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26:13Bill Simmons:I'm at least having a six hour meeting and it's a reconstruction of a, of a team because you're going to remove the Murray-Yokic pick and roll, but you could run a lot of that offense through Joker. You re-sign Peyton Watson with the extra money. You have him more involved offensively, and you could argue that that team's better, it's bigger, it's deeper. You have Jokic and Gordon and Jalen as your front line. You have more flexibility, and you have somebody who can really step in if Gordon gets hurt, which he gets hurt every year. and now you're not getting destroyed if that happens and you're under the tax and you can get Watson.

26:52Bill Simmons:That trade makes a ton of sense to me, Zach. It's a very, it's a good trade. It's a well, well done Picasso trade. Boston gets a little smaller, I think, depending on whether Cam Johnson, you know, sticks around the team. They get a little, although they played with only one of the Jays almost all of last year anyway. it's a good trade I mean Jamal Murray addresses a need for Boston I think it allows them to go three guards at the same time which is something they could only really do last year when Simons was on the team and then couldn't and also the reason they got into this Giannis thing in general was because they felt like Hugo and Shireman and maybe even Hauser, Walsh, they just felt like they could patch the minutes together that Jalen had with worse stats but at least like two-way stuff.

27:43Bill Simmons:And then Tatum would take some of the offensive slack. But really, they wanted to unleash Hugo, which is why he was untouchable in that trade. So they would cover the wings. They would still need a center. But it's an interesting team. And honestly, I think Murray's a great bet. I thought he had too much of a burden on the Nuggets. It was basically him or Jokic doing everything. And he's in the West. And I thought he was really good last year. And I thought he wore down as March, April, we got into the playoffs. Celts could put him on a 30-minute game timeline with White and Pritchard. And I just feel like they could manage his minutes better.

28:19Here's my obstacle if I'm Denver. Is I have no... Christian Brown is now my only proven rotation playoff level guard on the whole team. Out of anyone. Now I can do maybe bring back Bruce Brown on the minimum. Whatever. It sounds like Tim Hardaway Jr. is going to have some suitors. It may be out of their price range. jalen pickett is the only point guard on the team like the only one um and that makes me a little

28:47Bill Simmons:bit nervous they're mid-level in this though or at least like some free agent stuff it's pretty tight but i'd have to sit and redo the math but um they could because they're shaving some money off i mean they'd get guys uh i also think there'd be a learning curve of like fitting jalen brown's game with the point you're going all in on point yokich like almost all in depending on who you get in free agency and sort of fitting jalen brown into that universe i think would be have a little sticky at times kind of went all in on that anyway didn't they well the murray yokich pick and roll and like murray is it's like a fail safe like all right let's look tonight's jamal's just cooking you can run that all that stuff with jalen brown it's just it just feels a little a little different than me to to me then then and that's maybe that's fine and you obviously get bigger and there's something kind of fun about like yokich and a bunch of wings and like tweener forwards just taking up the entire court with their arms.

29:40Bill Simmons:Right. A little more flexibility. That was my favorite fake one of all those. Who do you think has a longer meeting about that trade? So it's just Murray and Cam Johnson for Jalen and Hauser. That's it. Who has a longer meeting about it? About that trade alone, I think Denver has the longer meeting because they are at some sort of crossroads where they need to figure out, we're really good. We fell short. um we had a lot of health issues Aaron Gordon again um you know the two teams that were above us in the standings are just so goddamn good that and we have this all-time great player in the middle of his prime um have has what we do grown stale is it is it time to make change almost for change sake is it time to just sort of risk a little bit of like instability in the way we play just to get our upside up a little bit and or is that is that too risky I don't I I don't know, but I think they are at a major crossroads as a franchise.

30:36They also have to bring back Peyton Watson, by the way, which we didn't bring up.

30:40Bill Simmons:But I think that's part of that trade, right? That saving$10 million makes it way easier to bring him back. I mean, just imagine a lineup of Christian Brown, Jalen Brown, Peyton Watson, Aaron Gordon, and Nicole Jokic. I have no idea how that works on offense other than Jokic answers every question on offense that has ever been posed to him. But that's a pretty funky lineup. And that would be like five. I would pay a lot of money to watch that. Watch them work that out. Well, basically, you'd be getting weird. Yeah, which is we're going to talk about Minnesota after the break. But it's the same kind of principle to me.

31:12Bill Simmons:If I'm them, I don't think the team I have, I can beat OKC and San Antonio and they're fucking pitbull guards on both teams. And I don't think I can get Jamal Murray through two straight rounds of that. Plus, Minnesota, maybe two with McDaniels and Edwards. like I just I you could see him wearing down in real time I thought last year so that would be the reason but um that would be a weird one for me because obviously Jokic and Curry are my two favorite uh non-Celtics and to have Jalen on a Jokic team and I you know I'm about as pro Jalen as you're gonna find um I he really I thought he was just awesome last year and I love the fact that the best quality about him, and this is what advanced analytics isn't going to measure, is he really is up for the challenge if somebody else is a good team with a really good player.

32:07Bill Simmons:He takes it personally and wants to outplay that person in a game. And it sounds like a really dumb thing to say, but there's just not enough guys in the league that are wired like that. You know, where it's like, oh, this guy, I've circled this game. I've been dying to go against this team tonight. So anyway, all right. we're going to take a break and then I'm going to unleash my lamello trade opinions. I can't wait. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel making USA's run even more exciting. And it's threatening to become a run, by the way. Every match, every goal, every step toward the knockout stage, there is more on the line than ever before.

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34:16Bill Simmons:Visit www.mickelobalture.com slash superior access slash FIFA World Cup 26 for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. One last point I wanted to make on that Jalen trade. We didn't have a Houston trade in there because Houston has literally been telling everybody we want no part of Jalen. We're not interested um that team was a bravo show last year how were they dry how were they drawing the line at oh jalen brown would make us weird you guys had the weirdest team in the planet you know what jalen brown would do is actually show up for games and not roll over in a playoff series anyway lamella okay yeah it's just like settle down what's the number one guys were a disaster last year educate me what's the number one bravo show in your life what's what's a bravo show real housewives so all the real housewives of any variety that's all bravo everyone still spinning off cities they did rhode island i i went to right that's if you go to rich newport rhode island there's probably some good stuff going on there some good accents too uh my wife's a big below deck fan all right lamello trade you already gave your take i did do i'm going to give the cliff notes of your take or do you want to just give your your 45 second take no i want to hear the bill simmons cliff let's filter let's filter it through your years near pod it was a very entertaining pod i listed on a nice little power walk a very hot la and you were bullish on the trade for for both teams actually i think it's like i think it's like a b for both teams is if i were a trade grade guy that's what i would that's about what i would do uh i'm at a minus or a for charlotte and i'll go into the reasons in a second I couldn't believe the trade from Minnesota.

36:02Bill Simmons:I fucking hated it. I hated it. I just couldn't believe it. You do this trade. I wrote down some notes. You do this trade. If you want to become the most beloved NBA team with under 25 fans who play video games and are online a lot. It's a 2k merchandise Jersey selling trade. I get it. You don't want teams to double Anthony Edwards anymore. I feel like I get it is kind of an important qualifier to I hate the fucking trade. I get it on paper. Lamello Ball would solve a lot of problems that you had with Anthony Edwards last year. There's one problem. He doesn't fucking play. He's played two seasons of the last six.

36:45Bill Simmons:Last year, Charlotte brilliantly, only he played big minutes early, got hurt, came back. I watched a ton of Charlotte last year, as you know. they were using him like a race car on Sundays just driving him slowly around the block he averaged 27.5 minutes a game from mid-November on Zach they were really really careful about not getting him hurt again almost like they knew they were going to trade him this summer flawed mid-20s superstar what does that mean well just that's how you're able to get a guy like this for Nas Reed and a first round pick and a swap and I get it from the Minnesota side where on paper it makes sense.

37:28Bill Simmons:Now they could play LaMelo and Ant and Io together against these smaller lineups, against San Antonio and against OKC, which they didn't have the option to do last year. And the only thing I really understand from it is that they built that previous team to beat Denver, right? Connelly's like, we have to beat Denver. What is the team we can put together to beat Denver? And now it seems like they've built this new team to beat OKC and San Antonio who are going to have more talent than them. Well, how do you beat them? These two three-point shooters, and we can guard with Io and McDaniels and Gobert, hopefully protecting LaMelo.

38:04Bill Simmons:And we're going to have three-point shooting variants with these two guys who in any game can get super hot. I just don't trust LaMelo at all. And if you're wrong, Ant's leaving. And by the way, Tim Connolly might be leaving too. He's got a year left on his deal. And if I'm Tim Connolly, I'm cool making this trade because if it doesn't work out, I'm seeing you guys anyway. I'm going to be out. He's got a year left on his deal. So this to me feels like a Hail Mary trade that your fans are going to like because LaMelo is the best player in it. The Charlotte fans are mad because they love LaMelo.

38:34Bill Simmons:LaMelo doesn't fucking play. I wrote down, he's the least durable good guard of the last 25 years. Six seasons, 9 ,400 minutes, zero playoff games, which puts him on this crazy list of guys who have averaged 20 points a game in their first six seasons but have played less than 10 ,000 minutes. And it's basically just him and John Moran and Zion. And that's it. He's not reliable. He has a, I think he has metal in his ankle. Like this is not like, Oh, Steph Curry had ankle injuries too. The mills injuries are way worse than Steph Curry's were. And I just wouldn't have bet on it. I thought this was a crazy trade.

39:14Bill Simmons:Okay. I mean, that's it. That's where I've landed. Well, and I landed it there right away. Um, all of that, like all the availability stuff is a thousand percent fair game also um something i probably should have mentioned more when i when i reacted the other day was there is this sort of like drip drip drip trickle down effect of minnesota transactions kind of chasing their own tail a little bit similar to how dallas had to chase its own tail when like all right we lost we left jail and brought we let jail and brunson go we got to trade for kyrie uh the grant williams thing blew up on our face we got to trade him and a pick to replace him with p there's like a little element of that of like we got phoenix too we traded everything for gobert we're a little asset poor and we're now we're really expensive we're probably gonna have to trade towns we trade towns okay that didn't really work now we have to do something else so there's a little bit of element of like chasing their tail a bit i i get i get all of the the concerns i i guess my if you're worried about anthony edwards happiness level um i guess my question would be what you just hold for something else down the line and go and do you do not make the randall trade like what what do you do if you're bill simmons timberlows gm well the randall trade they clear it was clearly a money dump right and you could say it was a two-part trade but and it opened the door for lamello but i also think they just wanted to get away from randall and not not pay this crazy luxury tax thing i have real questions about them spending a ton of money in general um i mean they're spending right now the payroll is is going to be high i think they're going to add i think they're also not done.

40:47I think that's important to say. They're not done rounding out the team for next season. But the town's trade was a financial trade period.

40:54Bill Simmons:Yeah. That was it. They, that was, we got to get off some of this money and do it. And it turned out to be a really crazy trade. They have, I think 11 million to spend on four guys. They don't have their own first control their own first for seven years. What did you think of that IO contract was the other one that I was kind of shocked by five years, 112 million. What was going on there? I, I, what do you, I mean, that's what I like them, but Kobe white got the same annual, so actually a little more annual, less years, but same annual. Kobe white got three for 74. Yeah. Less years, uh, 25 a year.

41:29I was at like 22 and a half a year. I mean, this was five years though. Well, the, yeah, I mean this like, don't you want, so you can't win with these contracts, right? Like if they're too short, you're like oh man we only got that guy and he's going to be extension eligible this and that and now it's this one's too long for you they got what how old is io i just if i told i know i i like

41:49Bill Simmons:him too and i thought he was really good in the playoffs if i had told you in february when he got traded for a second round pick that he was going to sign for a five-year 112 million dollar deal in the second apron thing i just would have been surprised by it he's 26 years old i don't you can't win like if it's a two or three year do you want a three-year deal just right down the middle that's it that's the perfect length i just thought it was interesting they they properly maybe even splurged a little on io but they've been cutting corners with some of these other stuff and you know randall was a guy who made multiple second team all-nbas and the reason that he went sideways after the all-star break because they fucking tried to trade him right before the trade deadline for yannis and he was never the same after that the other drip drip drip thing i neglected to mentioned in the drip, drip, drip of assets is the Dillingham pick not working out was a big, a big, right.

42:38Bill Simmons:But at least that turned into Iowa. Right. But again, they had to throw picks and all of their, their, their chasing, not just mistakes. Cause I don't know if the Rudy trade can be classified as a mistake anymore, but they're chasing. They're just, it's like a, it's like a better that is losing and keeps chasing and keeps spending more. It's like a Ponzi scheme blackjack thing. First of all, they missed their title window. They were a conference finals team twice in a row and the West was weaker and they had a real chance and they couldn't get there and you go back to that Dallas series I think was really probably their best chance when you think about that matchup and they couldn't beat them.

43:12Bill Simmons:I didn't mention this in my LaMelo case or anti-LaMelo trade case and I really liked watching LaMelo last year and I enjoyed the hell out of the Hornets. We have zero I repeat zero evidence that LaMelo Ball can hold up for one playoff series with his hoops IQ or the physicality of a playoff series, much less for what Minnesota is trying to do with a trade like this, win four playoff rounds or at least three to get to the finals. We've never seen him play at the level of the playoffs we just watched with the physicality of the teams that we watched and just what basketball is like. You're going to need, this is like the Wemby conversation.

43:54Bill Simmons:If this is your second best player, sorry, buddy, you can't play 27.5 minutes each game in a series. He's like, we're going to need you for 37 now, and it's going to be really physical, and you're going to get banged down. You're going to get knocked in the basket support. You can't take the 30-footer with 30 seconds left in the game down one with 20 seconds left in the shot clock. You have to become a smarter, better player. I thought he made a lot of strides last year, but that Miami playing game was a roller coaster. Think of how nuts we went after that game. Then the next game, they got blown out.

44:27Bill Simmons:But I just, we have no evidence that this is a guy who could handle a playoff series against San Antonio or OKC. But this is exactly why the Hornets traded him. It's exactly what I said on my show is like, just the physicality, toughness, all that stuff you just said. Plus, I do, and I said this too, I do think their record in the play-in tournament, it's only been four games. And three of them have been like absolutely disastrous blowout losses. And in the Miami one, he did have 30 points, but I think he shot 12 of 31. won. Also fair to note, like he's a rookie, but Khan was a disaster and down the stretch of the season and including in those games.

45:02Bill Simmons:I mean, the Khan, Khan hurt his back. He wasn't the same the last 10 games. Don't you talk about my son that way? I was going to say, I don't know what would happen if he was hurt though. I don't know. Like Hugo, Hugo versus Khan is becoming like the battle for your heart is, is getting a little, it's getting, it's, they both have, they both have some work to do to prove themselves to you listen i i love them like i love both my children we don't pick when you when you have two kids you just support and so it's an easy out for you because when the hornets play the celtics when their one team plays the other you're going to cheer for the celtics because that's your team like we need hugo going to get traded for another team that's the true test of who of who your love your real love goes to but um that's exactly why uh the hornets i think trade i think it boy you can make the case about picks and salaries and all this stuff i think it really just boiled down to we watch the playoffs and we just don't think he can hang at that level and that those are all fair those are all we don't trust him physically or physically i think the iq 16 playoff games with this guy i think you can get over the iq stuff because like you said i think it trended well last year i think being the second the clear second best guy on a team is going to really kind of force him to recalibrate some of the ways he plays um but i think it's more of the physicality stuff and i i think that's a completely fair bet for charlotte i think when you combine this trade with the bridges trade that happened today that we're going to talk about i think charlotte has come out looking awesome just to to like put those together great work by the hornets who continue to just kill it under their new regime uh for minnesota i would just i would just ask again what are what what path i mean according to john Krasinski, they tried to get Jalen Brown and they couldn't get, you know, like this package was not going to get them Jalen Brown.

46:51So what, what do you, you're trying to compete with San Antonio and Oklahoma city. You're on the clock with Anthony Edwards. What the status quo was not acceptable, right? Like that's that, like we, we clearly they didn't think so. So you're

47:06Bill Simmons:laying out all the, you're laying out all the logic for some of the, the worst big NBA trades we've had over the last 40 years. I don't. Well, we got to do something. I don't. I don't disagree. Can you talk yourself into LaMelo Ball? I don't disagree. First of all, I think LaMelo Ball, I think a lot of this has to do with what your prior is on LaMelo Ball. And you and I have disagreed about LaMelo Ball for like five years. I just think he's better than you think he is. I've always thought he's been better than you think. I thought your durability, though. That's fine. I like when guys play. It's like, it's one of my weird things.

47:34Bill Simmons:It's not weird. I like seeing them on a basketball court. It's not weird. But I, you got to do, I guess you're saying just do nothing and just figure it out later, which is a completely like a logical way to go about it. I think the wolves had concluded that that wasn't an option for them. The case for it is. I think they're going to be good. I think this is going to work and I think they're going to be good. If your bar is, well, can they beat San Antonio four times out of seven or Oklahoma city four times out of seven to pretty tough bar to hit? You know, I just, but I think offensively this is going to be a super bar for the, for all the trades they made, because I felt like last year, one of the reasons they didn't look better in the playoffs was they had a bunch of injuries at a bad time well they still have hurt in the playoffs i was got hurt during the playoffs and defense shenzel got hurt during the playoffs like to me this feels like an overreaction all that and so that's that i had before first six seasons less than 10k minutes just guys who average 18 points a game basically merger on it's ja lamello zion and clark kellogg that's it those are all the guys in the last like 45 years.

48:38Bill Simmons:He turns 25 in August. And if you're trying to make the case for Minnesota, you would say, look, we've seen a lot of success with immature, injury-prone, talented guys in the first like five, six years of their career who went to a different team and put it together. And I think there's going to be nights with this team. And I'm sure the Minnesota fans will be on high alert. And even people I have in my life, like Nate Tice, who liked Minnesota, there's going to be nights when they're on TV on a Thursday night and they're playing somebody awesome and Lomelo hits eight threes and Ant hits nine and they beat somebody by 18 and they look awesome and they're doing like chest bumps and all kinds of stuff midcourt.

49:18Bill Simmons:People are like, oh, how's that Lomelo trade now? I'm just telling you. And there's going to be talk to me in April and May. There's going to be Bill Simmons poo-pooing it. Yeah, yeah. Just wait. Just talk to me April and May. I don't care what happens October through March. I just don't. Here's the real question with Minnesota. And I don't, I think people think this question has been answered because they made two straight conference finals and there had been such a woebegone franchise for so long between Garnett and those two conference finals that people think the question has been answered definitively as a yes, they should have made the Rudy Gobert trade.

49:56if you just reverse time like if you if you assume that the gobert acquisition is why they ultimately had to dump towns and we all said when they traded for rudy gobert a towns deal looks inevitable because of the financial realities and the fact that he's a center and all this like we all said it at the time like as soon as that trade happened even before it happened i remember saying if they do this the town's trade is the next domino that will come eventually did they give up on ant plus towns too early by making the gobert trade i think is still kind of an open question because it not only robbed you of a lot of assets i think they over they clearly overpaid for gobert like it it both got them team success to a point that people have already stopped questioning whether they should have made the trade or not and that's okay but they clearly overpaid either way and it forced their hand on cat and we just didn't get to see all that much of like anthony edwards plus carl anthony towns is the foundation of the team i think it's just

50:57Bill Simmons:an interesting question i hated the go bear trade as much as any trade i've ever ever that's been made they made two conference finals with it i don't know if i was wrong i didn't get to the finals i thought they gave up too much that's the thing i don't know if you were wrong and like i I was on TV that moment. And I said on ESPN, I am in disbelief at how much they gave up for Rudy Gobert. And I was as puzzled as you were. I maybe didn't hate it, hated as much as you did. And I'm not even sure you were wrong despite the conference. I guess you are wrong because of the conference finals, but like this, this, all of this starts with that trade.

51:39Bill Simmons:With all that said about the Lamella trade, I never would have done. I would have thrown my body in front of it. I'm really excited to watch them this year. I think they'll be really fun. But that's the problem. They'll be really fun as a regular season team, and I don't think, as constructed, I think they've reduced their odds to win three straight playoff rounds in the West. I don't think they have the same odds. They added variance, but I don't think they, when the durability and, I just don't trust LaMelo. How high do you? Also, doesn't it scare you that Charlotte's like, Of course. Yeah, we're good.

52:08Bill Simmons:Yeah, take him. He's not even on a max. He's at 43 million in Charlotte. Charlotte, by the way, just could have brought back Kobe White and tried to do what they did last year. And they're like, we're good. We're going to move on now. It was a classic selling high. There was something else I wanted to ask you. And now I forgot what it was. I'm sorry. No, about this trade. By the way, the other thing with this trade that I thought was interesting that everybody missed, Josh Green was just shoved in this trade. I mean, he's like 15 million air. He was irrelevant for the Hornets. Well, I was listening.

52:41Bill Simmons:I was listening to him in the trade. I was listening to one pod where they were like, oh, this is a great, like, you know, they, the Josh Green, you know, Minnesota got a lot of depth in this. That was a good get, but I'm like, good get. This was like a must. You have to take him. That was like Charlotte. If you're doing this, you're taking this. Oh, that's what I was going to ask you is let's, let's try to just put this trade in a vacuum. I know that's not possible, but like in a vacuum, both with Timberwolves history and like cap ramifications and all that. do you think LaMelo for Nas Reed and one unprotected pick and a few swaps that may not even like it's unclear if they're going to be out is that actually too high of a price for LaMelo ball?

53:26Like is that that much that you're giving up if you're Minnesota? A six man of the year who's now going to start and is a good player has some defensive issues, some swaps that may or may not be anything, a really good pick and some seconds. Is that actually that high of a price?

53:41Bill Simmons:think about where we were in september october when we were talking about lamello jaw and trey young all together when i was the one saying lamello has the most value of the three and it's not close we had this conversation i thought i thought it was a little closer than you did but i thought those were the three and it seemed like he had the best chance to be redeemed and maybe traded instead of giving away trey was given away john morant not only can't be given away that's that's the other subplot is like you're gonna have to add a pick to get rid of him lamello they rehabilitated his trade value um enough to where they got i thought you know i i think you would have taken that in september if even if it would have made the fans man it's like look we don't know if this dude's ever going to play they were able to get 2 000 minutes out of them and they were able to trade them my only point is if you isolate the trade which you can't i get that but I don't think they overpaid for LaMelo Ball to some crazy level.

54:35I think it's a fair trade.

54:37Bill Simmons:But you have to throw the Randle into it. Randle has to be part of the trade. They traded Randle, Nas Reed, and the pick and the swap for Josh Green and LaMelo is the trade. And that's, I don't know.

54:55Bill Simmons:I feel bad for the Minnesota fans. They haven't won a title since 1991. one. And Lomelo, this is going to be a very seductive combo. I'm telling you, there's going to be nights where you're like, holy shit. Ant and Lomelo had 23s combined. This has never happened in the history. There's going to be nights. They're going to be really fun together. We'll see how long he can play from a Charlotte side. And they did another trade today. So they traded Miles Bridges for Grayson Allen and Royce O 'Neal and won that trade. They won that trade just with the three players in it. Just Miles Bridges for Grayson Allen and Royce O 'Neal.

55:30Bill Simmons:I've won the trade. No, how about this? I'll throw in the worst of my 2029 swap. You'll get the less favorable version of that. And you give me your unprotected first in 33. And Phoenix is like, that sounds great. Let's do it. What a fucking terrible trade by them. That was why, I mean, I just, the picks, explain it to me. I mean, do i have to are you making me do that well how can nobody how about top i guess you can't put protections on the picks anymore but i checked i checked i was like where i texted lots of people i was like no protection on it not anything top nothing top okay um for a year of miles bridges he's a free agent next year so here's the thing it's not going to be a year of miles bridges you know that they're going to resign miles bridges and you have to price that into the trade as well and that could make your evaluation of it bill simmons even worse depending on what the number is and they're probably going to extend dylan brooks too and all of a sudden this team's going to be pretty expensive i don't want to explain the trade to you i don't like the trade for phoenix they did it because they didn't have a real power forward they got one now they did it probably because miles bridges is a michigan state guy great um congratulations uh and they did it because they saved money they saved money this year and they get 29 million dollars of grace now plus Royce O 'Neal, who they view as just sort of fungible, whatever, seventh guys off the books, and they get a starter.

56:58He's going to start. Who signed

57:00Bill Simmons:those guys, just out of curiosity? The Suns signed both of them. Oh, so the Suns now have to get off the money that they gave to these guys? If I was a Suns fan, I would be losing my mind. Why did you give these contracts? You made me be Ish Be a spokesperson. You assigned me the fucking job, so let me do it without interruption. So I tried my best to do it. I don't like to trade i think it's an awesome trade for charlotte who loses lamello ball right so they lose like the the high wattage star a guy that i think should have gotten all nba consideration this year like third team all nba he was in the mix for that they lose they don't get back a player in kobe white reeds re-signing plus grace now plus royce o 'neill that's anywhere near as good as lamello ball but kobe white's good and is a viable starter i think they lose some playmaking and passing they're gonna have to make up but what they have now is so much depth if those guys are all healthy that they don't have to speed up steinbach they don't have to speed up christian anderson but those guys maybe already they have like a lot of good players on this team and in the regular season that's really important and just sort of getting through the season and they kick the pick out they owe to 2029 so they're not under a huge amount of pressure and it's a swap thing anyway so it's not like a huge risk well they have the best collection of picks probably in the eastern conference though and phoenix that unprotected 2033 i get what they're doing what they're doing is we're exchanging a future pick for a now pick because we've traded all of our now picks our near window picks for durant and we need we need to be able to do stuff in this period of time when devin booker is approaching 30 or whatever he is that 2033 pick, just like the 2031 Suns pick that Memphis, I believe, has.

58:42Bill Simmons:Or these Bucks picks that Portland has that it's like, oh, that's nine years from now. What do we care? And then it's like, oh, now they're coming. Important to state we don't know what the rules are going to be in terms of trading draft picks and lottery and all that stuff. But but those picks are going to be extremely valuable trade ships. And I don't. It's not like Phoenix has any roadmap to being a title contender in the next three or four years. So I don't. Well, I have a follow-up idea for them that you're going to do the thing where you can't speak for a minute. Okay. But Charlotte's picks.

59:17Bill Simmons:So they have the 27 Dallas first top two protected next year. They have a Miami pick that's going to be unprotected in 28. They can swap with Minnesota in 28. They have a bunch of swap stuff. And they have unprotected Minnesota Charlotte in 2033. on top of a shitload of flexibility that they have now because Zach Lowe, they traded Lamello, Green, and Bridges, $78 million. Turned that into Nas O 'Neal and Grace Nowlin, $52 million. And they also have a$41 million trade exception with all these picks. They have their mid-level still. From some of the reporting, it seems like Kobe White was not a slam dunk to come back as like a third guard.

1:00:01Bill Simmons:and when they traded LaMelo, all of a sudden that Kobe White deal was done. They're going to have O 'Neal who can play 3-4. They're going to have Nas who can play 3-4-5, really. Grayson Allen coming off the bench as yet another shooter. And by the way, where did Grayson Allen go to college, Zach? Where did he go to college? The team I always cheer against in the tournament, I think. Duke University located in North Carolina. Where did Kobe White go to college? Where did Rick Schnau go to college? so they have coming off the bench, Alan Nas Anderson, if he's good, Kalkbrenner, Steinbach, a year of Grant Williams.

1:00:38Bill Simmons:They, I, I'm so impressed by her. I've been saying this for two years. I've been so impressed. Every move they've made. I'm like another good one. Oh, like that. Great one there. Is this the team you would want to be in the East now for the next seven years over everybody else? Not next to next seven, seven years. I get my pick of teams. just for how they're loaded locked and loaded right now i like the city i like the city too i like the ownership okay so let's can i give you some candidates yeah i'd by the way i didn't prep you for this because i wanted to see your agonized reaction no this is great because i'd love to imagine like this is like a like where could where would i want to work off the top up.

1:01:26Charlotte is definitely maybe number one. If I trusted the Reinsdorfs at all, the Bulls with Caleb Wilson and Swain are now kind of interesting. And if I were the person that's in Boozellas, I could save the Bulls. What a legend I would be and how fun Chicago is and all that. But I don't trust the owners.

1:01:44Bill Simmons:And they don't have the same level assets and you have owners that aren't going to ever spend. The Wizards, despite getting DeBansa and having all this stuff, they're just still the Wizards. I can't put them above these teams. Their uniforms stink. Their arena is dead. I can't do it. Trae Young. Trae Young for four years. I'll tell you two cities. A city I like. I mean, if you give me seven years. Seven years. I'm saying seven years of assets, players you have now, chance to win a title. You got to factor all of it in. I just like Philly a lot. I like the city of Philly a lot. Seven years lets me ride out the Embiid thing.

1:02:21Bill Simmons:So you have VJ, Maxi. I'm going to have expirings with Embiid and Georgia here. I have a fan base that the moment anything goes wrong, I'm going to be blamed and tortured. Yeah. Okay. It's weird that Boston is a good one. It's weird that you've mentioned eight teams and didn't mention Boston, which I think speaks to maybe where Boston is right now. Seven years. I'm just going fun. I want some warm weather too. So Atlanta is a good one. um i want good weather it's clearly charlotte charlotte flipped this around they were the worst run team in the league or in the top three year after year for 15 straight years right a long time they haven't won a playoff series in like the entire time i've known you and now one of the things i like about this is i you know i i think there's a lot of reasons they probably i don't have inside sources with charlotte like i'm sure there's a lot of reasons why you would be like it's time to move on from lamello i would guess one of the main reasons would be we what we saw from miller and what we saw from con as a rookie which is the worst he's ever going to be is there more there from a ball handling playmaking can we run more of the offense can we have more movement um can we be more unpredictable can we just have like a 12-man team?

1:03:37Bill Simmons:Can we, can we start to look a little OKC-ish without the Shea piece of it? Can we have depth, shooting, interchangeable guys? And then you guys, I was really glad Krasinski talked about this on the pod. I thought he was excellent that you did on Thursday. Talking about Nas Reed, what a fucking great guy he is. I mean, other than KG, the most beloved, and I guess Ant, but probably a top three most beloved Timberwolf ever. Unbelievable behind the scenes guy. Selfless, like was one of the, like really could have torpedoed a lot of what happened with them in the last couple of years and just didn't.

1:04:15Bill Simmons:And I'm just a huge fan. We know what he looks like in the playoffs. I just think that team needed more adults and less kids. And they feel like they have now flipped out with Kobe and with Nas. And I'm sure there's another bet coming. but I really like where they're sitting. They have, the Hornets are in an unbelievable position and it's not like we, I don't think you're missing anything about why they did this trade in the myriad of factors, including Faith and Miller and Khan to level up even a little bit. I think part of it is also like, we're not gonna get carried away with what happened in the last three months of last season.

1:04:56Right. We're not gonna push all in for 26, 27. Devin, we're actually willing, if we do end up taking a small step back, we're actually willing to do that. And we're fine with that. And, you know, if we do miss the playoffs or something like that, like the new lottery rules are pretty good for us in a lot of different ways. And so we're not going to accelerate for short-term gain. We're okay with that if we think it's the right move.

1:05:20Bill Simmons:And we sold high on a guy that might never play 2 ,000 minutes again for all we know in Lomelo, right? It's a big one. Um, Fiendu only has regular season win odds for two teams, just by the way. Okay. Interesting. 50 plus wins for Minnesota is plus 108. So that means they think they're right, right on the 50 win level. 45 plus for Miami is minus 210 and 50 plus is plus 140, which means they think Miami is probably in the 46, 47 range. um i the more i think about that trade for miami i have you really like just spent five minutes in your brain thinking about an offense with yannis and bam and where they go yeah just just the geometry of where are they going to be every possession yes of course that's i did a whole podcast about it i said i know you did a podcast i said you come up with an actual answer the number one reason that i am skeptical that this is a championship contender now we got to see how they round out the the we don't know anything right we don't know Powell we don't know Wiggins we don't know like we're going to learn all about what their team is out by the way Powell I think they started cutting his minutes as we got closer to the playoffs and in the playoffs I think he's out well I mean that was a Powell hero we have no faith that we can defend with those two guys on the floor together thing but uh I mean it's going to be very hard for them to make a competitive offer to Norm Powell I would also bet on him being elsewhere at the beginning of the season so but My point is, we don't know what the team's going to look like.

1:06:52But the number one reason I said I'm skeptical that they can build an actual contender out of this, like a true blue finals championship contender, is I just think at heart Bam and Giannis are too duplicative on offense. And I know that that sounds crazy because Giannis is this bulldozer to the rim, and Bam shot seven threes a game last year and all that. At their best, they are still guys who want to operate in the middle of the floor. That's what they do. They do it differently, stylistically, but that's where they want to live. and despite Bam taking a ton of threes and all that, that's where they really should live.

1:07:23Like, I don't think any, Bam's got to get much better as a three-point shooter for defenses to treat him like he's a real threat out there. And even so - I don't see that. I'm just like, do you want Bam out of, he's not Carl Anthony Towns. Like, I want Carl Anthony Towns shooting 10 threes a game. He's that good of a shooter. I don't want an interior bruiser like that who's just an okay shooter shooting 8 to 10 threes a game. I'm not sure that I want that. And so -

1:07:48Bill Simmons:It reminds me a little when Houston tried to make it work with Hakeem and Barkley in the late nineties, you know, it works somewhat and they did make the Western finals, but Barkley had to move out and Barkley had to shoot more threes and he was never a good three point shooter. And I just, I always thought it was clumsy. And then remember they had Pippen that one year and then it was like, oh my God. And like, to be clear, I think Miami is going to be really good. I think defensively they have a chance to be special. I think the East is going to be very interesting, but also very deep next year.

1:08:19I just win the finals, and that's the goal when you make a trade like this. It's going to be really hard, and that's before you get into the Giannis who seems to be injured at the end of every season for five of the last six seasons.

1:08:32Bill Simmons:I do not think Miami is going to be very good. I think they'll be fine. I think they'll be between 43 and 47 wins, depending on how much Giannis plays. Again, the price is palatable and you just have to, you know, there's three paths. There's the status quo, which clearly wasn't going anywhere. There's this path, which may go in any number of directions. And then there's the, what if we use all these assets on someone else path? And I just don't know if they saw that path anywhere else down the line. And in the meantime, I don't know what the upside was. So I get it. I'll tell you, if I was 80 years old, I definitely would have made the trade.

1:09:07Bill Simmons:The back to Phoenix for a second. Sure. John Morant for Jalen Green what else do you want me to throw in if I'm Memphis

1:09:19okay all right I mean now we've reached a point where we're is it an unprotected pick so I have a lot of picks Memphis gets Jalen Green straight up this is a one-for-one who has 36 this year and a player option for 36 the next year yeah and I get off from a rant and I have to throw in a

1:09:38Bill Simmons:first and unprotected first i i'm asking what i need to throw in because i have better picks than that i could give you my best of minnesota cleveland or utah in 27 i'm just i could give you my orlando first and 28 or 30 you you tell me what you want let me flip it around why is phoenix doing that because they could get an extra pick and they can roll the dice with john morant for a year and hope changes scenery. Devin Booker, a really good fan base. And maybe we, you know, this is last stop for Ja, basically. Here's my answer if I'm Memphis. I'm throwing in nothing. That's my offer. It's Ja Morant for Jalen Green.

1:10:24I'd probably do that just to clean the slate and I get an interesting prospect, not even a prospect, an interesting young player to take a shot on a player who has not really covered himself in glory.

1:10:33Bill Simmons:So you're doing the Michael Corleone. My offer is nothing. Yeah, my offer is John Moran. You either want him or we don't make a deal. Because if they have the equivalent contract, I feel like they're just equally sort of unknown in different ways as just assets going forward or whatever. John Moran has obviously reached a level in the NBA that's well above anything Jalen Green has done, but he's older and has a whole boatload of issues that come with him. But their contracts are the same length, and John makes$8 million more a year, whatever. Like, I don't like I'm not I'm not interested in I'm not that psyched about exchanging him for Jalen Green, even if it's completely toxic with him on the team.

1:11:13Then I'm throwing you any good draft assets. So you get nothing. That's it. Deal with that. You either want John Moran or you don't.

1:11:19Bill Simmons:Do you like the idea of John Moran, Devin Booker, Miles Bridges? No. All of their centers and a couple other swings. Let's just how about Phoenix? Just chill, like feel good season. You brought back all your key role players who everybody fell in love with. Con Gillespie and Jordan. Good. Let's just take a, take a beat now. Okay. Take a break. Controversial transaction today on a bunch of different levels. Let's chill out. No more team Sparty. Like, let's just chill. I would do it if I could get a real good pick back from Memphis. You're not getting one for me. If I'm Zach Kleiman, I'm hanging up the phone.

1:11:50Sorry. Zach Kleiman. Boozer. Coward. I'm happy. I'm, this is what I'm saying. I'm happy.

1:11:57Bill Simmons:I hadn't talked about this on the pot either. you already did, but they got beef stew. They're just back, baby. What do we, we had grit and grind Grizzlies. What do we have? What is this version of the Grizzlies? They need a nickname. Verno, come up with a nickname for these guys. It's not, you can't do grit and grind again. It's gotta be something else. It's like the don't fuck with us Grizzlies. My favorite moment of your - It's just like three men in a front line. My favorite moment of your draft recap podcast with Groggy House and draft beat Nick J Kyle, man. just a great odd couple of guests my favorite moment was it pivoted from house saying something housey to like about cam boozer and the pick and and to kyle man being like listing off the players cam boozer was going to help make better in memphis like i think he's really gonna like cam spencer and cam boozer are going to have a good good chemistry game like we've cam spencer like that's gonna be a big winner i think it transitioned from all the foods that you had ordered and how you were trying to keep house awake by mentioning food to J Kyle, man, hard pivot into Cam Spencer.

1:13:02And now that was going to fit.

1:13:04Bill Simmons:And everybody woke up. I mean, I woke up. I was like, wow, we ordered a pizza too. That's a big night. John Moran is a no-go for you if you're any of the other 29 teams at this point. I don't think they have anything for John Moran right now. I mean, who's the team, right? Like you go through the list of teams that need point guards. Toronto isn't on LaMelo. I don't sense that they're in on John Moran. Minnesota made its move. I don't mean Sacramento just drafted a point guard. I don't think they need to be in the business. If you're Minnesota, would you rather now, actually I would have rather done LaMelo, just Nas Reed for John Moran, basically.

1:13:44I mean, I think Memphis would have been thrilled to do that. Memphis would have been delighted.

1:13:48Bill Simmons:I think they would have thrown a pick for that. All right. Before we go, a couple of quick things. Sure. It's June 28th. what happens with LeBron

1:14:00I wish I had a hot good answer for you I don't I don't know I really don't know

1:14:05Bill Simmons:I'm surprised how many people in my life have asked me what I thought was going to happen with him why are you surprised he's LeBron James I just there's these giant chess pieces either you know there's Kawhi might get traded Jalen Brown Jamal Murray Detroit has all this cap space there are all these things as we head toward and july 1st anthony david we you and i think out of all these ones anthony davis is that would be my bet bet my life you hate when i bet my life i would bet my life on the day on the ad trade this summer over all the other famous the only thing the only time i ever said that phrase out loud about sports was when croatia was in a penalty kick game in the last world cup and luca modric walked up said i would bet my life on luca modric baby i bet he made it of course um so I have said Golden State for three months.

1:14:55Bill Simmons:You're sticking with it. I'm sticking with it. I'm sticking with the expendables. That includes Anthony Davis, which I guess that would have to be Butler in the 2027 first or I don't even know what needs. I'm sure Washington has to get some pick back. Have we bought House an Anthony Davis Wizards jersey? We got to pool some money and get him one. House is treating Anthony Davis like he's like when somebody steps into the White House because the president got pushed out or died or impeached or something. And there's somebody like Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford. Anthony Davis is Gerald Ford for House.

1:15:33Bill Simmons:He's just here for a year. He's going to do a job. Anthony Davis is inexplicably Washington. He's not staying. And they're going to turn him into a pick, hopefully. What's going to be more fondly remembered in the Anthony Davis era in Washington and all the great fashion on the bench? Oh, Dallas. No, the Dallas. us or the one and a half quarters that he played in his Dallas debut where the match is why this is why we did trade this is it will Chamberlain for 40 minutes for for like a year Super Bowl weekend they clung to those like remember those two quarters that was division that was crazy um so I would say Golden State I wonder if the Clippers who have both cap space and flexibility and a bunch of different ways to add him.

1:16:19Bill Simmons:I just don't know if LeBron James would ever play for the Clippers. Now, he did go to Miami. That was a surprise. He did go back to Cleveland and Dan Gilbert. That was a surprise. He went to the Lakers, which was Kobe Bryant's team, when he went over there. And kind of, by the way, still is. so I wouldn't rule him out going anywhere the Clippers solved the most issues for him for get stay in LA a lot of golf courses doesn't have to leave his house but Golden State's a 50 minute flight from here and Golden State as you know is famously lackadaisical about making sure guys are around all the time so if LeBron wanted to kind of come in and out I think he'd be able to but in terms of living in san francisco you mean like the guy shows up five hours before every game and you know i'm just saying like after a home game at night i'm gonna fly back to la i'll be back tomorrow okay lebron we'll see you tomorrow like it's one of those teams there's there's flexibility built in with the vets okay um the question for me because the most fun team for him to go to is san antonio wow this is where eduardo right now is like ding ding ding ding here's my social clip um what's up eduardo uh san antonio he solves actual issues for him for them and could actually win the title with them would it be perceived as a ring chase or not to you well also and i think this is important vis-a-vis the Clippers discussion.

1:17:58It's a franchise that is dignified and I think befits LeBron's perception, rightfully so, of himself and the kind of teams and franchises he should be on.

1:18:08Bill Simmons:Yeah, you could sell that really fast. Like, Pop's there. I've had a long relationship with him. This team's close. I could be the missing piece. I watched them in the finals for five games. They were missing that one veteran leader. And by the way, it could be a trade where it's like Cornette and Kelton Johnson's expiring and then you can figure out how to pay LeBron 30 million a year for two years. But do you think it would be perceived as a ring chase or not? I think he's 41 and a half years old and anything he does in the direction of a ring is going to be accepted as like, it's pretty crazy that the guy is still a good player in the NBA.

1:18:48If he wants to chase another ring and have a new adventure, that's fine. I don't think this is not, not to go back, but this is not a 29-year-old superstar signing with a 73-win team. I just think if that's what it is and that's what he wants to do, I don't think anyone begrudges him and people get more into like, oh, how's that going to work? That's kind of exciting.

1:19:07Bill Simmons:Zach Lowe, we are 100 % agreeance. Oh, we are? Yeah, I think if I was like his conciliary, I would walk through San Antonio and Golden State. Denver is interesting too, but I actually don't think that cements anything. Just watching him with Joker would be amazing. They flirted with, I mean, you know Denver has been interested in him before. They tried to get him in for a free agent meeting at one point, I think, or something like that. I can't remember exactly. But the money doesn't work. With San Antonio, it works because they actually have flexibility. They actually could pay him. Because the thing we always forget with these guys, they're not taking a pay cut.

1:19:42Bill Simmons:He's not going to go work for$2.2 million veteran minimum expansion. This is why Kobe signed up for 40 and 40 the last two years. These guys, they want to be compensated. They go to a franchise. They're going to sell LeBron Spurs jerseys. I really like the idea of him on that team, and I wouldn't consider it a ring chase because if I'm him, I want to keep playing. I'm still really good. This Lakers thing has fizzled out. They obviously don't want him to come back. It's been an uneasy dance for six months. They want to turn the team over to Luka. and San Antonio kind of needs him. If he had been in that Knicks series, I think they would have won.

1:20:23All right. I'm not prepared to go reimagine the whole finals that we just had with LeBron James as a Spurs. That's a bridge too far at this hour for me. The Knicks won in five games.

1:20:33Bill Simmons:Give him all the Kelden Johnson, Luke Cordette minutes. He's out there in crunch time. You can't just let the Knicks be happy. We were already... All due respect to them, I'm doing a hypothetical alternate universe. I'm just saying if they had LeBron last year, that was kind of what they were missing. Cause I don't, I don't think Fox plays at that point. I think LeBron is in the Fox spot and I think better decisions are made, but there were several poor decisions. Would he want to live in San Antonio? I don't know. I, the golden state case would be you and Curry ride out in the sunset together.

1:21:05Bill Simmons:The team is just, especially if they got Davis too, the team is just good enough that it's kind of fun. You're going to sell out everywhere. this will be like when the Eagles had their reunion tour in 1995. It's the Hellfrees is over tour. It's just every place you go, it's going to be the biggest thing that happened in that city in a long, long time from a basketball standpoint. Really since the Curry Warriors in the mid-2010s. Unless it's a back-to-back on the road. Careful. Yeah, true. I forgot about that part. Maybe Curry and Lamar and just alternate. All right, so pick. Where do you want to see them go?

1:21:40Bill Simmons:Make a pick. where do i want to see him go yeah where do you want to see him go basketball fan zach low i think i think um i think golden state is the most fun i think that him and curry together is the most it feel i i've transitioned from it feels like sacrilegious to see them go from like sometimes bitter rivals during those four finals like no there was like some acrimony is bitter yeah um to what we saw with team usa in the last two games at the 24 olympics to to let's let's just have some fun and we're probably not going to win, but it's going to be fun. Like I think that'd be, that'd be the most fun.

1:22:14Bill Simmons:The two times I've been the most shocked sitting in my seat for a basketball game when bird and Dr. J got in the fight, I was there. I still can't believe that happened. And then 2018 in the, I think it was the OT, a game one, the J.R. Smith game, LeBron and Curry got really mad at each other. And there was like a split second where it felt like they might actually get into something. And just watching, it was like, oh my, LeBron was so mad. He was so mad about the J.R. Smith play. He was so mad. He had just played the best game probably of his life and they were going to lose. And he like hard fouled Steph or did something and Steph got really mad.

1:22:51Bill Simmons:And oh yeah, it was good. I think all camera angles have been destroyed. What I do remember is in the 16 finals in one of the Cleveland games, and I want to say it was game six, he has a block on Curry at the rim and it's emphatic and he kind of poses a little bit over and afterwards not like directly over but kind of makes it makes a show out of it makes a meal out of it and i remember thinking like that felt like a yeah i'm the best fucking guy i'm bigger than you i'm stronger than you and this has been cool and you might still win this series but remember i'm the best fucking guy which is also what he did in 2018 in that first game he just physically overpowered them like shack in the finals it was nuts um all right so you're we're both saying golden state i would like the san antonio thing though that'd be fun and by the way if he went to denver i would talk myself into that in two seconds hard not to if they did the the jaylen trade we mentioned earlier and then they're like oh and our new point guard is is 41 year old lebron james we're just going to try to figure it out the fly uh what is your craziest prediction for the week before we go craziest prediction for the week.

1:23:59Bill Simmons:I don't have a... I'll go... Is there going to be something this week that makes you go, whoa! Well, it's too late for a Kawhi trade, right? That's already been murmured about enough that that wouldn't be like, oh my god, Kawhi got traded. Unbelievable. I will say... I think Kawhi going to Toronto would get that reaction from me. I'm going to say Denver is going to do something big and I don't know what it is, but I'll say a Denver moves that leaves people like, wow, that's what they did. I'll say that. I was going to say, I was going to say, imagine if the Sixers found a trade for Embiid, but I just don't, I don't, I don't think it's possible.

1:24:40Bill Simmons:I'm going to, I have Detroit as my wow team. I think they're up to stuff. Good wow team. The Stewart trade was really suspicious. I didn't really understand it. it felt like they were clearing some cap. But then they also got Isaiah Joe. So that only cleared half the cap. Maybe there was more to that story. Just feels like I think they should have taken a swing last February and they didn't. And now they probably will. Be my guess. And then LeBron going somewhere weird would be the other wow thing. If it wasn't Golden State or some of the other teams we mentioned. It's like, wow, he's going to Cleveland on the minimum?

1:25:19Bill Simmons:Can they even sign him to the minimum? Utah is a veteran mentor? What? That would be, now that would get a big wow. My other wow would be Jalen Brown just not getting traded, which I actually think wouldn't get a wow because I think it's conceivable he doesn't. It's definitely conceivable. We've seen them put the toothpaste back in the tube in the NBA a lot of times. It was like, this is done. It's over. It's like, all right, let's, well, we had dinner and things are better. it's happened this is like this is like um you go and buy like a a costco case of like eight tubes of toothpaste and you step on all of them and it's all over your bathroom all the tubes are out so it's a lot of toothpaste when's the next croatian game i believe thursday versus portugal oh wow yeah we got we got a bad draw we got a bad and the winner likely plays spain this is the opposite of the draw croatia got two world counter i don't think he got that bad of a draw.

1:26:16Bill Simmons:Portugal is, is, is tied to the bitter end to, uh, to an aging star. Uh, we've seen how this goes. Spain, I think it's good for you guys. Winner gets Spain is tough. That's tough. Um, but the Croatia had a very good draw two world cups ago when we got to the finals, like the bracket broke exactly. Right. So like, you know, what goes around, comes around, comes around. I think you should do pods Monday, Wednesday, and you have to go to the game cause you're two and O this year. I don't know. It's in Toronto. It's not like it's in. No, but it's going to be free agency is going to be going hot and heavy.

1:26:48You're encouraging me to do this, to skip out on day two, three of NBA free agency.

1:26:54Bill Simmons:No, you got to go the game. You can't. This is once every four years. I've already been to two, man. It's more two more World Cup games than I ever thought I would go to. So you got to go. I think you should go. All right. I would tell my wife. Let's go. All right. Zach Lowe, a true pleasure. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back with Taylor Sheridan. I want to warn people. He did this from his ranch in, I think, Wyoming. And the Wi-Fi is a little spotty. So there's times when it cuts in and out a little bit. We did the best we could with it. I thought it was an awesome interview.

1:27:25Bill Simmons:I had a great time with him, but just bear with it. There's going to be a couple of times where it gets choppy. Anyway, we're going to take a break. Come back with the one and only Taylor Sheridan. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. For small business, every hire matters, but the time and resources required to hire right or limited. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered screening interviews.

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1:28:32Bill Simmons:And the meta pant, that's my number one I need to look like I tried option. Get 20 % off your first purchase at viore.com slash simmons and discover the versatility of viore clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. All right. So I never asked for a lot of guests. We have a, we have a great booker named Alison, who's always like, do you want this person? You want that person? And I always send her a very short list and Taylor Sheridan has always been on the, on the list. I've always wanted to talk to you, really admire your career, everything you've done and your productivity.

1:29:07Bill Simmons:And now all of a sudden, you wrote a book too. Just when I was like, what's up with this guy? How does he keep doing it? How does he keep turning this stuff out? And now you're coming after books. I have so many questions for you, but what made you want to write a book on top of everything else you're doing? well so it's a it's it's a bit of a long story luckily you've got a long podcast so we have time for it it's true so so you got to go back to 2003 about okay yeah before i'm living in la and there was a gym about oh two-thirds of a mile from this apartment that i had and me and my roommate had run over there and work out every day because we're actors and we don't have anything else to do until we go to whatever shitty job we're going to and there was a guy that started working out there and and and this dude was he looked very different than the typical west hollywood gym crowd i mean this dude was jacked with all these prison tats not the not the tribal bullshit that a bunch of hollywood actors get like like stuff was done home anyway so he would he was very fascinating with fitness he'd asked me this and i'd ask him that we kind of became friends over over the court you know just in the gym uh and then he became a personal trainer there got certified and did all that deal and he actually trained uh my he actually trained my wife um so we became pretty good friends one day we were talking and he just bullshitting over lunch and he kind of casually mentioned i think i'd mentioned a movie or something and he hadn't seen it i mentioned in there uh and i'm like where have you been in a cave for the past 17 or 20 years he's like no i was in prison and i said oh well walk me through that what happened was some kind of accident he goes no no no i was a i was a criminal you know i was a career criminal i was a drug dealing armed robbing, burglaring criminal.

1:31:12And so I spent most of my life in prison and most of my adult life. And then I discovered fitness in prison. And that's really, I didn't want to spend my whole terrible place. And so I got clean, got clean, got straight, really focused on fitness. And now I'm a personal trainer. And someday you watch, I'm going to have my own gym. And within, I'd say, five years of that, he did have his own gym. and uh and it became the biggest privately owned personal training gym in la which is saying something because there's nothing in la but gyms and you know freaking laser surgery just the stuff that's in la coffee it was very different than the gyms in la it felt like a gym right he's playing the music the only music he knew so like 80s rock and 70s rock and it was a really cool place and he was doing really well and and and i started having success with storytelling and then i got the hell out i moved out of la in 2013 moved up to wyoming and um and we'd check in every so often uh and he and he actually wrote a screenplay about his life right his life of crime pretty good he sent it to me once and i'm like it's pretty good man uh nothing ever came of that for him but but it stayed in my mind uh keep moving forward to 2020 and covet hits and and i'm the only film production tv production in in america filming i'm the first one to go back to work and the way i was able to convince the screen actors guild and the directors guild and all these guilds is the safest place this crew can be is on a big ranch in Montana, right?

1:33:07There's no, if everyone's negative, when we get there, we can't give it to anybody as long as nobody leaves. So they said, that's fine. Stay on the ranch. So then I wanted to, I wanted to, so we didn't all go crazy. I called, I wanted to build a gym on the, on the ranch. So I called Tom and said, hey, can you give me a connection to whoever you get your gym equipment from? I need to buy a bunch. And mine, they shut me down. And I said, what do you mean they shut you down? He goes, we're closed. LA shut down. Well, every business is shut down. You can't have a gym right now. We're on lockdown. And I said, well, don't sell all your equipment.

1:33:50What are you going to do when it opens back up? Just sign up for that PPE stuff and, you know, Newsom's sending money to everybody else. I'll probably send something to you. And he's like, they're not sending it to white ex-cons, buddy. I'm like, I've already applied. I'm not getting any money. And I said, okay, I'll send a flatbed. And I sent a flatbed down. I bought a pile of, so I didn't talk to him again, you know, years go by. And he reached out. And, you know, by this point, I got so many shows going. I'm so busy. It's, you know, someone's got to call me about 10 times for me to actually get a chance to call them back.

1:34:26And I finally reached back out to him and said, hey, how's it going? And he said, man, I'm in a real bad way, Julia. Go kind of handle that. It's coming up the road. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, they found a mass single father. His partner had died, and he's trying to raise this five-year-old girl. And he's an ex-con. he's a felon and he cannot find any work, reliable work with enough daycare to take care of this kid. And so he was asking me about the movie business. Is there anything that he could do for me? And I said, I mean, I can probably get you some stunt work or, or something, you know, transportation department.

1:35:12I don't know. Something, but you're going to be working 14 hour days. You're not going to be with your kid. I don't know how that's helpful. And, and he asked me, he said, can you, can you give me a loan? I mean, I got one more month's rent. Can you give me a loan to figure it out? And I told him, I said, look, I have a 100 % failure rate of loaning money to friends and them still being friends. So I can't do that. I'm not a bank. I said, but let me think. Everyone has a story, right? And your story has value. So let me just think about what that would be. And there's a book that I had read many, many years prior to this called The World's Most Dangerous Places.

1:35:53And it was written by a guy named Robert Pelton Young. And it's the most fascinating thing I'd ever read. It's essentially a travel guide for war correspondence about every single place where there's a war going on in the world. And this is a very accomplished war correspondent who wrote it and it's and then at times it was very cynical and at times it was it was laugh out loud funny and then at times it was it was very thoughtful and i thought we're mad for a buck uh and and and he's not the only one who's done something like that you could look at you'll remember this from the 80s the oh any anything for dummies right house building for dummies, Spanish for dummies, you know, whatever it is.

1:36:41And they had taken a similar format and made it very digestible. So I just thought how interesting and, and would it be if we wrote a travel guide for prison and, uh, and, and to be for the most part, I think is a really good deterrence to someone from going there, right? But also if someone did happen to do something dumb, now they're career criminal, this book isn't for them and they know it anyway. It's really for a guy like you and me because everyone's always wondered if you've ever watched Locked Up or any of these shows, what would I do? How would I navigate that world if I find myself in it?

1:37:24And so here's an expert in that, right? Here's someone who spent 17 years in state and federal prison, in security prisons, and had to navigate the worst of the worst. And came out good, came out not a criminal, right? Made those choices. A success story. So I called him back and I said, look, here's what we're going to do. And it's going to be work. We're going to write a book. And it's going to be How to Not Die in Prison. And we're going to use your experience. And I've done a ton of research about prisons because I've got a TV show about prisons. But that's research. It's not firsthand of a storyteller and a guy who's already proven to me that he's good at telling stories, coming together to explore this world and how to get through it, or hopefully how to never go.

1:38:17And so that's what we did. So we wrote the first three chapters and I write the intro and then he writes the body and together we shape the body of that. and we took that out, sent it to all the publishers and Simon and Schuster stuck their hand up and Simon and Schuster said, we want to put this out. We want to do it. And I said, great. And Tom rolled up his sleeves and I rolled up mine and we sat down and we came up with this.

1:38:45Bill Simmons:So if we were doing this in person, I would have interrupted you like 10 times as you were telling that because I thought this book was so interesting. all of my experience from knowing anything about prison is just from TV and movies right and it's and it's like it could go from like Shawshank to the show you did or a million things Jericho Mile going way back but this is like so detailed it's almost like you have glossaries in there you have all these do not do this do not I thought it was really interesting and I've never read a book like it it's one of those things where prisons are, have been such a huge part of, you know, any society, but nobody really knows anything that happens in there other than what they basically watch or read.

1:39:36Yeah. You know, so, and I talk about this in the book, there is a scene in episode three of the first season of Mayor of Kewaer, uh, a man is arrested for killing a child. Uh, and And it actually is a parole violation. So the guy doesn't go to county. He goes straight back to prison immediately. And and when he comes in, there's this frenzy. Right. Because a child killer is the one person in prison everyone can look at and say, I may have done this, but I never did that. Right. And so there's a bullseye on these guys. and uh and we filmed this scene where this this and after the first take um i start hearing buzz over the radio uh we need a medic uh actually we need two medics and i run upstairs to see what happened how why do we need a medic uh someone have a heart attack and most of the extras in this scene were ex-cons who had actually stayed in this prison, which had been decommissioned.

1:40:51So now it's empty. Of course, we're paying, you know, a few hundred bucks a day to these guys and there's not any work because it's COVID. And so they jumped at it, right? And two of them had panic attacks that were so bad that they had to go to the hospital. and then there was a third one who you know we we closed them in and locked them in the cells and this guy starts screaming you gotta let me out i can't do this and uh we let him out and he's like i starts taking off and and it's like i'm sorry i can't you know you don't have to pay me i said no no no for what i just put you through we're gonna pay you um and and they left they were done.

1:41:36They wanted absolutely no part of, of even reenacting it. So that was the first thing, obviously we all can imagine and surmise that it's a terrible place, right? It's, it's, it's a, it's not designed to rehabilitate. Um, uh, it's, uh, it's a whole lot of people have proven to society that they can't get along with society and we crammed them all together and along with each other. So it's, it's a, it's a model that, that, that is, isn't designed to in, in any way, uh, rehabilitate. It's just, they're on a big old timeout for however long that may be. Right. Um, but it was so fascinating to me that I thought just what a really rich world to explore.

1:42:23And I would imagine somebody reads this book and they're thinking about losing their temper or They're thinking about, I'll have another drink. I can still drive. Because here's the very real world consequences of that.

1:42:36Bill Simmons:Yeah. Oz beat that out of me. But my five years or six years, whatever it was, watching Oz. I love that show. So the story with you, which everybody knows at this point, was you came late into the writing thing, right? You were an actor. Then you were acting coach, all that. And you didn't really start writing until 41. And then you became... probably the most prolific writer of the last 15 years and all the shows and movies that you've done really in the last, it's been like decade and a half, basically. Um, did you, I have a million questions about this, but did you, were you writing before age 40?

1:43:16Bill Simmons:Like, or did you just dive into it then? I didn't understand that part. No, no, not in any way that, no, it's not, it's not a skill that i had developed but you have to remember i'd read i don't know by that point five five thousand scripts ten thousand scripts uh and of those scripts nine hundred 994 were bad you know i can i can i can recount for the 15 years that i was in hollywood but I can recount to this day the excellent scripts that I read. I still remember. And there were very few that I read, and I thought, wow, that's going to be something. So most of them are bad. And so I knew when I started writing was to simply not do what everyone else was doing.

1:44:19And what everyone else was doing was taking shortcuts, essentially breaking all the very basic fundamental rules of storytelling because they couldn't figure out their story. And so by that, I mean this. With a movie, you're supposed to show me what's happening. The camera is supposed to move the story. dialogue is supposed to tell me how the people in this world feel about what's happening or what they hope to do or what they wish they hadn't done or had done right so so if you stick to that one very basic rule from the from the beginning never have a character tell me something that the camera should show me and and and if you go back and watch movies that uh maybe you like the premise and maybe you like the way it started and then toward the end something happened it's just and it just felt a little easy because they couldn't figure out an intelligent way in the story to show me something so they just had this character say it all these marvel movies do it uh ad nauseum where they where they will just have information dumps that you have to follow to get to the action rather than than actually moving plot with action right and then the other thing that i did was basically find the most interesting thing most interesting way to say anything um i'll take a scene from hell or high water where uh where you have jeff bridge's character walk in and he's questioning uh this waitress about the two boys that just robbed the bank across the street and he says uh you know describe them and and that she doesn't mention height or hair color she mentions you know they they look you know they're young enough to know better but you're too old to know better and but still and you know and they look brokered and these guys over here, but the, but better than these guys over here.

1:46:31And, and so just find interesting ways of saying they're in their mid thirties and they were dressed casually and the ones got blonde hair and one's got red hair. Right. So we're just, what's the, what's the more interesting way of describing something or somebody. Um, and then I think the other thing that I, that I try to do, and this probably comes from me having been a journeyman actor, which means most of my roles were smaller roles or guest star roles. I always try to make the impact to the overall story. In other words, those individuals that are just there to push the plot along somehow have an impact on our lead character, whether they make them recognize something about this place or feel something or mirror something in their own lives, that all these little people have a big impact on our main character, on our protagonist.

1:47:23and then that allows the audience to feel completely submersed in a world, right? Because now everybody has a point of view, everyone. The guy at the gas station, the waitress. Right.

1:47:36Bill Simmons:You know, what you said about letting the people show you versus writing all the dialogue for them to tell the thing, Tarantino had this thing about Steve McQueen, about how a lot of the stuff that he would do was just him reading situations and just him being a movie star and just the concept of like movie stardom sometimes doesn't have to be about dialogue, but just about seeming like you're a movie star on a screen and soaking things in and stuff you do with your eyes. I noticed like with your shows, a lot of times it's about like, even, even the show, the Michelle Pfeiffer show, which of course I loved because I enjoy all your shows, but a lot of it is sometimes it'll just be her staring out, you know, having a glass of wine at the end of the show and just trying to process stuff, you know, and thinking about things like there's moments like that.

1:48:30Bill Simmons:And I don't know if, I don't know if shows and movies are doing that in the same way anymore. They're always like, especially now in the streaming era, everything's in a rush. Everything's like, they have to tell you, here's the murder that we have to solve. And you're going to see the murder in the first three minutes and we're going to, but it seems like your shows are way more patient. yeah there there and there's a there's a few i think explanations for that okay and one is i think the most important one is who's writing these stories okay and i'm this isn't an indictment of other writers uh but but where are they well if they're in la or they're in new york and and and and if you're a purdue are if you allow this business to do it to you you are from the second you wake up to the second you go to bed you are you're going you're meeting this that meeting this meeting tone meeting prop meeting casting this then i gotta go sit with my room of writers and we're gonna put a bunch of stuff on a whiteboard and we're gonna outline and you take this and i'll write that you do this and then i gotta go home to my kids and or my wife or my husband or whoever, and we're going to try and carve out two hours of meaningful relationship.

1:49:45And then off to bed, we go where in that is the time to reflect. I live, I live in a country in the middle of nowhere. So before I, I start writing every day, I take about a 30 minute walk and there's no, there's no traffic because the road's mine. It's on my ranch. Uh, and, And I just think. And I'm also not scared to leave my phone behind. So I have time to reflect and actually think like a character. The bigger challenge, and I'm very fortunate in this regard.

1:50:23Bill Simmons:When you're reflecting, are you thinking about ideas for shows? Or are you just thinking about life? What are you thinking about? It depends. It depends. And sometimes I'm just, and I think this is with any storyteller, when you can get to a quiet place, and I don't mean a physical quiet place, a quiet place inside yourself, the ideas come. You don't have to go hunt them, right? They just come. So, you know, fortunately, I'm the only person around because if I wasn't, people would think there's this on this dirt road talking to himself. And, but that's what happens. you you know i just my my routine is is is very set and and when i'm writing i always return i'm in the cat this is the first place i ever bought this this house up here in wyoming and it is an 1800 square feet um and i always come back here because this is where i can control the quiet and this is where i can get the most done um so the second probably greater influence upon writers in the industry and it didn't used to be this way when steve mcqueen was a movie star at paramount right and bobby evans ran the ran the studio because he writers were turned loose directors were turned completely loose there weren't endless rewrites There weren't meetings with executives about tone and mood and all this nonsense, right?

1:51:57And then you didn't have a lot of people. And by the way, the studio executives and the network executives need a group in the industry, right? These are marketing executives for the most part, or maybe they, whatever they studied law, whatever. Then they came and they got a job in the mailroom at CAA or WME and hated that shit. And so then they ended up as an intern at some network. And then through attrition, they find themselves the head of development. Well, what do you know about developing story? You know, nothing. So they get terrified, panicked that the audience won't get it because they actually have no storytellers.

1:52:37So they don't get it. So it needs to be written on the page. There's all this stuff. They want backstory. They want, basically they want synopses of who all these characters' lives are before we meet the character. None of which is applicable to whatever conflict the character's facing. I've had many actors come up and ask me, so what's my backstory? I said, you have carte blanche. You don't have a backstory. That character did not exist until I wrote them on that horse on that hill. Didn't exist. So I'm looking through very narrow windows. But our business at this point is truly governed by these executives because they're the ones that are going to determine whether or not your script is going to go into production.

1:53:25And they're going to try and control every element of that. The greatest thing that I have is I came up in independent film. Right. So the first movie that I made with Sicario, that's an independent movie. Thunder Road, Basil Oswannock. He went out and raised the money from, uh, and they just gave us a chunk of cash and we went and hired who we wanted to hire and made it. The same thing with hell or high water and the same thing with wind river with wind river. I mean, that money came from an Indian tribe in Louisiana and they're just here, go do it. Um, I never saw a producer. One time I was talking to my, my DP, we're standing on the top of this mountain.

1:54:07And I said, you know, we've never met anyone who gave us this money. like i have no idea never met him i don't know we could just leave we could go we don't even have to make the movie we're just this is a tremendous amount of responsibility for someone who's never done it before um but that but i so every decision that i got to make i made and i got to make it for what i thought was best for the story and since i wrote the story i felt the most qualified to do that. So when I made my deal with Paramount, I made that same deal. I said, this is not a democracy. There's no committee. You're going to pay me and you're going to give me a bunch of money and I'm going to deliver you these shows.

1:54:49One of them, because I'm just not that special. I'm pretty common and I'm going to tell stories that common people are going to understand. And that's most of America. You're not going to win no Emmys with me, but I'm not trying to win enemies. That's not my goal. My goal is to, is to sit somebody on their couch and move them, make them think, make them laugh, scare the shit out of them, excite them. That's what I want to do. Cause that's what I want from a show. Right. I don't want to, I don't want to be, I don't want to be preached to. I don't want someone to tell me how to think or why I shouldn't think this, or should they look through this rectangle box and go to another world and escape.

1:55:26And, and, And so I have such a streamlined system that I'm able to create this massive volume of product. And I bet I work less than a guy who has one or two shows on the air.

1:55:47Bill Simmons:I want to talk about that system, but something you said earlier, this is like the biggest passion point of mine with anything with TV. because over and over again, the best shows or the best ideas or the most successful things seem to come from like one vision, one voice, maybe two, but usually it's one person. And those are the best shows that we care about the most. And over and over again, all the streamers and the studios, they seem like they ignore that. That instead of like the one voice, it's like, well, now here are ideas. And now it's like, you're trying to do creativity by consensus, which is the exact opposite of all the greatest shows we have.

1:56:26Bill Simmons:So why do we do it that way? The reason they do it that way is to justify their jobs. And they're not wrong. So when I first started at Paramount, there was a huge development department, right? There were all these people whose job it was to sit there and give me notes and tell me what to do and how to do it and this and that and the other. And after four years, they got rid of that department. So all those people got fired because they didn't need them. They had no job because I wasn't returning their calls. I didn't respect because they don't do what I do. It's job justification. It's like, what do you do all day?

1:57:11Bill Simmons:I give Taylor Sheridan notes. What are you giving him notes for? He doesn't need your notes. No. And if you look at some of the real bellwether shows, right, some of the shows that really, and there's a number of them, you can go back to early Stephen Bochco, David Milch, and these guys that were, David E. Kelly's another one, right? right no one gave that dude notes and he was a one-man band he writes all his those that guy was writing chicago hope that's 22 episodes of television and what's the other one that he had on uh he had three shows on the air at the same time all the practices

1:57:56and he's writing every word himself making every decision and he'd obviously built a very tight team of filmmakers around him. Right. Um, those shows was excellent. Right.

1:58:11Bill Simmons:Excellent. Well, when you talk about your system, I think this is part of the genius of what you've figured out. You've had all the same people basically that you had, you know, your first movie and you, you have this whole like infrastructure in place so that when you're making stuff, you have like a shorthand. It doesn't need to be three months to set up. You can do it in four weeks. And, um, and that's the biggest reason you have all these shows, right? It's even better than, you know, I have editors assistants that are now a senior editors. I have, I have production assistants, you know, guys that were running around getting coffee that are now first assistant directors.

1:58:52This argue one of the top three most important people on the set. I have camera operators that are now directors. I have an editor who's now a director. I have, directors who are now also producer directors and executive directors. I promote from within exclusively. I have a lead costume designer that used to be an assistant costumer. I have a assistant, literally, not even probably not even supposed to be in props. The kid's like 15 years old. He's just helping his dad. Now he's a prop master. So is his sister. And they only know one way to do it. They only know the way that we do it. so there's no arguing or debating about what cameras we're going to use there's no debating about about the lens package there's no i don't have to teach anyone the color palette nothing they know what i like and don't like and so the system is so streamlined our days are so much easier i had to learn this right wind river was incredibly difficult for me to do uh the first two seasons of yellowstone were incredibly difficult and then i figured it out and I had to get rid of a lot of people along the way.

2:00:04I had to fire a lot of people who didn't see it my way and wanted me to conform to the way that the business does it, as opposed to the way that I wanted to do it. And so all we really do is make everything the exact same way we made Wind River, just on a much larger scale, right? That was a gorilla. Now we make$235 gorilla or$35 million gorilla television series. Right.

2:00:29Bill Simmons:Well, one of the things you're good at is you're targeting people who have actors, lead actors who have had real success, but you somehow work well with them. And now because you've had success, they want to work with you. So now you have somebody like Billy Bob, you have Landman. He's like literally the perfect guy on the planet to be in Landman. But he also wants to be in Landman, which I don't, maybe in 2015, you're not able to convince him. But, you know, now, now it seems like you're getting whatever actors and actresses you want, right? I was getting, I was getting whatever I wanted from day one, as far as actors goes with Sicario.

2:01:08I mean, those are, those were our top choices, right? Oh, really? The same. Oh yeah. Same with Hell or High Water. I mean, I, I, I told, I told David McKenzie, I said, look, I wrote this role. I wrote it for, for Ben, Ben Foster. I wrote it for Ben Foster. and they kept looking for everybody and i said i don't know you could just hire you do that and then he actually went on a on a he got on a yacht and went for a week trip with his family uh where he had no cell service and they still hadn't pulled the trigger on ben and i just said fuck it i'm hiring him so i just called this agent up and said he's hired we got him he said really i said yeah i had no authority to do it whatsoever so then i got just called the costume, call Ben Foster, get his sizes.

2:01:56Because with SAG, as soon as the costume designer calls, you're booked. You're booked. So, when he got off the boat... But it was the perfect choice. So, yes, I've been fortunate to get the actors that I wanted. But I was an actor. I write for actors. I write words that they want to say. And now I do it even differently. So with Billy Bob, with Kurt Russell and Michelle, Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, that's who I had envisioned for the roles. But I hadn't written a word. And I told Billy Bob, I said, here's my idea. this is the show i want to do i'm going to do it if you don't want to play the role i'm not going to go try and fit a circle in a square but i'll write it for you and he said okay helen and harrison said the same thing michelle was a little bit tougher sell but she finally acquiesced and she was terrified to commit to something she'd never read a word um Um, but when, when, when a writer is writing specifically for an actor, right in a role that, that they were born to play, how can that not work?

2:03:07Bill Simmons:Wait a second. You have to tell the audience exactly what you told Billy Bob Landman was, because I actually know this and I thought it was great. So what did you tell him? I said, I want to make a drama with bad Santa running an oil company. And he was like, I'm in. he's like, that's the greatest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, let's do it. So when you, when you're coming up with these ideas, do you have a piece of the idea? Do you have the whole thing played out or you're just, is it just as simple as that where you're like bad Santa runs an oil company? Okay. That's something.

2:03:45Bill Simmons:Or is it like, are there cases where you're like, Oh no, I'm way more into this. It's always a lightning bolt, right? Every time it's a lightning bolt so for land man uh a buddy of mine from high school worked out in odessa midland and he and he was he was essentially uh oh some type of site manager would be the term right with the title but essentially he's just a problem solver he's a crisis manager right of which they're and I'm watching TV and some guy some wing nuts driving through the streets of Odessa shooting off a gun shoots like seven or eight people before the police run him down and kill him and I knew my buddy was in Odessa and I knew he's always driving around so I just called him and said hey just make it sure you're good he said good what do you talk about and I said well they're some lunatic running around Odessa shooting people And it's all over the news.

2:04:47And he just starts laughing. And he says, that happens here every day, every day. He goes, it just happens out in the patch. He goes, this place, you don't understand what this place is. He started telling me stories. And that's when I got the idea for Landman. And then coincidentally, not six weeks later. So I pitched the idea to Paramount. And not six weeks later, this podcast drops. that Christian Wallace from Texas Monthly had done. And I listened to it. And my partner, you know, hey, have you heard about this podcast? I said, I'm listening to it right now. It's awesome. And he said, we're worried that someone's going to try and buy that and make a competing show.

2:05:34And I said, well, then you buy it. I mean, this is endless stories we can explore. Let me talk to this Christian guy. So I talked to Christian who had been a roughneck. and was a very thoughtful, good writer. He didn't know how to write a screenplay, but I didn't need him to. I just needed someone to help me manage the autistice often and make sure that we tell the story. I'm a big believer in holding a mirror up to the world and writing down the reflection and not having any judgment on it and making it truly, truly authentic. This is what it is. if I make a movie about a ranching family in Montana, I have to make that movie for professional cowboys, right?

2:06:19They have to sign off on it first. Uh, if I make a movie about, uh, the military and the CIA, those guys have to watch it and wonder, uh, how did this guy know about it has to feel that real. So the same thing with this, I need experts. I need experts that can help me get immersed in the world to deeply understand it. So, yeah, no, but it did start out, and that's kind of why it's tonally so schizophrenic, Landman, which I like. I like a show to make me think and then do something that's almost vaudevillian, right, that's cartoonish, because all of our lives are kind of cartoonish, if you think about it, right?

2:06:59So these ridiculous dinners that are Angela's fantasy of what, and they're so preposterous and nobody wants to do them, which is a repeating theme, but she keeps doing it because it's her fantasy of what a family's supposed to do, but her family's so non-traditional. It's so ridiculous, all these strangers living in this house together. So it's a lot of fun to do that show.

2:07:30Bill Simmons:Well, you also, another thing you do that I've never seen anybody else do, you'll grab these really good actors or known actors and maybe their schedule won't allow them to be in the show as much as you need them in the first season, or maybe you want them for season two. Like how you used Demi Moore in Landman, it was like, she's one of the stars of Landman and she wasn't in it that much, but your whole idea for her was season two. That's when you were going to need her. And I told her, when I met with Demi about that, I said, look, here's the thing. you're going to be an extra in this show for seven episodes you're an extra and the critics are gonna fuck they are gonna come after me i'm underutilizing this can't write for women all this nonsense and then i'm gonna kill your husband and you're gonna have to run the oil company but but i said but and i and i i have a very you know the critics in me i don't care what they think and it and it annoys the shit out of them that i don't care and and i'll be the first to tell you that i there are things i do that that rage bait them a bit and this is one of them right um and episodes where they could have watched it and realized that flip but i did and i just sent him the first three um because fuck them honestly right and and so uh with with to me i knew that when we put it all on her shoulders from an audience standpoint you've just seen her in little snippets as this housewife right in the background living this fantasy so we've we've set her up bio mission to be someone that the audience is already predisposed to believe can't do this, capable of doing this job.

2:09:21Right. And so not only does she have to overcome every character in this world's opinion of her, but now she has to overcome the audience's predetermined opinion of her. And I let her do it in the first scene of season two. Right? I give her a monologue that basically says... You gave her two. I'm meaner than my... Yeah. Yeah. Where I say, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm essentially, I'm the bigger bear and you're about to learn it. How many questions it at times that she's a true wildcatter, like her husband, betting everything on this impossible drill, which is what, and that, and that's actually based on an actual, there's a woman who runs an oil company in Texas, a wildcatter.

2:10:07And, And she, that was her rig that I filmed, that shallow rig. And the story of that rig blowing and then that insurance money being used to double down, that actually happened. And she's risked$2 billion she does not have, both the character and the real person, the character's based on, on a lottery ticket. And it's insanity. But if the lottery ticket hits, it's, you know, you're talking, you're talking not just generational wealth. You're talking, I don't even, it's hard to comprehend the numbers you're talking. And that's the riverboat gambler addiction that these wildcatters have. It's fascinating.

2:10:58Think of the fortunes that it, think the Hunt family, for example. You know, that's in the 1920s, did the same thing, wildcatting. And, uh, and a hundred years later, you know, the family's still this institution in North Texas.

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2:11:49Bill Simmons:PNC Bank, National Association member, FDIC. This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, That's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 US-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas. So you'll throw, because I felt that you were doing this.

2:12:27Bill Simmons:there's sometimes you'll throw stuff in a show specifically as like a this to the critics or just to mess with them and it does feel like you're tweaking sometimes pagan pagan uh roommate that's one of the few times that the network and even some of the actors called me and said you sure that you don't want to compress the resolution of pagan and ainsley you know what you do in episode 10, uh, where they become friends and you don't want to put that in episode nine. I said, no, no, for, for exactly for the reason that you're asking. Yeah. I want to piss you off a little and then, oh, how dare I?

2:13:10And then you watch the next week and go, oh, uh, oh, got me to judge. And I, yeah, that's the difference between TV and a movie, right? The TV show's not over. So to sit there and treat an episode as though we've completed anything is ridiculous. Right? It's not done. I'm not done storytelling. You just saw a little sliver. You can't judge the thing till it's done.

2:13:36Bill Simmons:It's not like a movie. How many seasons are, like you're doing Landman or, I don't know, pick a show. Are you planning how many seasons ahead? For me, five years. five years, five years, max. Then, because beyond that, now it's just problem with a week. Right. And, and go back to remember that show, not Beverly Hills, not Oh, one Oh. I love that show. That show way back. Right. So think about that show for a minute. So Jason Priestley's the big heartthrob and he's this, he's the guy. and, uh, They take him on this story arc, and then everyone gets a little tired of Jason Pruzzi. So then they're dying out.

2:14:22He's the heartthrob. He's this. And then that kind of peters out. And then they take Brian Austin Green. It's his turn to do the same exact thing we did with the other two. So your lead characters that you've been following have fallen back, and this next one takes place. And Ian Ziering's next. And now it's just romance of the week, right? Because it went too long. so if you go into them knowing this is the the length of time that that we're gonna we're gonna explore and then have the courage to end it at that point in time now you have a completed thing and it stands up and you can re-watch it the amount of people that re-watch 1883 and 1923 in these in these these basically long-form movies that are that are just designed to be digested over a short period.

2:15:08Madison is the same way. It's a six episode season, right? Yeah. So you, I mean, I, I know where that, I know where every show ends. I know how they all end. Um, and, and I think you have to know how they end or if you don't, how do you know where you're going? Um, you may not have the ending, but you need to know thematically, how does this world resolved what are you what are you what are we saying right um and uh and and if you know that then you can write toward that and uh and and you know with yellowstone kevin was only supposed to be in the first three seasons that was in his contract um in in my mind that's that's when uh when his youngest son takes over and then we have to watch this and and lose that ranch over you know or not lose the ranch whatever the case is going to be um but the network was so scared of not having kevin be a part of it even though kevin was ready he was ready to go he had other things he wanted to do but he stayed on for another two seasons and and that was just because the show was such a behemoth it was such a huge hit that the the notion of of giving up a hit before it had run out of of of juice to squeeze is very foreign to a network and there was even pressure from some of the the cable companies wanting to put it in their deals that they were going to get an x number of seasons of yellowstone to re-up with whatever this cable company is i mean that's the power of a really big hit show but creatively uh that can run in opposition and and finally kevin hit a point where he's like i gotta i gotta go do my own thing and i'm like i gotta do my own thing too so so but but we we had originally conceived it together that it was three seasons and then and then the baton is handed um or if that wouldn't have been better for the show because we had to tread water for a bit there I think it was pretty evident.

2:17:15Well, I think COVID ballooned that show.

2:17:19Bill Simmons:It was already a big show. And then I felt like in COVID, when everybody was trying to catch up on stuff and what the fuck am I going to do for four months? And I've watched another show I haven't seen yet. And all of a sudden, it felt like Yellowstone was somehow growing. It was crazy. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, what was there to do? Everybody was stuck at home. Nothing. Yeah. And then whenever, which was different in different places, you know, the big cities were shut down for, you know, LA was shut down for over a year. Yeah. And New York for maybe six months or more. I don't know how long. I didn't go to either of them, but, you know, I had friends in LA still driving around with a fucking mask on in 23.

2:18:01You know, what are you guys doing? It's over.

2:18:05Bill Simmons:We call them lunatics. You don't have to do that anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was driving my daughter to Arizona for soccer tournaments because they wouldn't let anyone, even in the fall of 2020, they wouldn't let any sort of high school club soccer stuff happen. So you'd have to drive across the line to where it was. The good news is we got to spend a lot of time together. It was an interesting disease. It's the first disease in history that doesn't spread at protests. I don't know if you're aware of that. yeah we found that out yeah um wait i had a couple more questions for you about actors cole hauser who i always loved you seem to find over and over again these people where i'm like oh i always liked that person like kathy riley was she was she was unbelievable in flight she'd been in some good stuff so i wasn't surprised she took off but cole hauser like he was in goodwill hunting with affleck and damon and he was in school ties like he was around for a while and nobody unlocked them and then you unlocked them.

2:19:07Bill Simmons:So how'd you unlock them? The movie that I saw that made me... And I remember him from Days In Confused, right? That was a great role that he did. But it was... He played in Pitch Black with Vin Diesel and Gretchen Mull. And he was so good. And he was such a heavy actor that understood nuance. And what I mean by that is there's actors who can convey emotion. There's actors who can just their essence feels believable. And then there's wordsmiths, someone that understands which syllable of a word you stress changes the meaning or the emphasis. and, and, and there aren't as many that have that. Right.

2:20:08And, and to have that and have an emotional presence, those are the great ones. Right. And, and, and he has that. Uh, and, and, and maybe he has it. He's not a traditional looking pretty boy leading man. And that may be one of the reasons that the business because he's a he's a dude he's a man's man and at a time he came up at a time when they were buying sort of pretty and androgynous they didn't want right that in a man and and our business didn't foster that they didn't they didn't develop that they really wanted something that they felt was a little safer or more relatable whatever the case may be.

2:20:51Um, and he felt a little more throwback. He felt a little more seventies as an actor, that style. And, uh, which is the, which is what I grew up with. Right. That's, that's what acting that I, I was always drawn to. Um, and, and so he's, he didn't even audition. I just, we just, I just knew it was, I just knew.

2:21:14Bill Simmons:So when you're approaching like a TV show or a movie or, because I always feel like the best way something's going to succeed is like, you're bringing me into a world. I don't know anything about this world. Like Landman Z is the example of this. It's like, I don't fucking know anything about how they make oil in Texas. Like, so you're just pulling me into that. It seems like you're the best at this. Every TV show or movie you do, you're pulling me into something that I don't really know that much about. So is that intentional or is that just the outcome for you you have to understand for me the the landscape is is the main character that the war that everyone's reacting to so what's the star of the madison the madison river this idyllic place that has this incredible ability to heal right uh don't which is it's it it is the land it is it is land that's so that people would kill for that they would die for right it has so much value and and and is so grand same thing with 23 same thing with 83 uh with uh with the story of the mayor of kingstown's the opposite right here's a here's a place that is broken.

2:22:37It's a, it's a, it's a complete failed society. When your last business cling to is human incarceration as a, as a, as a city, you're done, right? That's it. Attracting prisons. If that's the business you're getting, then look what you're attracting with those prisons. And now you've sunk your city, right? So, so even though it's the city is really the antagonist in that one, it's still the main character. With lioness, it is the, forget good or bad moral, it's stated constantly, the main character of that is our societal survival, as perceived through people who do not apply morality to those decisions.

2:23:29Morality is another agency. Their job is to make sure that the United States remains the United States. Period. End of story. Someone else's job to interpret if the way we do that is good or bad. So those, to me, are really interesting landscapes. So then for Lioness, for an example, we've seen a version of that world a number of times. I just juxtaposed it and made the James Bond character a woman. And let's watch a woman deal with having two daughters that she's not present to raise. And that the husband has to be the one that stays at home and be passive and question why she has to do this.

2:24:15And let's watch that discussion and that debate from a different perspective.

2:24:20Bill Simmons:Yeah, another thing that I love about your shows is you find yourself, like my wife, we loved 1883 and 1920. we loved those shows but my wife was always we would watch 1883 and my wife was like I would have been really good in the 1800s I just think that could have been my best time I would have like known how to make stuff I could have defended myself like I just would have owned 1883 and I'm like yeah part of the greatness of these shows you just put yourself in I would have done terrible because I had bad eyesight I feel like I just would have been killed I just would have been done immediately she would have been great she probably would have been running a small town but it's funny like watching these different things and being like yeah how would i fit in in this where would i fit in yellowstone where would i fit in the land man um just because i don't know anything about those worlds but i'm sure you get that all the time people like i would have been awesome in the 1880s but we all i mean isn't that part of the great joy of of of storytelling and witnessing it, whether it's, whether you read it in a book or whether it's a TV show or a movie and are wondering what that character's life is like right after the movie's over.

2:25:32What did they do after that? Like that's a fascinating thing. And that's the greatest compliment you can give the storyteller because they successfully built a world for you. Right.

2:25:44Bill Simmons:Well, you also, you come in, you also flip something like an 18, there's stuff in those shows that you always knew, but you didn't really think about. So like in the 1880s, there's really no rules, right? You go somewhere and it's not like they have a set of laws or anything in place and people can just fucking go nuts. And so you're defending yourself on a totally different level at all times. I've just never really thought about that that much. And then I'm watching this show. I'm like, fuck, what would I do? The only... it was completely self-policing, right? You had to determine what your own boundaries were.

2:26:28If, if you, if you as an armed gunman, you know, you're traveling across the plains and you come across weak man and his wife and two daughters, um, the only, there are no consequences of actions other than losing the gunfight which you can assess pretty quickly whether you're going to do that so what's going to keep you from killing the dude and robbing him blind killing the wife raping the wife selling the kid what's what's going to keep you only you right that's it there were there was no law it's great fascinating and a pretty terrible time because there were plenty of people that didn't have, there was no boundary for that.

2:27:16Right.

2:27:18Bill Simmons:Um, did you ever think in your wildest dreams, Yellowstone would turn into what it turned into? Like not only a massive, probably the biggest show of the last 10 years, but also a universe that went backwards and forwards. Like when did you realize what the fuck? Look, when HBO, when I, you know, I sold this show to HBO first and I told them in 2015, go on television. I told them that. You told them. I told them it's going to be the biggest show on television, period, end of story. And when the executives at Paramount read it, they couldn't believe it was available. Couldn't believe it. They were shocked.

2:28:03that no one saw it. And it scared everybody. And I had the argument many times that they said, look, they just tried to do this. They made that movie Cowboys and Aliens and the cowboy genre dead. What's dead is dumb movies about cowboys and aliens. That's a bad genre. Maybe don't do that. But every time someone makes a good Western, it's a fucking hit. Every time. Unforgiven, 310 to Yuma, Silverado. They're all hits. Right. Because it's a very uniquely American thing to explore. That period is fascinating to us. To look at, it's the closest thing that we had to in medieval times, right? That is our dark ages.

2:28:51Our medieval period was the mid-18, post-Civil War 1800s.

2:28:56Bill Simmons:Are there any shows in the last 10 years that you've been jealous of? I gotta be honest with you. I haven't seen anything. I haven't watched any other shows. Oh, you're just locked into all your, well, you're doing seven shows. You probably have to constrain. Well, I mean, look, here's how I explain it. You're a dentist, okay? When you cough this, do you look at pictures of teeth? Right. You know? I don't want to watch anyone. I don't want to watch my own shows when I come home. I got to, you know, I don't, so, so no, I haven't seen anything. Um, we have to end cause I know you're running low on time.

2:29:39Bill Simmons:We have to end on Sicario, which is an incredibly important movie in the Grantland Ringer universe that I am in. That's my Yellowstone universe. We did it for rewatchables. Um, this movie podcast we have a couple months ago. It's a movie that people really liked when it came out and it feels like it's, it's gaining steam and growing as the years pass and has become, I think one of the best movies of the 2010s when I'm sure you knew it was good when you were doing it, but did you ever think it would have a tail like it's had? I mean, and I don't want this to sound arrogant. Um, I've never taken a movie out.

2:30:22I've never, you know, all my scripts are specs. In other words, I don't get hired to write them. I have an idea. I sit and I go sell it and sell it with the intention of making it. So typically with my projects, there's, I either put into them a penalty, uh, which makes it like, if you're not going to make it, I'm going to make it really painful for you to not make it. Or I'm going to mandate in the contract that you make it, that you have no choice. Yeah. And, and so I don't take something out if I don't think it's going to be a hit and it's going to be really, really impactful, then I don't make it.

2:30:57Then, then for, to me, it's not ready to be taken out. I can't, I, and there's a lot of people, I'm very fortunate in the fact that when I first started screenwriting, I, I didn't, I didn't fall into the dangers. There's traps in any business, right? You could say that if you're an actor, the big trap is getting on some sitcom that goes for 10 or 12 years and you, and you may have, yeah, you made money, uh, and you had a stable job, but is it fulfilling you creatively? And are you going to have to overcome that typecasting when you get out? I was having a friend of mine who called me for advice today about this, where she got offered this job.

2:31:39It's a money job, but, but she doesn't really want to do it. Right. But she was conflicted. What do I do? I've got two kids. And I, and I, I, I asked her, I said, okay are you behind on your mortgage no will you be behind on your mortgage in six months no okay then you don't need to take a money job right none of us got into this to make money the fact that it pays well is pretty shocking to all of us none of us nobody got thinking i certainly didn't get into screenwriting for the money i got into it because i was tired of compromising and I wanted to control my own destiny. I had no idea that it paid well, right?

2:32:21I got my first residual check for Sicario. I was like, oh shit, I wish I'd have done this 15 years ago. But so with Sicario, I wanted to write something that was unique in every way. I wanted the structure to be unique. I wanted to really play with of who is the protagonist. and I wanted to give the one character with a moral compass, no power. And then it's probably the first time that I was already fucking with critics because I made that character also a woman, which means instantly they're going to assume the reason I did that is because I think women are powerless. When it is actually morality that froze her.

2:33:11it wasn't gender it was the fact that she believed in right and wrong she believed in playing by the rules in a in a sphere where there are no rules no one is playing by the rules the cartels aren't playing by the rules the cartels don't even have rules they may have their own codes amongst themselves but they have no rules and so now the federal government decided that they were going to play with no rules which would not be the first time our government has decided to do that You can ask Maduro about that. And, and so here's what it looks like. What if they treated criminals like enemy combatants?

2:33:49And so I, I, I wrote that script on a five act structure instead of a three act structure, um, to, to play with the, you're, you're pre, you have a preconceived, your condition when you watch a movie to know 17 minutes in, there's going to be a big revelation. and I'm going to know what this movie's about. Right? And then we're going to go off on the journey. And about an hour and 10 in, we're on the mission. We found the villain. We found the gold. We found the thing. And we're on a mission. And for the next 15, 20 minutes, we're going to see if we can achieve the mission, whatever that is. And we typically know, even though it's exciting to watch, we know they're going to get the girl or they're going to win the fight or they're going to conquer the hill or whatever it's going to be we know right but if you start playing with that structure and i don't really tell you what the goal is until the the end of act three act four well that feels very different you know the shootout that happens on the border is is really in the the the end of the second act okay and and i built that battle within its own little five-act structure if you watch it you could sit there and find the beats to it and uh and and i did that to completely disorient the audience about how in the world i'm i it's we're only 40 minutes in i think everyone's about to die i don't think anyone's safe right how could the movie be over and and and then you've got an audience that's truly jarred and on the edge of their seat and and and i knew when i wrote it that i had effectively done that and the and the way that you know that you can read it and look at it yourself but the reaction of the town like hollywood went nuts for that script um it scared the shit out of everybody nobody wanted to make it um the producer who decided to make it was, his name's Basil, and he had made The Town with the movie that Ben did.

2:36:07Great movie. And again, on paper, that's a pretty dark film. It wasn't one that the whole world was running around saying, we got to make this movie. People would read that script and go, damn, this is a great script. I don't even want to begin to think of it. I'm making it, but damn, I can't wait to see it. And Basil didn't hesitate. and the first director we sent it to was Denis Villeneuve. And when Denis read it, I had to make it. I knew I had to make it. And when we had Denis, I knew I had a director that could execute the way that I had structured the script. He would get it. He would understand it.

2:36:47Because he's very comfortable telling complicated stories. So when we had those pieces, and then the cast just fell together, I think we all knew. We all knew what it was. well it's interesting i mean anything i was surprised i was surprised that the that the way that lionsgate released it i think if it had been really hit domestically i think that i think that they they decided to make an awards play um and i wouldn't have done that i would have treated it like a summer movie and then you walk and you think you're seeing this exciting thing and it slaps you in the face and you walk out of there going, what in the world did I just see?

2:37:28You know, they did that. They did that with platoon, which was brilliant to treat that, you know, to not tell the world we're about to punch you in the stomach. Right.

2:37:39Bill Simmons:Well, it's interesting because obviously you made all your success and you bet on yourself in all these different ways, but, um, you know, a little, a tiny bit of luck helps every once in while right like you get the director for sicario who turns out to be one of the best directors of the last 15 years and he likes the movie i can't think of anyone else who would have directed it like looking back and he was perfect i would say it fortuitous you make your own luck right right lucky is when fortuitous is a better words onto your shitty script yeah he signs onto your shitty script and now it's great and it goes out and it's a hit and through no through through nothing that you now you're lucky right that's lucky here's another example what if you had just gotten a job acting on some show that locked you down in 2010 where you were doing well like what if you were on i don't know csi new orleans and you were the third lead and that's just what your job was Were you, would you even have written?

2:38:44Well, remember I quit Sons of Anarchy too, right? In 2010, I was on a show and, uh, and thank God that they had so little respect for me that they offered me garbage, garbage. They made it really easy to walk away because it was easy for me to, to, to sit there and say, okay, I'm going to do this for the next six or seven years. and I'm still going to have a second job with the junk they're paying me and I'm going to miss my chance to be a creator, a chance to tell a story. That's also, if they hadn't treated me so disrespectfully, I would have never, they hit me over the head with a mallet that made it so clear that the only way I was going to get to be an effective storyteller was if I, because actors are storytellers, it was if I told my own stories.

2:39:35I was never going to get the opportunity as an actor. And, and look, I'm not saying I'm, was a good enough actor that I deserved it. I guess I didn't. Right. I guess I didn't because 15 years in this business and I never had that opportunity. So I guess I was doing exactly the acting. That's all the acting I should have been doing. They helped me see that.

2:39:57Bill Simmons:Was there a fork in the road role that you came close to getting or you'd think like, man, if that had happened, maybe I'm going this way instead. Yeah, there was one. There was one. Uh, I, I was, I was a couple. Um, but there was, there was this movie called American History X with Ed Norton. Um, and, and, and the role that Stacey Keech played was written as Ed Norton's character's best friend. And they had tapped me for that. And then either the director or Ed or whoever made a decision that if it was his friend betrayed him, and they're not wrong, by the way, but if the friend had betrayed him, it didn't make a greater statement about, uh, what they were really focusing on, which was this, you know, racism at an extreme.

2:41:02Um, and so if it's just how does his best friend being a fucker, uh, and betraying him lead to this epiphany that everything that he believed about race was a lie right so so they so they as a storyteller they rightfully uh went back and addressed the script and and changed it to make this character much more of a leader and a father figure and and not so much an equal to to uh and and more part of an organized racist like supremacist as opposed to a bunch of skinhead drug dealers which was what it was originally right um so probably the right decision for them from a story standpoint uh but but it but it cost me a job have you have you ever the other one was uh i got pretty far down the road on walking dead and and bernthal beat me out of that role really yeah yeah so he was on when he did Wind River, you know, we were talking and I'm like, you know, you, you saved my ass, dude.

2:42:15I was damn near, I was gonna, I was damn near still an actor.

2:42:19Bill Simmons:Oh man. And then he ends up in Sicario too. Yeah. Yeah. So you never thought about, I mean, you've popped in, you popped in Yellowstone, but you never thought about writing one thing that you would be like one of the stars in or you're, that bug is gone. the funny thing is oh no i play a character on on uh and he's sort of one of these career ground bench just a um just a just a hammer he's just a he's just a hammer uh and yeah and it's fun to do those stunts and to run around and you know shoot the guns and play play that it's and i I get, you know, if I do an episode, a half of that, a season, then I've scratched that itch.

2:43:04But I've ironically been offered roles, you know, since, and I haven't, I've turned it all down. Yeah. I don't have any interest in spending four months on it.

2:43:17Bill Simmons:Would you have interest doing rewatchables if you're ever in LA? Because we would love to have you talk about one of your favorite movies. I feel like you'd be really good at it. If you ever do rewatchables in Fort Worth, Texas, I'll do it. I might have to come. I might have to get like five choices. I'll come. I'll come to you because I think you'd be really good at this. I've made it pretty clear. The only way you're getting me back to Los Angeles is if it secedes from the union and I'm drafted into the army to take it back. It's the only way. All right. That's good. A lot of people feel that way about Los Angeles.

2:43:54Bill Simmons:my friend William Goldman who's sadly not with us anymore but never wanted to come back here he was like New York New York I never want to come back that's it some people just that's it they're done yeah no I love New York I love New York that city's way way stronger than whatever political wind is blowing it in any direction right whereas LA's built on sand it ain't strong there's no foundation there that's sorry sucker it's right that way the book is called I Did Not Die in Prison it is out it's out on hardcover right now June 23rd I'm going to have to come to Fort Worth to see you America heard you say if I came down you'd do a rewatchables but it's great to talk to you I really admire everything you built yeah we'll figure out something but congrats on everything though it's been fun to watch from afar thank you thank you I appreciate it Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming.

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