An NBA Scoring Boom, NFL Holiday Picks, 'Landman' Is on Fire, the Return of 'Stranger Things,' and the Future of TV With Kirk Goldsberry, Joe House, Chris Ryan, and Zoe Simmons

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra, a crisp, refreshing beer with only 95 calories.

Speaker 1 And just like some of the best plays we've seen in the court throughout the NBA Cup, Ultra is best served cold.

Speaker 1 Plus, as the official beer partner of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with exclusive prizes and courtside tickets. Michelob Ultra, Superior is worth playing for.

Speaker 1 Enter now at michelobultra.com/slash courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 25 to 26.
No purchase necessary. Open to U.S.
Residence 21 Plus. Begins on October 1st, 2025, ends on June 30th, 2026.

Speaker 1 Multiple entry periods. See official rules at mickelobeltra.com slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

Speaker 1 The Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday.
We did Two for the Money.

Speaker 1 That is a gambling movie from 20 years ago that has aged beautifully as an unintentional comedy classic. Also, a pretty good movie.
Pacino, McConaughey.

Speaker 1 And it was me and Chris Ryan and cousin Sal breaking it down. So I'll just give you a heads up because we don't have another podcast till Sunday.

Speaker 1 Rewatchables next Monday, it's time. We're doing Rocky 2.
It's the last Rocky that we haven't done out of the first four. So we did, I think we did.

Speaker 1 three,

Speaker 1 four, one, two, and that's probably the right order. I think that's what we did.
Anyway, that's coming on Monday. So you have five days to watch that.

Speaker 1 I have a mega pod coming up because this is my last podcast of the week. We're going to talk NBA with Kurt Goldsbury.
We're going to talk NFL picks and some best point guards ever with Joe House.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk to Chris Ryan about the Philly sports scene and the future of TV. And then last but not least, my daughter's home for Thanksgiving.
And Stranger Things is... is launching soon.

Speaker 1 And we're going to talk Stranger Things at the end. She's going to give us a report card.

Speaker 1 She really just bullied her way into this podcast. I don't know what to tell you.
It's all coming up next. We're going to take a break and then Pearl Jam.

Speaker 1 This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by State Farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm.

Speaker 1 It's like needing the protection of an offensive guard on the football field, but getting an elementary school crossing guard.

Speaker 1 Sure, they're both guards, but you can only trust one to keep your quarterback safe when the game is on the line. So don't settle for just any insurance.

Speaker 1 When you can have State Farm, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Speaker 1 All right, Kurt Goldsberry is here. He has a new piece on the ringer.com.
Today, we're going to nerd it up. I have, uh, I want to talk advanced metrics with you and a whole bunch of things.

Speaker 1 I asked you to come come up with a couple trends, things you're looking at, things that have jumped out from a basketball slash nerd numbers standpoint. There's been some good nerd numbers this year.

Speaker 1 I can't wait to go through them. What's your number one?

Speaker 2 Well, I think the biggest one, Bill, is that scoring is way up in the NBA. So we're seeing scoring numbers.

Speaker 2 It's great to talk to you about this because we haven't seen scoring numbers like this since the 1960s before the three-point line existed. NBA teams are averaging 117 points per game.

Speaker 2 Those are crazy numbers, up from last year, but definitely up from anywhere this century.

Speaker 1 I saw, I was looking at some of the assist numbers. There was multiple teams just averaging 29, 30 assists a game, which I thought was kind of exciting.

Speaker 1 But so you mentioned the early 60s, and I remember debunking the Oscar Robertson triple-double stuff from my book because just the way they played back then, they would just kind of run up and down to take shots and nobody could make a shot back then the way they could now.

Speaker 1 There's a bunch of reasons why scoring's up. I'm going to throw a couple at you.
I didn't know you were going to bring this up, but I'm ready.

Speaker 1 The fact that bigs can all shoot for the most part.

Speaker 1 We have your occasional

Speaker 1 Nimi Kata or

Speaker 1 DeAndre Ayton kind of outlier, old school center who's just kind of around the room. But for the most part, we have these bigs, these stretch fives and just more talented bigs.
That's one.

Speaker 1 The pace is up. I think that's two.
The pressure, Phoenix, you wrote about in your piece today how Phoenix, that's one of the reasons they've been able to unlock their season.

Speaker 1 Like these teams that are just using 10, 11, 12 guys and trying to pressure the ball 94 feet, which Indiana started last year. And now I feel like it's a trend.

Speaker 1 But I also think a big part of that is how much talent we have that teams can go 10, 11, 12 deep now and have the luxury of doing that. So what other than those, are there any other factors you see?

Speaker 2 Yeah, like, so they're in general, like when you look at it long term, the shot selection revolution is is the biggest reason just every possession is more efficient.

Speaker 2 But when we look at just what's happened since last year and we have like a three and a half, four, four point a game scoring uptick, unfortunately, the biggest thing is fouls and free throws.

Speaker 1 I think interesting.

Speaker 2 Yes. Unfortunately, almost all of the scoring increase is.

Speaker 2 explained by a 3.1 per game free throw made increase for each team in every game.

Speaker 1 So that just threw away all my other reasons?

Speaker 2 No, I mean, if you're looking at, say, how did we get it here?

Speaker 2 Like one of the crazy stats I was looking up is the 73 Wynn Warriors, one of the greatest teams you and I have ever seen, had an offensive rating of 113.5. That would rank 22nd now.

Speaker 2 We've gotten a lot better at scoring in the NBA. That team would slot below the awful L.A.
Clippers offense right now.

Speaker 2 So that just tells me that over 10 years, Bill, the average NBA offense is just shooting smarter shots. There's more talent as you describe.

Speaker 2 But when we look at just why are we so much higher than last year, we're setting records for free throws.

Speaker 2 And specifically,

Speaker 2 certain types of players are drawing a lot more fouls and going to the line more than ever before. And specifically, Luca Doncic epitomizes this trend.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you were at the Lakers Spurs game earlier this year

Speaker 1 at crypto.

Speaker 2 But yeah, Luca is the epitome. He shot less than nine free throws per game last year.
He's at 12 and a half this year. He's drawing over nine fouls per game

Speaker 2 himself, which is the highest number we've ever seen in the player tracking era.

Speaker 1 Do you think that's because the league

Speaker 1 rigs the league for the Lakers or are there other reasons?

Speaker 2 I think there's a few reasons. I think the league rigs the league for the Lakers, which is hard to say.

Speaker 1 They get their extra six free throw attempts per year, no matter who's on the team. Just factor that in.

Speaker 2 This is one thing Spurs fans and Celtics fans can clearly agree on.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 two things are happening.

Speaker 2 I want Luca is one of the smartest, hardest players to guard in the league. Like, no disrespect to Luka Doncic.
He does work the refs. We all know that, but that's not new.

Speaker 2 I think one of the other trends we're talking about, you sort of alluded it.

Speaker 2 to it with the with the Suns is teams are playing handsier, more physical defense for longer stretches of the court and throwing more and more guys out there.

Speaker 2 So I think because of what Rick Carlisle started in the playoffs last year, I think teams are just being handsier.

Speaker 1 But that said,

Speaker 2 here's a stat for you, dude.

Speaker 2 This year, there's been 14 instances of a single player drawing 12 or more fouls. That's fouling out two guys on the other team, by the way.
Last season, there was only 23 instances of that all year.

Speaker 2 Luke has four of those this year. He never did that once last year.
So we're starting to see like single guys like drawing fouls. So I do think the foul baiting is a part of this too, Bill.

Speaker 1 Foul baiting. I don't think anything with the word baiting in it.
Last year,

Speaker 1 the top seven teams in free throw attempts were all between 23.3 and 23. Yep.
Memphis led the way at 23.3. By the way, I did not look this up until you just mentioned it.
This year,

Speaker 1 we have

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 hold on.

Speaker 1 I'm going to get this right.

Speaker 1 This year we have Orlando at 30.7.

Speaker 1 Jesus, how is this possible? We have 25 teams shooting at least 23.5 free throws per game. So last year we had seven.
We're at 23. That's it.

Speaker 1 We have four teams 28 and above, and we have 12 teams 26 and above. So there's your scoring.

Speaker 2 There's your scoring. I mean, I brought up that game in LA for a reason that had 66 foul calls, 84 free throws.
The game lasted two hours and 54 minutes.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. So that's, it is a big, it's the best place to score on the free throw in the basketball game is the free throw line, according to Dee Smith.

Speaker 2 So yeah, like that explains the general scoring uptick since last year is this. And like one of the other stats I had in the piece was.

Speaker 2 There were just seven teams that committed over 20 fouls per game last year.

Speaker 2 This year,

Speaker 2 29 teams are doing that. So everybody's doing that.

Speaker 2 And my question to you, Bill, is: are these teams suddenly playing more handsy defense or is the rules around contact allowances sort of evolving once again?

Speaker 1 I think it's pie chart. I would have everybody has more good players they can throw out there and they're telling people to pick up full court, be more physical.

Speaker 1 It's noticeable when you watch all the different games. I remember a doc telling me a couple of years ago with the Pacers, before we even kind of noticed what they were doing, he was like,

Speaker 1 I just, these guards, they picked the, they picked teams up for 94 feet and they're like a pain in the ass to play. And I'm like, man, I never really noticed that.

Speaker 1 And then I look for it and I was like, oh shit, like, this is really annoying. I would, I would imagine if you're an opposing point guard.

Speaker 1 But now you see, like, it feels like half the league's doing it. I do wonder, though,

Speaker 1 do we also have with these, now that we're playing with centers and bigger guys and offensive rebounds, teams like Houston, Detroit. Does that also help with the free throw rate too? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Do you do you really think like the leagues, like you got to call this differently, call more fouls?

Speaker 2 Well, I talked to a bunch of coaches about it. And I think what you just said about the Indiana Guards bears repeating.

Speaker 2 Because I talked to one coach, he's like, Yeah, every year we all watch the finals. It's the first time that all the teams' coaches sort of watch basketball almost leisurely

Speaker 2 because everybody can watch the finals except for two teams. And he said, Yeah, like everybody saw what Carlisle was doing.

Speaker 2 And I I think a lot of people did import that into their strategies this season. So I think that's fair.

Speaker 2 The other thing people were telling me is like the league sent around a bunch of points to emphasise about, you know, the high five foul that you might have heard about with shooting, fouling a three-point shooter, certain rules around driving offensive players and how they're going to be called.

Speaker 2 And some people have said, yeah, that's really what this is too. But they've tightened it up in favor of the offense, in favor of three-point shooters, and in favor of driving players.

Speaker 2 So I think that explains it. It's both like a tactical adjustment league-wide, but also the league with these new points of emphasis.

Speaker 1 Also, more good players.

Speaker 1 More guys that are just harder to guard. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We have the most, like trying to do the Ringer 100 last week or a week and a half ago was impossible. I couldn't believe like some of the guys that were in the 50s.

Speaker 1 These are guys that would have been. in the 30s, you know, 10 years ago.
So

Speaker 1 you watch every team. I was watching Sacramento in overtime last night against Minnesota.
Minnesota yet again blows another lead.

Speaker 1 I don't, at what point do we start kind of side eyeing Chris Finch with all this? Like, how many terrible

Speaker 1 last-minute collapses can you have?

Speaker 1 But in the end of the game, all of a sudden the Kings are going to DeRosan, who's an afterthought, who is probably available for 20 teams if anybody wants to trade for him.

Speaker 1 And he's getting really hard buckets in overtime. And it's like this didn't exist 10 years ago.
Nobody just had DeMar DeRosan sitting over there, like ready to score in overtime crunch time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I'm thinking about it in terms of San Antonio, the two new guards when we were doing our ringer 100 rankings. They're going to say, okay, where's Dylan Harper go? He's on here now.

Speaker 2 Where's Stephen Castle? He's jumping up way up here. And both of those guys.

Speaker 2 put a lot of pressure on the defense as driving players.

Speaker 2 I think these younger players are playing more like Shea,

Speaker 2 who also needs to be mentioned. He's a very hard player to defend legally without fouling.
And he knows that. And he gets his way to the the free throw line.
So I think it's just, it's a trend that

Speaker 2 has a lot of explanations. But it sort of leads into the second trend I wanted to bring you.

Speaker 1 Can I say one thing on that really quick? Yeah. I always think a good way to look at this from a talent standpoint is like four-year clusters of drafts.

Speaker 1 When you think like when the league was struggling, like 05 is a good example, that 04, 05, 06 range before like the LeBron class really ascended.

Speaker 1 The drafts, just the 99, 00, 01, 02 like we just didn't have enough enough good guys coming out of those drafts for a variety of reasons right and then as those guys round into their mid-20s and are supposed to be like the next wave of all nba guys we just didn't have them in the same way and now i think what we're looking at this these 2020s guys

Speaker 1 you know even 2020 the covet draft that still had edwards and it had maxi

Speaker 1 And it had Halliburton, right? And it had Desmond Bain. And you go through it and it's like, shit, this is a pretty good draft.

Speaker 1 And I think last year's draft, especially, like you just inject all of these young guys, these first-year players in the league who can play. Like we have 12 guys who can play 25 minutes right now.

Speaker 2 And stylistically, they're really unique, too. And I think that's the most underrated part about how the league changes over time.
It's like we're talking about Chris Paul retiring this week.

Speaker 2 Well, he's taken the elbow jumper with him. He's taking the pull-up with him.
He's talking about DeMar.

Speaker 2 He's taking that pull-up with him too now it's all floaters and drives and uh guys finishing at the rack and pulling up for three and step backs like

Speaker 2 the older guys take stuff out when they leave with them and the young guys import new stuff and i think that's one of the coolest ways to think about this too whether it's your little four-year package of drafts or whatever like these these generations change the game with style too Yeah, Harper's got a move that I don't know if I've fully seen before, that baseline move.

Speaker 1 I've I've talked about it on a previous pod, but he kind of goes like a little herky-jerky, goes baseline, and then can spin either way, but can spin on the baseline or spin toward the paint.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's clearly going to become his one of his signature moves. But he does, man, I'm really, you know, he got hurt.
He missed a couple games.

Speaker 1 But even if you look at the net ratings, his net rating is a complete outlier compared to like all the other guys in that list. We'll talk about it in a second.
What's your second trend?

Speaker 2 Well, it's related.

Speaker 1 It's the rise of the full court press.

Speaker 2 So I think if you're watching the NBA this year, you're seeing everybody act like Rick Carlisle, and you're seeing everybody pick up on the other, on the defensive backcourt.

Speaker 2 And the numbers really bear this out too, Bill. We're seeing over 40 possessions in an average game when teams are picking up.
ball handlers behind that mid-court stripe.

Speaker 2 That's up from 33 last season. That's up from 26 two years ago.
And this stat has more than doubled in the 2020s. So what we're seeing,

Speaker 2 you know, last year was maybe, or last decade was really about like a shot selection revolution. Here we're starting to see defensive responses to

Speaker 2 some of this. And that's one of the biggest trends I'm seeing sort of in the 2020s.

Speaker 2 It's like, we're going to pick up your dude as soon as you inbound the ball and make it hard for you to get across and sort of initiate early offense.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 one of my favorite writers, a guy named Bill Simmons, wrote a huge basketball book once upon a time.

Speaker 1 And one of the chapters I did was

Speaker 1 trying to create the perfect team of all the guys in history, right? So I did that in 09, 2010. It wasn't just like, these are the best 12 players ever.

Speaker 1 These are the 12 guys that if we're trying to beat the aliens, how would we do? What kind of looks would we have? Would we have big ball, small ball, shooting lineup?

Speaker 1 And one of the things I really had was...

Speaker 1 that I was really excited about was like the killer press, like five guys for an awesome press.

Speaker 1 And I wrote, I'm borrowing this idea from Rick Petino, who told Malcolm Gladwell that if he ever coached the NBA again, he would pick five of his bench guys to practice exclusively on a full-core press, then play them once a half for four or five minutes at a time.

Speaker 1 Their sole purpose would be to create havoc, wear opponents down, exploit opposing bench guys, and shift momentum. They would be like five guys prowling around like cheetahs.

Speaker 1 So I picked for this out of my

Speaker 1 wine-sour team. And this is 2010, Duncan, LeBron, Pippin, 2009, Dwayne Wade, and 2008, Chris Paul.
And it's just like, you guys are all playing together for four minutes. Go get us the ball.

Speaker 1 Now, if you were going to do that with the guys we have from the last 15 years, I think Kawhi would have to probably

Speaker 1 be in early, like mid-2010s, Kawhi would probably have to be out there because he's the all-time, let me go take that ball. So maybe you would have, maybe you'd have LeBron Pippin and Kawhi,

Speaker 1 then Chris Paul, and then maybe Duncan. But this idea has been sitting there forever.

Speaker 1 What took the league so long to realize that nobody wants to dribble up against the press And at any level of basketball, by the way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's annoying. And I think it tires these guys out, too.
It's like if you watch Harden, he takes his breaks, like bringing the ball up. He's like, all right, let me catch my breath.

Speaker 2 And you're just denying them that

Speaker 2 little sort of break in between rounds of action, if you will. But no team's doing it more than the Blazers.

Speaker 2 And then your team, the Celtics, are right there too. And if you have a lot of good defensive-minded guards

Speaker 2 and you're young, why why not? Like you're saying, like nobody wants to see this. And

Speaker 2 in an era where everybody wants to get into early offense, we've all learned that that's where the efficient part of the shot clock is.

Speaker 2 Slowing them down and taking that away and making them sort of toil until they're 16 or 17 on the shot clock. And you hear players starting to say that too.
I just don't want to make it easy.

Speaker 2 Like, why should I just let you walk it up?

Speaker 2 If you look at teams which aren't doing it, one team sticks out, which is the Lakers. And that sort of makes sense because their guards are not great defensive-minded stars.

Speaker 1 And they didn't really have traditional guards, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Luca and Austin Reeves aren't going to do this. But if you have Derrick White or if you have Shaden Sharp and Drew Holiday and you have good depth behind them, why don't you just do this?

Speaker 2 Be these pests in the backcourt and slow down your opponent.

Speaker 1 Well, you had that in your comp today. The ultimate example of this is the Suns.

Speaker 2 The Suns.

Speaker 1 They're scrappy. They're trying to basically tilt the seesaw a little bit.
They're using a bunch of people and they're just, and they have Dylan Brooks as the focal point of all of it.

Speaker 1 And they're like, we're just going to be super fucking annoying to play against.

Speaker 1 You're not going to enjoy the experience the entire time. They played when they played Houston and Brooks was just in rare form.
No Durant, sadly. But,

Speaker 1 you know, they just, they're not as talented. They had Houston's been awesome all year, but the Phoenix just scrapping and scratching.

Speaker 1 And it's just the complete opposite of the team we saw in Austin in February.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 This team that wanted no part of playing together and didn't really care about pressure or any of that stuff. What was your third trend?

Speaker 2 Oh, my third trend. I love the Suns, though.
I have

Speaker 2 the East, and I want to hear what you say because you're the historian here.

Speaker 2 Is the 2025-26 Eastern Conference the most open conference we've had in a decade or two?

Speaker 1 For like who you could see in the finals.

Speaker 2 I don't even know who your favorite is, right? Obviously, we talk about the Western Conference right now.

Speaker 2 If we talk about the East and West in the 2010s, we're talking about Warriors and Cavs every year, or the Spurs are in there, or there's clear favorites.

Speaker 2 The East is so wide open. I think at the beginning of the year, hey, it's the Knicks and the Cavs.
And if you look at FanDuel, they still have the Cavs and the Betters.

Speaker 1 It's still the Cavs.

Speaker 1 We haven't seen the Cavs play together all year. Have they had all of their guys together for more than one game in a row?

Speaker 2 But we did see the Cavs play in the playoffs last year, Bill.

Speaker 1 We did.

Speaker 1 Tharlin was hurt, though.

Speaker 2 It was. But

Speaker 2 if that's your favorite, I'm fine with that. I just think there's a wide openness to the Eastern Conference that's very exciting.

Speaker 2 And you have teams like Detroit and Toronto and Miami who are threatening to sort of crash that party. And you could tell me the Hawks are in that group, too.

Speaker 2 But I just, you look at the West and you're like, okay, this is the Thunders, unless the Nuggets have a postseason run of the Aegis.

Speaker 2 But the East just seems like it's the most wide open that I can remember any conference since I've been covering the league.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm going to go.

Speaker 1 The one that jumped into my head as you were laying that out was 07

Speaker 1 because that's the weirdest team that made a finals, the 07 Cavaliers, right? Oh, yeah. So that had.

Speaker 1 That was, we thought Detroit was going to make it. That was kind of the tail end of their run, even though they made it last year.
They were 53 wins that year.

Speaker 1 I don't, either they lost what, did they lose Wallace? I'm just going to check this really fast. Did they lose Ben Wallace that year? They did.

Speaker 1 So they were kind of like, every, we were kind of looking for, is there anybody else? Was it Miami? Miami had that kind of year after the title year. Toronto won 47.

Speaker 1 LeBron won 50, basically by himself. He had nobody on that team.

Speaker 1 The Bulls 149, but that was one of those years where we're like, are we, is there what? And meanwhile, all the action action was in the West. This year,

Speaker 1 the three best teams are in the West.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 It's like unassailable. Those are the three best teams.
I think Cleveland has a chance out of everybody we have in the East to climb up.

Speaker 1 But you mentioned, I think Detroit's a little closer to that conversation than you gave them credit for. Like they're clearly three and they might even be two.

Speaker 1 Atlanta is the wild card to me because of some of the advanced stats with the non-trey lineups.

Speaker 1 I think that they have one of those lineups is like one of the best lineups in the league, the one with Porzingis and the three long guys and Alexander Walker.

Speaker 1 I'm not counting out Orlando yet.

Speaker 1 That was one of the things I was going to talk about with you.

Speaker 1 When you look at the five-man lineups,

Speaker 1 Orlando's best five guys, the whole reason they made that trade, those guys are plus 19.7 when they all play together. Oh, really?

Speaker 2 With the Bain and the

Speaker 1 two young or the bunch of guys, just their best five guys.

Speaker 1 yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that tells me there's room with bench stuff and, or it tells me their bench is terrible or maybe both. But uh, but Atlanta's best five, no tray, is plus 14.8.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 and I think that means something because Atlanta has the trade possibility if they wanted to get nuts and trade them.

Speaker 1 They also had that giant trade exception if they wanted to just add one more bench guy.

Speaker 1 But I think, I think they have the most room to kind of maneuver with the roster they have if they detroit everybody's throwing the marketing trade i i personally would not with detroit i wouldn't do it we zach and i talked about it thursday we used the what would sam presty do rule and we both agreed sam presty would not do anything right

Speaker 2 no he would have he would have traded with uh joe dumars to elevate his draft position for next year which is is looking like an incredible move by anci in the hawks front office uh right i love the thing they have that crazy trade chip if they want to if they want to use it they have this new orleans pick that is going going to be top six.

Speaker 2 And again, if we're doing what would Presty do, the move is to keep that pick and get a Chet Holmgren type player on your team next year and be ready to go.

Speaker 2 And I love the Hawks, not just this year, but more so deep into the future. I mean, Jalen Johnson is great, and

Speaker 2 Dyson Daniels, like, they have such an identity now.

Speaker 1 But Detroit's the one. There's some Reese Shea momentum.
I don't know if you've been following.

Speaker 2 Reese Shea Reed Shepard, still a conversation in many practice facilities.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I want to push back on something.

Speaker 1 I love the Detroit Pistons.

Speaker 2 I thought they should have beat the Knicks in the playoffs last year. You know, no disrespect to the Knicks.
There were some tight calls there. I feel like Detroit was still learning how to win.

Speaker 2 They had this weird Malik Beasley thing, which in retrospect was very distracting.

Speaker 2 But they're 15-2, man.

Speaker 2 And they look great protecting the paint, and they look good attacking the paint.

Speaker 2 They have this Cunningham-Durhan pick and roll thing that is emerging as one of the most reliable two-man games in the Eastern Conference.

Speaker 2 The shooting is a little questionable. Duncan Robinson is filling that role nicely, but still beyond Duncan if Tobias Harris isn't playing a lot.

Speaker 2 But I love Detroit. I think they deserve to be in the Knicks-Cavs conversation.
If I had to elevate one team, it's definitely Detroit. And I'll take the 15-2 record as Exhibit A there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would have those three. I think Detroit has officially moved into the conversation with the other two now.
I would still take Cleveland

Speaker 1 and then Orlando is the wild card. And then Atlanta is the wild, wild card.

Speaker 1 Other than that, Milwaukee being a play-in team, but having Giannis come back for the last 45 games of the year and still having to see them.

Speaker 1 in a one game or in a 2-7, something like that. I just don't want to see Giannis in a playoff series, especially like with how driven he is.

Speaker 1 Now they're a little under 500 now, and the longer he goes out, their lineups are really, all the stuff is really bad without him.

Speaker 1 Like that, I think the lineup they played the most without Giannis was like minus 19 or something. But in eye test wise, it's like, ugh.
And that, you know, the Kuzma roller coaster stuff.

Speaker 1 Let's, we'll take a quick break and then going to come back and throw some other stuff at you. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel.

Speaker 1 This Thanksgiving, FanDuel introducing a brand new way to parlay together. Let's parlay together, everybody.
It's called pass the leg. Here's how it works.

Speaker 1 Start a group, add your pick, then pass it to your friends so they can add theirs. When everyone's done, each look at the parlay with your own funds.

Speaker 1 On top, everyone gets a 50% profit boost to use on their build. In Missouri, get ready because FanDuel is going live on December 1st.
FanDuel, play your game.

Speaker 1 You must be 21 plus president in select states or 18 plus and president in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Opt-in required bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens.

Speaker 1 Restrictions apply, including any token expiration, max wager amount, C terms at sportsbook.fandler.com. Gambling problem, call 100 gambler or visit rg-help.com.

Speaker 1 Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads.
The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people.

Speaker 1 So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn Ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers.

Speaker 1 And that's where it stands apart from the other ad buys. You could target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, company revenue.

Speaker 1 So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. That's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B return and ad spend on all online ad networks.
Seriously, all of them.

Speaker 1 Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/slash Simmonsbill.

Speaker 1 Terms and conditions apply. All right.
Any other trends before we keep going?

Speaker 2 Well, I got, you want one, the nerds are really talking about this one, which is picks. Picks are in decline.

Speaker 2 So when you and I were growing up, it was dump it down to Mikhail or Jabbar, and the post-game was the bread and butter action of pro basketball.

Speaker 2 You know, the Dan Tony sons obviously made it a pick and roll game. But here we are in 2025, and the epicenter of this movement is in Miami.
I don't know know if you're following.

Speaker 1 I sure am. I hate that I like watching them.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's electric to watch.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're really fun to watch. I hate myself.

Speaker 1 But it's also unprecedented.

Speaker 2 They're setting fewer screens than any team has in decades in the player tracking era by a wide margin.

Speaker 2 They're just saying, let's move the ball quickly and see if we can find a driving gap and attack it before anybody's ready to set on defense. So it is, it's fun to watch.

Speaker 1 People are coming completely.

Speaker 1 It's like a run and shoot football offense.

Speaker 2 That's a great analogy.

Speaker 1 They're just going. They're trying to just get downhill and catch people when they're backpedaling.
Seems to be their entire strategy, and it works. Yeah,

Speaker 2 they're number one in pace. They're setting the fewest picks in the league, and they're scoring by far more points per game, even though they're number 12 in offensive efficiency.

Speaker 2 But it's a brand new look. I think last year, Adebayo set 27 picks per game, Bill.
If you want to drill down on a a player level. He's setting eight picks a game this year.

Speaker 2 They're just doing something completely different.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 they've gotten off to a really good start with a 12th ranked offense without great offensive personnel. Remember, Tyler Harrow hasn't played much at all.

Speaker 2 Bam, Adebayo's missed time, and they're number 12 on offense. And by the way, this team is built for defense.
They're a top five defense.

Speaker 2 If Harrow comes back and he fits into this, which why wouldn't he? And if Adabio is regularly available, I expect them to be flirting with the top 10 offense with this new look. The defense is great.

Speaker 2 Will teams around the NBA start to copy this just like they copied elements of the Spurs or Dantoni systems?

Speaker 2 That's what the nerds are talking.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Didn't realize the nerds that was that much scuttlebuff for that.

Speaker 1 Can I ask you, I don't think Miami should do this trade. So I'm going to preface that right now.

Speaker 1 So don't aggregate this because but this is a no for miami i'm just talking about it as a conception because i think sub bonus is available on the kings

Speaker 1 and i was just wondering would it be more fun to watch subonis the way miami is playing than bam out of bio in this offense with what they're trying to do i it's just My point is, I've always wanted to

Speaker 1 see Sabonis in an offense like this where you're just going and he's just rebounding. And I always thought he was underrated as like a guy on the move.

Speaker 1 And he kind of gets pigeonholed with whoever the fuck is on the Kings every year where everybody stands around.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's ball stoppers everywhere, but he can dribble past and shoot.

Speaker 2 I mean, I love Bam Adabio, but I think, yeah, the passing and the movement that they're trying to do there in Miami, he would fit.

Speaker 1 And can do it too, obviously. Yeah, but it's just like, I wish.

Speaker 1 It's too bad that's not a fair trade because it would be fun to see him on that team.

Speaker 2 But we'll see what they are once they get Harrow in there and

Speaker 2 Adabio in there. I mean, they,

Speaker 1 I don't don't know.

Speaker 2 I know we all respect Eric Spolstra. You're afraid of the Miami Heat because they've scarred you for years.

Speaker 1 They're Michael Myers. You think they're dead, and then all of a sudden there's another movie coming out.
It's like, I thought he blew up in a fire. He's back.
His mask burned.

Speaker 2 I'll compare him to Greg Popovich because he's played many different ways. Eric Spolstra.
Now, he's been in the league so long.

Speaker 2 And one of the signs of a great coach, he doesn't get fired from the place he's been coaching, but he's sort of overseen these different motifs, like

Speaker 2 obviously starting with the Heatles, but then moving on with the Draugic era, the heat culture, Butler era, and now this. Like he plays different ways, and I really respect that about him.

Speaker 2 And this is just one of the more innovative things we're seeing in the NBA this season.

Speaker 1 Here's what doesn't make a ton of sense, and I think it's bad for them long term.

Speaker 1 They just don't have the the horses.

Speaker 1 They don't have a top 25 player. I had Bam at 27.

Speaker 1 They're Hero and Powell. They're getting a great Powell year.
Great. Great comeback Hawkeyes year.
Hero's coming back.

Speaker 1 But I think if you're actually going to think about like, can they make the finals? I think it's really hard to make it if you don't have a top 25 guy. So you would.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 1 It would have to be one of the weirdest seasons in the history of the league. Can I give you, you mentioned that pace thing.

Speaker 1 Miami being first in pace, what were the odds on that in August? Like 100 to one?

Speaker 2 No, I mean, there was some talk about this, this, this Grizzlies consultant coming over and talking to Spo about this newfangled offense, but you'd have to be really deep in discord.

Speaker 2 First? To predict that Miami Heat would be,

Speaker 2 no, nobody saw this coming.

Speaker 1 Clippers are 29th, which fits the eye test. The 30th team, do you know who's 30th?

Speaker 2 Is it your team?

Speaker 1 It's my team. Yeah.
I thought before the year, they were going to be run and gun, gunning threes, going like kind of like just trying to cause chaos. They've done the opposite.

Speaker 1 And weirdly, it's kind of worked. Like they have a winning record.
Now, that granted, they've, they've had a little bit of schedule luck. Like they played Orlando the other day and

Speaker 1 Orlando is missing everybody. Yeah.
But,

Speaker 1 but.

Speaker 1 You know, their defensive rating is a little higher than I thought. I think they're,

Speaker 1 they might be, what are they, fifth?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're fifth in defensive rating they're third in three points attempted they're last in free throws attempted and they're last in pace and it matches what you watch game to game i don't know what this team is white hasn't had a good year at all they have like three jalen's been excellent um and then and then nimi has been like the most underrated guy in the league yeah and he got he sprained his ankle multiple sec uh text threads about oh my god we can't lose kata like this is things celtex fans are texting each other.

Speaker 1 So that's been weird.

Speaker 1 I have a couple offensive ratings things for you.

Speaker 1 So Houston is first. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which is bonkers. They're 30th and three points attempted.
Yes. First and rebounds by a wide margin.

Speaker 1 And they basically just flipped everything we thought basketball was as we headed into the mid-2020s. Like spacing, shooting, switchability on defense.
It's like Houston's like, nope.

Speaker 1 Here's this giant team where we're really good at shooting twos and we're going to crash the boards and we're going to have the number one offense this way. Can you make any sense of this?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I looked into it for the column last week and it's remarkable. We forgot about rebounding, I think, generally, is a fundamentally important part of the sport.

Speaker 2 And Stephen Adams and Alpern Sagoon are here to remind us, dude.

Speaker 2 I think if I'm not mistaken, Bill Simmons, This year's Houston Rockets team is on pace to set the record for offensive rebounding percentage by by recovering over 40% of their own missed shots.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, they're not shooting threes, but when they miss, the defensive stop hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 2 And a lot of those second chance points, you know, those second chances are among the most efficient options you can have as an offense. And they just have more of them than anybody we've ever seen.

Speaker 2 Credit to Stephen Adams, but also Shangoon. And just one of the things when Van Fleet got hurt is, oh, yeah, they put Ahmed Thompson in at point guard.

Speaker 2 And by the way, I got in trouble by saying he's not a point guard. He identifies as a point guard.
He has his whole life.

Speaker 2 But the larger point is.

Speaker 1 Stop it. He's not a point guard.
He's a guard that dribbles the ball up and you can run stuff through him. He's not a point guard.
Chris Ball is a point guard.

Speaker 2 I got corrected sitting next to some Rockets coach, but don't say that about him.

Speaker 1 Stop.

Speaker 2 They can settle down. But one of the things when Van Fleet went down is like, okay,

Speaker 2 now every dude in this lineup is a rebounder right and so durant is one of the tallest threes when they're playing double bigs that you'll ever see in this league and then you have you know people like tauris and and guys like uh jabari jabari amin thompson who are incredible rebounders so

Speaker 2 It is one of the more fascinating pathways we've seen to the number one offense in a very long time.

Speaker 2 When Joe Missoula had figured out the math, hey, what if we just shot more threes than everybody else? That was, it was kind of this sort of cliche way to get there.

Speaker 2 What I love about this Rockets team is they are reminding us that you can get there with just brute force inside and grabbing rebounds from your opponents.

Speaker 1 Well, did were you and I doing the podcast where we talked about Reed Shepard

Speaker 1 and whether the Van Veeep, we did that one, right?

Speaker 1 And I just think it's worked out as it's a 10 out of 10 if you're a Rockets fan for like, all right, how am I feeling heading into Thanksgiving about Reed Shepard getting some of these Van Viet minutes?

Speaker 1 He looks way more like Mark Price than Brent Price. So if you're doing the Price Brothers seesaw, which I think is an important way to look at him, he is looks like Mark Price is doppelganger.

Speaker 1 I thought Friday was one of the games of the year. It was NBA Cup, whatever.
It was more like a,

Speaker 1 let's size each other up. Denver didn't have all their guys.

Speaker 1 Houston should have won the game, it felt like. And Denver just did what they usually do sometimes with Joker, where they're like, yeah.

Speaker 1 And of course, they lost the next night because it was like, it really was like a high-level playoff game. But I also thought it was a good game for Houston because

Speaker 1 I think it showed them like Shepard can play in these games now.

Speaker 1 We can get 20 to 25 out of him. All of our guys kind of make sense against this Denver team.
And if you're going to beat Denver with bigger guys in length, and

Speaker 1 Jokic is going to get what he's going to get, Shengun was the one X Factor. He wasn't good.

Speaker 1 And was that I'm playing my, you know, my, the guy I always get compared to and I just had a bad game or was there something more there? I don't know.

Speaker 2 But those three teams, and you alluded to this earlier, those are the three best teams in the NBA, right? We have Houston, we have Denver, and we have OKC. And the OKC levitating over both of them.

Speaker 2 Well, that's my last trend, by the way. But dude, I think

Speaker 2 anybody who says all these teams are playing the same, just watch those three teams. It couldn't be more different.
It couldn't be more different.

Speaker 2 And, and, and, you know, you know, you and I have to do this every time this year, it feels like, but this time of year, it's like, this is awesome.

Speaker 2 I love watching the Rockets play the Nuggets or the Nuggets play the thunder. I just pray everybody's healthy.
Um, yeah.

Speaker 2 But I do want to shout out Emei Adoka, Ben Sullivan, that staff for finding efficient offense in a way that people haven't found it. And it's a little bit like what's going on in Miami.

Speaker 2 There are these, these, these cool stylistic trends that are finding success in the NBA.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's some, there's a couple good games tomorrow night. And the most interesting one to me, and this ties into Houston and a team I wanted to talk about quick.

Speaker 1 I know you're going to talk about OKC in a second, but Houston, Golden State. Golden State, you know, they've had some injuries.
They're not going to have their whole team.

Speaker 1 Golden State's 21st offensive rating.

Speaker 1 With the team they have,

Speaker 1 if they're not going to be better offensively, like to me, Golden State, their record, and they could point to a whole bunch of things, but they're basically been a 500 team.

Speaker 1 Conceptually,

Speaker 1 i'm worried for as you know i love curry i'm really worried about this team because i don't think they're big enough and i think they kind of know they're not big enough but i think where the league has gone even where it was in two 10 years ago 2015 even that year they had bogut they had the ability to bring in somebody with some size i i just think when they're playing these like stephen adams and shangoon together or they're playing Portland, where Portland can give you Kling in and then all of a sudden Rob Williams is back.

Speaker 1 They just can't match up with these teams. They can't rebound.
They give up too many offensive rebounds and they don't get second chance points.

Speaker 1 So everything, it's like one of those, it's like one of those end of Brady's Patriots career Patriots teams where everything had to be absolutely perfect just to get a drive.

Speaker 1 And if one guy dropped a pass or a pass got tipped, you're just going, the punter's coming in. Golden State, like everything has to be perfect.
Curry has to be awesome. Butler has to be incredible.

Speaker 1 And it's just not easy enough for them. And I really think they need to make a trade.

Speaker 2 And Horford needs to be available.

Speaker 2 I say them and the Clippers. He's old.

Speaker 1 He's a 50-game a year guy who doesn't rebound anymore.

Speaker 1 He's not going to solve this.

Speaker 2 I call them and the Clippers the Danny Glover lethal weapon teams, dude.

Speaker 1 They're too old for this shit.

Speaker 2 Like

Speaker 2 this is a league that's been dominated. And you've written about this better than anybody for a generation.

Speaker 2 This is a 20-something man's league for the most part.

Speaker 2 You can find exceptions to that, that, but look at OKC, man.

Speaker 2 Look at the best teams, and you're going to get pushed around. And it's just like, especially once you're on the wrong side of 34, 35,

Speaker 2 somebody else is in better shape than you. Somebody else is hungrier than you.

Speaker 1 There's more wear and tear.

Speaker 1 You're not recovering for the third game in four nights. There's a trade I think they can make.
Can I float this at you? Yeah. It can't happen until mid-January.
Obviously, Kaminga's involved. Yep.

Speaker 1 Why does Gafford have to be on Dallas?

Speaker 2 Dallas has too many bigs.

Speaker 2 If you're the,

Speaker 2 what do they call it, the interim GM of the Dallas Mavers, I guess is Michael Finley. You have to look at your front line and be like, we have too many guys up here.

Speaker 1 They have the second defensive rated. They're number two and they're 30th in offense.
And it adds up when you watch them because they don't have a point guard.

Speaker 1 They finally at least realized how to, that Cooper flag, how to actually try to grow his career instead instead of ruin it yeah but what if it was Kaminga to the to uh chicago kobe white to dallas and then gafford and expiring to golden state does anyone have to throw a pick into that trade because the moment white came back to chicago it kind of screwed them up i'm not positive they need him and i i actually think they probably need another wing and more explosiveness and kobe white's going to be a free agent.

Speaker 1 Do you want to pay Kobe White if you're Chicago when you already just paid Giddy?

Speaker 1 There's some sort of ring around a Rosie trade with that. But I like the idea of Kobe Wedding in Dallas, who desperately needs somebody like him.
Yep. And then Gafford to Golden State.

Speaker 1 If they could get turn Kaminga into Gafford somehow,

Speaker 1 I'm not going to say they're going to make the finals, but I think that at least gives them a puncher's chance to win a couple rounds.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they've been at their best. And remember, Looney's not there anymore.
He was there forever. They don't have that traditional five-man, with all due respect to post.

Speaker 2 I like it. Kaminga, obviously, it's not clicking, it's as awkward as it's ever been.

Speaker 1 Uh, but they can't play him and Draymond and Butler together. Doesn't it doesn't work if those are three of your guys.
You're not, you're just not going to rebound well enough.

Speaker 2 And you're the Dallas point, like Dallas needs to start moving. They're going to be really active at this deadline, or are they going to have some disappointed fans?

Speaker 2 Because they have too many pieces to move around, and they need to start looking at the future around Cooper and Lively, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 But Lively, who's they just said has hurt even longer now. So I don't know if that affects your thinking at all.

Speaker 2 No, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 I think we'll see.

Speaker 2 I think it's a foot thing, which is, as you know, is you got to be really careful with those.

Speaker 2 But assuming he's healthy, those are two pretty great building blocks for a rebuild. If you have Cooper Flag and a relatively healthy Derek Lively, that's a pretty fast rebuild.

Speaker 2 I think a lot of teams in the league would kill to have that as your starting point.

Speaker 2 But everything else should be on the table. PJ,

Speaker 2 Kyrie, AD is obviously already being floated out there.

Speaker 2 But this is a team that needs to get young fast and get a return on some of these players that aren't in that aging sort of that part of their aging curve as soon as possible.

Speaker 1 I'm not ready to throw away the season yet from Dallas.

Speaker 1 Because I think they have, I like a lot of their players. They missed on D'Lo.
I try to warn everybody and then Kyrie got mad at me. Sorry.

Speaker 1 If they had somebody who could have the ball and create shots and actually care about other guys on the team and try to set them up and things like that,

Speaker 1 I think that only helps flag. The only thing I care about is how do we help flag? Well,

Speaker 1 step one, get him a guard who thinks about other players in the team and can create stuff. That's step one.

Speaker 1 Step two is how do you get rid of this weird log jam you have, especially with Davis coming back, where you have to play flag basically as a two or a three because you have too many big guys.

Speaker 1 Trade one of the big guys for a guard. Like, this is a fucking layup.
Build around Leyva. You're not going to be able to trade Anthony Davis.
He's not going anywhere. Nobody's trading for him.

Speaker 1 That trade doesn't exist. It's not going to happen until this summer.
He's going to be on your team this year.

Speaker 1 So maybe you could try to make a run and try to get a play-in team because some of these West teams are bad. You know, and they're not that far out of it.
What's their

Speaker 2 5-14, dude? I mean, I

Speaker 1 five and 14, but the 10 seed is 6-12. That's true.
And that's Memphis. And that's what the John Moran thing going, couldn't be going worse.

Speaker 1 But could they leapfrog Sacramento, Clippers, Utah, Memphis, Portland? Like, I think they could be a ninth seed. I would try to be thinking now how to make the team better.

Speaker 1 That's interesting. And they have Davis.
Davis is, I don't know what version of him we're getting when he comes back, but Davis, when he's healthy,

Speaker 1 is a top 20 player in the league.

Speaker 2 That's right. When he's healthy.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I wouldn't punt on the season if I was Dallas.

Speaker 2 It's compelling. I think they got to start the rebuild.
But

Speaker 1 what they don't know. The thing is, they couldn't do that Kaminga trade for another month or a month and a half because you can't do it until January 15th.
So maybe it'll be too late by then.

Speaker 2 Well, and the other thing to watch with Dallas is they do have a wounded front office, to put it mildly. Are they going to let Michael Finlay or an interim GM come in?

Speaker 1 I mean, intellectually wounded or just wounded? Just wounded.

Speaker 2 I mean, they lost

Speaker 2 their leader.

Speaker 1 What leader? Jason Kidd didn't know about the trade. I dude.
Hey, he had no idea.

Speaker 2 Blindside. Nobody knew.

Speaker 1 Dumont didn't know. It was Nico, who's a solo shooter.
He was JFK on the sixth floor. Just acting alone.
CA, not involved. Ridiculous.

Speaker 2 But do they want to bring in another executive to manage this rebuild around Cooper flag?

Speaker 1 I'm right here. I'll move to Dallas.
I'm throwing my hat in the ring. It's time.
You hear that, folks. Ready to do it.
I'll leave the ringer.

Speaker 2 Don't leave the ringer.

Speaker 1 I'll turn it over to Gahal Gahal and Eduardo. There you go.

Speaker 1 Now, the Mavericks, that's a great job. Their fans, I will say, the fans, I get it.

Speaker 1 The most traumatizing sports trade ever, but the fans have to move forward now. Flag's really good.
He's not even 19 yet. He's finishing games.
They're running plays for him in crunch time.

Speaker 1 He's an awesome additive player. There's good pieces here.
I don't think they're out of the playoff race. And I think Nico's gone.
They did that. I'd be a little worried about the Jason Kidd.

Speaker 1 I'm not positive

Speaker 1 whether he wants to coach or whether he wants to coach this team. I have no idea.
But Davis is going to be in the team. There's no Davis trade.
You're not getting four first-round picks for him.

Speaker 1 It's not happening. I don't think.
Who's the team?

Speaker 1 I don't. I don't.
I'm not trading for my vom Detroit. I'm changing my identity if I get him.
I don't want to do that. I'm in 13 straight games.

Speaker 2 I was watching Phoenix without Mark Williams the other day, and that was one that crossed my mind.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 2 It's because of the Kentucky connection with with Devin Booker.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 2 I haven't done the research on

Speaker 2 the salaries and that, but I was just like, oh, yeah,

Speaker 2 Phoenix might be a good place for him to land. But

Speaker 2 I don't know. If I was in a front office, my job would be to bring to the general manager all the risk associated with the move.
And Anthony Davis is nothing if not human risk.

Speaker 2 And signing up for two years of Anthony Davis at a big number is just a lot of risk for one of these teams.

Speaker 1 If you were the Knicks

Speaker 1 and Davis for Towns as the focal point of something was on the table, who hangs up faster?

Speaker 2 I think the Mavs are staying on the phone because they just want to hear what

Speaker 2 they're looking to move on with their lives.

Speaker 1 Also, Towns is kind of a better fit for this team to have with these multiple centers than at least he could be on the outside stretching the floor versus.

Speaker 1 And he's younger.

Speaker 2 I mean, he's a younger player.

Speaker 1 Can you do your OKC thing quick before? I'm going to bring House in with us.

Speaker 2 Well, this involves Joe House's team, too. I wanted to ask the sports guy this question.

Speaker 2 Are we more likely to see a historically great NBA record this season or a historically bad NBA record this season?

Speaker 1 I've been on this regular season win record for the last month. And the odds have been dropping.
I think, what was it, plus 700 or something on FanDuel for them to do it? Oh, House is here.

Speaker 1 House, are you recording?

Speaker 5 I am, of course.

Speaker 1 Remember your friend Kurt Goldsbury?

Speaker 5 One of my favorites.

Speaker 5 The OGKG, baby. Let's go.

Speaker 1 The little tickets. OKC is plus 880 to break the wins record on FanDuel.
74 plus wins, plus 880. Is that more realistic to you than the Wizards breaking the loss record?

Speaker 5 If you had to pick one, Wizards, most losses ever, Thunder, most wins ever, what would would you pick the thunder i mean the the wizards could win basketball games they they they could there are there are nba level players not many of them but you know they're playing these rotation shenanigans and so forth they there's a 115.

Speaker 1 how's it going to get better

Speaker 5 you're going to be buying out veterans play the nba players at the end of the games i i do regret and resent them not trying to win a few of these games at the end uh of the you know in the fourth quarter where they're competitive there's a few that i haven't been a fan of would it bother you if they were the the worst team of all time or would that just be like all right we got a great draft it doesn't house how

Speaker 2 his body's full of wizards bullet scars at this point he's just another scar for his for his leg can you do some of your okay see stuff kirk well i mean if you just look at the game the way i do there's a compelling case for the thunder to beat this record they're setting the the net rating record once again.

Speaker 1 The Bulls. Yeah, after 18 games, it's the highest, right?

Speaker 2 Well, so there's a case against it, but the case for it is, yeah, the net rating is over 16.

Speaker 2 The 95, 96 Bulls have the record at plus 13.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 Remember that when the when the Warriors won 73, they didn't even lead the NBA in net rating. That was R.
Spurs in San Antonio that year.

Speaker 2 Thanks, Zaza.

Speaker 1 Did they hang a banner for that or no?

Speaker 2 No, Zaza made sure of that. We also had

Speaker 2 another counterpoint, though. For those who don't want to see this record fall, the Thunder have had the easiest schedule in the league so far.

Speaker 1 Well, how about counter to the counter? No, Jalen Williams. Exactly.
Counter to the counter.

Speaker 2 So that's where it goes. So

Speaker 2 I think the over-under is a 68.5 right now on FanDuel, which is absurd.

Speaker 2 I would take the over. And the only question there to me is, how far over can they get?

Speaker 1 House, OKC's reached a point when they lose, I'm shocked. shocked.
Right. And I know this because they've only lost once.

Speaker 1 It's shocking. If they lose like their next couple games, they're home for Minnesota, home Phoenix, at Portland to finish the month.

Speaker 1 Those would be three shockers for me if they lost any of those games. Then you go into December.
They're at Golden State, home Dallas, at Utah, home Clippers.

Speaker 1 They could be 24, 20,

Speaker 1 24 and 1 heading into at Minnesota on Friday, December 19th. That's some rarefied territory.
Like the Warriors, what did they start out? 25-0? We've had some teams start out like 24-1, 27-1. But

Speaker 5 I want to see how much of it as we map this out before. So the implied probability at plus 880 is a little better than 10%.

Speaker 5 That feels like a good, you know,

Speaker 5 worth a dabble. But how many times are they doing three games and four nights?

Speaker 5 What's the back-to-back situation look like? Like you would want to map some of that stuff out. I'm not worried about like strength of schedule because

Speaker 5 I'm still mad at the Cavaliers last night sitting virtually everybody against Toronto, basically conceding the tiebreaker against Toronto as though Cleveland's going to finish so much better than Toronto this upcoming season that they can go ahead and concede the tie.

Speaker 5 They've lost three times to the Raptors and they have a game last night. Everybody sits.
Like, come on.

Speaker 1 The other thing,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 2 The last thing I say on the thunder is like, they're going to encounter so many games, and this is very 2025 NBA, and I don't like it, where the other team isn't trying to win, to your point.

Speaker 2 I think when you talk about the 96 Bulls or the 16 Warriors, is it fair to say that this potential record could fall in part because there's more teams not trying their best on a nightly basis in the NBA?

Speaker 1 So are you saying against OKC specifically or just in general?

Speaker 2 Just in general. Like teams teams are tanking at a higher level.
More teams are tanking this year with a deep draft.

Speaker 2 So if they do get to 74, is there an asterisk in part because there's so many of these wizards in Utoka.

Speaker 1 Go look at the 96 bowls. That league sucked that year.
Fair enough. That was one of the reasons.
That was one of the reasons that happened. It was like we had like the, yeah, we had.

Speaker 1 expansion teams in two clusters right before they did that. And I don't know that that the 73 and 9, I actually think there's probably some more impressive records.

Speaker 1 The crazy thing with Jordan was never losing three games in a row for the last six both seasons. That's one of my favorite stats ever.

Speaker 1 Can I throw you Toronto sixth offensive rating, second in assist per game, and 27th in three points attempted, three pointers attempted. Some of it's schedule related, right?

Speaker 1 Zach and I talked about that last week. Schedules lined up really nicely for them.
But But I test-wise, I don't mind watching them. Like, I actually think it's a team that makes sense together.

Speaker 1 But do you think that rating, does that seem too high to you? What do you think?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think there's some shooting luck on both ends of the court. I don't want to reign on the Canadian parade.

Speaker 2 But if you look at the three-point shooting percentage on defense, it's a little lower than you would expect. And on offense, it might be higher.
I think Scotty Barnes is shooting 40%.

Speaker 2 I love Scotty, but that's not where he's going to land this year.

Speaker 2 But they're bringing the ball to the hoop. They're attacking.
They're They're really physical.

Speaker 2 And I do love Scotty Barnes because there's very, he's not Giannis, but with a head of steam and he gets going, that's a really great. Yeah.
And then last time.

Speaker 1 I finally bought in after five years. So I'm finally in on Scotty.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm in. It took some time.
I mean, shrugging, house.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Because he sucked last year.
I mean, it's perfectly fine. He's playing much better.

Speaker 1 He's playing.

Speaker 5 Yes. I mean, his shooting percentages across the board last year, which was emblematic of what that team was, you know, sort of designed for, what their goals were.

Speaker 5 They had injuries throughout the season, and they decided to do the quiet tank with about 30 games left. They pulled everybody off the court.

Speaker 5 So you didn't get any, they paid Scotty Barnes all this money and then he, you know, he didn't show up. But this, I like this version of Toronto quite a bit.

Speaker 1 By the way, that's a great name for a

Speaker 1 blog in the 2000s, the quiet tank.

Speaker 1 We're going to see some quiet tankers pretty soon. I think the quiet tanks, I keep waiting for it with my team to see.

Speaker 1 My team just keeps winning every time I think the tank's about to happen. House has been quietly, quiet betting Toronto over and over again.
That's been one of your teams, right?

Speaker 1 Toronto and Phoenix have been your two teams.

Speaker 5 Well, and Toronto was a lock for me, the over. I mean, I think I got him at 39 and a half in the, in the, you know, before the season started.
I love it. I love you.

Speaker 1 The best stat of all time this year, OKC being first in defensive rating by 7.9 points. That's, I've never seen anything like that.

Speaker 1 Dallas is second, Detroit's third, Houston's fifth.

Speaker 1 The net rating stuff,

Speaker 1 anyone over 20 minutes a game, all the leaders are from OKC and Denver. And then Suggs pops in there, plus 17.2.

Speaker 1 Dylan Harper, 16.8.

Speaker 1 Stephen Adams, 16.8. Ananobi, 16.5.
And then my guy, Keda,

Speaker 1 16.4.

Speaker 1 House, stick around. Kurt, can you stick around for one more quick segment?

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
We're taking one more break. I want to talk point cards with you guys.
This Thanksgiving FanDuel is letting you pass the leg to your friends and family with a fun new way to bet.

Speaker 1 So let's break it down. Open pass the leg in the FanDuel Sportsbook app and begin by creating a unique link for your group.
Add your legs. Invite and share with friends.

Speaker 1 Once friends are finished, add in their legs. Add the group parlay to your bet slip.
Finally, use your pass-the-leg PBT.

Speaker 1 Last but not least, to boost your winnings and place your bet. Sal House and Dubundo, they're creating their own group pass-the-leg bet on Cowboys versus Chiefs.

Speaker 1 I would love to get in on that one before Sal and House eat all the turkey and forget to pass the leg. So go check out that parlay.

Speaker 1 Throw it in to whatever you want to do for your bets for Thanksgiving and for Black Friday and everything else. And on Wednesday, the ringer will be sharing our final root bet.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned to social for that. All right, two topics.
Didn't prep you for either of them.

Speaker 1 You know, it's 25 years of the 21st century.

Speaker 1 Thinking back a little bit to everything we've seen.

Speaker 1 And I was thinking about John Morant, who I've just been so disappointed by for so many different reasons, as most basketball fans have been the last couple of years.

Speaker 1 Even the Clay Thompson thing, like Clay Thompson's NBA royalty, like settle settle down, don't talk shit to Clay Thompson. Anyway,

Speaker 1 I was wondering, has he thrown his hat in the ring for one of the most disappointing stars of the past 25 years? And what are the qualifications for that list, House?

Speaker 1 Because I don't think injuries are fair. It's like, oh, I'm so disappointed in Jay Williams.
Well, he got in a motorcycle accident, hurt his leg. Like, like, that doesn't count.

Speaker 1 Greg Odin, I can't be disappointed by.

Speaker 1 But I made a list of the guys I was the most disappointed by. And I'm not even going to read all the lists, especially because probably all of them have a player podcast at this point.

Speaker 1 But I think my number one most disappointing guy of the last 25 years is Ben Simmons.

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 That makes a lot of sense. I think he was there for like a year and a half when it was like, I see the vision of what Ben Simmons, I think he can be the one of the 10 best guys in the league.

Speaker 1 Like it's. It's right there.
You kind of look like LeBron sometimes when you have a head of steam downhill. And defensively, you might be one of the three best guys in the league.

Speaker 1 And you are a foundation block of a team that could maybe win a title. And then it just, that Atlanta series, it went sideways.
And I'm disappointed by it.

Speaker 1 So is that, would that be a good candidate for you guys?

Speaker 1 Is Ja starting to nudge toward the top here, Kirk?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he definitely is. In part because I loved watching him play basketball at such a high level.

Speaker 1 He do.

Speaker 2 And he was so young and so ascendant and so confident and cocky.

Speaker 2 And like those series against the the Warriors were just thrilling to watch. And, you know, I hear Chris Vernon in my head with just, he had the city too.

Speaker 2 Like he had this whole identity of Memphis and all this. And it was like, oh, this is perfect.
The alignment of the player and the city and the

Speaker 2 highlights were incredible too. It wasn't like boring greatness.
But yeah, it's been, it's been, I think I'd put him ahead of Ben Simmons, but that might be recency bias just because I loved how

Speaker 2 I loved watching John Morant play.

Speaker 1 House?

Speaker 5 I mean, Ben Simmons, to me, has to be number one because wasn't he, was he first team or second team?

Speaker 1 He was second team all-NBA.

Speaker 5 All NBA and first team all-NBA defense, right? Yeah. So Ja hasn't, has he sniffed that?

Speaker 1 What's Ja, what's at the Ja might have been third team, but Ja was, you know, they had, I guess, the highlight for him was that Golden State series when they went toe-to-toe with those guys.

Speaker 1 They showed clips of that the other day when they were talking about his history with Golden State. And even in that series, he just looks more explosive than anything we've seen this year.

Speaker 1 He's got to be in there.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So we're not counting

Speaker 5 first-round busts.

Speaker 5 So Markel False.

Speaker 1 I'll give you a couple others.

Speaker 5 Disappointment.

Speaker 1 Go ahead. Yeah, Markel Faltz is a tough one because he's disappointing.
But I also think, like,

Speaker 1 you know, he, in retrospect, I wonder how much some of that was his fault. It seemed like he had some physical stuff with the shoulder.

Speaker 1 Like, Zion to me is on the list, but I think can still play out of it just because I don't think he's taken the body piece of it physically, the

Speaker 1 staying in shape, taking care of himself. I just don't think he's done it.
And I think that's the biggest reason he's had so many issues. I don't think it's debatable, right?

Speaker 1 And it's, he's one of those guys you watch one far and you're like, why can't this guy figure it out? So I think that has to qualify.

Speaker 1 I had Darko.

Speaker 1 I don't know how much of that was his fault, but Darko was really talented. And I don't really know why it didn't happen.

Speaker 1 This isn't isn't like a kwame brown thing where kwame brown got drafted out of high school ended up staying in the league for a while right and it wasn't his fault he went first and that somebody thought he was better as an 18 year old than pal gaso which is just the wrong opinion but somebody was michael jordan somebody was the greatest player of all time yeah darko was darko was good he just was a fucking mess but i that one still bugs me

Speaker 1 seven foot guy he could shoot threes and you know he was athletic kirk smiling oh i love the i'm Was he too early for his time?

Speaker 5 God, such a great point.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Or did he just, if he goes to a different team, he's not on this. He's not the mascot of a 2004 Pistons title team, and he's just on Charlotte for a couple years.
Does it turn out okay for him?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 5 Couldn't he have been Christophe Porzingis 1.0? Couldn't he have been...

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 you could do the Instagram thing with him where it's like, Darko Milichik was a problem. And you could cut like two minutes of highlights from him and be like, ah, I kind of see it.
He's a lefty.

Speaker 1 You know, he had that little, little lefty hook. I liked him.

Speaker 5 For this exercise, let me interrupt you for just one second. If you put Ben Simmons number one, where's Joelle and Biede?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I thought about him. He didn't make my list because

Speaker 1 I think physically.

Speaker 1 It's just been one thing after another the entire time. How much does he get blamed for that? I don't know.
But he had issues coming into the league. He had knee injuries coming out of the gate.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Whether he could have

Speaker 1 done stuff on his own,

Speaker 1 I don't know. But, you know, he also won an MVP.
He had some really good years.

Speaker 1 I don't, you know, to me, he's more in that Chris Weber area where it's like, oh, there's a version of this where this is a way better career.

Speaker 5 Never played in the Eastern Conference Final.

Speaker 2 He never did. Seriously.
Can I nominate somebody for your list, please?

Speaker 2 Lakers Center

Speaker 2 went out. Andrew Bynum?

Speaker 1 Yes. Okay.
He's on my list.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he was on my, I'm not sure, list because he had some knee stuff.

Speaker 2 He did. And some brain stuff.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, he definitely,

Speaker 1 I don't know if he made a lot of friends during the course of his career, but it seemed like his body broke down. But House, I didn't know if it was because he was carrying too much weight.

Speaker 1 He's one of those centers where it's like, but yeah, 08, 09, 10, that guy was,

Speaker 1 you were scared of him when they posted him up. Yeah.
I had,

Speaker 1 this is a tough one for House. I think he belongs on the list.
Now, I know he had some personal problems, but half of of the guys in this list probably did. But Steve Francis,

Speaker 1 who was 26 and 6 and was the focal point of a Tracy McGrady trade. And his career was basically over before he hit 30.
But

Speaker 1 he just from the get-go, when he didn't want to go to Vancouver, and it just

Speaker 1 was never, there was a better player in there somewhere. We never got the career.
All right, my next one. I'm still mad at Derrick Williams, who I think was the second pick.

Speaker 1 I think I was really high on him in the draft diaries. And I don't understand.
He was great in college.

Speaker 1 He was the perfect stretch for, who was, I thought he was a, could be a rim runner, but also hit threes. And he's moving into this 2010s era.
And I still don't know what happened.

Speaker 1 Really makes me mad house. We thought we were all in on that dude coming out of college, but remember the Arizona stuff? It was like, how is this guy not going to be an awesome pro?

Speaker 1 I'm also mad at Jimmer Ferdette. I don't know why he couldn't put it together.

Speaker 1 We're moving into the three-point shooting era. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The guy had 30-foot range. He couldn't have been like the 10th man.
He couldn't have been Peyton Pritchard House.

Speaker 1 He knows that.

Speaker 5 He had plenty of chances.

Speaker 1 House is bailed. This.
House. I got to give House some red meat.

Speaker 5 I'm thinking this through. We don't have like, you didn't define the parameters.
So, like, is Marvin Williams a disappointment?

Speaker 1 No, because I was ready to be disappointed by them. I'll give you some red meat.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 1 Anthony Davis.

Speaker 1 Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
Let's get get Frisky. NBA top 75 player.
Man, a ring. Got a ring.

Speaker 5 That's one. That's one.

Speaker 1 Should he've been Tim Duncan?

Speaker 5 I'm not disappointed by Anthony Davis.

Speaker 1 All right. I put him honorable mention.
I just want to talk it out.

Speaker 1 Baron Davis.

Speaker 5 KG, what do you think?

Speaker 2 I think he has a couple of historic moments. I don't know how high I was of him coming out of UCLA.
I think he had a decent NBA career, but I can see why people

Speaker 2 who watched him play either early in the NBA thought that he was destined for more than he actually got.

Speaker 1 He's on the list for me because I was going to those Cooper games. I thought he was so talented.

Speaker 1 And then the other, I remember Nash talking once about how Baron Davis was the hardest guy for him to play in the entire league. And he had that whole run.
And he had a good career.

Speaker 1 He made, he, you know, got a couple of big contracts. There was a big game element to him that we we saw in the 07 Warriors Mav series where it was like the bigger the stage, the better he got.

Speaker 1 And I never thought he was in the right shape for most of his career. He had some knee stuff, but I thought he should have been awesome.
I put O.J. Mayo on there.

Speaker 1 And then Vince Carter, obviously, has to be on this list. Yeah.
I just, even though Vince Carter is going to go to the Hall of Fame,

Speaker 1 deserves it. Average 25, 26, 27 a game some year, but it's just never from

Speaker 1 the heights of that early Toronto stuff when you go all the way through to to the end of Toronto to the Nets, then he shows up on Phoenix and he's in Dallas. And

Speaker 1 it just felt like somebody that should have been the best guy on really good teams for like seven, eight years. And it never happened, House.

Speaker 1 One of our most frustrating players that we would talk about.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he never found the situation that

Speaker 5 was going to give him a chance at a ring. I mean, what was the best team that he played on?

Speaker 1 That wouldn't have been in Orlando in 2010. I never understood that.
He's playing with an all-NBA center. The league wasn't in the greatest shape, right? LeBron's Cleveland thing's about to crater.

Speaker 1 The Celtics were up and down that year. And it just

Speaker 1 felt like somewhere along the stretch, it should have happened.

Speaker 2 If that's your logic, is Tracy McGrady a candidate for your list?

Speaker 1 I thought about him.

Speaker 1 Like if you teammates were the supporting cast were so awful. I'm actually in the camp of I would actually defend Tracy versus put him on a list like this.

Speaker 1 I thought he just played with nobody for years and years and years.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I love this game. One of the nerd candidates I'll throw at you is Larry Sanders.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a great one.

Speaker 2 When we were putting, we were starting to do some of the first player tracking studies in the NBA. This guy started to pop on all these rim protection metrics that we'd never had access to before.

Speaker 2 And I wrote a paper for Sloan. I was like, this guy is going to be the best rim protector in the league for the next five or 10 years.
And he was out of the league

Speaker 2 by 26 or something. And, but he was,

Speaker 2 I was like, this guy, I'm going to put my flag in here. And this guy's going to be, you know, the face of the defensive analytics revolution.
He never showed up.

Speaker 1 I'm still personally disappointed in Keith Vanehorn, but technically he also belonged to the 90s. But I just, I don't know why he wasn't 20 and 8 for like 12 years.

Speaker 1 House is done with this segment. Can I give you my top 10 point guards really quick?

Speaker 5 Go ahead.

Speaker 1 Talked about this with Zach.

Speaker 1 We talked about it through the context of the point guide, Chris Paul, retiring, and I mentioned my top five,

Speaker 1 which

Speaker 1 is Magic and Curry and Oscar

Speaker 1 Robertson and Bob Koozy and Isaiah Thomas

Speaker 1 as my top five. House, do you have notes?

Speaker 5 No, no, that's it. That's the list for me as well.

Speaker 1 Polesburg, you have notes.

Speaker 2 I can't go against the sports guy on Koozi, but that's the one. I know I heard you and Zach talking about it, the generational stuff.
Everybody's going to read that differently.

Speaker 2 I'll take it as listed.

Speaker 1 Next five

Speaker 1 at Chris Paul, John Stockton, just a hair behind him.

Speaker 1 Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, just a hair behind him.

Speaker 1 And then Walt Frazier, if he counts as a point guard, which I think he does. And I think that's the top 10.

Speaker 1 We mentioned

Speaker 1 at Gary Payton level after that.

Speaker 1 Then it moves into it. Gary Payton's probably the toughest cut.

Speaker 1 Iverson was not a point guard, so he can't be included. But House, how do you feel about that second five?

Speaker 5 No issue. I mean, you know, we're doing the all-time greats and we have a good, like a pretty unimpeachable top 10.

Speaker 1 Frazier is the one that got lost to history a little bit. He has the game seven and 69 is one of the great individual games in the history of the league and wins them a title.

Speaker 1 He wins two titles. He is probably the best defensive guard of his entire generation,

Speaker 1 was a famous, famous big game guy and had good stats. And his career went about as long as it should have gone in that era where they're flying coach and they're playing on converses.

Speaker 1 So yeah, Gary Payton is the toughest one for me because I think Payton's peak was probably better than Stockton.

Speaker 1 There was at least one playoff series where he just murdered John Stockton, right? And it was a really bad matchup and the whole thing.

Speaker 1 But is there anybody, who do you think is the most underrated point guard of all time for you, Gloria? Tony Parker.

Speaker 2 The guy who won four NBA championships, the finals MVP, led the league in paint scoring as a 6'2 point guard.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you could say he's a system player or what, but man, he was the best player on that team for a lot of big games.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I'm biased to the silver and black, but Tony,

Speaker 2 Tony's getting lost for the same reason Tim gets lost. He doesn't talk about himself.
He doesn't make a lot of appearances.

Speaker 1 He's not on TV. Not on TV.
Not on TV. It always helps.

Speaker 2 But that's the name where I wouldn't be doing a service to my friends in San Antonio if I didn't bring him up.

Speaker 1 So the guy we didn't mention was SGA.

Speaker 1 And I don't think SGA is a point guard, but I also don't know what a point guard is anymore. Because technically, he fulfills the position of point guard,

Speaker 1 but he's not a point guard. He's not like these guys House and I grew up with, like Mo Cheeks and Tiny Archibara.
He's just a different type of player.

Speaker 1 It's almost like this new version of a guard, right? So he's like on this different list with like Harden and Russell Westbrook and people like that. Yeah, Luca, these high usage rate guards that

Speaker 1 they fit the role. And that the bigger question for me is, is Curry in that list? And Zach and I talked about that

Speaker 1 yesterday. But house do you think curry's an actual point guard what do you in your head what is he is he a guard or is he a point guard

Speaker 5 uh he he's more of a guard than a point guard but

Speaker 5 it's it's impossible to to try and split you know to do definitionally what we're what we're we're trying to accomplish so just putting him in the top five we're saying okay he's he's with magic and he's with you know that that's that's the right place for him What do you think, Kurt?

Speaker 2 I have him as a point guard. I think if you look at...

Speaker 1 Parker's like this too. Parker wasn't like a a total point guard, but he was.

Speaker 2 And to

Speaker 2 piggyback on your point, like we have to, we have to move the goalposts because the style of the game is changing.

Speaker 2 And, you know, when Mark Jackson was the coach in Golden State, they ran a lot of traditional pick and roll, and he sure as hell looked like a point guard back then.

Speaker 2 And then Steve got there, and now they're running through Bogut and Draymond and David Lee and a stribble handoffs. And he's running circles.
And that really defined his career.

Speaker 2 But I think of him as a point guard. But yeah, the same thing I would say to Shay.

Speaker 2 It's just like, this is, if we want to continue to compare point guards, we have to say that the definition is growing to include these type of guys.

Speaker 2 Cause, you know, who's not walking through that door is Mo Cheeks. Mo Cheeks isn't walking through that door ever again.

Speaker 2 We're never going to see like the 6-1 guy who dribbles it up, initiates an action, dumps it down to Moses Malone, and there we go.

Speaker 1 Kaus and I love those guys. I played basketball.
We had a couple of guys at Holy Cross.

Speaker 1 Well, we had playing pickup. You always wanted the Mo Cheeks type guys.

Speaker 5 Oh, for sure.

Speaker 1 Those guys just were looking out for everybody else.

Speaker 1 Just wanted to let everybody else eat. What can I do, guys? Can I make you a plate?

Speaker 1 Can I cut your chicken for you? Here.

Speaker 1 I wonder as this argument evolves down the road, if we throw away like point guard, shooting guard, all this shit, and we just go guards, wings, and bigs, and that's where we end up. Because

Speaker 1 Jokic is, I mean, Jokic is a center, but he's also a guy. I don't even know what the fuck he is anymore.

Speaker 1 I guess he's just a big, but just the five positions that we grew up with are basically gone, right? And

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 Luca's. The game's different.

Speaker 5 It's fine.

Speaker 1 Luca's a guard.

Speaker 1 Harden's a guard.

Speaker 1 I just think that probably an easy way to think about it. But is it house? How high can I put SGA in the pyramid at this point? What's the number that you'd be happy with?

Speaker 1 Because he's clearly on it now.

Speaker 1 Is he level two for you yet?

Speaker 5 Yeah, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 So that puts him

Speaker 1 in like the McAdoo, Archibald, Joelle Embiid, Bernard King, Heinzon, Arizon, Wilkins, Dwight Howard, Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis area.

Speaker 5 As you say all those names,

Speaker 5 I grow more and more confident that it's absolutely appropriate to say he's there.

Speaker 1 Does he nudge toward

Speaker 1 like the low 50s Gary Payton Paul Pierce area already? Or does he need a couple more years?

Speaker 1 Because almost when you're doing this, it's like his career ends tomorrow. Does he have enough to

Speaker 1 so you need two more years? Okay.

Speaker 5 Well, let's just let the season play out. If they defend the title, if they win 70 games and they defend the title, then

Speaker 1 now he's in the 40s. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If they win two straight titles, he wins the MVP last year, maybe even this year, now you're in the different tax bracket for this, I think. All right, Kirk, anything else?

Speaker 1 Any other questions for us before you go?

Speaker 2 I would just like to wish you and your family and your listeners and the house family a happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy the football, some basketball in between football.
And thanks for having me on, Bill.

Speaker 1 Kirk, what's your favorite side?

Speaker 2 I'm a mashed potatoes guy. A lot of garlic, a lot of gravy.
And yeah, I don't get a lot of mashed potatoes. So once a year, I really go into it.

Speaker 1 House, you're going to have to be careful this year because the football games are really good.

Speaker 1 I don't know what you're doing for an eating strategy, but you almost have to kind of wait for that little stretch between the second and third game. The first two are amazing.

Speaker 5 I'm going to eat all day. I'm just going to eat all day.
There's no reason, like, you know, it'll be plate. It'll be a plate an hour.

Speaker 1 All right. Over 12.
Saying bye to Goldsbury's. House, staying on, and we're going to do some football.
Later, guys. Thanks, Kirk.
This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats.

Speaker 1 Every time I sit down and watch the game, I find myself getting a little hungry. Football and food just go together.
Luckily, Uber Eats has game day deals all season long on the food you love.

Speaker 1 Like right now, you can get a buy one, get one, free

Speaker 1 three-piece tenders combo from Popeyes.

Speaker 1 Popeyes. Whether you're ordering from your favorite restaurant or getting snacks from the grocery store, Uber Eats has you covered for game day.
Order now on Uber Eats.

Speaker 1 Promotion available until November 30th. Product availability varies by region.
See app for details. Terms apply.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Speaker 1 These shorter, colder days don't have to feel so dismal. Instead, pass the time and reconnect with people you care about.
You'll be asking why you didn't do it sooner.

Speaker 1 Or if you need help making those connections, try therapy with BetterHelp.

Speaker 1 Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step.

Speaker 1 Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/slash Bill Simmons. That's betterh.com slash Bill Simmons.

Speaker 1 All right, House, we're doing Ringer 107 picks on a Tuesday afternoon, Thanksgiving. This is way too early.
So much can change.

Speaker 1 But what are we going to do? We got to do it.

Speaker 1 We're going to try to concentrate on the Thursday and Black Friday games just because they're closer and we actually know who's playing and then maybe

Speaker 1 do some other stuff.

Speaker 1 We had another disappointing week last week, two and three. We're two games under 500.
I just can't get it going this year, House.

Speaker 1 And I don't know what it is.

Speaker 5 We're not making excuses, but you and I spoke and I told you that by the time Sunday morning arrived, I was in a different place on at least two of our picks. And we had a difference of the game.

Speaker 1 The Saints was a classic.

Speaker 1 Like the Saints on Thursday. That's right.
By Sunday, it was clear it was an all-time stayaway pick. Everybody had them.
They're minus one and a half with a pretty crappy two and eight team.

Speaker 1 with everybody mobilized behind them and the game played out the way it played out. So we're going to concentrate on

Speaker 1 some of the games that are a little closer. Okay, staying away from Rams, Pants.
Stop me if you don't want to stay

Speaker 1 away from any of these. Rams, Panthers, Bucks, Cardinals.
Don't even know who's starting QB for the Bucks. Titans, Jags, Falcons, Jets.
I'm never putting the Falcons in Ringer 107 again.

Speaker 1 I hope they burn in hell. Chargers, Raiders,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 Broncos, Washington. Is that a possible parlay for you, or is it a stayaway? Who's playing QB for you?

Speaker 5 Almost certainly Marcus Mariota.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 yesterday they were characterizing it as extremely unlikely for

Speaker 5 Jaden. I just want to go on the record.
I think if he plays any more football this season, I think it's an outrage. I think it's a goddamn debacle.

Speaker 5 There is no, I think it's a misunderstanding fundamentally of what an asset he is and what the risk paradigm.

Speaker 5 The man's been hurt three different times with three different body parts this season and a different body part with a different injury last season. There is no rationale other than what?

Speaker 5 Butts and seats at the stupid stadium out in Prince George's County. He's not, he doesn't need reps.
He's not getting useful reps with this poverty team, with everybody hurt. No Terry McLaurin,

Speaker 5 no Noah Brown. Eckler's been hurt, you know,

Speaker 5 since the beginning beginning of the season. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
So

Speaker 5 I soundly and loudly reject the idea that additional reps are helpful to him. I hope not to see him until the beginning of the 2026 season.

Speaker 1 Should I just cut and paste that same monologue when the Celtics start thinking about bringing Jason Tatum back in March when they're 38 and 39?

Speaker 1 Viking Seahawks, can we stay away?

Speaker 5 So it's probably Rosmer.

Speaker 1 It's double digits now. It's 10 and a half.
It's probably Rosmer, right? Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 1 What if he's like, okay, I don't know. I know.

Speaker 5 I don't. I'm in the same boat as you.
I was really, really, really, I already bet it. I bet Seattle minus nine and a half before the news about this.

Speaker 5 I'm going to be really, I'm not going to make any jokes about the concussion thing because he did get someone.

Speaker 1 You see a joke that he might not have one.

Speaker 5 Well, it was, you know, he had the symptoms on the flight. Yeah.
On the flight home.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
So I'll just.

Speaker 1 And he took some hits in that game.

Speaker 5 He took hits. Let there be no doubt.

Speaker 1 Dolphins, Saints, Dolphins, five and a half.

Speaker 1 Cannot. Cannot.

Speaker 1 Staying away completely. Cannot.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you like Coward was saying

Speaker 1 he thought Purdy was the right-handed to a. It's really the first coward take I've been jealous of in a while.
It's very good. Coward, keeping me on my toes.

Speaker 1 I haven't been jealous of a coward take in four years.

Speaker 5 The only difference is so far, Purdy doesn't really put himself in harm's way running-wise.

Speaker 1 Coward was bragging on his show that he had better seats than me at a WrestleMania.

Speaker 5 It's possible. Why couldn't he?

Speaker 1 There was one where I was with six people and I was in the third row and he was in the first. He called the wrestling fans Booger Eaters for years and years.
Go look it up.

Speaker 1 So what?

Speaker 5 That doesn't mean he can't sit in the front row.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that was once. I've been ahead of him in the I'm always ahead of him in rows.

Speaker 5 You should be on the front row at every event. I don't understand.
What are you doing?

Speaker 1 For Coward, he can screw off. Go sit with the Booger Eaters in the third row.

Speaker 1 See, I'm hoping this turns into a sports blog post because they can just put it, put us both in the, in the post with the thing. But meanwhile, I like Howard.
But don't tell anybody.

Speaker 1 Just get your post.

Speaker 1 Get your aggregation out.

Speaker 1 Likelys.

Speaker 1 These are not Thursday, Thursday-Friday games. Browns plus six and a half at home against the Niners.

Speaker 5 We have to play it.

Speaker 1 Home Browns is one of our favorite bets. They're just a different team.
Home Browns. I mean, the Hash Browns.

Speaker 5 Shadore wasn't incredible, but he was fine.

Speaker 5 And them at home against that.

Speaker 1 Maybe less than fine, but he wasn't bad.

Speaker 5 He wasn't bad.

Speaker 5 This San Francisco defense,

Speaker 5 what they put on display against Carolina, It was that, that San Francisco handling their business against the Panthers was a thousand percent about how inept the Panthers are.

Speaker 5 That was the Panthers insisted on defeating themselves again and again and again.

Speaker 1 I did a seven-point tease with five teams, including the Panthers, up to plus 14 and sweated out, and they won. Oh,

Speaker 1 Bryce Young was just.

Speaker 1 What goes on in that dude's head?

Speaker 3 Would you rather have Would you rather have J.J.

Speaker 1 McCarthy as your quarterback and know that it's not happening?

Speaker 1 Or Bryce Young tantalizing with the possibility that it might happen, but then over and over again, proving that it's not going to happen. I don't know which one's worse.

Speaker 5 Definitely J.J. McCarthy.

Speaker 1 He can't play. That's worse.
Okay.

Speaker 5 He's worse.

Speaker 1 So Browns, just

Speaker 1 they're six and a half. This is like three free points.
Play it. How is this line that three and a half?

Speaker 5 I don't know. Play them.
We love the Browns. Browns at home.
Miles Garrett might get four sacks.

Speaker 1 Another possible is Texans Colts. Texans are getting four and a half in Indianapolis.
This is a bet on the Texans defense.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's Mills or Stroud. I don't really care.

Speaker 1 Not sure how good the Colts are

Speaker 1 as the season goes along. The fact that Sal and I talked about it on Sunday,

Speaker 1 really, they seem really scared to let Daniel Jones decide the game.

Speaker 5 Here's the thing that scares me a little bit about

Speaker 5 the Houston situation.

Speaker 5 The

Speaker 5 Colts have been away from home for a month. And all of these games where they haven't looked great have been outdoor.

Speaker 5 That game against Pittsburgh, that's an outdoor, you know, not going to let them get out and run thing. Then they went to Berlin,

Speaker 5 outdoor stadium.

Speaker 5 They put up a bunch of yards.

Speaker 1 Last week in Kansas City.

Speaker 5 Two consecutive overtime games also for the Colts now. But finally, they're home.
They're finally home. They're back to their home track.
And that secondary, the health,

Speaker 5 they were good.

Speaker 5 That secondary against the Chiefs was very good. They were not.

Speaker 1 That was not the same thing. You're saying all stuff I had in my head that

Speaker 1 should I be more scared of them at home

Speaker 1 with Houston, who can't really block

Speaker 1 with the secondary taking a rise up

Speaker 1 and most people probably liking the Texans because of the line and because of the way they've been playing? Counter, Texans, 10 days' rest.

Speaker 1 Must win for them.

Speaker 1 Like, literally, a must-win. I don't know if they make the playoffs if they don't win this game.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll mark it down.

Speaker 5 I mean, to be fair, the Colts did have a buy in between. It wasn't like they flew from internationally back to the U.S.
and immediately played the Chiefs.

Speaker 1 I'll mark it down because

Speaker 1 I thought that was a really bad loss for the Colts. Like Sal and I were talking about just to go three and out the last four times you had the ball, and it just didn't seem like they trusted Jones.

Speaker 1 And I think sometimes with your teams and

Speaker 1 like those are the moments where it's like, do you trust this guy or not? And it didn't seem like they trusted him.

Speaker 5 It's fine to not trust him. You got to get JT the ball.

Speaker 1 Well, that's it.

Speaker 5 We watched the here, you know, we saw the recipe with the dumb, dumb Lions. The Lions at least understand that Jameer Gibbs is their secret sauce.

Speaker 5 And they're like, we're probably going to lose this game to the Giants, but we're going to get you 300 yards from 300 scrimmage yards. Because if we're going to lose, it's going to go down this way.

Speaker 5 It has to be the exact same with Jonathan Taylor. Go ahead and be cautious, but get that man touches every which way you can.

Speaker 1 So, what maybe staying away from that one?

Speaker 5 I just don't love it.

Speaker 1 Giants, Pats. Giants are getting seven and a half in New England.
It's a Monday night game. We went against the Patriots because I try to be like, I'm not trying to be a homer.

Speaker 1 We wanted the five best picks. We went against the Pats once and we lost.

Speaker 5 It was a tough situation. They went to Tampa and they handled their business.
It was impressive. That was the one we went against them.

Speaker 5 Seven and a half. Is that the number?

Speaker 5 It's too many points.

Speaker 5 Is Jameis playing? Is Jameis definitely playing?

Speaker 1 I think Jameis is playing.

Speaker 5 If Jameis plays, then it's too many points.

Speaker 1 You know who's not playing? The entire left side of the Patriots' offensive line. You know what wasn't good? Even two weeks ago? The Patriots' offensive line.

Speaker 1 You know what was the best part of their offensive line? The two guys on the left side, the rookies, who we're not going to have.

Speaker 5 The way to get at the Giants, again, you know, we just saw it with the Lions, you got to establish the run. You have to get outside and run on them.

Speaker 1 Can the Patriots do that?

Speaker 5 Have we seen that at all this?

Speaker 1 There's two issues with this line being this high. One is that I'm worried they're not going to be able to block the Giants at all.

Speaker 1 Two, even if they have the lead, they're not going to be able to run the ball to keep the lead, which is what we saw in the Bengals game. They should have put that Bengals game away.

Speaker 1 They could have run the ball. So this line's just too high.
The counter would be: you have Jameis.

Speaker 1 God only knows what that dude. You're betting on on him on a Monday night.
There could be two pick sixes.

Speaker 5 It could be, you know, four and four, four touchdowns, four, four picks, two of which are pick sixes. That's what makes him so beautiful.

Speaker 1 The Pats have, look, the schedule has been amazing. They barely beat Cincinnati.

Speaker 1 They, Thursday night against the Jets, which they won by a 13, that game was closer than it felt like. And the Jets left some plays on the table.

Speaker 1 And really, if they were competent at all offensively, that would have been closer. Tampa, 28-23 final, but Tampa played really well that game.
And I just thought that was a good game.

Speaker 1 Atlanta, they win by one. The last time they've really beaten up a team was Cleveland in week eight.
They won 32 to 13.

Speaker 1 They'd be Tennessee the week before. But this is, they're not really like whooping teams because they can't run the ball to protect leads.

Speaker 1 So this line's too high.

Speaker 5 Giants have been pretty good on the road. Like

Speaker 5 they were live.

Speaker 1 They've blown five double-digit leads on the road.

Speaker 5 Yeah. They were live to beat many very good teams, live to beat all of them.

Speaker 1 So the other thing with this Pats game, they have a bye week after this week.

Speaker 1 They're banged up and they got Buffalo the week after. And this just feels like a classic.
Can we just sneak through this game?

Speaker 1 Let's try not to have any more injuries. And anyway, marking it down.

Speaker 1 Bills, Steelers is the last one. Bills at Pittsburgh.
Bills are minus three and a half. Bills, 10 days' rest.
Steelers missing their left tackle. They're missing Harmon on defense.

Speaker 1 I didn't think last week was a great game for them. Wet Rodgers is apparently coming back, even though he's going to have a splint on his wrist.
And I don't like the hook, especially in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 1 But I do want to put the Bills in the tees or a parlay.

Speaker 1 I would like to discuss that.

Speaker 5 As a money line leg?

Speaker 1 We could do, I think we both like the eagles minus seven against the bears and we could just do eagles money line bills plus one and a half and make that one of our picks so

Speaker 5 bills plus one and a half in pittsburgh the case you have to make for pittsburgh is 18 years of tomlin tomlin in these situations they can't lose any more games they're gonna they're gonna be out of the playoff picture if they lose any more games um

Speaker 5 and you know that their ability to generate turnovers especially at home especially in this dog position, when you sit down and go through the numbers, the trends, Tomlin in this spot at this point in the season, especially three and a half.

Speaker 5 Um, you have to play. So, the right thing to do is what you're guiding us towards, which is get away from, don't play three and a half, get away from the hook, do something else.
But, um,

Speaker 5 how can you, do you really feel like we can trust the bills? That's my question to you.

Speaker 1 So, I thought about this:

Speaker 1 The Bills are seven and four.

Speaker 1 11-6 might like you're almost in danger. You might not even make the playoffs with how many like 11 and 12 win teams we're going to have.
They can't really afford any of their losses.

Speaker 1 Did we overreact to that Houston game?

Speaker 1 I mentioned this to Sal on Sunday. They're playing on three days' rest.
They're playing in Houston against the best defense in the league, and they almost won, by the way.

Speaker 1 Hit the ball in the 10-yard line, first down, and they couldn't punch it in, but they were in the game. It wasn't like, yeah, Allen got sacked a bunch of times, but that was the best defense.

Speaker 1 They did only have two days to prepare for it, basically.

Speaker 1 And I don't know. It just feels like we're actually getting the bills on a nice,

Speaker 1 kind of on a nice zag situation where people are a little too down on them.

Speaker 5 Yeah, the market's not, though. It's three and a half.
The market's kind of telling me.

Speaker 1 We both agree. Everybody's going to be like, oh, Pittsburgh, three and a half, Tomlin at home.
You got to take the points.

Speaker 5 That's what I'm thinking the only thing that makes me uneasy is it does seem like pittsburgh is pretty comfortable with their run game now and it is kind of a two-headed monster like both um jalen warren and

Speaker 5 gainwell as a revelation and and they're getting catches out of the backfield it they've they've really done something um nice with their their two-headed running back core And the thing that has beat this Bills defense all season long is

Speaker 5 the the running game.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 5 I just want to make sure we're being cautious.

Speaker 1 You're advocating a stay away. We still have to come up with five picks.
All right. Thursday, Lions Packers.

Speaker 1 It sounded like you liked the Packers a little bit, but I'm going to force us to take the Lions.

Speaker 5 Well, you can do that. I am vehemently opposed to it.

Speaker 1 Okay. Can you make the case? Let's hear it.

Speaker 5 I think the version of the Green Bay Packers that we saw in the very first game of the season against this Lions team is still present, and that they can do the exact same thing to this Lions team.

Speaker 5 The skepticism around the Lions coming into the season was they had two of their Hall of Fame-ish,

Speaker 5 you know, interior offensive linemen,

Speaker 5 one retired and one plays for another team now.

Speaker 5 And you know, that the changeover at offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator, all of that has proven to be, you know, factor in making this Lions team look pretty underwhelming against every team with any kind of talent.

Speaker 5 And I think that this Green Bay defense is being underrated. I think that they are, to me, they're a top three defense in the NFL, the Green Bay defense.

Speaker 5 And I think they have no problem whatsoever going into Detroit and bullying the Lions. They won in 2023.
They had the ball last possession last year and lost right at the end.

Speaker 5 They're not like afraid of going in. And this Lions defense was on the football field for 80 snaps.
That game went to overtime against the Giants. Here's the, if you want to get into

Speaker 5 the trend thing, teams that play on Thursday after playing in an overtime game, six and 25 against the spread since 2000. 6-25.

Speaker 5 And it's at noon. So it's not even like, you know, they're playing nighttime, nighttime, the Lions.
So I'm on Green Bay. I've already bet it.
I bet the money line. I think they're the better team.

Speaker 5 I think they're going to win the NFC North.

Speaker 1 That was a pretty compelling case, House.

Speaker 1 I don't know what it is about Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 Trying to come up with a good counter other than I have no idea where the Packers are going when it's third and seven.

Speaker 5 Here, the counter is the Packers are also like, one, Jordan Love falling down the wrong way because of the, you know, he was handing off with his opposite hand

Speaker 5 because

Speaker 5 whatever that injury is. If he falls down the wrong way, one time.

Speaker 1 I noticed that.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And we're still waiting for that offense to really wow us. Now, Emmanuel Wilson, who you picked up, you son of a gun.

Speaker 1 Ringer in my Ringer Fantasy League.

Speaker 1 Part of my dramatic comeback. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Jacobs, I think.

Speaker 1 I've been for noticing.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm looking. I think we're going to to play each other.

Speaker 5 If the playoffs started this week, we would play each other. So I'm trying to look at who I'm likely to end up playing against.

Speaker 5 But Jacobs, I expect the reason that he didn't play on Sunday is so that he could play this game. But what if that's a two-headed kind of monster for them? Because you got to play Wilson.

Speaker 5 So they got to play both, I think. And that should help

Speaker 5 Jordan Love.

Speaker 5 That would be the counter, I think.

Speaker 1 So are you advocating Philly money line with Packers plus six and a half?

Speaker 5 Oh, I mean, that would be fine, of course. Because the Philly money line is fine with anything you want to pair it with, from my perspective.

Speaker 1 What if we had Eagles,

Speaker 1 the Eagles

Speaker 1 minus one and a half, and we got that Lions to plus seven and a half?

Speaker 5 Fine. Great.

Speaker 1 Done. That sounds pretty exciting.
Awesome. So you're saying even if the Lions win, which you're skeptical of, it's not a game where they're going to be blowing the Packers out, anything like that.

Speaker 1 You're expecting a tight game or you're expecting the Lions to kick their ass. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I think that the Green Bay has

Speaker 5 the right personnel to handle the, you know, the

Speaker 5 Detroit's weapon is Jameer Gibbs because golf has really not been that impressive. We keep waiting.

Speaker 5 That was a classic Detroit get right put up 50 point spot against the Giants and they should have lost a football game.

Speaker 5 So, and it's because they just can't, they don't win at the line of scrimmage the way they used to.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. So I'm fando.
Packers plus six and a half is minus 235, but plus seven and a half is minus 330.

Speaker 5 They're not giving us over the sun.

Speaker 1 So it would have to be Eagles money line with Packers plus six and a half.

Speaker 5 Fine, fine, fine. I mean, the Packers are going to win outright.
I've bet on it. I'll accept my fate if they don't, if Jordan Love gets hurt.

Speaker 1 Well, your fate last week was you gave us the Saints minus one and a half, which I didn't want to do, and that fucking lost.

Speaker 1 So, your fate's been pretty fateful.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 so many lessons learned.

Speaker 1 What are the lessons? I mean, that

Speaker 1 on Tyler Shuck,

Speaker 1 what's his name?

Speaker 5 I thought I was watching Tennessee from last year, watching that game because I was two field goals.

Speaker 1 They had

Speaker 5 fucked up two fourth and first and goals invested in, yeah, like they were bad at every phase.

Speaker 5 They had poor planning it was a poor scheme it was uh poor execution offense defense and special teams it was really like i said i thought we were watching the titans from last year it was a callahan special

Speaker 1 cowboys chiefs cowboys are getting three at home chiefs speaking of your overtime stat they also played overtime on sunday and i liked it's funny because i used the logic for liking the Cowboys in this game as part of my calculus

Speaker 1 and didn't use that for the Lions Packers until you reminded me that the Lions also played numbertime.

Speaker 1 This went from three and a half to three.

Speaker 1 There's some wiggle room here with the Ts too,

Speaker 1 with the Cowboys. That's not true.
We could throw in the seven and a half. I would much rather just take the plus three.

Speaker 5 Not me. I'd rather have the points.
I'd rather have the points.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? Cowboys.

Speaker 5 I'd rather have the extra points. We're over, you know, over seven and a half.

Speaker 5 I need a back door.

Speaker 5 Three doesn't give us a back door with Dallas.

Speaker 1 Well, one more game. Bengals Ravens.
Bengals plus seven. No T.
Higgins. Chase is playing.
Burroughs playing. I got to watch this team against the Patriots last week.

Speaker 1 They're not very good.

Speaker 1 It's one of the reasons like the Pats Giants line, like the Bengals, we made the Bengals defense look like it was pretty confident.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure it is, but I don't like the Ravens either.

Speaker 1 The Bengals have the worst defensive DBOA since 1978, according to Aaron Schatz. The Ravens, I don't know know what the advanced metric is for I test.

Speaker 1 This looks like something's wrong, but something looks wrong, especially with Lamar.

Speaker 1 I almost want to stay away from this game.

Speaker 5 Good. Please do.
Because the correct side is definitely Cincinnati at that number.

Speaker 1 I don't want to take Cincinnati.

Speaker 5 What evidence is there of Baltimore winning by margin against a team with a good quarterback? Like, I don't want to go against Burrow. I mean, there will be a rust factor.

Speaker 5 There'll be all the stuff, but I just,

Speaker 5 I mean, these, these two teams, this divisional game, that's a lot of points for a divisional game with all the uncertainty around a burrow return.

Speaker 1 Well, we only have four picks.

Speaker 1 What are they?

Speaker 5 What are the four?

Speaker 1 Packers, plus two and a half.

Speaker 1 Eagles, minus two and a half. Parlayed with Cowboys, seven plus

Speaker 1 plus seven and a half. That's uh like minus 113.
Browns, six and a a half over the Niners.

Speaker 1 Giants, plus seven and a half over the Patriots. Then we need one more game.
So it's either the Texans plus four and a half, or we, or we, uh, we just

Speaker 1 blindly take the Steelers-Tomlin infrastructure plus three and a half.

Speaker 1 God, I don't know. Or we take the Bengals plus seven

Speaker 1 just because it's Thursday and we get to root for it.

Speaker 5 Let's do that. That's more fun.

Speaker 5 We're at the, we're, we're at the

Speaker 5 stage of the season, week 13. It's Thanksgiving.

Speaker 5 I'll be sprawled on the couch,

Speaker 5 t-shirt halfway up my mouth.

Speaker 1 By the way, this is the Thursday night game.

Speaker 5 I know. That's what I mean.
I'll be on the couch,

Speaker 5 protruding belly, t-shirt three-quarters of the way, barely covering. It ain't going to cover my belly.

Speaker 1 I don't think the Ravens are good.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, let's do it. All right, Ringer 107.

Speaker 1 Lions, as always, presented by FanDuel. House wanted us to take Packers plus two and a half against the Lions.
So we're doing that. You're basically vowing the Packers are going to win this game.

Speaker 1 This is confidence I've seen you all year.

Speaker 5 True story.

Speaker 1 I believe it.

Speaker 1 We were talking, we did the two for the money rewatchables, and we were talking about that sports advisor's era when they dramatically said, this is the lock of Thanksgiving, and whether we should incorporate that in our own Ringer 107.

Speaker 1 The only time we did that all year was that one Browns game, the bad weather game with Tua going to Cleveland. We were like, this is our lock of the year.
The Browns against Tua in that one.

Speaker 1 I don't know if we should start doing that more. And we won.
So we're 1-0 and we go lock of the year. So Packers plus 2.5.
Is this the house's lock of the holidays?

Speaker 5 It's the Thanksgiving lock. It's the turkey leg lock of Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 My Thanksgiving lock.

Speaker 1 Brings in Black Friday, and it is Eagles minus two and a half with the Cowboys parlayed to plus seven and a half. Eagles have to win by three.
Cowboys are getting seven and a half points.

Speaker 1 We're parlaying those together.

Speaker 1 We're going to take the Bengals plus seven against the Ravens because it's too many points. Burroughs back.

Speaker 1 Jamar Chase is back. Trying to prove to everybody he's learned some lessons.
A Bengals defense, either the Pats offense isn't good or the defense actually looked pretty frisky.

Speaker 1 They had some goal line stops and they were at least playing hard.

Speaker 2 So there's three.

Speaker 1 Browns.

Speaker 1 Plus six and a half at home against the Niners. House and I just feel like the Browns are like, home Browns are like a different, they're like the 33rd NFL team.
And then last but not least,

Speaker 1 we're staying away from Bills Steelers because of the hook.

Speaker 1 We're staying away from Texans plus four and a half at Indianapolis because we're not sure Indianapolis at home might have forgotten how special that team is.

Speaker 1 And we're going to take Giants plus seven and a half in New England because the line's too high because the Patriots don't have an offensive line anymore. They can't run the ball.

Speaker 1 And even if they take a lead, it's going to be hard for them to extend and move it out. And there's a whole Giants pass history, and I think it's the right one.

Speaker 5 And the back door is open if Jameis is the quarterback.

Speaker 1 That's true. I hope the Patriots win by 40 points, but that's going to be our ringer 107, the last pick Giants plus seven and a half.
All line subject to change, presented by FanDuel Sportsbook.

Speaker 1 All right, give us your 2025 Thanksgiving rankings before we go. Thanksgiving rankings.
Number one thing you're most excited to eat. What is it?

Speaker 5 Dark meat. I love to get underneath.

Speaker 5 It's not just you could take the leg and the leg is fine, but where it connects that thigh meat, the juicy thigh meat, because it's been sitting in the pan and roasting for hours.

Speaker 5 And all of the moisture of the turkey is

Speaker 5 right down to that portion of it. That's the bird butter.
That's what I want. I would put my face in it if I had the opportunity, but this is, you know,

Speaker 5 I understand everybody that's like, oh, turkey. Yeah, I have to do turkey.

Speaker 5 You're missing,

Speaker 5 it's a rare thing.

Speaker 5 We don't have it all the time. So try and find the portion of it that is just, it is flavorful.
It's packed full of flavor right where I'm describing.

Speaker 1 Turkey is the quarterback of Thanksgiving that you try to look for other things that are the most important player in the team. And it's like, no, it's actually the turkey.

Speaker 5 It is the turkey.

Speaker 1 Everything revolves around the turkey. We don't eat it that often because it immediately puts you in a coma.

Speaker 1 There's a scene in Beast and Me Me when the bad guy, Matthew Reese, his character, he's just eating rotisserie chicken. Oh, I don't know.
Have you seen that show yet?

Speaker 5 I don't know it.

Speaker 1 No, he just starts eating this chicken and he's just like eating it like an animal. And the only other person I've ever seen do that is you.
All right.

Speaker 1 What's your number two Thanksgiving thing you're excited to eat?

Speaker 5 Stuffing, but it's got to be sausage stuffing because I love the combination. And it's got to be a moist stuffing.

Speaker 5 I don't, I understand when, when, um, you know, folks go for that, that, that crispy baked top, but it can have the effect of undermining the moisture, sucking the moisture out.

Speaker 5 So, as long as you can preserve the moisture, but like, I like big chunks of sausage in there. I like the pow and I like a nice bite of fennel

Speaker 5 that stuffing. And if you want to throw a couple red pepper flakes, if you want to elevate, you know, um, the spice level, I'm, I'm here for it.

Speaker 5 Because when you put that next to that that uh that the the dark turkey um you know it it's almost takes you in the direction that dark turkey with the the juices it's a little bit gamey also uh potentially and then you then get that sausage and the pop of that sausage the way that that that eat and the the moisture of the bread along with it there those are bites those are those are world-class once a year revel in it bites

Speaker 1 big chunks of sausage was in the text between Olivia Nuzzy and RFK Jr., but I can't remember who texted it.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 My favorite, I'll let you go again for your third pick. My favorite is stuffing of everything.
And for all the reasons you laid out, I don't like when it's too dry. I like when it's a little moist.

Speaker 1 I like putting gravy on it. I like taking the turkey.
I don't eat the stuffing by itself. I always have the stuffing bite with the turkey, with some cranberry.

Speaker 1 And as I say every year, and people people think i'm a serial killer i still like the canned cranberry over like the fancier homemade i like give me the old school buy it at any grocery store i still like that cranberry jelly round whatever fucking however you describe it i still like that the most the juliet we've come all the way around people now what i see is um folks even high-end chefs saying advocating go ahead and if you want to make your foo food do it but also make sure you serve a canned version next to it because it's it's nostalgia.

Speaker 1 It's a best bite. It is tasty.
It's still tasty. Carve it out.
It also has a little better consistency. So you put it on the stuffing,

Speaker 1 scoop it in with the turkey.

Speaker 1 And a little gravy. And it's like, that's the best bite I'm going to have.

Speaker 1 Number two is my mom's,

Speaker 1 the sweet potato casserole thingy she makes with the, she puts like, it's basically a diabetes special. It's like, there's pecans on it.
It's brown sugar. It's cooked.
There's marshmallows in it.

Speaker 1 It's like you just, you just go into a coma basically after you have this.

Speaker 5 Is it dessert or is it served as a side?

Speaker 1 No, it's a side. Yeah.
So I the funny thing is we have mashed potatoes too. We do double.
We have mashed potatoes with the sweet potatoes.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Mashed potatoes and sweet potato is a fairly traditional

Speaker 5 double dose. I think that's what's your number three.

Speaker 5 I don't want to be told that this is a cop-out. It's gravy because gravy plays such a crucial role

Speaker 5 to

Speaker 5 elevating every aspect of what's on the plate. If you've got mashed potatoes on the plate, then you got to have the gravy.

Speaker 5 If you've got the juicy turkey that I'm talking about, but the gravy just it elevates it. It push like it takes,

Speaker 5 it's a glue guy.

Speaker 5 The gravy plays that glue guy role and it elevates everything.

Speaker 5 And, you know, any vegetable you're going to have on the plate, got to have it, you know, have the gravy available to dip.

Speaker 5 You know, if there's green bean, I I mean, I'm not, I don't do the green bean casserole with the mushroom soup.

Speaker 1 Um, I like kind of the roastable vibe. My mom's making that.
The green bean casserole.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because she has the gravy. You want traditional green beans or green bean casserole?

Speaker 5 You could have both.

Speaker 1 What you find is that anything with casserole in it, I'm probably going to eat in Thanksgiving.

Speaker 5 Yes, yes, for sure.

Speaker 1 My wife's trying some cream spinach thing that I didn't even really fully understand.

Speaker 5 That's it from a steakhouse, that vibe?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't, I didn't really understand it. It just sounds like more calories, but apparently that's happening as well.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 1 You know, the Italians,

Speaker 1 this is my beloved Aunt Jen, now deceased, but, you know, it was multi-courses, like to start with, this is for Easter, too, where you,

Speaker 1 there's a lasagna. Yeah.
Oh, sure. And then a ham, and then Thanksgiving, which makes it, but that's like.

Speaker 1 I don't know. That's fucking crazy.

Speaker 1 Like, I look back. I'm like, how do you have a ham and a turkey? That's absolutely bonkers.

Speaker 5 I don't think it is. So like my household um tradition the thing and i've i've put pictures of it up my mother um for you know 50 years makes a ananapasta with with um rolled italian meat

Speaker 5 meats um cheeses olives um we have that sometimes too yeah the the the um the vegetables in the brine like the whole that whole spread maybe with a little bit of tuna in the middle flaked tuna any other what's your favorite uh what's your fourth gravy?

Speaker 1 Any other ones? Nah, I mean,

Speaker 5 we covered the most important ones.

Speaker 1 How about favorite pie?

Speaker 5 Definitely 1,000% sweet potato. I love sweet potato pie.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know,

Speaker 5 you're still in the same basic kind of orientation with pumpkin. And why would I say anything bad about pumpkin pie, but sweet potato pie is superior.

Speaker 1 One of the biggest tragedies I've had since I moved to LA, it's not in the top three, but it's in the top 10, was when my wife's friend Robin, who made the porch pies. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And she moved back to the south, and we don't have porch pies for Thanksgiving anymore. Man.
She would make the chocolate chess. Chocolate chest was outrageous.
And the sweet potato. Yep.

Speaker 1 And it was the fucking best. And now it's just gone.
And I haven't had a pie since. That's like it.
It was always the number one. I don't know why she just didn't stay here and open a

Speaker 1 porch pie shop.

Speaker 5 You could call her up and ask her to send you.

Speaker 1 Maybe I should make her move back.

Speaker 1 She's an extra 10 pounds for me, though.

Speaker 5 You can just ask her to make one and put it in a FedEx. That's so good.

Speaker 1 What's your least favorite Thanksgiving dish or dessert? Do you have one that you're just out on?

Speaker 5 I don't tend to eat the rolls. I don't mess with the bread because

Speaker 1 why is there bread in Thanksgiving?

Speaker 5 I'm looking forward to every other aspect of it.

Speaker 1 Bread and the stuffing.

Speaker 5 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 That's right. And I want like my calorie allocation.
I want it to the stuff that's like the once-a-year stuff. It's like your green bean casserole, casserole,

Speaker 5 your mom's sweet. Like, let me have it.
It's only once a year that you're going to have that. Why am I having a Parker House roll? Or those rolls are good.

Speaker 5 They play, you can, yell, they sop up the gravy and stuff, but that's, I'd rather have the gravy on the other things.

Speaker 1 I'm always out on rolls. To me, rolls are the run into the middle of the line on the first down.
Like, what's the point? We're still, we're still going to have to throw it to get a first down.

Speaker 1 Why do we do that?

Speaker 5 Negative EPA.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I might get an offensive lineman hurt.

Speaker 1 A million things that could go wrong.

Speaker 5 What's your eating schedule on so you're just eating constantly yes i i'll wake up i'll start eating savory i'll have coffee in the morning um the whatever the first game comes on at noon and i'll have um i'm i'm traveling this year i'm not going to be with my mom so i won't my mom's anapasta is like 12 30.

Speaker 5 it's it's it's um halfway through the second quarter of the first game that's the house tradition uh but i will figure out you know a way to get a version of it and just i'll start having plates starting at halfway through the second quarter because I'm.

Speaker 1 And how many hours since your last meal before Thanksgiving? Do you try to go like 15, 16 hours?

Speaker 5 No, it doesn't matter. At this stage,

Speaker 5 we're professionals. I don't need to like starve myself in advance.

Speaker 1 I like to do early dinner the night before, nice empty stomach.

Speaker 5 Great.

Speaker 1 Then moving right around that first, end of the first game, West Coast time.

Speaker 5 Great.

Speaker 1 But then the second meal around 7.30 range. I'm not an eat all day.
I'm like a eat.

Speaker 1 Can't believe how much I ate. I want to throw up.
Should I throw up?

Speaker 1 Where's the thumbs? I don't want you to do that. I'll have a glass of red wine.

Speaker 5 There's so much that you have to, where you feel that way.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 the second wave around 7, 7.30.

Speaker 5 Before you think you're full.

Speaker 5 Before your brain tells you you're full, stop eating. That's how you can eat.

Speaker 1 I'm getting that advice from you. You've overeated more than anybody I've ever met in my life.

Speaker 5 I can eat all throughout the day remember i saw you passing in a phone booth that didn't have a phone once because you ate too much what's the thing that that defines me though everybody else has stopped eating true and i continue to eat long distance runner there you go yeah

Speaker 1 you're like the rabbits in the marathon they come and go and you're just still chugging away putting the eight minute miles together um i can't wait i can't believe we have three interesting football games in a row it's going to be outrageous this hasn't happened since we were like in college how about four?

Speaker 5 We, you know, we, we, yeah, but a lot of people, all Bears fans are going to be super mad because we've been, I'll put my hand up. I've been down on the Bears all season, super skeptical.

Speaker 5 And we just like said, Eagles in Monty Line, Eagles. We're not, we gave no, no, no discussion whatsoever with the Bears.

Speaker 1 Here's why we didn't give a discussion. Here are their last one, two, three, four, five, six, seven wins.
They beat Geno Smith, Mariota, Rattler, Flacco, the Dart Wilson combo, J.J.

Speaker 1 McCarthy, and Mason Rudolph. Congratulations.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's literally what Washington did last year.

Speaker 1 That was Washington's run. I don't think you're going to beat the Eagles after a loss on Black Friday at some weird time of the day.

Speaker 1 In Philadelphia, I just don't see it happening. Yeah.
But you might keep it close. That's why we did the money line.
Anyway, happy Thanksgiving. Best to you and yours.
Great to see you, House.

Speaker 5 Amazing. Great job.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. At Whole Foods Market, you'll find great everyday prices for this Thanksgiving.
Check out their 365 brand.

Speaker 1 No antibiotics ever turkeys start at $149 a pound with Prime with Organic Birds at $299 a pound. You'll find Thanksgiving essentials like condensed soups.
I love those.

Speaker 1 Instant mashed potatoes, like those too. Organic baking spices plus low prices on everything else you need from fresh produce to frozen appetizers.

Speaker 1 Enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market Terms Apply. This episode is brought to you by Frank's Red Hot.

Speaker 1 Bring every bite to life with the perfect blend of flavor and heat. Two of my favorite things.
You can put Frank's Red Hot on everything. And believe me, you will.

Speaker 1 A world where wings bring out the flavor of game day any day, where Buffalo Chicken Dip takes any party up one, two, three notches.

Speaker 1 And where any slice of pizza instantly becomes the world's best slice of pizza. Visit franksredhot.com slash shake to learn more.
All right, Chris Ryan is here. We're taping this on a Monday.

Speaker 1 We just did a rewatchables with Sal that by the time you hear this, went up, did two for the money.

Speaker 1 And then we thought, because we were sitting here, we'd talk about Landman, which I know you're excited about. But very much.
I want to talk about Philly sports, which you're not as excited about.

Speaker 3 No, because I don't like it when you put me in the Philly cuck chair. I want you to bring me on when you want to celebrate Philadelphia.
I don't always want to have to.

Speaker 1 Would you come up with the Philly cuck chair?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't always want to come on and be like, Joe Allen Beats knee is not doing great.

Speaker 1 You know, know, or like, but that Sixers stuff's going great.

Speaker 3 The Sixers stuff, they're my heart. I love them so much.
I have such an uncomplicated research.

Speaker 1 Let's start there. Let's talk about this.
rejuvenated kind of Sixers future, even though you have two of the worst contracts in the league, but somehow everybody's good with it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and also like even the two guys who have the worst contracts seem to be enjoying themselves, which I would too, if I was making that money and sitting on a bench for most of the time. But

Speaker 3 the young core of this team is so delightful and so awesome to watch.

Speaker 1 And actually moving up the ladder for most popular Philly sports athletes in a while.

Speaker 3 If I watch him without my glasses on and I see the black uniform, it looks Iversonian sometimes. Come on.
It kind of does. Like he's so electrifying.

Speaker 1 The minutes is crazy.

Speaker 3 It's terrifying.

Speaker 1 With the way he plays. Yes.
Where it's just like, this dude's going to do this 41 minutes tonight. And the answer is yes.
He actually is.

Speaker 1 He's been, I mean, he's a second team all NBA guy, maybe even in the running for first team right now. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And they have just like, they're obviously just scraping together a team from what they have in terms of like it's maxi and edgecomb and grimes and then like whatever night they have it's like barlow or whoever they have to throw out there in the front court but i don't know it's just like they play fun games they it's the cardiac sixers a lot of tight games a lot of clutch games so lately that looks been swinging a little bit yeah and it's it's a really good league pass i mean edgecomb came a little bit down to earth, but not like so much that you're like, oh, that was a fluke.

Speaker 3 Like he's obviously going to be a really, really amazing player.

Speaker 1 Any Knipple? Should we have taken Knipple at three? We don't have any Knipple.

Speaker 3 Should we have taken Knipple? Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I want to make sure.

Speaker 1 I think they're a little bit of a Knipple bubble. Knippo's made the most threes of any rookie ever through 12 games or something.
Sounds great. Knipple's doing great.
No, I like Edgecombe.

Speaker 1 That's a good battle.

Speaker 3 It's a great rookie class.

Speaker 1 Ben and I bought a bunch of boxes from this class

Speaker 1 for cards because I love this class. And I didn't even realize how deep it was going to be.
But it's like, this has a chance to be one of the generational classes.

Speaker 1 So, Edgecombe with Maxie, I think, pushes it over the top because they're these two guys that clearly complement each other in like the best possible ways.

Speaker 1 And you can see, like, this is like the foundation of we can now build a team around this. Yes.
You know what I mean? Yes.

Speaker 1 Like, I know what this is now for the next seven years, but you just have to wait out the Embiid piece.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And Edgecombe really excites me because even when he's got games where he's not fully involved or it's not going right for him, he doesn't quit on the game.

Speaker 3 Like, he'll still do lots of little things. Yeah.
Grab an offensive rebound, do a hit-a-head pass. Like, it's just, he's just a really fun basketball player to watch.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he can,

Speaker 1 there's some rookies that if they're not doing well from a scoring standpoint, they're pretty much useless in the game, but he's still around. Like, he rebounds, he moves without the ball.

Speaker 1 The Maxie thing,

Speaker 1 you know, I don't know what the sample size would have to be before we start talking about him in the territory with Brunson and Mitchell and Booker and people like that, but it's, it's, we're probably like 10 more games away from him just being in that group.

Speaker 3 Especially if he keeps playing games where he's the best player on the court on both teams. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, everyone says he's the best fucking guy. Zoc was saying this forever.

Speaker 3 So beloved in Philly. Yeah.
Like, is already probably, I'd say,

Speaker 3 top two or three, if not the number one Philly athlete right now.

Speaker 1 So weird. It's so weird how all this works out, where you think it's going to be, it's the process with Embiid and Simmons, and then Maxie's this post-lottery pick, right?

Speaker 1 A bunch of teams pass on him. Weird camera.
And that ends up being the guy. Yeah.
Yeah. That ends up being the guy you're going to have for 15 years.

Speaker 3 I actually just feel bad for Embiid because he can't participate in this, you know, or like he can't participate in it consistently.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, he was getting back not anywhere close to his old self, but numbers-wise, was doing pretty decently per minute. And PG had like a really nice game the other night.

Speaker 3 I think it was the, he was on a minutes limit against the Bucs, but had like a really good like I saw some PG, by the way.

Speaker 1 He's not a disaster. No, of course not.
Like he'll definitely help whatever's going on.

Speaker 3 And it's like, are those guys ever going to be healthy together with Maxie Edge, Coleman Grimes?

Speaker 1 Probably not. Right.

Speaker 1 I mean, so OKC has your pick, but the team's going to probably be good enough. There's already...
There's three teams in the East that have already said we're done. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Charlotte will be the fourth. I don't know what the Celtics win, the Celtics keep winning every time I think they're about to go in a seven-game tailscase.

Speaker 3 I thought we were talking about Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 Well, but it seems like there's 11 East teams, right?

Speaker 3 So you're trying to decide who's real. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Even if Philly was like, you know what, we're actually going to tank so that we don't want to give OKC or tank. I think it's too late.

Speaker 3 I don't think they can like

Speaker 3 afford to tank with the fan base. I think they have to.
Or with Max.

Speaker 1 If you have Maxie playing like this, you can't tank. No.

Speaker 1 You can't shut that down.

Speaker 1 I got to bring it up. Do we have to give Daryl some props here?

Speaker 1 Yes. Daryl was being fired for two years,

Speaker 1 but he picked Maxi, right? Or was Maxi already there? No, he picked Max. I think he picked Maxie.
Yes. He picked Maxie.
He picked Edgecombe. He picked Edgecombe.

Speaker 3 And he finds good.

Speaker 1 By the way, he tanked so that they would be in the position.

Speaker 1 They audibled quickly enough that it actually paid off, which I'm not sure everybody would have done.

Speaker 1 All the side stuff, like the Grimes trade was a great trade.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 And then holding his powder dry to like sign Grimes for like the number that they got him back, like not blinking when Grimes was like, I'm 25 million a year and getting freaked out by that and like just kind of waiting that out was really good.

Speaker 1 The mistake was not trading Embiid when he could have. I think there was a moment with the Knicks pre

Speaker 1 went before they went all in on the towns and like this whole CAA team that they have now.

Speaker 1 I think, especially because Embiid was their old client, before they traded all those picks picks for bridges, I think there was a monster Embiid trade to make. I know that this is a house of cards.

Speaker 3 It's an antiquated, anachronistic idea or whatever, but like trading your franchise player in division is very, would have been, that would have been a real death sentence for Daryl, I think.

Speaker 1 Would you have been like, why are we doing this? Or would you have been like, oh, that's pretty smart?

Speaker 3 No, I just would have been like, I can't believe I have to watch Joel and Bi go to like the Eastern Conference finals or the finals on the Knicks after all the years that we kind of like emotionally invested in it.

Speaker 1 That makes sense. Well, they're in a, you know, these contracts, whatever, you know, what the heart of the team's going to be.

Speaker 1 You know, you have like one of the best 12 to 15 assets in the league in Maxi.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you wait out the Embiid.

Speaker 3 With or without Joel, if we make the playoffs, it's a, it's like a really cool, like, you probably would rather not see them in the playoffs kind of team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, especially if Embiid puts it together for like five to ten.

Speaker 3 Like if they wind up being

Speaker 3 the eighth seed, like or the seventh seed, like would is Cleveland or Detroit going to be a little nervous to play them?

Speaker 1 I kind of feel that way about the Celtics.

Speaker 1 Well, just like if Tatum comes back in mid-February

Speaker 1 and they're able to get like

Speaker 3 you decided on the number or the record that you would accept him coming back versus being like, just take a year off, bro.

Speaker 1 They're hitting this danger zone with the season.

Speaker 1 Even if they started tanking now, everybody's done so much work on the tanking ahead of them. I don't know how they pass some of these teams.

Speaker 1 There's three teams in the East that you're not catching now. Right, Indiana is just gonna come up with all kinds of reasons to lose games from now on, and then the other two are terrible, right?

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 I don't know, I unless there's some sort of injury, Memphis. I'll be interested to see what happens with them whether they throw the hat in the ring.

Speaker 1 But the Utah will at some point start going backwards. But then, some of these other teams, like Phoenix, was a team I thought was going to be the bottom eight, and they're not

Speaker 1 probably there yet. There's Dallas, I still don't believe, is going to be a tank team.
No.

Speaker 3 It's like Kings, Pelicans.

Speaker 1 Pelicans are the one because they're going to play their young guys, but they don't have their pick.

Speaker 3 That pick goes to Memphis, right?

Speaker 1 That pick goes to Atlanta. Oh, Atlanta.
Yeah, so there's still some tanking stuff up in there. But I thought the tailspin, the Celts had this awful loss to Brooklyn on Friday.

Speaker 1 And I was like, here we go. Oh, you went to that game, right? No, my dad did.
He was like furious. He said it was one of the worst games he's been to this decade.

Speaker 1 And then Orlando doesn't play any of their guys, and they win on a Sunday. So I think it's a zigzag situation.
But this draft, I think the more people watch the draft, they're going to go nuts.

Speaker 1 What's been your favorite old school CR kind of NBA story through five weeks, not counting the bomber stuff?

Speaker 1 Like, are you like deep, deep Damon Jones in it right now?

Speaker 3 Old school CR at like a kind of like a dirty story or kind of like a feel-good story? Dirty. I think it's just watching what's happening, the Clippers.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 yeah and just like on it and just how even if harden scores 51 they're just in a dogfight every night and not that i wish this on them but it is it kind of almost feels like a throwback season of like these just really there's a couple really gross bad teams really early like the kings thing is just like yeah almost unwatchable on a night-to-night basis and then somehow they beat denver yeah i know Right as it felt like it was an all-time slip away for them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it doesn't feel like a lot of teams can other than oklahoma and detroit and a couple other places they they can't get any traction like even jokic coming out and being like we're not as good as we think we are right and gordon getting hurt it kind of puts a pause on their season the golden state stuff is so strange butler already starting to kind of do cryptic quotes about people defending it's a strange strange year so far and nobody seems to think they practice so i'm looking at the standings Brooklyn, Indiana, and Washington are all three wins and less.

Speaker 1 Charlotte's 4-13. So those are four tank teams.
New Orleans is 2-15. I don't see that changing.
Sacramento is 4-13. This is on Monday.
Then it goes Dallas, Clippers, Utah, Memphis.

Speaker 1 Probably two of those fall.

Speaker 1 But yeah, the league's so deep now.

Speaker 1 These teams that you think, oh, they're probably going to suck. But then you watch Phoenix, and they have like a bunch of NBA players in their team, like Grayson Allen, Mark Williams, Royce O'Neal.

Speaker 3 They're playing together. And they're playing hard.

Speaker 1 They seem like they give a shit about each other um i'm the most interested in this whole

Speaker 1 the wherever this gambling story goes really

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 so the damon like wind horse did a big damon jones feature today which i read obviously yeah he's just crossed paths with a lot of teams and a lot of people and you know i depending on how much he knows like that i i keep thinking about good fellas like henry hill flips at the end right so is damon supposed to be maury in this case i think i think he's Henry Hill.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay. It's like, oh no, they got Damon.
I just don't know where it goes. And the Chauncey thing is nuts.
I feel like we haven't talked about this enough.

Speaker 1 This guy coached the first game of the year.

Speaker 1 We haven't seen him since. He's being like arraigned.

Speaker 1 He's in all these games, but I feel like there actually hasn't been enough reporting about this, maybe because we can't find what the actual facts are. But I think this is a bonker story.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Is it my imagination or is the NBA has been pretty like poker-faced about this? Like they're just like, we're investigating. Like there's not been a, we're in a crisis moment.

Speaker 3 Like we need to have like an independent investigation into this. Like, are they doing that?

Speaker 3 Like, I don't feel like we've seen a lot of like Adam Silver press conference, Adam Silver TV interviews about this stuff.

Speaker 1 Cause I think it's more contained to the poker games. Right.
But if there's situations where people have information they're passing along, it's the thing that the league can't. police.

Speaker 1 But I think for the most part, pretty good NBA season so far. The games have been really good.
They have been.

Speaker 1 Denver Houston on Friday night was spectacular the injuries suck but i think that they're pretty

Speaker 1 they're looking pretty soberly it's like look the like the sports just changed so much in the last couple of years that these guys yeah but they they have to i say this all the time they have to cut games out of the schedule we're at that point now i think it's too hard to play basketball now i've been uh i've been to four games in four different arenas And it's the thing that jumps out all the time, like how hard these guys are going.

Speaker 3 They're covering so much of the floor.

Speaker 1 Compared to the NBA we grew up with, and I know Eddie Johnson doesn't want to hear it, but I just, you can watch any of those games on YouTube.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a certain type of body that you were able to jog around, take some plays off. There's a lot of standing around, a lot of posting up.

Speaker 1 It was more physical, but you were more in danger of like having your nose broken. Sure, you weren't in danger of like having this, all this Achilles calf stuff, Davis getting hurt, and then

Speaker 1 them now teams realizing like, hey, this could lead to this. Yeah.
So they're this feels relatively new new to me.

Speaker 3 The amount of like probably pre-emptive,

Speaker 3 like, let's pull this guy out for a couple of weeks because he's in the red zone. It seems like they're taking it really seriously, especially after Halliburton and Tatum.

Speaker 1 How about all the streaming stuff with Amazon, Peacock,

Speaker 1 ESPN, all these different, like, just figuring out where games are on? I end up just going to the NBA app to fig to, because that will send you to the game anyway. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, I have enjoyed enough the league pass experience on Amazon uh so far but i think when it gets into the national games and when it's like is this on peacock is this on nbc is this on it just it's kind of sad like i don't think that we like necessarily deserve to have every single basketball game for free i mean that's not how we grew up you would basically watch your team and i've i've tried more or less just like watching the Sixers as much as I possibly can.

Speaker 3 So I've probably watched, I don't know, like 10 Sixers games, 13 Sixers games. So I'm trying to keep keep it like more like as Sixers play people.
That's how I see them.

Speaker 3 But it is really frustrating when you're home on like a Wednesday night and you're just like, oh my God, you need like all these different services just to get like a complete picture of the league.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I got a mailbag question that I didn't use from somebody who said, is the NBA now being marketed to the 1%? Right.

Speaker 1 If you get the league pass, it's like 160 bucks, right? But you get, I think you get all the games.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's some blackout rules, but yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would say the NFL is more guilty. That the Sunday ticket is like three times the size of that, right?

Speaker 1 Even though they have some games on for free, but I just think this is the business of sports now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Could they maybe all charge less and then make less money? Sure. Sure, but they're not going to do that.
Guess what? They're not doing that. It's the same reason we have 82 games and not 72.

Speaker 1 Who was I talking to the other day?

Speaker 1 Oh man, I would give this person credit about

Speaker 1 they never talk about making the NBA schedule longer, which is how you know it's too long.

Speaker 1 Nobody's like, could we get this to 86? People would be like, what do you guys think?

Speaker 3 What they could do was the NBA Cup. What do you think? Do you think the Cup's going to, are they going to keep doing it?

Speaker 1 Or do you think that they're going to. Oh, yeah.
Amazon bought in. Yeah.
I just don't know what the answer is to get people to actually care other than, well, the courts are weird. Right.

Speaker 1 But like, do you care? I don't know.

Speaker 3 I don't think that the group stage stuff is working. I think that people in Champions League, you know, they've changed the groups,

Speaker 3 the group model significantly in the last couple of seasons, and it's helped a little bit.

Speaker 3 But I think that if the NBA probably wants to make this like a huge product, they might have to introduce elimination earlier.

Speaker 3 Which I don't know if the teams would go for.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? Like, if you lose the first game to whoever, you're just gone. You're gone.

Speaker 3 You're done. Now, you might have some teams basically tanking the cup cup because they're like, cool, maybe we get some nights off here and there.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 But I just feel like if you want to make this exciting, you should introduce the idea of it being tournament basketball.

Speaker 3 You shouldn't make it just like another game and they're tied 1-1 in group D with points differential coming into play. Like that doesn't really like stir people up that much.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's year three and I still don't know why the players ultimately care other than the extra money. Yeah.
And that's that's really it. But ultimately,

Speaker 1 you want to make the best players in the team care. I'm sure they care a little bit, but you don't.

Speaker 1 Everyone keeps sending me the draft pick idea, and I just don't think the players would ever care. Oh, if we win this.
Oh, could my check

Speaker 1 pick to draft my replacement? Right. Why would that ever be an incentive? I did think of one thing, though.

Speaker 1 I'll test drive this with you with the cup.

Speaker 1 The problem is I can't figure out how you would do the tiers, but if it's a team that wins the cup and it's one of the 10 best teams in the league, when they win the cup, they're automatically guaranteed a four seed in their conference.

Speaker 1 Interesting. So they know from that point on, we're at least home for round one because we won the cup.
Right. But you have to be in the top 10.

Speaker 1 If you're not in the top 10, if you're from 10, from 11 to 20 at the time of the cup, you're guaranteed a playoff spot. You're guaranteed the sixth seed.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And then if you're from the 21 to 30 range,

Speaker 1 you're guaranteed to be in the play-in

Speaker 1 in the seven speed.

Speaker 1 What happens? Yeah, you're guaranteed the home game seven seed spot.

Speaker 1 Even if you're like New Orleans and you're a 2-in-15, you win. Now you get to be in the seven speed.
You can actually control your play-in destiny.

Speaker 3 Would that affect the New Orleans draft slot, though?

Speaker 1 Wouldn't affect it.

Speaker 3 It wouldn't because the record would still be. So records are basically encourage New Orleans to essentially throw every game that they have left.

Speaker 3 Because then you get into the play-in, but you also get the number one pick or have the best odds of getting the number one pick.

Speaker 1 The thing is, the 21, the 30 teams would never win the cup. Sure.
So it's usually going to be the best teams anyway. So if you're like,

Speaker 1 I don't know,

Speaker 1 think you're like the Bucs or you're Cleveland. It's like, you might not actually be a top five seed.
Yeah. Or you might actually be.
Now it's like I'm guaranteeing being a four seed.

Speaker 1 I just think it would be a fun one.

Speaker 3 I just think they should run it more like the league cup or the FA Cup in premiere in English football, where it's just like on the there's there are certain weekends that are cup weekends and if you lose you're out and i think you know they you know obviously they have like if you draw you have a replay for the fa cup but you wouldn't do that in basketball but i think it would be cooler if there was just a little bit more danger involved if it was a 60 game schedule and we had the cup i think it would work so much better yes there's just too many games it's hard to be in the the whole reason the playoffs matter is people care about it i still still feel like at least it's a little different.

Speaker 1 It accomplished the objective of in December, in November. You'd be like, oh, yeah, that's this game.
It kind of means that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that Denver-Houston game on Friday was fun. The red court, like pretty high-level basketball.

Speaker 1 And then Portland was next, and they were in that. And I was looking at that bracket.
I'm like, whoa, that's quite a bracket. But it wasn't like I was texting you.
Like, do you see Group C? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Group C is loaded.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's the group of death.

Speaker 1 yeah um speaking of death land man

Speaker 1 our favorite show is back we've seen two episodes of season two and uh

Speaker 1 so john ham in january when we were trying we saw him for the fantasy football thing and we're like are you coming back because it was unclear of his character dat or i was like no no i'm done and he said how taylor sheridan had set this whole thing up so demi moore was in a few scenes in season one and just seemed like why is she in this yes why is she swimming laps in the background of this scene and he was saying, because Taylor Sheridan set this up, season one was my season, and then season two was the Demie season.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 I think she's been awesome.

Speaker 3 She's been a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 Her first couple scenes in the first episode, I thought were homework.

Speaker 3 She's just doing John Hamm, too. It's like in a very fun way, but where she's just like...
talking about the Serengeti and how she's going to underbid people's leases and all this stuff.

Speaker 3 And the only difference between me and my husband is I'm meaner.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It was just playing the hit.
She looks great.

Speaker 1 I thought her Texas accent was surprisingly pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I had that was like five to one odds. She was going to have a good accent, but I thought she was excellent.

Speaker 1 I thought Billy Bob and Allie Larder have completely figured out their whole thing.

Speaker 3 So how do you feel about though when it's like the Allie Larder 12-minute dinner scene?

Speaker 1 I'm in.

Speaker 3 You like it.

Speaker 1 Do some people not like it? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, I like it for how crazy it is, but it is truly like unhinged television when they're just like, we're going to do an entire 12-minute scene about my menstrual cycle and white truffles.

Speaker 1 But I think that's what they're trying to do. It's like when she comes in, fucking safety off.
Yes. And we don't know where this is going.

Speaker 3 I don't even feel like the actors know where it's going. Like, they're all just sitting there at the dinner table, just like, what the fuck is happening?

Speaker 1 So it makes me wonder, like, I don't know how involved Taylor Sheridan is in these shows after he sets them and writes the first one. He's writing this one.

Speaker 3 Yeah. That man's like pretty a huge show.

Speaker 1 So he definitely has some thoughts about marriage.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I'm not sure if he just thought it would be fun to take this angle or if these are really, because Billy Bob will have, he did this in episode two.

Speaker 1 He has these like, he's telling it, giving his son advice. His modern women.

Speaker 1 And it's almost like cutting too close to home. It makes me wonder, is this what Taylor Sheridan, all of his thoughts are? Billy Bob's his proxy for relationships.

Speaker 3 I'm sure he is his proxy. I don't know about what Taylor Sharon's marriage is like.

Speaker 3 The thing I like the most about this show is that

Speaker 3 it doesn't really seem to play by that many rules. So it'll be like Cooper, this son on this show.

Speaker 1 Who I really like.

Speaker 3 And he's Jacob Laughlin's a really good actor, but he will be like... You're like, so this guy has basically been on an uninterrupted role since his friends died in the rig in the first season.

Speaker 3 He's wound up with this girl. They wound up being able to be with her because they've like successfully warned off like her friends and family members who were against it.

Speaker 3 Then he digs these wells by like reasoning with these guys to get their leases.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All of the wells hit.

Speaker 3 And you're like, where's the conflict in this character? Is he just going to be like, oh, we're getting the conflict. Every Hail Mary he throws is a touchdown.

Speaker 3 And then we find out this week that like off screen, there's been some shenanigans.

Speaker 3 And this is probably just Taylor Sheridan being like, it's never too late to course correct something or to throw a curveball.

Speaker 3 And this kid needs, this this kid needs like a an obstacle so we're gonna bring in the cartel andy garcia

Speaker 1 his silent partner and is financing these leases yeah i it just looks so easy to just go down to texas and borrow some money from people and drill drill some land yeah just be like now what people don't realize is the land that people thought the oil got they already thought they tried it out but what they don't realize is the oil is higher but that that was when that sounds the second episode was great because tommy was like What the hell is wrong with you?

Speaker 3 Like, why didn't you come to me about this? Like, you could have, what would have happened if this had all gone wrong? You know, and

Speaker 3 I think that will be like a really good plotline for the rest of the season.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and Billy Bob's doing great. Then we have this whole Sam Elliott.

Speaker 3 So far, two scenes, both at sunset, both in a wheelchair.

Speaker 1 We'll see if Sam Elliott was. Is Sam Elliott actually in a wheelchair in real life or what's going on?

Speaker 3 Well, he did say that he had gotten injured shooting 1883 and that he has had like physical stuff stuff since then, but that this was a part that he really wanted to play.

Speaker 3 So I'm hoping now with the funeral coming up for Billy Bob's mother that we'll get some mobile Sam Elliott out there.

Speaker 1 She sounded like a prize. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Do you think Sam Elliott moves into the house with everybody else? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've signed up for Sam Elliott this season. I need him in more scenes.
We saw... It was at dinner in Malibu like a year and a half ago, and Sam Elliott was in the bar.
It was at this place.

Speaker 1 There's a steak place there and they have this place where there's like tables, but you can also see the bar. And Sam Elliott came in and sat at the bar, and it was like the most Sam Elliott thing.

Speaker 1 That's great. All the women were like, Sam, like women love Sam Elliott.
Handsome dude, like exactly what you would think. And he's just having like a scotch and soda.
That guy has lived a life.

Speaker 1 That's great. Yeah.
So I don't, maybe in Landman, they're taking it week by week, not knowing if he's going to be there.

Speaker 3 So you're watching Landman. You watch Beast and Me.

Speaker 1 What else are you watching? Are we done with Land Man? No, you keep talking about Landman.

Speaker 3 What else other characters are there we did cooper we did tommy well that you know they haven't figured out uh

Speaker 1 billy bob's son's living girlfriend no but she actually like was like hey i don't know if i'm if i'm signing up for this

Speaker 1 i feel like he's gonna make a big speech and turn i wouldn't mind if we got rid of her and he ended up with he started to play in the field a little bit on land man okay I don't really want anybody attached on Landman, even Billy Bob and Ali Larter.

Speaker 1 Like, does anyone have to date anyone in Landman? It It's should just be like an all-open relationship. Yeah, I think it should be all like the ice storm.

Speaker 1 Just don't know what's going to happen said in Texas. But yeah,

Speaker 1 I don't like that plot that much. Do you? My dad is a nice guy who wants to be a decent fake stepfather.

Speaker 3 I think he's trying to be the opposite of his dad, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's cool. Play the field a little.
You're like, do we know how old he is too? Who? Cooper? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think Cooper's supposed to be like in his late 20s. He's out of Texas tech, maybe mid-20s.

Speaker 1 He's been doing geology at lubbock but now he's probably a couple years out of school and the daughter mid-20s who i thought was great in the first episode i love the college uh the tcu stuff yeah so i i think she has you're trying to encourage ben to go to tcu after this show no um yeah so land man i love beast and me yeah i thought uh i thought that was a home run i'm midway through that now Yeah, I thought that was really good.

Speaker 1 There's been some good documentation.

Speaker 3 That kind of reminds me a little bit of like

Speaker 3 really good early like uh fx and netflix thrillers i was gonna say like early 2010 showtime bloodline yeah uh you know like um damages oh yeah yeah yeah well it's howard gordon yeah who did homeland in 24 and stuff yeah

Speaker 1 reuniting with claire

Speaker 1 She's really good. Would have been an interesting call.
Yeah. Convincing her to do it.
No, no, this character is different. Yeah, this character laughs it up.
Yeah, this is a different one for you.

Speaker 1 That one's been really good. I feel like TV's had a really nice run this year.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's uh, we were, we're about to do our best of the year in a couple weeks, and it's uh, it's one of the easier top 10s.

Speaker 3 The cream is really like obviously the cream for this season.

Speaker 1 Somebody sent me a tweet, and it was the 2000, it was a video of the 2014

Speaker 1 best actor Emmy nominees.

Speaker 1 And the caption of the tweet was something like, we really knew how to make TV in 2014. Was it like Cranston, ham it goes through it's cranston it's ham it's kevin spacing house of cards um

Speaker 1 who who else was that year would that have been a thrones year oh two true defense both true detective guys

Speaker 1 yeah it's like a when you're watching it's like oh my god it's like this murderous row that was the height of grandland uh when it just for like tv coverage where we just couldn't believe we had all these shows yeah it's we're in a different era now it's but it's like there are successful shows like land man's like not gotten nine million viewers which is really good or 10 million viewers or whatever but it just feels it gets talked about differently and people watch it on their own time now they've completely broken the idea of like watching something on the night it comes out unless it's like task finale or whatever yeah but even that white lotus was the last like sunday night this is the time it's on yeah but even that like my daughter didn't watch it when it was on i think you've you have a whole generation of people now that that though the one difference is so i noticed this with my daughter uh summer i turned pretty which was dropping on like wednesday nights at two in the morning yes i'm i was participating east coast time yeah and were you actually participating my wife was is a huge summer i turn pretty fan so she was so it was like 11 o'clock on the on the west coast yes My daughter was in college.

Speaker 3 Up all night waiting for it to come on.

Speaker 1 There was one time where she stayed up for whatever the drop was. I thought that was interesting.
And I think the Stranger Things Wednesday will be a big one.

Speaker 3 That'll be big, but I think that they, this is almost indicative of what I'm talking about, where they're playing to the idea that everybody's going to be off work and will have time to watch five hours or six hours of Stranger Things over the course of like a night or two.

Speaker 3 Whereas like before, we would just be like, no, do the one hour on a Sunday night so that we can talk about it all week.

Speaker 1 But this has been the Netflix conundrum for 10 years.

Speaker 3 But it's like, even if they put Stranger Things out on a normal like kind of media schedule, where if it had dropped two weeks ago, you know, you would have just had so much more coverage of it.

Speaker 3 I think people will cover Stranger Things a lot, but it's they're kind of circumventing like the talking about it part.

Speaker 1 I don't know the answer, and it almost depends on the show because I think there's some binge stuff that like Beast of Me was a perfect binge show.

Speaker 3 Not a show I want to watch week to week.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it wasn't quite.

Speaker 1 I know it was a really good show, but I liked the ability to just plow through it. There were like 40, 43-minute episodes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It really was a six-episode show, but they kind of extended out. Cut shorter.

Speaker 1 But, you know, we always look at it from our,

Speaker 1 the Grantland Ringer vantage point of we just want content. Sure.
So White Lotus was perfect.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And then you get shows like Task was perfect.
Perfect. And then every once in a while you get like adolescents, you know, where it's just like out of nowhere, somehow.

Speaker 3 Everybody is talking about this show that's been on Netflix for a couple of days and everybody watches it.

Speaker 1 But the Garf, the Garfield assassination. Shut by lightning.
Really good.

Speaker 1 that's a perfect binge though yes i don't think that should have been we're in a space this out every four weeks when you go to like they crucially didn't make that into like an eight episode show right they were like this has like we're gonna tell like a very contained story here i thought the marketing of it was really interesting too the marketing kind of they snuck it out the game of thrones guys were involved yeah they said

Speaker 1 they didn't really play that up um they kind of put it out but it did really well it seemed like but i didn't feel like there was a lot of buzz at all whereas like the stranger things do you watch purpose at all have you checked it out i'm going to that's that's on my list i i don't i feel like this is a combo sports culture thing but everybody's just better at spreading out the content and picking weekends so that it's kind of relentless now oh yeah there would be stuff think like back 10 12 years ago where they would just have weekends where there was no new movie no tv show to watch and no sports on yeah like ah fuck and now you're like i feel like i'm already really behind on awards movies And the TV stuff I'm on top of, but it still is like, it's piling up for sure.

Speaker 3 Pretty much after Stranger Things, Fallouts coming out. And then the rest of the year is pretty quiet for TV.
Until January when industry comes back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because in sports,

Speaker 1 and this was a big Nick Con thing for UFC and WWE, like just that whole, that whole company that runs that stuff, they really studied the schedules of we shouldn't be putting WrestleMania out on this weekend.

Speaker 1 Why don't we do this weekend? It's a little more dead. Why don't we have this boxing thing in the third weekend in August? Cause that's a dead weekend.

Speaker 1 So now it just feels like we just go from week to week and there's always like a new thing.

Speaker 1 And I think the big thing for me, we haven't talked about it on this podcast, but I know you've talked about it on the watch a bunch, but Paramount,

Speaker 1 what happens with them if they can get Warner Brothers or if Comcast can get Warner, whoever gets it,

Speaker 1 are one of those people going to be a disruptor? Because right now I don't feel like we have disruptors in the same ways where we Netflix has figured out their lane.

Speaker 1 Amazon is basically doing like they're into sports. They have

Speaker 1 and dad shows for specifically my dad, like Bosch and those.

Speaker 3 So I think that the one thing I would note about the Paramount stuff is that Cindy Holland is now essentially running their TV business. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And she was the person who kind of was the architect of Netflix's early TV strategy and has really, really well-guarded taste.

Speaker 3 So she was the one who brought in House of Cards and Artist New Black, all the shows. So I think that some of those first decisions that she's been making have been really interesting with Paramount.

Speaker 3 I don't know what happens if they acquire Warner Brothers. I mean, I think HBO is really the crown jewel of

Speaker 1 well, let's we'll do the players, right? Netflix, we know what they are. Every week they have something.
Apple has these shows. They always have big stars.
They're either a movie or a TV show.

Speaker 3 But it's a closed circuit. Their shows don't go out.
They don't get licensed anywhere. It's a global service, but at the same time, it's one that I think

Speaker 3 lots of people don't even know that they have if they've got it or don't even know how to do it.

Speaker 1 And they have stuff that comes and goes, and you didn't even know it happened. Yes.
Like real movies with famous people.

Speaker 3 There's a show on right now called Down Cemetery Road with Emma Thompson and Bruce Wilson, which is pretty good, but it's like, I don't think I've seen a single outside of Apple piece of advertising for it.

Speaker 1 And then the studio, which I think we all, we all were fairly high to pretty high on at on the ringer.

Speaker 1 I also think that was a New York LA show. I don't think anyone.

Speaker 3 I think that they're fine with a New York LA show.

Speaker 1 And it hit the awards. It did everything they'd want, but it wasn't a big audience show.
Severance

Speaker 1 claim is a big audience show, but I don't know how big of an audience it is.

Speaker 3 I think Severance and Pluribus have both kind of like moved into

Speaker 1 larger

Speaker 3 theories.

Speaker 1 fan theories and also like a larger beyond apple thing yeah pleuribus is a good one by our standards where we can get the content out of it every week, I think. But yeah, so you have them.

Speaker 1 You have Paramount, which has basically moved into this Taylor Sheridan kind of world.

Speaker 1 I know, but they don't lose him for three years.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but like, that's, is, I do wonder whether that's a little bit like, yeah, that's right, Mark Cuban, you can still be the governor, you know, like, right, right, right.

Speaker 3 Like at what point does Taylor Sheridan start offloading some of those shows to like proteges or people who are like now writing Mayor Pinstown or why marshals or whatever.

Speaker 3 And he starts to go to work, at least somewhat on his peacock stuff.

Speaker 3 The fact that Comcast got Taylor Sheridan makes me think that Comcast thinks they're major players for another 10 years.

Speaker 3 Buying the NBA rights, having the Olympics, getting Taylor Sheridan, that makes me think that they are really like going, they're going to go after, I think they're really going after those Warner assets.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And maybe getting at least half of them

Speaker 1 so it feels like we're about to hit disruption again because right now everybody seems too comfy and hulu we didn't mention them but hulu i'm not the it's hulu plus fx and they have stuff like i did the murdoch murders by the way i watched that i enjoyed but don't you think at a certain point that just becomes dis tiles on disney plus like won't they want to choose so hulu's probably a loser and then peacock

Speaker 1 i guess it needs to be supercharged by whatever happens with nbc Universal and folded in.

Speaker 1 But I do think this, I think this, whatever happens going forward with all these assets from the Warner Brothers is going to supercharge somebody. I just don't know who.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it's a question of whether or not, like, for instance, so Sean and Amanda were talking about this today.

Speaker 3 If Netflix were to buy Warner Brothers, do they still commit to the way like releasing movies? Or if they were to buy Warner Brothers, do they also buy HBO?

Speaker 3 Are they buying the HBO Braintrust and HBO becomes like a

Speaker 3 basically a tile on Netflix?

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know how that stuff works. I don't see it.
Netflix has never bought anything.

Speaker 3 So you think they're just doing their due diligence?

Speaker 1 I think what they would want is the library. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's my understanding. Yeah, you get the Warner Brothers.
You just get all these movies that are now just on Netflix and you just have them.

Speaker 1 I think HBO, however this plays out, HBO ends up on its own somewhere. carved out.
I think

Speaker 1 the biggest thing that's happened the last five years is HBO kind of got its mojo back as an entity. Sure.
Because it really felt like Zazlov was trying to ruin it.

Speaker 1 It's like, no, no, it's only a part of this bigger thing we have and Max.

Speaker 3 I also think TV is getting back to being TV again post-COVID, post-strikes, which is really worth keeping in mind when we say the sky is falling is that a lot of people's like sort of changing relationships to television was in fact.

Speaker 3 a ripple effect of COVID and the strikes. That's where like the three years in between seasons starts coming in.

Speaker 3 That's when, and now it's like the pits coming back on in in like January or February you know it's a big success like these shows like these Taylor Sheridan shows usually come back once a year so like we're starting to get back into TV as something that is like repeatable on an annual basis not something that's like an event every three or four years everyone I know who tries to sell shows or make shows says the combo of COVID and the strikes changed the equation for the urgency these places had to actually green light shows.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And that we're just we're just making less stuff across the board and people are just more careful versus maybe apple's not being as careful but people are careful for the most part of what they're green lighting how long those things are going to be how many seasons um and it's still kind of shaking out so the paramount thing i think is the most interesting wrinkle right as we head into the second half of the 2020s how much are they is are they just going to completely blow up the market for everything are they going to be trying to steal stuff also are they the only people who can get a merger to go through because of of the white house so it's like i don't know how that stuff works politically and what happens if like tides change politically still feel like tell me lies

Speaker 1 the uh some right term pretty

Speaker 1 stranger things euphoria There's still some massive shows being marketed to people under 30 that are working in real ways.

Speaker 1 And then there's shows for the over 30 people that that i think have that both that stuff's been hitting too i don't know i'm pretty bullish right now yeah it'll just be interesting to see whether people like your kids graduate into becoming tv watchers the way we were and like adopt their shows or whether they're just like this is just like part of the content buffet or there's better stuff now like i was thinking about when we were kids they would show reruns of sitcoms and we would watch them again syndication stuff yeah no

Speaker 1 like on nbc oh right it's not a new episode. It's not a new episode of Night Court this week.
Here's cheers again. Yeah.
It's like, you already saw it. It's like, cool.
Yeah. Thanks, guys.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I'll watch it again.

Speaker 3 But that would be your only opportunity to ever watch it.

Speaker 1 Watch it again.

Speaker 1 But now it's, I don't know. Everything is kind of narrowed down.
I still don't, the thing I really want to see how it plays out just for TV and movies is comedy.

Speaker 1 I think we figured out everything but comedy. Like horror movies are the most back they've ever been.
Yes.

Speaker 1 The IMAX and blowing out these big movies on movie screens, you can even see in the marketing now. We're like, coming on IMAX, March 23rd.
And so we figured that out.

Speaker 1 We figured out the Prestige TV, YA, all these different things.

Speaker 1 Comedies, we've not figured out. They don't release in theaters anymore at all, right? Nobody goes to see comedies in theater.

Speaker 3 There's a conclusion between the popularity of stand-up at any given time and the popularity of comedy television and movies in terms of like, are people just going to see stand-up and watching comedy comedy pods rather than watching comedy sitcoms and comedy movies that's interesting

Speaker 1 I I just think we don't have the stars

Speaker 1 like I was watching we have really big comedians though yeah but like here's difference like I was flying home on JetBlue the Wi-Fi went so now I'm stuck with direct TV and they're they have like their 20 channels Beverly Hills Cop is on we TV, which I've seen 700 times.

Speaker 1 I'm like, all right, fine. I'll watch Beverly Hills Cop again.
This is my best option. I can't watch the ESPN Talking Ed programming.
There's nothing else.

Speaker 1 And it's just a great movie. And Eddie's just such a megastar in it.
And I just feel like if we had people like that, comedies would be back. Like, sure.

Speaker 1 We just need massive people who can carry movies that are really funny, which sounds like, it's like, we need a franchise basketball player. Great.

Speaker 1 I just don't know who those people are. And you're right.
They've kind of drifted towards the stage. I just think it's pretty lucrative to doing their stand-up and doing their pop.
Nate Bergatzi.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like 30 years ago, Nate Bergatzi is coming up with his version of Everybody Loves Raymond and not doing stand-up.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 1 1993, Ray Romano is trying to be Nate Bergatzi in 2025. He's not doing Everybody Loves Raymond.
So TV sitcoms, those have gone out the window.

Speaker 3 And then that was also like a platform to go into movies.

Speaker 1 But I wonder with comedies,

Speaker 1 what is the generation coming that was shaped by the Apatau movies and Super Bad and all that? Because if you think of-like Craig Horlback's age?

Speaker 1 Yeah, because when we did the Weird Science pod, me and Kyle, we were talking about how much that movie influenced Superbad, right? Weird Science comes out 85, Super Bad's 2007, 2008 range.

Speaker 1 And the generation that wrote in Super Bad and acted in it was affected specifically by those 80 movies, like Weird Science.

Speaker 1 That new generation should be coming now for all the people that were affected by Jonah Hill, Bill Hayter, Steve Carell, Carell, Will Farrell, Anchorman, like that should be transferring, but maybe that just goes to TikTok.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's also like the, that would be around like the people grew up watching Eastbound and Down and the Danny McBride stuff.

Speaker 1 Right. That was an unbelievable comedy era.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And now I think probably the biggest comedy that's on right now is probably Chair Company, like in terms of like.

Speaker 3 the the Tim Robinson show and that is that even a comedy uh barely it's more it's got more in common with like David Bear

Speaker 3 or some of those right uh i mean i think it's funny but it's it's got it's it's a super weird show like it's like i love la is interesting it's not like you're not laughing yeah i think there's some like funny observations in it but i don't know that it's like a comedy yeah or like a punchline driven comedy

Speaker 1 yeah i this is like that louis show started this where this these shows that were ostensibly comedies but they're not yeah and this is just where we've been 10 years I still think there's an option for somebody to just

Speaker 1 be really fucking funny, but you need the stars, unfortunately.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think that they, I just don't think, I think it's become so lucrative to be your own boss and have your own comedy career that you don't want to go and be like, I'm a cop, fish out, I'm a fish out of water cop, you know?

Speaker 3 Right. And it's like, Theo Vaughn's not going to go do that movie.
Like he's doing fine.

Speaker 1 Well, comedies would work. I still feel like buddy cop movies still work.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 3 I'm surprised nobody's done a college comedy in a minute. I'm trying to think of like.

Speaker 1 Or would that just be on Netflix now?

Speaker 3 I guess, but it's, it's also just like,

Speaker 3 I think that those become TV shows, probably. You're right.
But we haven't had like a Project X kind of like party comedy in a while, right?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 Which has traditionally been like a nice place to start from where it's like Animal House.

Speaker 1 Right. But do people go see comedies in a movie theater anymore? Or do they just wait until they're on?

Speaker 1 Like, I really wanted to see the Paul Rhode Tim Robinson movie, and I was like, ah, I'll just wait till it's on Amazon.

Speaker 3 Well, this is, this is, they, they've crippled that because, like, now that's become like the ultimate, like, it's not exactly going to see one battle after another. I can watch this on my TV.

Speaker 1 Whereas you have to see one battle after another

Speaker 1 in the theater. Yeah.
Yeah. Have you seen it? How many times have you seen it? Twice.

Speaker 3 Once on IMAX and once at home.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm going to test drive it at home.

Speaker 1 It's so much, and it's almost three hours that it's, you leave and you're just like, you're.

Speaker 3 But it's also like, I would say the second time through because you kind of know the rhythms of it and you know where it's going and you know how much longer the perfidia section is and how much longer the it's it it really is an awesome second watch and rewatchable movie.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like some of the stuff I didn't pick up on the first time. I've only seen it once, but just how distinct and deliberate the starts in 2008 ends in 04 or 24.

Speaker 1 And just I want, there's so many things I just want to watch.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and there's lots of nuances to like the Leo performance and the Benicia performance that are like on the second watch, I noticed like, even just like Leo's vape acting is just elite on the second watch.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you think he's really vaping the whole time? He must be, right?

Speaker 3 I think he's, he's an enthusiastic vapor. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Did we cover everything? I think so.
Thanks for popping on. My Evergreen BS Thanksgiving Week podcast.
Great to see you. I'm glad.
Great to see you, man.

Speaker 1 Well, we didn't talk about the Eagles. Oh, yeah.
Probably a good thing, right? Tulo stuff? Let's see. Yeah, just quickly.
Were you eight and three in miserable?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's what it is. And it's like a, did you ever have a Patriots season like that? Did you ever an 8-3 in Miserable?

Speaker 1 We had a,

Speaker 1 I want to say it was 09, 2010. It was after Brady's ACO when they were winning and they were scoring, but you knew the, you just knew they didn't have it.

Speaker 1 The only thing that's weird is that I don't know who has it this season. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, it would be one thing if it was 8-3 and it's fake and they're about to like lose the Bears on Friday and it's just like goes downhill.

Speaker 3 But they could very well turn this around and go to the Super Bowl again, you know. Like they get Lane Johnson back, like there's all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 1 Like, there's ways in which this could go better, but yeah, if you're doing the life depends on a test and you're like, what team's coming out of the NFC?

Speaker 1 And granted, I'll give you the Rams, but I don't know how the Eagles aren't the second pick in that conversation, especially with Tampa falling apart. I, I, who else are you taking?

Speaker 4 Right, Seahawks. Like,

Speaker 1 I don't know. I like it.
Right, like, the mid-2000s NFL, NFL, like the year we had that Colts-Bears Super Bowl. We had that Steelers-Seahawks Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 You're just looking at all these teams going.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like, really? Yeah. You're going to make a Super Bowl with Hasselbeck?

Speaker 1 Rex Grossman's going to be in there? Like,

Speaker 1 it might be that crazy. Like, it might be like a really flawed Patriots team or, you know, the Bears just get the two seed and somehow win round two on a punt return.
And you're like, really?

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I was watching the lions yesterday and um another flawed team and a flawed team but like so exciting and feel so like much more fluid and like electrifying than the eagles and you know gibbs looks like what saquon used to look like but i i they're they're in nail biters every week it seems like you know so it's just like i don't really know who's good

Speaker 1 who's your favorite eagle oh devontae smith oh by far is that is he like the uh is it the alternative band he's like the Matthew Sweet of the Eagles.

Speaker 1 He's like the teenage fan club of the Philippine Eagles.

Speaker 1 All the cool kids. Yeah.
The little Devontae Smith. I love Smitty.
Yeah. Smitty, we're calling him now.
When did that start?

Speaker 3 I think it's been like his Philly nickname for a minute. Yeah.

Speaker 1 How many Eagles text threads do you have?

Speaker 3 One major one with Andy and Zach.

Speaker 1 That's it. Just three of you? Yeah.
Nobody else is invited. That's not even invited.

Speaker 3 I don't think anybody else would want to

Speaker 3 withstand that.

Speaker 3 Just the amount amount of like us scouting other people's offensive coordinators.

Speaker 1 I have, I'm on a Boston sports thread that Hench is on, but I'm also on a Pats thread with him and one other person. And somehow we don't repeat our takes on the two threads.

Speaker 1 Each thread has a different energy. A different vibe? The Boston sports threads are a little like happier.

Speaker 1 And then the Patriots thread is like hardcore. I'm really worried about Gonzalez.
This is the third time he's been beaten by some fringe receiver. It's like getting into that.
Oh, God. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Those are, those, those are some fun threads.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was just telling you, like, I was like, if you go back two years, we're openly calling for Bobby Sloick to replace Sirianni.

Speaker 1 Oh, and you're, on your tech service. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it's like the, like, the, the certainty with which we were like, it's just a matter of time before Sloick moves into Siriani's office

Speaker 1 and then he goes and wins a Super Bowl. That would be a fun.

Speaker 1 I don't know what that would be. Yeah, it would just be like take storage in your text.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was wondering, could you pay apple to just get rid of your terrible sports takes

Speaker 1 i'm positive we could beat the lakers for like 2020. uh all right see our great see you as always

Speaker 1 all right tuesday afternoon gonna finish the podcast with my daughter zoe simmons who i made come home from college you resisted i didn't resist for a couple days you were like come home

Speaker 4 i did come home for you You should come home for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 You spend every Thanksgiving with us.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but I came home for you because I know how badly you wanted me to.

Speaker 1 Wasn't mom, just me?

Speaker 4 It was for mom, too. But mom is less hurt by these sorts of things.
You take this stuff to heart.

Speaker 1 That's my dad's side, though. That's that whole guilt trip side.

Speaker 4 You're a grudge holder. You're a guilt tripper.
I knew if I didn't come home, this would be hung over my head for the next 10 years of my life.

Speaker 1 I don't know how many more of these I have left. Come on.

Speaker 4 I mean, really, let's not even go there.

Speaker 1 You're in college. It'd be 21 in May.

Speaker 4 Yep, it's true.

Speaker 1 For the people listening. For the people listening.
It's been coming on this podcast since like 2017. Although, I was thinking about it in ESPN.
I had you and Ben sing sing

Speaker 1 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer when you were like little kids. I forgot about that.
It's been quite a journey for us. It has

Speaker 1 Stranger Things launching this week, the defining show of your generation. I think it's fair to say.
I don't even know what the competition would be. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's interesting because your generation is like way scattered, social media, all these influencers.

Speaker 1 Everybody has all these different things they like, and you don't have like the common stuff like my generation had, where we all watch the same shows, movies, but yet everybody watches Stranger Things.

Speaker 1 This is the the one show like that.

Speaker 4 There's a few out there. Some of them are like older TV shows that people of my generation have found.

Speaker 4 Like Gilmore Girls is one of those shows where I think if you're a female within age like 13 to 30, you are just expected to have seen all of Gilmore Girls.

Speaker 4 There are a few shows like that, but I think this show, as you were saying, it's so scattered all over the place because with social media and everyone just being aware of what everyone is up to.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's easy to just do your own thing and have your own route and like be aware of other stuff happening, but not necessarily like immerse yourself within it because you just know that it's happening.

Speaker 4 But this show kind of like stopped time and it felt like everyone had to watch it. And it came out in, what was it, 20, 2012, the first season?

Speaker 1 It was no, it was later.

Speaker 1 It was like 20, yeah, 20, I'm going to say.

Speaker 4 It was a defining year,

Speaker 4 regardless of when it came out. And every single person that I knew watched it.
And we were all, at least, for me, the ages of the characters when the first season came out.

Speaker 4 So it just, it felt like a total.

Speaker 1 Now Millie Bobby Brown's a mom.

Speaker 4 She's a mom. She's a wife.
She's old.

Speaker 1 They're all old.

Speaker 4 It's going to be, that's a whole other topic, but interesting how they kind of transferred how these people have grown up and how many years have been between the last season releasing and then this season.

Speaker 4 Because the last season came out my junior year of high school and now I'm a junior in college.

Speaker 1 Why did it take so long? Because of COVID?

Speaker 4 COVID setbacks. The CGI for this show is also also just out of control.
And the writer's strike. Like, there were just a lot of things that happened that set it back.

Speaker 4 And I'm honestly okay with it because I would rather them do it to the best of their ability as perfectly as they can than just try and pump it out for no reason.

Speaker 4 I think it also, it taking so long to come out has made people like really excited for it and has given you time to re-watch all of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, people keep re-watching them. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because it's a nostalgic, like, for me, it's my first real nostalgic thing.

Speaker 4 It's like I watched this show for the first time when i was like 12 years old and now i'm 20 and i'm re-watching all of these episodes and these seasons and remembering things and it's it's the nostalgia of it that really gets people i think it was even a show you and your brother agreed on watched

Speaker 4 Everyone I know, though, everyone has an experience where they're like, I remember when I first watched Stranger Things. I remember this happening in my life, this thing happening.

Speaker 4 Like it was just a cultural thing, Stranger Things.

Speaker 1 So is there a fear that this isn't going to

Speaker 4 match up to whatever the hype is no i don't think so okay i usually worry about that in terms of shows that have so much hype around them i think this season is gonna be phenomenal i have no fears about it whatsoever so i somehow never watched it i know i only saw bits and pieces from when like you and ben were watching it but you're aware of like the cultural like

Speaker 1 stigma that surrounds it i'm aware of all the stuff that

Speaker 1 the show bred. I don't actually know what happens.
I know it's set in the past.

Speaker 1 I know it's an homage to all the movies that I loved when I was in the 80s.

Speaker 1 And 7

Speaker 1 has superpowers or something. 11.

Speaker 4 11.

Speaker 4 7's a different character. Seven got killed off in season one.

Speaker 1 You don't really know the other numbers.

Speaker 4 11's the goat.

Speaker 1 All right. So where do we leave off with 11?

Speaker 4 11's Jason Tatum of Stranger Things World.

Speaker 4 Well, season four. was

Speaker 4 this whole other this show is so confusing to explain to someone that hasn't watched it? So, I don't even feel like I can attempt at doing that for you.

Speaker 1 Okay, but do it in 20 seconds. Okay, can you do it in 20 seconds?

Speaker 4 This big test 11 is a part of this company that is basically trying to breed people to have superpowers so that they can use them to fight other countries in war and combat and things like that. Okay.

Speaker 4 So, she's a production of this evil hospital. She escapes into the woods and ends up like finding her friends that are the Stranger Things cast.
So she's like escapes from the hospital.

Speaker 4 And within all four seasons, they're trying to get her back.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 So that's like a different subplot. But that's not the whole show.
There's so many different subplots.

Speaker 4 But in season four, it kind of comes to fruition that the number one person who started this entire like Elle was the one who broke the world and basically made it possible for us to enter a whole new dimension, which is the upside down.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Um, upside down.

Speaker 4 And she sent one of her other people from like the hospital, number one, into the upside down, and he became a demon that was the king of the upside down and has now come back for revenge.

Speaker 4 Oh, so that's the whole different subplot, which is the main part of the show. But then in season one, Will, um, one of the characters, one of the little boys, gets abducted.

Speaker 4 So that's kind of how it all starts out.

Speaker 4 And then Eleven comes along, and Will is always kind of like a part of this upside-down world because he was abducted and then possessed by the like upside-down demons.

Speaker 4 That's like the dumbest way I can try and explain a really complicated thing.

Speaker 1 I think I followed it.

Speaker 4 You got the gist.

Speaker 1 But this is it. So it's going to end with like 11 saves the world and then the show will end.
Right.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of predictions and like speculation as to what's going to happen this season because we've had some pretty pivotal characters die, beloved characters, you could say, but not any characters that were like there from the beginning.

Speaker 4 Yeah. There's always like a new character that's introduced at the beginning of a season.

Speaker 4 Like season three, it was Bob, who's Will's stepdad and Joyce's new like boyfriend who becomes like a really lovable father figure character, and then he gets murdered at the end.

Speaker 4 It's just devastating.

Speaker 4 And then this last season, Eddie Munson, who's kind of like the leader of this group that they're in, the Hellfire Club, which the whole show is based off of Dungeons and Dragons.

Speaker 4 Like that was the premise.

Speaker 1 Damn, I never liked it in the 80s.

Speaker 4 I'm not a Dungeons and Dragons girl myself, but Eddie was kind of like the the ringleader freak of the high school, and he ends up being a good guy and then sacrificing himself for the kids.

Speaker 4 But he was the big loss of the last season. So this season, people, because it's the last season, have been speculating who's going to die.
It's a lot of

Speaker 1 and they keep it under wraps. Like they don't leak it.

Speaker 1 No one knows anything.

Speaker 4 Okay. It's like a Taylor Swift situation where it's like there's no, there's no teasers.
There's no, they can't be known. Like it's everything is kept super under the wraps.

Speaker 4 But there's a lot of theories floating around. 11's going to die potentially because she's going to have to die in order to save the rest of them.

Speaker 4 But there's a few pretty significant people in there that I will be absolutely devastated if they die.

Speaker 1 So what is the number one reason why this show resonated like it did? Because it's well done because people love the characters because of the mystery of it. Like, what is it?

Speaker 4 I think that...

Speaker 4 People, at least for myself, like I have always loved the 80s. It's the entire vibe of the show itself.
It makes you feel nostalgic for something that you never even experienced.

Speaker 4 And I know that you lived through that period. Mom lived through that period.
Like all these people that I know and love and looked up to lived through this period.

Speaker 4 And I think that this show does the best job at like depicting what it was like. And it almost makes you wish that you could have been living back in time.
Because it was. It really was.

Speaker 4 I think the outfits, the fashion, the vibe, that's a whole facet of why this show is so popular and why I like to watch it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Outside of that, I'm not a science fiction person but the way that they've done this show and every single season has so many different layers and it's just like it's so obvious that they had thought so far in advance from the very beginning and all these pieces coming together that's what people really like it's more than just well done but it's like so well written it feels like tv doesn't get written this well in this day and age like it's well one of your big passions is how the tv shows always seem to miss stuff that would resonate with your generation.

Speaker 1 They always get like three things wrong. Right.

Speaker 4 And I also like to feel like I'm much dumber than the people that are writing the show. If I can like guess exactly what's going to happen way before it happens, it doesn't feel like rewarding.

Speaker 1 With this show. Maybe you're really smart.
Maybe you should be writing shows.

Speaker 4 But this show, like you never know what's going to happen.

Speaker 4 It just feels like this force that's so much bigger than you, as cringe as that sounds, it's like it really, it does withhold like such a power that really no other media or TV or movie has ever done for me unless it was some old stuff that was produced like 20 years ago so why did some Ride Turn Pretty hit like it did what was the what was the difference I think that had immediate nostalgia because for me I read those books when I was in middle school and I think a lot of girls my age also did those were kind of like the rite of passage books that you read throughout middle school so just to see something like that on a big screen was important.

Speaker 4 I also think using like all current music like Gracie Abrams, Taylor Swift, all these songs that we kind of grew up on, that was super helpful for watching the show.

Speaker 4 But I think it was just an easy watch that it came out as summer was ending.

Speaker 4 So getting to watch it through like the fall period, especially for me, like playing soccer and meeting, like kind of longing for the summer and like relaxing times, they just did a good job at making it an easy watch.

Speaker 4 And they also made the characters super lovable or hateable. Like people are still very much in love with Conrad on TikTok, like like consistently talking about.

Speaker 1 Conrad win or lose. I can't remember.
It was a love triangle, right?

Speaker 4 Well, they

Speaker 4 Amazon made it so that there's a movie that has to come out in a few months to finish the whole story. They left us off on kind of like a cliffhanger.

Speaker 4 We're assuming we know what happens, but we don't exactly know. But anyway, like the parasocial relationship that people have created with Conrad is like...

Speaker 4 a whole reason as to why like it was so successful.

Speaker 1 And then everybody what did they like about Conrad?

Speaker 4 Hates Jeremiah so much because he's a yearner. This is what people say on TikTok.
Like, you're a yearner. Like, Jeff Buckley's music is like yearning music.

Speaker 4 And, like, women long for like men that just yearn for other women. Because in this day and age, it's like boys are kind of not like very charming.

Speaker 4 Do you know what I'm saying? Like,

Speaker 4 boys aren't trying to court girls anymore. And I think Conrad, like, trying to court Belly, like, really.

Speaker 1 hit with just the yearning and the courting.

Speaker 4 Well, that's just what like TikTok is kind of going off of. They like a man who's willing to put all of everything aside and just be like, I love this girl and I'm going to do everything for her.

Speaker 4 And that's what resonated, I think, at least with my friends that still love Conrad.

Speaker 1 I think it's great that Jeff Buckley still matters. Oh, yeah.
Especially because we have a new documentary, the music box series, about Jeff Buckley. Logging it next month.

Speaker 4 He's had a huge resurgence.

Speaker 1 Well, it's funny how the TV shows can revive some of these people. Yeah.
Yeah. So Summer I Turn Pretty got to the point where you were, what time was it coming on on Boston time? Midnight.

Speaker 1 On like school night. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 And it's, I also like when TV shows space things out weekly, so you have to wait for it and you get to have the anticipation.

Speaker 4 I think that was a whole other thing, similar to Stranger Things, where it's like everyone is watching this show and everyone's waiting.

Speaker 4 And in the week before, everyone's throwing in their predictions or like just bonding over it on like

Speaker 4 global matter. Exactly.
Like White Lotus 2.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but why don't the streamers, everybody feels this way? And yet, like, Netflix is dropping all the the Stranger Things episodes at once, right?

Speaker 4 No, they're dropping the first batch on Thanksgiving. I think the first four episodes and then you have to wait until Christmas and then New Year's.

Speaker 1 But wouldn't it be a bit better off doing two and then just one a week to like

Speaker 1 to basically like suck you guys in for the rest of 2025.

Speaker 4 They're more important than these other shows, which I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that I think they are too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, obviously it works.

Speaker 4 And they're important enough to be able to like, here's four episodes and then you have to wait a month for the next four. And I'm willing to do that.

Speaker 4 I think that they, they want to be like bigger than

Speaker 1 Strong Pretty didn't do that, right? Because that shows

Speaker 4 not nearly as good as Stranger Things. That's the type of show that has to be released weekly because you're going to lose interest if it's not.

Speaker 4 Like there were so many filler episodes in there where it's like, I don't know what just happened for the last hour, but it feels like

Speaker 1 a fantasy basketball thing.

Speaker 4 It feels like nothing that we needed to happen happened. So it's like, oh, hopefully the next week will be better, but at least it's only seven days until we get to find out.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, that dates back to the 80s and 90s and the 902-0 type shows that were like that. They always should have been like 10 episodes a year.
And they would

Speaker 1 like 902-0 was 32 episodes for a couple of years. Yeah.
So they would have like all-time filler episodes.

Speaker 1 Somebody turned pretty, it seems like, what is it, like 13?

Speaker 4 It's not enough episodes to have as many filler episodes as it did. Like I would leave a week of show and being like, this, that was just.

Speaker 4 pointless a wasted hour of my life but i'm going to come back again next week because i need to know what happens but tell me lies was that one hit. Whole different spectrum.

Speaker 4 Like I put these shows in different like boxes in my brain where it's like Summer I Turn Pretty is just nostalgic, easy to watch, a good watch.

Speaker 4 Every episode might not necessarily be good, but it's easy for background noise. And it's a nice thing to be able to like.

Speaker 4 relate with others on the internet about and just be like, I'm going to open my free you page and everything is going to be about this one scene from the show last night and we all get to laugh about it together.

Speaker 4 I just like having the sense of community that that show brought.

Speaker 1 Tell Me Lies was like the dangerous show that people

Speaker 1 16 shouldn't be watching, but they have to watch.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's like a total mind screw-up. Like watching that show, I have to prepare myself to go into every episode because it feels like you are like

Speaker 4 watching something really dark.

Speaker 1 Are there any manipulators on that show?

Speaker 4 What do you mean when you say good people? Like good person? Yeah. There's not a single good person.
Yeah. Okay.
Literally not a single one. But it's it's a great show.

Speaker 4 It's exactly like Euphoria in the way that these characters are so complicated and so fucked up that you would just never even imagine that a person could be capable of doing the things that they do.

Speaker 4 It's a little less drug-heavy and kind of like disco

Speaker 4 glitter outfit situation, but it still has the same effect where it's like a more real-life simulation of like, this is some really fucked up, manipulated, like really terrible people.

Speaker 1 Euphoria is coming back, and they're, I think, fast-forwarding. Yeah.
The ages. A lot of years.
I'm nervous.

Speaker 1 The one thing I heard was that I heard Sidney Sweeney's character is going to be an OnlyFans model on the show. No, for real.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's the only Euphoria scoop I have for you.

Speaker 4 I'm nervous for that show to come back.

Speaker 4 I really did love it in the first few seasons we watched it, but it seems like there's so much baggage that has happened and so much time in between that I just can't imagine it being a good season.

Speaker 1 You loved I Love LA.

Speaker 4 I loved I Love LA.

Speaker 1 And you were literally the audience for it because you're a 20 year old in LA, which I don't know. They renewed it.
So that's a good sign. Yeah.
What did you like about it?

Speaker 4 I love LA. Was I thought it was just perfect in the way that it made fun of how awful LA people can be.

Speaker 4 I love LA, not the show. Like I love LA.
LA is great.

Speaker 1 But you're also smart enough to know who not to like in LA.

Speaker 4 It's, it just just did the most perfect job at showing how ridiculous like the whole influencer world can be because it is just insane. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I loved every single bit and piece of the influencer stuff. The relationship that the lead character has with her boyfriend is just could not be more perfect.

Speaker 4 Everything about the show just felt like it's all of these like niche things I've picked up on in like my 20 years living here put into a singular thing and then blown up by 100%.

Speaker 4 And I think it, it resonated with a lot of people from that.

Speaker 1 So, you think it became a little bit of a thing? Oh, yeah. I saw a lot of stuff of it on the internet.

Speaker 4 And it's a binge-worthy show, too, which is helpful. It's an easy watch.
People just like easy watches.

Speaker 4 It's nice to know that, like, if you're going into a show, like, tell me lies, it's like, I need to prepare myself.

Speaker 4 And this might like give me an emotional, like, some emotional turmoil for the rest of the week.

Speaker 4 Watching I Love LA, it's like I can just easily watch this show and go about the rest of my day and not really have a dark cloud hanging over my head.

Speaker 1 We should have created a podcast where you recap these shows with my dad as he tried to figure out what was going on. And like, I love LA.

Speaker 4 He's unbelievable. I think you would have had an aneurysm if you tried to watch that show.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's, he's just conditioned for CBS now.

Speaker 4 We tried to watch a docute with him over summer.

Speaker 1 Which one?

Speaker 4 The Call Her Daddy one.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's right.

Speaker 4 And he,

Speaker 4 I think he had four seizures in his seat. He had to get a lemonade with extra ice just to keep him awake.
And then he left with like just left.

Speaker 1 He went to the other side. He just disappeared.
He's like, I don't like that lady. And he just left.

Speaker 4 He was only here for four days. And he didn't even want to stay with us to watch it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I don't really blame him.
No. Was it wasn't great.
Any other shows before we go? That's it? That's the All-Star team? Who's your favorite influencer right now?

Speaker 4 I love my Graydon Cutler Halley Batchelder combo. I've talked about them before on here.
Also, like a local Boston resident. I'm always looking out for him whenever I'm on the streets.

Speaker 4 He's six foot seven, so he shouldn't be that hard to find. But

Speaker 4 there's some good people out there that I'm really liking right now. My most favorite person is this lady named Natasha, and she is from California.
She lives in Long Beach, I think.

Speaker 4 And she takes like four weed gummies and then tries different

Speaker 4 restaurants from like different ethnicities and different sorts of like areas of the world.

Speaker 1 Why do the weed gummies? What does that have to do? It makes her hungry. It makes her hungry.
Okay.

Speaker 4 But she films it through like these glasses that she wears. And it's like you're eating.
It's like you're eating. You're watching her eat, but it's from a first person perspective.

Speaker 1 Well, and you still love Therapist, but it's on vacation, right?

Speaker 4 No, therapist just finished season two. Okay.

Speaker 4 He, I mean, I couldn't love that guy more. And his, his two friends, Julia Mervis and Peyton Perther and Brett Chodi, like all the people that surround him, I just would trust with my life.

Speaker 4 There's no one more that I'd want to be friends with. If anyone was like, You can be friends with these five famous social media people, he's my number one.

Speaker 1 Because all these influencers come and go, or they get canceled, or they turn on each other, or they never seem to last longer than like nine months. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, I was trying to explain to mom the other day, like how he came to be and how he gained success.

Speaker 4 And it was literally from him, like, getting high and then making these little skit videos that people would send in. I think his most famous one was like Abraham Lincoln finding his signature hat.

Speaker 4 But it's just like these little stupid, funny videos almost simulated Vine,

Speaker 4 and people just caught on to him. And his personality is so great.
And he just created this entire

Speaker 4 kingdom around just his personality and how he is.

Speaker 1 And he's lovable across the board.

Speaker 4 Everyone who's been on the pod, like, loves him. He's buddies with every famous person.
Yeah, because he's so likable.

Speaker 1 I want to go on. I haven't been invited.

Speaker 4 I'm sure you'd like to have you.

Speaker 1 I would love to go on therapist just to impress you.

Speaker 4 Would you be able to give some recommendations to the pussies about like things

Speaker 4 that's what he calls them? The pussies.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the therapists.

Speaker 1 Well, you said he's tapping into some trend that's happening right now where so many people are in therapy that he's crossed therapy with a podcast and interviewed thing, and he's somehow, he's somehow solved.

Speaker 1 these three different things at the same time into one pod.

Speaker 4 The mailbag segment, the life advice, the unsolicited therapy thing.

Speaker 4 And he's a trustworthy person. And I think it's hard hard for these influencers to be successful because they're so easy to see through.
Yeah. And it's like, you're liked for this specific thing.

Speaker 4 Like maybe you're the crazy party girl and that's your appeal and you can get a certain audience or whatever your niche is.

Speaker 4 But he's just genuinely like such a likable person and people trust him and just like want to listen to him. And that's why everyone keeps coming back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're almost too normal to have a pod. You would have to have a pod where you were the normal person.

Speaker 4 I know and have some crazy, some crazy guests.

Speaker 1 Some crazy girls your age who who just like tell stories every week about what they did and you're kind of the the calm one yeah well jake

Speaker 4 for business if that if we throw those two people but stranger things we didn't finish who i think is going to die i'm just going to throw it out because we got to go so tell us who's going to die give us give us two predictions i hope to god steve harrington doesn't but i'm assuming he will another big prediction that i saw on the internet was that um one or vecna is going to transfer his powers over to will

Speaker 4 who's one of 11's best friends friends, which is going to make it a more difficult time for him to kill him.

Speaker 1 That could happen. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's a potential.

Speaker 4 Regardless, let's all stream it together. I'm super excited about Stranger Things.
Just excited for everything that's coming out.

Speaker 1 And tell me, I'm going to be watching Thursday. I'm going to be watching football

Speaker 1 after we eat. And you'll be like up in your room watching Stranger Things on your phone.
Done for the night. And then you fly back.
Okay. It'd be great to see you.
Soy Simmons.

Speaker 1 Great season, by the way. You stayed healthy.
Yeah. Congratulations.
I tried.

Speaker 4 It was was good. You did this year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was all right.

Speaker 4 It was successful. Oh, it was all right.

Speaker 1 No, no, it was good. Yeah.
It was a successful season. I'm always happy when you're playing and you stay healthy.
Yeah. Those are my two goals.
Got to it. It was fun watching.
All right.

Speaker 1 Good to see you, Zoe. Happy to see you.
Good to see you.

Speaker 4 Thanks, guys. Bye.

Speaker 1 All right. That's it for the podcast.
Thanks to Goldsbury and thanks to Chris Ryan and thanks to House. Thanks to my daughter.
Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well.

Speaker 1 Have a great Thanksgiving for Ringer 107. We're going to be posting all of our picks on Wednesday night.
If you want to get some

Speaker 1 really mediocre, is anybody going to get hot in the Ringer 107? I have no idea. We have five teams all treading water around 500.
Will one of them get hot? We're about to find out.

Speaker 1 Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Thanks for supporting the podcast.
I will see you on a Sunday night.

Speaker 1 Must be 21 plus in president in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in president in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming.

Speaker 1 Gambling problem call 100 Gamble or visit rg-help.com. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg.org/slash chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland.
Hope is here.

Speaker 1 Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8 HOPE-NY or text Hope NY in New York.