A Clips-Nuggets Slugfest, Brunson’s Heroics, Best 2025 TV Shows and NBA Then and Now With Rob Mahoney, Joanna Robinson and Bob Ryan

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Coming up, we're going to talk NBA playoffs, television, and historical NBA.

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Speaker 1 Put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did someone to watch over me.
It was a one for us, for me, and Chris Ryan. We have a massive movie coming on Monday.
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Speaker 1 You can go to the Bill Simmons YouTube channel as well, where we have all the videos, stuff from the last six, seven years. This podcast, so

Speaker 1 I'm taping this before I went to Clippers Nuggets game six, which we're going to talk about with Rob Mahoney. We're going to talk about Nick's Pistons as well.
Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 1 his podcast partner on Prestige TV. She came on with me to talk about the year in TV so far because it's been awesome.
We tried to do do as unspoilery a conversation as we possibly could.

Speaker 1 And then, last but not least, the great Bob Ryan. I wanted to talk about a whole bunch of historical NBA stuff, 2025 versus guys from the past.
So he graciously came on. We talked hoops.

Speaker 1 So it's a big, big podcast. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.

Speaker 1 All right, recording the top part of the pod. It's a little after 10 o'clock Pacific time.
I just drove back from the Clippers Nuggets Game 6, which was quite an affair. Rob Mahoney is here.

Speaker 1 Clippers dominated the entire game. James Harden was magnificent for three quarters.
He was.

Speaker 1 It looked like they were about to put the game away seven times and it was just going to go into the 17, 18, 19 range.

Speaker 1 I was going to be able to drive home with six minutes left and start recording the pod with you. And then all of a sudden, the Nuggets were within nine and they were within six.

Speaker 1 And the PTSD kicked in. New arena, new energy,

Speaker 1 really good team. It didn't matter.
The crowd got fucking nervous and you could feel it. And I was getting flashbacks to 10 years ago, that Rockets game when

Speaker 1 they blew that 19-point lead. And they survived it mostly thanks to like a crazy Russell Westbrook play.

Speaker 1 A couple of them. How many excruciating layups is Russell Westbrook going to miss this season?

Speaker 1 I went with my friend Mike, who I shared tickets with him. We decided he was the MVP of the game because he did good stuff for both teams.

Speaker 1 Everybody had a positive interaction with him. It's true.
Our guy balances the ledger. He knows what he's doing out there.
So I'll tell you what I saw in person, but what did you see on TV?

Speaker 1 What jumped out to you i think the hardened elements for sure but also like this felt very much like the nick batum game a game in which batum completely changed the energy completely changed the strategy tylu finally pulled the plug on some of chris dunn's minutes in the second half which the series had been kind of building to that point over the last three games or so to be honest with you it felt a little inevitable but once it happened you could just You could feel everything the Nuggets were trying to accomplish.

Speaker 1 It seemed uphill from that point, just from having Nick Batum on the floor. It was crazy.
I don't think Chris Dunn played in the second half.

Speaker 1 Uh, a lot of the people in my section had been calling for this for a while, just basically go bigger, longer.

Speaker 1 But the thing I wasn't expecting was Batum had a bunch of reps on Jokic defending him. Now,

Speaker 1 we were playing Blood Sport Rules tonight. I don't know if you noticed.
I think there were less than 30 fouls total, and it was the same both ways. So, that was just how it was going.

Speaker 1 I went to the Laker game yesterday. I think there was close to 50 fouls in that game, and everything was a foul.
This game, nothing was a foul. And everyone knew it.

Speaker 1 And Jokic, who was getting mauled every time he had the ball, but he was also mauling other people. There was a couple of plays where he was just shoving batoon backwards.

Speaker 1 He was shoving guys in the back to get rebounds.

Speaker 1 Like every, it was just full-on warfare, which I would think would benefit the Nuggets, but I thought the Clippers, with their size and their, and, you know, their physicality kept up with it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you would think so.

Speaker 1 But honestly, I think when you allow them to be that handsy and that physical, this is the kind of series where if the Clippers can control the glass and specifically keep the nuggets off the offensive glass for long stretches, it feels like they're in control of these games.

Speaker 1 Like they're going to win the turnover battle so handily just by the nature of how they play and how Denver plays.

Speaker 1 If you can keep the nuggets from clawing back possessions through any other means, you're going to be in pretty good shape to win the game.

Speaker 1 And so that's one area where the physicality really pays off, not just, you know, battling Jokic to keep him off the offensive glass, but bumping and holding Aaron Gordon, bumping and holding Christian Brown, like bumping and holding Russell Westbrook, frankly.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Hardin comes out and you see it immediately where game five, he was terrible. Game six, he's doing that accelerator thing that he has.
Yeah. Where it's the herky jerky, I'm going, I'm stopping now.

Speaker 1 I'm going again. And he just had he was yo-yoing a bunch of the Nuggets defenders.
And so he's playing well and Kawhi is playing well. And I think they both ended up with almost 60 points combined.

Speaker 1 Usually they're pretty hard to beat if both of those guys are going. But he watched in Harden just toasting everybody in the nuggets.
And it's like,

Speaker 1 just why don't you do this more often? And then what you realize is he had about 90 minutes of him. And by the fourth quarter, that acceleration thing, it wasn't there anymore.

Speaker 1 And Denver had him figured out. A lot of slow possessions, reminiscent of my Celtics.

Speaker 1 Just a lot of like killing the shot clock so you can get a terrible shot with three seconds left, like a corner three with a hand in the face. And the nuggets kind of clawed back.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think what to take away big picture, especially after going to two of these games.

Speaker 1 And I really do think the Clippers are slightly better, and I don't think that's going to mean they're going to win the series. It does not.

Speaker 1 But I would say if it's three to three right now, but it's like 3.3 to 2.7.

Speaker 1 I think the Nuggets have to be super pumped that they have a game seven at home because I don't think they've played that well as a team.

Speaker 1 They've certainly had their moments and they've had stretches where they felt really good and felt like they were clicking and playing their style. This game ultimately did not feel that way.

Speaker 1 Like, they're still walking the line in so many respects between Jokic being as aggressive as he needs to be to dominate some of these matchups, and particularly when the zone is out there, when Batum is guarding him, ordinarily when Ben Simmons is guarding him, although now he's kind of out of the series, he's gone.

Speaker 1 R.I.P., RIP, Ben Simmons, Chris Dunn, R.I.P. He had a good run.

Speaker 1 But those are possessions Jokic just has to bulldoze his way and brute force his way into baskets because ultimately the Clippers are going to play off Russ if he's out there on the floor.

Speaker 1 They're going to shrink the floor around him, but take away the passing lanes. And so Jokic is going to have to create tough baskets in crowds in a lot of these situations.

Speaker 1 And he has to do that against Zoo too. And for all due credit, Zoo came up with some monster stops down the stretch of this game.

Speaker 1 Game saving plays on the defensive end with all of that contact we've talked about, but he knew the prescription. Like he knew what this game allowed and he played it to a T.
Well, it was interesting.

Speaker 1 It seemed like they were going to bench him down the stretch. I mean, but we were watching.
But he was that good, honestly. It was crazy to think about.
And we were watching on the bench.

Speaker 1 It was five, it was like five minutes left. There's a timeout, and but and Zoo wasn't coming back in.
And we were, we were like, wow, he's he's pissed. Like, he can't believe he's not coming back in.

Speaker 1 And then I think the Nuggets scored once, and Tylu was like, all right, get back in. And then he made some big plays down the stretch.

Speaker 1 But I think this batoon piece is a really nice wrinkle for them on the road in a game seven because a couple things in their favor. One, Denver lost a game seven at home last year, right?

Speaker 1 It was a year ago. Two,

Speaker 1 they're a six-man team, maybe six and a half. I've actually kind of enjoyed the DeAndre Jordan just couple coffee minutes.

Speaker 1 I think I've actually been pretty effective, but it's a six and a half man team. And the six-man is Westbrook, who giveth and taketh every single game.

Speaker 1 And I do think if Hardin and Kawhi play really well, if they stumbled into something or this batoon thing, this is a team that could win on the road. And then you think the other hand,

Speaker 1 you're trusting James Harden in an elimination game seven. That's the catch, right? And this is where I struggled to determine down the stretch of this game in the fourth quarter, as you mentioned.

Speaker 1 The acceleration wasn't there for Hardin, the pace he was playing with, just the downhill determination to blow by whoever was in front of him was not there.

Speaker 1 Is that because he's James Harden at this age, at this point in his career, and he doesn't always have it all the time through every game?

Speaker 1 Or was that them playing playing the clock basically and trying to coast out a marginal lead against you know a run that the like specifically jokic was pushing the ball up court and they were starting to create some pressure and were they just trying to drain too much clock i couldn't quite tell which one was going on to be honest with you my take would be he's like a pitcher who could get about six innings maybe six and two thirds But I thought the fourth quarter, I thought he wore down a little bit.

Speaker 1 He's making some weird decisions. Like they, you know, they, the Nuggets had gotten a stop.
I think there was like a minute and a half left.

Speaker 1 And they inbound the ball and Harden dribbles right into a double team. And Tylu has to burn a timeout.
It was like, you could see the double team coming seven miles away.

Speaker 1 And he just kind of fog-headedly went into it.

Speaker 1 Right across half court, too. Like literally the worst place to be here.

Speaker 1 And he had a, he had a couple of those down the stretch where you're thinking, like, is this just an old guy who's feeling the miles of the game?

Speaker 1 Or is this the James Harden stuff we've been watching for his whole career in big spots? Now, Kawhi, on the other hand, has come through in a ton of big spots.

Speaker 1 And I think he had a couple, I got this moments. But really, this, the Clippers, that, that corner three, which Dunn couldn't make, I think it was 0 for 3.

Speaker 1 And then Batum and Derrick Jones together, I don't know what they finished with, but I looked at one of the timeouts and they were, I think, 4 for 10.

Speaker 1 And those four threes they hit were the difference basically in the game, right? If they're two for 10 or 1 for 10, I think the Nuggets probably pulled this up. The other thing,

Speaker 1 it was a Michael Porter Jr. Milk Carton game.
It was like, is he out there? Oh, no, there he is. It was one of those.
And they finally yanked him and Russ got all his crunch time minutes.

Speaker 1 It felt like they were trying to get him going in the second half. And you just could see, like, it was one of his classic no-show games, like in game one.

Speaker 1 He was probably due for one at this point in the series, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1 But the, the threes, like, yeah, Derrick Jones is not going to hit every night in the same way that Chris Dunn won't hit every night and may not even be in the rotation anymore.

Speaker 1 Batuma would expect to.

Speaker 1 But more importantly, I think the possessions that led to those threes and led to so many, I would say, kind of like random clippers baskets where these like chaotic offensive rebound tipped by Zoo bounces off three guys' hands, goes through a crowd, and ends up with a random clipper.

Speaker 1 Those plays can seem really fluky, but when you're the team playing with as much effort as the Clippers are playing with and you're as engaged and you're flying around the court, like it felt like they were quicker to those balls in part because they didn't have to push it the other way.

Speaker 1 So they can fight for it in a different way than the Nuggets can. But I thought they just turned up every single one of those plays that they needed to.

Speaker 1 And then when you look at the total sum of all of them, that's like a 15-point swing in this game, ultimately, right?

Speaker 1 Like the, the, the Russ missed layup coming down on the other end and ending up in a Norm Powell three, what should have been a four-point game as a nine-point game. That's it right there.

Speaker 1 Like the chaos of these games decides them. And there's a real whole, I said this Sunday, too.
There's a real home court with the Clippers that I just can't believe exists. I know.

Speaker 1 You know, and it's not going to swing a game. Like they lost game four at home.

Speaker 1 It's not like it was deciding the game, but there's a real energy and when you know that the crowd really likes norm powell and

Speaker 1 he gets going yeah as they should but when he hits a couple it's like an electric shock for the crowd like they're really really and you and that's probably when they get the most excited and then the other one is kawaii will have a couple moments his stretches where he just like he'll hit like three shots in a row or he'll hit like two shots and get a steal and block it and he'll just take over the game for like three minutes and i think the crowd now has a sense for when that's happening now on the flip side you know, I think Jokic had maybe 18 in the first half and finished with 25, but it's just continually terrifying.

Speaker 1 At top of the key, whatever sort of, and they're sending one guy, they're sending two guys, but tombs just standing behind him, just whacking him on the side. I always felt like he was going to score.

Speaker 1 So when every time he didn't score, they turned the ball over or blocked it, felt like almost a miracle. I think in Denver,

Speaker 1 I don't know if they're getting some of those,

Speaker 1 some of those mauling calls on Jokic.

Speaker 1 And maybe that's where you don't get some of the Clipper role players delivering in quite the same way.

Speaker 1 Like when you were saying, you know, the Clippers are so hard to beat when Kawhi and Harden are both clicking at a high level. Obviously true, clearly true.

Speaker 1 Part of the reason it's true is because then it relieves the pressure. So only one of, say, Norm Powell and Zubats have to be a big-time scorer, right?

Speaker 1 It's taking some of the edge off those guys where they can just kind of fill it roll. You go on the road.

Speaker 1 Let's say Harden and Kawhi play well again, but now all of a sudden all of the role player shots are tougher. Maybe the threes aren't coming quite so frequently.

Speaker 1 Like, that's that's one of the trade-offs that just is really, really tough with roadplay, especially in a game seven.

Speaker 1 And we're about to get a game seven with two of the best postseason performers in modern playoff history, in Kawhi and Jokic, in particular.

Speaker 1 So, whatever reservations we may have about Hardin or Michael Porter Jr. or whoever else is involved in the series, I'm fucking psyched for it.
I can't wait.

Speaker 1 Well, this was the dream for a bunch of different reasons, especially we would not have had basketball on Saturday. It's true.
Group chat depends on that game seven.

Speaker 1 How did that shake out that way? There are no contingency plans there where we're just not going to have games on Saturday, May 3rd, or whatever day that is. That was a thing that was going to happen.

Speaker 1 So the over-under on that game on FanDuel, I always love game sevens, and I think this is going to keep going down. I think the over today was 213.

Speaker 1 The over for game seven is 204.5. And I bet that goes under 200.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because game sevens, game sevens rock fights tense slows down people don't really take chances in the same way every single thing is careful careful ugly you're not getting Derrick Jones hitting four threes in the in the corner you're not getting any of that stuff and you know it'll a lot of it will depend on how much they're letting both teams get away with I think the more they officiate the game, the better that probably is for Denver because of the way Jokic plays.

Speaker 1 Do you think either of these teams is better than Minnesota from what you've seen for two weeks? Great question.

Speaker 1 Now, the Minnesota thing is interesting because the Lakers just might be this like incredibly flawed team that made Minnesota look really good. They have no center.

Speaker 1 They don't really have a point guard. They had Luca gets hurt halfway through game five and just can't guard anybody or bounce off anybody.
I thought, I really thought he was a little compromised.

Speaker 1 LeBron wore out, I think, after four games. And Minnesota might not be as good as they looked last night.
Who do you, if you had to rank the three, how would you rank them?

Speaker 1 I think I might put the Clippers as the best of the three, even still. I would too.
Yeah. But it's, it's very, very close.

Speaker 1 And then there's also the question of like, are we talking about head-to-head in a series versus sort of in a more abstract universal sense? Ceiling upside, yeah.

Speaker 1 Ceiling upside, I think the Clippers are the most versatile of these teams.

Speaker 1 I think their defense can be as good as Minnesota's defense can be, but they have some qualities in terms of their half-court offense that feel even a little bit more stable to me and a little less matchup dependent, right?

Speaker 1 So I think there's just some things with the Clippers that I really, really like. And I love Ty Lou pulling the levers behind all of those things.

Speaker 1 Like I trust the flexibility of that roster and I trust the people making the decisions, even though one of them is James Harden in a game seven. Right.

Speaker 1 Well, and they, I like how they adjust in a game and in a series, right? They'll try four, five, six things. They'll change rotations, not in a panicky way.

Speaker 1 Like, all right, we gave Ben Simmons a whirl and he shot an air ball that went sideways and we're not going to see him anymore now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Um, Chris Dunn, they're just begging, they're leaving him open by 10 feet. Like when it's 10 feet, maybe it's time to get somebody else.

Speaker 1 But I do think they have two lineups that I think really work in a muck it up game seven. One was that one we saw tonight where they just went long, right, with Batum.

Speaker 1 The shortest guy was Harden out of everybody that was out there. And then that other one was that one they played.
near the end of game four with the shooters when they did the zone.

Speaker 1 And it was just the all-offense lineup with Bugdanovich. Yeah.
And I think they have their typical lineup, but I think they have two levers to pull if the game gets weird.

Speaker 1 Whereas the Nuggets, it's basically like, let's throw in Westbrook and just kind of see what happens. It's like watching somebody light fireworks in their backyard.

Speaker 1 It's like, just don't try not to hit the house. Please don't shoot the tree.

Speaker 1 Please don't. Just please shoot this up in the air.

Speaker 1 And he's their fireworks guy. Other than that, they don't have a lot of moves.
It's like, is Jamal Murray going to have it? Is Michael Porter going to show up? Are we going to get good Michael Porter?

Speaker 1 They don't really know what they're getting.

Speaker 1 can I talk out of both sides of my mouth about this a little bit yeah uh I think the Clippers are the better team and I think they're going to lose in game seven

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 1 things working against them road team game seven

Speaker 1 james hardened a huge game yep um jokic is the best player in the series although kawaii maybe he has something to say about that um

Speaker 1 The fact that Porter was so bad today makes me think he's going to be good in game seven because that's basically what we saw in the game four that i went to on uh on saturday where he was awesome and rebounding and playing with a ton of athleticism so i went i bet they were going to subtly call him out and challenge him and i really like the way murray is moving and and just looks in general like yeah if he had played this way uh in the in the summer olympics i think canada would have won the gold medal it was he did the opposite but they've been they've been trying to get him to play that way in the olympics for a long time right i don't i would the ship's probably so I don't think that's going to happen.

Speaker 1 But I will say this Clippers' win is particularly impressive in that way because Jamal came out hot.

Speaker 1 He was scorching right from the jump. And it's hard in those Jamal Murray games to then put him back in the box to kind of tamp down

Speaker 1 his sort of fire starter scoring. And I thought they really got a handle on him.

Speaker 1 They made him into more of a passer in a way that, yeah, opened up some shots for other people, but ultimately took some of the momentum out of the Nuggets offense. So big picture legacy, Steph.

Speaker 1 Let's do a little legacy. Pre-game seven legacy? Yeah, a whiff of a legacy here.

Speaker 1 Jokic losing two game sevens at home in back-to-back years when he's the best player in the world would not be great. Not awesome.

Speaker 1 The nuggets blowing two game sevens at home in a row is a pulsating sign that something now needs to happen.

Speaker 1 Right? They lose this. It's like now something, now we have to do something.
Somebody has to go. That sign has already been lit, I think.
It's already been pulsating.

Speaker 1 You know, we've, we've, I think we've been there for a little while. It's pulsating, but I'm not sure it's on 24 hours a day.
I don't think it's like a diner sign. No.

Speaker 1 A fluorescent diner sign, but I think it does pop on. But yeah, there's multiple guys, I would wonder.
Yes. And if you, even if you work back for keepers, it's basically just Jokic, Murray, and Brown.

Speaker 1 And then you could tell me.

Speaker 1 anyone else on the team who knows.

Speaker 1 And I think Gordon's a keeper, but I think he would be the trade piece if you were going to blow it up.

Speaker 1 That is fair. I think that was kind of my hesitation point as you were saying that.
It's like Aaron Gordon, Mr. Nugget, like he is part of the DNA of that team.

Speaker 1 He's also, you know, per the conversation you were having with Zach the other day about like Draymond as an amplifier. I think Aaron Gordon is a terrific amplifier.

Speaker 1 Like he turns the Murray Jokic pick and roll into a three-man action, like really triangulate some interesting stuff out of it.

Speaker 1 His ability to work the baseline, work out of the dunker spot, but also out of the corners, also kind of turning around like random junk offense is really one of the only reasons the the Nuggets are alive in this series at this point.

Speaker 1 And so, like, I think they would be very hesitant to trade that away, to say nothing of the world that he gives you on defense in terms of his effort and versatility on that end. So, pretty important.

Speaker 1 They have four keepers. That's a pretty tough,

Speaker 1 tough team to change because now we are just in the pure Michael Porter Jr. trade machine era and no, really, no other lovers.
Zeke Najee?

Speaker 1 I don't think the market for Zeke is robust

Speaker 1 in all due respect to him.

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Coming back, Nick's Pistons.

Speaker 1 So I was in the car, not realizing that Beyonce was playing at SoFi tonight, right next to the Clipper game, and it took an hour and a half to get to a Clipper game.

Speaker 1 And my plan was to watch the fourth quarter on my phone at the Clipper game, and I could not do that. But I was listening on Sirius.
And just kind of playing off the announcers.

Speaker 1 And it was the Detroit Pistons announcers who were very, very excited. And

Speaker 1 Jalen Brunson did it again. So, what did you see? Because I unfortunately could not watch the game with my eyes.
I could hear it. I couldn't watch it.
What did you see?

Speaker 1 Do you feel better or worse about the Knicks after tonight? I mean, better because they won by the skin of their teeth. Better because Jalen Brunson is an amazing crunch time performer.

Speaker 1 The fact that... So have you seen that play? I assume you've seen the highlight.
Yeah, I saw the highlight. I watched it halftime.

Speaker 1 Genuinely unbelievable how much space Jalen Brunson creates off of pure torque and crossover against one of the best perimeter defenders in the league and Assar Thompson, a guy who had been giving him trouble even in a high-scoring night, basically throughout the game when he was allowed to play by J.B.

Speaker 1 Pickerstaff. And we can talk about that if you want.

Speaker 1 I'm just like in awe of the space that Brunson creates. And I think this is what fuels some of the conversation we have about him sometimes, about the free throw baiting is when he doesn't do it.

Speaker 1 And he didn't, there's no pushoff on this play at all.

Speaker 1 Like he creates all of that space on his own, no illegal contact, cans it because he's Jalen Brunson, one of the most clutch players that we have in the league right now.

Speaker 1 I love watching that guy play. I love watching that guy hoop.
And when he's doing it in this way, like he's, he's such an undeniable charismatic basketball force.

Speaker 1 And yet, heading into that next round, the Celtics are minus 700 favorites.

Speaker 1 Now, if I told you before the year, the Celtics and Knicks are going to play in round two and the Celtics are going to be 701 favorites.

Speaker 1 I think we would have thought somebody was hurt on the Knicks. Yeah.
We would have assumed Towns, Brunson, or

Speaker 1 Inanobi, one of those three, or maybe even Bridges, but some that was not a healthy five, but it is a healthy five. I mean, I know Brunson's slipping around, but he had 40 tonight.

Speaker 1 Well, or the other assumption would be that the cat trade had gone really poorly for some reason, which it hasn't. It's gone mostly quite well.
Not so well in this game.

Speaker 1 I thought this was a game in which it was very much Josh Hart and OG and Mikhail completely delivered in all of their kind of peripheral capacities, in addition to Jalen Brunson just going balls out as far as like shot creation goes.

Speaker 1 And then Kat is doing a thing we've seen him do before, where he's sort of floating around and he's weirdly passive and he's not involved in the offense.

Speaker 1 And then when the ball finally comes his way, he's shooting shots five feet behind the three-point line.

Speaker 1 And then he fouls out and misses a crucial free throw. It's just like a...

Speaker 1 Not a great display of Carl Anthony Towns as a basketball experience, especially going into a series against the Celtics where he has to be one of the Knicks' most important players to actually leverage that matchup.

Speaker 1 And I really like Kat. I find myself as a Cat defender in a lot of debates and conversations.

Speaker 1 I don't have a lot of faith in his ability to successfully bully and score on and be everything defensively that he needs to be against the Celtics. It's just not, it's not,

Speaker 1 that matchup does not position him for any kind of success.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a weird one with all the Knicks fans. I know, and I'm sure you know a lot of them too.

Speaker 1 Last year, they were just so delighted by that gritty underdog team that they had and they just really responded to those guys and this year it's a lot of complaining a lot of complaining about tibbs a lot of wondering but but then also a real love for brunson yeah and the fact that at least they got to round two with those five guys healthy which was i think was the number one goal a team that was built to try to beat Boston, even though Boston spanked them all season.

Speaker 1 I do not have any Knicks fans in my life who are like, watch out for us.

Speaker 1 The vibes are real weird right now. Yeah, don't you think? I mean, they, again, barely survived this series.

Speaker 1 The Pistons had several chances to potentially win it, several chances to, you know, lead and protect the lead.

Speaker 1 Malik Beasley almost had a look to tie this game at the very end, but kind of like Gary Trent Jr., the ball away at the final second. Yeah.
Like it was right. I'm sorry to tell Gary Trent Jr.
did.

Speaker 1 Wow. After that implosion the other day against the Patriots.
Unfortunately, it's wrong place, wrong time, but such as life.

Speaker 1 But I would say, as far as the reason that that Celtics optimism and Knicks' pessimism exists, in addition to just, you know, not disputing the heart of a champion and kind of the general funkiness that's been going on with New York all year, you could see in this series, it's so clear that the Knicks just do not trust basically anything other than a Jalen Brunson ISO.

Speaker 1 Like they, they don't run him consistently enough. Maybe a pick and roll if you're lucky, but so much of their offense is geared around Jalen having to create every inch of space against defenders.

Speaker 1 And now

Speaker 1 that's a weird one to me, though.

Speaker 1 I don't get it. I didn't understand that as a

Speaker 1 strategy. I get it from the sense that Jalen Brunson's an unbelievable ISO scorer.
I don't get it in the sense that you just traded for Carl Anthony Towns in the offseason.

Speaker 1 You just traded for Mikael Bridges in the offseason. And some of those guys are good at kind of creating movement within stale sets, but it really doesn't take much of a nudge from the defense.

Speaker 1 to push the Knicks into just ISO, ISO, ISO, ISO repeatedly in a way that's frankly self-destructive. Well, you know who eats that up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is the Celtics.

Speaker 1 If you're just going to do the same thing over and over again, they couldn't be more delighted. I mean, Brunson had 33 shots tonight and eight free throws.

Speaker 1 33 shots is for a non-overtime game is kind of bonkers.

Speaker 1 And I just don't feel like they've, I have felt that the whole year, I've never felt like they've, it feels like somebody's always losing when somebody else is winning on this team. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like almost like a zero-sum game. Brunson gets 33 shots, so that means Towns has to have a shit game, basically.

Speaker 1 And again, I need to watch the second half and study what was going on, but I just 33 shots is fucking, that's a crazy number. I know we made 15 of them, but that's not sustainable against Celtics.

Speaker 1 Celtics have so many guys to throw at him.

Speaker 1 They're going to be sending two guys at him. They're going to be putting taller guys on him.
This is one of the Tatum superpowers.

Speaker 1 He's actually really good at guarding guy. I wouldn't be surprised if they threw Tatum at him.
You should.

Speaker 1 I I mean, based on Asar Thompson's success in this game, to the extent that there is a Jalen Brunson blueprint, and this guy just went for 40, like it's not a wildly successful blueprint.

Speaker 1 I thought Asar Thompson did a great job with the minutes that he was given and the assignment he was given.

Speaker 1 And that's kind of the Jalen Brunson story is you try to put as much length as you can get away with. It's just usually wings and bigs have a much harder time hanging with Brunson's footwork.

Speaker 1 Not so for the Celtics. Like they have enough bigger rangier defenders and even the guys who are quote unquote small, if Drew Holiday is healthy enough to play consistently in that series,

Speaker 1 that's a tough matchup. Derek White's a tough matchup.
They're all tough matchups. Well, the other thing is, though, Tatum's been just playing so great.

Speaker 1 And the Knicks built this team together partly to go toe-to-toe with Tatum and Brown. Brown hasn't been as great and I don't think he's 100% healthy, but Tatum

Speaker 1 is at the complete command of his powers at this point. And, you know, there's going to be this Ananobi versus Tatum piece, and then Bridges will be the second guy.

Speaker 1 I'm sure they're going to stagger him so that, you know, there's going to be stretches.

Speaker 1 Maybe he'll come out earlier in the first quarter and then come back where he's trying to go against some Knicks bench guys.

Speaker 1 What is your level of satisfaction with the Tatum rise? As I would say, the preeminent author of the Does Tatum Have Another Gear ongoing conversation? Yeah,

Speaker 1 I feel vindicated and delighted.

Speaker 1 I just think he's been awesome. And there was somebody who wrote a piece about Angry Tatum in that Orlando series, and I totally agree.
He had developed this little sneer that he has now.

Speaker 1 It's like, where'd that come from? You're like the nicest guy. Now you have like a playoff sneer, but the sneer is worth like three percentage points in terms of field goal percentage, easily.

Speaker 1 At least a couple free throw attempts. It's worth its weight in gold.
I love his

Speaker 1 the bully stuff that he does, which is going to be harder to do against this Knicks team. But they're going to be, I just think they're going to hunt Brunson.
This is what the smarter teams

Speaker 1 who have a lot of options. They're just going to be like, where is he? Let's try to wear him down on this end.

Speaker 1 they're probably not going to defend him full court which i think if like indiana played them i think indiana would try to wear him down that way and just basically make him work to dribble the ball up detroit did some of that too but you'll you'll get some of that with og just like denying at various points or sorry i think in terms of more tatum like i think there's there's just so many ways that on both sides they can deny the stars and force you to go to your second option and for the celtics there's many avenues from that point for the knicks like you deny jalen brunson you chase him full court even if that's what they decide to do.

Speaker 1 There should theoretically be many entry points for this offense.

Speaker 1 Realistically, and in terms of the way these games play out, they just kind of wait for Jalen Brunson to get open and sometimes he doesn't.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's not, if the Celtics are healthy, that's not going to work. The question would, the fear for the Celtic fans is, how healthy are we? What's going on with Drew Holiday?

Speaker 1 Are they playing it super safe?

Speaker 1 Or is this a guy who's in his mid-30s now who has a hamstring issue and this is going to bug him the whole time? How bad is Jalen's knee? When's the next poor Zingas injury? Like there's, you know,

Speaker 1 getting the rest and not having to play a game six against Orlando, I think was pretty good.

Speaker 1 If I'm a Knicks fan, I'm really concerned that it was that much of a slugfest knockdown, drag out, back and forth series with Detroit.

Speaker 1 You know, and I know that we talked about them a bunch on your pod, on my pod. Like we all respected Detroit.
The advanced metrics are very favorable.

Speaker 1 They turned into be a good regular season team, but they're so limited in a series like that.

Speaker 1 Like the guys that they had versus the guys the Knicks had, I just don't feel like the series should have been this nail biter for six games.

Speaker 1 And I don't think they should have been able to go in there and win a game five at MSG. I don't think this game tonight should have come down to Brunson having to be like heroic.

Speaker 1 Like the Knicks should just be better than that team. So that's.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And I think some of it is coach related, which we've talked about on all of our ringer pods. Like, I just don't think Tibbs has a feel for this team.

Speaker 1 This This doesn't feel like a Thibodeau team, in my opinion. I think all of that's true about the Knicks.

Speaker 1 I just don't want to diminish the fact that the Pistons grabbed those games, like grabbed those wins and nearly grabbed this one.

Speaker 1 And I think that that's a team that has a lot to be proud of in terms of the way they acclimated themselves to this series, to this dynamic. You're right.

Speaker 1 They don't have all of the options that the Knicks do. They don't even have, I would say, you know, the high, the highest end experienced playoff shot creation yet.

Speaker 1 I thought Cade was really, really solid in the series overall. But you can see a bit of a distance between him and Jalen Brunson, right?

Speaker 1 You can see where Cade still has to go as a young creator, and that's really exciting. And you can see, you know, what Asar Thompson can be.
You can see overall for a team that was missing

Speaker 1 two crucial rotation players, right? Isaiah Stewart barely played in this series. Jaden Ivy did not play in this series.
Like, that's a huge deal.

Speaker 1 And I think saps the pistons ultimately of their hopes of being more dynamic. And then you get into a position where it's like, when

Speaker 1 push comes to shove, like, I don't know, Tim Hardaway Jr., like Malik Beasley, like these guys are your kind of security blankets. Tim Hardaway didn't play in the finals last year.

Speaker 1 He was on a team that made the finals and did not play. And for good and fair reason.
And yet, in this game, it's like he's essential personnel because of who the Pistons have on their roster.

Speaker 1 And so that stuff that will gradually improve over time as they sort of like start to replace some of the archetypes of these supporting players and maybe replace them with, you know, Jay Niye coming back and having another great season.

Speaker 1 You know, like there's young talent, Ron Holland, who kind of got, I would say, kind of filtered out of the rotation by the end. Maybe he starts to pop in a different way.

Speaker 1 These are all different in terms of what they're bringing to the table, but I like where the Pistons are headed. Kind of like a stealth Durant team.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't say he was the favorite, but it's a really interesting one if we were going to try to figure out a Durant destination and the price gets a little lower, but you just kind of put him in the Tobias Harris spot.

Speaker 1 I mean, they're not close to winning a title, but. You think Tobias Harris for Kevin Durant's a pretty solid upgrade? Well, I'm sticking up with like about how many picks would have to be in this.

Speaker 1 But if they're trying to get picks, I, you know, if I were the Pistons, I would probably try to do what some of these other teams in that position have done in years past is,

Speaker 1 hey, it was great. We got our playoff taste.
Let's try not to get crazy. Let's do this again.

Speaker 1 And then maybe two years from now, you know, they're probably hoping the story is already starting to come out about how the Celtics, this is kind of a last run with the roster they have and expect some trades.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm not surprised that came out.

Speaker 1 I'm not surprised people people did the math and was like, yeah, this is probably not sustainable. The timing of it was a little weird.

Speaker 1 I was wondering why it became a story when it was, it's been a story all year for anybody who follows the Celtics standing capacity.

Speaker 1 The roster is going to cost like 250 million extra if they're going to like trade some salary. I don't know who it's going to be.

Speaker 1 So there's a little bit of this last dance run just with this, this specific group. And it might just be one guy.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 Bob Ryan's coming on this pod later and we were talking about like just what a popular Celtics team this is with the with the fans, like just a bunch of like dudes.

Speaker 1 There's no like the one guy like, oh man, that guy drives me crazy. It's like, it doesn't

Speaker 1 really exist. So one last thing with Celtics Knicks.
Yeah. You would think there would be all these great storied battles over the years and there just hasn't been.

Speaker 1 You know, I was too young to remember when they played in the 70s. I do remember the 84 series, which was Bernard versus Larry, which was just awesome.

Speaker 1 Bernard basically beat this awesome Celtics team by himself for three games. They beat them in 1990.

Speaker 1 I think they played maybe in 2013. Yeah, I want to say we got a, didn't we get a mellow?

Speaker 1 It was the tail end of the KG Pierce era. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But for two teams that have been in the NBA since it began, that's pretty crazy. It's fucking nuts that they have no playout because they're like, oh, what a rivalry.

Speaker 1 It's like, this really isn't a rivalry. But this is probably the closest the two teams have been

Speaker 1 from a talent standpoint, I would say.

Speaker 1 Maybe 84. I thought the Celtics were way more talented, but Bernard was maybe the second best player in the league that year.

Speaker 1 So that this, it'll be fun to see it. I think it's going to be a really hard ticket to get in New York.
Sure.

Speaker 1 There'll be some energy behind it. And from an ESPN standpoint, they lost the Lakers.
But they get to know the kids.

Speaker 1 We just move right to the Knicks, right? We move right to Knicks content. What happens? I don't know what they You don't think Clippers and Nuggets are moving the needle in that way? I don't.

Speaker 1 Well, they'll probably, they'll get five more days of LeBron. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm fully expecting from somebody from the Lakers, LeBron is open to re-signing, but wants to make sure Luca is committed to being shaped next year. I'm waiting for that story.

Speaker 1 I'm on pins and needles. Just sneak that one out.
Yeah. I am waiting for the Austin Reeves.

Speaker 1 If they have to trade Austin Reeves to get a big guy, you know, you saw what happened with Rudy Gobert. We got to do it.
Um, I'm waiting for that one. Um, maybe it'll be trading for Rudy Gobert.

Speaker 1 Who knows? Um, you just laid out like four different news cycles. I think we're good through June, to be honest with you.
We're good at least through round two with all the cycles.

Speaker 1 Well, I forgot the will LeBron retire or not. We're going to get that one.
He might, he might not. Now he's thinking about it.
Now he might. It's, it'll just, he'll be in the news over and over again.

Speaker 1 Or we'll get the, will LeBron accept a minimum salary to go play for a contender? That'll be two days. So yeah, ESPN will be fine for

Speaker 1 probably another two weeks because what they're not going to do is talk about can OKC go 16-0 in the playoffs? Sure.

Speaker 1 Well, and meanwhile, here on the Ringer, here's another segment about the Boston Celtics. You know, we all have counterpoints.

Speaker 1 It's a great point.

Speaker 1 But out of all these four series,

Speaker 1 what's the best one? Like, we don't know who's coming out of OKC Denver. It's probably Gold State, Minnesota, right? If that's if that becomes the series, just from a star power intrigue standpoint.

Speaker 1 I mean, that would be a juicy one.

Speaker 1 Honestly, like, this is maybe an unpopular pick, but I'm actually really excited about Cavs Pacers. I think that's going to be a really fun, really competitive series.

Speaker 1 Are you with me on Don't Count the Pacers Out for a Massive Upset Corner or no? I'm basically always on Don't Count the Pacers Out corner. So, yeah, I think that has to be taken into account.

Speaker 1 But like, there has not been a bigger buzzsaw in these playoffs than the Cavs in the first round. So I'm eager to see what they get against better competition.

Speaker 1 Of course, I'm eager to see what OKC's got when they have to play someone who's actually going to put up some resistance. So

Speaker 1 honestly, it's been a pretty fun, if a little bit turbulent, of a first round. The second round is going to have some real juice to it, though.
Indiana's plus 4-10 in that series.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 for the series spread,

Speaker 1 yeah, Cleveland. Cleveland will win in

Speaker 1 a sweep one

Speaker 1 4-1 or 4-2. That's minus 188.
I think the Pacers are going to hang in this series. I've been saying it for weeks.

Speaker 1 I really think they have,

Speaker 1 I think they're really hard to play, and I think they really know who they are, and they have an identity, and uh, and they're going to be dangerous.

Speaker 1 I, can I get, I know you already got your Minnesota Lakers thoughts out.

Speaker 1 Can I just tell you how weird it was to go to that game last night and to experience Rudy Gobert in person, who is awesome, certainly the best game he's ever had, but just to watch the Lakers

Speaker 1 not try to solve the problem,

Speaker 1 this is like a we win if we lose this game, we go home, yeah, and they're just getting annihilated on the boards.

Speaker 1 And they were just like, even the guys on the court, like they weren't playing a center, but it's you know, Luca looked it seemed like Luca was 100% healthy, but Rui and LeBron is basically if they weren't getting rebounds, guess what?

Speaker 1 Nobody else is getting a rebound, yeah, and they're 15 feet from the basket.

Speaker 1 It was one of the weirdest games I've ever been to. I've never seen a team in a must-win situation just let the same thing happen over and over and over again.
Well, there was the refusal on J.J.

Speaker 1 Reddick's part to put, say, Jackson Hayes, whatever big you would prefer on their roster back in the game. There's a corpse of Alex Lennon in there.
At least like he's taking up space.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to advocate for putting any of those guys in in particular. I'm just saying he refused to do it.

Speaker 1 And yeah, the fact that the players on the court, specifically the forwards, were just like not putting a body on anybody, including Rudy Gobert, but really anybody at all, just standing there as rebounds came down.

Speaker 1 Like both of those things can't be true. Like one of the sides has to budge.
Either you put in bigger players or the kind of bigger wings you have have to rebound. But this is

Speaker 1 a game too.

Speaker 1 They were scrambling and gang rebounding and really being wary of it. In this game, they weren't.
I thought that when Maxie Kleiber came in, I was with my friend Chen.

Speaker 1 First of all, I honestly didn't know he was on the team. I didn't know like he was dressed for games.
And he came in and I was like, Is that

Speaker 1 Jackson Kleber? Kleba, and then he came off the medical table, cleared to play. And they're like, Yeah, okay, here you go.
Here's five minutes.

Speaker 1 See if he's not going to be able to get it down the corner.

Speaker 1 Minnesota was like, That's great. You knock yourself out over there.
We were just like, Wow. And he was out there in the second half of the game.
Um, very, very strange.

Speaker 1 Um, going, obviously, going back to that Mark Williams trade, not going through, but I don't know. He makes a difference.
I just feel like that's a bad matchup for them all the way around.

Speaker 1 Mark Williams thought he made a difference. I don't know if you saw him rashly against the action, which I appreciate, but I don't think he's changing that game.

Speaker 1 I don't think anybody on their roster, if they had subbed in Alex Lund or subbed in Jackson Hayes, I don't think it's materially changing the fact that Rudy Gobert was putting just about everybody who would get close to him in the rim, and nobody would really get close to him by maybe the third quarter at best.

Speaker 1 Well, it was also like such a massive rollover because Minnesota should have won that game by 35 points. They couldn't make a three.
Yeah. All the threes were wide open, all of them.

Speaker 1 And guys weren't like scrambling. They weren't like, you know, road.
It was just, it was such a weird one.

Speaker 1 And then the way JJ acted in that 48-hour stretch, it's like, wow, that feels like he's unraveling.

Speaker 1 I thought the whole thing, now you go into this offseason, it's like LeBron's going to be now officially in his 40s. Yeah.
You know,

Speaker 1 really the only move is Reeves. That was weird.
But for Minnesota,

Speaker 1 Minnesota Golden State, Minnesota probably has the

Speaker 1 punchers' chance against OKC because of the Edwards piece and the defense. But

Speaker 1 I'm still on Clippers have the best chance to beat OKC Island, and they're probably going to lose game seven. It's weird like that.

Speaker 1 I think the trouble with Minnesota too, and I'm a believer in the Wolves. How could you not be after the display they just put on? Julius Randle played Unreal.

Speaker 1 Rudy Gobert obviously showed up in the way he did. And Ant has just been developing as a playmaker right before our eyes.

Speaker 1 There's also some stuff happening on the periphery. You mentioned the three-point shooting where like Nikhil Alexander Walker, Loki cannot hit a shot.
Dante DiFincenzo cannot hit a shot.

Speaker 1 He was awful yesterday. Yeah.
Like that stuff, it either will come home to roost all playoffs long or it's going to swing back hard the other way.

Speaker 1 And I think that's the question if you're picking the Wolves as one, one of the definitive best teams left in the bracket is, are you betting on those guys to hit?

Speaker 1 And I think it's realistic given both of their pedigrees to say that they will, but there's a lot rioting on them. And Jaden McDaniel is also, we should say, being dared to shoot yet again.

Speaker 1 And he will be again, just by nature of the way that team is built. And he's going to have to knock down some shots in addition to everything else he's doing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The one thing I feel like with Minnesota is when McDaniels is good, they feel almost unbeatable. Yeah.
And he's finding more ways to be good.

Speaker 1 Like he's finding more ways to leverage his size to get inside, to make plays for other people. It's been an awesome Jaden McDaniels.
Yesterday

Speaker 1 they hung him on a foul with a minute into the game. Yeah.
I was like, okay, here we go. Then he had a second foul.
I was like, all right,

Speaker 1 good job. You got him out of the game.

Speaker 1 And then he had 40 of the 50 fouls that you mentioned he did they they were calling him on hand checks which is so fun like if he had played in the he would have loved playing in the game i just went to he would have been clubbing people um

Speaker 1 i think though the last point i'll make on minnesota driving home i was listening to gobert being interviewed and he was they asked him like hey edwards was 0 for 10 or 0 for 11.

Speaker 1 would you would you think of his game because he'd still had an impact on the game and and he was like i don't care if he was 0 for 60

Speaker 1 he made all the right plays. And that's all we want him to do is he made the right decisions.
The ball didn't go in, but he was still making the right decisions.

Speaker 1 I thought that was a really good point because I thought last year in the Dallas series, when he got a little discombobulated, then he stopped making the right plays.

Speaker 1 I always felt like he was doing the right thing or had the right idea most of the time yesterday. He just couldn't make a shot.
And that, I think, is the difference to him last year and this year.

Speaker 1 I think there was a stretch of maybe three or four possessions where he settled on threes threes consecutively when the wolves really needed baskets.

Speaker 1 And it was like, he's rocking a little bit off the axis here, but then he stabilized, then they stabilized. Then he's, you know, he's getting Julius Randle involved.

Speaker 1 He's making this crucial setup to Mike Conley in the corner for a game securing basket.

Speaker 1 And also, there's also the thing where it's like when your game plan is so clearly to work the offensive glass like hell, the shots he was taking are not necessarily bad shots.

Speaker 1 Like sometimes, sometimes his role is to force things so that he doesn't have to call Rudy Gobert up for a high screen. So Gobert can stay low and get those rebounds.

Speaker 1 Like, there's some trade-offs involved in that, obviously. And you would love, you know, when he gets Luca, an injured Luka, one-on-one, to see him blow by him.

Speaker 1 But the Lakers were doing kind of soft doubles all night. They were trying to throw things at him to throw him off balance.

Speaker 1 I thought he mostly aced every test. Some occasional blips, but really, really impressive stuff from Ant.
Yeah, when you think he's

Speaker 1 not even in his mid-20s yet, it's pretty good. Well,

Speaker 1 a lot of good setups. Plus, we got a game seven, Rob.
So group chats going right after, like Sunday morning. Right.
Right after the game, I assume on Saturday. We'll see.

Speaker 1 We'll get it up as soon as we can.

Speaker 1 I'm excited to hear it. Rob Mahoney, thanks for

Speaker 1 popping on. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Bill.

Speaker 1 All right. Joanne Robinson is here from The Ringer.

Speaker 1 We were like basically married to White Lotus for eight weeks together. Eight weeks, yeah.
Me, you and Mallory. Then we did a couple rewatchables.
We did Can't Hardly Wait. We had our first fight.

Speaker 1 A lot of good stuff happened.

Speaker 3 Right. And then, and then divorce, I guess.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was, I guess, trial separation. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So last year was rough for us with television because we had the writer's strike. They were moving stuff to 2025.
And this year has been.

Speaker 1 a pretty great run, especially for like the ringer and for our pods where we had like white lotus and severance and a bunch of different things. And now we're in Last of Us.

Speaker 1 We have this John Ham show. We have the studio.
We have, we found out, I don't know if this is common knowledge or not, but the bear is going to be mid-June now. So there's shit's going down.

Speaker 1 What's the biggest TV storyline of 2025 to you?

Speaker 3 The biggest TV storyline of 2025, I think, is that

Speaker 3 the good IP is actually delivering.

Speaker 3 Because I know you didn't mention Andor, and I'm not going to try to make you talk about Star Wars on this podcast, but Andor is firing on all cylinders, the Star Wars show.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And The Last of Us is incredible. And so I think, and Severance delivered on its second season.

Speaker 3 So I think all the ways in which we're used to watching this stuff drop off in second seasons after like a big first season hasn't really been the case this year so far.

Speaker 3 And that's been really exciting to know.

Speaker 1 Well, it also feels like the whole infrastructure of an episode happens.

Speaker 1 We talk about it. We go backwards.
We go forward to the next one. What's going to happen? Oh, new episode.
This happened. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It still feels, I was really worried the binge model was going to ruin it and i think it has ruined it in some cases it has like your friends and neighbors could easily just you could have put those all up at once and just had me binge them but for the most part that week-to-week structure still works i know for us with white lotus like we got so much content out of it it was great it's apple and hbo and fx are really like holding it down on the week to week front in that way and paramount as well um but yeah and the binge model i say this all the time but yeah if white lotus had been a binge drop or if your friends and neighbors the show that you texted me the other day was making you giddy was a binge drop, then we wouldn't get to talk about it for as long as we do and dig into it as deeply as we do.

Speaker 3 The bear is still a binge drop. That's always confusing to me.
I don't know why that's not a week to week.

Speaker 3 And Andor, once again, to come back to this, but Andor is dropping on three episode chunks every week. So it's going to be over in two weeks.
And that's wild to me for our 12-episode season.

Speaker 3 So it's, it's, it's mixed bag, but I do think that people are finding more and more that if you want your show to to really take root in the conversation with something like White Lotus, when we're all watching together, when we're speculating together, that's the way you really permeate pop culture and the larger conversation

Speaker 3 without even the help of IP, White Lotus being sort of like an original concept from Mike White.

Speaker 1 So, well, so there's three versions of these shows, right? The first version is like what we went through with White Lotus, what you're doing now, Last of Us.

Speaker 1 You watch it. You probably watch it a second time.
You prepare all your thoughts and takes, and you really got to dive in. Then you wait for the next week, try to anticipate.
That's one.

Speaker 1 The second version of that is probably the same thing, except maybe you don't need to watch it twice, three times. Like for me, Landman was like that, where I really looked forward to it every week.

Speaker 1 It knew what it was. Then there's that third version that's a real sweet spot this day and age, which I think your friends and neighbors fits into.

Speaker 3 Okay, tell me about it. Tell me why this is a third.
This is not

Speaker 3 this is deeper than landman for you. What is it?

Speaker 1 No, no, no. Landman was good at this too.

Speaker 1 I don't have to completely pay attention the entire time. Okay.
I can kind of do something else.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Somebody might call, I missed five minutes.
I'm probably not missing that much. It's a show that knows what it is.
I like hanging out for an hour. I wouldn't watch it twice.

Speaker 1 Probably would never watch the season again. I like, I'm enjoying the hang.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like this new version, like a hang show. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 A good hang show.

Speaker 3 I love to know that you're somewhat second screening it.

Speaker 3 I think what's so telling about your friends and neighbors is like we are covering it on the Prestige TV feed, but we're probably only going to drop like 30-minute episodes about it because there isn't like, we're not going to go deep into the metaphors of your friends and neighbors.

Speaker 3 It doesn't have that meat on the bone, but it is fun to talk about. There are great performances in there.
It's fun to look at. And it's fun to think about it.
It's a real like throwback show.

Speaker 3 We've been comparing it to stuff like weeds, you know, or breaking bad and stuff like that. And so it's this, it it feels like a really vintage kind of show dropping surprisingly in 2025.

Speaker 3 Apple's doing all kinds of surprising things. The studio is really, really hitting for me as well.

Speaker 1 So well, I want to talk about the studio, but that, yeah, you're right. Your Friends and Neighbors was probably like a 2012 Showtime show.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. It was definitely a Showtime show.

Speaker 1 Like packaged with the affair. It's like the affair at nine o'clock and then your friends and neighbors at 10.
And telecommunication sort of

Speaker 3 era. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's got the model of a lot of those type of shows where Ham is the star. It's then you have like the second star who's like, oh, I've always liked them.
In this case, Amanda Pete.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, great to see her again. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm glad she's still in stuff.

Speaker 1 But for the most part, not, it's a cast of, you know, that guy's and that ladies and people you're like, I know I know this person, but from where I can't even remember.

Speaker 3 A huge roster of side characters. I did have a question for you about your friends and neighbors that I was curious about.

Speaker 3 When we were talking about it as this kind of throwback show, I was remembering that when shows like Homeland or The Good Wife came out, there was all this conversation about the teen characters and how annoying people found the teen characters.

Speaker 3 How do you think? What do you think about the kids on this show?

Speaker 1 On your friends and neighbors, it's so funny you asked this. I just was talking to somebody about this who works in TV and

Speaker 1 who had kids around the same age as my kids. And we're just like, it's just amazing how TV gets this wrong.

Speaker 1 Because you'd figure some of the people that write or run shows have teenage kids or just had them or are in the middle of having them.

Speaker 1 And they're, I, I, they just don't get it.

Speaker 1 They're all kind of that, like, anytime you have like a female daughter, like a 15-year-old daughter character, yeah, they're always like super snarky and angry.

Speaker 1 They, they have no other dimensions other than that. The boys are always like crazy awkward.
And that's just kind of what they've decided all the teen characters at all these shows could, should be.

Speaker 1 And I don't really fully understand it.

Speaker 3 What do you think they should be like?

Speaker 1 More people that I could see.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, I judge judge it by the the kids that pass through my house right yeah like my son will just have four people over randomly and i'm like hey what's happening you know or the same thing when my daughter was living with us in high school and i don't know they're just kids i think teens are way more interesting than we see on tv and maybe maybe they don't know how to write it I mean, I really miss when, as you and I both enjoy, I miss when teens were played by 30-year-olds like on 90210 or the OC.

Speaker 3 Now they're casting actual teenagers, and it highlights even more how they're getting it wrong.

Speaker 3 Because when they cast 30-year-olds, we're all like, We know we're not watching actual teenagers, we're watching like an invented fantasy version of a teenager.

Speaker 3 But when you cast an actual teen, I'm like, this doesn't bear any resemblance to any teen I know in real life. Does any show get it right? Is anyone getting it right?

Speaker 1 Well, the funniest is Landman because I think the lady who plays the teenager is like 29 in real life, it's also in 1923

Speaker 1 in a completely different role. But um,

Speaker 3 no one's getting it right. You guys,

Speaker 1 college girls. I thought

Speaker 1 the youngest son on White Lotus.

Speaker 1 I thought Lockheed was a pretty interesting character that had some dimensions. Now he's probably, he was heading to college, right? He was like a senior.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's like 19. Yeah.

Speaker 1 18, 19. Well, we were talking about when we did Can't Hardly Wait, like how many of those archetypes they either got wrong or there was way more there or stuff they missed.

Speaker 1 I just think Hollywood's always had issues with this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I'm glad to know that you think that Lockheed, a character who gave his own brother a hand job on the White Lotus, spoilers White Lotus, is

Speaker 1 an accurate depiction of

Speaker 1 yeah, but just like a sense of like, I think when, you know, it really depends on the year, but kids are when they're 15, they're trying to be 17, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 When they're 17, they can kind of see 19 and 20 in college and they want to be adults, but they're not there yet and it's super awkward.

Speaker 1 And then when they're 19, which is another age that's in these shows a lot, that's when they become become irrational confidence adults, like my daughter now, who thinks she knows everything.

Speaker 1 And, you know, she's like, I know, I dad, I know. And it's like, you don't know anything.

Speaker 1 But it's just, it's weird. They can never nail it.
And I think a big part of it is they have tried to zag and cast the people that are more age-appropriate.

Speaker 1 And then you're heading into a whole other thing where you don't know if you're getting good actors or not.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 My favorite thing that TV writers now and probably always have done is, yeah, they did this with like Dylan on 90200 is they give the teen characters their own the pop culture interests of their generation you know so like if you watch euphoria and all those kids go to a halloween costume party and they're all like dressed as you know Bos Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet or you know like just pop culture references that are not of their time no matter how much teens are like obsessed with the 90s right now it's just clear that the writer's room are like this is what we think is cool and the way we code our coolest characters is to give them interest in pop culture from the past.

Speaker 3 And that's, those are the cool characters on your show, like Dylan, et cetera. And I just think, I just think that's really funny.

Speaker 1 They're not inspiring. The Homeland Daughter was really when

Speaker 1 that's the fork in the road for how we did this. But I mean, your friends and neighbors, the best thing is it's basically a John Hamm show.
And if you like John Hamm, you're going to like the show.

Speaker 1 And I like John Hamm, and I support all John Hamm projects. But this is like, John Hamm, just cook.
You're going to, you, you ran out of all your money. Your wife's sleeping with this other guy.

Speaker 1 You're paying, you're paying alimony to her. You just got fired for no reason.

Speaker 1 Just start stealing from people you know.

Speaker 3 I love a heist, personally. I have a question for you.

Speaker 3 As you know, I'm covering this with Rob Mahoney on the Prestige Feed, NBA

Speaker 3 expert. What do you think of the basketball player on this show?

Speaker 1 I have some questions. I have some thoughts.
There was a pretty strange party basketball scene they had in one of the episodes that I was like, well, this will never, ever in a million years happen.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I do think some of the dynamics they have are pretty fun about like the country club dynamics, the paying, paying some sort of private coach. How much should we spend? Do we need to get another guy?

Speaker 1 We've got to get our daughter in a college to play this sport. Like some of that's pretty good.

Speaker 1 And then the dynamics of when you have this big extended circle of friends which i'm certainly have had different versions of that as i get older yeah one divorce or separation can be such like a catalyst for conversation whether they're in the room or not for people how do you bring it up or not how do you talk about it do you take sides so they've hit some pretty good stuff but this to me is like a typical apple show it's like the morning show it's just these kind of fun shows that you have to watch kind of one episode of and you get it yeah i was thinking about bad monkey uh similar, like in that vein, and that it's like, it's such a showcase for Vince Vaughan and then everything else that's happening around him.

Speaker 3 But, like, if you love Vince Vaughn, you're going to love Bad Monkey. And if you love John Hamm, you're going to love your friends and neighbors.

Speaker 1 But that's kind of the Apple model, right? The person to put in the square picture with the title of the show. And you always know who it is, right? It's like, oh, Vince Vaughn.
Okay, what's he up to?

Speaker 1 And sometimes it doesn't work where it's like. Billy Crystal.
He's a psychiatrist and he looks sad. I don't, I'm going to stay away.
I don't, no thanks.

Speaker 3 But yeah, but then like you, I mean, yeah, the studio is riding a lot on, you know, do you like Seth Rogan? Here's the studio.

Speaker 3 But I think the studio has much, much more on its mind to say about the world it's existing in. Are you, I, you and Sean and I talked about the studio early in the season.

Speaker 3 How are you enjoying as you now that you've seen more?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we did the prestige. We did the first like, I think three.
And

Speaker 1 I think we were all really interested in it. You guys liked it a little more than I did.
I thought the energy was definitely a choice. And they've kept that energy every episode.

Speaker 1 It's really interesting. It's,

Speaker 1 you know, to me, it's like the rehearsal or some of these other things where people decide creatively, we're going for it. And you're either going to be for the ride or you're against it.

Speaker 1 And they have a lot to say about the studio system, why things are made, why choices are made. They're trying to.

Speaker 1 satirize and parody everybody at the expense of where sometimes you watch and you're like, oh, come on, that wouldn't happen. But I don't think they care.
Right. So it's a fun hang.

Speaker 1 I think it seems like the younger generation, like Craig Korlbeck, loves it. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 1 So for there's a certain generation that isn't familiar with the player and some of the other times that people have made shows like this. So for the first time, they're seeing a show like this.

Speaker 3 And they're like,

Speaker 3 do you feel like, oh, you don't even know the player? You don't know, you don't know what you're doing.

Speaker 1 Or like Larry Sanders or a lot of these. It's dipping and pulling from a lot of things I've already seen.

Speaker 1 So I kind of know, like, I'm not, I don't find it that surprising, but I'm still glad that exists. So what do you think? What's been your take through seven episodes?

Speaker 3 I love it. And there's been moments that I've been really surprised by.

Speaker 3 Like, I think the biggest moment that surprised me was, it's not an episode that I loved overall, but the fact that they got Olivia Munn, I'm sorry, Olivia Wilde, I'm Olivia Munn's obviously, and your friends and neighbors, Olivia Wilde to sort of parody herself after having been under such scrutiny for her work as a director.

Speaker 3 I thought that was pretty interesting that they had that conversation with her and was like, Look, it'll be great for everyone.

Speaker 3 You'll show that you have a sense of humor about yourself, and we'll just go ahead and do it.

Speaker 3 I think, I think that's always really fun when you can imagine the conversations that they had with the person who's playing themselves and say, Look, everyone's going to really love that you did this, that you, that you know, that you let them know that you know what they're all talking about, uh, and you showed an even more extreme version of it on screen.

Speaker 1 Um, that's been the blueprint for all of these things where they were always able to get good cameos that are smartly thought out, where it's like, here's this public perception of you.

Speaker 1 We're going to twist this a certain way and try to use this. So, and this will be a win for you.
And then usually it is.

Speaker 1 Ron Howard made

Speaker 1 an episode works.

Speaker 3 But the rest. And I think, I think it's really interesting to think about, to your point, about like the rehearsal or the studio.

Speaker 3 I complain all the time. All of us who cover TV complain all the time that there's too much television.
And there is. There are tons of shows that go unwatched, unnoticed by people.

Speaker 3 But the advantage of having so much television is that people will, studios will green light something that seems really niche or really odd or really experimental, like the rehearsal, and just say, go for it.

Speaker 3 We have the space, we have the time, we have, we think we have the money. Now they're realizing they don't have all the money in the world, but we think we have the money to try this.
Let's try it.

Speaker 3 And when it hits, it's extraordinary that something like the rehearsal exists, you know, and you don't get that in the sort of tv landscape that you and i grew up in that's a great point well i feel like

Speaker 1 you know i think about the uh the studio and what's missing for me because i've watched every episode i look forward to it i don't always love it but i'm always i'm glad it exists yeah i don't like seth rogan's character i don't i'm not rooting for him yeah i i like how he's drawn out like i get it like i totally get the character but you're making him the hero of a show, but he's not a hero, which I think is the point.

Speaker 1 But it's like, I, as, so I'm seven episodes in, it's like,

Speaker 1 am I rooting for this guy to flame out or figure out, like, oh, I can actually use my powers to save Hollywood? And maybe the show hasn't figured that out, but they, we're on this journey with him.

Speaker 1 And I don't know what the journey is. And I'm not sure what my role is.
Am I rooting for him or against him? I don't know if the show's figured it out.

Speaker 3 It's funny to hear you describe that because I am rooting for him, but I hear what you're saying. And that he's a doofus.
He's a, a he's like a fuck up like all this sort of stuff like that so um

Speaker 3 but that's the exact same journey i'm on with your friends and neighbors where i'm watching john hand's character coop and i'm like am i supposed to like this guy am i supposed to be rooting for him i don't mind the crime i don't mind the b and e i love a heist but like he seems like he was a

Speaker 3 bad husband and a bad dad and you know like kind of a callous dude am i supposed to be wanting him to succeed or wanting him to get busted what am i what am i looking for inside of this show?

Speaker 3 And that doesn't like, it doesn't have to be someone.

Speaker 3 A character doesn't have to be someone I'm rooting for. They just have to be someone I'm interested in.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 And so like, if you're interested in what Seth Rogan is doing in the studio, for me, that can carry me beyond whether or not I want him to succeed or not. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know what you mean. I think.

Speaker 1 It's weird.

Speaker 1 Both shows, even though I think the studio probably put a little more thought into everything it's trying to do than your friends and neighbors, but I think both of them are trying to say something that's not about the main star, right?

Speaker 1 The studio is

Speaker 1 pretty obviously trying to make all of these points about this is why we all complain about Hollywood all the time. This is the thought process.

Speaker 1 These are the people that are responsible for the choices of the shows and movies that make you mad when you don't understand why there's not more good stuff.

Speaker 1 This is why you're seeing all of it right now. So I get that.

Speaker 3 These are the people who don't know how to write teenagers on your favorite TV shows.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Your friends and neighbors, I think, is way less interested in the John Hamm piece and more interested in this whole culture of wealthy people,

Speaker 1 their relationship with one another, their possessions, and the fact that they have stuff and they don't even realize stuff's gone when they're just collecting things. They don't even know what it is.

Speaker 1 They have a basketball court. They don't use it.

Speaker 1 They want their daughter to... play tennis because it'll get her into college and it'll be a good thing for them, not for the daughter.

Speaker 1 And so it's, it's, it's hitting this like, why are the choices that all these wealthy people are making what's the point of them that i i actually think is a really interesting concept well i think it's interesting to watch your friends and neighbors right off the heels of white lotus which is also a show that that tries smarter version yeah look at rich people and hey man they also have problems they're not happy even though they're surrounded by all this luxury um but i think it's um except for greg gary he didn't have problems he figured it out he has a great house and he knows what he likes sexually.

Speaker 1 He's good.

Speaker 3 But I think both those shows are trying to have it both way, both ways, where they're critiquing that class of person while also

Speaker 3 inviting you to luxuriate in this world and just have this sort of escapist fantasy that you too can have a watch that costs this much money or, you know, a swimming pool that looks like this or a catered birthday party that looks like that.

Speaker 3 You know, like that.

Speaker 1 Or a shelve of watches. Yes.
Just like, here are all my luxury watches one by one.

Speaker 3 Do you have a watch shelf, Bill?

Speaker 1 I'm definitely 100% no.

Speaker 3 I don't know, man. Is there anything on your friends and neighbors that you saw that you're like, yeah, I should, I should do that.
That's something I should do.

Speaker 1 I mean, when they went to the guy's little private basketball court, I was like, oh, that's pretty impressive. A little indoor court out of nowhere.

Speaker 1 Some of the

Speaker 1 part they maybe don't hit hard enough, especially with older parents is how drunk people get

Speaker 1 they've gotten in a little bit but it's definitely something you see when when people have like the kids go to college and it's just like the couple left like people getting like hammered uh

Speaker 1 it's like this whole that's what i've never seen in these shows in the right way where it's like whoa

Speaker 1 They can't even walk and they're 54.

Speaker 3 The more you talk about this, Bill, the more I want you to make this show. I want you to know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I want you to make the show where you get the teenage characters right and show what the empty, the like the well-to-do empty nesters do once their kids are.

Speaker 1 It doesn't even have to be well-to-do. I think it's everybody.

Speaker 1 If you're building like your whole life around work and your kids, and then the kids just go, some people just like that.

Speaker 1 First of all, you better really like who you're married to, which I'm fortunate enough. I really enjoy my wife's company still.
But you better really like whoever you're married to. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you better be prepared for like, guess what?

Speaker 1 There's going to be a moment when your kids don't really want to hang out with you and they're just going to leave and they're going to go and it's just going to be you guys. And some people are like,

Speaker 1 that's how it goes.

Speaker 1 All right. Wait, can we talk about Last of Us?

Speaker 3 Sure. What do you want to say?

Speaker 1 I don't watch that show. I know you don't.
I know.

Speaker 3 Are you having any, are you having any FOMO given that the Last of Us and Andor is are dominating at least a lot of the conversations we're having at the ringer?

Speaker 3 Is that something like, do you, does it bum you out to not be watching watching these shows or how do you feel

Speaker 1 i i don't i think i'm gonna watch last of us at some point really

Speaker 1 yeah okay i do and then by the way i watched the first five episodes yeah i just wasn't for me those bleak end of the world type things like you really kind of have to be in the mood and the and you know post

Speaker 1 Post-COVID, I wasn't really that interested to explore the end of the world, but maybe I'll get there in the late 2020s. I don't know.

Speaker 1 And or is something like that's one where I think you really have to buy into the Star Wars universe, and I think it becomes more meaningful, right?

Speaker 1 I just couldn't step into Andor unless I had some background, right?

Speaker 3 To a certain degree, but I think you know, when you listen to Chris and Andy talk about it on the watch, you know, uh, they have been so disillusioned with Star Wars.

Speaker 3 Uh, they might have grown up on Star Wars, but they've been so disillusioned with like what's going on in that

Speaker 3 world.

Speaker 3 And what Tony Gilroy is doing with and or is just like making a really complex show about politics and spycraft and all this other stuff and with like this barely visible veneer of star wars on top of it so i actually think you could watch and enjoy interesting i should just watch the first one and see what i think yeah yeah see what you think i mean the problem is i'm just on these terrible channels like Tubi and Pluto and just like, oh, Deathwish is on.

Speaker 1 And I'm just watching some movie from 50 years ago.

Speaker 1 Do you pull up Pluto because it is comforting to see the old like grid of what i love the grid yeah i love the grid i still have cable too same thing i'll zip through the movie channels and yeah

Speaker 1 yeah the tubi main screens great um i like when amazon will get frisky sometimes with like 90s classics or 2000s movies you haven't seen i like yeah i like having my hand held so you're happy with the last of us i know you're covering it all over the place yeah i mean can we spoil the big thing that has happened this season that everyone already knows about i feel like at this point, everybody knows, right?

Speaker 1 How would you hide from that one? Yeah. Right.
So they kill off the main character.

Speaker 3 So Peter Pascal is not on the show anymore. Looking at it from the outside in,

Speaker 3 like, what is, are you, do you have any reactions to that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was, I was startled. Yeah.
Because they did one of those things that we've gotten used to during the social media era of

Speaker 1 huge surprise, you know, and you see that. There's a huge moment on The Last of Us.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So So, you know, something happened, but then it just was persistent.

Speaker 1 And then the next day, of course, it's on like Apple News on my phone, like, why Pedro Pascal left The Last of Us. And they stayed true to the video game.

Speaker 1 And so obviously, even me, who doesn't, didn't watch the show, knew that he wasn't on. So, but so it stayed true to the video game, right? Or no?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that happens in the, there's, there was like a first edition of the video game and then a sequel to the video game.

Speaker 3 And in the sequel, they kill off that character right at the beginning of the game. So they killed him off.

Speaker 3 And we were all wondering if they would string it along just to keep their star, the Petro Pascal, on the show a little longer. But they killed him in the second episode of the season.

Speaker 3 But I was just curious if that kind of move is something that makes you want to watch the show more. If you're like, oh, they're doing something as bold as that.
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 I kind of want to check that kind of storytelling out. Or if you're like, because we've heard

Speaker 3 well, there's been this interesting,

Speaker 3 there's been a reaction of if Pedro Pascal is not on the show, I don't want to watch this show anymore. And I, I, I have to say, I got a little

Speaker 3 like bored with that because I've just heard it before, and those people don't ever wind up quitting the shows.

Speaker 3 I've just heard it for too often that people are like, I'm quitting, I'm never gonna watch this show again.

Speaker 3 We heard on Game of Thrones every other season, people would say that in reaction to something, and then more and more people watched it every software.

Speaker 1 Dad was the best example of that. The first couple years when it was really a water cooler show, and they would kill off a couple of people and be like,

Speaker 1 What? How are

Speaker 3 how I'm now? I'm quitting. I'm never coming back.
And then they always do. So I'm just like, it's not like I can't.

Speaker 1 What's the number one? What's the number one? I can't believe they killed that off, that person off characters. It's got to be the guy in Game of Thrones, right? Sean Bean? Sean Bean.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Just like that.
They did that. And everyone who read the books knew it was coming.
But for somebody like me, it was like.

Speaker 1 I thought that was the star of the show. It was like, wait, what? How do you do that?

Speaker 3 Given your allergy to genre storytelling bill how did you wind up watching game of thrones in its very first season what um because it was on i didn't watch it very i didn't i came in late okay um and uh

Speaker 1 a couple people and it was the then grant land universe right um

Speaker 1 just hammering me but it it got to the point where it was clearly such a great show and such a phenomenon that it was like if i like tv how do i not watch this it was one of those yeah and i'm trying to decide which, like, between The Last of Us and Andor, which one I want to sort of

Speaker 1 steer me toward. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Bug you about for the next five years to see if I can get you to watch it. Probably.

Speaker 1 My biggest hole, my worst one that I'm, your worst one is Sopranos.

Speaker 1 Clearly. My worst one is probably six feet under.

Speaker 1 I've never seen it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've never watched it.

Speaker 3 That is wild to me.

Speaker 1 That's terrible. It's a bad job at me.

Speaker 3 No, it's just such a bill show.

Speaker 1 I know. It's like a show you wouldn't really like.

Speaker 1 Can't explain it. Okay.
That's okay. We all have those things.
Yeah, that's one that I know I have in my back pocket. I never watched The Shield,

Speaker 1 which has enraged a couple of people in my life, but now I feel like that's probably too dated. No, I mean,

Speaker 1 and The Leftovers is the other one that's amiss for me.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but I like The Leftovers isn't a Bills show, but like Shield and 6100.

Speaker 1 Carol's in it, though.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, Carrie's in it, but you can see her in other things, right?

Speaker 1 I know, but I feel like I have to support the Carricoun franchise.

Speaker 1 I was watching flipping channels and Eagle Eye was on with Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan. Michelle Monaghan, yeah.

Speaker 1 Much younger because it came out 20 years ago. And I was like, wow,

Speaker 1 there's our girl. She's back.

Speaker 1 I still feel like attachments to all the

Speaker 1 characters. Although it seems like our guy Walton Goggins is kind of unraveling a little bit.

Speaker 3 I have a lot of questions, Bill, and no answers for you.

Speaker 1 Just only people go on white lotus and weird shit happens after.

Speaker 3 They lose their marbles. It's a lot.
I don't know. We support Walton Goggins always on this podcast and all podcasts, but I just have some questions about what's happening.

Speaker 1 I do have some intel. I don't think they're going cold in season four.
What?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I tried to warn you with this.
I don't think Mike White likes cold. Okay.

Speaker 3 Do you know where we're going?

Speaker 1 I don't know where we're going, and I don't think they know where they're going, but I don't think it's going to be cold.

Speaker 3 Somewhere sunny. Okay.

Speaker 1 You're not going to get the Swiss Alps. Hotloads.
The Swiss Alps. We're not getting Aspen.
We're not getting anything with snow, I don't think.

Speaker 3 What's the next show this year that you're excited about?

Speaker 1 What's coming up that you the bear?

Speaker 3 The bear.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And how do you watch this bear?

Speaker 1 I can't. So here's the thing with the bear.
I can't do more than two.

Speaker 1 I think that's how you have to treat it. And I think people who binge, who try to watch like five in one night, that's not the show.
You can't do it. You're doing the show a disservice.

Speaker 1 That's not how it was meant to be. written, perceived, consumed, anything.

Speaker 3 But would you do two over the course of a week, like Monday through Friday, every night? We're watching two, or do you do two and space it out a couple days and two more?

Speaker 1 So I'm saying I would watch two in a row.

Speaker 3 Right. But I'm saying like Monday night, two episodes, Tuesday night, the next two episodes, Wednesday night, sort of like that.

Speaker 3 Or the problem with binge shows like that, though, is you don't want to be too far behind what everyone's talking about in case you get spoiled or something like that.

Speaker 1 You know, if I was in charge of FX, I would run one on Sunday night and run and one on Wednesday night.

Speaker 1 And I would do a Sunday, Wednesday staggered schedule so people could talk about each one, but then the next one's coming. And that's, I just think that would work better.

Speaker 3 I told you why they started binge, like the bears a binge watch, right?

Speaker 1 It was to ignite Hulu, wasn't it?

Speaker 3 No, well, I was told that it was because John Landgraff thought it was like too bleak and that people wouldn't stick with it if it were week to week.

Speaker 3 So I understand why they dropped the first season as a binge, but once they saw what a hit it was, I will never understand why they keep dropping it as a binge.

Speaker 3 I think it's just because they think people expect it at this point. But I don't know why you wouldn't just reverse course and own the summer with the bear, which you could easily do.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I could tell you this, it would have been great for Grantland and it would have been great for the ringer and it would have been great for any content

Speaker 1 Coconut will ever be involved with. Yeah, think of the content.

Speaker 3 On the watch,

Speaker 3 a great podcast on your network.

Speaker 3 Chris and Andy interviewed Tony Gilroy about Andor and he was talking about the release schedule and he was saying, dropping three episodes a week. He's like, I kind of like it.

Speaker 3 It's like a little movie every week. Right.
You know, so people can watch it. He was like, I do worry about the podcasters.
And he sounded actually genuine.

Speaker 3 He was like, it's a lot for the podcasters to try to cover. And I was like, thanks, Tony Gilroy, for thinking about us.

Speaker 1 Well, Stranger Things was the other one that just doesn't care. And that's coming too, I think, this summer, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
I think like midsummer, July, something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The one I'm the most excited about, and God knows it'll ever, when it'll ever finish, and it probably won't be 25, is uh is when they figure out euphoria especially if they do the moving the characters forward by five years gimmick which it sounds like they did yeah i just i've always wanted somebody to do that i think what did like dawson's creek do that or some one tree hill one of those shows oh that's advanced the characters got old and they just said it and moved everybody forward yeah that sounds like a one-tree hill move dawson's never did that we had to suffer through all the years of college well at the are you the finale the finale of Dawson's they did a time hump.

Speaker 1 Well, the best time hump of all time is Mallory's favorite moment in the history of television, which was the end of the affair with old Dominic West

Speaker 1 with the old age makeup.

Speaker 1 She's never been more delighted about anything that's ever happened.

Speaker 3 I genuinely think you two think the affair is one of the greatest things that's ever happened on television.

Speaker 1 It's one of our bonds.

Speaker 1 The first season, I would stand by the lore of everything behind the show, behind the scenes of the show. Yeah.
That just became, that would be the greatest oral history, no pun intended, I think,

Speaker 1 that's ever been written about a TV show. I still don't really know what happened.
Euphoria would be a pretty good one, too.

Speaker 3 But I love that Mallory's not here and you're just sort of like filling in for her. I appreciate you.

Speaker 1 I'm just reading that energy. I'm just taking some of her takes.
I know she's

Speaker 1 what show are you the most excited about in 25 that hasn't come out yet?

Speaker 3 Well, we got another throne show coming up, a night of the seven kingdoms. We just don't know when it's coming.

Speaker 3 We thought it was coming after The Last of Us, but they haven't even announced a date yet. So I don't know when that's going to happen.

Speaker 3 But I'm really, really excited for that one to podcast about it with Mallory and Chris. I think is going to be really fun.
So that one should be good.

Speaker 3 There is a there's a new show from the creator of Mary Vistown.

Speaker 3 That's going to kill. Yeah, that's going to be a really good one, I think.
So,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 there's a lot to think about in terms of what we want from television going forward because television is radically changing in terms of how they're making it and what exactly they're making.

Speaker 3 And so I think, you know, the more that people can make it clear in terms of conversation or engaging, what actually hits and what they're not actually watching.

Speaker 3 I mean, your friends and neighbors, you're saying you're watching like 80% of it. Is that what you said to me?

Speaker 1 Something like that? Yeah, I wish they were some way to keep like how they have aurings and Apple watches. Wait, where your eyeballs go during a TV show? It's like, is it like a 72%?

Speaker 1 I'm looking at the TV during it. Yeah.
Is it an 80%? Are we at 30? Where are we?

Speaker 3 So that's a hang show for you. That's just sort of like a background watching show for you.
But with White Lotus,

Speaker 3 you were sat and you were taking notes and you were ready for it.

Speaker 1 In 1923, which I really, really, really enjoyed. Yeah.
And is a big show for me and my wife.

Speaker 1 I think we, there's very few shows we equally like, like the same percentage.

Speaker 1 And that White Lotus was another one, but 1923 seems like it's a hang show, but you actually like are, you're popping your head up a lot on that one.

Speaker 1 There's a lot going on. And I thought the actors were really good on this season.
I thought the wife character who

Speaker 1 is trying to get back with her husband. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 That guy's

Speaker 1 great. She was excellent.
I thought she was an excellent actress.

Speaker 3 She's great. What do you think of the rumors that the guy who plays her husband, Brendan Spenner, that he might be Batman? What do you think of that rumor? Would you like it?

Speaker 1 Interesting. I know he has some Sidney Sweeney movie coming, right? Like he, and he has, he's in a movie with the lady from White Lotus that I think already might have come out.

Speaker 1 The girl from season two.

Speaker 1 That one I think already came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So I think they're trying to make him a thing.
Him is Batman, though. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I mean, the one thing with him is I do feel like he's winning fights on 1923. It's like, don't fuck with it.
Like, he has that kind of

Speaker 1 energy to him that I think works. He threw that one guy overboard.
Like, you know, so

Speaker 3 I mean, I think that would be really interesting.

Speaker 1 Oh, one, two other shows we didn't mention before we go. Paradise was totally watchable.
I thought that was probably a 72, maybe a 67 on my eyeball scale. Yeah.
Definitely

Speaker 1 could like go on eBay and look for stuff and just pop up. And then I didn't watch it.
I'm going to, but the pit. Oh, I think was the unexpected surprise hit of the year, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, but the pit is not

Speaker 3 a paradise background watchable.

Speaker 1 No, you're locked into the pit. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think the pit is definitely,

Speaker 3 I think Andor, just for what I like, is the number one show of the year for me. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it's just operating on a different level altogether. But the pit, in terms of similar to your friends and neighbors, it feels like a show from a different era.

Speaker 3 We feel like we're just watching ER and Elevated ER. And

Speaker 1 Elevated ER is a great idea. I would have bought that one in the room.
Oh, we're doing Elevated ER. Done.

Speaker 3 The best part about the PIT, not just that it ran longer than your normal HBO show runs.

Speaker 3 So you're just like really with the characters week to week for a while, but it's coming back at the top of next year. Like we don't have to wait three years for another season.

Speaker 3 They're bringing it back at the same time next year. And so, you know, that's how we used to watch television.
But yeah, the pit is.

Speaker 3 I mean, absolutely killer. I can't wait for you to watch the pit.

Speaker 1 I can't wait to hear your picture. Yeah, I'll be banging.
Once we get through NBA playoffs, when we hit like

Speaker 1 mid-june i'm just that's it i i will be all caught up on all tv by probably mid mid-late july so what i'm hearing uh though is that you want to podcast about euphoria season three with me that's what that's what our plan is for am i i think i'm too old to be on that podcast are you no we're we're well first of all i don't want to jinx it because god only knows with all the people involved in that show if we ever get to the end of a season three filming but they are filming it Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that's a win.

Speaker 3 I believe.

Speaker 1 I just want to say

Speaker 1 the one I'd want to do with you is like the five-year anniversary of The Idol.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Diving back in and trying to figure out exactly what happened.

Speaker 3 Is that my punishment for not having seen The Sopranos? You're going to make me watch The Idol five years later.

Speaker 1 What happened? Like, I actually don't feel like enough's been made out of them postponing.

Speaker 1 the biggest phenomenon show that they had since basically not a non-Game of Thrones, like just an absolute phenomenon that's peaking on TikTok.

Speaker 1 And instead of doing season three, the guy's like, can I do this other idea first? And then it just becomes this two and a half year shit show, however long it took. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then it was so bad they had to basically combine episodes to get out of the season. Like, what are the odds?

Speaker 3 That was a brush fire. That was terrible.
That was.

Speaker 1 It couldn't have been worse. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay. Five years later, The Idol, what happened?

Speaker 1 What happened and why? A deep dive. Yeah.
Coming back. All right.
So you can hear Joanna on House of R with Mallory

Speaker 1 as well as Prestige TV Podcast, which was a feed. We were basically like, we were holding on to the side of the cliff, hoping for good shows.
And then, boom, we're having a really good year.

Speaker 1 There's a lot going on. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Good to see you, Joanna.
Good to see you. Thanks, Krimno.
Thanks.

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It is Thursday morning.

Speaker 1 There's so many storylines in play, big picture, that I had to bring the guy who's seen it all, Bob Ryan, who is the best ever at comparing players, different eras. He's seen everything.

Speaker 1 What guy do you want to start with? Because I really want your big picture context on some of this stuff.

Speaker 1 You want to go Anthony Edwards, age 23, taking it to the Lakers, taking down Durant last year, taking down Luke and LeBron this year. What do you see with him?

Speaker 2 Interesting. There was a point in the middle of the season when I,

Speaker 2 in fact, I don't even know if Twitter had turned to X yet, but I either tweeted or X'd that he's got some Michael Jordan in him. And then, next thing you know,

Speaker 2 I saw that somebody of, you know, in real consequence saying the same thing, made me feel very good. He does have Michael Jordan in him.
There's Michael Jordan-esque qualities in his game.

Speaker 2 Same size, body type, range of skill,

Speaker 2 swagger. He's got swagger, God knows.

Speaker 2 And, you know, we took, he got everyone's attention last year in the World Games, even though we lost. He was the best player on the team.

Speaker 2 That was news to a lot of us that he would be the best player on that team.

Speaker 2 And he's built on that. And he's a growth stock.
My God, you know, they've got something very special there. So yeah, he's gotten my attention.

Speaker 1 Wait, hold on. Can I say on Edwards?

Speaker 1 So World Games was two two years ago, and then last year was the big playoff run. Olympics.

Speaker 1 No, I'm just getting the chronology right.

Speaker 2 When he's just there, but that's where he got my first, first got my, now I was aware of him in Georgia, and I knew people that thought he was very talented, but there was something missing.

Speaker 2 But whatever was missing doesn't, he appears to have found it.

Speaker 1 Well, you think last year versus this year, last year was the Whoa, Anthony Edwards. He's here.
I can't believe it.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize he was, whoa, there's a little Michael Jordan here this year, even though

Speaker 1 he sucked in the closeout game last night. He couldn't make a three.
But

Speaker 1 Rudy Gobert said something interesting after that I agreed with because I went to the game. He made all the right plays.
Like he wasn't making the threes, but they were the right threes to take.

Speaker 1 They kept sending these doubles, staggered doubles at him. He usually was making the right decisions.
And the truth is, if they had made some threes, they would have won by 30. But I'm with you.

Speaker 1 Like, I didn't go to the famous game. I know you did, the 63-point game that MJ had.
And I hate comparing anyone to MJ. He's the best player I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 But there are pieces, and it's undeniable when you see it in person, where you're like, ah, that kind of, just the way he's carrying himself, the way he's easily going by people, the way he easily seems like he's the best athlete in this game, it does bring back some memories.

Speaker 1 I got to be honest.

Speaker 2 It's fair.

Speaker 2 Bill, it's always fair, fair. to guys say, guys, remind you of great players and this qualities about them without going overboard and saying that they are that guy or

Speaker 2 is better than that guy. I mean, absolutely.
And then he did people,

Speaker 2 there's types. We all know that.
There's all kinds of types. There's guys that remind you of that.
And then there are certain people that I don't, you know,

Speaker 2 they stand apart.

Speaker 2 And I always say that one of the things that the truly great players

Speaker 2 have something special that

Speaker 2 is uniquely theirs.

Speaker 2 There's a something about their style.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's a quirk of some kind,

Speaker 2 but, you know, and they don't have to be the top of the line player, but I'm talking about just a Hall of Fame level excellent player can be very special in a way that nobody else reminds you of him.

Speaker 2 For example,

Speaker 2 and you'll like this, I think.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying he's the greatest player or the greatest guard of all time or any like that, but I've never seen another Dennis Johnson. There's something about his package.

Speaker 2 That's the word we want to use. The packaging.
His package was

Speaker 2 special and different

Speaker 2 and worked for him. And I haven't seen anybody that reminds me.
I've never seen anybody reminds me of him.

Speaker 2 And yet there were plenty of other great players that somebody would, you know, reminds you of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Dennis Johnson's a good one because he had size.

Speaker 1 He could kind of jump, but he would pick his spots. We got him with the Celtics.

Speaker 1 It was like a slightly different part of his career because he was so good on Seattle and they, you know, was a big part of those two finals teams. But

Speaker 1 the way he would pick his spots, the only person that kind of reminds me of him is Drew.

Speaker 1 With the way Drew has gears during the season and then gears in games, and then in a fourth quarter, can elevate a level where he goes from being a role player to being, you could really feel it in the Celtics Orlando series, where it's just like,

Speaker 1 I feel like Drew, and sometimes I feel like he's the second most important guy in the Celtics for the late game stuff. He's always in the right spots.
You can always count him, get the right rebound.

Speaker 1 I always feel like he's going to make a three. He can guard anybody in the other team.
And that part reminds me of DJ, I think. But I think you're right.

Speaker 1 DJ was a one-on-one.

Speaker 2 But of course, part of that is when we knew him and we knew, we saw him night in and night out and understood the

Speaker 2 overall approach that he took, which was that he didn't play 100% all the time. He took nights off.

Speaker 2 And at least in 85, 86, he's absolutely positively, but he pre-announced them to the team, to Danny specifically. I love this.
Danny, tonight you're getting the shots.

Speaker 2 And he always picked a team that they were going to kick their ass at home. It wasn't a game the way the game was going to be won.
And

Speaker 2 you can see, I've got the logging game by game. And, oh, minutes played, 28.
FGA, four.

Speaker 2 Danny, Minutes played, you know,

Speaker 2 FGA, 17,

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 DJ was taking the night off. And yet the converse is

Speaker 2 when the big games came, you wanted that guy. And Larry Bird would be the first one to tell you.
And

Speaker 2 as he famously anointed him, it was the best player he ever played with

Speaker 2 and never backed down from that.

Speaker 1 Right. Well, you know, another 101, this is a fun combo,

Speaker 1 just because I always think about this stuff. And you're one of the,

Speaker 1 I probably learned it from you. I've never seen anyone rebound like Moses.
Like Moses at his peak.

Speaker 1 I've never seen anybody, whatever he was doing, I remember writing about in my book where he would go, he'd almost go to the baseline, almost out of bounds, And then he would just back into people.

Speaker 1 And I've never seen anyone do that before or since. Like he would just use his ass as this like weapon.
And all of a sudden, guys were flying backwards and he was right next to the rim.

Speaker 1 I've just never seen it.

Speaker 2 No, he was special

Speaker 2 in that regard. But we back because to me, the number one rule of rebounding, do you want the damn ball or don't you? And, you know, he wanted every rebound.
I mean, and there's two types of

Speaker 2 statistically good rebounders. There's guys that get what comes to them and they're big and they're strong or they're athletic.

Speaker 2 And there's guys that get rebounds that, quote, don't belong to them, unquote.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 Moses was the champion of getting rebounds that didn't belong to him. And that's what he lived for.
Rebounding was his raison, was his identity.

Speaker 2 And I know that mattered, that was the part of the game that mattered the most to him.

Speaker 2 There was no question about that.

Speaker 2 He was an okay offensive player. He didn't have a great repertoire.
You know, he had a big man post, you know,

Speaker 2 power stuff. But he wasn't a finesse, any way, shape, or form, a finesse offensive player.
But he sure was a phenomenal rebounder.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what I love, though. Game four of the Golden State series, Draymond made that big stop, and then Butler came flying in for this crazy rebound in traffic.

Speaker 1 And he's just like, I'm getting this rebound. That was, I went to the Laker game last night.

Speaker 1 And they're just getting killed on the boards. And everybody's just kind of looking around at each other, like, I don't know.
Are you good? But nobody was like, shit, I better get some rebounds.

Speaker 1 You know, like, I think about 2010, game seven, Gasal was, you know, really taking it to KG, but Kobe, because he wasn't making shots, and Kobe's like, I'm just going to have to go get, try to get as many rebounds as I can, and came flying in.

Speaker 1 And that's what swung that game. Nobody in the Lakers did that last night.
Everybody was like, ah, Rudy Gobert. I wish we had a center.
And you could watch them rolling over in real time.

Speaker 1 It was kind of crazy.

Speaker 2 Interesting. Yeah, well, I think the whole thing.
They,

Speaker 2 I'm guessing I wasn't, I never did anything against a person as you did, but the Lakers, I guess, recognized the futility of their circumstance some point during the middle of this series.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 Inherently. And I mean, you know, and they, they just weren't, they didn't have a deep enough roster.
They, they're lucky they had two guys, let alone three.

Speaker 2 And anyway, we all know you saw it, and, you know, so now we'll see what that offseason brings.

Speaker 1 All right, more guys now and where you see them. What? Who is Brunson to you? Brunson almost seems like he's at in 1974, like he could have been easily on the Knicks with Walt Frazier.

Speaker 2 Yeah, very, very true.

Speaker 2 Brunson's one of those guys that you could easily see playing in a 1968 All-Star game as well as playing today.

Speaker 2 I had two guys in a previous generation that I said were complete throwbacks games that they were in combinations of the 1950, the combination of Dauph Shays in the 21st century.

Speaker 2 Paul Pierce and Manu Ginobly. Those two guys had old games

Speaker 2 spiced up with a three-pointer. You know, they added the little extra sauce, which was the three-pointer.
But other than that, their game would have translated very well in previous generations.

Speaker 2 Brunson, he just, he makes, he shows you what you have to do if you're going to excel at his size. He's figured out

Speaker 2 angles. He's figuring out deception timing.

Speaker 2 He's strong. He's strong.
He can take a bump and keep the shot when he goes to hoop.

Speaker 2 And he just, he's got a basketball mind, a PhD. You know, he's a player's son and this coach's son who really had obviously absorbed all the lessons.

Speaker 2 And he's got, and people talk about the flopping. It doesn't even bother me at all.
I think he's just smart. That's all.

Speaker 2 I don't mind it with him.

Speaker 2 I buy it with some people over the years, but it doesn't bother me at all. with him.

Speaker 2 You go guy. I love him.
I just think

Speaker 2 he's a special. And here's the thing, Bill.

Speaker 2 When they got him, now I i always had my eye on him back to villanova and and now of course i didn't see him play much in dallas you know um but i knew he was there but when they got him i said oh that's the good move very good move but they've overpaid he's not a star he's a he's a wonderful auxiliary player that's what i thought oh boy is he turned out to be worth every penny for them yes do you make anything

Speaker 1 Do you make anything of the fact that only one team built around a small guy in the history of the league has ever won a title

Speaker 2 yes i think it's i think it's a good historical lesson in fact i've had this discussion in this year uh with people about uh you go back over the history of the nba and uh i i'm only can think of one in my time anyway you know i'm i'm and i'm thinking about what i know about the 50s and kozi never won till he got russell and and so uh and he was the preeminent guy and then and the other guys the other little guards of his near near him were seder martin and he did win.

Speaker 2 He had Mike and

Speaker 2 Bobby Davies, and they won one in 51.

Speaker 2 But anyway, Isaiah Thomas arguably was the best player on the bed, Boy Pistons, and they won back to back and could have won three in a row because they were jobbed in 88 on a terrible call.

Speaker 2 Don't get me started. Lambert.
You know, when they put Lambert, they put Kareem on the line, and that was a terrible call. But anyway,

Speaker 2 Isaiah, I think we're on the same page here. Only exit, only Stockton ever won, you know.

Speaker 1 Chris Paul.

Speaker 2 Nah, Nash, no, you know, so it's hard. It's hard when your best player is a point guard and the next best player is a point guard.
And so,

Speaker 2 you know, we'll see how far they can go not just this year, but in the future,

Speaker 2 with their best player being Jalen Brunson.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because there was a great book about the Pistons in the late 80s, how they put together that title team with McCloskey called the franchise.

Speaker 1 And it was all about them with this conundrum of the league had been around for four decades at that point.

Speaker 1 Isaiah was their best player, is one of the best players in the league, but nobody'd ever won with a small guy. So what do you have to do?

Speaker 1 And basically, the answer was Isaiah had to give up a lot of his offense, lead the team.

Speaker 1 He could have had 30 a game. Instead, he scored like 22 a game, 23, whatever it was.
And he was trying to get everyone else involved.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I wonder, like when I watch Brunson, how much he has the ball, if he's not, like, are they better off with him scoring seven less points a game? You know?

Speaker 2 That issue was raised earlier in this series,

Speaker 2 at least in the New York Post, anyway. I didn't read, I read that every day, and I didn't see it.

Speaker 2 And they raised that issue that

Speaker 2 he's got to be less ball dominant for this team. And the next came out, he was.
And in fact, so yeah, that's a very, it's a fine line. It's like so many things in basketball.

Speaker 2 That's why I love the, the among the reasons i love the game i love but but the uh the the the what goes into winning you know and and the the need to calibrate guys skills that's what i always said about uh about jordan uh and the difference when jordan people think

Speaker 2 He didn't win a championship. Yeah, he needed, he won the championship when he finally got Scotty Pippen as a tremendous sidekick.

Speaker 2 But until he learned how to calibrate his skills with the other guys and not, you know, and balance it out and know when to take over, when not to take over, know who to go to, when not. I mean,

Speaker 2 it's all very, very important stuff. You just don't throw together talent.

Speaker 2 You've got to play the game in a quote-unquote right way. And that's a universal truth.
And

Speaker 2 you got to figure out how I'm going to blend with the other guys. There's one ball and five guys.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 2 Petey Carrill used to talk about that. Bradley grew up thinking that way.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 you got to be able to think that way. Byrne understood that.
And

Speaker 2 God knows Magic understood that. And Michael didn't originally do, even though it came out of North Carolina with Dean, but he finally figured it out.

Speaker 2 And once he did, the championship started to flow.

Speaker 1 How about Luko?

Speaker 1 First of all, is he a one-on-one? And second, do you think he'll ever understand that balance of I have to make everybody else better? Maybe I don't need to score 35 a game.

Speaker 1 Where do you see for him from a title standpoint?

Speaker 2 First of all, before we get to that, I was thinking that I know one person sitting back having an extra

Speaker 2 late tidy night last year was Nico Harrison. He must have been smiling as the Lakers out the window.

Speaker 2 Anyway,

Speaker 2 yeah, Luke got interesting there because

Speaker 2 he does have the ball, you know, all the time.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's a tidy.

Speaker 2 I think he's still only 25. He's still got lessons he can learn.

Speaker 2 And I think he's smart enough to feel, we recognize

Speaker 2 that he's got to think in these terms that we're talking about. But

Speaker 2 the Lakers, though, unfortunately for them,

Speaker 2 you know, their roster is shy. And, you know, now,

Speaker 2 who knows where they go from here with LeBron aiming, we played 40 years, 41 years old in December of this year. Yeah.
Is he going to play again and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 No, Luke is interesting, you know, in that regard. He's so skilled, but that's the thing that when you have all that skill, you have to learn how to utilize it properly.

Speaker 2 There's no question, you know, and

Speaker 2 some nights it seems like that he does, and other nights he's got the ball too much. So I don't think he's fully gotten there yet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I wonder. I'm sure they're going to be talking all summer.
Is he going to get in shape? And how seriously he's going to take this?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's the whole defense thing, too, with him. And I wondered, my big question about the series before they started was, will people, will the other guys be able to take advantage?

Speaker 2 You know, how much can you exploit him on defense? You know, and

Speaker 2 it happened, and uh, uh, that's something that the Lakers have to be, you know, realistic about.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they the Lakers' case

Speaker 1 hinged on uh, can Luca not get torched on defense? Can we get any rebounds? And how much can we ask from LeBron?

Speaker 1 And as the series went along, LeBron started to die, especially in these fourth quarters. He, so he's you said he's going to be 41 next year during the playoffs.
Um, I think that's right, yeah. Um,

Speaker 2 September 30th is his birthday, so I know that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so Havilichek

Speaker 1 Havichek played 16 years

Speaker 1 and it seemed like 40 when Havilchek was like, oh my god, somebody played 16 years in the NBA. This is impossible.
But then probably could have played a couple years more. Like you were going to.

Speaker 2 By the way, I've got a column in the hopper. It's either going to come out Sunday or the week after.

Speaker 2 They didn't tell me which one they want to run.

Speaker 2 It's on Havilchek, by the way, for reasons that you'll see. Okay.
And

Speaker 2 you'll like, but I know you will like it. it.
But

Speaker 2 John did not quit because he couldn't play anymore. His game had diminished, sure.

Speaker 2 He averaged 16 points a game that year,

Speaker 2 but he could still play. And

Speaker 2 he said he would have hung around if he had any idea how good Bird was going to be.

Speaker 2 And he would have hung around. Anyway, no, John played 16 years.
He ended at 38, went out with a 29-point game.

Speaker 2 And he quit because he didn't like the circumstance anymore. He wasn't having fun with the way that the Celtics had deteriorated in the locker room, quite frankly.
And it was a down period. And

Speaker 2 so anyway, but he still had skill.

Speaker 2 He went out. He went out to being able to play.
But he was 38

Speaker 2 that year. He ended.
In fact, he ended

Speaker 2 the day,

Speaker 2 his last game was the day after his 38th birthday, by the way. And that just so happened.
He had turned 38 the day. He was born April 8th, 1940, and his last game was April 9, 1978.

Speaker 1 wow yeah because there was always stories about how he would come and like just play with them and scrimmages and stuff when like three four years later and was still pretty good

Speaker 1 and they couldn't believe how good he was these guys these young guys you know that did the this this you know that was his birthday present to himself to come to practice and suit up that was fun well so i mean that this is the question with lebron because we saw it with brady where he just kept playing and you know in the 2017 18 range and they had garoppolo and it's like how long can this go?

Speaker 1 They need a succession plan. Quarterbacks don't play this long.
And then he just kept going and going and going. Like, I do feel like there can be generational freaks.

Speaker 1 I really wonder how long LeBron can go.

Speaker 1 I think he could still keep playing, but if he's going to be making $50 million a year as one of your two expensive guys.

Speaker 1 That's where it becomes problematic, right? Because you're just asking like

Speaker 1 you're asking for

Speaker 1 nine months a year, potentially, if you're going to win the finals from this guy that you need to rely on for all these different things because he's in your $50 million spot.

Speaker 1 And that's where I don't know what the, it almost seems like the answer might be maybe he needs to take less and try to boost up the team and think about it that way.

Speaker 1 But I don't know if he would do that.

Speaker 2 I don't know. That's obviously would be a very

Speaker 2 rational solution that,

Speaker 2 you know, we know along the way, supposedly Brady was able to do that in his time

Speaker 2 with the contracts. And it's always wonderful.
And, you know,

Speaker 2 with the money that we're talking about, these people make, it shouldn't be that hard of a decision if you really want to win. You know, you don't have to.

Speaker 1 Plus they make it off the court too, right? Like they can still make up money all these different ways.

Speaker 2 But the issue about whether how long he's occasionally he's has he not

Speaker 2 at times over the years or recent years when somebody would kiddingly say about playing year 45, not dismiss the possibility that he would want to keep playing until he's 45.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, if he deteriorates, I used to look at Brady.

Speaker 2 I remember thinking about Brady this way. If he were to deteriorate, take a percentage, 5%, 10%,

Speaker 2 how much would you still like to have him? And the answer was always, I'll still take him. If Defon deteriorates 10% next year,

Speaker 2 that's still a pretty good player based on what he was able to produce this year, right?

Speaker 2 And so.

Speaker 2 You know, he certainly could still play in this game.

Speaker 2 He is in phenomenal shape. We learned that he spends literally a million dollars a year on conditioning

Speaker 1 or more.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And

Speaker 2 we see the benefit of it.

Speaker 2 And we've never been, we've had old guys.

Speaker 2 We've got, they've always been the old, the two oldest guys I can think of that played this long were Kevin Willison and Robert Parrish, who still holds the record for most games, which I guess LeBron is eventually going to eclipse.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 1 old washed up Kareem, I think, got to 42, didn't he? Wasn't he like 41 or 42?

Speaker 2 But those guys got into their 42 and 3 range,

Speaker 2 particularly potterish. LeBron,

Speaker 2 but they weren't running up. They weren't doing the work, you know, the up and down work that LeBron does.

Speaker 2 They were doing the down low work.

Speaker 1 But anyway,

Speaker 2 we haven't seen anything like this, what I'm babbling to say. We haven't seen anything like this before.
Anybody that could play the game, the way he plays it at this time, at this level,

Speaker 2 at this age, we haven't seen that before.

Speaker 2 It's a whole new territory that we're exploring.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I voted for him second team on NBA and I stand by it. Right.
It's just that he was one of the, I mean, there were a lot of injuries, but

Speaker 1 Jason Tatum, what do you see when you see him?

Speaker 1 Who do you see pieces of with Jason Tatum?

Speaker 2 Jason Tatum at six feet 10

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 the most all-around skilled player the Celtics have ever had at six feet 10.

Speaker 2 You know, Larry didn't possess that kind of ball handling ability. Larry didn't possess that kind of get your own shot at your will

Speaker 2 against almost anybody at any time. You know,

Speaker 2 most people, but there were people, you know, we know that could give him, irritate him.

Speaker 2 This guy,

Speaker 2 it's funny because he's like Pierce on steroids because, you know, I declared 20 years ago that Paul Pierce was the best scoring machine in Celtic history.

Speaker 2 You know, not the best player, still Larry, but the best scoring machine, that he had every aspect aspect of scoring, you know, you know, they say now all three levels, right?

Speaker 2 Well, the fact is that his mid-range gauge was superb and he can get a shot off anytime he wanted and he could and he had a three-point range and he's the best, Bill, I think he's the best finisher on a break the Celtics have ever had was Paul Pierce.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he had that and he and don't foul him because he's an 80 plus percent way up there, mid 80s percent homework free throw shooter.

Speaker 2 This is the best all-around consummate individual offensive player that they've ever had. Jason Tatum is making a bid for this honor.

Speaker 2 And as a matter of fact, I'm sure a lot of people now think he's already earned it.

Speaker 2 And it's funny you mentioned, not funny, but I'm glad you mentioned this because I've already been on local public record as saying he just came off yet another yawn, routine 35-point X-rebound, ecstasy game in a playoff, and he's not getting enough credit for it here in Boston.

Speaker 2 He's not.

Speaker 2 This is part of the curse of the history of the franchise. He's up against, you know, the Havilcheks and the Larrys and the Pierces.

Speaker 2 That's what happens when you come to Boston.

Speaker 2 And there's good in that and there's bad in that.

Speaker 2 And this guy is,

Speaker 2 I hope he's going to be totally appreciated for what he's done and how much he's improved his game and then broadened his game.

Speaker 2 Last year, the big thing I took away from the playoffs with him was improved defensive rebounding, traffic rebounding. I thought he became a terrific.

Speaker 2 traffic rebounder last year, which to the likes I hadn't seen before. We know he's broadened his passing game, you know, and

Speaker 2 then his individual offense.

Speaker 2 I mean, some of these step backs, they're, you know, of course, all over the league, we're getting used to it. Curry has set a template, you know, for distance that you've got to match now.

Speaker 2 And I used to call it Curry land. Now I call it Caitlin Clark land, but that's a story for another day.
And, but, you know, look at the shot that.

Speaker 2 How about the shot that Carl Anthony Towns made, that that last jumper the other night.

Speaker 1 95.

Speaker 2 Yeah, after we had the one, we were going out of bounds, which was a from that was a bird-like shot going out of bounds on a baseline, making that from almost behind the backboard.

Speaker 2 The next shot, that was five feet behind the arc, minimum.

Speaker 2 He's seven feet tall.

Speaker 2 But Pierce has, I'm sure, excuse me, Tatum has this ability to make step backs almost in that range. And people, I think people here take him for granted.
I really do.

Speaker 2 And I don't know what more they want out of him, frankly.

Speaker 1 I agree with you. I've been talking about it all year, and then people get mad at me that that I'm talking about Tatum too much.

Speaker 1 And I just feel like he's made such a leap from two years ago to last year, but then last year to this year, where there was, I thought Tatum and Brown last year were 1A, 1B in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 Brown was awesome last year. And the distance between them, you know, was you never knew who was going to be the best guy in a given game.
Now Tatum is clearly the best guy in the team.

Speaker 1 I think he's...

Speaker 1 clearly either the third or fourth best guy in the league. And you didn't even talk about like how good his defense is and his ability to guard all these different positions.

Speaker 1 But the rebounding is the thing I love the most.

Speaker 1 He's their best rebounder by far. You take a game like that Minnesota Lakers game last night.

Speaker 1 He just would have gone under there and battled Gobert and gotten like 14 rebounds because he's like, this is, we're going to lose unless I do this. I think I appreciate that piece of it the most.

Speaker 1 I just think he's turned into such a, I don't want to say bully, but there's, there's, there's a toughness to him this year.

Speaker 2 There's a confidence. I mean, he's a, I mean, obviously, he's, he's, he's smart

Speaker 2 and he's he's smart and uh confident, but humble too. He's, yeah, you know, there's nothing not to like with this.
And, you know, the whole package, I don't see anything. There's no yeah, buts.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't have a yeah, but and uh on him. And we, and we know off the court his personal life with his wonderful kids.
And, you know, the whole thing is, he's, he's entirely rootable.

Speaker 2 It's where I'm trying to spit out here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think this year,

Speaker 1 people will appreciate him more, I think, if this goes a couple more rounds. I think he's going to get.

Speaker 2 If they win, you know, if they don't win, you know, there'll be all this. And

Speaker 2 I get, don't get me, you know, I'm not a championship robust guy. Okay.
I've never have been. I never will be.

Speaker 2 Because too many variables score into winning any championship, including in this, you have game seven and things are going great and then somebody goes down. It can happen.
And we know that. So

Speaker 2 I don't take anything for granted there. I'll say this.

Speaker 2 I'm going off teeth here a little bit.

Speaker 2 If anybody other than OKC, Cleveland, or Boston wins, I'll be stunned. One of those three is going to win.

Speaker 2 You got to draw a line after those three teams in this league. You have to.
And that's that.

Speaker 2 And one of them is going to win. I don't know which one.
I'm anxious to see.

Speaker 1 So I had the, and we're taping this for game six of Clippers Denver. I had the Clippers in that conversation and just, I must have had amnesia with James Hardiff.

Speaker 1 I just, I just i think i just forgot i don't know maybe i blocked it out of my mind or whatever and it's like what am i doing of course of course they're not making the finals with uh with james harden i should have known um let's let's take a quick break and then uh we'll come back i want to talk about jokic this episode is brought to you by tick tock sports fans love to discover the next greatest player of all time tick tock applies that passion to the whole game.

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Speaker 1 iPhone 11 or later required. All right, we're talking history, current NBA, got to talk Jokic.

Speaker 1 I went to the game Saturday when he just would not let them lose against the Clippers and basically played the whole game and just did everything and was a man absolutely possessed. And it was,

Speaker 1 you know, it was up there for me with LeBron in game six in 2012 and some of the Jordan stuff I'd seen in person.

Speaker 1 Just when I'm thinking about the best players I've ever seen in person, this now moved, this moved him just being at that game and just being like oh my i can't believe how good this guy is um where where do you put him i never thought we'd see another bill walton i never thought we'd see another bird and yet there's pieces of both of those guys and a lot of the stuff he's doing and he's also doing way more than that but when you watch him like did you ever think we'd see anything like this ever

Speaker 2 Let's go back early in his career here. And I remember a local writer out

Speaker 2 there

Speaker 2 talking to me and asked about his passing and how did I think his passing rated with

Speaker 2 Walton.

Speaker 2 And I hadn't seen enough of him to have, I couldn't believe I was having this discussion that anyone would be so sacrilegious as to suggest that there was a sinner who would come along to pass anywhere near as well as Bill Walton.

Speaker 2 And guess what? He's it.

Speaker 2 That was a fair, he is right. I mean, he's there.
And

Speaker 2 we can have the argument.

Speaker 2 He's so,

Speaker 2 and so that's the thing.

Speaker 2 He's not only is he as good at Password as Walton, but he's a far superior scorer. Oh, my God, you know, he was not even questioned.
And so

Speaker 2 my position on centers, as you probably well know, I mean,

Speaker 2 you start with the three altimers, and whichever one you want to make the devil's advocate argument for, go right ahead, Russell, Kareem, and Wilt, you know. And I could, you know, fine.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm a Russell guy, but I mean, I totally respect the other two for what they were. And

Speaker 2 then I said,

Speaker 2 then you draw a line. Now we start with Brian, who's number four.
Well, now we got a guy firmly entrenched in

Speaker 2 the discussion that we'll see how it all plays out, how many championships he'll win or whatever it is. But in terms of wanting to watch somebody play,

Speaker 2 I'll tell you what, he's at the top of the list.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's extraordinary. You don't know what he's going to do next.
You don't know what incredible past he's going to conjure up. You don't know

Speaker 2 how many threes he's going to make. You don't know what great rebound he's going to get.
No, he's a treasure. I mean, my God,

Speaker 2 it's a total delight to watch.

Speaker 2 And he isn't,

Speaker 2 you know, he's still got a long way to go, you know, depending on how long he wants to play. We don't know.

Speaker 2 We know he might want to go become a jockey, you know, a seven-foot jockey someday.

Speaker 2 Who knows about that?

Speaker 2 But anyway,

Speaker 2 count me among the admirers, the idolaters of Nicola Djokic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Russell and I talked about this a little on Sunday, that this whole theory that he's just going to retire when he's 34 and be done with it.

Speaker 1 After going to that game on Saturday, I don't believe it. The guy's too competitive.
You don't shut that off. Like, he was an absolute full-fledged maniac in that game.
And just in general, like,

Speaker 1 you know, there's pieces, like, obviously there's some Walton. There's a lot of Bird.
One of the things that him on defense reminds me a lot. Bird always had the

Speaker 1 reputation of being not a good defensive player. Meanwhile, he made all defenses and was always up there in steals.

Speaker 1 But his ability, Jokic's ability to read what the other team's going to do on offense and know what they're doing in advance and then fuck it up basically before, as they're doing it, jumping in these spots where they're like, oh, I didn't know somebody was going to be there.

Speaker 1 He's just, his brain's always moving. It's...
In person, it's unbelievable. I never thought after Bird of Magic, I never thought I would see somebody that processed a game like that.

Speaker 1 You know, and I, to me, that's the standard.

Speaker 2 There's always a danger of allowing yourself to think that way. I've done it myself.
I'm not going to, you're never going to see anything.

Speaker 2 I mean, when Havilch retired, you know, I mean, of course, and we haven't seen, and we were talking earlier about styles and individualistic people and people that John, there hasn't been another Hawich, but the point is, in effectiveness, Bird comes along, you know, and renders John as the 1A in self-pantheon now instead of one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you, you, you, there's always, you got to prepare yourself for

Speaker 2 the evolution of the game. This guy

Speaker 2 is really

Speaker 2 ultra special.

Speaker 2 And the thing that made Bird so special ultimately was the mind game and playing, thinking two steps ahead. And now we got a big guy taller than him that

Speaker 2 can

Speaker 2 do that as well. No, it's it's it's it's he he understands that the game, the game in a way that so many other guys never never never will.
No, no, so you have

Speaker 2 you have like there's that hakeem moses shack kind of area right and maybe yannis is like right underneath it and you already have jokic in that area potentially looking at that spot right under wilt and kareem oh he's at a bridge right now you're kidding first of all my number four is all is hakeem okay he's my number four okay so uh oh so what in between he's he's closer to the big three than he is to the four i mean he's going to be in that he's going to to have to be in that discussion.

Speaker 2 You know, and Tim going to Harbon Championships. Wilt won two, you know, and

Speaker 2 the other guys won multiple. And Russell, of course, won 11.
And Kareem won what, six, whatever, five or six.

Speaker 1 Shaq had four. Moses had one.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you know,

Speaker 2 Moses, you know, wasn't pretty, but he was effective.

Speaker 2 But anyway, Robert Parrish got three, by the way, because he got one with the Bulls, by the way, although he wasn't, you know, prominent. Right.

Speaker 2 Anyway, um anyway he's i got him in in between we're four he's at three and a half right now on his way up

Speaker 1 you know all right so we go we're your your whole premise that i loved we're playing the aliens and we can grab anybody

Speaker 1 and yokage yokage bird and magic agree to come and now we need to find two more guys to put with those three where we're just like we're just going to have the aliens backpedaling not knowing what's happening just amazing passing who are the other two people playing with Jokic, Bird, and Magic?

Speaker 2 Well, I still want Michael.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 You know, and you know who I'll take now because that gives me a weapon. You know, not since I got Magic, I got the ball handling.
I got the orchestration. I got the fast break.

Speaker 2 I got everything settled. You know, who's who to run it? I got

Speaker 2 special qualities that he had.

Speaker 2 Stefan Curry.

Speaker 1 Why not? Wow.

Speaker 1 See, but for the spaces.

Speaker 2 The greatest shooter of all time. You know, and I'm coming.
I mean, the greatest shooter of all time.

Speaker 2 I don't need LeBron, you know, multi-skilled. I don't need LeBron.
I'll bring him off the bench.

Speaker 2 He could be my sixth man. He won't like it.

Speaker 1 He'd be an amazing sixth man.

Speaker 2 What a wonderful sixth man that would be.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Why would we dismiss the greatest shooter of all time?

Speaker 2 And who's a team guy? Oh, by the way, who can also pass? By the way,

Speaker 2 he's people. He's not a point guard.
He's a two-guard who can pass. Period.
He's not a point guard. He doesn't think that's not his role,

Speaker 2 but he can pass and will. And by the way, the other thing is under how well he goes to the hoop with either hand,

Speaker 2 you know, to set up things for himself and other people in the long run. Curry.
So answer, and I'm just, this is on the fly question that you ask. And my first, why not? That with the guys you name,

Speaker 2 he'd fit in perfectly.

Speaker 1 If Maravich had a three-point line, are we talking about him in the 60s and 70s like we talk about Curry?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 remember,

Speaker 2 the game came, the shot came in in his last year. Yeah.
1979, 80. He, when he joined the Celtics in the mid-season.

Speaker 1 And he did make that three.

Speaker 2 He did make. He's a guy that scored 68 points in Madison Square Garden without a three, averaged 44 points a game.

Speaker 2 And 44 people, young'ins, the guy averaged 44 points a game in three years of college basketball at LSU without a three. Yeah.
And he had that.

Speaker 2 You know, he would have done what

Speaker 2 so many of them who didn't, would have done, go home and work on it.

Speaker 2 And he would have gotten, you know, certain guys that occasionally took shots in that range when it was considered to be a bad shot. And sometimes they went in.

Speaker 2 He would have worked on that shot.

Speaker 2 But he made some threes. I remember some games where he had effective threes for the Celtics.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Oh, my God.
It's just, because they've done these estimates, you know, which I've at LSU, going over the game films and trying to project what his average would have been had

Speaker 2 he made, had well.

Speaker 1 He has sort of taken more of them, though, because if he knew there were three instead of two, he's taken 20 a game.

Speaker 2 It's like Larry. It's like Larry.
People that anybody, my God, do you imagine how we flourish today? If you tell him, oh, you can take 10 or 12 a game. You know,

Speaker 2 Larry embarrassingly would take four or five because it was, you know, you know, there. And part of it, you know, he famously didn't want the three, didn't like it.

Speaker 1 And well, he's used them more as the weapon. It was like a, either to get the crowd going or to demoralize people.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yes, he did it as a psychological weapon more often than not and saved the spots.

Speaker 2 But he would have, hey, if you said, okay, if that's the game, I can play that game. And he would have gone, well, he gotten better.

Speaker 2 A lot of guys like in, you know, by the way, you know who would have been ready-made for the game? I can still see him.

Speaker 2 Jerry Lucas. Jerry Lucas was going threes before there were threes from at six with that shot put thing he had.

Speaker 2 You know, I can still see him with legs extended and he shot it from here not not here he shot it from here but you know with the disc anyway lucas would have been a phenomenal three-point shooter stretch for getting 15 rebounds a game jerry lucas

Speaker 2 and then computing his seasons average in his head as he went back down on defense famously computing his recomputing his shooting percentage as he would go back down on defense where do you put yannis in all of this

Speaker 1 because he just got knocked out of the first round again

Speaker 2 He's spectacular. He's not, you know, now we were talking centers earlier, but oh, yeah.
I think the question now is going to be the rearrangement of the all-time 10, you know, the all-time pen.

Speaker 2 How can you not include him in any current discussion about all-time top 10 players?

Speaker 2 I can't. I can't ignore him.
I'm sometimes in awe of him.

Speaker 2 I am a little annoyed that he has legalized not just a Euro step, but in his case, a Euro gallop.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's,

Speaker 2 you know, that's this whole thing, this whole traveling thing. I used to laugh it off, but it is epidemic.
It is bad. And the league doesn't seem to care about it.

Speaker 2 And he's an exhibit A, you know, and how devastating it is when he can do it because he can go from mid-court to basket, no more than two dribbles, you know, with ways that, oh, he's phenomenal.

Speaker 2 I think. And

Speaker 2 this whole issue with the buck, that's a whole, you know, that's worth a, you know, lots of discussion.

Speaker 1 And listen, they gave up a lot of assets for Drew Holiday and then Dave Willard. And that's it.

Speaker 2 I know. I, and, and, and what could they possibly get? And who could afford them? And what can they possibly get back that would make it even remotely worthwhile?

Speaker 2 I, I, not that in my head, I don't have the scope of, you know, the, the, the vision of or knowledge of all the teams' individual circumstances to know who could possibly make anything remotely, a deal that the Milwaukee would ever want.

Speaker 2 But they have to start thinking about it whether from here now. It's all, you know, clearly it's over.
And whether Document here, so I don't know whether that either.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm hoping Doc comes back on my podcast. Um, the Milwaukee has no first-round picks that they control of their own over the next five years, which makes the tanking a little bit harder.

Speaker 1 I got one more guy for you. Um,

Speaker 1 SGA is another guy who feels like he easily could have existed in 1974,

Speaker 1 right? He's

Speaker 2 he's a ton, he's a tremendous guard and he's tremendous.

Speaker 2 You know, he's a, I'm trying to think of, I can't think of,

Speaker 2 you know, among all the great two guards,

Speaker 2 does he remind me of anybody? No, I just see him as a wonderful all-around shooting guard, period. But I do, I love the idea, by the way, that that team has an all-Canadian backcourt.
Right.

Speaker 2 And, you know, Deutsche community, he's from Montreal, Dewey.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 so I love that.

Speaker 2 I'm still waiting for Canada to make a splash in the world and the Olympics sometime soon, you know. I mean, but they choke every time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they fall apart at some point. They don't.

Speaker 2 I know it. They're massive underachievers, Canada.

Speaker 2 But, you know,

Speaker 2 anyway.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah,

Speaker 2 I could see FGA, you know,

Speaker 2 in the 1970

Speaker 2 Florida Championship Series. You know, I can see him.
Yeah, absolutely, positively. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's not.

Speaker 1 so you have no

Speaker 1 that i can come up with you have okayc still as the favorite because vegas would agree with you i i

Speaker 2 i

Speaker 2 i think that the no honest to god i mean i know it sounds parochial i'm sorry i still think that if everybody is fortunate enough to be healthy and able to bring their a game that the celtics

Speaker 2 can win and will win if if they're a fortunate enough but right now the the variables there starting with you know holiday starting with nen brown and will somebody you know mess around with the tatum's wrist and poor zingis you never know when he's going to take a misstep never know you can't count on too many what ifs there for me to be totally confident but i'm saying if they are show up in the finals healthy you know then and and and i don't care how and i want everybody to be healthy uh i'd still like their chances okay she's interesting though there's no question about it and i'll tell you who's i'm i'm i've read about you know i I was prepared for him, but having read about him before he ever set foot in college.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 my God, Holmgren is good.

Speaker 2 Holmgren's good.

Speaker 2 He's a very, very useful player. And

Speaker 2 Hartenstein, he's not a star, but he knows who he is and he knows what his job is.

Speaker 2 And he does it well.

Speaker 2 And of course, then

Speaker 2 the rest of the team, yeah, fine. And well coached, of course.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I like that. And as far as, and Cleveland, Cleveland, don't dismiss Cleveland, but when again, right now, they're doing it without Garland, as well as speak.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I think they would, they're not going to go all the way without their full compliment. But,

Speaker 2 you know, they're good. It's salute nobody, the defensive player of the year.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 they're good too. But I still honestly believe that the Celtics

Speaker 2 have more assets ultimately than anybody. I still think if they're healthy.

Speaker 1 Is this Celtics team, where is it creeping up on the popularity rankings in Boston?

Speaker 1 It just seems like people love, you know, they have a real history now with Tademan Brown because those guys grew up on the team. Porzingis is a cult hero.
Horford is among the most popular

Speaker 1 role player plus guys they've ever had. Holiday and White are impossible not to like.
Pritchard's a fan favorite. Yeah, it's just you go on and on.
It's like everybody loves everybody on this team.

Speaker 1 I don't remember many teams like this on the Celtics.

Speaker 2 And the vastly underrated Luke Cornette, made, who's been a nice adjunct to this team. Okay, you're right.
Well, this is a new generation.

Speaker 2 This is their team. This is, the Celtics have had, you know, four or five incarnations.
Well, you go about the 50s, then you got the

Speaker 2 50s and 60s team, that's one. You got the Havacek Calams team, that's two.
You got the big three team, that's three. You got the second big three team, that's four.

Speaker 2 This is the fifth Celtic incarnation, you know, of greatness and

Speaker 2 a new fandom. I see so many young people in the stands.

Speaker 2 And it's terrific. And

Speaker 2 it is what a likable bunch.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 it is. It's just, there's no polarizing players.
Marcus Smart, who I loved, but acknowledged his foibles. To me, he and Jackie Bradley Jr.
were like Siamese twins of sports.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I love Jackie Bradley Jr. to the, you know, I don't care if you're 180,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 there's no polar, who's a polarizing player?

Speaker 2 Unless people want to manufacture something about, you know, oh, Brown, he dribbles in the traffic. He still doesn't have a left hand.
All right. Blah, blah, blah.
You know,

Speaker 2 that's as close as I can come

Speaker 2 to any kind of a

Speaker 2 negative. You're right.
It's a beloved team and very well worth rooting for.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And it's something that, I mean, I certainly grew up with where everybody stayed on the same teams.
And then in the last 15 years, that kind of got blown up and people move around more.

Speaker 1 And you have something like Jokic in Denver, you have Curry and Golden State, or you have Brown and Tatum together in Boston with Horford.

Speaker 1 And I do think it's more meaningful to the fan base and to the people at the games. They have real history with these guys, you know?

Speaker 1 And like we tried to capture some of that in the Celtic City about these generations, how they overlap and how people buy in and people overlap with the stars from the previous generation.

Speaker 1 And does this stuff actually exist? And I do think those guys care about that. I I think Missoula cares about it.
You know, I think the organization cares about it.

Speaker 2 That came across clearly. Well, it sure came across clearly how Garnett and Pierce felt about it in their time.
How about Ray Allen?

Speaker 1 Ray Allen was like, I'm a Celtic. He only played five years.
And he's like, I am a Celtic. I consider myself a Celtic.

Speaker 2 That did. That did surprise me.
You know,

Speaker 2 he was always kind of a little bit unscrutable as far as I'm concerned. And

Speaker 2 that was good to know. Yeah, that was really good to know.
No, it's all true.

Speaker 2 So that, but, oh, by the way, I'm going to give you, I can't leave you without filling out. And you'll,

Speaker 2 I've decided Peyton Pritchard is a cross between Larry Siegfried and Eddie House.

Speaker 1 Wow. I'm probably one of the only ones that's going to get that one.
What's the Larry Siegfried guy?

Speaker 2 Well, he's same rough size.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Close and

Speaker 2 feisty, tough. He's a scrapper.

Speaker 2 Sigmi was, oh, I can look at Johnny Mo. Siggy's in his shirt.
Siggy's in his shirt. Well, I can see that Peyton's in his shirt.

Speaker 2 And he's good for one sneaky offensive rebound a night.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he's tough. He's not just a three-point machine.
He's a good basketball player.

Speaker 2 And I love it. takes himself in inside and finds a way to get the shot off, you know, and sometimes they block it.
Okay, fine. But he can, I love him.
That's the secret.

Speaker 2 And, of course, you know, the Eddie House part is self-evident, you know,

Speaker 2 the three points. But that's really the cross between

Speaker 2 Eddie House.

Speaker 1 Before we go, you were a big part of Celtic City. So we did nine episodes.
We tried to cover 80 years of the team. When you saw all of it laid out episode by episode,

Speaker 1 like, did you had, like, what were you expecting? And then how did you feel as you watched it?

Speaker 2 Well, first of all,

Speaker 2 you can't do everything, as you well well know.

Speaker 2 There are a couple of things I would have liked to have seen addressed at the time, maybe either more thoroughly or at all, but I'm not remotely going on a nitpick. I thought it was a spectacular job.

Speaker 2 I thought that they got the essence of it.

Speaker 2 You accomplished your mission. That's what I thought.
I could say they've accomplished their mission.

Speaker 2 And then tied it up with a wonderful bow with the 95-year-old Bob Koozi saying how much he wanted the 18th championship to keep the continuum that he could relate to and feel a part of going.

Speaker 2 That was exactly what you were trying to portray, I think, and the spirit of that. And oh no, I thought it was terrific.

Speaker 2 I'll tell you, it was a hard episode,

Speaker 2 was eight.

Speaker 2 That was, you know,

Speaker 1 Grudgie, Lewis.

Speaker 2 That was hard. You know, they're lived when you live through it, you know.
And I'm sure a lot of us, I know how I felt watching it. And,

Speaker 2 you know, it's real, it's part of the deal.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 those those things happened, and there was a down period, and

Speaker 2 it was, you know, those things were just frightening, but it was just awful.

Speaker 2 But Biason, who we didn't know, you know, I had seen, I was so excited about him because I happened to have stumbled. I don't know what I was doing, Bill.

Speaker 2 I have no idea why I was in Durham, North Carolina that particular evening and why I was, because I don't know what kind of feature or whatever I was doing.

Speaker 2 I was there at Cameron North Stadium the night as a Maryland player. He dropped 40 on Duke.
He got my attention. I could see.

Speaker 1 You went to that game?

Speaker 2 I was at the game. When he got 40 at Duke, oh my God.
And then twice, twice, Mike Schaszewski said to me that the greatest two opponents he ever faced in college were Michael Jordan and Lynn Bias.

Speaker 2 And, you know, and I'm, and I know how excited Larry was. Larry was going to come to Curly early and work with him.
play with him. And, you know, he was, Larry was, Larry was up to on him.

Speaker 2 He knew, he knew he was really excited excited about it. And to think all this happened in a flash in you know, 36 hours and 40, it was just astonishing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the we

Speaker 1 tried to hit that. I mean, that episode, not exactly a feel-good episode, but uh, that 90s Boston, how dark it got.
Like the garden got knocked down, bias and Reggie, the Red Sox.

Speaker 2 If I said eight, I meant whichever one encompassed the bird and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 okay.

Speaker 2 Okay, but um, oh no, that that group,

Speaker 2 and I loved what Rick was, you got Rick there saying, Danny, how do you put together a big three? You know, and, or, or, and, well, here's how you do it. You know,

Speaker 2 you take your fifth round, your number five pick and trade every Ray Allen. And now you can, you persuade Kevin or Garnett to come.
And now you got a big three.

Speaker 2 I'll tell you what I remember, though, about me, and I'm on record. I mean, I can't deny it.
I printed it.

Speaker 2 that when they put the big three together originally, that second big three, I said, yeah, well, guess what? You need a lot more than that.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't trade, there's no team in the league would trade their next, their final other nine for the next Celtic nine that they got the worst support.

Speaker 2 Upon which they went out and got Eddie House, James Posey, and then ultimately, of course, PJ,

Speaker 2 which was a great story about being recruited, literally being recruited by the big three or parts of thereof. And so I was, you know, I was a skeptic.

Speaker 2 I didn't think it was going to be enough, but never dreamed it would just come together as quickly as it did.

Speaker 2 Those guys were so ready to do it, you know, to get it, to have a, they recognized what the possibility was, and they were so ready to do it. And it was going to require the word sacrifice.

Speaker 2 It's going to require

Speaker 2 a balance of skills that they're going to have to calibrate. And I love that word, calibrate their skills to get the most out of it.
But ultimately,

Speaker 2 there's nobody like Kevin Garnett.

Speaker 2 There's never, you can't, he's special in terms of the, the, you know, the approach that he would, as good as all-round scale players Pierce was and great shooter Allen was, you know, we all know that the ultimate key person on that whole thing that made it work was Kevin Garnett.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the sad thing, you talked about earlier how you don't judge players by championships.

Speaker 1 You look at KG like just this completely misused asset in Minnesota forever. Like, gets drafted in 95.

Speaker 1 We had to 2007. He's won two playoff series.
And meanwhile, everybody's like, I think he might be the best player in the league.

Speaker 1 Like, nobody even knew how to put him in context because he just had such bad luck. His owner gets penalized for the Joe Smith signing, and they lose like three first-round picks in a low.

Speaker 1 Like, like, Stephon Marberry just decides he wants to go to New Jersey, and that happens.

Speaker 1 Like, it's just, yeah, there's 30 different things that prevented him from ever succeeding in the NBA in the way he should have, which sometimes that's how it plays out.

Speaker 2 I mean, mean i don't want to hold that against them unless i have a certain

Speaker 2 you know antipathy for somebody uh in a sense you know i uh i i i like to hold that against them but but if i if i don't care about them personally uh and and their game then you know fine and i it's like you know who i think i i got tired of people dumping on because he's never won a championship and and obviously never will chris paul It's not his fault.

Speaker 2 And once again, we get back to the little guy thing.

Speaker 2 You know, Chris Paul's a great player, great point guard,

Speaker 2 a technically pure point guard, perfect guy, you know, in that job. It's in a worthy Hall of Famer.
So I'm sorry, I don't judge him for not having won a championship anymore.

Speaker 2 And I judge Stockton for not having won. They could have, I hold Carl Malone accountable, though.
I think they could have beaten the Bulls in 97 for sure and should have. Mrs.

Speaker 2 Freet goes, he's not a guy you want in a big moment. I'm telling you, Carl Malone was not,

Speaker 2 I think he's the most overrated great player, supposed great player in NBA history. I do.
He's not on my list of top 10 forwards at all.

Speaker 1 He's one of the main reasons I decided to write a basketball book because I didn't want people 50 years from now to be putting him in the top 10 because of his stats.

Speaker 1 It's like we gotta, we gotta fix this. Somebody's got to go on the record.

Speaker 2 You'll love this. I don't know.
For there was a period of time when I carried in my wallet a little list of

Speaker 2 10 forwards better than Carl Malone.

Speaker 2 I swear to God,

Speaker 2 it was such a topic for me. And he's not a bad human being or anything like that.
You know, no, that's not it. But I just,

Speaker 2 all those thousands and hundreds of millions of points. And

Speaker 2 I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 He wasn't a guy you wanted to. Well, I'm going to.

Speaker 1 Your other guy like that was Elvin Hayes.

Speaker 1 Who ends up winning the title, but he's, wasn't he like benched in the fourth quarter when they actually won the title? I forget the story.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was in the game seven. He went out of the game for whatever reason.
And Mitch Kupchak came in and made the big play of the game in his that he wouldn't have been in the game if

Speaker 2 Elvin hadn't come out. So they wouldn't have won if Elvin hadn't been watching from the bench.
That's and yeah, that's for sure. And I loved it.
I'll tell you what, I relished. 1975, when the

Speaker 2 Warriors swept them, and the rookie

Speaker 2 Keith Wilkes, 6'6, 1, God knows what, 80, 90, outplayed Elvin Hayes, you know, four inches taller, 50 pounds heavier, you know, and he outplayed Elvin Hayes. I loved every second of that.

Speaker 1 Do you think Harden is this generation's version of those guys?

Speaker 2 Harden? Yeah. Like I said?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I can't stand watching him play.

Speaker 2 And so to a degree, I am. you know,

Speaker 2 vindicated that he doesn't come up in the playoffs the way

Speaker 2 people think he should. You know, I just can't stand watching that dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble game.
And I always say he must have bribed every scorekeeper in the league.

Speaker 2 I don't know how there's assists, I don't remember any of this assist, but they're there to the point of the league, right? I guess.

Speaker 2 I still can't believe it. I don't know how.
But I mean, that's just my personal, you know, preference. And I don't, I'm not, I'm not a big hardened guy.

Speaker 1 Where do you stand on Embiid?

Speaker 1 On Joel Embiid.

Speaker 2 Oh, Embiid. M's not just said the beast.

Speaker 2 I want to like him very much. I love his game.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, I love his range of skill on offense is tremendous. And I've seen him in games where I just love to watch him play.
But there's something,

Speaker 2 and he, you know, and he's an engaging online presence, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 But he's on another level. He's not, you know, he's not, even though he did get an MVP, and I think I would have

Speaker 2 voted for him. But, you know, he's not Joe Kitchen.
He's not Giannis. He's the next, it's another level down where he belongs.

Speaker 2 But he's on, he's on the way to the Hall of Fame. There's no, I have no problem with that.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 All right. This was a good hour.

Speaker 2 The thing is, stay healthy. You know, he has a hard time staying healthy.

Speaker 1 Well, you've, I mean, you've been watching this forever. These centers, once the injuries start, it's not like it gets better.

Speaker 1 Once, you know, they're like buildings with like real structural foundation problems. And then at some point, it becomes a problem.

Speaker 1 And it feels like it's like once you've had a few of those surgeries injuries whatever i don't know i just don't when you're seven foot two i don't know how you like oh no i'm fine i you know i don't see it yeah big guy so yeah you're right you're right it's a good point so like i saw kyrie irving at the laker game yesterday right and he tore his acl

Speaker 1 I feel like he can come back. He's 6'2.
Like, you know, he's a guard. He can, I feel like he can bring back his movement and get back in a year.
But when you, you know, you've had a bunch of these.

Speaker 1 Anyway, all right. That was a really fun hour.
I'm glad we caught up. I needed your take on a bunch of stuff.
Bob, Ryan, thanks for being in Celtic City, by the way. But great to see you as always.

Speaker 1 Hope all is well.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having me there, and I appreciate it very much. Shalom.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks to Mahoney and Joanna and Bob.
Thanks to Gahao and Eduardo as well. You can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel.
You can also watch this as a video podcast on Spotify.

Speaker 1 Going forward, we are going to be live on Sunday at some point.

Speaker 1 We don't really know the basketball schedule yet, but it's going to be me and Marcello at some point on Sunday, and we'll be going live on YouTube. For that, enjoy the weekend.

Speaker 1 I will see you on Sunday.

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