The Mailbag: Dangerous NBA Teams, Lottery Tweaks, the KD Files, The Oscars, and Cruise vs. Pacino | With Chris Ryan and Joe House | The Bill Simmons Podcast

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Chris Ryan is coming on.

He's going to do half of the mailbag with me.

I have just unbelievable mailbag questions.

So many.

So I had to use this time as there's no sports whatsoever other than Winter Olympics to bang out some mailbag questions.

Chris Ryan going to join me for the first half.

Our old friend Joe House is going to come on for the second half where we do some NBA stuff.

That is the podcast that's all next.

We're going to take a break.

Pearl Jam and then CR, Chris Ryan.

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All right, we are recording mid-afternoon Pacific time.

There's no sports going on other than the Winter Olympics.

What country are you rooting for, Chris Ryan?

America?

I'm just rooting for fun, frozen competition, you know?

Yeah, sure, I'm rooting broadly for America.

What about you?

Well, you and I, we did the two-man luge together in 2014.

I thought that was fun.

Is that what you're calling the black hat pod?

It's the two-man luge-er.

Uh, no, I, I, it's all right.

There's a lot of like luge bobsled skiing.

I have trouble keeping track of which events are more important than the other ones.

And then they're like, oh, it's, it's the figure skating short session, free skate, whatever.

I'm like, oh, that's an important one.

That's like the Tanya Harding one.

I feel like I'm just getting killed by just finding out what happens early in the day so that I can't watch primetime.

And that's my fault.

But when I open up the New York Times or ESPN or The Athletic and it's just like here's everything that happened that you were going to watch at 8 pm tonight, I just wind up losing a little bit of juice for it.

Yeah, I do wonder was it better in the 70s and early 80s, when we had no mechanism to find out what happened and everything was a constant surprise and we never knew what was live and taped?

It might have been a better way to live.

Absolutely.

Read the news once every day.

Yeah, sounds great.

We're going to do, I have a two-part mailbag.

I'm going to do half with you and half with House.

I sent you a couple of questions.

I kept some questions away from you.

But basically all the mailbag questions I'm getting right now and please please, stop sending these to BS.

Podcast 33 at gmailcom.

I'm good with the tanking solutions.

We have so many and I can't think of another sports kind of debate topic where everybody's like I've got it.

Is there anything else like this, where you could be in a bar and somebody's like no no, here's what they should do.

And everybody's all of a sudden the expert and nobody has it.

I found the limit of what I'm interested in in sports.

And I think it's solutions to tanking.

God bless you.

I was listening to you and Zach on Sunday.

And I could tell even you were losing your own mind trying to figure it out.

There's no answer.

And also, the answer is we need a bad draft.

So this draft is too good and too many people want to get in on AJ and Darren and Boozer.

And we just need to have better basketball to think about.

Because I think we're just getting a little too distracted with how to fix something that ultimately is pretty good.

But I do think some of the stakeholders involved have different, different objectives.

That may be the common NBA fan.

And that's why I think it causes so much frustration.

I think the biggest problem for the NBA we talked about it Thursday night in the live show is that football ends and basketball finally has center stage.

And it should just be more positive stuff instead of all of us like, how do we fix this?

What's wrong with this thing?

Even Mark Cuban today came out as pro tanking, which...

I enjoyed it.

It just feels like he's trying to stick it to everybody these days.

I fully just... That's exactly what I mean.

Cuban's comments, while very well informed from his perspective as a former owner, was like nobody remembers shots and dunks.

They remember the experience of an NBA game.

And I can just assure him that I'm the exact opposite.

Yeah.

I actually don't really love going to NBA games.

You know like they're like.

I like it when the basketball is good, but as a personal consumer experience, I can think of a lot of better ways to spend my money than having like 22 year old rap music blared at me for three hours.

Like, yeah, it's, it's, it's a really like, I thought he, he misidentified what was at issue there.

Yeah.

We could be going to black cat at the new Beverly cinema.

We could be spending our time in a much better way.

All right.

Mailbag questions.

These are all real questions.

First one.

The KD Twitter burner account scandal is the first scandal to reference the Epstein files instead of Watergate.

Everyone is calling it the KD files is blank gate dead.

That's from Don H.

So basically what he's saying see our Watergate with the 52 year run here of just Gates watergate.

I went on Wikipedia and I went and looked at all the gates and they had them broken down into sports culture politics, tech.

There's just a lot of gates.

And the Epstein files have basically said, move over, buddy.

There's a new sheriff in town and now we're using files.

Are you buying this?

Is gate done?

I thought that this question was pretty poignant, maybe unwittingly, in the wake of the mass WAPO Washington Post layoffs.

And that's obviously where a lot of the original Watergate reporting happened with Woodward and Bernstein.

And I think that we used to rely on these institutions to ferret out this information through investigative reporting and then interpret the information and tell us here's what's important.

Here's why you should care about this.

Here's what might happen because of it.

And now, especially with the Epstein stuff, you're basically getting raw intel on social media.

You're looking at redacted files.

You're looking at basically the stuff that a journalist would look at to interpret.

And you're being asked to do it yourself.

And sometimes you have to battle against the sheer amount of it in the case of the Epstein files.

And also... whether or not some of it is real or not.

Because that's obviously starting to come up.

The Katie thing is kind of a good example of that.

I think it's hilarious, but I'm not 100% sure it's him.

And I don't really even understand where it came from and what's going on here.

I mean, where's your head at with this?

We'll never know.

He hasn't said anything.

If I had to bet my life one way or the other, I would bet yes.

Triple double cocaine bear is one of the funniest things anyone's written on any platform in the last 30 years.

Yeah.

And I don't think we'll ever find out the true answer.

You think KD's throwing around Hitler and Stalin jokes in his group chat?

I don't know, man.

I don't judge anyone's group chats.

Group chats, it's a private space.

You just never know what's going on in there.

It could be a combo of some real stuff with some AI stuff.

And that's, Like you laid out, this is the problem in 2026.

Always trying to decipher what's real and what's really.

You can feel Instagram changing in real times, where you're like oh my God, that cheetah climbed into a kid's bunk bed.

And it's like, oh, that probably didn't happen.

Yeah.

That cat sang Sinatra perfectly with its meows.

That cat was at the dunk contest.

I have my top five gates ever.

That's what this question inspired.

In no particular order.

I didn't want to really rank these, but Spygate Nipplegate Deflategate, Bountygate and Poopgate.

When the Dave Matthews band emptied the sewage tank on a Chicago barge and they called it Poopgate.

You have Poopgate above Iran-Contra.

Yeah, but here's my question.

So Iran-Contra, I feel like we just called that Iran-Contra.

Or like an affair?

I don't think that was really a gate.

I don't know.

I really thought about that because that was like the biggest one after Watergate.

But I don't ever remember.

There was some Contra gate, but I really feel like that became Iran-Contra.

And what's interesting about...

Does it necessitate it being broken by journalists, or does it just sound cool if you put gate at the end of it?

Well, so that's what I thought was interesting.

Nipple gate and poop gate are culture gates, right?

This is just Timberlake pulling Janet Jackson's thing off at the Super Bowl and then poop.

And then spot gate, deflate gate and bounty gate were all these football scandals that we just put gate on at the end because it was funny.

But that's what the names became.

And you go through all the other ones.

The gate never really stuck.

Didn't stick like I thought.

No.

Deflated Ball Affair does not have the same.

No.

It doesn't have the same ring to it.

And I think Scandal kind of stepped in too.

So anyway, those are the best gates.

Next question from David from Flemington, New Jersey.

With more KD Burner account news allegedly coming out.

Who of the pre-social media pantheon guys do you think would have also had burner accounts if they existed at the time?

If any?

I had one in particular that I'm positive would have had, but what do you have for this?

I was thinking about this because a lot of the people who I think are the most opinionated, I also think would have had better things to do than tweet or text a lot.

Barkley...

I get paid to say stuff.

I'm not going to be on a group chat saying what I really think.

Kobe, I think, would have been good, but I also don't think he would have done it.

Kobe was right on that.

He was right on the border between social media being something where you're just like, oh my god, the Knicks won and now like weighing in on AI all the time.

Kobe was also like a call whoever out of the blue.

Like he called me out of the blue once.

He would do that to everybody.

It's supposed to be practice, Mitch.

Or send you a long email or he would call, he'd read a piece.

So he was more of a direct to direct, not like in the shadows.

Yeah.

I wish Durant would try that.

He should just call Jabari Smith and tell him how he feels about his shot selection.

So here's my one that I definitely think would add a burner account.

There's no question.

And I'm positive he would have had it.

I'm as positive as I could be about a theoretical concept of something that's impossible to prove.

Will Chamberlain.

Will Chamberlain, I was fascinated by him when I did my book.

I read all the books that he wrote.

I read all the magazine profiles.

He, it was back in the air in the sixties.

You would do like your first person magazine piece for sport magazine or sports illustrated.

Yeah.

And he would just trash everybody.

He would trash his teammates, his coaches.

He would blame everybody else.

This was one of the main reasons I wrote a whole chapter about Russell over will, because he and this is why all the other players didn't like him that he, you know he got traded twice.

People would always like take shots at him, his rivals.

And I just think he absolutely would have been had burner accounts and he would have been like Bill Russell sucks man.

He has no left hand.

And it would have been like some dipper 69.

That would have been his account.

The real 100.

Yeah.

He was the most sensitive, always trying to patch his legacy on the fly person that we've had.

KD just loves it.

He just loves being in the middle of all this stuff and rolling up his sleeves.

So, whether this was his account or not, I think what's a little more interesting is that he has enough out there already that people just believed it because it was like, of course it's him, because he did all these other things too.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that there's also like, aren't people basically lining up?

There's like Allegedly, this was discovered by the Rockets a little while ago and that's right around when the Rockets fell off a cliff.

Which leads to the next question from Gio in New York.

Is Kevin Durant becoming the modern-day Rick Barry, accomplished player but difficult teammate?

I'll take this one first.

Rick Barry was really disliked. when he played by teammates.

And there's a lot of documented evidence that I covered in my book.

He was just a very polarizing player in real time.

The interesting thing about Durant, even though if you go back basically to the 2018 warriors and most of the teams really every team except maybe the 22 nets felt like there was an unhappiness about them or something kind of sliding sideways, never really knew what was going on.

Um, But you never hear the guys bad mouth him.

And that's the difference.

Even like the Warriors thing, which got so weird in 2018 and 2019 in a whole bunch of different ways.

And he had the famous blow up with Draymond in the Clipper game.

But those guys don't talk.

They didn't talk shit about him after.

They didn't throw him under the bus.

I can't really think of a lot of instance, even after he left Phoenix.

People weren't afterwards.

They were like, yeah, you know, we're just trying to change the identity of the team.

They weren't like, and they basically just got rid of two guys.

They're like, we're a completely different team.

Now this is the kind of son's brand we want.

And it's, but this also wasn't Durant and Bill's fault.

So what, what are you trying to say about last year?

I never added that up, but I do think people like him.

So it's, it's really complicated.

I've stopped thinking that I think about NBA players the same way NBA players think about each other.

Harden's a really good example where Harden is warmly greeted every team he goes to.

Teams do love Harden.

Yeah.

And so just because I have bad feelings about him because of Philly, or because Rockets fans might not like him, or Brooklyn fans might not like him,

Ultimately, he's obviously very popular among his co-workers, which probably tells us more than we could ever write or say on a podcast.

As far as Durant goes, I wanted to ask you let's say this goes as bad as it possibly could, hypothetically.

Like Houston goes in the tank.

Houston craters.

He has a hamstring and he's like, I'm done.

Ime is like, fuck this guy.

Whatever happens.

How many more stops does this guy have on the world tour?

Yeah.

At a certain point, I would imagine he's got to stick out a situation that doesn't go right.

And he's got to kind of be like, this is where I've put down stakes and I'm here to fix this team.

And maybe I made mistakes, but they made mistakes.

I don't see him washing up in Charlotte and playing somewhere else next season.

Do you?

I thought this Houston stop was going to be the stop.

I loved how they were playing the first six weeks.

And I really felt like that was the perfect team for him.

And he was kind of a leader, but they also had a lot of different ways to go.

But I don't.

What you're describing basically is when do you hit the Chris Paul zone of people are just like yeah, we're good.

It's you're, you're not, you're not worth it basically.

But, but with Chris Paul that happened because he wasn't good enough anymore, you know, to take on all the other stuff that is allegedly sitting there.

We're not talking about a guy who's like I can give you 18 serviceable minutes and like be a good leader.

I mean, Kevin Durant's still an elite player.

So it's sort of strange to be in this kind of situation where it's like would you rather just get off of this, to not make your whole locker room toxic.

Let's say this was true, this burner thing.

What's his move if we're his PR team?

Just wait for it to go away?

Pretend it never happened?

I would probably, if I were him, come clean about it just because he's just too online.

He's not going to not see the entire internet talking about this.

He already responds to people as Kevin Durant.

So for him to be like, I haven't really been paying attention.

I'm going zero dark 30 here.

That's not going to fly with people.

So I'd probably either just be like, look, it's bullshit.

It's not me.

If I want to say something on social media, I put my name on it.

But yeah, this is just such a mystery to me.

It would be weird if, if he went on the counterattack and did the, these were private text threads.

I'm not going to apologize for them.

Do you all, would you all want your private text threads to come out?

Yes.

I bet you wouldn't.

And he just like, and people are like, yeah.

Uh, all right, let's move on.

Um, all right.

Here's from Jared blank.

He had an idea for the NBA lottery.

There's a 15th ping pong ball.

And if that ball is picked as one of the four balls, the team with the first pick now gets the 32nd pick.

It's the ping pong ball death.

Would you tank if you knew there was a one in four chance that you'd basically lose your first round pick?

Now I wouldn't do one and four chance ball of death, but it would be interesting if there was a ball of death and it could move you from one to 14.

You're just at the end of the ladder if you get it, or you just move to the 10th pick if you get it.

I don't know.

I like it.

It's certainly an entertaining version of when you're watching the lottery and you're like, oh my god, did we just lose our pick?

Wait a second.

Maybe we just moved fully 10 picks up, which has happened a couple of times.

Again, all of these lottery and tanking solutions kind of lose me on the third step of advanced chess.

So I'm not sure.

But Jared, I like the idea of Austin Ainge's head exploding.

Oh no!

There's a little skeleton logo on it.

They got the ping pong ball of death!

This is from Joel in Brisbane, Australia.

I thought I'd do a couple Super Bowl emails for you.

I'm here for you, man.

You know how I feel about the Patriots.

Here for me or here for you because you deserve it.

Joel said, tough watch.

Drake may looked over one by the moment.

The Seattle defense reminds me of Draymond green, stealing Jalen Brown's heart in the 22 NBA finals.

We, I guess he's a Celtic fan.

Weren't ready to win.

Just like Drake may.

He knows he has what it takes to get there, but needs to learn how to win.

Just like the Jays did.

I've heard this take before.

Do you think they're like your neutral observer?

You hate the Celtics.

You don't really care.

Do you think there's some sort of positive legacy from that 22 finals where it's like not quite ready yet?

Got your, got your job punched a couple of times, tasted your own blood.

Now you have to come back a couple of years later.

Is this a sports thing you would believe in?

Cause you've had the opposite way where like that happened to the Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid Sixers, and they tasted their own blood and guess what?

They didn't like it.

I think a better example would probably be like Kurt's losing to Mahomes, the Eagles losing to the Chiefs.

Taking out that L, finding out what sort of fine differences there are between winning and losing, sometimes because of the penalty that happened at the end of that game, and then coming back even stronger.

So yeah, I believe in... moral losses sometimes i i gotta admit i hadn't really considered what the warriors triumphant championship really meant to jalen brown recently i think those guys because game four game five game six those guys were just it was a heavyweight fight and they were just in the corner getting annihilated i never wished that you were back on espn more than right now and the idea of like the warriors win the title and you're like i'm just thinking about jalen brown and what he's You know, it's a great example of this magic in the 84 finals.

Yeah.

When uh, he really falls apart and his one of his nicknames that he got after the finals was tragic Johnson.

And it turned out, it turned out to be the best thing for his career.

Like all of a sudden gave him the eye of the tiger was the Rocky three scenario.

And that's happened a few times with the greats over the years where they get their teeth kicked in.

And all that does is make them figure out like, how do I get better?

I mean, There's some cases where the guys get the teeth kicked in and never get the chance to even get back there.

Yeah, I mean I think that between the impatience of fans in front offices and also just like the churn of title contenders in any sport, but especially even in the NBA, it's like tough.

It's kind of.

It is kind of interesting that the Celtics have been this good for so long that they can go through that kind of narrative of ups and downs.

Yeah.

This one's really for you.

I didn't give you this one either.

It's from Marco.

What do you think of Super Bowl 60 being known as the It Follows Super Bowl?

Sam Darnold, well-known for seeing ghosts of the past.

It was obvious during the game they'd been passed on to Drake May.

Now we wait to see who May passes them on to in a big game.

I love this.

For a second, you meant Sam Darnold and Drake May were both virgins.

Maybe, well, they were maybe big game virgins.

Yeah.

I like the it follows concept, though.

Who does Drake May pass the it follows thing down to?

God.

Well, so now that would have to be like, the Bengals are good again.

I guess Joe Burrow's already been in the Super Bowl.

He's already been.

Maybe it's Bo Nix.

Yeah, Bo Nix is good.

Or Caleb Williams that Pats and the Bears play next year.

Maybe in a big game, Caleb Williams just gets it.

I like that you follow those things funny.

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This is from Edward.

Is industry not enough of a big deal or just the right enough of a big deal?

I look forward to this show like nothing since Breaking Bad, but have nobody to talk about it with other than The Watch and Katie Baker's recaps.

Two ringer plugs.

Thank you for listening.

My girlfriend thinks the show is depraved and none of my friends care.

That's from Redbird.

I think for industry fans, we're eating well.

This is exactly where we want the show to be.

And it actually is building out a future for itself where it can be anything it wants.

When you think about where the show started, about these probationary finance executives in this training program, and now it's about international espionage it's pretty incredible.

But I totally understand if somebody is just like.

There's just too many threesomes on the show and too much ketamine.

So I think it's right where it needs to be.

You know, it's like building towards the future, but it's, it still weeds out the squares.

Yeah.

Just when you think the show is going to calm down, all of a sudden there's a giant strap on dildo and you're like, Oh okay, we're doing this again.

And the first episode, um, I think this season and last season I've watched every season.

The first time I was fine with, I enjoyed, didn't really like, wasn't going to tell my grandkids about them.

I thought last season was superb.

And I think this season has been otherworldly like, almost like to the point I'm Starting to go Scientology on it with like trying getting mad when people in my life who I know would like it haven't watched it.

Like we're hitting that point with it.

What do you think is the resistance people have to it?

Is it the raciness of it or is it like the British Britishness of it?

I think it's the people feel like it's not an American show.

So it's a strike against it.

Right.

It's like oh yeah yeah, it's hedge fund show set in England.

No thanks, two of the main characters are American right, and it is is pretty easy.

Giant stars sure, but it's just exceptionally well acted and I thought this season, yeah.

So Jon Snow I'm from Thrones is in the show in a completely different like just physically looks different.

Everything's about I'm different.

I wrote this down CR.

Well, first of all, is this a coastal elite bubble show?

Probably Is the studio a Coastal Leapover show?

Definitely.

I'm sure that both of those shows probably appeal to anyone, anywhere.

Studio's funny.

Studio has lots of fun, manic gags.

And industry has sex and drugs and nail-biting, thrilling moments of corporate and international crime.

But I think largely the languages that they're spoken in and the concerns that they have are probably limited to a certain coastal elite, if you think that that's a real thing.

I wrote this down.

Just for you, if you told me in 2011, 15 years ago, that in 2026, LeBron would be playing in the All-Star game, Trump would be in year two of his second term, you and I would be doing a video podcast on Spotify and Netflix, or there would be a superb HBO show that featured Sally Draper blowing Jon Snow.

What would have blown your mind the most out of those four things?

It would be the latter.

I'd be like, you know what?

LeBron takes care of himself.

Trump, who knows?

Yeah, who knows where this podcast is going to go?

But wait, what happened?

I just can't get over it.

Oh, wait.

I have another tanking question for you.

Okay.

It was a sliding scale. with rookies choice.

I talked about this.

This is from Imran in San Francisco.

I talked about this with Zach a little bit about could rookies get autonomy with where they go, especially in the high picks?

His idea was a was a scale that slides from like 20 million to three, and the the athlete can actually just pick what number is the combo with the right team?

Um, I think, And I this is what I said to Zach and I've refined a little bit but if the five worst teams, whoever wins the lottery or you could just be the bottom five, if it's just a ticket to be in the top five.

And then when the first pick comes up, so it's like the the the five teams have decided that they would take Cooper flag in this spot.

Okay.

So like the, they send their list, they all send their list.

Here's what we would take.

And it's like, by consensus, Cooper Flagg would be the pick here.

Cooper, come on up.

You could go here, here.

You go the Sixers, Spurs, Mavericks, Hornets, or Jazz.

Your call.

Okay.

And then he just gets to pick.

So this is kind of like the voice?

It has become love is blind, cross with the NBA draft.

It would be amazing if they made the number one pick.

Like Darren Peterson comes out from behind the wall and he's like waiting to see what GM meets him on the carpet.

It's like, Oh my God, it's Danny H. Oh, it's Danny H. Cool.

I love Salt Lake City.

It'll never happen, but I really liked that idea.

Uh, I got a few questions about this, but Mitchell Eppner, who's been in a bunch of mailbags over the years um, He called me the media personality who's done the most to dramatize the question of who gets the hammer during the In Memoriam segment of the Oscars.

You really have.

You know what?

I'll take credit for that.

It's something I've always cared about.

I really feel like it's an important thing.

And he mentioned, he sends this before the tragic death of 95-year-old Big Shot Bob Duvall.

Yeah.

He said he sees three incredible choices in order of passing.

He's not ranking them.

Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Rob Reiner.

And now we have Duvall.

And send me a long thing of pros and cons, where we go.

And I would have said Redford before the Duvall thing.

I don't remember we've had four like this in the same Oscars thing.

I don't know what they do, CR.

Yeah, I mean you could make an argument for any of the people the big names that you've mentioned could get their own tribute on the show.

And I would argue that that would probably be quite meaningful.

If every 10 15, 20 minutes, Conan took a break and was just like we just want to pay tribute to the work and life of Redford Keaton, Duvall and Reiner and you could have somebody come talk, you could do a montage.

It almost feels like the in-memoriam is not enough.

That's where I landed as well.

And if we're doing like maybe Redford's the last one of all the ones they do.

But man, I can't remember four like that.

I just hope that Duvall gets the hammer and the last scene is just that guy going.

Let me tell you something, my Kraut McFriend.

Jack Waltz.

If you take the two godfathers out, what's your Duvall Mount Rushmore?

I love him in Apocalypse.

Yep.

Now, I love him in Network.

A later period one that I really enjoy him in is The Paper.

And I'm trying to think of one that's kind of like a funky.

Oh, the TV film version of Want Some Dove.

Yeah.

So I somehow never saw that.

And, uh, my dad loves it.

I might actually bang it out.

He's amazing at it.

Him and Tommy Lee, like five or six of the best hours you can spend is watching that.

It's so good.

So I have apocalypse.

Santini has to be on there.

That's like a once in a decade, crazy performance.

Um, I really love him in days of thunder.

I just love that he did the movie.

Plus there's that famous story of him just pitching Tony Scott out for 10 minutes being furious at him.

And then my last one would be invasion of the body statures which he's in for like 10 seconds on a swing in a priest outfit, just being fucking crazy, just for no reason at all.

They just throw them in there.

Um, this is from Spencer.

After listening to Bill and CR talk about Miami vice the show for years um, I finally bought the entire series on Blu-ray.

I just finished a season one episode called Home Invaders, about a group of robbers that left Chicago and continued their MO of breaking into homes in affluent neighborhoods.

Blah blah, blah.

Which is basically Heat 2.

Well, that's his point.

He said, gathering info from one of their members who's a valet at a shopping complex.

I thought it sounded familiar.

The exact storyline is part of Heat 2.

Michael Mann breaking out the old hits.

I don't even care because it's so great.

Do you care?

I don't care.

To love Michael Mann is to love Michael Mann motifs.

I was just watching Manhunter last night with my wife and the great samurai man staring out over water.

Even William Peterson's house in Captiva looks a lot like Neil's house in LA, where it's all blue, very minimal.

So, like I think that you go to man, because he has these recurring themes and recurring bits of information and he shares them across films.

I mean, I think that there's like there's connective tissue from thief to manhunter, to heat, to collateral.

Like you know, you could, just you could, it's.

It's actually one of the best parts about loving his movies.

I think you could go through the first season and a half of Miami vice and probably pull 10 movies out of there.

Like the Bruce Willis episode, a hundred percent of movie.

The Great McCarthy episode, 100% a movie.

Lombard, that Dennis Farina character, the mob boss.

You could have easily turned that into a two-hour something.

There are two two-hour movies in Miami Vice in the first season.

You just keep going and going.

What are we just going to do it?

What are we just going to say, fuck it, and just do a rewatch of it?

Of the entire first season?

Yeah.

Are you throwing this out at me?

This summer, should we just say fuck it?

Just do 20 minutes an episode?

Yeah.

Well, we did Calderon's Revenge on rewatchables.

I do get the email from time to time people wondering why we haven't done the pilot.

That would also be a rewatchable to me.

Which peaks with.

I mean, there's a couple great moments, but it does peak with Tubbs dancing with his buttons open to rock.

Well, somebody watching watching me in a strip joint is it streaming right now?

I don't think it is.

No, it is.

It's on uh, i think it's on pluto and paramount.

But you can, you can bang these out like they'll have sales on like fandango, and it's like i did it.

I banged it out.

I just was like i'm taking this down um, i'm gonna have to think about that, just just putting it out there.

Maybe we'll have America vote on this and top five tanking.

John S. wants to know, is Taylor Sheridan basically white Taylor Perry?

I checked with Van and Van had some thoughts.

What were Van's thoughts?

Van was like, we've talked about this.

I was like, I don't know if we had.

Here's the thing.

I think both of them are creating content driven toward certain kind of bases slash, pieces of turf that are available.

And Sheridan, like we talked about earlier with the coastal loop bubble, Sheridan's like there's like 45 states out here that are underserved.

I'm just going to make shows for them.

But I actually do think, I wouldn't say it's like, these aren't like all white shows.

Like there's a lot of stuff going on.

They definitely veered toward conservative.

Like I didn't watch Lioness, but Van said Lioness got super conservative at one point.

I think Landman Season 2 had a couple moments.

Yeah.

But in general, I don't think Tyler Perry could have written Sicario.

That's my answer.

Okay.

I would just love to see a big dinner party with all the characters from Perry and Sheridan just hanging out.

Maybe they should just do a movie where they just kind of merge worlds.

Yes.

Medea's lioness.

Speaking of rewatchables...

This is from Garrett from Ohio.

I am listening to the scent of a woman rewatchable.

Craig.

Producer Craig asks who is more important to the pod, meaning the rewatchables, Cruz or Pacino.

This made me think, if the rewatchables is the NBA, Cruz is LeBron and Pacino is Steph Curry.

He keeps going.

It's mostly believed Steph influenced the league more, although LeBron went to and won more titles and is the better overall player.

By the way, they won the same amount of titles.

Cruz has made more appearances and probably won more movies, but Pacino has shaped the podcast more.

Vincent Hanna is like Steph's long pull-up three in OKC in 2016.

The league and the pot are in the spots they are today because of it.

It's from Garrett from Ohio.

I think he's right that Pacino probably means more to the pod, even though Cruise has been in more movies.

Yeah, I think that I get more out of bad Pacino movies than I get out of bad Cruise movies, of which there aren't that many.

But, for instance, I'd rather watch The Devil's Own than Oblivion.

You know like, i just really think that al pacino represents what i love about, like taking a big swing on a piece of shit and trying trying something when you're playing the devil and cruz is just.

He's just tom cruise every time.

You know what i mean.

And he, he fits himself into certain things and you can watch him in eyes wide shut and you can watch him mission impossible and it's consistency there.

So i guess that is lebron.

I think this is a good, good metaphor, Yeah.

The LeBron Cruz thing is, is a pretty good combo.

Like when you think about like just reliable year after year, sometimes they'll get a little they'll, they'll take a swing at something like Cruz will be like fuck it.

I'll do this Stanley Kubrick movie in London for a year and a half.

LeBron is like, I'm going to try to go back to Cleveland and I'll get them to trade for Kevin Love.

We'll see how this works.

When's the last time you watched Eyes Wide Shut?

Just out of curiosity.

So you watched it last weekend, right?

We did that.

We did it for rewatch was a while ago.

And now it is like this movie that it was like number 12 on iTunes.

It's a canary in the coal mine kind of movie now.

Well, Tubi was running it.

I saw too that it was like most popular on Tubi and people revisiting it based on certain real life things.

Did you learn anything this time around?

Um, I think that it just is one of those movies that it could be another hour longer and I would not blink.

You know like it just could go on forever.

I think it's just also one of the great movies to read about.

After you get done in a watch is to go on and just go through every single symbol, every single frame that it's like look, you put a pentagram behind him and you're just like holy shit, did he?

So it's just one of the great texts, but obviously pretty relevant now.

Yeah.

My son watched.

He'd already seen The Shining a million times, but then he watched 2001 and And then he watched full metal jacket and he was with his friends on a.

It was like a four day weekend.

And he's like, which, which Kubrick movie should we watch?

And I was like, full metal jacket.

And then the next day he came back cause they were all like sleeping in somebody's house.

And he came back and he was like, yo.

And I was like, you liked it.

And he was just like, Hey Joker.

I was like, you liked it, didn't you?

And he was like, he was like, what an amazing movie.

Was he doing D'Onofrio?

Yeah.

Okay.

And he's like, I looked for the rewatchables.

I couldn't find it.

And I was like, we haven't done it yet.

He was like, how have you not done rewatchables on that yet?

So he's really into it.

So on Sunday we watched a room to 37 which I think is in the running for um, one of the best documentaries in the past 20 years.

Amazing stuff.

It's just like the craziest documentary.

But you don't want to do eyes wide with him too uncomfortable with ben.

Yeah, my wife and i talked about it because he wanted to watch it with us and we were like we're good, there's still some lines we don't want to cross with you.

Eyes wide shut might be one, maybe solo that one, or uh, Or watch with your girlfriend.

But we're going to pass.

Oh, my God.

But yeah, Room 237.

I don't know how they pulled it off.

Where they just take all these people who's... And you can find it basically anywhere.

But all these different people who interpret different things about The Shining.

Yeah.

And I actually think this would be a good rewatchable.

This is the Room 237.

Or it would just be a good segment.

Because there's a couple guys where I'm like...

The Calumet Cairns guy, I'm like, this is pretty good.

He does only put it behind the scene, in the background twice.

This has to mean something.

The thing that everybody is obsessed with is the final scene of Eyes Wide Shut.

Oh, yeah.

And whether Helena looks back.

Because they gave their kid away.

Or she's taken, yeah.

We did a pretty close... second-spectrum watch of that the other night.

Here's the thing with Kubrick.

By all accounts, just an amazing preparation guy.

Even in Room 237 they talked about how he went to the hotel that he was scouting for three months and just checked out every part of it.

So everything that's in The Shining like the carpet, the fact that the guy who the boss that Nicholson goes to see about the job, he's got a window in his office when there's no way there would be a window in that part of the hotel.

And it's like, everything happens for a reason.

But then you could also go.

Maybe Kubrick was just old and he just Just didn't realize that that room should have a window.

And it's like, I don't think so.

I think he really did think about every aspect of this.

First of all, I fully think he thought about every single thing.

But it's funny because when you're watching Eyes Wide Shut and you're like, this feels so otherworldly.

It's because he rebuilt New York City.

On English downstage stages

And he did it like... detail perfect to like where the newspaper boxes would be.

And you're like, what was he trying to say?

And it's like, well, he also hated flying.

So he didn't want to shoot in New York.

So like, I guess it's kind of, it can be both.

Yeah.

Eyes wide shut.

You could say he's trying to tell us all this stuff that we're now finding out about in the Epstein files.

Or he just wanted to make a movie about a fucked up marriage and what would happen if something went sideways.

Who knows?

Um, Somebody named CP, didn't give his full name, asked if he's too late on the potential of a month-long theme month called the Rewackables and suggested Two Moon, Junction and Tarzan.

I thought with Bo Derek, I thought I'd leave you with that one.

I rejected Rewackables.

I don't...

No comment.

Yeah, we're not going to do rewatchables.

But yeah, that's it.

That's all I have for you, CR.

How are you feeling about the Sixers heading into the end of the All-Star break?

Well, I'm glad we're not Houston.

Good to see you.

Oh, by the way, last thing before we go.

I told you this yesterday.

March is going to be CR month on the rewatchables.

It really is.

What made you do this?

Just like it's time?

Finally, you were worried about my wandering eyes?

No, it's time.

No, there's a couple movies that we were due and it's going to kick off on March 2nd on Netflix.

We're going to do a live Sicario.

I won't spoil the other movies, but we're going live Sicario, Mew and Fantasy.

It doesn't feel real.

I'm not going to believe until we're actually live.

Are you going to be nervous for this?

Is this going to be more nerve-wracking than a live show?

I've been training for this my whole life.

Live Sakari on March 2nd.

All right, Sierra, good to see you.

Thanks.

So we're going to keep going on the mailbag with Joe House, who's here.

Hello, Joe House.

Hey!

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So we're going to talk about a couple over-unders that we love.

We also love the Charlotte Hornets for the division.

They're a couple games behind Orlando, but that's still in the 4-1 range house and I don't really fully understand it.

Well, they have a little bit of a difficult schedule.

Sure.

And, you know, they have to jump over the heat as well, don't they?

Yeah, they have to jump over both of them.

But right now, it is...

Orlando is 28 and 25.

Miami is 29 and 27 and Charlotte's 26 and 29.

So 27 games left, they'd have to make up four losses basically.

And I actually think that's four to one.

I think that's relatively reasonable to me.

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All right, house.

We're going to do a mailbag in a second, but I talked about over under.

So the season comes back on Thursday.

And you and me and Sal and Hench have spent a bunch of time trying to figure out bets we made.

You guys do award stuff which I'm not allowed to bet on, but we did wonder, like the Cooper flag rookie of the year, odds did seem really high, considering I don't trust if Dallas is going to shut them down.

On FanDuel, there's some teams that have tanking potential.

You can't even find the over-unders.

I sent you eight and I want to go through the three.

Honorable mention for me for over-unders, just for win totals.

And then the five I like.

But these three stood out to me.

Charlotte, who is 26 and 29.

Their under is 42 and a half.

So they basically have to go 16 and 11 or worse to basically go 42 and 40 or worse.

17 and 10 beats the over under.

My question for you, House, is 17 and 10, that seems high for Charlotte.

Like I was looking at, Just like the last 25 games in the league.

The only team that went 18-7 was Detroit.

Five teams had 17 wins or 16 wins.

We just have more parity.

17-10, I just think is going to be hard.

But I also don't want to bet against Charlotte.

So I think it's a stay away.

Yeah, I like the idea of staying away.

I think the number is fine at like 42.

So the under makes sense to me.

41-42 feels like the right number.

But we don't want to bet the under.

And right, that's the karma.

And we already have cash in pocket with a beautiful over for Charlotte this season.

So let's keep the karma headed in the right direction.

Golden State is 29 and 26.

Their over-under is 43 and a half.

If you go over, that means they only have to go 15 and 12 the rest of the way.

And it looks like they might have Porzingis back.

I think it's a stay away just because I don't trust them from a health standpoint.

But I also I don't think they're going to tank.

I'm violently opposed to Golden State success.

I am heavily invested in them missing the playoffs.

I don't think that they have any rational incentive to bust ass through the balance of this season.

The mileage on Steph. you can't get it back.

So the right thing to do is to get to the end of the season, try and, over the course of the summer, figure out how you're going to be competitive next year.

Is there something that can be done with Jimmy Butler over the course of the summer and go from there?

I agree.

It's a stay away.

And I also think this next one's a stay away, but I thought the number was intriguing.

The Lakers right now are 33 and 21.

The over-under for them was 48 and a half, which means they would have to go 16 and 11 down the stretch to go over.

The only reason I mentioned that is because I think the Lakers are the hardest record team to figure out, where you catch them on the wrong night and then they just suck.

You're just like, what is this team?

And it almost feels like two losses, but it's only one loss.

And then they'll have other games where they suck for three quarters and then they just have Luca and LeBron on their team and they just figure it out down the stretch.

I find it hard to believe they're not going to go 16-11, but I also don't want to bet on it.

They're an under for me.

Their schedule is backloaded to take advantage of the fact that they become a primetime team in these Saturday games, these Amazon Prime games, these NBC games.

LeBron's not playing in any back-to-backs.

Oh, that's a good point, too.

Their strength of schedule is inside the top 10 in terms of what they have to face over the balance of this season.

15 and 12 would be under for them.

Okay, here are the five I like.

Cleveland.

Right now, 34 and 21.

The over is 52 and a half.

They would have to go 19 and eight over their last 27 games.

Last 25 games, House, they're 18 and seven, fifth in net.

They added Harden, they added Schroeder, and I really like the Harden thing.

They haven't been healthy all year and I think To me that's a 60-plus win team, especially with Harden, the fact that he's durable and they could have somebody take a night off and he could just run the offense.

Everything could run through him.

They'd have to go 19-8 to beat that over and under, and I like it.

I'm over for them.

I like it too.

The crazy thing is, with the 18-7 over their last 25 and then us projecting them out to win basically another 20 games, that's them playing at a 70 win percentage north of that which they just did over the last 25 games 72 win percentage but that they have to hold in at that level.

Now I think the way that they reinforced their depth Obviously Harden, and what that means in terms of taking off load for Mitchell.

But more importantly, Schroeder backup, competent guy, guy that can consume minutes.

And the Ellis piece of this is super underrated.

We're barely scratched the surface of what Ellis is going to be.

For them, I think that they are loaded and their schedule is great.

They get Brooklyn twice.

They get Dallas twice.

They have the Bucs twice.

And then all of the bums, Chicago, the Pelicans, the Wiz, the Pacers, Utah.

I really like the way that Cleveland's lined up here.

All right, Cleveland over 52 and a half.

That's first.

Second one, CR and I talked about Houston and the KD burner scandal earlier.

Burner gate, burner files.

Houston's 33 and 20.

Their over-under is 51 and a half.

18 and 11 or worse hits the under.

I love the under.

I just think they're a different team with Adams out and they haven't had VanVleet all year and Adams.

Wish Shangoon was their superpower.

Talked about this with Zach on Sunday.

That's gone.

I don't know what kind of injury risk they can afford either at this point.

They have some weird off the court stuff.

They're in a harder conference.

There's less teams throwing games away in that conference.

And just in general, 18, 11, 17 and 12, 16 and 13.

I feel like they're in there and I'm under house.

Yeah, it's a strong under for me.

I said on this program, I think you said it three weeks ago.

Yeah, I love them under 53 and a half.

That number ticked down to 52 and a half.

And now it's sitting at 51 and a half.

And it's still an under.

In addition to the points that you just made, Kevin Durant is third in the NBA in minutes per game.

That is not sustainable.

That does not make any sense.

That's not a path. to success as you enter this playoff run.

And the reason that he is in that position is because they can't score at the end of games.

They really, really miss Dylan Brooks.

Think about that.

But it's FBV and Dylan Brooks both missing.

The perimeter scoring just isn't there.

There's some tough Shangoon stats.

Thompson can't shoot at all.

Teams aren't even guarding him anymore.

Um, I I don't want to like cross them off cause I still think they might be a bitch to play in the playoffs, but I think for a regular season hard under next one.

I'm a hard over for Minnesota is 34 and 22.

They're over is 49 and a half, which means 16 and 10 hits it.

And notice like Houston has 29 games left.

Cleveland has 27.

Everybody has 27, 28 or 29 left.

Minnesota only has 26 schedules spread out.

They got to soon.

New um they i think have underachieved a little bit at 34 and 22.

Anyway, i like the team, i like the durability of the team and 16 and 10, with also them trying to get into the top four, which is another piece with them, because you get top four, you get to host home court.

So i have this marked down as minnesota over.

I am right there with you.

They are jumping over Houston in my lineup there.

I don't count the Lakers as a top 14, but for the reasons I just mentioned.

So Minnesota into that top four makes sense.

They're incented.

And the thing that is the remains to be seen, two pieces.

Anthony Edwards reminding us on a national stage that he is that dude.

And Minnesota does get a bunch of primetime games down through the balance of this schedule.

And I think that AO acquisition is just going to be...

We're going to really feel it.

I loved it so much.

And somehow they got Mike Conley back with the most obscure rule I've never heard of in my life.

That if you trade a guy and then he gets traded to a second team and waived, you get him back.

Who knew that was a rule?

That's a rule?

I thought if you traded a guy, we weren't able to get him back for the rest of the year.

Now it's like, if you trade him and trade him again, I get him back?

Nobody wants him.

He has a home in Minnesota.

Let him go home.

I mailed you and Sal and Hench this.

If you do a West Final Four right now, who are going to be the four West semifinal teams?

If you win OKC Denver, San Antonio Minnesota, that's plus 652.

And I think that's way too high.

I think that's one of the best bets on the board.

I couldn't agree more.

Because I think that's the top four.

So somebody's going to have to beat them not having game seven at home.

We've seen...

You know, we've seen the higher seed.

Somebody will blow it.

We saw it last year with Cleveland.

We saw Milwaukee a couple years ago.

It's not like it doesn't happen, but I just think that's going to be the final four.

Those are the four best teams in the West as we sit here today.

The only thing would be Minnesota Lakers, if that's the four or five.

I think it's just a terrible outcome for the Lakers.

They cook the Lakers.

We just watched this last year.

It's a 4-1 at best for the Lakers.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

They win one game.

With the Lakers over under.

I was almost wondering would they try to tank to get to the six just to get away from Minnesota?

All right.

Next one.

Two more.

Nick's 35 and 20 right now.

Over is 52 and a half.

And they'd have to go 18 and nine the rest of the way in 27 games.

Some of the same stuff you have in the East with a bunch of shitty teams.

I love the Alvarado thing when it happened.

I thought he was one of the best stealth guys to get at the deadline.

I wanted the Celtics to get him.

You could already feel how different they look with him.

They have a better bench.

I think they're I just feel like they're going to take off.

It's weird to say you would like the overs for both the Knicks and Cleveland.

But I think by the end of the year, it's going to be a top three with those three.

And I like the over.

It makes sense.

It's what their priors lined up.

And we took overs for both Cleveland and the Knicks at the outset of the season.

I had the Knicks getting the 53 or 54 wins this season.

And I had Cleveland in like the 58 win category.

And so the fact that they had the hiccups that they had regular season wise, but now they're poised.

They have the rosters lined up. especially Cleveland depth wise.

We just need OG to get more healthy than not.

If we get OG, if you tell me OG is going to play 75 of these Knicks games down the stretch, then I love it.

So the last one.

I just had to look on Fando again to make sure the odds didn't change, because I can't believe this one.

It's an insane number.

I just can't.

I'm stupefied by it.

Orlando is 28 and 25 right now.

Their over-under is 45 and a half wins, which means they would have to go 18 and 11 to be over.

If you get 17 and 12 or worse and you win the under 16 and 13, 15 and 14 house last 25 games, they had the 24th net rating.

They have not passed the eye test all year.

It is not once.

It has looked like a team that has had something wrong with them for four months.

I don't know what's going to change.

And I have no idea why anyone would think they're going to go 18 and 11.

I thought this was insane.

I said not once.

They did beat the Knicks in Madison Square Garden.

Right, and we were like, oh, maybe here comes Orlando.

And then they lost to somebody shitty, like two days later.

What's the Franz forecast?

That's the most important thing for this.

Like, when does he come back?

Yes.

Will he come back?

Put it this way.

This number has it built in that he's coming back.

So if he doesn't come back, that helps the number, but...

No, this is a huge under for me.

This team offensively, has been one of the most dysfunctional in the entire NBA, which is so weird to say because the Bain acquisition was successful.

And the emergence of Black... he's, he's really effing good.

Right.

And and Paolo has numbers, but they're empty calories, for for for some reason they still have two games against Cleveland, two games against Detroit, two games against Minnesota, Oklahoma city and Boston.

Give me the under baby.

I honestly, I keep checking it to understand, try to understand what's happening.

So, all right.

So we're over Cleveland 52 and a half, under Houston 51 and a half, over Minnesota 49 and a half, over next 52 and a half and under Orlando 45 and a half.

I think those are five good ones.

We're gonna take one more break, come back and do the rest of the mailback.

And now it's time for the paradox playbook presented by by Pepsi.

Have you heard about the Pepsi paradox?

It's this idea that when labels and bias disappear in blind taste tests, 66 of people in last year's Pepsi challenge preferred the taste of Pepsi zero sugar over Coca-Cola zero sugar.

Well, if your favorite team had that winning percentage, they would almost always make the playoffs, right.

Which got me thinking, sports is full of paradoxes like this.

You see this every year, especially in the NBA.

The NBA season is so long.

We always see a team that we don't really take seriously around the 50 game mark.

I remember this happened with the 2022 Celtics, 25 and 25.

You just kind of forget about them.

And yet every year there's that one late bloomer.

It happens in the NFL too.

And there was the Celtics, the Mavericks, the year Luka made the finals with them.

And as you're looking at the NBA season this year, just kind of look around the landscape.

Who hasn't peaked yet?

Who might peak?

It doesn't make a lot of sense.

You would think the good teams would reveal themselves before Christmas, but sometimes that doesn't happen.

That's the paradox.

Well, let me ask you this question.

Are you picking the zero sugar cola that you actually prefer?

Or are you settling for the label that you think you prefer?

Hmm.

Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

Let your taste decide.

All right, House, have some good mailbag questions.

I tried to not give you any of the tanking ones.

This is a long email from somebody named Marco P. in British Columbia.

Oh, Canada.

It's one of the more interesting theories I've gotten in a while, and I can't wait to read it to you as a fellow lover of NBA history.

He says, I don't think you can win a title with your best player resting.

If your best player plays less than 60 games, you cannot win a ring.

I pulled that number straight out of my ass.

Then I went through the last 45 years of NBA history.

Apparently my ass has great aim.

Now he mentions the 21 bucks championship.

Giannis played 61, but there was a post COVID.

It was a 72 game season.

So cross that off.

Yeah.

2019 Raptors.

Kawhi played 60 games.

Then he writes, that's it.

Since 1980, no other team won a ring.

If their best player played less than 60 games.

Why do I bring this up?

I have Wemby in the rookie draft.

My fantasy league is a five-year keeper.

I'm increasingly realizing I'll never win with him.

Um, my theory is you can't win a title with your best player playing under 60.

Is that the team develops chemistry and identity without your star?

When he comes back, the actions halting and awkward, especially in the playoffs.

And then he says, yes, I'm aware.

Curry played 51 in the 2018 championship, but we all know who the best player was on that team.

Shots fired, but also not wrong.

Um.

So he says um.

Unless you're a historical super team with 1A, 1B options like Curry and Durant, you cannot let your best player miss more than a quarter of his games.

You cannot afford to rest them.

That's what history says.

So I went back further and I looked at everything basically since Bill Russell.

The most anyone missed was Bill Walton in 1977.

He played 65 games, missed 17.

Is there something to this?

We have.

Basically the only outlier we've ever had is this completely insane 2019 Raptors title, which I want to go in with you in a second.

Other than that, we've never seen it happen otherwise with resting in a title.

Why is that?

I'm shocked that you took the time to go investigate even further and really test this.

It feels self-evident to me.

I don't mean to be Captain Obvious here.

Yeah.

Playing 70 of the games feels pretty effing important to me with your best player, for the reasons that the author of the email shares.

But have you ever heard somebody mention this in the discourse?

Like, If you don't play this guy enough, history says you actually won't win the title.

I've never heard anyone say that before.

Here's what's annoying and depressing and disappointing.

We're only talking about it because of the last five years of the effing NBA.

I know.

The arrival of load management and the arrival of the guys looking for opportunities to The team's, looking for opportunities to rest their players.

And then you can't have the combination of load management and injury, which is basically the last five years of Kawhi Leonard.

I mean, this is why Kawhi with the Clippers is a complete bust.

So I don't The 2019 Raptors legitimate title they won and I actually ended up really liking that team.

I respect the title.

It's also an incredible outlier.

Where you had, LeBron goes to the West that year, Cleveland blows up.

Celtics have all that talent.

Gordon Hayward comes back, second year of Kyrie, Brown, Tatum, they blow up for whatever reason.

Giannis is a year away, not quite there yet.

Lakers are a year away from getting AD.

Houston and Golden State are probably the two best teams.

Houston can't get by Golden State, even though KD is hurt.

And Golden State loses KD in the playoffs, right.

And then we get to the finals and kd comes back and blows out his achilles in game five, followed by clay thompson blowing out his acl during a hot streak in the third quarter of game six.

Now you could say this was how five-year little nba dynasties are supposed to end.

It's too much wear and tear.

It's all that.

It was an iconic hawaii playoffs.

Fred VanVleet in the finals had a just insane heat check.

Curry stunk in game six, but partly because he was the only guy they had to guard.

They threw everything at him.

He was exhausted.

He was every other game Curry at that point.

Yeah, this was, we've seen it with the 89 Lakers, the 87 Celtics, like the 04 Lakers.

We've seen these great teams at the tail end.

They can't sustain it.

And the Raps had a great player.

They had luck from injury.

No injuries.

Seven really good guys, all who could create their own shot.

And a couple wildcard heat checks, and they deserve to win.

With that said, I still can't believe what happened to the Warriors.

And I almost think of them first when I think of that playoffs, right?

It's like, what are the odds KD and Klay are going to go down in the playoffs?

That was fucking insane.

Yes, yes.

I mean, it's the only thing I can think of.

That's like in the neighborhood.

I'm probably missing something obvious, but I think of Isaiah Thomas.

Yeah.

Against the Lakers.

Yeah.

That's a really good one.

And how, what impact that had.

So that brings us, by the way, with Kawhi.

They also had that game seven against Philly, with the crazy shot in the corner.

And that whole, that game is nuts when you go back and actually look at that game.

Kawhi took 39 shots in that game.

Van Vliet was like in an absolute shooting coma, like kind of nobody else stepped up.

I think maybe a Baca stepped up and Kawhi just basically carried everybody.

So that leads to our next question.

What Boston sports moment would you compare the game seven Halliburton injury to?

We were so close yet to quote Dan Campbell.

It may have been our only shot.

I am a fan of the 26, 27 NBA champion, Indiana Pacers.

Corbin H wrote that.

So there's no Boston sports moment.

Like the only one would be like, if you know, when Brady blew out his ACL, that happened in the past giant Superbowl.

There's no way to compare it to game seven.

Your best part gets hurt as you have the lead in the first half.

I think the only one you can compare it to is that.

Isaiah again, because same situation that when he sprains his ankle in game six against the Lakers comes back.

They almost win and it gets pulled away from them at the end.

And then he's too hurt to really do anything in game seven.

Detroit had never won the title before, like Indiana.

That's the only one I can think of where it's like, wow, if that didn't happen, we might've won.

I'm more disappointed in you taking the bait of picking one that asks about a Boston sports moment.

Well, that team is just trying to get in the mailbag.

Come on.

I understand that.

He's smart.

It was well played by him.

The crass pandering.

It's well played.

And you bite down hook, line, and sinker on it.

So I was trying to think, what would be the other game that was like this anywhere?

You need the best part of the team going down.

I think it would have to be a team that's never won.

So that kind of rules out Katie and Quay going down and back to back years.

You kind of have to go to sports movies.

You have to go to like Pele and victory and getting hurt.

And even he came back and tied the game.

I don't, the Halbert and things like, well, it's like over here.

It's not to make it seem like it's comedy, but it's like, it's so fucking crazy that that happened.

I can't wrap my head around it.

So um, All right, I didn't want to throw a bunch of tanking things at you, but I really like this idea from Nick in Nebraska and I think you're the perfect guy to mention this to.

Nick in Nebraska, let's go.

Nick in Nebraska, no relation to Nick Aida.

He talked about college football playoff bracket and how a committee gets in a room and proclaims the rankings right.

The committee says, here are the rankings from one through 12th.

There's a narrative.

They buy into it.

Good wins and good losses matter, he writes.

The draft lottery has been a breeding ground for conspiracies.

Like Ken Loong in industry, you go straight to the problem.

Determine the draft order by a committee that makes the order based on who deserves what pick.

It incentivizes the best behavior.

Karma becomes a real thing.

Think of the content.

Now, I don't think they're going to do that, but it did inspire an idea that I want to throw at you.

Okay.

So I think we have 1,001 ping pong combos for the lottery.

I think that's what it is.

Great.

Whatever it is.

I think it's 1,000.

What if we had a karma rankings committee?

I was doing the lottery karma rankings every year where I was like who actually deserves the number one pick based on how they handled their business during the season.

Did they have bad luck with injuries?

Is it their fault they're in this situation?

Did they conduct themselves with grace? and competitiveness and sportsmanship.

If we had a karma rankings committee and we put another 250 balls in the lottery and we had a committee and they actually voted 150 balls to first place, 75 for second and 25 for third place.

And those balls just went in the lottery.

Would you like that?

Extra balls, extra balls with committee and stuff to argue about and content for us.

I mean, I really feel like you're baiting me right now because of what happened last year with I won't curse the Dallas Mavericks, the least deserving team in the history of the NBA draft, in the history of the NBA lottery.

Right, so they would have had balls taken away.

They would have lost 100 balls.

They should have had no balls.

They should have been eunuchs going crazy.

So my thought was 250 balls go in, 150 for first place, 75 second, 25 third.

But we also vote on two teams that should lose balls.

Yeah, now we're talking.

We take away 150 balls, 100 from the first place and 50 for second place.

So if we voted right now for the karma for I want to give these guys more lottery balls, they deserve them.

Indiana has to be the first choice.

Why?

Because why do they have to be first?

They've had a ton of injuries.

Have you watched them?

Like they still like give a shit.

Like they're trying to win some of these games.

They went on a stretch there.

As soon as Matherin went out, they went on an all time, all tank.

I mean, it was McConnell was hurt.

I know, but, but the best guy in a game seven last year.

Well, I would vote for them first.

So who would you vote for first?

Washington, obviously.

I had that second.

But Washington, I think, has handled the season with relative dignity.

They've tried to compete, you know, within reason.

And it's a super young team.

And they've given some veterans an opportunity to go out and, you know, distinguish themselves.

Maybe Marvin Bagley III will get another contract out of the fact that he showed decent for Washington now got traded.

Now it's at Dallas, like killing it for them.

Right.

So I'd have them second.

I would actually have Milwaukee.

I would give 25 extra ping pong balls.

None of this was their fault.

They traded.

Interesting.

They amnestied whatever they did with Dame Lillard.

They tried to get Miles Turner.

You don't think that's their fault?

Like the extraordinarily poor front office management?

Yeah, but they won the title with what they did though.

Like they're in this position partly because they did that Drew Holiday trade and then did the Dame trade, because they were constantly trying to actually compete.

The game trade turned out to be an act of desperation that that didn't pay off, but you want to reward them for taking the swing, the big swing.

Listen, is there a guy available who can, who can hoop, who might have some personal issues?

They welcome them in milwaukee.

It's like nobody wants cam thomas.

We'll take them.

Uh, i like i would.

So i would go indiana washington, milwaukee.

Your order would be washington, indiana.

And who?

I would have said Charlotte, but they're too good.

Yeah, Charlotte's too good.

They're not going to be in the lottery.

All right, so you only have two boats.

And then for the takeaway ping pongs, Utah has to be number one.

I honestly think that, I'm sorry, I would reward the Pelicans maybe.

I don't think the Pelicans.

Yeah, because it's almost like you feel bad because of Joe Dumars giving their pick away.

But the thing is you reward them and then that pick just goes to somebody else.

So you're rewarding Atlanta.

Atlanta's like, please reward us.

Atlanta gets even more.

So if you're taking the balls away, Utah would be my number one pick to be penalized here.

Well, they have to be because they did the most dishonorable thing at exactly the wrong time.

The true mistake for Utah, they can compete.

They can win on lots of nights.

Like I loved your idea of this threshold wins.

Yeah.

27 wins.

This Utah team, is in the mix.

Like they have enough talent to compete for mid-20s kind of wins, all the way up to potentially Oh, I think they could be in the 30s.

I think they could do what Portland did, where at least they could go 32 and 50 if they really went for it.

With Kessler out, I mean, you know, the West is tough and Kessler's out.

So, I mean, I think 27 is secretly a great number.

But their true mistake is like The whole sports world is about to shift its attention away from football.

So you can't do the open and notorious tank right as we're all starting to pay attention.

You go straight from a cousin, Sal, you're crying in your hot water.

This cousin is mostly kind to you.

The cousin was terrible to me.

A lot of people mentioning people are asking.

He was terrible.

He was fine.

Um, but that was the Sunday pod.

And then the Tuesday pod is you losing your mind with Nick, right?

Entirely appropriate, entirely deserved.

Utah jazz.

Cause the bum ass.

Utah jazz did that thing right before the like.

We're all the whole league's going to be together for the all-star break.

Why would you do it right before the all-star break?

I like when they were like the owner, who we actually like, but the owner was like hey, we won the game.

What did we do wrong?

We're getting fined for winning a game?

It's like, come on.

I like the idea of taking ping pong balls away and I would love the chance to vote on that.

And I'd like to volunteer both of us to be in the voting committee.

Yeah, I volunteer.

Honestly, out of all the taking ideas, I think this is my single favorite of karma ping pong balls one way or the other as a way to just ding people that don't behave properly.

Like there's no better way to do it.

Just slap you on the hand.

Quinn G from Denver says, You're really the perfect person for this question.

He stole this from Twitter, he says, but was curious on your thoughts.

He's calling it the Palo theory.

The idea that drafting a good not great player with a top pick is more detrimental than drafting a bust, because said players are likely to be overcommitted by cap resources, especially on the second contract.

It's almost a branch of the Ewing theory, right?

Who's lived this more than you?

Yeah.

I mean, you had John Wall and Bradley Beal.

Yeah.

Well, Bradley Beal wasn't the number one overall pick.

He was a third pick.

No, but I just like the idea of like a top pick, like a top.

A top five pick.

Bradley Beal is third pick.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

Like a top three, top five pick that then gets a giant contract.

Second contract kind of because the team doesn't 100% have a choice.

Sorry.

Sorry to bring up some bad memories.

I don't.

I mean we've we've said this, but however many times on this pod, the single biggest sin you can commit in in the previous iteration of the NBA and the current iteration is to pay a super play, a superstar or, you know, a very good player like he's, like he's a super duper star.

Yeah, that's the thing that hurts you more than anything.

That's why we have a worst contracts draft. uh, on this program.

I would name the theory after Zach Levine personally.

Sure.

And I, and I would, I would kind of open it up.

So it's not just top pick, but it's that conundrum that these teams get into where it's like well, and I've been, I don't.

You can go through all the podcasts I've done and everything I've written.

This has been one that I've been slam my fist down every time.

I would just never do it.

I would never pay the, the non-superstar superstar money.

There's no track record of this ever working.

Find me the player where this was a good idea for it.

It does not exist.

It's terrible.

It does not exist.

Can't find one.

Josh from Dallas writes, none of my four kids have ever been a big basketball fan.

I'm a huge Mavs fan.

Yesterday, my 10-year-old son came downstairs and said, hey, dad, can we watch the dunk contest?

I was a little dumbfounded.

Here are the highlights.

My 10-year-old, who are these guys?

Is LeBron in this?

My 15-year-old, after Keyshawn Johnson missed his attempts but danced.

Why is he dancing?

That was bad.

My 10-year-old later, why aren't any of the Thunder doing this?

My eight-year-old moaning after Carter Bryant missed his final dunk.

This is so boring.

They then asked me why none of the good players were in it, meaning players they know and hear about at school.

I was mad at the NBA.

The dunk contest offended me.

Josh from Dallas.

So you have a 15-year-old kid who is right in the dunk contest wheelhouse.

I think was 15 when the dunk contest came.

Maybe I was 14 in 1984.

You were 15.

And it was easily one of the most exciting things that happened that year for me.

Not a lot of girls for either of us back then.

No, not at that age.

No.

But it was just like, oh my God.

And now, all these years later, I think it comes down to how do you get kids to watch something where they don't know any of the players?

So did James House watch the dunk contest?

No, no.

And I would not for one second suggest to him, like he's doing, whatever he's doing online with his crew.

Yeah.

You know, what would have gotten his attention and what we would have watched together is Max McClung.

McClung would have been going for his fourth.

McClung is an internet sensation.

His reputation preceded him.

It was a stroke of genius for the league to leverage into a cult hero, an internet cult hero, and have him available for it.

We have to find those guys.

Find the interesting stories.

With all due respect to the competitors that gave it a go this year, that was the least compelling, the least interesting.

The only reason to watch it at all is to send the snarky-ass jokes that we sent back and forth to each other.

Also, no more centers, please.

There's a way to do it.

Raise the rim.

Make it the 12-foot rim.

No, if the guys are incented a couple times over the last couple weeks, you guys, you and maybe Nick and maybe Zach, there are.

All the dunks have been done.

I disagree with that.

All the dunks have not been done.

I mean when we, when you get the the real elevated competition that Zach Levine, Aaron Gordon um competition, those were those they're.

They're variations, right?

Um, but there was some genuine innovation, but passing it underneath the butt with the legs straight out um, that Aaron Gordon did.

I'll never forget that.

That was like.

That's up there for me in terms of a wow dunk that I don't.

I don't feel like I'd seen before.

And McClung because of his size and the way that, that the ferocity of that, those are you, those are unique dunks.

Those are, those belong to him.

And those, those stand withstand the test of time, in my opinion.

So you want, like a wild card, a traditional dunker in there.

Even if it was somebody who's not in the NBA or the G league, that would be fine.

Yes.

Yeah.

Somebody that resonates with the culture.

I don't know who that is.

Now, I haven't been watching.

Yeah, we're too old.

Amazon isn't out there.

You only know what resonates with golf.

Like your guy, Anthony Kim.

Tiger.

We never lived to our action.

That was amazing.

I stayed up till 145 in the morning, East Coast, watching Anthony Kim.

A reader named Kyle proposes a new category for the trade value list the missing piece overpay for borderline all-stars and elite role players who would theoretically be the missing piece for a title team.

Some examples Zubats of the Pacers Bane of the Magic Gobert of the Wolves Holiday of the Bucks and Mikael Bridges.

I like this.

This almost should be like its own category.

It should, yes.

For like...

Four teams in the league, these guys are worth 40% more than for everybody else.

I got to figure out how to factor that in.

Doug K from Brooklyn wants to know why we count all-star selections either for guys who got voted and didn't play or the guys that were the placements.

He says seriously, in 10 years we're going to look back and say wow, Brandon Ingram was an all-star in 2026.

Wouldn't it be useful to know that he was the fourth fucking replacement?

No, he wasn't better than Giannis that year.

That's from Doug K in Brooklyn.

I stand by this.

When I look by, I actually agree with Doug.

When I look at the basketball references and you look at the all-star games who played, there's no context for replacement players.

You can look that up.

It's knowable.

It's knowable, but hard to find out.

This doesn't bother me as much.

Okay.

Because when you're evaluating...

But you think about it in the context as the true NBA historian that you are.

You're looking for benchmarks, and one of the benchmarks is all-star appearances.

And it's okay.

You're not looking singularly at one all-star appearance that has an asterisk next to it, because that tells you what kind of a player that you would remember if.

If Brandon Ingram only makes one All-Star game, then you're going to know that that was the context.

So you wouldn't give him an asterisk?

Okay.

Did you like my idea, for at the end of the All-Star game they vote for the top five guys who gave the most shits.

[The Evolution of 'Gate' Scandals, NBA Tanking Paradoxes, and the Return of the Mailbag]-[The Mailbag: Dangerous NBA Teams, Lottery Tweaks, the KD Files, The Oscars, and Cruise vs. Pacino | With Chris Ryan and Joe House]

📋 Summary

The Decline of 'Gate' and the Rise of 'Files'

The NBA Tanking Quagmire

The 'It Follows' Super Bowl and Narrative Losses

Cultural Critiques: 'Industry' and Kubrick

Betting on the NBA Stretch Run

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

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[The Evolution of 'Gate' Scandals, NBA Tanking Paradoxes, and the Return of the Mailbag]-[The Mailbag: Dangerous NBA Teams, Lottery Tweaks, the KD Files, The Oscars, and Cruise vs. Pacino | With Chris Ryan and Joe House]

📋 Summary

The Decline of 'Gate' and the Rise of 'Files'

The NBA Tanking Quagmire

The 'It Follows' Super Bowl and Narrative Losses

Cultural Critiques: 'Industry' and Kubrick

Betting on the NBA Stretch Run

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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