Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by the ringer podcast network, where you can find a new episode of the rewatchables that went up Monday night.
We did snake eyes, which is a really, really, really fun 1998 movie.
Yet another awesome 1998 movie directed by Brian De Palma starring Nick cage.
As Sean fantasy said on the podcast, it was a safety off performance by Nick cage.
He is just, uh, just going for it the entire time.
Really fun movie.
So you can check that out wherever you get your rewatchables podcasts.
Hey, I wanted to bring something back for 2026 for this podcast.
Obviously, I did this when I wrote.
I did this for the first couple of years of when we had this podcast on The Ringer.
And now I'm going to try to get it going again, maybe on Tuesdays.
But I wanted to bring the mailbag back.
I wanted to lean on the listeners for some fun questions.
And you can email us questions at bspodcast33 at gmail.com. bspodcast33 at gmail.com.
Send them in.
I'm going to have somebody go through them.
Send me the best possibles.
And then I'll go through and try to make it a running thing either on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
Maybe near the holidays, but not so...
Really thinking for 2026, especially when this podcast ends up on Netflix probably, I think, in mid-January.
So I want to have some sort of extra gimmick.
I miss doing the mailbags.
It's just pure laziness why we haven't been doing them.
I haven't had time to really go through all the emails, but I'm going to get some help and I'm going to bring it back.
So the mailbag is coming back.
It's not a big announcement, but it's an announcement.
It's not as big of an announcement as the Mavericks firing Nico Harrison less than 10 months after he made the Luka Doncic trade.
We're going to talk about that and a whole bunch of other things with BS Podcast Hall of Famer Chuck Klosterman, who hasn't been on in a while.
We have a lot of topics.
I have some sense of where this might go.
But then, as always with Chuck, you just never know.
And it's next.
We're going to take a break, then bring in Pearl Jim.
This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by State Farm.
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The BS Pod Hall of Famer Chuck Klosterman is here.
We are going to talk about a bunch of stuff.
One thing we did not have on the docket was Dallas Mavericks.
GM Nico Harrison got fired about two hours before we started taping here, at 10 o'clock Pacific time.
And we never talked about this trade and all this stuff on the pod.
So he's getting fired not even 10 months after he made this trade.
Which, when the trade happened, everybody automatically was like wow, this is one of the worst trades of all time.
This is inexplicable.
Why didn't he shop it?
Why would he trade Luca?
Why did he underestimate the fan base?
And then somehow it worked out even worse than it seemed like in the moment.
Davis has played nine games out of like a possible 44 and the Mavs are, are terrible.
The fans are enraged and they finally had to dump this guy before we even got to Thanksgiving.
Can you remember another sports situation like this since we've been alive?
Well, I don't know.
I'd have to think about that.
It's interesting that the GM is under so much fire.
The awareness of the GM of the Mavericks is higher than the vast majority of their roster, which is Right.
I'll tell you what, though.
Obviously, the trade didn't work.
I'm not going to sit here and be like, ah, well, I'm the opposite, actually.
But...
I do think he was treated somewhat unfairly and it was to some degree his fault for not explaining this better, because there is a way to explain this trade that does not seem as insane as it does now.
Yeah.
All right.
What's that way then?
Well, okay.
So they go to the finals in 2024 and Luca plays great.
He's like, cause like 28, nine and eight, I think during that playoff run.
But they barely beat OKC and then they kind of got run by the Celtics and clearly couldn't compete with them.
So, if you're him and the idea is – the real goal is to win a championship, not to be good, not to be competitive, not to be interesting, not to make money, to win a championship.
I can understand the thinking being like we need to go in a completely defensive direction.
Which he said.
And Anthony Davis is –
I mean obviously Luca.
On a scale of one to 10, he's a 10 on offense, maybe a five or six on defense, when he's healthy.
Anthony Davis is like seven, eight on offense and eight, nine, 10 on defense.
So I think that he looked at this and like we got to just completely reconstruct the scene because it didn't we.
We did.
We did the best that we could with what we had, with our best player playing awesome.
And we could not do it.
So we've got to sort of recreate this.
They say, like, why didn't they throw Austin Reeves in there?
I think at the time he was like, that's not he's part of the system that's not going to work.
It's like either all shooting or all defense.
Yeah.
As it turned out, it was a mistake.
This did not work.
And, you know, and everybody who said it was going to be terrible proved right.
But you know OK, so no one talks about him letting Jalen Brunson leave that much, because everyone seemed to think you're supposed to let Brunson leave at the time.
Now, if they hadn't done that, the team is completely different.
There's a lot of things I feel like that could have made this a completely different situation.
But he kind of made that mistake that a lot of GMs do, which is when you make a trade, you're almost supposed to behave like I'm not going to say anything.
I'm just going to let everything play out and I'll be proven right.
He should have been more on the offensive and said this is doing this because we're not going to win a championship the way we're, with the trajectory we're on.
We got to change things.
And I think that would have seemed more reasonable.
It's.
It allowed people to kind of think all these crazy things, that he was trying to actually just move the team to Vegas and all this stuff.
I, I mean, yes, obviously I'm not trying to say it was a good trade.
Now it didn't work, but it wasn't as insane as people responded at the time.
Right.
Well, he, he did leak out the defense stuff and he was saying the defense wins championship thing.
He probably didn't say he'd probably didn't come hard enough.
There's nothing else you could have said, right?
There's like no, like.
That had to be the reason, but he wasn't very definitive in his defense of this decision, you know.
Yeah.
Cause he's, he's like too cool for school.
I mean, there's so many things wrong with the trade and we talked about all of them when it happened, basically that they didn't shop it.
This was the only suitor, that it was the only suitor, because if word leaked out that they might trade Luca, the fan base would have revolted.
So he's trying to sneak it by the fan base.
Basically.
Can I get this deal done without this leaking?
Yeah.
Cause if, if it leaks out, I won't be able to do the deal because the fan base will revolt, which probably should have been a red flag for him in retrospect.
Like, yeah, you're doing a trade that the fan base is going to revolt.
That might not be a great idea, but the bigger thing for me, he didn't get enough in the trade which everybody said at the time.
I whether you like Reeves or not, he has to be in it.
Cause at least he's an asset.
But he was banking on Davis who, as we've seen, and he's, He's had some bad luck.
He got poked in the eye.
Now he has to wear goggles.
He's had some wear and tear over the years.
But he's banking on this guy who's a big guy heading into.
He's already in his early 30s, heading toward his mid-30s.
When we see the history of the league, these 6'11 and up guys as they hit 32 33, 34 they can get really gamey in a whole bunch of different ways.
Versus, Luka was in his mid-20s, with a whole bunch of scenarios where he could have actually gone up a level.
And that was the part I didn't understand.
You're buying almost past performance and giving up future performance with this age piece of it.
That was stupid, along with all the other stuff.
And everybody who said the trade was idiotic was right, okay?
Time has proven it was a bad move.
But I think this is tricky because the way trades are considered while they're happening is very different than the way they're considered now.
And this is what I mean by that.
Okay.
So when the Thunder traded James Harden, okay, who won that trade?
The Rockets.
Okay.
But at the time the trade was made, the idea for both teams was we're doing this to win a title.
That is our motive for making this move.
And it didn't happen.
Now, ultimately, the Thunder down the road do win.
So if we look at this, of all being dominoes that line up and kind of moving in these kind of capricious, arbitrary ways, but kind of ending in the present, the Rockets didn't win that trade.
The Rockets did not win a championship by, you know, by getting hard.
So damn close.
It seems like that they won the trade because obviously he had this amazing career and what was given in return did not really, you know, amount too much.
But if the goal was to win a title, the goal failed.
So If the initial idea about the trade is to win a championship, that needs to be the same criteria you use when considering it in retrospect.
Yeah, that's fair.
Well, so Kyrie blew out his ACL right after the trade and AD got hurt.
Yes.
That was a good acquisition he made that everyone thought was crazy.
Many people question the idea of him getting Kyrie, and that proved to be a smart move.
I really respect your Nico Harrison tag.
I didn't think it was possible.
And you're, you're, you're zagging in a way that I, it's new territory.
It's like watching somebody climb some mountain that's never been climbed.
What I'm just saying is that it was that go to trade was a mistake, and time has proven that it was.
I think to some degree he was treated unfairly.
And I think that the idea of the fan base turning on the guy being the motive for firing him.
Well, I if, for whatever reason, they start the season six and two or whatever, everything is different.
The fan base will then all of a sudden decide, Oh, this was brilliant.
He got us Cooper flag with this backdoor in Nostradamus thing.
I it's.
It is strange to take the side of someone who just got fired for obviously making a horrible decision, but that's what I'm doing.
Like I, I sort of do see the reason behind it.
And I just think the pile on against this guy was kind of cheap.
Anything about him as a person.
What is he like as a guy?
Not that that should matter in terms of how we gauge this decision, but what is he like?
Very well respected in the NBA community.
I mean I had a whole shoe background and when they hired him I think people thought he was like His shoe background.
His big thing is that he blew it with Steph Curry.
Yeah, but I mean, everybody's got one of those probably.
I think he was respected as a relationships guy.
Like he had relationships with agents, players, people on other teams.
And he was somebody that could rejuvenate them.
I think, like when I look back now that it's almost 10 months later and you look back, this was really a.
We don't think Luca can be the face of our team trade, and what's the best we can do.
And almost like we might be getting one over on the Lakers if we get this trade for him now, because they don't realize what they're buying.
But the part they missed, which I said at the time, was like you're lighting a fire under somebody who the one thing that you could kind of ding him on was well, he's not in great shape yet.
He's a little bit of a diva.
Like all things, that by trading him, you're just lighting this massive fire under him to be like oh, I'm going to fucking show you.
So it was like the greatest thing that ever could have happened to him, which people said, including me at the time.
And that was the part he didn't factor into the trade.
Like, what is the potential of what I'm giving up?
What happens if this guy goes up a level, which is what's happening.
I would say two things to that.
One here again, in retrospect, you are right.
So I can't say like that was, you know, a crazy thing to think.
But I think it is difficult to make a move or not make a move, based on the intangible abstraction of whether or not this guy will care more.
If this happens, if this guy will take this in some personal way and he'll lose a bunch of weight and care more.
I mean, that's part of sports.
So you have to factor in human nature and motivation.
That's a good point, that's a point in your favor that, like that's the kind of thing he's supposed to think about.
The other thing is, I do think he probably became fixated on Anthony Davis, that he thought this is the only rim protector who can feasibly score 33 points as well.
Like I can get the most on both ends of the floor from this guy if he's healthy.
And I'm going to gamble on that because I think a lot of these guys it's like you know, And you, I'm sure, will agree with this
There are so many GMs in all sports whose only goal is putting themselves in a position where they can't do anything that will get them immediately terminated.
That if they can always sort of create this- By the way, Chuck, that's life.
That's like the content industry right now.
That's like a bunch of media executives that name a company.
They just don't want to have They'd rather not have a win or a loss.
They would just rather kind of cruise along and not actually take a risk on anything.
And is that good or bad?
That's bad.
That's bad.
And I would say that the idea of a guy thinking maybe we can win the title in two years if all of these gambles come together,
I mean, that makes that gets a guy fired.
And it did.
But it's like a. But the real problem is he didn't make the best possible trade.
So if he's going to shop Luca, you shop Luca.
And maybe Utah comes out of nowhere and says we'll give you Lori marketing and 10 first round picks.
Like you just don't know until it's like.
It's like selling something to your neighbor over putting it in on eBay or something.
Like you're just basically guessing that's what the price is.
You don't know.
Like here, here's a comparison to me in this situation.
Yes.
They should like, should have Reeves in this deal or whatever.
They could have gotten marketing all these different guys, you know teams.
Uh, this happens, I guess, more at the college level in football, but uh, They kind of run the shotgun all the time, right.
And then they get down inside the 10 and they're still in the shotgun.
And you're like, what are you doing?
Why are you doing this?
And it drives you crazy.
Texas Tech used to do this all the time.
It would drive me insane.
Well, here's the deal though.
If you say our philosophy is this, we play in this way.
We go shotgun all the time.
We go fast all the time.
We never eat clock.
It's not what we do.
You can't say like, oh, but when we're inside the five, we flip this.
You got to stay to the program.
Now we're a power running team.
So if he looks at this and he's like okay, you throw in Austin Reeves, maybe what Austin Reeves offers, which is, you know, he's averaging 30 points a game this year,
He's a great offensive player, but maybe he was like this is not the kind of guy that we want for what we're doing, going forward.
We need a different kind of, but he's still an asset.
That's like, it's still somebody that's the issue with that.
Yeah.
And that's, and so you could have flipped him for something else.
You know?
Yes.
I hear again.
It's like, I'm like somebody here being like, oh, actually, it was a great idea to go into Vietnam.
It made a lot of sense.
It didn't work out, okay?
It didn't happen, right?
So I'm not saying that actually what you think you saw is an illusion.
It made the trade.
It was a bad trade.
It failed.
I'm just saying the reasoning behind it was not as insane as people behaved, particularly in that first 48 to 72 hours after the trade happened.
People just sort of lost their mind.
And I feel like that...
Like this idea of winning trades, like you don't know until these things play out.
You know, I mean, we got to talk about it because this is what the job is talking about this shit.
But it's not a good way to do it, because the criteria changes from are we going to win the championship by making this move to, in retrospect?
Who got more value out of this move that both want to snuff?
Yeah, but there's another piece to this, which is the sports fandom connection thing.
It's the same thing that the Red Sox had with Mookie Betts, and this happens over the years.
I remember when I was a kid, the Mets traded Tom Seaver to the Reds, and I didn't care about the Mets, but as a little kid, I was like, holy shit, they traded Tom Seaver.
He is the Mets.
How can you trade the face of your franchise for what you got back, which was basically like Doug Flynn, and I forget who else was in that trade.
But I think that's the piece that I think People can, over and over again, underestimate how much fans give a shit, how much fans get attached to somebody.
That's somebody who maybe doesn't make that much money.
They bought their kid a Luka Doncic jersey for $200, and then the guy gets traded two months later.
Little things like that, they just missed.
It's a lack of connectivity.
It's a lack of connectivity to the fan base and to what they actually care about, which is like I think the fan base actually cared more about just having Luka in their life for 15 years than actually winning the title.
If you gave everybody the choice and they're like all right, 5 chance you win the title, but you keep Luka for 20 years or 90 chance, you win the title with Davis once.
I think all the Mavs fans would be like, we'd rather have Luka and the puncher's chance.
And that's it.
I think that probably is true.
You know, one thing about the Portland Trailblazers is that for many, many years they never really put themselves in a position where they could realistically win a title.
But the fan base liked the team because they're always competitive, you know.
And I do think that, I mean, that's, you know, when I was, okay, so I have a ton of friends who are huge, like Minnesota Viking fans, right?
Because of where I'm from.
And we sometimes sort of had this discussion.
Would they prefer what the Vikings have been over time, which is the most successful franchise, not to win a Super Bowl?
I would say.
When you say, oh yeah, decade to decade, no question.
They're always kind of relevant and in the mix and just can't actually get over the hump.
And then it was like would you rather have that or all these other possibilities of teams who won a championship but for the most part have been down?
And I think for the most part that they prefer the way things have worked out.
They prefer having a good team all the time, over time.
It almost feels as though they've had championships in a weird way.
You're talking about like consistent relevancy versus like that one, like the Florida Marlins 2001 title or whatever, or 2002, whatever year.
That was when they kind of bought the title and then gutted the team.
I mean in the year they went 15 and one and got beat in the NFC championship by Atlanta.
That was obviously a heartbreaking, you know.
You would say like a gut punch loss or whatever.
And yet there's a memory of that season that is positive in their minds.
Like they remember how awesome that was or whatever.
So, even though it didn't end with a championship, As though they feel the franchise is – and maybe it's the exact same thing here.
Like maybe particularly in a place where basketball is by far a secondary concern where it's – where high school football matters more in Dallas than the NBA.
And it may be like, well, it's just nice to have a competitive franchise.
It's nice to always have a good team or whatever.
It's nice to have something fun to look forward to.
And that would be – that obviously is what they should have done.
Like, here again, looking back, that obviously would have been a better move.
I did not expect the response to be what it was.
But it would be strange to hire a GM.
And if he came in he was like well, my number one priority is sort of making sure the fan base is enthusiastic and happy.
It doesn't matter how we finish.
I want the fans to feel good about this.
Well, that's actually a very reasonable move, kind of stratagem.
I don't think you would hire a guy who says that right.
If his number one thing isn't we're going to win a title, that's what a GM is supposed to say.
My job is singular.
I am here to put together a roster that wins us a championship.
Well, do you think you know, like if you were the Mavericks GM and you called me and I was like your one phone call yo, I got to throw this by you.
Let me ask you about this.
And beyond, like how dumb the actual trade is.
There had to be somebody in his life who would have been like dude, they're going to hate you.
If you do this trade, like you, you have to go to the games.
Everyone knows what you look like.
You have to sit in the arena and everybody's going to hate that you traded their favorite player.
And if this doesn't work out and it's not quite as good as you think, or Davis gets hurt or Luca goes to the Lakers and he's awesome.
There's like seven different scenarios I can present to you, where you become the most hated person in Dallas since 1963.
Basically, that's how you would be perceived.
You won't be able to go anywhere.
It won't be fun for you to go to dinner.
It won't be fun for you to go to the games.
It won't be fun for you to go to a convenience store and buy gum.
Name any scenario with you in Dallas and it's going to suck.
So are you sure you want to do this?
You have to be really convicted in the trade and be like, nope, you don't understand.
If we get Davis, people don't understand how awesome he is and I'll take the heat if he's not.
And I just don't think it was even remotely a slam dunk to risk all that other shit.
Did you happen to watch this martin scorsese documentary that was just on?
I still haven't.
I'm i'm, i'm due.
Well, the same situation could be said about him making the last temptation of christ.
He had this idea that this is what i want to do and i think this is what i got to do.
I'm sure there were people in his life saying like don't do this.
Yeah, like it's going to change your perception among the people who currently like you the most Like like, like Christian.
You know, it's like he he's, he's sort of tied into a world with sort of very traditional views in his audience, or people who have sort of you know, artistic reactionaries or whatever the case.
However you want to look at it, you know, but he was like I got to do it.
And if you want to be great, you got to do those things.
You can be good by listening to advice, but to be great you have to ignore it and take the gamble.
You know.
So I guess it's weird.
I didn't think of it.
Come on here and support nico harrison today, but i guess you're supporting the concept of it.
You're not supporting, or at least like to me.
Uh, i can imagine a scenario where things work out differently and this is remembered as a brilliant decision.
But that's not going to be what it is right.
It's not how it's going to be.
So i'm not.
That's what he'll tell people 10 years from now.
Be like look, davis got hurt, kairi got hurt.
I don't think i was wrong.
He can move into that mode pretty fast.
I don't think I was wrong.
I think the team we put together actually would have been really good and we never saw it and we'll never know.
I had um, I was thinking about like growing up and then through our childhoods, when we cared about sports and we had no internet way more time to just think about dumb historical shit.
There were always these trades that kind of levitated above all the other trades or the Babe Ruth thing was more of a sale.
Yes.
But, um, I was trying to think of the worst trades of my lifetime.
And Herschel Walker always gets mentioned first, right?
That Minnesota gave all this stuff to Dallas.
And it was really the wrinkle of the trade where, if they just waived all these players, they got all these extra picks.
Yeah well, it was really a trick in the.
Yeah, it was Like Mike Lynn of the Vikings did not believe that they would actually cut all those guys.
He was like, they're not going to cut everybody.
And it was like, yeah, we're cutting them all.
And we get the pick.
And that was, I mean, that really was on him.
But fundamentally, when that trade happened, people were like, holy shit, the Vikings got Hershel Walker.
They gave up a lot, but Hershel Walker is awesome.
Like, you know, in the moment, it was not crazy.
I mean, I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.
In the first game he played, or maybe it was the second game.
I think it was the first game.
They put him in to return the kickoff.
Right. and his shoe came off, and he still had this huge return.
I don't know, I think he scored, but it was a big return with one shoe on.
And I remember all the Viking people being like, this is it.
We did it.
This is it.
This is the thing that we did.
So it's a defensible bad trade.
Well, it's defensible.
If you look back on it, it probably was certainly the most meaningful trade in modern NFL history.
No question.
No question.
Yes, there's no question about it.
But when it happened, you can see it.
I mean, the worst trade in the history of the NBA somehow isn't the Luka trade.
I think that's the most indefensible trade.
The worst trade ever, it wasn't even the Nets' fault, but the ABA-NBA merger happens.
They have to pay this big premium to join the NBA, and they basically don't have money.
So their choice is like we can join the NBA but we're going to have to sell Dr J and they sell him to the 76ers for 3 million to, basically because they had to, because that was the way to keep the franchise alive, because NBA teams didn't make money back then.
But fundamentally just selling Dr J, as you're entering the NBA when he's in the prime of his career.
There's no worse trade than that.
I guess trading Jabbar, okay, so that was like for Brian Winter, I think Junior Bridgman.
Junior Bridgman, Dave Myers.
And also, Kareem was kind of forcing it.
But he was going to be a free agent in a year and they knew they weren't going to get compensation for him.
So they kind of had to do it.
So another one like this.
So the Broncos trade for John Elway, who is like the best quarterback prospect of the 80s, doesn't want to play for Indianapolis.
Rightly so.
Like, it's pretty smart that he didn't want to go there.
And he's like, basically puts his foot down.
I don't want to go there.
So they trade him for a quarterback named Mark Herman.
Chris Hinton, who was one of the best left tackles in the league.
And in 1984 first, and that's it.
And they get John Elway for two decades, basically.
And I think that's actually a worse trade than Herschel Walker.
But the catch is he didn't want to go there and he wasn't going to go there and he was going to go play baseball.
And they were kind of hamstrung.
Right.
So there's a reason for that.
And now we do not want to go there.
But if that trade was discussed two years after it happens, everyone was like Elway is not going to make it.
Right.
I mean, like that was like he was he seemed at the time like a super athletic guy.
Remember, there's footage of him.
He lined up behind the guards at the center one time.
And it was like there was all this.
He was kind of getting pushed into playing and it didn't seem like it was going to work.
And then.
Yeah.
And all of a sudden it took a terrible relationship.
Now obviously, as it turns out, you know it would have been he won two Super Bowls and he's a Hall of Famer and all of the other settings in the AFC title game.
Siever to the reds.
We mentioned, which had a lot of the same DNA.
The Luca trade, where it's like you're just trading somebody that your entire fan base loved.
And in Siever's case, one titles with right.
One in the 69 title with made the 73 world series with most beloved met ever.
They traded them.
The Deshaun Watson trade was really bad.
And I think we knew it was bad when it happened.
Then they guaranteed his contract.
They gave up all these picks.
That really was the worst NFL trade of all time.
Not Hershel Walker.
I would say for what you gave up, if you add the money into it.
You add the money and the off the field stuff, which had already happened.
Yes.
And a fan base going, wait a second, we don't even want to root for this guy.
You traded all this stuff for him and you get it.
So that's actually the worst NFL trade.
Then the Pierce Garnett trade to the Nets, which I think was way more defensible when it seemed like Prokhorov was just going to spend basically money like the Dodgers are spending now.
And you know they gave up Three first.
They gave up a pick swap in 2017, but it just seemed like they're going to have the highest payroll in the league every year.
So who cares about the picks?
They got rid of Gerald Wallace's.
It was semi-defensible in the moment.
Then a year later, Prokhorov's like, I don't want to spend money anymore.
Now you don't have those picks.
And then the only other one is the most famous NBA one for years was that Parrish-McHale trade.
It was Joe Barry Carroll.
The number 13th pick was Ricky Brown for Parrish and McHale.
Parrish was, you know, wasn't really Robert Parrish at that point.
He was the equivalent of, I don't know, like a better DeAndre Ayton right now.
McHale was the third pick.
Carroll was the best college player.
It was semi-defensible.
This Luka one is the first one that, even as it happened, was hard to defend.
Along in that same situation, I think getting Dennis Johnson for Rick Roby, probably.
Oh, that was amazing.
But there was some cocaine son stuff at the time, and DJ was one of the names.
So I think they got him on a discount.
The point is, you go through all these trades in history, and there's always one yeah, but.
And this Luka trade didn't have a yeah buck coming out of the gate.
Everybody was like, why did they do this?
You know, it was like the immediate mass reaction.
And then it just somehow got worse.
So I really think it has a chance to be remembered.
I don't know if it's the worst trade ever, but it'll be mentioned forever.
This will be when, 50 years from now, if we still have professional sports in a country and a society and they're like what were the worst trades ever.
This would be mentioned.
It will if the Lakers win a title for sure.
If they don't win a title, I don't know.
I don't know what will happen.
I like your little twist on that.
When I say this was, Harrison was kind of treated unfairly.
I'm not saying that it was treated unfairly because people didn't realize it was actually a good deal.
I feel that people over amplified the degree to which it was unbalanced.
And here again, it's a weird statement to make when all of those people have been proven, right.
It is strange for me to make this argument.
Now I realize that, but I what I'm saying is at the time I feel like he or someone else in the media could have made a very justifiable case for why the chances of them winning a title increased with this move.
And here's the, here's the problem with the increased thing.
Cause I went to all those finals games.
They lost the first two in Boston.
Game three.
It felt like they were probably going to win and Luka fouled out with five minutes left which, if you're going to hang Luka, don't foul out of the fucking game.
But then the offense went to Kyrie and I was in the stands going oh my God, this is like a Shakespeare moment where Kyrie this guy that all the Celtics fans hated because he kind of didn't want to stay on the team promised he was going to be there, didn't.
Now this guy's going to cook us in a game three.
We're going to lose game four.
We might blow the series.
I never felt like that series was safe until the second half of game five.
The point is they were pretty close to winning the finals that year.
So you can't really use the, Oh, well we can't win the title with Luca.
Wait a second.
Wait a second.
They were in the vicinity played as well as he could.
They got beat four to one in the finals and really should have lost to OKC in the semifinals of the West.
Well, yeah, the OKC series was a 50-50.
They really should have lost.
But we had the perfect team to play him though in the finals.
And also, wasn't game three when he followed out, wasn't that the one where he was sitting on the floor yelling at the bench and then, like Winhurst, talked about it after the game?
How immature he was.
Winhurst knows what he's talking about.
He was in a position basically saying like, this isn't going to work if this guy is this way.
And was there any indication that this guy was going to be different than that way, unless he changed locations, you know?
This would be hilarious if, as we're talking about this, Nico came out of your back room and just patted you on the back and said thank you, Chuck.
Thank you for being my one defender.
I know exactly what's going to happen, because it always happens when I go like it must be weird being you and having this audience of so many people that of course, you encapsulate some of the stupidest people on earth.
And you get real smart people, too.
Like, sometimes they'll tell me, like, oh, this person listened to our podcast.
And I'm like, that person listens to the podcast?
But there's a much larger chunk You have a higher tolerance for that than I do.
Or maybe you just got used to it.
I mean, this is something I got to bring up to you.
I promise some guys to bring this up to you.
So I was at this humanities symposium in North Dakota a couple of weeks ago.
And the theme was about the culture of the 1980s.
And I'm the speaker at this thing, and I'm doing all my bullshit, slow cancellation of the future.
I'm talking about the past and all these things.
Here's what people want to talk to me about.
This is the main thing they want to ask me about after this symposium.
First of all, does Bill Simmons actually believe Rocky III is the best movie of the 80s?
That was a question to you?
Yes.
Did you say that?
Did you make that statement?
I was like that seems like something he might say, but I was The best movie of the 80s or the best Rocky movie.
The best movie of the 80s, they claim, you insisted, was Rocky III.
Now, you could have... I said, like, maybe he was being sardonic.
No, I didn't say that.
I might've said most entertaining movie of the eighties.
I don't, I don't know if I would have made that case.
Do you believe it's the best of the Rocky films?
I did.
Well, I think it's the most rewatchable.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think Rocky one's probably the the quote unquote best one, but I think Rocky three is the most entertaining start to finish.
Okay.
So then the conversation morphed into this, and it seemed like the kind of thing you might have real input on.
If Rocky Balboa was a real person, and then he died.
In his obituary, what part of his career or what part of his personality is believed?
Like what is considered the most important or memorable aspect of his career, if he were a real person and then passed away.
That he ended Apollo Creed's undefeated heavyweight championship streak came out of nowhere.
Improbable rags-to-riches story captured the heart of the nation.
More so than beating the Russian in Russia and convincing the crowd in an exhibition to say USA, USA in the Soviet Union.
Oh, you think that would be the lead that ended the Cold War?
This was the crux of it.
That's the first thing people brought up.
And then they were like, but it was an exhibition.
And I can't remember, would it have been televised in the United States?
Is there footage in the movie?
Yeah, they show his kids watching.
Okay, so how did that happen?
Because he says, one of my kids is staying up late.
So the Soviet Union allowed... Who covered it?
Listen, there's a lot of holes in Rocky IV.
He didn't get paid for it.
It's unclear who profited from the pay-per-view, even though probably...
I would say tens of millions probably watched.
Where'd the money go?
Did they split?
There was no promoter.
It was an exhibition.
There's a lot of questions.
They've never really been answered.
If we use just the scripts, the fights we see.
So you're saying we take this as Rocky.
His whole career was a real career.
You're saying him beating Drago in an exhibition, but maybe turning the Cold War is mentioned above, him being a rags-to-riches story.
Who beat Apollo Creed and ended his streak?
That was sort of the central aspect of the debate over this.
Other people, I think, brought up the idea would it be seen as a very sad story because of the end of his life?
The way we look at Sonny Liston or something.
That even though in the movies, it is portrayed as positive.
No, because think of Mike Tyson.
Like if Mike Tyson dies, what's the first like sentence, what's the blink snapshot of his career?
It would be like Mike Tyson, the most feared heavyweight of the 1980s, who won his first whatever and was the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.
And then his career ended in disgrace.
He was in prison.
Comma.
His career ended in disgrace after he went to prison and bit Evander Holyfield and lost all his money and a whole bunch of other things.
Although it sort of seems like now his story is kind of a redemptive story, right?
The fact that he's still alive is, I think redemptive, you know, or he's kind of become something very, very different, because we were just talking.
It's just interesting to me always to talk about fictional things as if they were real.
And how?
What the response would be?
You know, it's like you know, if they discussed, if Rocky died now as a person, would there be a discussion about the racial overtones of his rivalry with Creed now, which would not have been, you know.
Would that be brought up?
Like in the New York Times, like that, the guy who won a Nobel Prize for, like you know, discovering or being part of the discovery of like the DNA.
And like in the headline it kind of mentions that later in life he said like some racist or sexist things or whatever.
It was very, it's like, I'm sure he didn't expect that was going to be part of his obituary.
So I wonder if that would happen now with if Rocky, the real person, die, if that somehow would be.
I would say the Clubber Lang part would probably have like the stronger racial overtones.
Cause Creed was like a beloved, you know, he kind of trained, he was like Ali.
He transcended all that stuff.
I would say Creed was definitely more, more that Rocky three tapped into that a lot harder.
I think even though Creed was on Rocky's side.
The strangest thing about Clubber Lang is I remember at one point he's giving an interview in the movie and his thing is you know, I live alone.
I train alone.
Yeah.
But he's a boxer.
So he never spars.
How can a boxer train alone?
Like a boxer more than anyone needs someone to train with him.
Is he just hitting the heavy bag?
I think he was probably being, probably exaggerating a little bit.
Let's take a break.
And then we got to talk about baseball.
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Can I say one more thing about Anthony Davis before we move on?
Just because it's timely and I'd like to just get on the record on the pod.
What's interesting is they trade Luca for him.
And he's the centerpiece of the trade and he's important for Nico.
And he's clearly when he's helping one of the best 15 players in the league, but now has had even more wear and tear.
He makes a ton of money.
They've changed a lot of the trading roles.
So a lot of the teams you could think he could get traded to, they can't even do the trade because they can't take his giant salary back.
I went through it today.
I can only find a couple teams that would even make sense on top of the fact that you know he's that they're not going to send him to a place where he's going to be unhappy, because they don't do that in the NBA.
If you have a disgruntled superstar, not worth it.
So it's really like, I was thinking, Oh, you know, it'd be really fun as is, uh, Davis for LaMelo.
Okay.
Just like the Mavs get this young point guard.
They play the flag.
Charlotte gets a big man.
And then it's, then you, you start unpacking.
It's like well, that trade can't happen because they have to.
They can only take one player back for Davis.
Charlotte have to send three to make the sellers work.
Davis would be unhappy in Charlotte.
They'd have to trade him.
Charlotte's not going to do that.
They want to tank.
So that blows up.
Really, the only teams are the Knicks and the Warriors.
And then it comes down to desperation.
The only team that would actually be desperate enough because they're near the end of the line is the Warriors, which leads me to Butler, who makes the exact same amount of money as Davis.
So you could trade them straight up, I think, if I understand the rules.
Is this going to happen or just you're speculating?
I'm just thinking like... Davis is getting traded?
Are they planning...
I was getting a bunch of texts today from different people going well, now the Mavs are going to blow it up.
They'll trade AD.
And we do this with the NBA, but they've changed the rules so dramatically.
And these guys make so much money.
It's like, well, actually cross off eight of the 10 teams you thought AD would go for.
Here are the actual teams.
And it's basically the Knicks and Golden State.
If you're the Knicks, I don't know if you trade Towns for him.
Towns spreads the floor for you.
Davis, all the wear and tear, who knows?
But I think Golden State would be the one team near the end of the line that could talk themselves into it.
Because they're not on the level of OKC in Denver.
And they could give Butler in some first-round picks.
Butler goes to the Mavs, playing with Flagg.
They have the centers.
It's just something in my head that I thought would make sense.
If you have Kyrie, Flagg, and Davis, don't you at least want to see what happens?
I think that's how this plays out, yeah.
I mean, I would want to see what happens first.
I'm just telling people, the blow-it-up scenarios, there's not a lot of blow-it-up options.
Okay.
All right, let's talk baseball.
Okay.
The pitch clock saved the sport.
True or false?
Singularly, or did they contribute to it?
So you're saying it was the biggest factor, or you would say singularly?
It's the biggest factor, I think.
But I wouldn't say it's the only factor.
Agreed.
Okay.
Also, the sport is saved now.
We've made the decision baseball is saved.
We've had like seven podcast conversations where we talked about baseball being dead.
Are we now the position that it's saved?
The viewership of that World Series was bonkers.
But this is what I think.
And anecdotally, September and October, there was more baseball talk going on than at any time in my life since the early 2000s.
I'll tell you what it's the most I enjoyed watching baseball since the 1991 series between the Twins and the Braves.
Think about that.
Or like 03-04 was the last time I felt like baseball kind of took over the country with the narratives.
Like 03, the Bartman game and the Yankees-Red Sox.
We just haven't had anything like this in 20 years.
What is likely going to happen is a lot of the people who watch this World Series and have suddenly changed their opinion about baseball.
Are they going to start watching it again next April?
And they'll be like, this is not what I remember.
Because playoff baseball now seems more different than the regular season now than any other sport.
It used to be that way in like the NBA and in hockey.
Now it's in baseball.
What I think could happen.
My kind of new theory on this is that baseball, Major League Baseball is going to overtake the role the NCAA basketball tournament had about 15 years ago, which is that people don't really follow the regular season, but then they become obsessed with the tournament.
So you get their pools, they watch, they do the weekends, they go to sports bars.
And they convince themselves during the NCAA tournaments that they actually still know about college basketball.
Like there's enough ways that you can cheat with the internet to actually seem as though you know what's going on in college basketball without watching it.
And then you get into the tournament and you're like, oh, this guy and that guy and all of that.
And then you can also kind of fall back into all like the classic pageantry stuff.
I think that's going to happen.
Maybe with baseball that people will not care that much during, you know, outside of regionally, during the regular season, but they'll be like okay, baseball playoffs, this is great, because i mean, that was really they got.
You know it's gonna be for another world series to match this, you know like, but the playoffs before the rounds before were great too, like it really.
So i think i've been thinking about a lot because something clearly shifted and i do think the pitch clock helped, but i i also think like having the Dodgers what they did right.
They spent all this money and they ended up, they, they make the bets trade.
They finally get Otani into a playoff situation.
They get Yamamoto who's incredible.
They get Freddie Freeman from the Braves and they have Will Smith homegrown catcher, right?
They have that.
That's their five, but they also have enough money to spend on these different expensive starters.
Like they, they, they just have enough money to spend.
They're basically making this giant blockbuster movie and they have enough money to spend on like Oh, this is a small part for the attorney general.
We'll get Laura Linney.
Like they just doesn't matter.
Um, but they're there.
They've won two in a row.
They won in 2020 and they're like a legitimate dynasty now, which I think people like, I really do.
And I'm not the first person to say this.
And I've talked about this on pods before.
I think I've I've talked about this with basketball forever, with how desperate they are to have more parity and make it have teams not dominate.
I personally like domination.
I like having the bar for all the other teams to try to beat.
This is what we grew up with.
This was Celtics Lakers in the eighties.
This was Cowboys Steelers in the seventies.
And this was the bulls in the nineties.
And I just personally like it more.
I like having like the bar you have to climb to beat.
This is what college basketball used to be like.
This is what we've had in college football.
The last, 20 years.
And I think baseball has figured out the best, because nobody's going to beat the Dodgers, because they've actually figured out how to spend, how to grab this Far East connection where they're always getting the best.
Now, who's the next guy from Japan?
They're probably getting them.
And now this is the team to beat on top of like you have judge in the, in New York.
Sure.
You have Soto with the Mets.
You have Bryce Harper and Schwarber with the Phillies.
You have Roman Anthony now with the Red Sox, all the big markets have a guy.
And I'm all for it, man.
I really feel like we're headed to a good place.
Okay, well, first of all, you said, so they're a dynasty now.
Now, weren't you kind of skeptical of people who called the Kansas City Chiefs a dynasty?
Well, they've won three in six years or five?
Well, if you said 2020, that would be three in.
I guess the difference with them and the Chiefs is the Chiefs was always built like the Patriots.
We have these little five-year windows in the NFL and then the cap gets you.
With whatever the Dodgers have now, they're always going to be the favorites to win the world series for the rest of the decade, no matter what happens with the team they have.
I mean, I think what people love the most and to some degree the NFL is the only league that can really create this scenario is parody with a dynasty where that right
That there's a league and there is one team, that sort of one level above.
That's kind of that's the ideal situation.
I mean like you know, um Say, like you know, we always talk about the Lakers and the Celtics in the 80s.
Those were dynasties.
But there wasn't a ton of parody.
I mean, you went down to the Bucs, and there was a level with, like, you know, the Rockets.
The Bucs, Pistons, the Mavericks for a couple years.
In the NFL right now.
I mean, that is, The Pete Rozelle idea of creating parody has worked to such a full extent.
I mean, the worst teams in the NFL are still...
Some guys that are like, it's really rare to think of that.
This is this team can't compete.
You know, it's like, so that's kind of maybe, you know, the idea of baseball having this situation.
I, I, it doesn't seem like they have created parody across the league.
No, they had, you need the dregs, which is, I wrote a column about this once to have great teams.
You need bad teams.
And this is why I hate the NBA lotteries so much, because you're constantly rewarding the bad teams for being bad, but you're putting the most talented players in bad situations and then wondering why they've been disappointing.
You know, you're putting guys who have a chance to be awesome, but they're playing on a 18 win team.
And very rarely can you flip that around.
Like even LeBron, when LeBron went to the Cavs, that team was awful for years, you know?
And it was like, what?
That was why I was so interested in what would happen with Cooper Flagg and the Mavs, because with Kyrie and AD, they actually had a chance to be good right away, which is basically what happened to Larry Bird and Magic.
Those guys went to teams where they were good right away.
Jordan had the opposite.
He went to like a mess of a team.
It took five years to get there.
But I think I still like it, because I still like when you have football has it with the quarterbacks, right.
It's Mahomes and Allen.
Those teams are always going to be good.
Hopefully, Drake May now at the Patriots, they're always going to be good.
The way the Eagles have built their team, they're going to be good for at least the rest of the decade.
So maybe you have three or four kind of bars that the rest of the league has to get through.
Baseball might have seven.
Are you one of these people who would be like let's abolish the draft and let just the guys come out of college, sign where they want to sign and we enforce a hard cap?
And so if somebody like you know Chet Holmgren's coming out or whatever, he can take X amount of dollars for teams that are in the cellar.
Or he can take a little less money if he wants to sign with a more established team.
Do you want the draft to exist?
I want the draft to exist.
What I don't want is for teams to be able to be in the lottery for three four, five straight years with top five picks.
That's what the NBA has to change.
What about the old way?
I just think if you win the lottery, you shouldn't be able to get a top three pick the next year.
I would just put that rule in right now.
You shouldn't be rewarded for being bad over and over and over again.
Yeah, I know.
If you have a top three pick, maybe you can't pick higher than four the next year.
Little wrinkles so that teams get penalized at least a little bit for being awful.
I think what the Nets did, they're the most disgusting of all the teams.
They had five first round picks last year.
They blew all of them.
And they don't care at all.
They're not even the second most important team in New York.
The Liberty, I think, are more important.
I think that people who own the Liberty and the Nets probably care more about the Liberty.
And they're just like a way station for incompetence at this point, kind of hoping that they'll stumble in this draft that's coming up.
There's these three legitimate franchise guys in it.
And they're just kind of keeping their fingers crossed to get one of those three guys.
And that's their entire strategy.
I think that sucks.
I'm done with that.
I mean, we talked about this years ago the whole idea of, like you know, the process, as it was used to be described, which would turn out to be a disaster.
Well, I'll accept that.
It actually worked exactly as it was, how it was supposed to work.
It's just, they never made it past round two.
They won two playoff series.
Yeah.
But the players didn't pan out, but they did the thing that it was intended to do.
They had Ben Simmons.
They had MB.
Both of those guys were seen as you got the false pick.
Yeah, here you go and like it, just so.
So the it did actually do the thing it was supposed to do, which is negligibly increase your luck of getting into somebody.
Great, like it's, like it doesn't.
It's not, it's a strange strategy, it's just like it's.
It's well, maybe not strange.
It's just slightly increasing the possibility that you will find the guy who changes everything.
And they did that.
They actually got that, yeah.
But here's.
Here's the thing with the sixers though, And this is what we learned retroactively and why I don't think teams will ever do that again.
They build a losing culture.
But they put these young stars in the losing culture and told them it didn't matter if they won or lost.
And I think it had real ramifications for those guys.
I think for Simmons and for Embiid, those guys have had really bizarre careers, you know?
And I think even some of the stuff they value has been.
Simmons was like thought he was a super duper star.
The team wasn't winning anything, and I still don't know what happened to him when he basically bailed on the team.
And then Embiid, I just think has had a really strange career where it really seems like he values the individual stuff over the team stuff.
And we've seen him like even little stuff, like I'll play Jokic, but only if it's in Philly versus playing in Denver.
Like you can't be like that and be the face of a team and the best guy on a team.
And I think you just learn bad lessons when you're in a bad situation, you know?
Yeah, I guess that's true.
I mean, and you're saying that if he gets drafted somewhere else, you think maybe he's a different person.
That's always well think about.
Like Tatum had one of the best, Tatum and Brown had two of the best situations you ever could have walked into.
Where they go into a team.
That's also had just signed out Horford that had Isaiah Thomas lucked out with him.
And the team was pretty good and was like in the Easter conference finals.
And those guys are rookies getting a taste of it. going against guys they're they're uh in winning situations with good crowds and i would say that had a great effect on them you know a really positive effect it's also unusual that's not usually how it goes but if you're just saying like i'm gonna put one guy in this philly situation and one guy in this boston situation which guy will learn better habits and have a better career you would bet on the boston situation oh totally i mean you know you know you you've in the NFL, you see this with young quarterbacks all the time.
I mean, Sam Darnold, that's the best example of all of them.
Cause he's actually talented.
You know what.
What is you know it's.
It's very often as it turns out.
It's like you know the the.
The cliche now is that nobody knows anything in the NFL about drafting quarterbacks.
Everyone is, you know, which all guests work.
We can't predict anything.
And it certainly seems that way.
And yet, when a lot of these guys are get into a good situation, they end up becoming pretty close to what the original description was.
Right.
You know, but whatever the original idea was there's it's kind of I can't remember what year it was, but the year uh, like he came out, Lamar Jackson came out and Josh Allen came out and Rosen was in that draft and Baker Mayfield.
Like we did a podcast and we talked about this.
And it's very interesting how we were in some ways, amazingly correct.
And in some ways, amazingly idiotic, most notably me claiming baker mayfield should be moved to slot receiver.
That was what i said in that podcast.
You said that well because that's incredible.
Everybody was saying about an amazing slot receiver.
They were talking about lamar jackson and it was sort of like he's such a great athlete but he'll probably never be a quarterback.
Maybe you move him to receiver or something.
I was like i don't think that should be the case at all.
He's the best of these guys in my view.
Yeah yeah uh, it's like maybe Baker Mayfield, maybe maybe like he could be, like you know, like an Engelman type figure, like coming out of Kent State.
Well, we like, you know, we like Lamar Jackson, we like Josh Allen, like you had seen him like in a target or something and talked to him and you were like he's a good guy or whatever, and like he sort of had a good understanding of him and and that worked out uh, and but like Rosen, I remember the guy from UCLA I think I was like that he actually might be the best you know without.
Obviously that was wrong.
He was out of the league in two years.
What if he goes somewhere different?
Who knows?
What if he goes to, you know, if he didn't went to Baltimore, it'd be hard to imagine what happens, but you know, we've, I feel like we've talked about this a bunch of times, but it is hilarious that in 2025, we've come no closer to figuring out what's going to make a good quarterback.
We have, we have decades of data and tape and analysis and, I think people are getting better at it.
Even somebody like McShay, who is with us at The Ringer.
I think he's done a really good job the last few years.
He's been pretty on it.
There's some stuff that I would look at.
That is almost like non-football stuff when I would look at these guys.
Because I remember thinking a lot about this stuff with Drake May.
And it's stupid stuff that's probably on brand for me, but like the fact that he was a little brother.
The fact that he stayed at North Carolina for an extra year when he just could have transferred when, you know, it seemed like the team was going to suck.
There was like there was like good guy, good teammate, leader kind of traits that were there, but it it also helps that he's fucking really talented.
Right.
And that's the thing.
You didn't really know until you saw him in the NFL.
The thing you said before probably is the biggest factor, which is this it's situational.
It really is the situation you're in.
When Jared Goff was coming out, do you remember what the criticism of him was?
Small.
Wasn't it?
Yeah.
Small hands and kind of dumb, right?
Well, he went to Cal.
I mean, it's like I thought he made like dumb decisions or there was some people weren't sure about his decision-making.
Um, I just remember it was that he had.
He had small hands and they were.
They were sort of like, you know, and there was like when it rains, the history, you know, it's like well okay sure, sure.
You know it's like maybe, but you know he was actually not terrible with the Rams, got him to a Superbowl and has had a very good career.
Um, You know what's funny?
So I was watching randomly watching the NBC pregame show the other day, which I don't usually watch, but I wanted to see the highlights because I was on a plane and I didn't catch everything.
And they had Jason Garrett interviewed, I think it was Jason Garrett interviewed Sam Darnold.
I think that's what it was.
Was that what it was?
Maybe it was two weeks ago.
I can't remember.
But it was Jason Garrett reading Sam Darnold, his scouting report of Sam Darnold, and going through the stuff that he had.
And Sam Darnold was like, yeah, that's pretty good.
Yeah, you nailed me there.
And a lot of it was stuff like he's so competitive he can be his own worst enemy, and things like that.
And they were just talking about it.
And of course they did it in that pregame style where the thing just they zoomed through it really fast with a bunch of edits and footage.
And I was like I could have watched this for 20 minutes of somebody going through their scouting report, of somebody who's like clearly made it as a pro and been like all right.
So what did I get?
Right.
Well, I was like, this is like the best segment ever.
And it was like a minute.
It is interesting.
Like there was one, I remember it was kind of going around online.
It was like the scouting report on Colby Bryant coming out of high school.
Right.
And it was like eerily accurate.
Like it was amazing.
Like the things they said about them.
That were good, of course, were plentiful, but even the negative things were all right.
It was like I mean, it didn't say this, but it was like close to be, like you know, could face legal issues in colorado, like it's.
Like it was so yeah, specific about what his life ended up being.
So some, oh my god, dead on you know.
Some yeah um, but also one thing a lot of scouting stuff though, is like very aphoristic though thing too.
So like if you're, if it's, if you're saying like oh, this guy he's, like you know, so competitive he might be his own worst enemy.
Uh well, that's okay.
So that's technically a criticism, right?
So is the idea that he should become slightly less competitive or caliber?
Less of his own worst.
I mean, it's not, it's a pretty.
It's like getting a job interview and saying you know what's your weakness.
It's like, Oh, I care too much.
It's like, well, thanks for nothing.
You know what I'm saying?
One thing I've learned, at least with the NBA.
And I think this probably goes for football, for quarterback too is like if I ran an NBA team, I would never take the guy like with a high pick that I'm really betting on, like potentially even betting my job, where I didn't get the feedback that this guy was like an incredibly hard worker.
I just think that to me, that would be a non-negotiable.
Even like I, I've started to do some work on the 26 NBA draft because um, it's really like potentially a generational draft with these, with these guys.
It's really nuts.
And I'm fascinated by this Kansas kid who really might be the best two guard prospect.
They compared majority.
That's the comparison I've seen.
Yeah.
Like he's the first one we've had at two guard who uh, can be credibly mentioned with like Vince, like what Vince was like coming out of high school and at North Carolina, and and Kobe, what some of the stuff people are saying about him coming out of high school, and then Jordan at UNC, like there's some stuff with them.
But one of the things that people have been saying is like, this kid really gives a shit.
Like he really works.
This is the Cooper flag thing.
Cooper flag is like, I'm going to, I have a weakness.
I'm going to work on this until I fix the weakness and, And I do think for the NBA, you need to be that way.
I don't think you can really succeed at the highest level unless you're wired that way.
You could be right.
I mean.
For me, I feel saying someone is a really hard worker or a workaholic in a scouting report is less meaningful than the detriment of questionable work ethic.
I feel like people will rarely say questionable work ethic unless they have a pretty clear reason for arguing that.
But people will say great work ethic because it's just something you say.
Like it's just talking about guys' level of competition, their need to win, all that stuff.
That's true certainly sometimes.
And sometimes it is just something people say.
But when they say something on the negative side, that usually means something motivated them to do that.
Like people are not really motivated to say positive things, except to occasionally seem the most enthusiastic.
That's another thing I've noticed about how, like the the the, the ranking of prospects has changed, that there is now almost a competitive world within that sort of you know paradigm where, like somebody is like well to be remembered about this, I have to be the most excited about Ace Bailey, or I have to be the most down on like whatever you know.
It's like you gotta have some like real strong strong strong, strong take.
And that does skew these things, because that's how you get into this problem of like these guys seem like busts immediately and they should have never been in the position to be viewed as potentially generational.
Well, we also.
This sounds really basic and dumb, but I swear we don't think about it enough.
How much a kid can change from the age of like 18 to 23?
Like I say with my own kids, like, You just, you change, you get older.
All of a sudden you have confidence.
It's like, what happened there?
And to try to project when somebody is, think about these basketball kids.
These kids are 18 and 19 and try to project even just what they're gonna be like as human beings at age 23 is kind of a crazy process, but we do it anyway.
I mean, okay, the United States is dominated by people from about nine to 12 universities.
Almost everybody in the elite world comes from about these nine or 12 places, which is essentially saying things are dictated by people who are incredibly oppressive.
16 year olds.
Like they were incredibly impressive when they were 16 and then they were able to get into Harvard and they were able to get into Yale and Princeton these places.
And then somehow, that education is the validation of, for the position that they start their life and where they end up.
But what we're really talking about is they're not a formed person.
Not only is there a huge difference between 18 and 23, think of the difference in you between 20 and 30.
Like it's almost the person I was at 30 had no relationship to the person I was at 20 and probably wouldn't have even liked that person.
Like you know, it's like so to view somehow the early part of my life as a way to understand the middle of my life.
I mean, in sports, there's no other way, right?
We got to get the kids coming out of college and guys peak early and all that stuff.
But yes, totally true.
That's exactly right.
Do you think if baseball has another strike I was thinking about.
We always say, in real life, history repeats itself, right?
It's like, oh, here we go.
We did this already.
And baseball having a lockout or a strike or however this is probably going to play out, which i think is going to happen, right as they've captured the zeitgeist for the first time in a real way in 20 years just feels like the most baseball thing ever.
For that to happen yeah, a little bit, a little bit.
This is what we've.
This has been our entire life right, every time it felt like baseball was going great, there would be something stupid happening.
Well, i mean, you know they just there's it's.
Can you sustain a league in the United States without a salary cap?
I don't know.
I guess they're doing it.
And it's.
It certainly seemed to work great in the playoffs, but I will you know, here it's.
There's so much chance bill.
I mean, it's like, okay.
So if for whatever reason, the world series went five games this year, we're not talking about it.
I don't care that much.
I don't know.
And then I'm not every person, but it's like you know, if that happens and then you're like ah, you know, the world series ratings were kind of down again.
And now there might be a strike.
We'd be like, ah, it figures baseball's dead.
But now, because there was this transcendent seven game series you know that game that went to like the 18th or whatever.
You know, I'm watching this thing and I'm like they're going to have to start having position players pitch but like Otani can just go in and like you know, all these, all these things were so interesting.
Um and plus, you know it's like I I, you know it's like a tiny, like he gets kind of shelled and like he thanks the umpire like tips his hat to the umpire while he's leaving the field.
And like, you know, and, and like Yamamoto is like, I'll pitch four games in a row if I have to.
It's like there were some things in that I was like well, you just don't see this from American athletes anymore.
The Yamamoto thing was the most unbelievable thing.
People were sort of like you know it was.
I think the conventional wisdom is, you know, among the people I knew it's like they were kind of rooting for Toronto or whatever, but like the, The Dodgers did to some degree.
Those two guys particularly just kind of win me over.
Like, you know.
Yeah, I agree.
One more break and then we got to talk college football.
All right.
I texted you for pod ideas.
You texted me back.
One thing you were excited about were all the insanely great coaching job openings in college football and why those jobs actually aren't that great.
Well, what did you mean?
They're not.
It's not that the jobs aren't that great.
They're just not as great as they used to be.
Like you know, you look at Florida and you know LSU and Penn state and you know Auburn and all these sort of these, these great jobs.
But what is weird now is something has been completely removed from college football coaching, which is charismatic recruiting.
Like you know, that used to be the big thing that a guy could go into someone's kitchen, talk to the kid And his dad and his mom, and it's like he was different.
Like, you know, I don't know if you've read, you read Barry Switzer's autobiography, bootlegger boy.
Oh, from like the nineties.
One of the things he talks about in that book which I just will always remember is that whenever he was recruiting a kid, he had this thing he did.
He would first walk through the back alley behind their house to see what kind of beer was in the garbage.
Like what kind of like, what bottles were in there, or you know.
And that way, when he went into the house, if the dad said like, do you want a beer?
He'd be like only if you drink old Milwaukee, he'd always, he'd always only want exactly what the guy drank.
Now, that's in some ways manipulative, but that really is someone like.
I understand how to relate to people, like on their level.
You know now, that's not how it is.
Now in the same situation he comes in, drinks a old Milwaukee and convinces the dad he's a great guy, gets the kid jacked about going to Oklahoma, and then the kid says like well, what's the offer though?
Because Georgia Tech offered $340,000.
That's all it is now.
So now it is completely switched away from being the kind of personality that can convince a kid to go to your program to talent evaluation.
Like can you see a guy who's a backup for Ole Miss at tight end, who then you can grab in the portal by just writing a bigger check?
Like it really is a professional.
That was.
That was what North Carolina was when Lombardi was saying how they wanted to be the 33rd NFL team.
And it's like, they're, they're basically, we're not a college program.
We're like a professional portal program, which I think is what they've created just in general with the sport.
Right.
I mean, to some extent, sure.
I mean, it's definitely like, it's, it is way different now.
I mean, the SEC is not as dominant as it used to be.
And there's a lot of people being like Oh see, now that everybody can play players, they don't have the advantage anymore.
But I don't think that's what it is.
It's just that the SEC used to have so much depth at every position.
And now that's just impossible.
Now to be like a great special teams player for Georgia means that like you can start maybe an outside linebacker for Indiana.
And then there's, you know, it's like, you can make these moves and it's, It has like so to have like the Penn State job now or the Florida job, like these marquee jobs is like you get there.
That's the whole deal.
I don't know how much of an advantage you have.
Like, right.
I don't think that whoever takes the Penn State job is going to have an advantage over Indiana.
Like I just I don't think that will be the case, unless that they can just, you know, do something very simple, which is raise more money.
Like, just have more money to give these guys and that really – so that also means that, while these jobs aren't as good as they used to be, a lot of random jobs could be great.
Like, if you get a job at like Liberty and Liberty says like we're going to do what it takes to get these guys, you might as well be in Florida.
You see this with BYU's basketball program.
BYU took a kid from Duke.
They just gave him a bigger number.
So I am very interested.
Well, they went further than that.
They moved the kid from Brockton, our own A.J.
DeBansa from Massachusetts.
And they moved him in there before he was even done with high school.
Moved him to a place in Utah.
What is kind of interesting about these college jobs is obviously the guy everyone wants is Lane Kiffin.
Which is hilarious.
Well, why is it hilarious?
Cause he it's been just been a rollercoaster ride for lane over the years.
Right.
At one point it seemed like his career was over.
Now he's the guy who's in the most demand.
The last super likable coach that still exists.
Right.
Yeah.
And at the college football, at least, but like, I don't know if Florida and LSU will wait for him.
Cause they're going to go to the playoffs.
They're probably going to win a playoff game.
Like.
So I don't know if LSU and Florida or like Penn state even if they would be in the running for that are willing to wait that long.
So I do think it's possible that he could end up at Auburn if he leaves.
But also I hope he doesn't leave because he has really rehabilitated his reputation as like a guy who now like loves living in Oxford, Mississippi.
It would kind of change everything back if he leaves.
Like if he, especially if he left, like in the middle of the year or the day after they lost, it would be like it'll be like Oh God damn it.
Like again.
But you know, do you think we're ever going to see like what we grew up with with Bear Bryant and Paterno and these coaches that are just at the same place forever unless they break the rules and they have to get shoved out?
That's gone.
I mean, well, I mean, the sport's different now.
I mean, they've, they've, they've made college football a professional sport.
It's just not the same.
And again Those examples, particularly like it's going to be hard to see someone in that position at an elite program that way, because you can never be down but you can't have.
You know someone can coach that long at like you know, like Missouri or Utah or some of these places.
You know that if you're just good, every year occasionally make the playoffs.
But if the expectation like at LSU I mean, what was Kelly's record at LSU 34 and 14, or something like that.
It wasn't that he was terrible.
He had a Heisman trophy winner every year.
They came in with the potential to possibly go to the national championship or at least make the playoffs.
I mean, if that is the annual expectation, you can have one down year, two down years.
Your means you're in trouble.
Third year, you get fired.
So the idea of their – even like a Saban-like coach, I don't think that will happen again.
Lane Kiffin, if he were to make a commitment to Ole Miss, could have that kind of career.
He could be there the rest of his life because the expectation is slightly lower than the other SEC schools, and he will have success both now and in the future.
Do you care about buyout stuff and shit like that?
When they're like Brian Kelly they're negotiating – buyout, he wants the full, like it's funny that this is just like a category of sports reporting.
Do you see what they're doing now?
On with the brian kelly situation?
Now they're playing lsu.
At least that's what i saw yesterday.
Lsu is claiming we haven't officially fired him yet, so therefore we can now fire him now for cause.
Oh, in which case, would that guess, changes the buyout situation?
I mean, he's obviously hard-lying it.
He's like it's like 54 million dollars and he's like Pay me.
Uh, you know, like I'll sit around and do nothing for two years, you know?
Um, and they don't want to do that.
I think that they assumed that he would be the kind of guy who'd be like I'm going to talk to Penn state right now, but he's not doing that.
So, right.
So what's your, give us your grade for the state of college football right now.
Are you happy with it?
This is your favorite sport, just everything, the whole experience.
Is it, are you pro?
Is this good?
Is this what's happened this decade been a good thing?
On the field, I would say it's still an A or A- almost every week.
I mean, in terms of the health of the system, C- and getting worse.
I mean, in the short term, it is fun that Vandy is good.
Like, it's neat to see that.
You know, it's like – And Indiana.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, like these games are great.
I mean, there was like a – this last Saturday there was a whole bunch of like kind of surprisingly –.
It didn't look like the world's greatest slate when I looked at ESPN, but there were a ton of good games.
The Indiana game was incredible.
That was one of the best sporting events of the year.
It was probably the catch of the year.
And then the Iowa-Oregon game was real interesting because Iowa was just at their utmost Iowa.
This last drive they got to go 93 yards and they can't throw the ball, but of course they completed deep.
All of these things happened.
They made it a really fun day.
So I still...
I mean, in terms of being a consumer, I would watch that over anything.
But I know what's going to happen.
Like I mean in the short term, professionalizing a college sport does kind of spike its popularity, because pro sports appeal to the casual fan more than college sports do.
But that erodes over time, particularly if the kind of professionalized college version just becomes like kind of a less good version of the NFL.
And that is what's going to.
I mean, my fear was going to happen in five years is that all of these teams are going to play the same.
And like the idea of someone like you know shotgun running the option, you know an option team playing an air raid team or something is just going to be over.
It's all going to kind of be, like you know, in the same way that for the most part, the NFL is that you know that, that the teams are different, but they're much more similar than different by, like you know, by factor of 10, and in college there's still real diversity and there's a regional quality to it and the conferences play differently, and i think that's all going to be gone and, of course, that's going to be disappointing.
But i mean, i just i, i don't know, maybe i'll, i'm sure i'll still watch it.
I'm sure i'll never have you heard about.
Have you heard about this five-year eligibility rule that's getting batted around?
What is this that people think might happen?
Um basically, instead of a red shirt thing and whatever happens with that, it's just like when you go to college you have five years to play sports.
You can play, you could start off five years.
You can play, you go to Duke and play basketball for five straight years.
Is this because the extra people thought the extra year for the COVID stuff was good for the kids or what would
Yeah, I think.
And especially like it.
Like in the D3 level.
You play four years.
You go to grad school.
You could just play for one more year after that.
I think people like that.
Well, I mean, I think I've said this before, but I very much believe this.
So I think that we are now less than five years from the SEC and the Big Ten, at least for football, breaking off from the NCAA.
And they're going to start their own thing.
And when that happens, I don't think the players will need to go to those schools.
I think the quarterback for alabama can represent alabama.
He can certainly go to school if he wants, but not actually go to class if he doesn't have to.
Yeah, there will be no obligation that he be an enrolled student.
So i i mean, i think that's almost certainly going to happen and everybody will know.
Here's what's going to happen.
Everybody, everyone like me, is going to be moaning this, but there's also going to be a lot of people being like this is progress.
Why should he have to pretend to go to school?
He deserves to make money because he's making the university so much money.
And it's going to be seen as kind of naive and reactionary to not support this.
That's going to happen.
And then a lot of people will be like, that's crazy.
How can it be that I'm watching the University of South Carolina and only 40 of the roster is enrolled in school?
And people will be like, you don't get it.
You don't get it.
The quarterback works full-time as a bartender at the local sports bar.
You'll just live on campus.
You don't have a great life.
Who's your team of the year so far in college football?
Because you float around.
You're like a nomad.
You'll just root for anybody.
Who's been your team?
Who captured your fancy?
I don't root for anybody.
Who captured your fancy?
Well, you know, I really like Notre Dame's team this year, but I kind of like them every year.
I like their run game.
I am very interested in Ole Miss. now with Saban gone, it feels like you're becoming a Kiffin guy.
That's the feeling I'm getting.
Absolutely.
Um, and especially now with Saban gone, that's kind of who I'm rooting for.
Um uh, in in in the South.
Uh, there's uh in the big 10.
I mean, the coach from Indiana is truly a jerk, but it makes for an interesting situation.
And I'm not going to root for Ohio state.
So it's like, you know, um, i uh unc any any really interesting absolutely i really wanted that to work like i was really in i you know i watched that first coming on it's getting better drive of that game i was like yeah but uh i mean i just i i think that this is what i think has happened you know that so what is sort of like the the one of the vortexes central ideas of like the coaching personality.
The coaching personality is that I love to coach and it doesn't matter who I'm coaching.
I would coach a peewee football team and I would care as much as I would coach in the high school team.
And I'd care about a high school team as much as I would care about a college team.
And I would care about that as much as the NFL coaching is teaching.
I'm an educator.
That's what matters to me.
All I care about is like what I'm doing in the moment.
And I think Belichick got to North Carolina and he's like, I guess I used to be that way.
This doesn't seem the way I remember it.
I can't tell these kids what to do and they don't seem to know anything.
I got to teach him everything.
Because when he took the job, say with the Browns, I think Belichick was still the kind of person who would have been like I like coaching the Browns.
I would just assume, you know, coach Maslin high school.
It's a Belichick impersonation.
I didn't realize I was on the docket today.
I'm not Chris Ryan.
I can't do this shit.
Okay.
So I just kind of failed you.
But like, so I can't do them.
My British accent is terrible.
But I think that when Belichick was with the Browns at that point in his life, whatever age he would have been, that would have been what
How many years ago now?
30 years ago.
I think he still would have been the kind of person who, no matter where you would have put him If you'd have put him in a powder puff football league, it would have been.
I care about this more than anything else.
But he's an older man now.
He's went through a lot.
He's had the experience of being the most talked about person in all of sports for moments.
And now he's in this situation where it's like, well, can I win the ACC or whatever?
I think that it's hard for him to get motivated be himself.
And I don't think, I think he's, I think in a way it's probably a bummer to realize that it would be like, if you know OK, so I start writing, because I just love writing.
Right.
I'm a writer before I ever get anything published.
I used to just sit in my bedroom and write stuff, you know, and then now it works out.
You're a journalist, write a bunch of books in my mind.
I'm still like the person in high school who just writes because he loves to write.
But now, all of a sudden, I couldn't sell books.
My mentality would say, Go out in your office and write.
You just love writing.
But maybe it wouldn't seem the same to me.
Maybe the idea of writing for nothing except myself all of a sudden wouldn't seem the way it used to be, when I actually became someone who could do it or whatever.
You have to just love it to be good at it.
But once you get rewarded for that, maybe it changes.
I worry about this.
I worry if I actually have The same drive that I had 30 years ago or 40 years ago.
I don't know.
So you think Belichick, being on like a four and five UNC team, just wakes up one morning and he's like I don't know.
I don't know if I'm enjoying this anymore.
I've done everything I can do in coaching and maybe this is it.
Here's what I think is more like it.
I think there was a time when he would have woke up in the morning and he'd have been.
We're four and five.
What can I do to make us better?
Now, maybe he wakes up and he's like, I want some toast.
You know, is the coffee ready?
Like, it's not that he doesn't, it's not like he's consciously being like, I don't care.
It's just that it's not consuming him.
Like you know, when you're consumed by something, whether it's a job or a person or whatever you know everybody's had this in their life where there's, like you know, maybe a time in your life when the first thing you thought of when you woke up, with this person you were dating.
And when you went to bed at night, you were thinking about this person.
And I was just like, it wasn't, it was just a- I'm like that with coffee.
Okay, yeah.
When I fall asleep, I'm like, I can't wait to have coffee tomorrow morning.
And then when I wake up, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get to make coffee.
And that would be a totally great mentality if you were trying to become a major coffee entrepreneur.
Right.
Like you would be like, that's who I need to be.
That's the person I need to be.
I need to be the somebody who thinks about coffee when I wake up.
Yeah.
I mean, that's because-
You know, if you want to be good at something, it can't be that you think about it a lot.
You need to think about it all the time, even when you don't want to.
And that is the key.
And that's a hard thing to sustain when you're someone who's lived and had that many experiences.
He said he's had so many experiences in football.
I'm sure sometimes this seems like this isn't the same.
Like this is, you know, it's just not fun to do this in the way it used to be fun.
I cut out a piece.
We did the rewatchables, me and Van and Sean last week.
We cut out a piece we ran last week on this podcast about filmmaking and creativity.
We were arguing about it and we're obviously all good friends.
I was saying, I worry sometimes that there's too many distractions, that it's going to ultimately hurt creativity, because I think of the way I grew up, where a lot of times I read a book or wrote something just because I didn't have anything else to do.
And I would be like, I got two hours here.
Maybe I'll try to write a column.
But now if you put I don't know, 18 year old, 19 year old me in the situation now, I'd be like I'll go on Instagram and go check that out.
Or I'll go on Twitter, or I'll go on some message board, or I'll go on the Celtics Reddit to see what they're saying.
And now I've just killed two hours, but I didn't do anything that actually I have something to show for it.
And I do worry about that.
With this, With the 125 generation, I'd sound like the old guy, but I think sometimes the best ideas I ever had, the best things I ever wrote, just in general, came out of like my brain was just going because I was at a stoplight.
I wasn't on my phone.
I was just kind of staring at a tree and all of a sudden thinking about blank and got an idea.
And I'm like, oh, that would actually be a good idea.
And now I wonder if people have that in the same way, because they're always moving on to something that that captures their attention when they're bored?
Does that make sense?
I would say the greatest detriment to American culture right now, I mean in terms of what we're talking about, arts and entertainment and stuff like that is the systematic elimination of daydreaming.
The people used to daydream all the time.
That used to be, you had to.
Like it wasn't.
You wasn't like You know.
If you were, you had to go to the bank and you had to wait in line and there was nothing to do while you were waiting.
So you just had to think about things.
And that, you know, I this is going to make me sound weird or weirder than I am.
But like I, I force myself to do this.
Like I have chunks of the day where I just lay there and don't do anything.
Just so I can't just so I can just to use your brain.
Well, to just let my brain just sort of go on.
Just like, let it, you know, think about anything without something providing stimulation back.
I mean, that's also like you know this thing you're talking about.
People have talked about this since the beginning of the advent of the printing press.
That basically, it's like people will be less creative now because they can just read the Bible or whatever.
And then it was like, oh, well, radio and then television, all these things.
It was like, these things are going to stop us.
But here is kind of what's different.
Reading is like a like a like a like a responsive thing.
You read something and you got to kind of imagine in your mind.
It's an active experience.
OK, but then all these other things we move through are passive.
And we have really accelerated that part of it, that like where people are like sort of looking on their phones or whatever.
I mean, phones are always the easy thing to use.
That's what everyone uses.
And there is a passivity to it.
Because you don't have to imagine what you're consuming.
It's a visual image.
Or you don't even have to read what you're reading about, because they find ways to sort of repackage it and tell it to you faster, in sort of a simpler format.
Or you listen to it over reading it.
You listen to an audio book, whatever.
And I just I think that the idea of sort of just sort of kind of spacing out and just kind of letting your mind go, I think that's really, but but just totally gone.
Like my, my kids can't handle it.
My kids cannot handle boredom.
You know, I often think, you know, it's like like we've really become like a, like a real secular society.
But I think one of the benefits to when it was a more sort of religious society was it forced people to be bored.
Like you know, I would go to mass sit there and then you would just have to sit there for an hour or whatever you know.
And, um, I think that was really good.
It's like really good to force people to be bored.
You know, and we've removed that from you know where we haven't removed it.
If you take a flight and the wifi is down and you thought, like I'm going to go on the wifi, I'll watch a show or I'll do, I'll go.
But now you're just stuck on this flight for four hours.
You didn't bring a book and you're like, Oh shit.
And like, guess what?
Sometimes that can be okay, especially if you're a creative person.
Well, I mean, this, this is kind of a thing, right?
Raw dogging flights.
Obviously you.
It's a weird strange they picked the term raw dogging for this.
But so there's this idea that you go on a flight, you don't watch TV, you don't listen to anything and you don't read.
And why would this happen?
Right.
Why would, why would people do this by choice?
And it's because they force themselves to do work.
Yeah.
No, I think that there's something in subconscious about us that craves this.
Like that, that for some, you know, that, that people are confused.
I flew four hours and I didn't read anything.
I didn't watch anything.
I didn't listen to anything.
Why do I feel good?
They don't even know why it makes no sense.
They expect to come off the flight and say like, that sucked.
The TV didn't work and I didn't bring a book and I just had to sit there.
And yet that's not what's happening.
They're proud that they did it.
Yeah.
Good about it.
So I I mean, it's an achievement to be on this podcast.
I've supported Nico Harrison and I was like, people should do nothing.
It's good for him.
So I get bored.
What's going to be third?
Yeah.
I talked about this on Sunday on the pod.
I went I took the train from Boston to Stanford with with my daughter.
OK.
And we both had an iPad on and we watched this peacock show at the same time.
And that's all we did for the entire thing.
We watched the show and we talked about it.
And I was thinking when I was a kid, going back and forth between Connecticut and Boston because my parents were divorced.
And I'd be on the Amtrak and I'd bring a book and a notepad, right?
And I'd read the book for some of the time or I'd have a newspaper.
And I'd write parts of short stories or fake sports columns, just whatever, to kill the time for three hours.
Those were kind of the only options.
But It also made my brain work in these ways.
I remember in college, I didn't have a computer until my senior year in college.
I wrote a sports column every week and I'd write it longhand.
I would go to a Dunkin' Donuts and I would get a giant iced coffee and I would write out ideas for the column and then I would start writing it in fucking cursive.
I would write out the entire thing, go back into the newspaper office and then type in the column.
And that seems like that happened in the 1890s.
It seems like I was like a cast member on, what was the Yellowstone spinoff?
1893, whatever, 1888, whatever.
Yeah, like that seems like a million years ago, but that was how, whatever my weird process was.
You know, you will often make jokes about like your fingers not working.
Do you misreact at all?
Like, I gotta say, I'm always surprised.
Like, okay, so you put that basketball book out.
It's like an 800 page book about a sport, right?
I don't know how many weeks it was on the top of the bestseller list.
You were in a position where you could have written whatever you wanted for the rest of your life.
You could have said, I want to do a book of poetry.
It would be $400,000 for that.
So how did you not keep doing that?
Like you could have written a book about anything you wanted and then you just stop.
Now I understand some people are listening to this and they're like well, because he moved into podcasting and that's actually much more relevant to what was happening in the world.
And he'd rather dominate this space than that.
But, but don't you, Do you ever regret that you didn't continue writing?
I don't regret it, but I really miss it.
And the reason I haven't wanted to do it the last seven, eight years is because I just don't feel like I could do it at a level that I'd ever be happy doing it.
I would say it's like golf.
It's like these people that have to play golf a few times a week to be good at golf.
And if they're just playing every once in a while, They're so unhappy because they know what they should be doing, but their body can't remember what to do.
I feel like with the writing, you just have to do it every day.
It's the only way I can be successful at it.
It's the repetition of being in the habit of doing it day after day after day that I think for me.
Some people aren't like that.
For me, that was what it was.
And all these different career choices you make, I don't have the ability to do that anymore.
So I would have to give up something pretty major to be able to do it.
This is, with that said, i have been thinking about writing a book.
Oh really okay okay yeah, this is a difficult question but, like you said, i totally understand you saying i don't feel like i could do it at the level to which i would be comfortable with or which i would find acceptable.
What specifically do you mean by that?
Like, what do you think that you're writing now would last?
That would stop you from being comfortable publishing it, because it's i mean, i'm always uncomfortable when i publish things.
So it's like you know, I think it's more the process.
Cause I remember the happiest I was ever with with writing was when I was doing my basketball book, which was like a suicide mission, basically trying to do the book the way I did it with doing all the other stuff I was doing.
But I was in the habit of really writing for three and a half four hours a day, like every day.
I didn't have another choice.
And I remember like I got to the point where I felt like I could flick a switch and just write whatever I wanted for like three, four hours.
And yeah, Be like, all right, I'm going to go to this place.
I'm going to do it.
And I know it's going to be at the level I want it to be.
And I never really got back to that spot.
I had moments.
I remember the first year at Grantland, I felt like I got back there for a year with the process.
I remember I came back from Boston after LeBron killed the Celtics in that game.
And I wrote a column on the plane that I think it was probably one of the best things I've written.
And I wrote it on the plane.
I had like four hours to write it.
I was frantically typing when I had to send it when I landed.
And I just knew I could do it because I had had enough reps.
That's the stuff I just... It would be so hard for me to do it now.
I don't know how to do it.
But look what you just said.
That you hadn't done it in a while.
You did it one time in a four-hour window.
No, no.
I'm saying when I did that, that was because I was writing all the time.
So what would happen if you did that now?
What would happen if you tried that now?
Do you think?
I'd probably... I'd stare at an empty...
I've tried a couple of times.
I'd stared at the empty document for two hours, like kind of even remembering.
You know, the process of putting your brain into your fingers.
What book are you considering writing?
This is like, I'm breaking news.
I feel like.
No, you're not because I'll never do it.
No, I had an idea.
I had two different ideas for a book.
I'm not going to mention them.
Okay.
I'll tell you.
I'll tell you offline.
Oh, OK.
OK.
I mean, I'm curious.
I don't mind you not telling me here, but I'm a little surprised that you said that.
I thought that was you were like, I'm done with that world.
No, I had a book after the basketball book that I really wanted to write.
And I just got too busy and I didn't do it.
But I had it all sketched out and I didn't do it.
I'll tell you about it after.
OK.
But I had it.
I had literally.
John Walsh still mentions it to me almost any time I talk to him, because he's the one I think the one person I told about the book.
So it's a sport.
He was excited.
It wasn't really a sports book.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'll tell you after.
But I think the biggest issue, the mistake I made with the basketball book, was it was just too long and too hard to do.
It was like three years of my life and it should have been like two books.
I should have spread it out.
Why?
I disagree entirely.
It actually became the book you imagined and it sold incredibly well.
I know, but I wish I had done part one and part two of it and then spent more time on it, versus like doing just trying to rush to meet a deadline.
I still have so many things I would change about it at this point.
Well, I mean, it's tough to do a book like that, particularly like when you're you were talking about some players who are still active, because there's no way you can write about things in the present tense without the book, in all likelihood, becoming dated, even if you're right.
Even if everything you say about those guys is correct, things just change.
So that is hard.
It would be hard for you to read a book like that and not say to yourself well, I would change this or I would change that.
I mean, it's really interesting.
But there's a scary moment when you're doing a book like that and I'm sure this has happened to you with at least one of the things you wrote where at some point you're completely lost in whatever you had in your head.
The book should be, and you've done a lot of the work already, but you're now in an abyss.
You can't get out of it.
You can't see the finish line, but you've already done all this work and there's nobody who can help you.
It's like, you're the only person in a weird way.
That's probably what I missed the most about.
Writing is like when you're the only person who can solve the problem, and it has to be you or else the thing's not going to get solved.
Right.
But at the same time, it's so scared.
It's all you think about.
It's like to do it correctly.
It has to be like the only thing you're thinking about.
You're thinking about it when you're in the shower, when you're in the car, when you're making a tuna fish sandwich, whatever it is.
It's just like, fuck, I got to figure this out.
That's what it is.
I mean, like when you do rewatchables now, it's almost like to use a musical analogy.
It's almost like you guys are kind of like making rumors, right?
Like you're people, you're kind of throwing ideas off each other.
You're using your- Which I love.
It's really fun to do.
You're using your relationships to kind of create stuff.
There's a producer outside.
There are all these things.
Writing is like being Prince Charming.
You write the songs, you play the songs, you produce the songs.
It's just you like that.
Billy Corgan making Siamese dream.
You're like, I'm just going to redo all the guitar and drum and bass and everything.
If you were smashing pumpkins and rewatchables, that'd be like you would go back and like you would like you'd do voiceovers for like things.
Right.
He says like, I don't like how he said this.
I'm going to get an actor.
Yeah.
So there's, there's stuff I do miss about it.
Now that my kids are older, there might be more time, but I'd have to give up something.
I don't think I could do it at the level I'd want to do it.
You know like that.
I admire the way that you've stuck with.
You know, like you have two books, two books that came out and how many?
What's the span of time between the two books?
Well, next year I have a book in January and a book in the fall.
And then weirdly this is talking about weirdness they're re-releasing Burger Rock City in the summer for the 25th anniversary.
Wow.
And it's strange because I haven't looked at that book since I wrote it, you know, and I'm kind of it's weird to think about it, but that's, you know, Jesus.
Yeah.
But you'll, and you probably, you finished too.
Now you're thinking about what the next one is.
Yes.
I'm really interested.
The book I'd want to read from you, or maybe it's just a piece is what's our, our bands just dead.
And why did bands have a shelf life in music and rock?
What, what was?
How did we have like when, when I was a kid and we had the that whole Beatles era of rock bands, but then we had all of this other like the bands that became classic rock, and then all of these other bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles?
We just had bands and the unity of a band and people getting together and just how you made music.
And why is that seem like it's not gone, but why, How did that just, how did that era just end?
Okay.
It's like, you know, like Tame Impala right now, I could say is like a band or like the war on drugs or a lot of these bands.
It's like they they they, they're still like you know they're, they're coming up with new ideas and like people are really into geese right now, as an you know.
So it still happens, but it's no longer the center of the culture.
And that's mainly what we're talking about is that it's receded from that.
Part of it has to do with, you know, the formal limitations of, of rock music.
I mean rock music, for whatever reason sort of made this decision that a band is going to be one or two guitars, a bass player, a drummer, possibly someone on keyboards, possibly someone doing another instrument that will sort of change the texture, and then vocals.
And the songs are all going to be between three minutes to five minutes, unless you want to go further and you become prog rock, or you can become extra short and you kind of become like a novelty, like stormtroopers of death or whatever.
So there's all these sort of formal limitations to a high degree.
I think we used them all up.
I mean, I know that seems insane to say, but there have been.
There were so many bands from 1964 to, you know 2004, whatever it was just used that like like the sheer number of music that was produced during that period sort of consumed a lot of the potential ideas you can create for a three or four minute song.
And then there was the fact that this, all this music, was also accessible, initially physically, but then through the internet, digitally.
And therefore everything has become to some degree retro, like everything that comes out now to some level is informed by music that existed in the past in a pretty direct way.
You know, and not just, And not the music that had just come before it, and not just like the classic records that everybody sort of steals from.
The idea that that there is.
It's almost impossible to imagine that the most interesting thing that happens in popular music would come from a band playing rock music.
At this point,
It just doesn't it just doesn't seem like that's still available.
But, you know, and the culture changed to the interest in rock culture changed and disappeared.
You know that was a big part of it.
Going to a rock show had a lot before and after the band played.
That was a meaningful time.
And that's kind of gone.
Nathan Hubbard has a theory that all of the chord combos and beat combos have basically been done in all of these different rock songs, that everything becomes derivative of something that already exists, which is part of the issue now.
Like basically what you said about all of these different combos have already happened with the four people in a band that would be in a band.
I think a lot of people said that happened in the 1980s.
Right, i mean, i'm seriously, because it was like you know, so much of what is considered rock music is still completely traceable back to 1955 to 1967.
I mean like, so yeah, there is so much of like what we view as like what is supposed to be in rock and what makes something heavy.
You know what makes something you know sort of, you know psychedelic or whatever.
Like that's all been established.
So I think it's like, it's not that it just happened now.
It's just that these things occur and they're lagging indicators.
Like, really like, rock music achieved full self-awareness of itself in the early nineties.
That was really the end of sort of the idea of formal invention in an ideological way for rock music.
But nobody realized that for 15 more years.
Like we went through a long iteration of like all the New York bands like the Strokes and stuff and the White Stripes and all these things.
Radiohead is in this.
You know it did not in any way feel like it felt like it was a vibrant rock form.
Like it felt like it was still something that was, you know, formally inventive and extremely interesting.
And yet, in a lot of ways, soon as the rock artists, particularly like the grunge era artists, became self-aware about what they were doing and what meant to be a rock star and sort of what this sort of said about your fan base and all this stuff,
I mean, all art ends when it reaches self-awareness and that's what happened to that.
I think 02 to 06 or 07 was, a really great time.
And I felt that way as it was happening.
And that was the last really exciting time for music.
There are many people who who, I think very justifiably argue that a lot of the music that's being produced in rock, you know, right now, and metal is like it's back.
It's excellent.
It's just that it has, it's, it's, it's sort of now like being like a connoisseur of these things.
It's sort of like saying, it's like being like, I know the most about jazz in 1985 or whatever.
And people are like, well, what do you mean?
Like you know, it's like yeah, it's like well, there's still jazz artists happening and these are still they're doing it.
It's so, you know like, especially when you and I talk about these things, we always talk about them in a macro way.
Like everything we talk about is sort of in the widest possible lens.
Like what does it mean to the world in general?
But, of course, if we would really drill down to the specifics of this In the same way that you do with the NBA, when you load talk and stuff like that, the things you're talking about aren't really applicable to most people who follow basketball.
Even when you talk about getting a league pass or whatever.
I think for most people the idea of getting a league pass, even though it's not that expensive, is kind of insane.
Since then,
90% of the time when I want to watch an NBA game, the guys aren't playing anyways.
Like the number of times that I watch a basketball game I want to see and both teams are operating at full strength happens so rarely.
It's almost like I got to text eight people.
That's like, oh, I'm watching the Warriors and the Nuggets and everyone's playing.
It needs to be an automatic text, yeah.
No, they need to tell you like hey, three days from now, the Nuggets will be playing all their guys.
Get ready on Wednesday night.
I'm in a fantasy league.
I got 15 guys on the roster.
10 of them are technically on the injured list.
Like, you know, to some degree.
It's just... Yeah, it's been ruined.
I was talking to my son.
My son really likes the Smashing Pumpkins.
Okay.
My son is like really is on the cutting edge of all the modern music.
Like he knows everybody has all the hip hop, all the basically all that world, like that's his music.
But there are some older bands that he likes, and he really likes Smashing Pumpkins, mainly because I was probably playing them in the car.
But I was thinking like when so I'm in high school and there's a certain kind of music I like, but there's only like between 10 to 15 years of it to go back and get like when we're buying like CDs and compact discs, calling up CDs in 1985 like gotta get more music.
I'll get, uh get, the best of sticks.
You know, and you, there just weren't a lot of, weren't a lot of albums.
Right.
And there's only like maybe 12 years total of all the music I like or 13, whatever it is.
And now I look at him in 2025 and there's 60 years of music for him to go through.
Not to mention like he also likes jazz and different things.
And, um, I almost wonder if we even need new music the way we did.
There's so much old music, like you could kind of live on that.
It's almost like having leftovers in your fridge forever.
You just go back into any decade and find awesome stuff, you know?
I would guess.
I mean, every person is different, but in general the idea of the time something is released matters much less.
I get the sense to younger consumers.
Like something being released now, something being released eight years ago, something being released 38 years ago.
They're all accessing it in the exact same way.
Because there's no physical music culture as much now.
It's not like you would have been into The Cure or whatever.
It's like you would have hung out with goth people and there would have been this whole kind of world.
I like The Cure.
I did not hang out with goth people.
But I'm just using that as an example.
I mean, you were into Styx, I guess.
You'd be hanging out with a lot of people who loved AOR music or whatever.
And you'd talk about Foreigner and you'd talk about Boston.
You'd have this kind of world.
Now that's not really... how it is.
It's like sort of all music is equally accessible.
And, you know, what you were describing kind of sort of like there wasn't that many albums.
Like I remember sort of the opposite experience where there was a limited amount of money.
So it's like, you know, I, I've said this a million times, but it's true.
Like for a very long time, I had four cassettes and then I got a fifth cassette.
This is like eighth, ninth grade.
And it was absolutely impossible for me, as a kid who was completely into metal, to be like I'm going to go back and buy the old Aerosmith records.
Like I couldn't have done that.
There was no way or particular.
I want to buy some unpopular Alice Cooper records just to understand that didn't happen.
Right.
That's good.
By the way, I was in the same boat.
I probably only had like 30 CDs, but it was a question of like it was, that was a normal, there weren't that many choices.
It wasn't strange to be somebody with 30 CDs.
It was strange to be somebody with hundreds.
Remember how important the greatest hits albums were?
Yes.
Because he would be like Oh, I get the most possible versions or most possible songs from this person.
I kind of like, I remember the bad company, greatest hits.
Like, this is great.
Yeah.
Well, the people, so glad they put off.
I never had a bad company album.
I used to buy a lot of live albums because the live albums encapsulate the last three or four records.
Um, you just mentioned, you know, like bad company now it's going.
So like, you know, so bad company is going in the rock hall.
Are you, are you aware of this?
Yeah, I saw that.
I was surprised they weren't in there already.
Okay.
So, well, I guess I have another, this might be another strange take.
Okay.
So, okay.
So so I mean, I think I probably I'm guessing like bad company more than most people who are listening to this podcast and all I mean I've owned some bad company records.
Okay.
Yeah.
Um, you know, like, uh, um, Pat Benatar, I think, is in the Rock Hall now.
And Foreigner.
Pretty good four-year run.
Foreigner.
Pat Benatar.
I definitely probably like Foreigner more than the average person in 2025.
Ozzy Osbourne got in as a solo artist.
Stevie Nicks got in as a solo artist.
So I'm not criticizing these bands, but I'll say this.
So the Rock Hall never actually described what bands are included.
Or like, what's the reason a band gets in?
But I did feel like there was an unspoken understanding of what bands are not going to get in.
And to me, it seems like it's artists like that.
Like people who are commercially successful, relatively formalist, straightforward bands, bands that got a lot of attention in the world since.
People bought their records.
People went to their shows.
But it doesn't seem like that's like a Hall of Fame thing. career to me.
I mean, if you're going to have a Hall of Fame about rock music or pop music, however you want to see it it seems like you should be able to say something about the artist more than it was like oh, there was good records.
A lot of people liked them.
It doesn't seem foreigner.
I just don't understand.
What is the reason foreigner is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
And here again, I say this as someone who likes foreigner like i like i like like by the way this this happened in the basketball hall of fame same thing the bar of who is a hall of famer because i think and i think it's the same reason for the rock and roll hall of fame they want to induct like six seven eight people a year right and at some point they don't have the six seven or eight anymore so all of a sudden and listen michael cooper killed the celtics in 1987 in game four he was the best defender at that position of the 80s I never thought he was a Hall of Famer, but now he's getting in.
People like that are getting in versus like the concept of the Hall of Fame is like Tim Duncan's a Hall of Famer.
You know, the... Allen Iverson is a Hall of Famer.
Like, the best 50, 60, 70 people in a sport are Hall of Famers.
Then we could argue about everybody else.
To me, a Hall of Fame is more meaningful if there are years when no one gets in.
Totally.
But, like, it's just very... It's just odd to me.
And now with the Rock Hall... anybody who gets in gets to vote.
Right.
So, like you know like so, like all the guys in Def Leppard are voting now, and like all the guys and all these and that and that's definitely going to, you know, expand this to bands that would, in the past, we would not have perceived as being sort of like kind of, you know, canonical groups.
I mean, that's, I guess that's what I like.
I kind of feel like if you're in the rock hall, you should either be a canonical act or you should be an act that did something that mainstreamed or invented an idea that kind of went everywhere, you know, or that during the time you existed you were kind of the most important act that was happening.
Um, and i, i?
It doesn't seem like that's how it is now now.
Now the rock hall, kind of like the basketball hall of fame, has become a situation where not getting in is more meaningful than getting in.
Like if you're a band who's not in the rock hall, like Motley Crue or whatever, is not in the rock hall and they'd be like well, why are we not in if Def Leppard is in?
Or, you know, what separates us?
Or, like, why the replacement?
So basically, if you've had success for seven, eight years, you're now in the rock and roll hall of fame.
Well, but yes and no.
I mean, I...
Boston's not in the hall of fame.
If you're going to pick one of these faceless, Boston's not in the hall of fame.
I'm 99% sure.
They're not.
Wow.
And to me, like, so bad company got in before Boston.
What?
Bad company got in before Boston.
Yes.
Kind of shocking.
I mean, I think that there's some people who say Boston really has like one and a half records, but I mean there's more hits.
I'd say three.
So they're great.
I mean, plus the thing with Boston is that record was a bedroom album.
It was produced by one guy. by himself in his house.
He did it himself.
It is the best sounding home recorded record in the history of music.
That to me, put that in a hall of fame or a museum, you know, like the achievement of, of the creative process of making that first Boston record would justify its induction.
I don't like, you know, obviously like I like Ozzy Osbourne.
I like Stevie Nicks.
I love black Sabbath.
I love Fleetwood Mac.
They get in and, in Black Sabbath and Fleetwood Mac.
I don't really understand why they're being, or why they were inducted as solo artists.
Can you really look at their solo career and say, like this is a, like it's important that these records happened, you know?
Well, Stevie Nicks, I think.
I mean she did have a couple albums and a couple hits, but she's the Fleetwood Mac piece of her career.
Is She already got in for Fleetwood Mac?
She had a good solo career.
Ozzy had a great solo career.
Crazy Train, Flying High Again.
There's a bunch of the songs that are great.
But to put it in a Hall of Fame now seems like it's just... Well, I have the answer for this one.
It's literally because they want to have the seven, eight new members every year so they can have the ceremony and the telecast.
And they're never going to be like, hey, we've run out.
Hopefully we'll have some more down the road.
They're just going to put in seven more.
They want to have the ceremony like in the Barclays Center.
So we have to induct Rush, and we have to induct Kiss or whatever because they'll fill the place.
But, I mean, Rush definitely should be in the Rock Hall.
But, you know, it's – I don't know.
But you mentioning bad company made me think of that.
Again, now – so now I'm pro-Nico Harrison, pro-boredom, anti-bad company, I guess.
This is the aggregate of this conversation.
And pro –
You think Bonds and Clemens should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame?
Yes.
I've been on the record for 20 years saying I don't know what we're doing.
But there's some veterans committee now where they might be able to get in.
I don't even think people care anymore because it's been so long.
Although, in a sense, over time, it helped Pete Rose not to get in the Hall of Fame.
It helped because every year the Hall of Fame induction happened, people talked about Pete Rose, every single year.
If he would have just got in.
People have been like oh, questionable decision with this gambling situation.
And that would have been, he'd just be a guy in there.
So sometimes not getting in is to your benefit.
Well, we never got to talk about The Chair Company and Pluribus, two shows that you love.
So if you want to do 60 seconds on that, and then we'll go.
I just want to say a brief thing about The Chair Company and Pluribus, which I felt television has been real down for the last six or so months, and these two shows are great.
And the reason they are is because they're they're kind of doing something that kind of had been lost for a while.
The chair company is the rare example of a show outside of like the Nathan Fielder stuff, where I literally have no idea what's going to happen in these episodes with even you know like it is really surprising to me when I watch a television show and I don't kind of see what like where they're going or what's going to happen, or or even if I don't know the twist, I see a twist on the horizon.
This show is not like that.
Like I, I, I do not know, scene to scene, what's going to happen.
And the thing about Pluribus, and I've only seen two episodes of this, but they're great.
What is interesting about this show is that it seems like it clearly must be about something, and yet that is a debatable concept.
Like, it seems like it's about AI, but maybe not.
I mean, some people I think who see it as like a statement against wokeism.
I think there's some people who think actually it's like a pro socialist message.
Like you know, like there's a whole like you this show because Vince Gilligan does things in a political way.
People assume there must be a secret political meeting in there and they can just kind of inject anything.
And he's done a brilliant job of making that possible.
Plus, he's one of the last guys who at least cares about what the TV show looks like on your screen.
He's not just like, I'm going to show... What would be an interesting way to show a woman driving?
As opposed to.
I'm just going to have a shot of a car for two seconds.
So we know she got from point A to point B.
He's trying.
He's trying ideas.
Two good ones.
They're both on my list, as is the Scorsese doc.
You will really like that.
So this...
And I haven't seen the Netflix, the Garfield assassination show yet.
But I've heard they kind of stealth released it.
The Game of Thrones guys are EPs on it.
And Tom from Succession is in it.
There's some really good actors in it.
And supposedly it's great.
It's about pregnant Garfield?
It's a four episode drama slash.
I think it's a little bit funny too about the assassination of James Garfield.
I didn't even know this was happening.
Yeah, they did the weirdest thing.
They didn't publicize it at all.
And I think they want it to be word of mouth.
But I already have a couple of people in my life who are like, this is fucking incredible.
And I wonder, could this lead to like some sort of Ryan Murphy type situation, but like on a high end caliber of like taking historical things and just like four episode whatever, because I'm all in?
If that's how we can learn about American history, I would be excited.
Like a real, like tabloid version of squeaky from trying to kill four, but this is like high-end, well done.
Yeah, that could be real good, you know right.
Yeah, so we'll see if that goes.
Uh, chuck klosterman plug, plug some pre-orders for your books.
Oh yeah, please.
My football book is coming out in january.
It's very difficult to sell books now, so i appreciate you having me on here and allowing me to say this um, And I will, I'll come back.
I'll actually come to LA in January.
We can talk about the book more.
Do you have the book?
I have the book.
Okay, good, good.
Good cover.
Haven't read it.
It's on my holiday list.
I will read it before we do the podcast.
Take your time.
I just went through the freaking gauntlet of NFL and NBA starting at the same time.
Well, yeah.
So I was trying to just survive October.
You know, it's hard to find...
The time to do, it's like what Jim Croce says.
It's like, you don't understand the things you want to do until there's no time to do them.
Jim Croce.
One of my first favorite musical artists, by the way.
Jim Croce songs, walking in the rain, walking the dog the other day, listening to this music.
It's like those songs at times are too emotional to be available to me in the day.
Like I don't want to think about some of these things that, like you know, and like they're real, memorable and everything's a visual picture.
And like some of them, like, you know, rapid Roy or whatever are just kind of fun.
But there's a lot of songs that are like there.
This resonates deeply with, you know, too much, too much emotion.
Chuck Klosterman, a pleasure as always.
I'll see you in January.
You got it.
Thank you.
All right.
That's it for the podcast.
Thanks to Chuck.
Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo.
As always, I'm going to be back on this feed on Thursday.
And don't forget about the new rewatchables that went up.
Snake Eyes.
Don't forget about the mailbag.
BSpodcast33 at gmail.com if you want to send a question for a future mailbag segment.
I will see you on Thursday.
Go Patriots.
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