realizing maybe I don't like my position, maybe I need more, but then she's still a great wife to Adam. So I thought that was brilliant. It gets thrown around a lot, but I just thought that it was incredibly believable. It was almost economic in the way that you would use it in the storytelling so that it's incredibly believable. economic in the way that you would use it in the storytelling so that it's incredibly believable by the time she's at episode five or, you know, at the end of it, she's, she's deciding like, I'm, I'm taking over here a little bit and she's pissing everybody off, but it wasn't rushed. It was, I just thought that was really good storytelling because it's such an important

part of it because it isn't just Adam. Thank you. Yeah. And I, and we, we think that that was kind of the story of, of WeWork, right, right? That as she saw it more and more as a vehicle for her to be what she wanted to be, she kind of insinuated herself more and more. profiles of your characters. Right. And so Rebecca is someone who grew up with a lot of wealth and her, and her, uh, first cousin is Gwyneth Paltrow. So imagine what it must feel like to want to be an actress and a person that you see at Thanksgiving every year is winning an Oscar and dating Ben Affleck and like all of these things. And it's like, what must it be like when people are like, so Rebecca, what are you working on? And she ends up leaving acting. She becomes a yoga instructor. She goes to India to study under the Dalai Lama.

She's a searcher. And that's something that we really, that we found interesting about the character. And she keeps kind of trying to find her place in the world. And then ironically, she ends up marrying another superstar, a rock star. I mean, the end of episode two is her watching Adam at the JP Morgan conference and Miguel turns to her

and goes, some people just have it. And you just, her face in that last eight seconds as the camera slowly pushes in on her, I think she's making a thousand different expressions. I mean, I think she's proud, she's jealous, she's envious. She's angry. She's frustrated. She's happy. And, you know, in episode five, she's at the Time 100 party. And again, she's cast aside. And again, watching someone that's so close to her getting all the attention that she so wants for herself. And that to us was such an interesting, that kind of broke it open for us in terms of her character.

I connected to that scene because I remember going to events with Van Pelt where they would be like, hey, just can you hold the purse? Can the other guys stand a little more to their way? And I had my Rebecca moment after that. I was like, I'll never let myself feel this way again. I think there is some part of this

because we wanted our pound of flesh because of the financial disaster part of this story. this is not the show for you. And I think you guys have been upfront about this, that this is a love story wrapped in a business that failed. You both, I don't know if with all the notes that I have, I think maybe Lee, you would compare it to Theranos and I would agree with you Elizabeth Holmes was was diagnosing people with cancer that didn't have cancer and telling other people they had AIDS I mean you know it was it was disgusting what she did um but I think Adam clearly knew that this wasn't sustainable but loved the lifestyle part of it and I don't know if that's where it goes

because obviously I haven't watched the rest of the episodes and I kind of like the once a week thing. It feels old fashioned, but it's kind of look forward to it a little bit. How did you balance, you know, you said it before, like this wasn't going to be a hit piece,

but the reality that, yeah, it wasn't as criminal as Theranos, but he fucked up. Yeah. So I think, you know, that was something that we wanted to kind of make as provocative as possible. Right.

That, that really, this is a series that kind of exists in the gray. Right. And I think it would have been too easy to just present them as caricatures. Right. That would like to easily judge them. I think what we're trying to do here is really kind of ask this dramatic question. Was this guy and was where he and Rebecca, were they idealistic visionaries that

went wrong? Or were these cynical opportunists that he just saw a way to make money and how to like wrap it all in this shiny millennial kind of dream. And he just kind of exploited people. And that the show is kind of an exploration of that. So, yeah, we very purposefully wanted to make it gray because it also then makes it bigger than just Adam and Rebecca. Right. There's a lot of players in this story. And we want people to kind of debate that. Lee? Yeah. I mean, we talk a lot about... Adam famously did a 12-minute tour of WeWork with

Masa. And at the end of it, Masa writes on the laptop, it's the end of episode 4, $4.4 billion. And you're like, wow, only the world's greatest salesman would be able to convince someone of giving up $4.4 billion. And then it's like, well, hold on, let's look at it the other way. What kind of person hears a 12-minute sales pitch and says, you know what, I'm in for $4.4 billion? And all of these people, when you look at all these financial institutions, the VCs, the banks, they stand, they take these crazy swings. They love that Adam Neumann didn't wear shoes. It's a narrative, right? Like they're all of these, the fact he's, he's tall, he has an accent, he has long hair like Jesus. Like there's

all this, we talked a lot about FOMO. We talked a lot about all of these banks. There's a scene coming up where all the banks are kind of competing for WeWork's business. And all of those banks stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars if they just are able to underwrite the IPO. levers of power, that's what the show also is hinting at. Like, we didn't want to just tell the story of Adam and Rebecca. You see that all of these institutions that are coming at them, throwing money at them like crazy, like it takes a lot to be calm and modest. And the fact that Adam is a narcissist, the worst thing that you could ever give Adam Newman is $4.4 billion. You think like, okay, they can buy their way out of this.

And all Masa says to him is you need to be crazier. Yeah, no, I get that part of it. And then you even to this point have the Jamie Dimon chase scene where he wants a line of credit and they're handing him a water bottle. And Jamie Dimon's like I said, a 50 million, you need a hundred million. Exactly. Because you said they want his IPO business later on. So here are the loans. I mean, all the mortgages and all the loans that he had on all these properties, he's buying them up left and right.

It is a little shady, though, I would say, on the execution of some of the stuff for him to be the only person that was allowed to be doing this against the shares. And I guess there were different parts in the podcast where I was like, how serious can I take this guy when he's pitching Elon Musk, we work on Mars. So I don't know if that's back to the masa part where it's like, just be crazier and crazier because there are a lot of people that tell, you know, history, the winners and a lot of the winners are telling you, like, I did all these crazy things and made all these decisions. And I think there's another generation of people that are just influenced by that thinking they can do no wrong because the banks haven't cut them off yet. So I get, I get that part of it where it isn't the hit piece i mean actually yeah the one thing lee and i when we first started talking about this and like and took that took that first walk we were

going to start this off in in holland during uh tulip fever right like and we were going to then go to the gold rush in californ And then we were going to jump through these times and we're going to have the same actor play that character throughout time. So we were just going to show that it both takes these snake oil salesmen, but also it's a sign of the times. And so it's a little bit of a chicken and the egg, but just how these cycles and bubbles keep recurring. little bit of a chicken and the egg, but just how these cycles and bubbles keep recurring. And the thing too, it's like there was a unicorn stampede and it was Uber and WeWork and Theranos and all this stuff. And it's like, everyone talks about unicorns and it's like, unicorns don't exist

for a reason. You know what I mean? And it's like, everyone so wants to be part of the thing. I mean, it's Shark Tank. It's a lottery ticket. And when they hit, like Masa invested, I can't remember how much, $200 million or whatever it was in Alibaba, turned into $30 billion. $20 million. $20 million, yeah. $20 million. And so you look at something like that and you're like, is this guy have the Midas touch? Is Masa a genius? And it's like, for every one of the Alibabas before and after that, there are hundreds of companies that he completely whiffed on. And so, you know, it's like, you look at these guys and it's like, oh, is he a master investor? It's like, no, he takes crazy swings. And when you

take crazy swings, yes, you're going to hit, you're going to hit a few out of the park. All right. This question's for Lee, but I mean, your story is pretty incredible when you think about going from Vance refrigeration, like, and then now you're in Hollywood. And then I don't know, did Jim and you ever talk about like your goals? What's that? Did what? I'm just fucking with you. This is back to a joke that I've shared with the audience is we had John in studio once promoting a movie at ESPN.

It was just him and I, and I was kind of like, do I take a big swing here? Just try something really stupid and something different and pretend the office was real and be like, you're like, I can't like, this is huge for you,

man. Like you've blown up and take it seriously. And I just, I went, I played it straight. Cause I was like, I don't know him. I was like,

this is a whiff. And then we went to commercial. He was super it straight because I was like, I don't know him. I was like, this is a whiff. Then we went to commercial. He was super nice. I was like, hey, I was going to try this thing. He was like, oh, that would have been really funny. It was code for that was fucking a stupid idea. I could tell the way he gave me the blow off. Oh, yeah, that would have been funny.

For those who don't know, Lee worked on The Office for a long time. You were one of the drug dealers, right? I was best known for all my five years on The Office. I was best known for playing Gino of Vance Refiguration, yes. And all the evolution from Gino and my four episodes that I get residuals from to writing We Crash. It's an absolute progression of Hollywood. No, but there are subtle things. I'm saying like i'm always able to detect it and i

know you know your career outside of that and comedy is terrific but i think people that can write comedy as well and just the subtle things in the office i still you know i've talked about it before on the podcast they're brilliant there's things you don't always catch the first time there's just you know like something as dumb as when Dwight turns to the camera and says, I see dead people, or he was dead the whole time. And I just think about the writer's room being like, did, you know,

did Rain know to do that? Or would somebody in the writer's room be like, you know what would be brilliant is if Dwight turns and goes, he's dead the whole time, blowing the sixth sense suspense. I think when you learn like those beats that are that subtle,

then I'm not saying like drama is easier, but I feel like when you have that background, like you guys do. And certainly those years in the office with you, Lee, I think it sets a template for like some really incredible stuff. You can be subtle. You can be funny without distracting from everything else you're doing. I think that, I think that, you know, we talked a lot about tone with this and John Reckless and Glenn Ficarra, who did This Is Us and Crazy Stupid Love and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. And they wrote Bad Santa. And they wrote Bad Santa. I mean, we talked about kind of like, you know, they talked a lot about mixed tone.

And that was something that Drew and I, I mean, there was so much, there's so much comedy in the story of WeWork. And, you know, you'd hear from, you know, we talked to former employees and people that knew Adam and Rebecca. And there are times where they're ridiculous. And we didn't want to shy away from that. We also didn't want the jokes to be, like I said before, it's like,

we weren't looking to kind of just take swings at them always. And so, you know, with this show, you know, we have the scene where Rebecca is performing with the Russian accent and she takes this big swing and does that really kind of rocky accent. And that seems funny. And we had a lot of conversations with Annie about what it meant. And what's really most important about that is not that scene and not the laughs that come from that scene.

It's the moment afterwards where she realizes that she'll never have a career in this and it doesn't matter. And she's in the staircase by herself. She has the flowers that Adam gave her and she just breaks down. And that to me, as I mean, in all seriousness, as I kind of think about the way my writing has evolved, those types of scenes and the mix of one of those scenes to the next, that's what interests me most as a storyteller. And, you know, even, you know, going so far as far back as The Office, I mean, one of the things we talked about on The Office so much,

we would spend the amount of time we spent on Jim and Pam and trying to get that story done right for how much screen time it got. We spent, I mean, it was probably 50-50 with that. And like, you know, what Dwight talking heads about, like, you know, skinning a raccoon and how delicious like the inner flesh isning a raccoon and how delicious the inner

flesh is of a raccoon. You're just weighing those things equally, even though one of them is 10%, but it's all those small touches. And I think when you connect to characters, when an audience can connect to characters and laugh with them, laugh at them, but also just feel that pathos, that to me is, it's really hard to pull off, but that's the thing that I'm always gunning for. And that's what we were trying to do so much in the show. Was the Andy acapella thing based on Coco Bo from Connecticut College? I, my old writing partner, Gene Simnitsky,

read some articles somewhere that people from Cornell were really, you know know felt had like kind of an inferiority complex in terms of the uh in terms of the ivies so that's how the cornell part arrived and then i don't i think because i think because ed sings i think we just started talking about it i wish the cocobo was the uh the inspiration because the only reason i remember is because growing up on the vineyard and being there during the summer is those guys started hanging out and they would just break out in song. Yes. I think it's a very known thing. There's not a lot of guys going, you've got to meet my friends from this acapella group.

They're the best. You know what I mean? Which is shitty. I know I'm dumping on the acapella fraternity here. I respect the talent. I know I'm dumping on the acapella fraternity here. I respect the talent. I respect it all. But then they changed their name to the Vineyard Sound. So the natives started being like,

you guys are from like Westport. You know, we don't, what's going on here? So I always wonder if there was that connection there. Not a fun fact, but I auditioned for the Kokobo. And like, I didn't just get rejected. It was like, I can't sing. I think I'm tone deaf. And I auditioned because the kokobo and like i didn't just get rejected it was like i can't sing i think i'm tone deaf and i and i auditioned because i was like oh these guys are cool so that things have gotten better since then but that that that is those are early days all right i gotta bring it

back because i don't want to lose everybody like what the hell are they talking about but i was in i was in the chorus when i when i was in drew's like wait how long is this these are some deep cuts these these really are. All right. I'll ask, I'll start with you here, Drew. Did Adam, Rebecca have, was there any consultation? None. We purposely. People don't believe you, huh? Yeah, no, we have, we purposefully stayed away. I mean, we knew that, you know, we wanted to really kind of tell the story we wanted to tell. And if we let them into the process, we wouldn't have been able to go the places that the show goes.

And so we just kept them at arm's length and just kind of told our story. By the way, that's the best. I can imagine those two being like, yes, we'd like to be involved in this. So I kind of knew the answer, but it's just we were reading a lot of stuff about it. People were like, oh, you know, there's probably, okay, here's, here's the final question though. Cause I think we all know the answer to this one. Lee, do you think that they've watched the show? I think, I think they've definitely watched the show. And it's funny. I spoke to someone who knows them. I said, do you think they would watch the show? And they go,

they would absolutely watch the show. I mean, also you jared leto and anne hathaway playing you i mean yeah i do believe that they're narcissists i would i the the lethal combo of narcissism and two oscar winners playing you i i mean i don't think they're i don't think they're tuning into uh you know ptolemy gray or something yeah there's no there's no like you know they're like actually we're way into severance right now. When it drops at midnight, they're tuning in. That's my favorite part, especially on the West Coast. I'll be like, oh, wait, I got it right. I got it the day early.

So there you go. If you're on the West Coast, it'll be Thursday nights. It's Friday for everybody else. It's on Apple TV. It is terrific. It's We Crash. And I want to thank Lee and Drew again. Thanks so much.

You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari. 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid.

So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice, rr at gmail.com. We got a mustache filter from Kyle here. You got it. Is that from Max Homa? Sure. Yeah, let's put a reason on it.

All right. Love it. sure yeah let's let's let's let's put a reason on it all right love it i almost texted homa uh where i was like hey can we talk about do you have like 10 minutes today i'll take you to the masters just to see if you'd be like are you an asshole like just see how much of a people pleaser it really is now i did call him once on a sunday during a tournament when he got cut and i was like hey what are you doing he's like are you serious i was like oh i actually had a question it's he's like yeah i didn't make the cut i'm like no i know that's why i called he's like well he's like i'm golfing i was like yeah no i was like i have a it was actually a very serious question it needed to be answered and he was not upset about it.

But I think he was kind of like, wait, did you not know I made the cut? Or do you think I was, and you just called me on a Sunday? But he was out grinding, folks. So I'll just tell you that. So we'll see how that plays out for him by the time this releases. Okay, we had a lot of response to the fiance saying he didn't want his fiance. I don't know that we've ever had this many people agree on the same thing. The baby arms thing, I'm not even going to bother.

100 emails on baby arms may have been 50-50 down the middle. You don't get bigger arms from holding babies. Guys giving me arm size increases, you absolutely do so rudy you're shaking your head right now there's 50 emails here from guys claiming you absolutely get bigger arms and the thing is i think it's a i think it's a lot about training like certain guys be like i just do calves and genetically they just don't get any bigger than other guys are like you can figure out a way to work it out the right way all of us are different you need to find your routine i do think the genetic calf thing is a little bit true but you're so dismissive of this baby arms thing. I got 50 adult males here ready to tell you you're wrong. I'm not saying that your arms can't get a

little bit more toned or get slightly bigger. My issue was didn't this guy, he, the guy said he was jacked. Like his arms are literally too big because of the baby. That's impossible. Like, yeah, you can go up and get a little bit stronger and, you know, maybe look a little more ripped. I'm not, you're not getting bulky and too big because you're holding a baby. That's impossible. Like, yeah, you can go up and get a little bit stronger and, you know, maybe look a little more ripped. I'm not, you're not getting bulky and too big because you're holding a baby. I'm sorry.

I don't think you're sorry. Yeah, I'm not sorry. Actually, you know what? I'm not sorry. No, I get called a D bag pretty heavily this morning on Twitter. Cause I sent out the Yoko Chimby double team tweet.

Because I've seen a lot of, a lot of blue checks checks it was basically for the blue checks so i'm like stop saying the reason mb's the mvp over yokich is it gets double teamed more because the reason yokich doesn't get double teamed as much is because people are afraid to leave the shooters and leave the cutters because he does some passing as we heard in that timberwolves game where finch's entire t-wolves excuse me excuse me, Timberwolves staff was screaming, stay home, stay home, stay home, stay home, stay home. So when I see like really educated basketball people saying, well, and B gets doubled more. So he's the MVP, but he may be the MVP, but that's not the reason because it's different basketball philosophies. All right. Needed to get that one off my chest. Cause that's usually when I say something like that, it's usually aimed at like

a handful of people. It's very specific. It's not me actually trying to be like i'm so smart i understand basketball it's me being like how come smart basketball people are pretending this is not the reason why this is happening all right so back ran out of time in the open huh yeah right right so i don't know do we i don't know what else to say on the big arms thing we're going to disagree i think this kid might just have you know when he works the arms when they're engaged you know those aminos start flying and and there you go but people were all over the place everyone agreed though about the guy not wanting his fiance to go to the wedding or whatever. I don't think we saw one thing from anybody. We had some other people like, like this guy got lit up in the responses and I'm not sure there's much value to, I mean,

we ripped them apart for 20 minutes. I don't. I think the limbs are in the woods in different sections. Right? Are we all on the same page? Do we need more on this? That was great. Funny meme. Frame it. You're famous now, dude.

Good for you. Because I did retweet the guy that was like, you go on your favorite pod. Do you think that was him? I don't think it was him. No, I don't think so. He made sure to tell people. He's like, just so you guys know, I'm not the guy. Oh, okay. He did say that? All right. I missed that know, I'm not the guy. Oh, okay. He did say that?

All right. I missed that part. I'm not the Mark. Yeah, because you've got to imagine that guy's like, do I want to listen to this podcast anymore? I would love to have that guy on, though, and be like,

you thought this was going to go way differently. I want to break down exactly where he thought that we were going to side with him on any of these different things because he was universally wrong by the three of us and basically all of social media we've never had anybody we've never had any topic on on life advice that has had that much agreement ever like we could have a murder where there'd be guys going yeah i don't know uh but we usually keep yeah we don't usually do the murder ones um now that we get. Let's try to stay away from those.

Okay. All right. We'll do a gym one. Has it been a little while since we've done a gym one? I think it's been a while. 34, 5'9", 155. People say I look 165. Well, holy shit, man. That's great news.

Never maxed out. Could do 20 pull-ups. But maybe since I'm only pulling 155 good for you no desire to be super ripped just want to look decent at the beach okay man got it some of you guys are giving us some intense prologues to the email about your body type i respect that though i respect that because if there's a guy who's like i just want to get ripped look good at the beach like i don't know if I'm hanging out with that guy. There's a guy's like, Hey,

I just want to look good. Don't want people to embarrass myself in front of everybody else. Then yeah, that's good. That's a totally different vibe. Do you ever want to get Jack Cerruti? No, never.

You would hate it. You would not want it. I described like if I ever wanted to get, and I don't really work out a ton in that way. And my bench would probably be embarrassing. Whatever my max is. I don't even know what it would be, to be honest with you. I think I could do 135, but it's been a while.

But I don't like those dudes that are too big. I would want to be like Rockstar Rick, where I'm just skinny, but you could see the muscle kind of situation. Oh, really? That skinny effeminate thing? I'd probably have to do way more drugs to get that kind of body too. But no, I would never want to be bulking.

Never. Kyle, you want to be jacked. I know deep down you want to be. I want to be. You know what they say? I think toned is the word. I want to be toned. What do you think about that?

I think it's fair. I think. Wait, so it's true. You said you don't like those guys. Like you don't like the weight on them or you just don't really want to be friends with them. No. You don't like the way it looks. One of my best friends is a bulalker he's huge and i tell him all the time like i think you kind of look ridiculous like you look you're too big there's how much there's this thing uh well he's

short too so he there's you know there's a little bit of an overcompensation thing he's five seven he loves to tell us that he's average um which is fine but he's definitely the most jacked out of all my friend group but there's a reason he's jacked. It's because he's the shortest guy in the friend group. Five-second average? And, you know, he's too wide. It's not like a fat thing. He's pretty much all muscle. But it just looks too bulky. It's not my

preferred body type. Sorry. Sorry, not sorry. All right. All established. Okay, so back to the email. I've been going to my current gym for about a year now since moving to a new country. It's pretty standard. He doesn't tell me which country, by the way. Most people know what they're doing.

Trainers walking around doing trainer things. About halfway through my workout today, a new trainer about my height and build came right up to me in the middle of the set. Obnoxiously close. I stopped, took off my headphones and asked, what's up? He proceeded to correct my form, then walked over to the dumbbell rack and brought me lighter weights.

Yeez. Hard out. I was doing lateral deltoid raises with 12 kilograms. All right. He said my elbows weren't high enough. I think that puts us at what? 25 pound dumbbell

get somebody on that um he said he said my elbows weren't high enough i humored him for about a minute and just said okay i put back all the weights without doing a second set moved on to a workout oh wow first set interruption you just said screw it new routine uh isn't an unwritten rule to not give unsolicited form advice to someone unless they're clearly a novice or doing something that's dangerous i'm no rossillo but i'm obviously someone who's from i wouldn't say all my form is all that great female trainer came up to me equinox she was watching my squat she's like yeah i think you need to kind of tweak something here um and i'll tell you i didn't love it i didn't love it right away but you know what she was right she had me change my foot

placement and maybe 10 stronger immediately and now we're now we're great friends do you think if it was a guy you'd be writing into this and if it wasn't a female trainer i'll admit the fact that i didn't know anyone at the time when she did it i was kind of like what and uh seriously gonna punk me right here yeah but i mean it was a very small adjustment she's like move, move your right foot up another inch or so here. She's like, you'll notice it in your hips. Just keep the pressure on the outside. And I was like, oh my God.

She just unlocked. So now I'm surprised I didn't propose to her. But right there, what are you doing later? So I think it's, this is shitty though. This is, as you're doing it, he interrupts you as you're doing the actual motion. That's unheard of. Again, my only time I've ever done anything, I don't even think it's a handful of times. I'll see some young kid doing some sort of shoulder exercise where he has way too much fucking weight because he can get a few reps. He thinks he can handle it. And all I'm watching him do is like, you're going to fuck yourself up. And I used to do military overhead, way too much weight. And I have a recurring thing in my shoulder blade. That's just never going to go away. It's better now, but it goes, it just goes because I did it wrong. So I see a younger dude doing this and I get it like being a really skinny kid growing up. You want to show that you

can do some stuff. So that's the only time I ever interrupt. Um, and i've got to see a guy that looks like he's going to absolutely wreck him over a certain age i'm like fuck it i'm not you're a guy i'm a guy i'm not going to help um and i'm not pretending that i have everything down perfectly anyway this is you're right you're right to be annoyed by this because mid rep stand right next to you and all that stuff now originally when we were reading this i thought never underestimate like trainers trying to get clients and just going up to people and being like, Hey, maybe I can help, but this is clearly not the way to do it. I would say any trainer that's listening to this would agree. And even if this person is pushing training sessions and that kind of stuff, this is the best way to not get hired to do any of these training sessions.

So, uh, you're totally in the right. He did send a picture. Hey, man, good looking guy. I don't really know what the picture tells us. Looks like there's some shoulder definition. Again, his shirt isn't off. It's sort of a, it looks like an avatar picture on top of everything else. I don't think there's really much debate here.

I know what he's saying. Like the elbows need to come up a little bit higher on that thing and you get that nice burn on this kind of stuff you should always go kind of light honestly because it's more about the movement and getting that burn in there than going super heavy on some of these things and i think there's just some shoulder weird stuff that can always um you know that's when you go a little heavy with that stuff man as you get older it can get a little you know i fuck myself up that's usually every six months. That's how I'll fuck myself up. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have read this one.

Maybe it wasn't super interesting. Did he send you a picture of his form or he sent you a picture of himself? What was the picture? Did he like have somebody show? Was he showing you what he was doing when he was corrected or what was this picture? Nope. Not even close. Bathroom mirror going on in the background, but it's kind of spun the other way.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, it looks like if you were, I don't know, if there were a woman involved, it'd be like, hey, this is what I look like on a picture. Got it. But there are no women on the show. Nope. He also said that his mother is a 65-year-old

Jamaican that is a regular listener of the pod. Wow. That's, that's, that's amazing. Cause you know, my love for Jamaica. Uh, I, that's, that's one of the coolest things ever. So shout out to the mom here. Although now, wait, did we expose him to the mom? She listens to the pod all the time.

No, we took his side. He's just lifting. No, we're good here. Yeah. Let's, let's not be hypersensitive to congrats, we took his side. He's just lifting. We're good here. Let's not be hypersensitive. Congrats on your son. Yeah, he sounds like a great kid. On your hot seat. Yeah, he's a good looking guy.

Takes a hell of a picture. I want to know, did she start listening to the pod because of him or vice versa? Who listened to the pod first? Hey mom, I got this sick pod. You should check this out. Priscilla, what's up? He's like, just fast forward to the end. Maybe she remembers me from Risky Business.

That's a club in the grill. They were like, Brian, I told you that story, right? So Rudy, where the guy was like, I don't think, I don't know. The guy was, I was, he was like annoyed that when I was DJing, I wasn't talking enough. And the guy that ran it was like, hey, you need to talk more.

I was like, I don't really want to do that. And he was like, well, he goes down here. He's like, they talk at the beginning of the song. They talk like in the middle of the song and the songs go quicker. And then he sort of played the same song like 10 times in a row.

Yeah. And he's like, you've never, you've never experienced anything like it. He's like, and then talk at the end. And he goes, and when you think you're not talking enough,

talk a little bit more or no, no, no. This is the way he said it. He's like, and then talk at the end. And he goes, and when you think you're not talking enough, talk a little bit more. Or no, no, no, this is the way he said it. He goes, when you're talking, when you think you're talking a little too much, talk a little bit more. That was what it was. And then the guy came over that ran the place. And it was crazy. His name was Brian Jardin. And he looked like

I don't know. He looked like This is like your own version of the guy at the gym. He's like giving you an unsolicited DJ advice. He owned the place. He owned the club. He owned Margaritaville. And he came up to me and was like, Ryan, you know, and it's crazy because the guy looked like Brian Cranston and just full blown Jamaican accent, which people don't understand about Jamaica is that it's actually means like of many people.

jamaican accent which people don't understand about jamaica is that it's actually means like of many people so there's like you could have somebody who looks like your buddy's dad who's an accountant and it's full-blown patois you know like you're like oh whoa what the fuck so anyway they didn't love me because i was like you know i don't really want to just you know throw t-shirts and scream how you doing all day long and they're like yeah that's kind of what it is that's almost exactly i was like i thought i was just playing music and they're like no yeah, that's kind of what it is. That's almost exactly... I was like, I thought I was just playing music. They're like, no. You got to do other stuff, too. You're a hype man, too.

Yeah. That's not you. No. I was like, I'm bad at that. Bad teases. You should respond to that. You ever heard Cascades' voice? Exactly.

You ever heard Calvin Harris talk? Nope. There you go. Sorry, not sorry. I have no idea. I got to save this life advice life advice all right let's get to a sports debate here um 31 years old i've thought about pivoting some of this where we have guys who've sent in emails about debates and they want a ruling on it which is sort of life advice but we could call it judge kyle uh i don't know i know how much kyle loves the courtroom shows huge fan all right so this will be a little more conversational

and not take forever to get through what was a pretty simple thing that we should have done. Efficiency rate, we're about 12. The VORP is real low on this one today. All right, 31 years old, 6'1", 180. Solid off-ball score that can handle point when needed and consistently grab rim. Sweet, what's up?

There's been a debate within a group of my friends which spans several years, and I figure with Ryan's expertise with the NFL salary cap and ability to weave through the nuances of a sports take, okay. Thus far, the group is split down the middle. The question is this. Playing in either the NFL or tennis, which sport would Spider-Man make the most money? Okay, so Rudy, can you look up all like full value of nadal or federer peak years considering all of the endorsement stuff too and then look up peyton manning tom brady

full not just what his salary was but endorsement shit as well right yeah okay give me a second no no look that up i'm gonna keep reading yeah and k And Kyle, you double. I'm on Manning. You're on Manning? Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Do the tennis, guys. Kyle's locked in. All right. So Rudy, you do tennis. That makes more sense. My body type? And just your vibe in general.

Okay, so which sport would Spider-Man make the most money? His total income would include salary, bonuses, incentives, and most importantly, endorsements. Also important to know, everyone is aware of the guy Spider-Man make the most money? His total income would include salary, bonuses, incentives, and most importantly, endorsements. Also important to note, everyone is aware of the guy Spider-Man. Alright, so he plays in his suit. He's Spider-Man. The only caveat is he cannot

use his webs during games. Fair. Super strength, spidey sense, all are fair game. As a result, we all agree that regardless of the sport Spider-Man plays, he's going to be the best player in the league. The group can also agree he would likely make the most money playing professional soccer as it's the most viewed sport in the world. Here are a few key points we always come back to.

Pro tennis Spider-Man argument. Tennis is a much more popular sport globally compared to the NFL, where the NFL isn't necessarily popular outside of the United States. Spider-Man would likely win every tournament, so his winnings would eventually add up to a solid NFL year salary. He said Wimbledon winner in 2021 took home 2.4 million. I don't know. I don't know if your,

your single year earnings, if you want every tournament, I don't know that off the top of my head. This is why I have research IT department here. So we're looking at this, you know, at the top end of what a quarterback would make 40, 45 million,

say average annual salary in the NFL. I don't know if you can win that in tennis. Again, I don't know. I'm just saying it out loud. With tennis being a much larger global sport, someone with the popularity of a superhero, plus being the most dominant player in the sports history,

he would make so much money in endorsements, it would be like characters from The Boys mixed with Michael Jordan. All fair. Pro football argument. The cap is going up. Sure is, buddy. Thanks for listening.

If Mahomes could make $50 million a year, what would a guy who could throw further, run faster, jump higher, and likely won't get tackled by non-radioactive spider-bitten players get paid per year? Even though the NFL isn't as globally recognized as tennis, the sheer weight of freaking Spider-Man playing quarterback would give him enough endorsements

to make up the secondary pay gap. A team would pay the other 52 players on the roster the minimum and pay whatever is left from the salary cap to pay Spider-Man. Still up for debate on if this would yield a winning team.

I've thought about this. Me too. I've thought about Spider-Man playing in the NFL for years, so that's why I was like, great pick, Kyle. Great pick.

All right, let's run over some of the tennis numbers, it looks like you may have some of them. Well, so Federer's made more than dollars. Let's just do Federer. Okay. 190 million. When did this article come out? This is 2022. Okay. $190 million in earnings on the court. And he has a net worth of about half a billion dollars. All right. But that's not what we're interested in. Those net worth websites are always wrong.

Do you have, is there a way you can figure out what he made in a single year? Like, do top, go 2020, or maybe not 2020, 2019. This says $84 million in endorsement earnings, tops among all athletes, Dwarf, Djokovic, and Nadal. For a single year? That looks like, no, that can't be. $84 million in a year?

That seems high. I don't think it is, man. It's definitely not for his career. This says, Sportico estimates the 20-time Grand Slam champion has earned at least $1 billion during his career from prize money, endorsements, and appearance fees since he turned pro in 1998. Okay, so I just looked up in 2019 Forbes highest paid athletes. So this is everything they made both in their respective sport and everything they made outside of it.

So McGregor made 180 million. Messi made 130. Ronaldo made 120. Dak Prescott made 107 million, which is more than Federer's 90 million million. Lewis Hamilton made $82 million. Neymar made $95 million. LeBron made about $100 million. All right, so that's all of it. So this actually tells us Dak being the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys and being good, but not, I wouldn't put him in the great category in the NFL, that he made more than Federer.

Here's the thing. Is even though there's a global part of this is a superhero playing a sport you know the nfl is not soccer i think soccer makes it totally unfair because it'd be insane i also wonder how spider-man would be at f1 with just the spider sense alone you have to think and he's not jacked so it's not like he's the biggest guy ever it's not like putting you know the hulk in a renault or something right uh i think it's the nfl because you could pay him whatever you wanted you could pay him 100 you know, the Hulk and a Renault or something, right? I think it's the NFL because you could pay him whatever you wanted. You could pay him $100 million of the cap and you'd win every game.

Because think about it, with Spider-Man, he's just going to jump over everybody all the time. And he has a spider sense on top of that to anticipate anybody tackling. There's nothing you're going to be able to do with it. Hell, he could just play wide receiver and you could throw it straight up in the air and he'd go up and get it. So there's nothing you can do. You can't put 11 at the goal line. He's just going to be able to do with it. Hell, he could just play wide receiver and you could throw it straight up in the air and he'd go up and get it. So there's nothing you can do. You can't put 11 at the goal line. He's just going to jump over those guys. There's no defense that's going to stop Spider-Man. He's going to score every single possession. So I

think you could put 10 scrubs out there with him, give him all of the money, and it wouldn't matter about the rest of the cap. Whereas tennis, yeah, sure, he's going to win. I mean, he's going to be awesome. He's going to be awesome. There's a lot of sports I can't imagine he's not going to be good at. But I still think the NFL here would play out a little bit better because the endorsement

part of being Wilt Chamberlain and also a superhero in the NFL would be beyond Wilt Chamberlain. Again, it's not real as I'm probably pretending it's a little too real. But go ahead, Saru. Maybe a stupid question, but like, would he be allowed to use his webs in an NFL game?

That's in the email. So it's out. Okay. Sorry, I was doing research. Never mind. I mean, other than them letting defenders and the secondary have crossbows, I don't really know how you would stop it. And then again, if a crossbow hit a fan, I don't know, the ratings probably wouldn't go down, still

with the NFL, but tenants might dip a little bit. As we've learned. Yeah, right. Put some nets up. No, but I've thought a lot about the NFL superhero thing. If you said, okay, Spider-Man, clear advantage, a bunch of different stuff. We've already been over that. Superman just seems stupid. He's unfair. He can fly. If Batman were in the league, he'd probably just get fined for

uniform violations the entire time. I actually don't think Batman would be all that good. Batman would be a tough teammate, too. I don't think he'd last. Yeah, right. What's this guy? A ton of off-field interests. Wolverine would never all that good. Batman would be a tough teammate too. I don't think he'd last. Yeah, right. You're like, what's this guy? Ton of off-field interests. Wolverine would never miss any games. He can't use his claws. It's ridiculous, right? Yeah, but he could tear his

ACL and heal himself immediately. He's fine. Yeah, he could blow out an ACL and he'd have somebody on the sideline being like, Wolverine's good to go in the third quarter. That's a great point. That's a great point. Captain America, no shield. Yeah, I know he's super athletic and everything, but I think the speeches, there'd be a little Tebow vibe

eventually with the teammates where they'd be like, hey, man. They're like, we fucking get it. We've done a lot. We've done a lot for the country, but we get the Steelers. We get the Steelers this week. He'd be in one of your opens by year three. All right, enough already. Iron Man, don't be ridiculous the hulk would be killing people that's not cool it gets suspended by the league black panther i thought about that

but then you know the nfl they probably make them a running back and those guys don't make that much anymore um black widow probably better in the front office i'm not 100 sure what she does no she's pretty uh she's got some pretty good lateral quickness. I think she'd be pretty good. Put her out wide. Just like Tyree Kill, give her some space, give her the ball in space. Yeah.

All right, I think we solved it. Yeah, I think that it'd be a version of an NFL thing that we'd never seen before in Federer versus Dak Prescott in 2019. Dak actually had more earnings. Unless the new Federer

non-Nike thing is bringing him in so much money, but he's also, you know, at the end of his career here a little bit. I'll go NFL. Because he'd be the most dominant player we've ever seen in team sports in the history of the United States. In the most popular sport in the United States. And he just had two-year deals all the time, right? Or a year deal even.

It's like, fuck it. A year deal. Who's got the most money? Because we could just take over your team no matter who you are. Everyone gets a Super Bowl. Well, think about what Mahomes got. What? You know, half a billion dollars. But that's for the most money. Because we could just take over your team no matter who you are. Everyone gets a Super Bowl. Well, think about what Mahomes got. What?

You know, half a billion dollars. But that's for the 10 years. What if he's like, yeah, I want the same thing, but just a two-year deal. That's it. New TV deal? He could probably do that.

Yeah. New TV deal? Yeah. All right. Yeah. I think we're going to leave in NFL. Even though I love the international. Yeah, I'll go NFL too. Okay, that's life advice.

Sort of. Thanks to Kyle and Steve. Check us out, Bill Simmons and I, on Sundays as we'll wrap up the regular season, get ready for the playoffs. We'll be back next Tuesday. Please subscribe, ringer, Spotify. Outro Music you