The Luke Kornet Game and Tatum’s Road Back With David Jacoby. Plus, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert

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Coming up, the Celtics are still alive, and we're going to talk some WNBA.

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Speaker 1 If you subscribe to the Ringer Movies YouTube channel, you can subscribe to the Bill Simmons YouTube channel as well, where I'm going to be going live tomorrow night, Thursday, with Rob Mahoney after OKC Denver Game 6, four podcasts this week.

Speaker 1 It's that time of year. A lot of basketball going on.

Speaker 1 We didn't even get to talk with Dave Jacoby, who's coming up in a second, about Warriors, Minnesota, because that series was over the moment Steph Curry Curry got hurt.

Speaker 1 Jimmy Butler, at this point in his career, was not able to win Golden State a game. No shots fired at Jimmy Butler.
I just think he's at a slightly different stage of his career.

Speaker 1 And Minnesota is really, really good. So we'll talk about that.
We'll talk about Minnesota versus whoever wins tomorrow night with Rob Mahoney tomorrow night.

Speaker 1 We'll see if the Joker has one more great performance than him.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned. So that's tomorrow night, today's podcast talking to Dave Jacoby about Celtex Knicks, game five, the Tatum injury, the fallout,

Speaker 1 some

Speaker 1 thoughts after having a day to sit with it and the Knicks, the spot they're in, and a whole bunch of topics that came at it tonight, the Lucor Nick game. And then

Speaker 1 WNBA Commissioner Kathy Engelbert came on to talk about the upcoming season, where the league is at, big picture.

Speaker 1 And I just wanted to pick her brain because the league is at a fascinating moment right now as it heads into almost its third decade. So that was a really fun conversation.
We taped that on Monday.

Speaker 1 And before we get to the podcast, just wanted to remind everybody on FanDuel, I'm doing Taylor Fade every week, and we're gonna be doing it for Thursday night's OKC Denver game.

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They add a profit boost to it.

Speaker 1 So, go check out the FanDuel Sportsbook app

Speaker 1 before the game on Thursday. Anyway, big podcast coming first, our friends from

Speaker 2 ProJam.

Speaker 1 All right, recording this part of the podcast a little before 7 PT. Once upon a time,

Speaker 1 you knew him as the czar of reality TV, and he ran all of the audio and video for Grantland, a job that many people have tried to take credit for, but I can promise you he did it 100% himself.

Speaker 1 Now he is the host of the mismatch, along with Chris Vernon, among many other things. My guy, Dave Jacobi, is here.
Die Easy Knicks fan.

Speaker 1 I did book this before we knew the results of game five, just for the record.

Speaker 2 You're an asshole.

Speaker 2 It's,

Speaker 2 I,

Speaker 2 this really could have gone two ways. I'm not really happy with the way it went, to be honest with you.
You know, I'm really not happy with the way it went.

Speaker 1 What did you think was going to happen? I mean, I guarantee you didn't think we would be calling this on the podcast title for this episode, the Luke Cornette game.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 that was the outcome.

Speaker 2 Ex-Nick, by the way, Westchester Nick legend, right? Yeah, yeah, yes.

Speaker 2 I remember hearing from Nick Benz being like, there's this guy in Westchester. He's like seven feet tall.
He hits threes and he's got ball skills.

Speaker 2 I was like, it used to be his git was the three-point shooting. Yeah, he doesn't even shoot threes now.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But no,

Speaker 2 I do think the Knicks will eventually win the series, but I had a feeling they would lose this one.

Speaker 2 And now it just, I don't feel good about anything right now because now it's just like, you have to win game seven. My Knicks group chat.
Game six, you're right.

Speaker 2 My Knicks group chat has gone from we need to trade for Giannis

Speaker 2 right around game three to who do you think would be a better matchup in the finals, the Thunder or the Wolves,

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 must win game six in the garden.

Speaker 2 There was no

Speaker 1 like four hours there of, are you guys worried about the Pacers at all? And then people reassuring each other, no, no, we're not worried about them at all.

Speaker 2 No, none of that.

Speaker 1 Okay, because the Pacers are really good.

Speaker 2 Oh, the Pacers, yes, the Pacers are really good. And also,

Speaker 2 you know, I revisited the Pacers Knicks series from last season, and I had to sort of freshen up on it because I remember game seven was such a big deal, and everyone was hurt, and OG tried to play.

Speaker 2 It's just like Brunson's hurt, and no one was there. But like, game one and game two, kind of like this series, like came down to the end.
And remember, Carl got kicked out of a game.

Speaker 2 I forgot about that. And he's like, small market teams deserve fouls too.
There's some chippiness. There was some real like

Speaker 2 stuff there. It was a good thing.

Speaker 1 It's going to be worse if it's Pacers Knicks this year. It'll be even worse.
And let's be honest, it's probably going to be Pacers.

Speaker 2 It's going to be worse.

Speaker 1 I'll just tell you my mindset. First of all, I was hearing my dad was there.

Speaker 1 And it was a late arriving crowd because it was a seven o'clock start plus a shitload of traffic.

Speaker 1 And there were some Knicks fans because I think some Celtic fans after the Tatum injury were like putting the tickets on. So you could hear the Knicks things.

Speaker 1 They show Chalamé at one point, courtside.

Speaker 1 And it turned into not in our house. We can't let this happen.
Every time you heard the Knicks three or some sort of good Knicks play in the first, you know,

Speaker 1 40 minutes of the game, first like real time 40 minutes, and you could hear the loud Knicks fans. And it was like, this is, would be really awful if the Knicks like win this.

Speaker 1 Their fans are celebrating. It cuts to the end, the wide shot.
Only the Knicks fans are left. Shalomay is pointing at people.
I was like, I just, we got to win this.

Speaker 1 It turned into Hoosiers and the Celtics rose to the challenge, Jacoby.

Speaker 2 They did. It was a good Celtics game.
I mean, we'll talk about the basketball stuff in a second, but

Speaker 2 I do want to say,

Speaker 2 I heard that Chalamet listens to the podcast, and I'm very excited about that. I'm excited that he's supporting the Knicks.

Speaker 2 Bringing the Kardashian element wasn't my favorite thing to happen in game four. Right.
Like,

Speaker 2 I'm just going to say, like,

Speaker 2 I love that you're here, Timothy Chalam. I love you supporting the Knicks.

Speaker 2 When he went to road games and sat next to Stiller behind the Pistons bench in Detroit, I was like, all right, I love this, you know, and the game is. Like a real fan acted like a real fan.

Speaker 2 I was like, yes, I was like, I love this. But it was when you bring a girlfriend, that's fine, but your girlfriend's sister, and then it becomes about them and their outfits.

Speaker 2 And you know what's going to sort of like make the press. I didn't love the Kardashian element that we saw.

Speaker 1 You remember once upon a time, our guy Ben Affleck,

Speaker 1 03 range, Red Sox had and won a World Series in over a decade. And he brought J-Lo, Yankee fan, grew up in the Bronx.

Speaker 1 Literally called Jenny from the Bronx and brought her into the good Red Sox seats for Red Sox Yankees. And it was like,

Speaker 2 that was when the learner turned on Affleck for a little bit. Yes.
It's like

Speaker 2 it's your buddy that has a girlfriend who golfs. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, it's like, oh, I'm so excited that your girlfriend golfs.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm excited that she's going to be joining us, but it's going to change the vibe. That's sort of how I felt about the Kardashians being at the Knicks game.

Speaker 1 We're not going to have our buddy have nine beers and he's thrown up behind the tentpole and asking the caddy bastard for afterwards.

Speaker 2 We're going straight home. Yeah.
It's just like, all right. Yeah.
I didn't love the Kardashian element, but like I will say this:

Speaker 2 the Celtics made appropriate adjustments and played good basketball tonight. And I love the way that they attacked the paint and just sort of like put the pressure on the Knicks.
They did.

Speaker 1 Well, I kept, you know, from the moment Tatum's tragic injury happened when we found out the results. And then I got some people in my life who are like, is there Ewing Theory possibilities here?

Speaker 1 And just for the record,

Speaker 1 first of all, love Jason Tatum. Second of all, not eligible because they won the title with him last year.
The whole point of the Ewing Theory is the team never won the title. Best player gets hurt.

Speaker 1 And then the team rises to the occasion without him in some way. With that said,

Speaker 1 it did open the door for some stuff that has been pretty frustrating about this Celtics team where they all had to band together.

Speaker 1 They had to get a little more creative offensively there was a lot more cutting there was a lot more ball movement and some of the stuff that would handicap this team in the past where it was either tatum or brown with the ball just dribbling especially when they had a lead and the lead would start to further away and then it just turned into one-on-one basketball that never happened in this game because the guards were more involved Cornette was cutting.

Speaker 1 The passing was really good. Like I, that was by far the best game they played in the playoffs, I think.

Speaker 2 I think so too. And it did help that derrick white hit like seven threes to start the game that was tough

Speaker 1 but josh hurt made more threes in in a half hour than he made all playoffs

Speaker 2 i will say that there is something to be said for

Speaker 2 you drive the car i'll drive the car you drive the car i'll drive the car but when you have when you take the tatum element out of the subjects offense it becomes a little bit more like i'm driving the car and i'll dictate how things are going to go and I'm going to spread the ball around.

Speaker 2 It's not my turn, your turn. It's my turn and then we're going to spread to role players.
That's what the Knicks offense is with Brunson sort of at the helm.

Speaker 2 And I think that is what led to them playing this

Speaker 2 sort of more democratic offense. And, you know, it also didn't

Speaker 2 Derrick White hit all this up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, they had to get more creative because Tatum becomes the security blanket that you can always rely on because he's, you know, can create a shot whenever he wants.

Speaker 1 But now, hey, Drew Holiday should probably post up a little bit more. Let's try a couple of those.
Let's set picks for Derrick White.

Speaker 1 So there was some stuff that was happening that was some really good basketball.

Speaker 1 I also think this version of the Knicks, I think they have some good one-on-one defenders, but as a team defense thing, this has been a problem for them all year. They're using against it.

Speaker 1 They were attacking Towns. They got Towns into foul trouble.

Speaker 2 No, no, that's not true. That's not true.
That's not true. Well, they did get Towns in the Foul Trouble.
They did not get Towns into foul trouble. They did.

Speaker 2 Towns got himself into foul foul trouble, too. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Carl, do you see what Carlin did? The fouls on him?

Speaker 1 Like, well, they did a good job of having players with the basketball near Towns as he had spasms and ran into people.

Speaker 2 The first foul, he was setting a screen. And again, none of these fouls affect the play.
Like, none of them do. He's setting a screen and then it's an illegal screen.

Speaker 2 It wasn't even like around the ball. It wasn't even like the point of attack.

Speaker 2 And the second one, Percingus is coming across the lane, and he hits him like he's like a tight end checking a linebacker on the way. It's like, what are you doing? It's like, again,

Speaker 2 Carl, KP is not a threat. Like, why are you doing this in the middle of the lane? I don't understand these fouls.
Then the third foul, he gets his shot blocked.

Speaker 2 And then he fouls the guy

Speaker 2 by Derek White. Then he grabs Derek White and throws him out of the way because he's embarrassed.
He got his shot blocked.

Speaker 2 So when you say the Celtics put him in foul trouble, I say that is complete bullshit and not true. Carl A.T.
Towns can't help himself, dude. He's got a real like mental problem.

Speaker 2 He's got like a mental block with this. And he goes through stretches where it seems like he's figured it out, but he hasn't.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to very quickly give you a quick analogy I gave on the mismatch, which was like, it's like a finance guy going to the strip club and going to the champagne room and getting roofied and spending $20,000 on his credit card and then waking up the next day and realizing it.

Speaker 2 And then around four o'clock that day, going back to the same strip club the next night. Like, when are you going to learn, dude? Like, when are you going to learn?

Speaker 1 If he went back to the strip joint every night.

Speaker 2 Five nights in a row is what Carly D. Towns did tonight.
His body was

Speaker 1 developing a resistance to roofies. It was actually like not working as well against him because he kept going back.

Speaker 2 Carlin D. Towns was getting fouls where he was.
challenging people that were driving to the basket trying to score at the rim. I would be like, that's fine.

Speaker 1 But if you look at his fouls tonight, tonight like the other one he was under the hoop on a rebound none of these are like on the ball plays at the rim or none of them are even questionable well i had some knicks fans in my life who were i won't name them who were very upset about tony brothers in in the third quarter just putting fouls on brunson i thought four of the five fouls were like no-brainer you had to call them calls The one where he fouled Derek White's elbow with his face, I always have a problem with that call because I'm not sure where your face is supposed to go if somebody's diving into you.

Speaker 1 But ironically, the person who benefits the most from that call and the flip side of it is Jalen Brunson because he gets a lot of fouls that way where he just lurches into guys. And,

Speaker 1 you know, your body can only do so many things when you're over six feet tall and standing up.

Speaker 1 If the elbow's coming at your face, it's probably going to hit your face. You can't like do the matrix.

Speaker 2 Well, also, Brent Brunson, and again, like, I'm a Nick fan, but I'm objective about basketball. He put his chin like on his shoulder.
Right. Like, you're putting your chin right there.

Speaker 1 That was the only one that I thought was the shaky call. So there's some big picture Celtic stuff, and then we could talk about the Knicks pieces.

Speaker 1 Actually, let's talk about the Knicks pieces first, just to mix it up. So the Knicks hasn't been the most fun 21st century, right?

Speaker 1 And finally, all of these different things have broken this year for them, including

Speaker 1 unfortunately for the Celtics and for the NBA. But this Tatum injury is obviously a huge competitive advantage for the Knicks.
The season parted, they were plus 700 before the series.

Speaker 1 They stole a couple fourth quarters. I thought they played really well in the second half of

Speaker 1 game four, deserved to win. They get this break with the Tatum injury.
Now they're heading into the

Speaker 1 finals of the East. If they win this, they don't have to play Cleveland.
They get to play Indiana and get revenge on them.

Speaker 1 So everything's aligning. And then they blow this game.

Speaker 1 And now we're going to MSG on Friday.

Speaker 1 And there's a lot of DNA now

Speaker 1 swimming in the, in the pool. There hasn't been a lot of happy memories the last 25 years.

Speaker 2 And I just wonder. You can't say DNA swimming in the pool and happy not going bad, bad places.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. My bad.
I know that's, that was once a frequent porn search of yours.

Speaker 2 But, but yeah.

Speaker 1 So the Celtics achieved their goal. They protected home court.
Chalamet wasn't pointing at Knicks fans after the game. And now there's pressure on the Knicks, who still have a better team.

Speaker 1 But at least now there's some pressure pushed the other way with that game seven in Boston looming, right?

Speaker 2 Oh, I mean, I think the Knicks will win the series. But if I do you think I'm going to sit here and not be doubtful and terrified of game six with OG playing the way he did tonight and like

Speaker 2 he's he's been up and down. There was the stretch when Brunson was hurt where Bridges and OG

Speaker 2 were phenomenal. And it just felt like

Speaker 2 low-key felt like Brunson being out for that long was actually great for the Knicks because it gave Bridges and O.G.

Speaker 2 this time to score 20 points, 25 points, 30 points, and be a focus of the offense that would help them when they

Speaker 2 re-acclimated to the Brunson environment.

Speaker 2 But right now,

Speaker 2 it just doesn't feel like it. It doesn't.

Speaker 1 Well, pussy was awesome in game one. I thought he was the best player on the court.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 1 we haven't seen it the same way.

Speaker 2 There was a couple things.

Speaker 1 I thought the Celtics were doing a couple of things a little bit differently defensively. One is they just didn't, they were fine with Josh Hart taking threes until they made about five.

Speaker 2 He made it.

Speaker 1 Then they shifted their defense. But initially, it was like, we're good with that.
We're good with that. They really seems like they studied the tape of Bridges.
What did Bridges end up with today?

Speaker 1 He was

Speaker 1 nine points today. He's four for 14.

Speaker 1 He's got that weird, it's like the guy you play pickup with all the time where they have this one shot and then eventually you figure it out and you're like, fuck, why didn't I figure that out six months ago?

Speaker 1 He does this jump shot. It's like a hop step, 45 degree angle, deliver a shot.

Speaker 2 And white couldn't time it.

Speaker 1 And then finally this game, they started like timing the jumper a little bit better.

Speaker 2 What he does is whether he's moving to his right or left or he's squared up to the hoop, he squares his shoulders to the hoop and he he puts his hands up like he's throwing a soccer throw-in pass.

Speaker 2 So the ball, and then he flicks his wrists to get it there. That's why he doesn't shoot threes that well.

Speaker 1 But he always bends back.

Speaker 1 He would rather take a 10-foot shot than an eight-foot shot from the same place where his feet are at. He's always going backwards.
And I think it was screwing up white.

Speaker 2 He couldn't gaze. And if you're over 43, he shoots like a double dribble character.
Like the ball goes up and his arms go up, and then he releases the ball with his wrists only.

Speaker 2 And once once you figure that out,

Speaker 2 I don't think anyone can figure it out, I'll be honest with you. I thought that he played so well in the fourth quarter of game four that they weren't.

Speaker 2 They were more aware of it.

Speaker 1 It didn't seem like they were surprised by his offense in this game. And then, you know, the other one was they were just really aggressive with Brunson.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, they just, they fell asleep in game four. Like the reason he got going in the third quarter of game four was because their defense sucked.
They fell asleep.

Speaker 1 They weren't, they lost him a couple times. They just didn't do a good job.
They did a good job today.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And it helped that he got six fouls in 10 minutes.
He didn't get going in game four. Like, he was absolutely on fire and took over the game.

Speaker 2 I thought that game four was one of my favorite basketball games I've ever seen with Tatum and Brunson in the third quarter just exchanging those punches.

Speaker 2 Was just it was one of my favorite basketball games I've ever seen. You know what I mean? Like I liked basketball before I liked the Knicks.
Like that was such a great game.

Speaker 2 And it's too bad that Tatum was gone from it. But here's a question I have for you.

Speaker 2 There was a point in game two, I think it was the start of the second half, when they just posted up Towns on the left block and he got in like that Carmelo spot, like 10, 12 feet from the basket.

Speaker 2 And they would just, they were obviously doing it. Like he would throw it in, throw it out.
They would just, they were obviously doing it.

Speaker 2 And there's, there's no Celtic defender that can cover him with his back to the basket 13 feet from the basket. And they just never go back to it.

Speaker 2 I don't know why.

Speaker 1 Isn't that the story of Towns' career, though? It always seems like

Speaker 1 the Celtics guarded him with Drew Holiday a bunch of of times today

Speaker 1 and teams teams just feel like they can get away with it because Towns is more comfortable 25 feet from the basket.

Speaker 2 But yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1 He torched Horford a couple times in game two.

Speaker 2 Horford, Towns, Brown, Tatum. It didn't.
There's no one on the roster. Maybe Lou Cornette.
Maybe this new Luke Cornette. Right.
Well, you know what's interesting about him?

Speaker 2 He's a streaky low post scorer.

Speaker 1 Usually people are streaky three-point, but he gets in like these grooves on the low post when you watch it. You're like,

Speaker 1 how does he not average 40 a game?

Speaker 2 And then he just won't shoot another eight footer for a month but it felt like a running back that was getting five yards a carry i think it was game two i think i'm pretty sure it was the very the third quarter game two where this went to it like three plays in a row and i said to myself why don't you just do this until they stop it just do this until they stop it and they never go back to it and like the why don't we see brunson towns picking rolls yeah i'm looking at his start looking at his shot chart I mean, he didn't take that many shots, but yeah, he only took two threes.

Speaker 1 He took a shot at the kick.

Speaker 2 Because he can't stop fucking fouling, Bill.

Speaker 2 Look at his foul chart. Dude, I'm telling you, all of his five fouls had nothing to do with affecting the play defensively.
Nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1 Missoula did two things tonight that the Celtic fans have been calling for for a while. One is he finally punted on poor Zingas.

Speaker 1 Listen, Porzingis, huge part of last year's team. Winnie's healthy.
He's a 20-point scorer.

Speaker 1 He's unicorn-y.

Speaker 1 We can see

Speaker 2 he's corny.

Speaker 1 Well, he's unicorn-y too. And in this series and in this whole playoffs and really since March,

Speaker 1 he's been zombie poor Zingas. He's been poor zombie.
There's no other way to put it. And he's such a liability.

Speaker 1 They were playing these two big lineups that they're just getting annihilated on in the previous games. And then finally today, they punted on it.

Speaker 1 They started the second half with Cornette, which is what they should have done. And the irony of the Cornette piece, he's been a really good bench guy all year.
He's been good in the home games.

Speaker 1 The crowd really likes him.

Speaker 2 I'm just telling you. I love Cornette.

Speaker 1 And they've played games you know they've been really careful because they kind of knew they were going to be the two seed for four months and they've been they would have games where they didn't play tatum they would have games where they didn't play brown

Speaker 1 and they had all these guys these guys are all used to playing without one of the two stars and cornet was always like a big part of some of those games so i went i can't say i was like shocked that he played that way seven blocks is shocking but I was waiting for him to play more for a couple games now.

Speaker 2 What I love about Cornette is he's a very self-aware basketball player. He never tries to do anything outside of his skill set.
You'll never see him fucking dribble the ball. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 You'll never see him pull up for three, even though he came up as like a 40% three-point shooter. Like he's just never doing anything that's outside of his role and his skill set.

Speaker 2 He just doesn't do it. He's not going to make negative plays.
I'm not going to look it up, but I bet he has like four turnovers on the year. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Like he just does what he's supposed to do. He knows his role.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 1 in this game, he helped with the rebounding, which was the other big thing that changed. They just took the rebounding more seriously.
Robinson was really good again.

Speaker 2 I have a theory.

Speaker 1 Robinson, he's had stretches during his career where you're like, why isn't this guy the next Bill Russell?

Speaker 1 Why aren't we talking about him like we talk about Russell, Chamberlain, and Kareem? You'll catch him for four minutes and like, is this the best part of the NBA?

Speaker 2 Well, I watch a lot of Mitch Robinson. I'm not a huge fan.
He can't catch. Number one, he cannot catch the ball.
Number two, I will send you a link.

Speaker 2 There's a video of him playing like pickup against like regular humans. He looks like Kevin Durant, but taller and stronger.
And I have a theory about Robinson.

Speaker 2 One of my favorite movies is The Prestige, right? You know, the big act at the end where they're like, how, they're like, how do you, how do you do this?

Speaker 2 And they're like, well, I've got like a drunken twin brother. There is another Mitch Robinson that they prestige onto Mitch Robinson tonight.

Speaker 2 Who else? He went six for six, dude. Like

Speaker 2 he couldn't even hit the net.

Speaker 1 He couldn't even hit the net. They were all free throws that he was making the same way where they would hit the front of the rim, bounce over and go in like he was at a carnival.

Speaker 2 He prestiged. They prestiged Mitch Robinson tonight.
There are two twin Mitch Robinson.

Speaker 2 I mean, I've never seen, but I've never seen, I've only seen one Mitch Robinson at a time.

Speaker 1 I'm still trying to figure out how Shalom got court side.

Speaker 1 I have more stuff to talk about with this game, but we got to take a quick break. Hey, as you know, I like to create things.
We worked with Fando on a new betting concept. We call it Tail or Fade.

Speaker 1 We've done it for a couple weeks in a row. We hit last week.
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Speaker 1 So if you check out Fando's Sportsbook on Thursday for the OKC Denver game, what we did was we did Jokic

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Speaker 1 If you want to tail me, join me. If you want to go against me, fade me, whatever you want to do.

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Speaker 1 Some things are just unnecessary. We see players, I don't want to name them, but players who can't help getting a dumb flagrant, dumb foul, dumb technical at the worst possible times.

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Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 obviously a pretty traumatic 48 hours for Celtic Celtic fans. Yesterday was just awful

Speaker 1 because there was no news at all. And even me, I couldn't, you know, I knew it wasn't great, but nobody, I mean, they just shut down.
They didn't say anything.

Speaker 1 And the reason they did it was because they went and they immediately put him into surgery. They just didn't want to say anything until they found out it was successful surgery.

Speaker 1 But the longer it went on,

Speaker 1 you know, by one o'clock in the afternoon, my time,

Speaker 1 I'm on threads. Like, maybe it's not an Achilles.
Maybe, maybe it's like he tore his

Speaker 1 plantarphositis muscle, whatever the fuck that thing is. Like, who knows? Maybe it wasn't, or maybe it's worse.
Maybe he tore his Achilles and like ankle ligaments, and it was like this catastrophic.

Speaker 1 And your mind just starts racing. Then all of a sudden, you find out what it is and start thinking big picture.
I was Googling all the, you know, all the different comebacks.

Speaker 1 Kobe was eight months, came back, then got hurt three weeks later, which is why I only played six games that year.

Speaker 1 Durant was longer, but everybody felt like Durant could have come back for the playoffs and just didn't.

Speaker 1 But you start, your mind's just going everywhere.

Speaker 1 And there's that Jalen Brown piece of maybe with all the money that this team is due, maybe they blow it up next year. Maybe this is the summer to trade Jalen Brown.
What's he worth?

Speaker 1 You start going down rat road. What would people get for him? Is it worth it to trade him? Or could he carry the torch for a year until Tatum comes back in February?

Speaker 1 It's really split what he's worth with the Celtic fans that watch him every day. Because the more you see somebody, they become like your spouse where you start thinking of all this stuff.

Speaker 1 Like, ah, that drives me crazy when they do that. And you stop seeing it.

Speaker 1 You can't relate to that at all. I get it.

Speaker 1 But he was really good tonight.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 to me,

Speaker 1 that's the reason not to trade him.

Speaker 1 Because I still feel like he's one of the 20 best guys in the league. What he did tonight is the case for like, don't blow it up.
Maybe Tatum can be back in February.

Speaker 1 Maybe you only have to shaver on the salary sides. Maybe you're a five, six, seven seed.
Maybe Tatum rounds in this shape until April.

Speaker 1 Maybe Jalen Brown can hold this fort with the infrastructure in Missoula and the fact that the East is going to suck.

Speaker 2 You know, to me,

Speaker 1 this game is going to make me think of that this summer. What do you think?

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I laid a lot on you there. Sorry, but I did the

Speaker 1 four minute first take intro.

Speaker 2 First of all,

Speaker 2 people that are listening to the Bill Simmons podcast want to hear that. And I'm honored to be here to respond to it.
And I will say that I also am prepared to ask you these questions.

Speaker 2 I never really considered the Jalen Brown trade. I think you're too much in the weeds.
I think the questions that need to be asked are:

Speaker 2 is Hortford gone? Is Porzingis gone? Is White gone? Is Drew Holiday gone? Like those four players are

Speaker 1 the only one who doesn't go. Wait, because White's gone.

Speaker 2 Are you sure?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 for what his value is and his age and all the stuff he brings to the table i think he's one of the 40 best guys in the league if you're making a list like when i do ringer 100 he's always in the 40 to 45 range for what he's making money wise

Speaker 2 you have to keep him holiday contract taken into account when you take did you make that list is contract taken into account yeah his his he's under 30 million still so here's my here's my take on like the future of the celtics is i think that porzingus is gone holiday's gone yeah but porzingus they still have to get a contract back.

Speaker 1 It's not like they could just be like, here, take his contract.

Speaker 2 Ew.

Speaker 1 Well, but you still have to get some sort of money back. You're not just wiping the slate.

Speaker 1 You're taking back like Rui Hachamura or whoever it is.

Speaker 2 The PR people for the Celtics need to put out some sort of like Porzingis has this thing that's going to heal in two months and his trade value is going to go up.

Speaker 2 But I will say this: I think it's a Peyton Pritchard play.

Speaker 2 I really think it's like it's, it's

Speaker 2 Pritchard is going to bridge this gap of scoring and playmaking and things that we lose with Tatum. He's that good.

Speaker 2 Wow. I think next year becomes like a brown

Speaker 2 Pritchard.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's going to be tough.

Speaker 2 17 points at 39 minutes. Yeah, he's good.

Speaker 1 But they could patch it together with the infrastructure because this team plays really well together and they have a certain style/slash system.

Speaker 2 Here's what I want to ask you that people want to hear. What do the Celtics look like like next season?

Speaker 1 I think either poor Horford, depending on if he wants to chase the title or just stay in Boston, um, one of the most beloved Celtics teammates/slash veterans they've ever had in the history of the franchise.

Speaker 1 I'd be surprised if he was like, All right, I'll see you guys later. I'm going to play for Orlando.

Speaker 1 He's going to be 40 next year. I don't, you know, you don't want to start just chasing stuff.
He already won the title last year. It's not like he needs a ring.

Speaker 1 Um, but I think it's probably Porzingis or Drew

Speaker 1 that would be

Speaker 1 that those would be it would be one of those two. And Drew probably has a little more value based on what's happened to Porzingis at this point.
Now, his contract's not great.

Speaker 1 He's got three years left after this, but

Speaker 1 the type of guy winning guy.

Speaker 1 Well, you try to do it. So you're trying to get somebody with less money

Speaker 1 that you're shaving, you know, if they shave $7 million off in a trade, it turns out it's like $70 million with all this repeater tax, all this.

Speaker 1 So that's, I think, what they would be trying to do.

Speaker 1 There's like bigger trades if you wanted to go nuts, where it'd be like Jalen Brown and Drew Holiday to Houston, and you get a bunch of stuff back, but you're taking $20 million

Speaker 1 less in salary and you're basically rebuilding wildlife.

Speaker 1 I know, but that's why that stuff's not going to happen.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying, like the big monster, if you were playing this as a video game and it wasn't human beings and real people, you'd be like, oh, I'll just do this and I'll just build the round table.

Speaker 1 But they're not doing that, especially the new owner. He's not going to want to come in and

Speaker 2 blow stuff up to save money. Drew Holiday, 80 cents on the dollar, Porzingis, 25 cents on the dollar.

Speaker 1 Or it might even be as simple as Sam Hauser gets traded this summer because a lot of teams could use a really good three-point shooting. He's not making a shooter who's not making a ton of money.

Speaker 1 And then you figure out in February where you are and whether you want to shave salary or not because Porzingis would be an expiry at that point. But I can't.

Speaker 2 I think the Celtics.

Speaker 1 I just can't believe we're having this conversation. It was inconceivable a week ago.

Speaker 2 It sucks. I mean, but they're going to win a lot of games in the Eastern Conference with no Tatum.

Speaker 1 Jalen had 26 points, 12 assists, and eight rebounds. And my fear for the game today was he can't dribble.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just thought the Knicks would be like smothering him and be like, this guy can't dribble. Let's go get him.
But he was pretty comfortable running the offense. And

Speaker 1 I just thought he did a good job. I thought he was patient.
He only took 17 shots. My fear was he was going to take like 30, but he didn't.
And they were pretty democratic, as you said, with the

Speaker 1 with the ball. So, you know, it's the question is, was this a moral victory or something

Speaker 1 more? Did they figure out something in this game that they can take? So they figured out the coronet piece. Well, they figured out ball movement, the coronet piece, and just continue to hope Towns.

Speaker 2 is a complete idiot. They figured out that Porzingus sucks and Towns can't stop fouling people.
That's what they figured out.

Speaker 1 And you and I figured out Porzingis couldn't play in the series two games ago.

Speaker 2 Two games ago?

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 has he had a good playoff game?

Speaker 2 What's no, he isn't.

Speaker 1 The only time he's been good, there's been some decent defensive stuff where he's just had his arms up.

Speaker 2 You mean the seven-foot-three guy put his arms in the air and that was good? Yes.

Speaker 1 But that, did I expect him to turn into Taco Fall?

Speaker 2 I did. I didn't realize that was going to be his new role on this team.

Speaker 2 He's winter, dude. He's Taco Winter.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 This Jalen Brown piece, though,

Speaker 2 there's no way, right?

Speaker 1 Because I want Tatum and Brown to retire together. I don't want them to trade Jalen Brown.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 And yet around the league, people are like, watch, Jalen's going to be the one who goes. They're going to blow it up.
And I just, I don't see it.

Speaker 2 It's not people around the league. That's people like us that talk into microphones.
It's just like fun to say. But why would they trade Jalen Brown?

Speaker 2 Jalen Brown's going to be the engine that brings the train to the next station, to the next station, to the next station next year. And there's 82 stops.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Like, he is the engine of the train. He's going to drive it.
And sometimes it's going to be ugly and sometimes it's going to look great.

Speaker 2 But like, if you trade Jalen Brown, who do you get back that's going to be like your go-to guy?

Speaker 2 It's going to be better than him. That's going to just like,

Speaker 2 I don't know. No.
And he's on the same timeline as Tatum. You won a championship fucking 11 months ago.
They won the championship. There's a parade, you know,

Speaker 1 50 weeks ago.

Speaker 1 Can I talk about Tatum's first eight seasons with you for a split second? Because I continue to think he's incredibly underrated.

Speaker 1 And it sadly took a major, major injury for people to go, oh man, that guy was really good. This is too bad.

Speaker 1 I don't think anyone took more shit

Speaker 1 unnecessarily. All he did was get better every year and really give a shit.

Speaker 2 As long as you allow me to retort with how corny he is when you're done, go. Okay.

Speaker 1 There's been nine guys since the merger season who in their first eight seasons played over 20,000 minutes and scored 13,000 points or more and then 3,000 rebounds or more and 2,000 assists or more.

Speaker 1 MJ, LeBron, Bird, Barkley, KD, Harden, Pierce, Tatum, and Mark McGuire, weirdly.

Speaker 1 There's been 14 guys ever in their first eight seasons. who played 100-plus playoff games and scored at least 15 points a game in those games.

Speaker 1 bird tatum duncan kobe worthy kawhi jalen magic parker mikhail pippin manu and scott and byron scott and there's been a hundred guys there's been four guys who have played 100 playoff games in their first eight years and had 28 and four as their stats 20 points a game eight rebounds four assists lebron wilt bird elgin and tatum

Speaker 1 What was so interesting about his career from a historical standpoint was how much postseason

Speaker 1 mileage and success that he had. He has 72 playoff wins.
He's just turned 27. It's so like Jordan didn't have nearly that many playoff wins by the time he was 27.

Speaker 1 Like even, you know, LeBron didn't have 100 wins by the time he was 27.

Speaker 1 So he was amassing this career that one of the best things about it was the durability and the fact that year after year, he was playing into May and June potentially.

Speaker 1 And he was on a really good team in a good spot. And he was, I think, one of the three most durable guys of this century.

Speaker 1 Him and Giannis and LeBron, where it almost seemed like an accident if they even sprained their ankle.

Speaker 2 Him and LeBron. Him and LeBron.
Taking Giannis out of that.

Speaker 1 Well, Biannis had, he had one where he like fell and broke bone in his back. And, you know, but for the most part,

Speaker 2 playoff availability. Yeah, I know what you mean.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And in a minute, that's all gone. But I just thought the first eight years he had was really crazy.
I never thought about it until that injury.

Speaker 2 I will also say, to be nice about Tatum,

Speaker 2 different running mates throughout the runs. Right.
There's like the Isaiah Thomas season. You know, there's the Scary Terry season.

Speaker 2 There's like a lot of different elements that he's always been the constant variable in the equation where everything else sort of changed and he still had this consistent output.

Speaker 2 Another thing I'll say, but nice about Tatum, not a lot of duds. You know what I mean? You look at a lot of these star players and there's a couple duds out there.

Speaker 2 You're like, oh, yeah, like, remember game two in the second round series where he was like, went four for 25. Like, he doesn't have those games.

Speaker 2 He has ups and downs, but but he doesn't have like dud, dud games.

Speaker 1 And he'll always bring defense and rebounding, and he'll help the game in other ways, even if a shot isn't going in.

Speaker 2 And the thing as a non-former Celtics fan, I will say, I love Larry Bird grown up.

Speaker 2 And here's the question I have for you. Why can't I like connect to him as a person? Like, why do I think he's corny? Why do I think that he's inauthentic?

Speaker 2 I was reminded by co-host of the mismatch, Verno, when they won last year. There was that like clip together of him sort of like cosplaying all these other Kobe moments and like Kevin Garnett moments.

Speaker 2 Like, why don't I connect to him as a person? I know nothing about his personality, other sides from the fact that he has a son named Deuce. Like, why do I think that he's corny and inauthentic?

Speaker 2 I'm asking you that question, not because I'm trying to accuse him of something or insult him. I just want you to put me on the couch and tell me why I feel that way.

Speaker 1 Well, so I would argue the Celtic fans feel the opposite. Like, he's a beloved Celtic.
And I think

Speaker 1 the reason he's beloved is because because all he does is like work his ass off, try to get better, be a good example,

Speaker 1 doesn't

Speaker 1 ever say anything controversial, doesn't ever get in any kind of trouble, obviously. And all he is is just additive in all these different ways.

Speaker 1 And I think when you watch it day in and day out, that's what you notice when you're a fan of the team. I think if you're not a fan of the team and you're judging people by, are they interesting?

Speaker 1 Are they up and down? Can I have conversations about them? There's just not a lot of Tatum conversations.

Speaker 1 But like, he's not as nearly as good as Tim Duncan, who's one of the, I have him as the seventh best player ever, but Tim Duncan used to take a lot of the same shit.

Speaker 1 He wasn't as interesting as Kobe, remember? He wasn't as fun to watch as Steve Nash. He wasn't, he didn't care as much as KG, he wasn't as vocal.

Speaker 1 And there were always, every time he got compared to anybody, even now, all these ex-player podcasts, they always shit on Duncan or they, you know, go out of their way to talk about, oh, no, Cobe was better.

Speaker 1 Cobe was way better. You know, but I just think some guys do that.

Speaker 2 You don't think?

Speaker 2 No, I think it's, I think it's,

Speaker 2 it kind of goes into like the X-Player pods where it's like, he's really good at basketball. Maybe he's not the best in the press conference.
Maybe he's not going to make you laugh.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Like, maybe he's not Peyton Manning. He's going to host SNL.
But like, we, that's not why we love him. We love him because he's a basketball player.

Speaker 2 So why do we knock him for not being a great personality?

Speaker 1 Did you think LeBron was like the most personable guy on the planet the first eight, nine years of his career? This was even a knock on him during that time where people are like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I mean, I could tell you what the person

Speaker 2 hour podcast about LeBron's personality.

Speaker 2 I don't even know where to start.

Speaker 1 Nobody could get a handle on him for the first,

Speaker 1 almost really until like the second or third Miami years.

Speaker 2 I don't. I don't know who LeBron James is, dude.
I don't know what to do. But that's a whole lot.
I want to start down that path. I don't want to start down that path.

Speaker 1 We always had like KG, Anthony Edwards. Those are the kind of players that people seem to gravitate to.

Speaker 2 Anthony Edwards is John Everson.

Speaker 2 Because they're all seem authentic.

Speaker 2 And they're fucking awesome. And you want to hang out with them and they make you laugh.
And

Speaker 2 they're cool.

Speaker 2 They sit at the lunch table that you are not allowed to sit at. That's where I like my professional athletes.

Speaker 2 I want my professional athletes to be at the table in the cafeteria that I'm scared to look at and I'm never allowed to sit at. You know what I mean? And I feel like Tatum's not there.

Speaker 2 And I'm not knocking him for it. I'm just talking about it.
Yeah, well, it's not the first time I've heard that.

Speaker 1 I think my argument for tatum is he doesn't try to be anything he's not

Speaker 1 you know he's not trying he doesn't want to host snl and he doesn't want to be in an adam sandler movie he doesn't want to do any of that stuff he just wants to be 25 and 10 and 6 yeah so that's what i'm going to do yeah no i mean one of the things some of the some of the like little stealth combos i've had are just people worried about removing basketball from his life.

Speaker 1 How's he going to handle the next four or five months? He's never had a major injury. He's been hooping basically since he was growing up in St.
Louis.

Speaker 1 Everything is is about like trying to get better, trying to get better, trying to catch people, trying to hit different levels, and trying to be one of the 10 best players in the league, trying to be one of the best five, trying to win a title.

Speaker 1 Can I be the best player in the league? And not only is that chase over, but your body's been like really injured for the first time. How are you going to handle that?

Speaker 1 You know, and I think the good thing for him is Kobe was his idol, which you mentioned before, but Kobe had the exact same injury and really documented what it was like to have that injury and how he fought back from it, and how he, you know, the work starts now.

Speaker 1 How great do you want to be? And I don't know. He weirdly laid like the Bible for how to attack something like this for somebody like Tatum.

Speaker 2 There's two pieces of information that we got today that I found really telling. And I found kind of like

Speaker 2 brought me into the Tatum psyche and circle, which I loved. One was Marcus Spears, not my favorite Marcus Spears swagoo.
I love the other Marcus Spears, but I love the football Marcus Spears so, so.

Speaker 2 You talk about Marcus Spears in person.

Speaker 2 Yes, yeah, the basketball one.

Speaker 2 He said that he spoke with Tatum's father, who's like coaching in Malaysia or whatever, and he, and he was allowed to talk about his conversation with his father, about his conversation with Jason.

Speaker 2 And his father said to Jason Tatum, he said, your idol is Kobe Bryant.

Speaker 2 Your idol is Kobe Bryant. That's the path you wanted to go down.
And this is part of the path. And that's not a direct quote, but I found that to be like, as a father.
And you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 I thought that was like a really cool thing to say. And I'm really glad that Spears got that information to share with us.

Speaker 2 Another thing, I don't know if you heard this part of the broadcast, is Reggie said he texted with Tatum and he sort of like read the texts on the broadcast.

Speaker 2 And I was sitting there, I felt it was like, I felt it like a violation of trust, but obviously Reggie texted him and Tatum sort of sent this message to Celtis fans.

Speaker 2 And it was while they were like up by 20 in the end of the third quarter.

Speaker 2 And he was like, and I can't, I can't paraphrase because I just watched it, you know, 40 minutes ago, but he's, he's like, Jason Tate said he can't wait to get back into the Celtic green.

Speaker 2 and he's going to show the fans how much that means to him.

Speaker 2 And as someone who sat on a pretty popular podcast 10 minutes ago and was like, I don't understand this guy, I don't get his personality and try to critique him in that way.

Speaker 2 Those two pieces of information getting into my brain was so fucking cool. You know what I mean? Like the idea that like his dad gave him this guidance when he's at probably the worst.

Speaker 2 day of his life and that he texted Reggie knowing it's going to get read on the broadcast in front of millions of people that this message to Celtics fans fans about his appreciation of his position in the sport.

Speaker 2 I thought that was a really cool thing to hear today when there's been so much information about how long the injury is going to take and what's it going to be like when he comes back and what does the Celtics do with the roster?

Speaker 2 Like hearing that from him, I found touching.

Speaker 1 Well, he's one of those guys within the organization, absolutely beloved.

Speaker 1 Just, you know, you have a lot of different people over the years who could be the face of a franchise and he's really embraced it, has embraced the relationships with the guys who used to be on the team, the former stars, and just kind of gets it.

Speaker 1 Gets, you know, he came in when he was 19 and just kind of gets that this is a slightly different franchise than the usual franchise that has a lot of history and, you know, a lot of baggage, good and bad.

Speaker 1 But it's, it's the bummer for this is it took him getting injured, I think, for people to appreciate. You know, people, especially in this day and age, you're picking apart.
You're picking apart.

Speaker 1 This guy doesn't do this. This guy does does this.
You know what he does? He was the fourth best guy in the league, and he was still getting better.

Speaker 1 And he was playing probably the best all-around game of his career in the game that he got hurt. And there was still room for him to get better and better.

Speaker 1 And now, who knows if he hit that limit or not? Durant came back, and I felt like he was just about where he left in that 21 playoffs against Milwaukee, right?

Speaker 1 But like scoring-wise, it felt like he came back. So that would be the hope.
And it seems like they caught it pretty early. But man, was thinking,

Speaker 1 it has to be one of the worst NBA injuries from

Speaker 1 hitting a guy at a certain point of his career and also what it meant to like a team, like Bill Walton hurting his foot. That probably changed the course of a couple titles.

Speaker 1 There's been a couple of these.

Speaker 2 Derek Rose.

Speaker 1 Derek Rose is one where it felt like that was the team that was positioned to battle LeBron for the 2010s and then he's just gone. So we've had these.

Speaker 1 Samson in 86, when he fell and hurt his back, He was never really the same after that. There's been a few of these, but it's hard to remember like a first team all NBA guy just getting wiped out for

Speaker 2 not just

Speaker 1 Brendan Moriette. He wasn't as good as Tatum, though.
You know, like Tatum's been first team all NBA four years in a row.

Speaker 1 And one of the things that was so amazing about him is it felt like he was indestructible. You just felt like just pencil him in for 39 minutes a game and he'll get 13 rebounds in every game.

Speaker 1 So it's a tough one.

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Speaker 2 The only thing I should compare. Here's what your listeners want to know.
Here's what your listeners want to know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 How's it been for you the last 48 hours? Like, what are you going through?

Speaker 2 Like, we've talked about what Jason Tatum's going through, but like, people listen to this podcast. They care about Bill Simmons.
You know, it's the bill of this podcast.

Speaker 2 Like, what have have you been doing the last 48 hours?

Speaker 1 Oh, yesterday was brutal.

Speaker 2 What happened? Take me through it.

Speaker 1 I was just farting around all day.

Speaker 1 I did a power walk. I was on Twitter.
I was just basically refreshing Twitter, waiting for the word and checking my texts.

Speaker 1 Now, when you get older as a sports fan, it starts reminding you of things that happened. So the obvious one was the Brady ACL.
That's the only other time I remember.

Speaker 1 And then when Cam Neely got hurt in the Pittsburgh series and when I was in college, that was another one.

Speaker 1 But at that point, we didn't know he was going to, it was going to change.

Speaker 2 What is the most intrusive thought that you had?

Speaker 1 Well, I think the Brady one was the worst one because that was when you just start thinking in terms of,

Speaker 2 all right,

Speaker 1 this is how long it's actually going to be versus when you're younger and it's like, oh, it could be back in February. He'll be fine.
But you're like, no, this is actually probably two years.

Speaker 1 And the whole team might be different. And maybe they missed their window.
And then you start thinking about windows.

Speaker 2 Was there ever a part of you that was like, maybe next year it doesn't help us to win basketball games?

Speaker 1 Oh, I definitely had that thought. I don't know how you don't, especially with the financial stuff and the money.

Speaker 2 They're so good. I know.
Well, it is big.

Speaker 1 Then you start thinking of the window of like from 22, 23, 24, 25.

Speaker 1 They make the finals in 22 and Curry just goes to another level and they're not ready yet. They lose.
23, they get to the game seven against Miami.

Speaker 1 I'll still, I'll always wonder what would happen if Tatum doesn't sprain his ankle in the first 40 seconds of the game because I still feel like I just thought he was going to be awesome that game.

Speaker 1 24, they win. This year, Cleveland gets bounced.
They have a chance.

Speaker 2 But here's the other thing.

Speaker 1 The Knicks were about to go up 3-1 in that series with Tatum.

Speaker 2 They were winning anyway. As a Knicks fan,

Speaker 2 I wish he never got hurt, but I feel like the Knicks win this series with Tatum not getting hurt. And that's a whole hypothetical.
We don't have to go down.

Speaker 2 But one thing that I heard on this podcast from you.

Speaker 1 They might have won the key game of the series

Speaker 1 right before he got hurt. It was already over.
They were down 70.

Speaker 2 OG was getting that. OG was getting that.
Lucy.

Speaker 2 Going up nine. Yeah.
It's like, and with Brunson, like, please, that's it. That's a win.

Speaker 2 They're winning. But

Speaker 2 I was listening to this stupid podcast driving back from upstate. Like, it was a pandemic.
It might have been like, it's not the bubble. Maybe it was the bubble to the year after the bubble.

Speaker 2 And you were talking about the Celtics and just how like fickle the windows are. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 You were just talking about like, it was, I think it was, I think it was the, I can't remember if it was the bubble year or the year after the bubble, but you were talking during the playoffs around this time of year, just about like, hey, man, with these windows, like you think you got a chance next year, but like, you really don't.

Speaker 2 Like, this is like, sometimes it's a six-month window, sometimes a two-year window. And I think that this injury and this moment is just a good example of that.

Speaker 2 The Celtics are favorites to win the East, if not the championship. They're,

Speaker 2 they're the, the what number two seed, but we all like secretly know that they're the best team in the Eastern Conference.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and we're talking about repeat championships, and then this happens, and we're talking about should they win games next year or tank for a pick? Like, that's just how fragile these things are.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I remember writing about

Speaker 1 OKC

Speaker 1 make the finals in 12, they do the hard end trade, Westbrook gets injured in 13

Speaker 1 in 14, San Antonio beats, and then all of a sudden they get to the clay thompson game clay gets catches fire they lose that in seven they had this stretch of like oh that team's going to be in the finals the whole decade and they won one finals game the entire like the over-under was probably 10 finals games they won one but at least at least there was a clay thompson game as a knicks fan i'm gonna look back and be like and then luke cornet came in for gayp to start the second half that's the thing seven shots and we couldn't stop him he's caught in the alley

Speaker 2 and then the series switched Yeah, and then I feel like it was Luke Cornette. But that's the thing.
You're talking about windows.

Speaker 1 I would say this is the window for the Knicks is almost more dramatic. The Celtics get nudged out of this potentially.
Cleveland's out. You have Indiana now, and I think you have home court, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. What do you think, dude?

Speaker 1 And then you just think, like, all right, OKC, not afraid of them.

Speaker 1 Young team, Brunson versus SGA, head-to-head. We could take that, or whether it's Minnesota.
But yeah, I mean, the Knicks have never had a window that looked as good as this. Even in 99,

Speaker 1 they had no chance in that Spurs series.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 no chance in that heat series, dude. Yeah, I mean, they won it.

Speaker 1 The one what if, I mean, the obvious what if with the Rockets in 94, but the bigger what if for me is that 93 Bulls series, I, they were every bit as good as the 93 Bulls. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 They were right there.

Speaker 1 And that was an either-or series. And you could drive yourself crazy with that.
This is an amazing chance for them.

Speaker 2 In the first round in 93, they beat the Pacers.

Speaker 2 94, conference finals,

Speaker 2 they beat the Pacers. 95, second round.
I know you know all this, but I just want to set this up as a potential Knicks-Pacers series. Second round, the Pacers win in a game seven.

Speaker 2 That's 3-4-5. They go head-to-head.
98, second round, the Pacers beat them again. 99,

Speaker 2 the Knicks win in in the conference finals. Like that.
And then it's not just like last year. And then in 2000, the Pacers beat them.
Like, Pacers-Knicks is not like, I think this is like,

Speaker 2 people hype up like Celtics-Knicks as a rivalry, but they don't really meet in the postseason.

Speaker 2 Like, I think if the Knicks have a rival, it is the Pacers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which is so weird, but I mean, there was one of the first 30 for 30s was made about the Knicks-Pacers mid-90s rivalry.

Speaker 1 It's a real thing that exists. But by the way, it was a a really good documentary.

Speaker 2 Who directed that? My guy, right?

Speaker 1 My guy, Dan Clores.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And Hicksburg Nitch, did they interview Jalen?

Speaker 2 They must have.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Jalen's in that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he must be.

Speaker 1 TNT's Jalen Rose?

Speaker 2 TNT's Jalen Rose, killing it.

Speaker 2 Racing Dwight Howard to the monitor. Dwight, Dwight's in slippers.
What are you even doing? What are you even doing? What are you doing, Dwight?

Speaker 2 What are you doing, Dwight? What are you doing there, Dwight?

Speaker 1 About that question.

Speaker 2 And I think that, again, I revisited last year's Pacers Knicks series, and if there is a Pacers Knicks finals, it's Eastern Conference finals, which I believe there will be, it's it was a lot closer than I remember.

Speaker 2 And OG getting hurt was huge, Brunson getting hurt. Like, it wasn't just,

Speaker 2 yeah, I just feel like it's a good matchup.

Speaker 2 And I've, and I've listened to your stupid pod, and I know you're all Pacers all the time, and like, all the basketball people are so excited about the Pacers, but I think the Knicks should be and will win that series if it comes down to it.

Speaker 1 FanDuel updated their Knicks Celtics odds.

Speaker 2 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 And the Knicks are now minus 270.

Speaker 1 They were, I think, minus 620 heading into today's game.

Speaker 2 The Celtics were minus 900 before the series started. I love this.

Speaker 1 The volatility of this for the playoffs, I mean, for the conference, Knicks are plus 125, and Indiana is also plus 125.

Speaker 2 I just think that I would hate that this goes down as like the series where Tatum got hurt because I really liked it as the series where the Knicks shit the bed in game one at home and shit the bed in game two at home and then DNA'd in the pool in game four.

Speaker 2 that was my favorite that was my favorite part of the dna in the pool game

Speaker 2 you know

Speaker 1 well what's crazy about game four the tatum injury puts a little bit of a black cloud over what would have been one of the great knicks wins ever and still is oh what a great cat that's dude what a depressing games but now now you have this friday night game six ticket in new york city which i think will be the hardest Knicks ticket to get.

Speaker 1 I don't even know when. I don't know if the demand for the 99 finals was even up there because it just feels like there's more Knicks fans now.
There's two new generations of Knicks fans since 99.

Speaker 1 Everyone's going to want to be at this game, and it's going to be an incredible game.

Speaker 2 I've got a couple things on that.

Speaker 2 One is I wanted to go to game four because we were doing the mismatch after the game. I was like, it'd be good, good for the show, whatever.
I was like, you know, I've got some expendable money.

Speaker 2 I'll just do it. It was like $900 to sit in the last row.
I just couldn't bring myself. It was 900.
Like, I just can't. Like, I've got children.
Like, I just can't do it.

Speaker 2 And another story I want to tell about game two is they have the watch party outside of the garden, right?

Speaker 2 They kind of like, there's a plaza there, just like most places do, like beer garden in Milwaukee or whatever. And I was doing the Spotify Newfronts.
Shout out to the sales Spotify people.

Speaker 2 And I did that event. And it was right next to that watch party.
And it was like the second quarter. I went to a bar by the garden and I had a couple beers and watched the game.

Speaker 2 And they started to come back. And I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm gonna see if they win and I'm gonna go to the watch party because you've seen the stuff on social from that area.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 and I went there and I was super excited about the energy from the Knicks fans and everything, but it was really a commentary on like the content creation generation

Speaker 2 because everyone was there with their phones out to create content for social.

Speaker 2 I feel like they were there. Yeah, it was me too.
I did the exact same thing, but it's not this. Like, I remember me and Kevin Wilds went to 7th Avenue outside the Riviera after the

Speaker 2 Red Sox beat the Yankees. And 7th Avenue was shut down.
It was all Red Sox fans and we were all there together, just high-fiving each other, being a big family.

Speaker 2 And it was before video was on the internet. So we weren't like capturing things with our phones.

Speaker 2 And again, I sound like an old guy or whatever, but like when I went to this one, I was doing the same thing. It was just kind of like, who's got the best shot for my Instagram story?

Speaker 2 So you're looking, you're cruising the crowd being like, who's the most excited? Who's got the best chance? Who can I film for this moment?

Speaker 2 So I think that when you view it and you're not there, it's a very different experience than living it.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? It'd be like if you were telling me that story right now and I was like, yeah, hold on, Jacob.

Speaker 2 It's exactly what I was like. It's kind of like, I get it.

Speaker 2 I'm guilty. I did it too.
I'm not being critical. It was just like a, it's just a different time.
It's like when you go to a concert and people are just like filming the concert.

Speaker 2 Like, there's professional cameras. Like, if you want to watch this later, you can do that.
How about you just chill and watch it now?

Speaker 1 I'm always, I always find that amazing. You know, I go to a few basketball games, and people will tape like the national anthem,

Speaker 2 they'll review

Speaker 2 to cheerleaders, they're like, Yeah, cheerleaders, and it's like

Speaker 2 we'll all be recorded by professionals.

Speaker 1 I was actually getting mad at the game for Clippers Nuggets, which Jokic played one of the best games I've seen in person in a long time.

Speaker 1 And there were a couple influencers sitting in front of us, just oblivious oblivious to it and try just hoping that the game would be close so they could tape the thing and then do this yeah yeah yeah um and i'm just i just wanted to like just hit them over the head with a coke can

Speaker 2 it's just like how can you not focus on this guy is one of the best basketball players of the last 30 years and he's like painting a masterpiece right now and you guys are fucking on tick tock yeah are we get off your lawn jacobi we sound like old guys and i get it but it's like i paid a thousand dollars to watch them do their thing, but you really paid $1,000 to like film yourself watching them do their thing for the people that are following you or whatever.

Speaker 1 And who's watching this video in 40 years? Like, your kids are like, oh, yeah, I'm still deleting dad's iCloud.

Speaker 2 He's at some clipper game. Just taking photos of the cheerleaders.
We're putting on Instagram stories. It literally disappears in 24 hours.
It disappears

Speaker 2 in 24 hours.

Speaker 1 Speaking of Jokic, I was so bummed. I just, I just love that guy.
I was so bummed out last night. The first three plus quarters,

Speaker 1 that was unbelievable watching him do that to OKC, where he's deciding every moment of every situation

Speaker 1 and just single-handedly dragging the Nuggets to the finish line. And then it just came down to Lou Dort made a couple shots.
Jalen Williams made a three that I never thought was going in.

Speaker 1 And the Nuggets missed basically every open shot they took. And all of a sudden, Nuggets were going home and they look like they're screwed.

Speaker 2 So I don't want to make this too reductive, right? But doesn't it just come down to a coach decides who we're going to leave open and whether or not that person makes the shot? You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 It's like very reductive. It's like, we're going to leave Ludo open.
It's like, oh, Porter Jr., he's got a hurt shoulder, hasn't hit. We're going to leave him open.
Porter Jr.

Speaker 2 and Westbrook, like, they barely hit the rim in the fourth quarter.

Speaker 1 Well, with Russ, they're like, yo, did you see that Ramona story about Russ with the unnamed teammate? Let's leave him open.

Speaker 1 Porter's got one arm. Russ is pissed about the story.
We'll leave him open. If that

Speaker 1 Peyton Watson comes in, leave him open.

Speaker 2 Strath are open.

Speaker 1 You're just pointing at guys that just are going to be open.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the Jalen Williams one, it hit the front rim and the back room went in. Like he looked a little surprised after it went in, too.

Speaker 1 If you had freeze framed that and it was the biggest shot of the game, front rim.

Speaker 1 I would have said

Speaker 1 10% odds. I didn't think I you would have, you could have talked into an airball or it hits the side of the backboard before it hits the rim.

Speaker 1 I just thought no chance, but he's pretty good in that game.

Speaker 2 I trust him. I think it's also worth mentioning the SGA three when they're up by three and he could, he, they go under the screen and he's just like, you motherfucker, I'm the MVP.

Speaker 2 You're going to let me shoot this. And that one didn't touch the rim at all.
That was pure. And that was a dagger.
That was a night-night shot.

Speaker 2 And the one thing I want to say about Jokic, which I was so, when he had that offensive rebound, when he tipped it to himself to put it back in, he's like, you motherfuckers can't even hit a shot.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go down down there and do everything.

Speaker 2 I'm just going to do everything. I'm going to make dinner.
It's like when our wife is going to be able to do it. I'm going to clean the dishes.

Speaker 2 I'm going to make dinner. I'm going to clean the dishes.
I'm going to put it. If you didn't clean up after we ate? I'll clean up.
You see your dishes flying around. That's exactly what was happening.

Speaker 2 He's just like, you know what? You're not an asset. The rest of you four are not an asset to me, but don't worry.
I got this. And he almost did.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the coach afterwards was talking about how, you know, I had to play a little Russian roulette there, basically, with Yokage. So I just had to keep him out there and keep our fingers crossed.

Speaker 1 It's like, yeah, because what else were you going to do?

Speaker 1 The moment he comes out, you're going to be minus 10 the second he steps out of the game. It's weird.

Speaker 1 I felt that, first of all, I thought that was the best playoff game, I think, of the whole playoffs, just from a quality game.

Speaker 2 I thought Nick Celtics game four was. That was the more exciting game.

Speaker 1 This was like exceptionally well played. Like the execution, defense, the execution was just went to a whole other level.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, but when Westbrook has two air balls and Michael Porter Jr. has two airballs, it's hard for me to talk about like the execution.

Speaker 1 I was just thinking about all the stuff Jokic had to just see and deal with. It was like a quarterback just being blitzed every play, just trying to figure out what to do.

Speaker 1 So weirdly, like if I voted for him for MVP, I feel better that I voted for him after watching that game, but SGA was equally awesome.

Speaker 1 down the stretch and showed all the reasons why if you voted for him, you'd feel good about that, right? He's got a good team.

Speaker 1 But when they really needed him, he made just about every play it felt like to help him. So it was weird to watch a game where both guys won.

Speaker 1 They had that moment where they kind of traded baskets for a second. And I was like, this is what a great MVP race that was because both of these guys are incredible.
And Jokic is,

Speaker 1 there's just nobody like this. They, you know, I keep talking about on the pods.
They were just, we're not going to see anything like this again for a while.

Speaker 2 Well, one of the things I loved about that Jokic performance was

Speaker 2 the 48 hours between game four and game five was turnover to assist ratio, and the worst he's ever shot from the field. It was this kind of like, have the thunder solve the Jokic problem.

Speaker 2 And you've watched enough Jokic, you're like, okay, guys. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We'll see if you've solved the problem. People have been trying to solve the Jokic problem for three years now.
Like,

Speaker 2 you cannot solve the Jokic problem. It's like Matt Damon and Good Hunting on the chalkboard.
It's like, you cannot do it. It's impossible.
Well, you know,

Speaker 1 it's he approaches basketball. It's like when you watch golf and they talk about Scotty Scheffler

Speaker 1 24th last week,

Speaker 1 fixed something in his swing. And he said he was leaning back a little bit on his drives.
And then he'll just rip a drive straight down the fairway. Like, oh, yeah, I fixed the swing.

Speaker 1 Jokic is like doing that during a series where it's like, Nicole Jokic

Speaker 1 didn't have a great game four. He noticed some things in the tape.
He fixed his whatever. And then it's just like he's completely solved OKC, who's doing the same thing.

Speaker 1 But now instead of speeding him up, making him do things he doesn't want to do, he's just, he's just on it, like he's got them on a fucking yo-yo.

Speaker 1 I just thought he was so awesome in that game. It's a much more fun series if Denver wins that game and we get to really see OKC with their backs to the water.

Speaker 2 Under pressure, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like, okay, guys, go to Denver. Let's see if you can win this one.

Speaker 1 Cleveland was in a similar situation yesterday. And they just cratered from it.
They couldn't handle it.

Speaker 1 It was a full-fledged cratering.

Speaker 2 I think there's a good parallel there between Jokic and Mitchell, where it's like, I'm standing on my head here, guys. I'm giving you 40 plus.
You know what I mean? Like,

Speaker 2 Mitchell's hurt.

Speaker 2 He didn't play great. But remember in the, what was it, the fourth quarter? He hit like three straight threes.
He's just like, guys, like, I just need some help. Like, Max Struce, like, do something.

Speaker 2 Like, Michael Porter Jr., do just, I'm not asking you superstars. All these guys are good in the regular season.
Do something, guys. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 And remember, I'm sure you remember the Celtic series last year was a similar thing with Mitchell. It was just like, again, there's guys out.
Garland was out.

Speaker 2 It's just hard. These guys need more help.

Speaker 1 They need help. It happened to him in Utah, too.
I'm wondering, maybe it's him. Maybe it's not the sporting colours.

Speaker 2 No, I love Mitchell.

Speaker 1 Maybe he's just eating too much of the food in the fridge and everybody else is just hungry and forgets how to eat.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's how it works. One of the things I love about Jokic is like my kids don't care about basketball at all.
And they come into the room when I'm watching.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, do you see that like slow kind of fat guy? I'm like, that's the best basketball player on the planet. They're like, that guy.
I'm like, and it's not even close.

Speaker 2 He's definitely the best guy. He's like the best.
And they don't even think about it.

Speaker 2 It's just like, they're like, that guy right there. I'm like, yeah, yeah.
I'm like, watch, just watch. And he'll do some slow, weird stuff.
I like the scratches on his arms. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I love it. I love it.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 Jacobs,

Speaker 1 Friday night, we'll see with the Knicks. It's perfect situation for them.
I'm sure they're going to learn some things from this tape. I'm sure Luke Carnett's not going to do that again.

Speaker 1 I'm sure they're going to attack Jalen Brown a little differently, but still some pressure.

Speaker 2 I'm terrified.

Speaker 1 They've been down 14 plus in every single game of the series, including today.

Speaker 2 That's a fact that I can't dispute, but I feel really good about the Knicks' chances on Friday night.

Speaker 2 Timothy Chalamay and his girlfriend will not let us lose.

Speaker 1 When is the mismatch taping?

Speaker 2 Mismatch tapes Thursday after that Thunder Nuggets game.

Speaker 2 And Verno has done a really good job of just really entrenching him in this, like, the Thunder are too young and they need to go through their playoff scars and they can't.

Speaker 2 There's no way they can beat the Nuggets. They've been there before, shaman chip pedigree.

Speaker 2 And like, he's really, really rooted deep, deep down in this take in a way that I'm scared to do as someone who does this for a living.

Speaker 2 And I'm really proud of him, but it's going to be a fun pod afterwards because he's either going to be really, really right or really, really wrong.

Speaker 2 Well, Well, there you go.

Speaker 1 He was really wrong about Memphis.

Speaker 1 He thought Memphis had a window. They never even bought the window.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 you and him have something in common.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Is when you guys are wrong about a take, you go straight into excuse mode.
Right. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 2 You do this in the master. Yeah, you do this too.
It's all, oh, it's because, well, John Moran got hurt. I mean, I didn't know John Moran was going to go down.

Speaker 2 I didn't know Steph Curry was going to get hurt. It's always like, I'm right, but these extraneous circumstances created an environment in I was wrong.
It's not my fault, it's the world's fault.

Speaker 1 It's smart, it's a great way to play it. It's a good move, Dave Jacoby.
Um, we got to do another rewatchables at some point, too. People are still bringing up Project X.

Speaker 1 It's one of the highlights of their lives.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 All right, good to see you, my friend.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Rain X. So, right now, you might be thinking about leaving work early to make it home in time for the game or what you're going to make for dinner.

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Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Black Friday Game Day on Prime. It's Bill Simmons, Black Friday Game Day coming to Prime, and it will be an epic day of live sports.

Speaker 1 Black Friday football at the center of it all with the Chicago Bears taking on the Philadelphia Eagles at 3 p.m. Eastern.
This might be an actual round one playoff game.

Speaker 1 That's followed by the final night at Emirates NBA Cup group play

Speaker 1 and a doubleheader starting with the Bucs and Knicks at 7 p.m., Giannis in New York again, and the Mavericks and Lakers at 10 p.m. Boy, I wish those two teams had a history.

Speaker 1 The whole day starts with the return of the Capital One Skins game as four league PGA golfers face off with $4 million in the line.

Speaker 1 Black Friday game day tees off with the Capital One Skins game at 9 a.m. Eastern before the Big Bears Eagles football game at 3 p.m.

Speaker 1 And it all culminates with a double dose of Emirates NBA Cup action featuring Bucks Knicks at 7 p.m. and Mavs Lakers at 10 p.m.

Speaker 2 only on Prime.

Speaker 1 All right, we're recording this on a Monday, but it's going to run Wednesday. Kathy Engelbert is here, the WNBA commissioner.

Speaker 1 Pretty exciting season coming ahead, including a new San Francisco expansion team.

Speaker 1 As you know, my life with the WNBA has been complicated because I was not a fan for a long time. And then as the years passed,

Speaker 1 really started to get into it the last couple of years. And I don't think I'm alone in that, right? How many new fans or converted fans have drifted in the last couple of years that you've seen?

Speaker 3 Yeah, definitely tens of millions.

Speaker 3 We were, you know, back when I joined, we were at the, you know, kind of on the outskirts of professional sports back in 2020.

Speaker 3 And then the pandemic, we held a season in a bubble down at IMG Academy and then just raised some capital in early 2022, which gave confidence, I think, to our owners to start investing and build on the momentum.

Speaker 3 And then we got this amazing rookie class led by Caitlin Clark last year.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, so yes. And the quality of the game, Bill, has really advanced enormously since I certainly played the game when there was no women's professional sports basketball league.
So

Speaker 3 I do take it with great responsibility that we are the longest tenured women's professional sports league in the U.S. by double any other, but we've arrived for sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it feels like when the whole Steph Curry era of how basketball, basketball got a little smaller, the shooting expanded out, there was more slash and kick stuff.

Speaker 1 And I think that's helped the league more than anything for WNBA.

Speaker 1 Like when you go back and you look at the games from 20, 25 years ago and they were resembling, you know, everybody had like big players and you're trying to post up and establish.

Speaker 1 And now now when you watch it, like the, the, the pace of it's better. Um, the skills bet, like, I, I just, I, like, I went to a finals game and I was like blown away by, uh, by the quality of it.

Speaker 1 Um, and also there's a bunch of good players. You're in like a really nice little talent boom here, right?

Speaker 2 And then you had this rookie class,

Speaker 3 you know, bringing AJ Wilson and Nafisa Collier.

Speaker 3 Just,

Speaker 3 you know, you know, to add into the rookie, and we have another great rookie class off of our draft this year uh with paige beckers and kiki iriafen and i mean personalities like huge personalities too so i think that's has arrived but literally there's so much we're hitting this confluence in women's sports and the wmba we were kind of ahead of the curve in raising that capital back in 22 now there's so much capital coming in and yeah partners and corporate partners and um you know it's led to kind of major investments on the player development side so when you have build that confidence in a business model that's going to work and is sustainable which is what I've been brought in to do,

Speaker 3 you see the benefits of that, the returns of that. And then you see, you know, some an athlete, a generational athlete like Caitlin, I analogize it to the Tiger Woods effect in golf

Speaker 3 and just her followership and

Speaker 3 then the rivalry she came in with against Angel Reese in LSU, Iowa.

Speaker 3 And now Paige Becker's coming in from UConn off her championship. So, but we had great players for many, many,

Speaker 3 for a couple of decades. But now I think with social media, with NIL, with them having brands when they come in and followership and just the quality of the game, I can't say enough about that too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's the old school model that I'm sure we both grew up with, where you would watch supporters in college for a couple of years.

Speaker 1 They would come to the NBA, you'd feel like you knew them. You know, like Ewing was at Georgetown for four years.
It was like, I knew that guy by the time he got to the Knicks.

Speaker 1 And the NBA, I think the one thing, not that the NBA is doing badly, but the one thing that they lost a little bit as the one and done era started was just not having these guys would come in and they would go to bad teams.

Speaker 1 And, you know, for every Anthony Edwards, there will be other guys that might show up on a team, not make the playoffs for five years. You just didn't have the same connection.

Speaker 1 You have this advantage now. I mean, you're using college basketball as this amazing feeder system.
You know, like when Juju got hurt during the tournament, I was like, ah, like,

Speaker 1 I was so excited to see if she, what, what team she if she was going to come out for the draft what team she might go for um but you just feel like a different connection so paige beckers i feel like she's been in college for forever whereas like cooper flag was at duke for six months you know yeah no it's a it's a very good point and the other thing is the brands are seeing the value of these athletes staying in college because again, under our current CPA, you have to be 22 by the end of the calendar year in which you get drafted if you're in the U.S.

Speaker 3 University.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 1 So Juju couldn't even come out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 She couldn't. She would have to wait a while.

Speaker 3 She's only a sophomore, right? So we wish her well. She's going to be an amazing player in the WNBA someday, but obviously had that injury during the NCW tournament.

Speaker 3 But yeah, so I do think that brands get to know them. Fans get to know them.
They come out and they thrive in the W.

Speaker 3 I mean, as hard as and as competitive as the W is, they not only have a local and kind of regional brand like they have in college, but then they have a national and actually now a global brand.

Speaker 3 So I think it's kind of cool to watch that.

Speaker 1 Well, and then the number two pick in the draft, the YouTube clips were nuts. And it seemed like one of those things, like, obviously Becker's going to go first.
She's famous.

Speaker 1 Like you can build a franchise around her and she's excellent and she's won everywhere she's been. Then you have this French kid that

Speaker 1 when you watch,

Speaker 1 I did, I did a token YouTube deep dive on her.

Speaker 1 I was like, I'm not quite sure I've seen this before in women's basketball. So how do you like market somebody like that?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so Dominique Malunga is her name. She was drafted number two to the Seattle storm.
And our GMs are really smart. They're looking at the global talent pool.

Speaker 3 I think four of our top 12 picks this year were players born outside the United States. So including one that was in the university system from Australia.
But it's incredible what Dominique.

Speaker 3 I mean, again, I met her at the draft, but. uh we brought her over from france but you know what she's doing effortlessly around her athleticism dunking so we'll see Um, she'll help lift Seattle.

Speaker 3 And we're gonna have a lot of parity in the league this year, Bill. I mean, it's not just gonna be two teams like it's been in the past or three.

Speaker 3 I think six, seven teams are really gonna compete hard for the championship this year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, with her, like the dunking, everybody gets excited if a woman's player dunks. This is going back to like you know, the 80s.

Speaker 1 The way she moves is just different. And to me, when I was watching, I was like, I don't know if I've seen a player navigate the court like this at this size.
So that'll be fun.

Speaker 1 You know, you mentioned how the league's in this awesome place right now, right? You 13, you have the San Francisco team is going to be launching.

Speaker 1 I think you have Portland and Toronto coming down the road.

Speaker 3 Next year, Portland and Toronto.

Speaker 1 So it's going to be 15.

Speaker 3 15, yep. So we're looking at, I've kind of talked about getting to 16 by no later than the end of 28.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about that, though, because the history of when professional sports leagues grow and things start to get a little good, and then they start expansion for a couple of expanding expanding because you get the expansion fees, there's interest, there's money in there.

Speaker 1 What's the right number of teams? Because for me,

Speaker 1 I don't think it should be more than 16.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm really hoping that you don't, all of a sudden you're at 24 and you end up in a situation where the teams, you know, everybody just has one good player and that's it.

Speaker 1 Like, how do you know what the right number is?

Speaker 3 It's excellent timing to be talking about it because we do have so much interest from some great cities.

Speaker 3 And I knew when I joined the league when technology is driving so much of your economy and you don't have a team in the Bay Area, San Francisco, that we needed to fix first.

Speaker 3 And then Toronto and Portland and Toronto is such a great sports market.

Speaker 3 And after that Raptors win, when I was actually being courted to come into the WNBA, the Raptors won the NBA championship that year.

Speaker 3 And so I knew Toronto would be a great place, Portland, great place for women's sports. So I think you're right, though.

Speaker 3 You don't want to degradate the quality of the game by bringing in too many teams too fast. That's why people thought, like, my first thing I should have done is when I came in, was expansion.

Speaker 3 And I said, no, we've got a lot of transformation of the business model, the economic model.

Speaker 3 We got to build confidence in this league, bring investment into this league and capital, get our owners all on the same page. And so that's what we've done.

Speaker 3 And now it's time to expand, which you're going to see to Valkyrie's this year out

Speaker 3 in San Francisco. Really?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 They like sold out right away, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 3 they have more season ticket holders than any team in the history of the WMBA. And what's really interesting, Bill, and this tells you about the W,

Speaker 3 less than 5% of those season ticket holders are Golden State Warrior season ticket holders, but they're owned by the same ownership group. They're going to play in Chase Center.

Speaker 3 That's an amazing stat because we know that our,

Speaker 3 you know, we have such a great fan base and it just brings in a whole new fan base, a whole new media market for us.

Speaker 3 Same with Toronto, having kind of the country of Canada.

Speaker 3 So, you know, more to come, but you're right. We're currently evaluating and really putting together an analysis of what the right numbers of

Speaker 3 teams are and when. But we do have a huge amount of demand, low supply, high demand

Speaker 3 from some great cities that you would say would be a no-brainer for a WMBA team.

Speaker 1 Low supply, high demand is a good thing. But yeah, you go back, you go back 60, 70 years with sports.
This is how you get in trouble when you're like, hey, we're doing good. Let's grab some teams.

Speaker 2 So you had

Speaker 1 a year and a half ago, Portland and Golden State were the expansion teams. And I think it was like, what was it, 50 million was the fee?

Speaker 3 They varied. So Golden State was different than Toronto, which was different from Portland, which will be very different from Team 16.

Speaker 1 Portland was 50, and now the price is like 125 to get in.

Speaker 3 It was a little higher than that.

Speaker 1 So it's already gone up two and a half times at a year and a half.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's incredible what has happened.

Speaker 3 But if you just look at the revenue teams are building, there's going to be some valuations coming out from both Sportico and Forbes in the next few months, I think, that are going to show an enormous increase in the valuation of teams because revenue is up, whether it's from GATE, whether it's from corporate partnerships, whether it's from merch.

Speaker 3 You know, there's a lot of things that lead into a multiple on revenue and a confidence in the risk underlying that multiple in the league. Yep.

Speaker 1 That always helps.

Speaker 2 I feel like,

Speaker 1 so you have 40 games season.

Speaker 3 44 this year. So most of the time.

Speaker 2 We bumped it up.

Speaker 3 44. We bumped up.
That's the max under the CBA. We can play 44.
So last year it was hard to play that because it was an Olympic year and we had to break for the Olympics in the middle of our season.

Speaker 3 But this year, no international competition. We can comfortably play 44 without a footprint.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 So that's 22 home games. And then the playoffs,

Speaker 2 you're looking at.

Speaker 3 Playoffs this year. We have a little evolution as well.
The first round. So we're a 3-5-7 now.
First ever.

Speaker 2 You went seven? I missed that.

Speaker 3 seven yeah finals that's exciting seven games and bill you you came to that minnesota new york game um can you imagine that went full five games to overtime can you imagine if that has been a seven game and that was one of my goals is to get our finals to seven game series because sports leagues play seven game series like you're seeing in the nba right now So, and game sevens are one of the most exciting things, I think, in sports.

Speaker 3 So, we'll have seven games. And even our first round now will be 1-1-1 instead of 2-1.
So, So everybody will get a home game that makes the playoffs.

Speaker 3 So yeah, we're evolving that with the footprint we have.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 So before you took the job, you're looking back at the 2010s, which the WNBA was in such bad shape that Diana Taurasi, who's the best player in the history of the league, just decided to skip a season because it wasn't worth enough money for her.

Speaker 1 And she was making more money overseas. And it seemed bleak.
It seemed like a business that wasn't going to make it and that the NBA was basically subsidizing almost like a charity case.

Speaker 1 So, what flips over the last eight years other than Caitlin Clark? What are the big reasons? Because even before Caitlin came into the league,

Speaker 1 this was happening. So, style of play.

Speaker 1 What else do you think it was?

Speaker 3 Yeah, one of the things I looked at when I came in, I said, like, we need a strategy.

Speaker 3 We've set, I do everything in threes, Bill. So I said, we got to be player first,

Speaker 3 stakeholder success, including owners and players, et cetera, and fan engagement. We had to make it easier to be a fan.

Speaker 3 So we set off on this path, but that sat on a foundation called the game, which I thought had never been better, both at college and into the WMBA, the brand, which was really strong, the organization, team, and league, which were a total mess and we needed to transform and hire human capital.

Speaker 3 And then the ecosystem could think media companies, corporate partners, where less than 1% of all corporate partnership dollars in sports back in 2019 were going to women's sports and less than 5% of all media coverage going to sports was going to women's sports.

Speaker 3 So, what changed is this confluence that I was talking about of capital coming into the league, confidence building, valuations going up, higher demand, new facilities, better amenities.

Speaker 3 We did kind of what we called a historic CBA back in 2020. Now we're in another one, and we'll do something transformational this year.

Speaker 3 But it's a confluence of all that and this popularity of the game. I mean, basketball is the number one team sport in the United States, and it's number two globally.
So next to soccer.

Speaker 3 So it's really an amazing time to be in women's sports and then in women's basketball. So, but let's not, this has been really hard, hardest.
I mean, I spent 33 years before I came here in business.

Speaker 3 This has been the hardest five years

Speaker 3 because we had to, every rock we picked up, we had to transform something under it. And last year, my mantra was the bold will win, everything must change.

Speaker 3 And that was even before I knew Caitlin was even coming into the league. And then this year, it's sustaining sustaining gain.
So I always have a mantra every year.

Speaker 3 But we stick with this strategy, player first, stakeholder success, fan engagement. We've hired engineers, hired social media.
We had none of that. I had 12 people in the league when I joined.

Speaker 3 And we had no growth engine. And now we have 25 people driving growth at the league level.
We had one marketing person when I joined. Now we have close to 30 marketing people.

Speaker 3 I hired a CMO who was a long-term Nike.

Speaker 3 um professional so i mean it's just been a great lesson in you need financial capital to hire human capital, but you need the people to grow the business. So, we were ready.

Speaker 3 I didn't know this was coming as quickly as it did. I thought we need three or four more years than what happened last year with sellout arenas and record-breaking viewership.

Speaker 3 And look at our preseason this year, Bill. We just had like sold-out college arenas.
That was the other thing I wanted to, how do you get the NCAA viewer into the W viewership?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And one of the ways to go back to those college arenas, like we did

Speaker 3 with, you know, going to Iowa and Notre Dame, LSU, and then Sabrina and the Liberty will be playing in Oregon. So leading into the tip of the season.
So yeah, it's, it's, you know, just every idea.

Speaker 3 We can be bold. We're a smaller league, smaller brand, but we can be bold and really bring, bring what our fans want.
And we've been listening a lot.

Speaker 1 I would throw in two other things. One is the women's final for that Friday night on ESPN, especially.
that semifinals doubleheader.

Speaker 1 It felt like all this, and it was doing well, but it felt like something shifted with that, where that really became like a casual sports fan event, not just the real basketball fans, but everybody.

Speaker 1 And all of a sudden, those games seem to really matter. And then that becomes the feeder system.
The other thing, you had a couple of owners that actually gave a shit

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 1 looked at their franchises and their place in the league and tried to innovate. It seemed like the size with the

Speaker 1 Liberty, like what Mark Davis did with Las Vegas, with with

Speaker 1 what did he do, give away tickets for like three years to try to build

Speaker 2 support?

Speaker 3 They weren't given away, but they were cheap in the upper bulb.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But he was really trying to get people in the building to give a crap about it. And that seems like, you know, those are, those are, I think, two of the sterling leaders of the league now.

Speaker 1 But it seems like because the owners really cared. So it's almost like a neighborhood where once people start fixing up their house, then everybody feels like they have to fix up their house.

Speaker 3 And I think also it was like the confidence, like when I came into the league, the owners,

Speaker 3 which the size were just joining the league, Mark wasn't in the league yet. MGM owned the ACEs.
The owners were all in on something called a go big. So literally it was go big or go home.

Speaker 3 When I was interviewing for the world, go big or go home. So all the owners saw something in the future.
It was just, let's chart a path. Let's hire a commissioner.

Speaker 3 Let's hire great human capital to execute it. So I think that's when the size joined.
Mark joined a few years later.

Speaker 3 And then they had, you you know, Mark had a, you know, before he got there, he had a couple of great drafts with an AJ Wilson and a Jackie Young and,

Speaker 3 you know, a few others, you know, Chelsea Gray came from

Speaker 3 LA and free agency. And so I think that helps.
And it helps when you have those star players.

Speaker 3 New York attracted Graham Stewart and they had drafted Sabrina UNESCO, who had gotten hurt her rookie season in our bubble. So,

Speaker 3 and, you know, to your point about the NCAA also in the final four that Friday night, I mean, those are the big games of consequence.

Speaker 3 Like, how great is March Bandness on both the men's and women's side? Yeah, those are the huge games of consequence. And we have that shorter season.

Speaker 3 So, I would argue a lot of our games are games of consequence, even in the regular season.

Speaker 3 But then, when we get into the playoffs, you're going to see a lot of competitiveness, competition, a lot of parody this year leading into our playoffs in September and October when we crown the champion.

Speaker 1 So, you have the players union. There's going to be a CBA that you're going to have to negotiate with them.

Speaker 1 You have all this interest from all these people who are either buying franchises or already did, and the prices have gone way up. But yet the business model hasn't been proven to be successful yet.

Speaker 1 So you're still investing in it. It's still growing.
The attendance has gone way, way up the last couple of years.

Speaker 1 You're in this new media rights deal where I think you at least tripled what you were making before,

Speaker 1 but you're only still doing 44 games a year plus the playoffs. Also, you have...

Speaker 1 What's the

Speaker 1 thing you had where people bought in? They bought percentages of the teams. So you have like the syndicate that owns

Speaker 1 piece of the league. What is that?

Speaker 3 Yeah, just in the league, not teams. This was the thing I referred to in February of 22.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because we had no capital to go hire people to affect a digital transformation, a hire social media, getting people growing.

Speaker 1 So, what percentage was that?

Speaker 3 So, um, well, first of all, uh, half of our existing teams invested in it, um, so it was 16% altogether, but about six percent of that were existing investment investors like the size and the Seattle Group Group and Indiana,

Speaker 3 you know, Washington, Ted Leonces.

Speaker 3 So, so, so it was about 10% outside investors like Nike and Michael Dell and Condoleezza Rice and Swing Cash and Pal Casol and Baron Davis.

Speaker 3 So we opened it up to a broader group of diverse investors, Melody Hobbs and Gail King. Like we're really proud of what we did back then.

Speaker 3 And it served us well.

Speaker 3 I mean, we would not be where we are today, not even close without that capital and having deployed it against so many different things, including, you know, marketing, including we launched our first ever in-season competition.

Speaker 3 We have our Commissioner's Cup well before the NBA did it, as a nice little, you know, trial run for the NBA's Emirates Cup now.

Speaker 3 And again, we're just able to produce all of our preseason games. We weren't able to do that before.

Speaker 3 We just had this record-breaking game between the Indiana Fever and the Brazilian national team, a preseason game that averaged 1.3 million viewers on ESPN.

Speaker 3 And then our draft was the second most viewed ever, the most viewed compared to MLB and NHL in their history.

Speaker 3 So we're just, we're seeing the returns of that investment in a big way and the values of our teams going up. So that was that capital raise when you saw the people that came and invested.

Speaker 3 I think gave confidence to all of our owners to invest in their teams, which is driving their team values up. So I think it's, you know, a bit of a confidence builder.

Speaker 3 And, you know, capital and valuation is all about confidence in the business and what you're building here.

Speaker 3 And, you know, to your question about the point about the media deal, we're not even done yet. So that was our tranche one media deal,

Speaker 3 which actually was much more than triple,

Speaker 3 five to six times.

Speaker 1 It was five to six times. Okay.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So it's a, that was a 200 million AAV.
And we were going in with about 40.

Speaker 3 But well, by the time we're done with tranche two, because we still have plenty of inventory left to sell, hopefully we're aiming to be about 260 A of

Speaker 3 over many years. And that's the other thing.

Speaker 3 When you get a big piece of your revenue locked in at a huge number, I mean, this is actually pretty historic, or it is historic, our largest media deal in the history of women's sports.

Speaker 3 And as we know, and as you know better than anybody, Bill, the landscape's changing so quickly. Streamers are interested in us, they're interested in more year-round content.

Speaker 3 Partnering with the NBA, we can provide, we're the only two leagues that run counter that can provide over 320 days of live programming to a streamer.

Speaker 3 And so it was much more attractive to a Disney and Amazon and NBCU with Peacock for the W to

Speaker 3 be part of this historic deal. So

Speaker 3 we're excited about that. Starts next year, next season.
This year, we're still under our old deals.

Speaker 1 So you took that investment. It's almost like a like a startup business, that they were a startup

Speaker 1 doing like a round,

Speaker 1 getting people to invest, no different than if you had like a AI company or something. People buy in, use that money, throw it back in the league in all these different ways.
And it actually paid off.

Speaker 1 The part that, so it's funny, like this has come full circle almost where a lot of the good stuff that was happening for the WNBA the first 20 years solely happened because of the relationship with the NBA and basically Stern.

Speaker 1 pushing it being like, you have to show the NBA. It has to be on TV, like basically forcing the networks to take it as part of the NBA package.

Speaker 1 Now in this last deal, I was watching from afar going, would WNBA have been better off not being attached to the NBA at all?

Speaker 1 Would they have been better off being on their own, like doing their own thing just entirely?

Speaker 3 It's a little bit of an unknown thing. We already had our own deals.
We already had Amazon. We've had Amazon.
This will be our fourth year with Amazon. We have.
Scripts Ion. We have CBS.

Speaker 3 Those are three deals the NBA doesn't have. So everyone just assumes it's just the NBA deal.
It's not.

Speaker 3 But again, the beauty of going to market, at least for that first tranche of deals with the NBA, is that 320 plus days of live program. We're the only two leagues that can do that here in the U.S.

Speaker 3 And it paid huge dividends because otherwise we're a four and a half month season bill.

Speaker 3 And it's not as interesting to a streamer who's on a subscription plan with their subscribers every month, right? But you need to provide year-round content. That's why that was advantage.

Speaker 3 I mean, obviously, the NBA has been a huge supporter for a long time under David, who launched the league. now Adam, obviously.

Speaker 3 And I sit on the NBA senior leadership team, which is helpful, you know, because we can, you know, play off one another.

Speaker 3 And they've seen a huge now demand for the WMBA game and are always really helpful. We share some back office shared services.
But again, we've kind of,

Speaker 3 because of that, capital race, been able to hire a lot of people on our own and have our own sellers on the that side of things. But yeah, I mean, it's a huge advantage.

Speaker 3 There's a reason why we're the longest tenured women's professional sports league ready to enter season 29. And it's because, you know, we've had a big brother all along.

Speaker 1 Well, so how do you make sure you're not perceived as being too big yet? Because the next step for this is like charter plans for every team.

Speaker 1 Salary cap goes way up and

Speaker 1 things start happening financially that maybe don't capture where the league is economically.

Speaker 1 So you're the one in charge of balancing that, especially when you have a bunch of agents coming in, you have players who expect to be paid a certain way.

Speaker 1 I've seen some of the quotes already from people who play for the league who, you know, rightly want as much money as they could possibly make.

Speaker 3 Yes. And we want them to make as much money as they can make.
But

Speaker 3 keeping in mind the economic model we've been building. And I would say, you know,

Speaker 3 five, six years ago, we were like an infant. And you talked about it being viewed as a startup.
We were like an infant in our economic model, not in the game,

Speaker 3 our economic model. And now we like graduated to like a young adult.

Speaker 3 We kind kind of skipped our teen years and our tweeting years right and we graduated to a young adult but we still have a lot of growth ahead of us and it's not just the media deal driving growth and that's going to drive significant increases in player pay and you know last year we already did the charter program fully for all teams for the whole season of playoffs we had been chipping away each year we did it in the initially for the finals and we did it for all playoffs commissioners cup and I felt because I knew kind of where we were trending on the media deal that we would pay it forward and give the players charter last year

Speaker 3 from the So everybody got charter last year because two years ago that was a big that was everyone everyone we did it in between collective bargaining so we interested it because I felt very confident in the fact that we could get to 2026 and the new media rights deals and I knew where we were trending that we would essentially pay it forward and do it sooner than the next collective bargaining cycle.

Speaker 3 So that's done. Our corporate partners have stepped up in a huge way.
We just signed Ally Financial. They're going to do a rivals week.
They're going to innovate inside the partnership.

Speaker 3 We have Google and Nike and Deloitte and AT ⁇ T and CarMax and so many others and American Express. So, I mean, we're in such good shape, but we still have a lot of low-hanging fruit growth global.

Speaker 3 I mean, Bill, if you ask me what's next, Kathy, after expansion and all this and CBA, it's global. I mean, there's...

Speaker 3 I mean, when I was at the State Department a couple of years ago, they said like one of the number one requests they get from embassies is for women basketball players from the WNBA to come to those embassies and show young girls that they could be professional athletes and leaders in their communities.

Speaker 3 So, there's so much up to the best.

Speaker 1 So, do you think, could you see a world where there's almost like what they're talking about in the NBA, where there's a European version of the league and there's some sort of

Speaker 1 you WNBA season happens, that season happens, and then there's like a world finals.

Speaker 2 Is that like in play down the road?

Speaker 3 Obviously, kind of tested Canada as our first outside the U.S. We love to play preseason games around the world.
That's part of our plan.

Speaker 3 And whether that's in Europe, Asia, Africa, longer term, host cities on the list, there's a lot of cities that would like us to come and have an exhibition or a regular season game.

Speaker 3 This year, we're playing our first ever regular season game outside the U.S. in Vancouver.

Speaker 3 I know that might not sound like a big deal, but this is a regular season game that the Atlanta Dream will actually host the Seattle Storm up in Vancouver.

Speaker 3 And we've seen huge success selling out in Edmonton and Toronto on preseason games. So

Speaker 3 the sky's the limit globally. We just want to make sure we have the right global footprint first.

Speaker 3 Nike just took Sabrina UNESCO over to Asia. She went to China and Hong Kong and I think the Philippines.

Speaker 3 And so, you know, that kind of, if you remember, Bill, what happened with the NBA when they brought Kobe there and Stefan Marbury? We've built huge businesses

Speaker 3 and huge followership in Asia.

Speaker 3 And so I think we'll, you know, look at that playbook a little bit and make sure we're bringing our game to markets.

Speaker 3 I mean, we showed our games in India a couple of years ago and 24 million unique viewers watched our games in India. And we didn't have one player from India in the WNBA.
So

Speaker 3 lots of upside globally for us.

Speaker 1 So you have to figure out the CBA, what's the timeline for the next deal?

Speaker 3 The timeline is by the end of the year. So I feel really good.
We've already been having meetings. I feel really good that we'll get something transformational done together.

Speaker 3 And you know, the players will posture in the media. But as as I said on draft night, we're not going to negotiate in the media.
We're going to negotiate across the table.

Speaker 3 And we're going to return as much as we possibly can, with keeping in mind the financial viability of the league for many decades to come. And I think the players will want that too.

Speaker 1 All right. So here's my big nitpick.

Speaker 1 I hate that these games go against NFL on Sundays, like huge

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 busy mailing.

Speaker 2 I know you said that.

Speaker 3 I know we've discussed that on the you know, I threw out that stat about the about the Golden State Valkyries only having less than 5% of the fans that were season ticket holders that were Golden State Warrior fans.

Speaker 3 The actual, you know, look, the footprint is challenging. It's a Rubik's Cubes, Arena Valuability, Broadcast Windows.
We got to do mate, October.

Speaker 3 And I realize that goes into both the college football season. So we generally don't play on Saturdays and it goes into the NFL season for sure.

Speaker 3 Although, we ironically get a weird pickup in viewership on Sundays when we.

Speaker 1 Well, so that was the counter. You guys actually did really well going against football.
It was like this almost like an alternative football audience.

Speaker 2 People are at home.

Speaker 3 If the one o'clock game, a lot of times we play at three o'clock Eastern, the one o'clock game's close to over by then or the score or whatever. People will turn on ABC or ESPN.

Speaker 3 We do really well on ABC because we have a more lifestyle viewer. And I think our crossover, we get a lot of fan data.
That was the one thing, Bill, when I came in the league.

Speaker 3 We had no, I go, who's our fan? And everybody looked at me like, what?

Speaker 3 So now, again, we have data analysts and data scientists and, you know, fan acquisition and insight, like insight people who will take our fan data and give me insights off of that.

Speaker 3 And one of the insights was: I think that we only have 20% crossover with NFL fans. So only 20% of NFL fans are also WMBA fans.
Now, we would like more of them.

Speaker 3 So we'll have our Taylor Swift someday, right?

Speaker 3 Because we skew a little more women than the men's leagues do. And so,

Speaker 3 you know, I think we're working on ways to bring in more fans, whether it's from other men's professional sports or women's or whatever.

Speaker 3 But that was an aha when I saw we're only 20%. Yet it's like 60-some percent NBA fans are also WNBA fans.
So,

Speaker 3 you know, so it's a much bigger percentage. So not to compete against the NBA or college basketball is more important to me than

Speaker 3 like, I don't even view it as competing against the NFL because we have a whole different fan base.

Speaker 3 But we get a little lift on those Sundays when we play games. I know a lot of people don't think so, but we do.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, the other challenge seems to be you're basically like the matriarch of this family and you want all the kids to get shine in all these different ways.

Speaker 1 But then you've also stumbled into this phenomenon in Caitlin that's like a once-a-decade thing. Like the last time it really happened in sports was probably Steph Curry in 2014, right?

Speaker 1 When the when the Warriors thing really started taking off and you could just feel the energy shift. I remember going to a Warriors game the

Speaker 1 year before the 73 win season and just get in there early because I want to see media people. And there were people were in the arena just to, in case he was still going to be there for warm-ups.

Speaker 1 I was like, ah, this is, this is like different. This has not happened for a while.

Speaker 1 You have this now with Caitlin. So how, how do you balance pushing her versus like making sure? Like Asia Wilson, her shoe just sold out in five minutes.

Speaker 1 So it's not like some of the other players aren't doing well. But how do you balance making sure you're not just too focused on her?

Speaker 1 And, but you also don't want to not focus on her not enough, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, it is a balance, but she's a generational talent.

Speaker 3 No league is ever about one player, but in this case, Caitlin brought tens of millions of new viewers into the W, and there's no denying that impact. Not just in the WNBA, but the world of sports.

Speaker 3 Adam and I talk all the time about she's the most popular athlete in America.

Speaker 3 You know, she went to an LPGA tournament for a pro-am on a Wednesday and like throngs of people were out there to watch her. You know, I was at the Masters last year when she was in the final four.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I counted like 19 Caitlin Clark shirts of people walking around the Masters.

Speaker 2 So it's crazy.

Speaker 1 Like I said on a pod, I think she's the most popular under 30 team sport athlete we have.

Speaker 1 Now that Mahomes is 30, I think anyone under 30, I think she has anyone in any sport at this point, just from

Speaker 2 recognizability.

Speaker 3 Just turned 23. So she is hugely popular.

Speaker 3 But again, you do want to balance it because obviously you saw what happened with Juju Watkins, you know,

Speaker 3 you want to balance making sure that you're also promoting your other stars, like an Asia Wilson,

Speaker 3 like a Breonna Stewart. Nafisa Collier killed it last year.
I mean, she was the runner-up, MVP, and the defensive player of the year.

Speaker 1 I loved her.

Speaker 2 I thought she was awesome.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and she's a great person.

Speaker 1 She gotten a couple of calls in the finals. I thought she could have gotten some superstar calls.

Speaker 2 I was upset about it.

Speaker 3 She's a mom and a role model for so many. So,

Speaker 3 yeah, so I think, again,

Speaker 3 that's why this year's sustain and gain, sustain the momentum we had last year and gain even new viewers.

Speaker 3 Because if you look at, I mean, we're up triple digits in every category and every demographic and young people, old people, young girls and boys were having watch parties and watching our games.

Speaker 3 So it was incredible.

Speaker 2 So how's the gambling?

Speaker 1 If the gambling comes, that's when you really know when the, when they, because I know like Fandel was saying, they actually had.

Speaker 1 like real interest, especially as it went to the playoffs.

Speaker 2 So that's like a whole other, a whole other, like that's what you know you're doing. Okay.

Speaker 3 There There already is a lot of legalized sports betting on the WPA.

Speaker 3 And, you know, one of the things last year on our tip-off night, happened to be a Tuesday night last year, not a Friday night because of the Olympic break and we had to push everything in.

Speaker 3 But we competed on ESPN 2 against the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs and outrated it. And Sam Duel said the handle on the W was the highest in the month of May last year

Speaker 3 of any sport. So

Speaker 3 it was incredible.

Speaker 3 So yeah, that's another like if you think about innovation about watch and bet and bet and watch and why do people watch sports they watch for rivalries they watch for compelling content and yeah some of the sports bettors watch because they bet the game yeah caitlin five plus threes with indiana to win part yeah that's that's just where we are with some sports viewership at this point did you but i know like i became an nfl fan because i had five brothers and i started playing fantasy football right

Speaker 3 and so i knew i had tim brown i'll never forget it and you know i had this was way back um And so that, that caused me then to watch games. So same thing here.

Speaker 3 I think more people are coming to watch the game from that, from that fan segment, we call it.

Speaker 1 So you're kind of stuck with your schedule now, going May, October. There's no way to go to 50 games.
It's just too hard with the basketball playoffs.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 3 the problem is every other year we have an international competition. So next year it'll be the FIBA World Cup.
Then two years after that, we have LA 28, which we love.

Speaker 3 I mean, the Olympics are, I mean, the fact that the women won eight consecutive gold medals, the U.S.

Speaker 3 women's national basketball team, and they're going for their ninth all-time record in LA is amazing. So we have to support those international competitions.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I can definitely see us going to 50. I don't know what it's collectively bargained.
So right now the max is 44.

Speaker 3 And, you know, the question is, do we want to go into November and cross over with the NBA and college basketball? And then.

Speaker 3 Because there's not much, people don't understand. There's not much you can do on the front end because

Speaker 3 we love the college draft.

Speaker 1 we love the rookies a lot of rookies well you're also you have the college season ends like april 4th left

Speaker 3 yeah we can't start it much earlier i mean again in a year like last year like caitlin gets goes to the final gate and gets drafted the following monday night as in training camp the following sunday she was and it she was luggage for the first month of the season like that was that was pretty hard playing since she was four years old or whatever and things did it break so um so again this year we had a little more time we had like two and a half weeks between the draft and opening of training camp.

Speaker 3 But yeah, it's a challenge on the front end. You can't move it too much forward if you want the rookies to come in, which we do because

Speaker 3 it's a great feeder system for us, as you said. And then so we'll look at the back end and how far can we go and how many NFL and college football Saturdays can we go into?

Speaker 3 And we'll evaluate all that under the CBA.

Speaker 1 You know, it's interesting, the WMA is actually good for fantasy.

Speaker 1 You just made me think of that when you were talking before about the football fantasy, because NBA fantasy stinks now because the season's too long and all the injuries and guys go.

Speaker 1 And it's just like, there's no rhyme or reason to it. And I was like an original, I was playing fantasy basketball in the 80s.
WNBA is actually because the shorter season

Speaker 1 works better. Now you got my brains turning.

Speaker 3 Yeah, ESPN does have a product. They have a ESPN fantasy league women's for the WNBA, women's basketball, it's called.
Yeah, so they do have one just, I think, the last two years or so.

Speaker 2 Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1 All right. Sounds like everything's going good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Bill. Five years for you, four years, five years.

Speaker 1 What is it?

Speaker 3 It'll be six years in July. So the first year was all blur because it was COVID.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 We forget COVID was like right, you know, right?

Speaker 3 You know, not that long ago, but seems like forever ago.

Speaker 3 So yeah, I feel like so the first year really during COVID, that's when I handed Asia Wilson her first MVP and now three-time MVP with her own shoe.

Speaker 3 Oh, the other thing, Bill, that's been amazing to watch from where I sit is when I joined the league, not one player had a significant endorsement with a big brand, except for maybe their sneaker brand, but they weren't big.

Speaker 3 And now there's almost a commercial break in any major sport where you're not seeing the WNBA player in the commercial spot.

Speaker 3 It's pretty cool to watch, whether it's CarMax, whether it's ATT, Delta now on the seat back on a Delta plane. They filmed a commercial with three of our players, Stewie and Nikka Gumikay.

Speaker 3 And it's just incredible what brands have done to step up to support these players too, individually. Like we have league deals with them, but we also have, they also have personal endorsements now.

Speaker 3 And so that's been a great part about the growth of the league. And I always said if 80% of every household consumer purchasing decision in the U.S.

Speaker 3 is made or influenced by a woman, why wouldn't you endorse a WNBA player?

Speaker 1 Well, they missed the boat with Taurasic because she's the best.

Speaker 2 I do.

Speaker 2 I can't believe they, she's the absolute best.

Speaker 3 Yeah, she's the goat. and she got voted the goat in our 20s.

Speaker 2 But also, cool.

Speaker 1 Like, she's she's a great hang. She's just cool.
Like, I don't, I never understood that one.

Speaker 3 I know. And now I think, God, if I was the commissioner 20 years ago,

Speaker 1 she should have been more famous. I need a team this year.
Last year, I had the Lynx because I bet on them halfway through the season, almost, almost pulled it off. But this year, because

Speaker 1 Boston doesn't have a team yet.

Speaker 2 So I just.

Speaker 3 Look at Phoenix, look at Seattle, look at obviously Indy has really

Speaker 1 I think I might bet I might bandwagon it and just bet on the fever to win the win the title. Just jump right on there.

Speaker 3 But yeah, no, that's he, our free agency this year, Bill, it's another thing that changed in the CBA. Our free agency was a lot better this year than I thought.

Speaker 3 But next year, fasten your seatbelt, 80% of the veterans in this league will be free agents.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 3 And we'll run two expansion drafts.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 one expansion draft, but for two teams.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's right.

Speaker 3 It's going to be crazy. It's going to be crazy.

Speaker 3 And that'll be our 30th season, Bill. So really looking forward to that.

Speaker 1 Well, congrats. You guys are in great shape.

Speaker 1 Thanks for coming on. I'm glad you're doing well.

Speaker 1 Don't expand too fast.

Speaker 2 All right. Settle the CBA.
Settle the NBA.

Speaker 2 Keep the league going. All right.

Speaker 1 Good to see you. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 3 All right. Thanks, Bill.
Anytime in a game.

Speaker 1 All right. That's it for the podcast.
Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo. Thanks to Kathy Engelbert for joining us.
Thanks to my old friend Dave Jacobi. Love that that guy.
Great to have him aboard. And

Speaker 1 I'm going to be back in 24 hours after OKC and Denver Game 6. You can watch it live on YouTube on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel.
I'll see you 24 hours.

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