An NBA Mailbag, LeBron’s Next Move, and the Wild Paramount-WBD Merger With David Jacoby and Matt Belloni

12:20David Jacoby:This was harder than I thought it would be. I agree. This was harder than I thought it would be. And one thing that I'm not going to allow is Hugo Gonzalez being part of the conversation. Did you see him last night? It's 16 rebounds. I did. but this was harder than I thought because my question for you is like there's a couple there's a bunch of 29 year olds who will still be in their prime but when I'm looking at some players I'm like Luka will be 32

12:47Bill Simmons:well can we do the chalk picks so if we're just going chalk it's Wemby, Ant, Luka, SGA whoa

12:59David Jacoby:Luka and SGA are 32 years old I'm just saying chalk Chalk. Safest bets for five years from now.

13:05Bill Simmons:Safest bets. Okay. And I would have Cooper Flagg as my fifth Chalk guy. He'll be 24 at that point. Everything we've seen, how much better he's gotten just in the last two years.

13:19David Jacoby:Luka and Shea at 32, I started to think that there are others out there. Jokic is going to be 36. He probably won't be playing anymore. He's out. Yeah. I wrote down I had different categories Cade and Maxie There's a lot of 29 year olds Cade and Maxie are on my list as well And Edwards But he's in Edwards

13:38Bill Simmons:So can we put Wemby and Ant in bold? Yes Okay Absolutely Can we put Cooper Flagg in bold or no? He'll be 24

13:49David Jacoby:Yes you can I just think I think there's no way he's not awesome in five years

13:54Bill Simmons:There would have to be some sort of Knock on wood terrible injury But we're not even having that conversation. Wemby's in. So Wemby and Flag. Yes. I could offer you AJ DeBansa, Darren Peterson, DP, DNP, Chet, Aman Thompson, Jalen Johnson, Paolo with a big resurgence.

14:15David Jacoby:Anybody else? Jalen Johnson is on my list. I'm glad you didn't bring up Tatum. He's going to be too old. He'll be like 33. There's a little bit of me. I didn't write him down just for crime. Yeah, yeah, I know. But there's a little bit of me that's looking at Maxie like, I don't know, could he be top five? Because you have to play defense too.

14:34Bill Simmons:He'd have to be in the low 30s point-wise for like four straight years in a row. Basically where Mitchell is now. You wouldn't even put Mitchell in the top five right now. No. So probably not.

14:45David Jacoby:Is there a world in which Jalen Johnson becomes like an all-around jack-of-all-trades, nine assists, and like 25 points a night guy?

14:53Bill Simmons:The problem is you have to really win to be in this conversation. His Duke season didn't go well, and he's never won anything with Atlanta. So you're really projecting with this. Yeah, I think we're there.

15:05David Jacoby:I don't think there's anybody else on the list that we're missing. Okay, so Wemby and... It's interesting that you would put Cooper in bold, guaranteed, and not even mention Nipsey.

15:18Bill Simmons:I didn't want to put that on 2K. It's a lot. It's a lot to ask of 2K. I think Cade should be in there, though. Cade will be high 20s at that point. Yes. Like 28, 29. So I think he would be my fourth pick. And I'm sorry. I think Luka's still going to be there. It'll be year 13, Luka. 32 years old. He already moves like a 39-year-old.

15:41David Jacoby:When I think about Luka and Jokic,

15:43Bill Simmons:I'm like, is this good or bad?

15:45David Jacoby:Because he doesn't... Max, he relies on athleticism that diminishes over time. Luka doesn't do anything athletic.

15:51Bill Simmons:So you wouldn't have SGA if he was still this good in five years. You're now talking about the best guard career anyone's had other than Michael Jordan. It would be better than Jerry West. It would be better than every guard we've ever had. I also think they're going to win a lot too.

16:07David Jacoby:That's why you might put him in. He's borderline there. So two spots for Cade, Luca, SGA.

16:16I think, God, it's hard.

16:18Bill Simmons:This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Well, here's the other thing. there might be somebody we have no idea like we wouldn't have said Anthony Edwards in 2021 he's the number one pick we wouldn't have said Anthony Edwards will be one of the five best guys

16:31David Jacoby:and both Edwards and Cade didn't have the kind of like Cooper rookie year I'm gonna say Cade

16:38Bill Simmons:ah shit it's hard to leave out SGA it is especially now that they're the villains that we need in the NBA I started that on Sunday I know

16:51David Jacoby:Explain to me why Cade won't be better at 29 in five years than SGA. The case would be really physical style.

17:01Bill Simmons:Putting Miles on in the next four or five years physically might break down. Okay. Those big physical guards, it's almost like a big physical receiver or something would be the case. I don't believe that. His team's going to be good. He's going to have Bull Dern the whole time. They're going to bring in a second creator.

17:18David Jacoby:Yeah, they'll have somebody, Giannis. and Beef Bump Stew. That's a great nickname.

17:22Bill Simmons:Beef Stew's a great nickname. I'm going to say Cade. You know what? I'm going to say SGA over Luca. I don't 100 % trust Luca.

17:32David Jacoby:I don't know about Luca at 32.

17:34Bill Simmons:That video the other day, which I actually thought was kind of a big deal, and normally I'm like, don't overreact to when guys get mad at each other on the bench. I could talk about that for hours. Here was the key piece that I didn't think enough play. I think it was Vanderbilt sitting next to him. Yeah, it was Vanderbilt. and he was watching the whole thing. If you watch the video, he's watching them go and he's kind of like this. It was the most important thing that Vando did all year. He's watching and he's watching, he's watching. JJ walks away and it looks like Luka went out to put his arm out but JJ walked away and JJ didn't seem to put the arm out as Luka was putting out and Luka got mad and stood up and I think it was Vando.

18:10Bill Simmons:It was Vando. He's watching out of the corner of his eye and stands up with Luka to block him from chasing JJ down the sideline. If you watch everything he's doing, It's the stuff like we're at a bar at 2.30 in the morning and our buddy is like, uh-oh, don't let him go over there. And we're just kind of watching him the whole time. It's like, oh, there he goes. We got to get him out. That was the vibe. I didn't think it was good.

18:32David Jacoby:I don't think it was good at all. And the first person that it made me think of was Nico Harris. And I've said this on The Mismatch, but I've always felt like there's just more to the story of what happened in Dallas. And I think that they hated each other. And he was like, guess what? you can be gone. I have that kind of power. I think it was personal, and I think it was vindictive, and I think that he hated seeing Luca every single day, and I think that Luca was disrespectful towards him, and probably vice versa. They clearly thought he was a dick. Exactly. You know what I mean? These things aren't reported.

19:03David Jacoby:I'm not reporting anything, but I think that that happened. I think there's a lot of incidents like this behind the scenes that we didn't see. There's two types of people,

19:14Bill Simmons:and I'm in the wrong camp with this. My wife instantly if something's happening, she knows. Right? Like if when you have little kids and the kid is going down the pool, walking crawling toward the pool or something and there's the type that goes oh no, that's bad and then you act or there's the person who sees that and they're moving immediately. That was Jared Vanderbilt. He saw it immediately. I don't think I would have stood up in time.

19:43David Jacoby:What's the second type of person?

19:44Bill Simmons:What are you? I'm the one who would have, I would have sat there for the extra second been like this is bad and Luca would have walked by me before I realized that I should be stopping it.

19:54David Jacoby:Because you I don't like to compliment you but you're an excellent room reader and floor seer. Not the instinctive this is bad. What are you? Which side are you? You know I rush to conflict. I enjoy the conflict. I enjoy tension. I enjoy just the weirdness of it all and like saying things that I probably can't take back and probably shouldn't say.

20:14Bill Simmons:The best version of this I've ever seen was our friend Jalen Rose. There was one time, one of the NBA shows we were doing, and there was, people were arguing. I was one of the people arguing. And we're walking off after the thing, and Jalen goes, turn your mic off, Bill. Like he just said, turn the mic off.

20:34David Jacoby:He's great at that. He immediately like read the tea leaves. It's a room read. You don't have to say it. I know you're going to say something that you can't regret. Turn your mic off, Bill. And that microphone is going to

20:43Bill Simmons:broadcast to the truck. Shout out to him. Yeah. All right, next question. Gus from Texas. I saved this for if we're ever going to do a mailbag together. He said, long-time BS pod fan. Thanks, Gus. Long-time fan of the challenge. Always loved when those two worlds collide, but it's been a minute. If the NBA did a rival-style season like the challenge, who would your favorite pairings be? Who would be the CT West team that would dominate? Who would be the messiest, funniest? So I sent this to you.

21:11David Jacoby:I just want to tell Gus that I love him very much. It's a great question.

21:13Bill Simmons:It's a great question. Two-man teams. This is the rivals thing that we love. So would they have to be rivals?

21:19David Jacoby:I spent more time answering this question this afternoon to myself than I've put into anything I've done professionally in 10 years. You were the right person. This is it.

21:29Bill Simmons:This is your vortex of all the things you care about.

21:31David Jacoby:I have found the perfect pairing from the NBA to go to the challenge.

21:35Bill Simmons:Is this rivals or just a challenge?

21:37David Jacoby:He said rivals, right? So I did think of sort of pairings that would be mismatched, we'll say, right? like they're not real rivals because they oh diabate and like beef stew that's not going to work you know what i mean or like dylan brooks and lebron that's not going to work but i was thinking i was like they did something like this do you remember the season that had like sean merriman and cm punk and like lolo jones yeah that was i remember thinking i was like this is lolo quit yeah and then she came back another time but i remember sitting there being like this can't work but the athletes weren't as good at the challenges that you would think And of course, this first person that came to my mind with Johnny Bananas, the goat of the challenges and like what makes him good at this and what makes him good at doing this is he's in great shape.

22:23David Jacoby:So you can run the final. But he's really good at room reading, like we were talking about earlier, and playing the social game and finding out who's aligned with who, getting the right people out at the right times. So I was thinking of a strategist. So my first answer is going to be a team that I think would be successful. So not Kevin Durant. Not Kevin Durant. Okay. But the fun answer is a team that I really want to see. I'll give you that next. I think that I landed on teammates. They're not rivals, but it would be Cade and Ron Holland. Because Cade is very mature, very measured. He's very intelligent and articulate.

22:59David Jacoby:Cade and Ron Holland. I was not expecting this. This is where I ended up. And I've got a fun one, though. Okay. The fun one is obviously. So why Ron Holland, though, over other people on the team? I think that Ron Holland. Just because he's such a good athlete? Yes. I think that his type of athleticism, he can like climb up stuff. So he'd be like Alton from the real world. And Cade will be like the puzzle guy. Yes, exactly. Because obviously your mind goes to beef stew or whatever, but I think he might be just a little too like big for this. And I think that Ron Holland's got a nice little level of crazy.

23:27David Jacoby:And I think Cade will be sort of like the brains of the operation. Holland will be like a little intimidating and like a little wild card.

23:33Bill Simmons:So they'll be in the bunk beds and Cade will be like, let's bring over Draymond Green. We got to align with him.

23:38David Jacoby:Yes. And my favorite pairing for this, and I used a coach, is LaMelo Ball and Joe Mazzula. Just imagine like Joe Mazzula. You can't let Joe Mazzula in this. He's too crazy. He's got like a blindfold on and LaMelo Ball's outside the fence. They're like, it's to your right. It's to your right. And Joe Mazzula's just like, what the fuck, LaMelo? He just rips the blindfold off and just chases after LaMelo who's just laughing and running around in circles. Like that pairing to me would be the one I would want to see the most. That's great. It would be perfect. Joe Mazzulla should be on the challenge.

24:12Bill Simmons:I think this would be an unbelievable vehicle for Draymond Green, too. I think Draymond would be great. I think he'd be the most compelling character. He'd definitely get kicked out of at least, if he did 10 seasons, he'd get kicked out of three of them. He'd complain about all kinds of stuff. He'd probably get into it with TJ at least once or twice.

24:33David Jacoby:I wouldn't mind Durant either. You see with him, with Tyler Hero, and the Miami bench. and like, I watched that starting five show. Yeah, but Durante

24:41Bill Simmons:would just team up and get out in the first episode.

24:43David Jacoby:What would you do with Draymond?

24:44Bill Simmons:He'd be like Cara Maria. See, now nobody, nobody watching this knows what we're talking about. We're not talking to alternate language. Who would, who would be the Laurel

24:54David Jacoby:of this? The big bully. Oh, I love Laurel so much. That probably beefs the... Yeah, probably Draymond, yeah. Well, Draymond's more of like... The Laurel's nasty, though. I guess he is more the Laurel. Laura's nasty. She will dress you down for no reason. Who would be the good guy? Would it be Gurry?

25:14Bill Simmons:Everybody likes Gurry. Like how everybody loves Mark Long?

25:16David Jacoby:Everybody loves Mark Long. Remember when he came to your house one time? We did have a challenge pod.

25:20Bill Simmons:That was fun. Thanks, Gus. Sean from North Carolina. I wanted this question for you because you have kids. I only sent you a couple questions. You don't know a lot of these. I know. He said, we used to live in a proper country. I would catch all sorts of classics on TV, including the slightly sanitized version of Die Hard on TBS. streaming services are great but I wish they had a cable edit option that way I could show my 10 year old kid Terminator Terminator 2 without it being inappropriate do you think Netflix should add this the parent cut of different movies well

25:51David Jacoby:and would you watch this with your kids you have older kids and I was around when they were younger and I learned one thing that I've taken from the Simmons household is just like you want to see Halloween and you're 6 years old Cool. Here's a kitchen knife. You know what I mean? It was just like, or like cursing in front of your kids. You were very like thrown into the fire. You know what I mean? And I do that at my house as well when it comes to content. Like me and my son, he's 12. We watched Psycho Killer over the weekend. Oh. You know what I mean? Like horror movies, sex scenes. I'll be like, close your eyes.

26:27David Jacoby:You know what I mean? But he doesn't really do it. So that's the thing. You have to know where the bad parts are in your cover. So I don't think we need the edit option. It's not necessary to do this. I agree. And I also, I took a page from your book. It's just like, let the kids watch whatever.

26:39Bill Simmons:They're going to do it anyway. Yeah, it's fine. You can either put your head in the sand and pretend like you're controlling it or do it with them and just kind of put hands over their face. One of my daughters gets super scared, so she won't watch. Fine. Like, you're watching Terminator with your kid. And all of a sudden, that guy's like, I came across time for you, Sarah. And you know they're about to get it on. Like, you know what? We're going to fast forward this part. Yeah. I'll just tell you, it's going to get romantic here. We're not going to watch it together, and you just move on.

27:06David Jacoby:My kids won't watch things from the 20th century.

27:10Bill Simmons:I came across Time for You, Sarah, one of the great pickup lines in the history of movies. Like, what woman's not at least making out with you after that? You came across Time? I came across Time for You, Sarah. This is great. Thank you. This is from Alex in Delray Beach. And I've gotten this email a bunch of times from people about the 0304 Kings. Are you familiar with them? Chris Weber's out for his torn ACL in the postseason previous year. Peja has his random MVP season. One of the most random top four MVPs ever. Before I mentioned White Chocolate, right? They're 40. No, he's gone by then. They have Mike Bibby.

27:46Bill Simmons:They're 43-15 through 58 games. Weber comes back and as Alex points out, the return was disastrous. Stjákovich's efficiency plummeted. The Kings lost 10 of their final 16, fell to the fourth seed, bounced in round one. now Tatum is coming back is history destined to repeat itself so there is a doppelganger for this comeback that I forgot about Bill I thought we were going to talk about the Kings

28:13David Jacoby:and then at the very end you're just like the Celtics and Jason Tatum

28:16Bill Simmons:do you remember this Kings thing though?

28:18David Jacoby:not really yeah I didn't really remember it either I didn't remember the Peja piece I remember like Lakers series and like Divac and like that kind of pre give us your quick will Tatum screw up the Celtics take I know you've done it on this match already no adding good players to your team it helps is he better than Bailey Sharman? he might play like 14 minutes too adding good players to basketball teams doesn't screw them up

28:43Bill Simmons:did they say one thing in the weird documentary they've made about his comeback wait you're watching that? no this was a thing on Celtics Reddit he said he didn't come back to be a role player

28:56David Jacoby:it's fine one of my basketball philosophies He's like, there's only one ball. I hate there's only one ball. Yeah. Share the ball. I guess what? If you score, I score. Jason Tatum makes teams better.

29:08Bill Simmons:We'll be fine.

29:09David Jacoby:Yeah.

29:10Bill Simmons:Steve B writes, what if Steve Kerr does not have a contract for next year because Steph is winding down and Wemby is winding up and he's replacing George Popovich to make a second run in the dynasty? I just like that he called him George Popovich. George Popovich. I like Steve B, too. Steve B. I was wondering, like, so Kerr, let's say he leaves this year and the Warriors are going to be out of the playoffs. Like, I think they're going to shut Steph down. My spidey senses are like, he said, yeah, it's going to be like 10 more days. There's only 39 days left in the season. What are they going to do?

29:45Bill Simmons:Even when he comes back, they already lost Jimmy Butler. They're not good to begin with. What are they going to do? Play two playing games with Steph with not 100 % need? Like, that team should go for a lottery pick. KP's already got illnesses. Yeah. KP's not coming back. That season's watch. Is Horford going to carry you to the second round of the playoffs? Kerr leaves. Thanks for everything. I'm going to take a year off. I'll do media. Hopefully it comes to the ringer. Then San Antonio, who knows? And if anything ever happens on that team, then you wait for that or you wait for the Knicks or some awesome job.

30:16Bill Simmons:You just do media for a year. When you do media for a year, your stock just rises. You see that every time.

30:22David Jacoby:Yeah.

30:22Bill Simmons:Right? so you don't think he's going to replace George Popovich

30:26David Jacoby:I don't think he's going to replace George Popovich because Mitch Johnson's doing a good job that's the problem I don't think that's going to be available to him and Mitch Johnson wasn't supposed to be the head coach of the Spurs

30:40David Jacoby:could you see a front office thing maybe where it's like he's not on the bench but he's just sort of like part of the thing

30:46Bill Simmons:my honest answer for this is I don't think he coaches again after this I think he did He did it since 14, 15. He did 11 years. He set up his son to potentially be a coach down the road. He won four titles. He won... How many did he win with the... He won one, two, three, five with the Bulls and Spurs? Yeah. He won nine titles? It's done. It's a wrap. Just do media. There's a media that's going to be on the rewatchables. It'd be great. I'd love to have Steve play on the rewatchables. SK month. Martin in New York writes, Where does Al Horford rank on the I left my marriage for the stripper twice and to no one's surprise, it didn't work out list.

31:30David Jacoby:You saved that one for me. You saved that one for me.

31:32Bill Simmons:He left the Celtics twice because he thought the title window was closed only to be instantly proven wrong 20 games into the season and he did it twice. It is a tough beat for Al. I never understood the I'm going to go chase the title with Golden State part. What title do you think he was chasing? You're in a conference with OKC. hey, what do you think is going to happen over there?

31:52David Jacoby:Also, they need you. Yeah. Because it's like post is their other big at the time before they got KP. I'm back to the Warriors. I never really saw it this season for the Warriors. I thought they'd go over the 46 or whatever, but I didn't think they would. But what did everybody say? Last year, after they added Jimmy Butler, if you look at the numbers, they were the best team in the history of the NBA. And I was kind of like, yeah, they were in a playoff game for two months in a row to kind of get in to the plan.

32:18Bill Simmons:The thing about NBA history, the older you get, the harder your chance is to win the NBA title. That's one of the things I've learned. And the only chance you have is if it's like a weird down year for the league where there's not a lot of stars and there's a couple bad drafts, some of the younger players didn't pan out. Then you can kind of sneak in. The league's not like that right now. The league's fucking loaded. No. You're not winning at... Like, I even look at Duran on Houston. And Houston, you know, we'll see what happens with them. They've hung around. They're going to be a three seed.

32:46Bill Simmons:but they're still going to have to rely on Durant for 10 straight weeks in the playoffs to win a title, and he's 37. I just think it's unrealistic. We saw in 22, remember Tatum took it to him in that net series? He was 33 in that series. He was four years older than that. Let's take a break, and then I have some more mailbag questions for you. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel's putting you in control right from tip-off. That's right. You get to choose your reward. Play it safe, go for it, whatever your style. you're in control. I'm going to figure out some sort of bet for the Celtic-Charlotte game.

33:21Bill Simmons:But I think it's going to be a close game. I think it's going to have a lot of points. And I predict my guy 2K, Conk Nipple, some threes from him. But just in general, I think it's going to be a fast pace, a lot of points game. I'll figure out what my final play is. Check it out on my Twitter account. No matter how you play, Fandle's giving you the power to choose your word, own your game this NBA season. Head to Fandle.com slash BS to make your pick. Get in the game and play it your way. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandle.com.

33:55Bill Simmons:Game problem call 1-800-GAMBLER. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. What makes basketball so exciting? All the superior skill on the court. This has been the case my whole life. The craziest thing, I mean, Wemby, stuff he's doing every game. There's two, three Wemby moments a game where you're like, I don't know if I've ever seen that. The number one thing for me is when he does the screen and roll. He's going to the basket. Somebody throws him an alley-oop and he just catches it and dunks it without jumping. It's an alley-oop, but it's not an oop.

34:32Bill Simmons:It's just kind of an alley. And every time he does it, I'm like, I've definitely 100 % never seen that anymore. It's a superior play. Superior plays aren't just for the NBA, though. Try Michelob Ultra. the official beer partner of the NBA and a crisp, refreshing, superior light beer. It's the beer of Max Kellerman. He just told me that. Plus they're giving you a chance to win Quartzside seats, custom merch, and more. Michelob Ultra Superior is worth playing for. Enter now at MichelobUltra.com slash Quartzside. Michelob Ultra Quartzside 2526. No purchase necessary. Open to US Residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2025.

35:10Bill Simmons:ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at makelobaltra.com slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines and prizes and details. All right. More mailbag with Jacoby. Mercury P. I don't know if that's a nickname or a real name. I'm so glad you're here for this question. He's proposing two new end of the season awards. The Marcus Morris Award for worst best brother. Oh. So you're the best brother but you're the worst player of all the best brothers. Wait, the worst best brother? Out of all the best brothers of the combos, you're the worst one of all the best brothers.

35:47Bill Simmons:Oh, so the Lonzo Ball would win this year. No, we'll go into it. But he also has the Seth Curry Award for best worst brother. I am so confused. Mercury P has got you thrown for a loop here. No, no, we're walking through. So there's really three categories. There's worst worst brother, which would be Giannis' brothers. Thanasis? They would win these, sadly. They're nice guys, but they would win the award for worst brothers for players. They're nice guys. But they're the worst players.

36:17David Jacoby:I was going out for coffee with the Atletico brothers.

36:20Bill Simmons:If we had all the brothers and we did a draft, they would get picked last.

36:22David Jacoby:Yes.

36:24Bill Simmons:Best worst brother. So of all the second best brothers, who is the best second best brother? That's got to be Osar Thompson, right?

36:34David Jacoby:Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think. I'll give you the other candidates.

36:38Bill Simmons:Mo Wagner, Champagne, Aaron Holiday. Not a lot there. Yeah, Champagne. Ron Harper and the Celtics. Cam Christie. One of the Spencers. Pick one. So yeah, but here's where it gets interesting. Worst best brother. So it's the brother combo. The better brother. The better brother. Who's the worst better brother? Oh, God. So I'll give you five candidates. Okay. Keegan Murray. and his brother Chris Max Christie and his brother Cam Caleb Martin, brother Cody Tyus Jones brother Trey or Justin Champagny and his brother Julian

37:23David Jacoby:I think the answer is Tyus Jones it's a little unfair because Jones and the Martin twins are kind of on the other side of their peak you know what I mean? the answer is the answer it's probably Tyus Jones

37:35Bill Simmons:it wouldn't have been Tyus Jones last year

37:38David Jacoby:because the Morse wins?

37:39Bill Simmons:He was just playing better.

37:41David Jacoby:Yeah.

37:43Bill Simmons:Interesting. Best.

37:45David Jacoby:Worst.

37:45Bill Simmons:Worst best brother. Here are the nominees. Wait, do you know how many brothers there are in the league right now? More than there's ever been in the past. 19 brother combos. Combos? Yeah. Or 19 sets. Two brothers, yeah. Wow. That's sweet. 19 combos. That's 38 people. 38 plus we have some threes. We have three holidays and three in and to cupos.

38:09David Jacoby:We have 40 brothers. So if there's 50 and there's 500, it's like a 10 % of the league. Turns out DNA is important. Yeah. Matt T says,

38:21Bill Simmons:me and Nick Wright miss the most obvious coaches for the black versus white all-star game gimmick that Nick suggested. I'm not at liberty to speak on this idea. No, hold on. In your microphone. He said, Larry Bird should coach the black team and Magic Johnson should coach the white team and bridge generational divides and then you flip it with the coaches.

38:44David Jacoby:All right. I really like that idea. No, see, I'm going to push back on this. Okay. One of the scenarios, because I've thought about this a lot too, it's not going to work. I've played this hypothetically. Oh, it's definitely not going to work. I've played this hypothetically in my head. By the way, that's three days of traction. Over and over again. I was like, this is not going to work. But one of my favorite hypothetical scenarios in this hypothetical game is the white team jumps out to like a 10-point lead in the first three minutes. Black team calls a timeout. And in that huddle, the discussion that black team has is just to be a fly on the wall and listen to that.

39:17David Jacoby:I think if you have a Caucasian head coach, you don't get that same conversation. That's my concern there. And also the race war that would come along.

39:28Bill Simmons:This is from William McGlynn in Sydney, Australia. Oh. he said he just watched K to go for 27 and 17 and thought about how he got waived for no reason by the Sacramento Kings. He mentions how it's interesting that this has happened more than you think. The Cavs waved Isaiah Hartenstein. The Grizzlies waved Steven Jackson. Danny Green got waved by the Cavs, picked up by the Spurs. Alex Caruso got waved by OKC, picked up by the Lakers. And he asked what my favorite one of all of those were. And I think it's interesting. I think it's Steven Jackson because they actually win the 03 title because of how Steven Jackson played in the playoffs.

40:10Bill Simmons:Yes. If you go back and look at that team, Robinson's got a bad, Danny Green as well, 2013, but they don't win in the finals that he gets hot. Remember game one, game two, he had like 35 and 40 points.

40:21David Jacoby:He was the MVP heading into game six. That's wild. That's just completely forgotten in history that Danny Green was the best player on the floor. After five games, he was the finals MVP.

40:28Bill Simmons:Yeah, he was. But I think it's Steven Jackson because he actually swung the title. Yes. If you go back and watch those games, he's like the number two guy on the Spurs. And he brings us all the smoke. And he brought us a bunch of joy.

40:42David Jacoby:He was very pivotal in the melee. He's also really fun to have around the office when I was at ESPN in LA. We gave him his first media chance on the Grantland Basketball Hour. He had a real presence. He had a real presence around the office. You knew when the elevator doors opened and Stat came out. Yeah. It was a good time.

41:02Bill Simmons:Glenn Sheffard says I'm listening to the podcast with Kellerman crazy that you went from discussing nicknames into discussing Darren Peterson's tattoo and Michael Myers and the boogeyman is sitting right there as an incredible nickname do you like Darren Peterson more if his nickname was the boogeyman and we also haven't had a boogeyman boogeyman's pretty interesting boogeyman's pretty good

41:23David Jacoby:because we had boogie yes boogeyman's pretty good the boogeyman had 45 last night And there's been a resurgence of Boogeyman lore because of John Wick and Baba Yaga. So it is time to come back. Maybe that's the nickname, Baba Yaga. Too hard to say. Baba Yaga goes down by the name. Baba. Yeah. But Boogeyman would be a really good nickname, but I think that person has to be scary.

41:50Bill Simmons:Multiple readers were disappointed in me that I didn't stick up for Darren Peterson more when he has a Michael Myers tattoo. And I'd like to apologize to everybody. I had no idea he had a Michael Myers tattoo. It's a pretty strong statement. All right, Ryan in Chicago wants to know, what five events would you include if there was a Winter Olympics pentathlon? Distance speed skating, cross-country skiing, and downhill skiing are the most obvious three. Would you round it out with ski jumping and luge? Ski jumping, definitely. I don't know about luge.

42:20David Jacoby:Ski jumping and luge. But so you have distance speed skating.

42:25Bill Simmons:I think you have to do the fast speed skating too, right? The short track. The short track. Cross-country skiing would be the last event. Downhill skiing. I think ski jumping's the fifth, and I think we're good. Ski jumping would be amazing.

42:38David Jacoby:So what are we creating exactly? The best five? Some pentathlon. Just a random pentathlon. We're not going to do any figure skating. You can't do 10. I think 10 is too. No hockey, no figure skating. Okay, this is just like, so it's sort of like one athlete can do all of these things. Yeah, because when you think about decathlon, it's like jumping, running, endurance.

42:58Bill Simmons:A little shot putty here and there. like strength it's all these things so for winter olympics it would have to be skiing skating endurance would have to be the five I don't think you get to ten I like a little jump the jump would be so the jump's not fun anymore because everybody there's no danger and everybody's good at it but if you had these guys where it's like the jump is his weakest yeah

43:19David Jacoby:he told us he hasn't

43:21Bill Simmons:trained much for the jump

43:22David Jacoby:yeah yeah

43:25Bill Simmons:okay this is from Joshua Tabor College Station in Texas. If you had to bet your entire net worth on one current NBA player to win at least three championships over the next 10 years, who are you taking?

43:40David Jacoby:Okay, well, it's a different proposal for each of us, because of the net worth part, but I had trouble with this. I think the only answer is Victor Wembe-Nyama. I had SGA and then Wembe.

43:52Bill Simmons:I thought about SGA too. I think SGA because of the OKC

43:55David Jacoby:situation. Exactly. They're going to cycle in more young players, so they'll stay under the cap. This would be an interesting

44:01Bill Simmons:fan duel future that they couldn't do because you'd have to realize it over 10 years. But I think SGA would be like a minus 150 favorite.

44:08David Jacoby:I think so too. And I wrote down in my notes just institutional knowledge. Just like they've won a championship before. Same front office. Same coaching staff. You know, they're going to have to cycle through some roster spots but they've got tons of picks. Sorber and Popich are the last two first round picks don't even play. You know,

44:28Bill Simmons:What's funny about Sorber, so the Clippers and OKC, they had the pick swap as part of the Kawhi trade last year. OKC gets Clippers pick. They take Sorber. I think this is what happened. And then the Clippers got number 30. And they took Niederhauser. Niederhauser. I bought stock last week. Had a whole argument with Mike Tolan in my seats about it because we went to the Minnesota game and I'm like, I really like this guy. And he's like, no way. And I'm like, I'm buying the stock right now. So Tolan's my witness. He's good. He's young and runs and jumps and I fucking like them. I feel like they were like,

44:59David Jacoby:Zubac, who had a great year for us last year. It's not exactly working this year. There's some Ewing theory stuff. But we've got Canon Niederheiser, John Jacob, Jiggleheimer Schmidt coming off the bench. He's good. He's good. Clippers are

45:12Bill Simmons:kind of interesting. If Garland can come back and actually look like the Garland from the first 50 games of last year, which we haven't seen in over a year. Yeah, I know. Like him though.

45:24David Jacoby:I understand why they did what they did. They're kind of interesting. That trade was great. For everybody.

45:30Bill Simmons:If you get somewhere 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th pick, I've started to work on this draft. So they get the Pacers pick if it's 5 through 9. Otherwise, it gets pushed like six years. There's like fucking awesome scores in that range. Every guy from 5 to 9 is a guy who could average like 25 points a game in the NBA at some point. Maybe. Seems like there's a 40-point game in college basketball like every week. These guys are like real. Every week. Acuff's my favorite out of all of them. like Acuff's going to come in the league and immediately be a guy. So anyway, I thought that was a good trade. So we have SGA and Wemby.

46:03Bill Simmons:Who would you put third? Ant? Or Hugo Gonzalez?

46:11David Jacoby:I can't make a case for flag really. I think it's SGA and Wemby. It's too hard to say with Dallas. Think about it. Three. Three championships in ten years.

46:21Bill Simmons:Last guy to win three titles. What do you mean? last guy to win three titles is there a question mark at the end of that oh Steph Curry it doesn't happen a lot if you're talking generationally I had no idea you were asking me a question you were like last guy to win three titles Steph won four, Duncan won five Kobe won five if you're just going this century, three is like a lot like Bird only won three LeBron LeBron won four Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. But LeBron was in the 03 draft. We're talking about the next 10 years. Curry's the last modern guy who won three titles. Even Durant, only two. Clay Thompson heads are like, what about Clay?

47:07Bill Simmons:There's second parts of this question from Joshua Tabor in College Station, Texas. If you had to pick one current NBA star whose legacy is most at risk of looking completely different in 10 years, either way better or way worse, who is it and why? I had a specific guy for this.

47:25David Jacoby:Okay, please. No, you go. You're the guest. My problem with this question is all of my answers were negative. That's where my head went through, too. You know what I mean? I was like, all of my answers were just like bad answers. Mine were Zion and Ja. Oh, interesting.

47:39Bill Simmons:I've already given up on those guys. To me, that would be a positive if it changed.

47:43David Jacoby:Well, I think Zion, it could be like 10 years now, it could be like, do you remember that guy, Zion Williamson, playing in the NBA?

47:48Bill Simmons:I think Luka's the answer to this. Oh! Zach and I did a thing on the Sunday pod. Something I noticed with Luka's MVPs, how he only had a top three and a top four. I heard that. And I wasn't doing that because... I'm intrigued. But I wasn't doing it because I was like, he should have more. It's like, because we do that with LeBron, it's stupid. The only person who you could definitively say should have more MVPs than they won is Michael Jordan. He should have three more MVPs. He should have won nine. I think he won six, whatever it was. But the three that he didn't get, it's fucking stupid when you go back.

48:23Bill Simmons:It's like, I can't believe he didn't win that year. Michael Jordan. Yeah, but also like... Would you rather have Karl Malone? The 97 one is one of the worst ones, but the 93 was ridiculous when Barkley won. There was another one in like 89 or 90. But with Luka, this is next year's gonna be year nine. I'm intrigued by this, Bill. But what if he just turns out to be like Dominique Wilkins who made the finals once? and it's like statistically the most awesome and he's in there with all these greats and then it's like he had one top three MVP, one top four MVP, only made the finals once and that's just kind of his career.

48:58Bill Simmons:All right, counterpoint. Counterpoint is the ceiling's still high.

49:01David Jacoby:Well, it's not only that, it's his style of play. We were just like 10 minutes ago talking about him in five years being one of the best players in the league and I also think that what happened to him in this trade, however it happened or whatever really happened behind the scenes. I have no idea what actually happened, but he ended up, he like teleported to the Lakers. You know what I mean? And this team is not built for him. So we saw what happened when Nico did a very good job building a team for Luka Doncic. Oh, a pro-Niko stance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did a really good job. We were all celebrating this guy, you know, with the PJ Washington and Gafford or whatever.

49:34David Jacoby:The Lakers are not built for Luka to be successful, and I think that when LeBron is gone, they will build a team for Luka to be successful, and they'll have some good years. I see your glass half full on that. I am. I think there's a Tatum coming off the Achilles

49:50Bill Simmons:in a possibly negative way. Just like he made first team all-NBA a few times. He has two top four MVPs, but can he get back to where he was, or was that the peak?

50:00David Jacoby:Or like Jalen Brown sort of like stays in this number one spot, and he sort of perpetually sort of goes into like a role. The other guy I had was LaMelo.

50:10Bill Simmons:What if LaMelo, what if Zach had some good stuff about him on my pod Sunday night what if we are now at this awesome LaMelo moment where he's just going to be really good for like nine years and he's remembered as this really fun guy who's in a lot of playoffs and it's just like oh man remember when we were worried

50:28David Jacoby:about LaMelo he's awesome you know I love LaMelo so much he brings me so much joy to watch I'm so glad that you're now on this team we argued about LaMelo before he was drafted do you remember that? it took me six years to warm up I was in on LaMelo early. And I said this on this match. Every time he has the ball, he's just looking around. He's like, what's the coolest thing I can do with this basketball right now? It's all he wants to do is cool stuff.

50:51Bill Simmons:As they've gotten better, he's pulled it back a little bit. He's become more of a winning player, I think, than just I'm out here to have fun and make highlights. Yes. And one LaMelo thing. With that said, he did drive the Hummer across the yellow lines into that car. That was very concerning. like that was crazy bad driving

51:11David Jacoby:I am looking at my phone because I saw it and I was just like that makes no sense it's not an intersection he's not making a turn wasn't great I would say that the judgment still scares me but I like where it's heading I know you're watching a lot of Hornets games I do and I do want to get your take on this this weird substitution patterns in the end of the fourth quarter with LaMelo Ball well I think they're

51:30Bill Simmons:trying to it's 27 minutes a game I think sometimes they'll put a more defense lineup but it's not offense defense though. So it was last year. That was one of the things where they just started benching him at the end of the games. They seem very concerned about putting too many minutes on him and kind of like, it's like when you have kids and you have a win with the kids and you're like, we're having a really fun time with the ball. Let's go. Before something bad happens. Of course.

51:58David Jacoby:I just feel sometimes like he'll be not in there with three minutes left. And I'm like, oh, I guess they're going to finish without LaMelo. And then with like two minutes left, they'll put him in. Yeah. It's weird.

52:09Bill Simmons:Corey Wallace writes just listen to the Alien Rewatchables Bravo for pointing out how much cats suck in general I like to tell people that the bigger cats get the more likely they are to hunt you for sport the bigger dogs get they still lick your face and want pets like all good boys do also I could go on and on cats shit indoors they cover said shit with their paws they walk on tables and counters what are we doing here there needs to be more negative coverage of cats and media this is wild

52:41David Jacoby:first of all i just want to say mallory rubin is very important to me and i listen you just can't i can't go anti-cat and be pro as pro mallory rubin as i am so that puts me in a bad spot i

52:52Bill Simmons:was in the same spot even worried about doing this you know in general it is a good point though when you when you especially if is your instagram algorithm ever send you cats like cats like hitting dogs in the face and stuff.

53:06David Jacoby:I did get that same clips, those AI clips that you got, where it was like, oh, it's like cats fighting bears. And the first 20 seconds, you're like, oh my God, cats can beat up bears.

53:17Bill Simmons:And then you're like, oh, this is just fake. It is an interesting point that the bigger cats get, the more they become predators. Okay. And the cats that we have as pets are just the mini version of those predators.

53:28David Jacoby:But the first thing that came to mind was that, I think it was that Liam Neeson movie when the wolves were, the gray, I think it's called. Yeah. Do you remember the wolves in that movie? So that could be dogs. Those are dogs. And they are pack hunters. And Liam Neeson was at the edge of his life for two hours in the cold.

53:42Bill Simmons:I remember, this was in the 90s. I was dating this girl and her family had a cat. We were staying at our house. And I went down to get a water. And I heard this weird noise. And in the foyer of our house, the cat had a mouse trapped. And it was like doing the Michael Madsen and Reservoir Dogs. It's like, I'm not going to kill you yet. Stuck in the middle of you. dancing around, really enjoying it. The cat didn't know I was there, and I was watching it. It was just torturing this mouse before I finally took it down. I was like, this cat's a fucking psycho.

54:13David Jacoby:I love how much you were enjoying it, like a voyeur. I couldn't believe it. You just sit there, and the cat didn't even know I was watching. It was honestly Reservoir Dogs.

54:21Bill Simmons:He was like, I got you stuck in the corner.

54:25David Jacoby:Yeah, cats. I don't know. I've never had one. I had a tough go with cats. There were two cats. They were Siamese cats, but they were twins. So they're Siamese twins, but they were not conjoined. That makes sense. And they just sat in this closet in my parents' room and they hissed at you if you walked by. And I'm like, what is the point of this?

54:42Bill Simmons:Yeah, that's not. Like, what are we doing? Steven in Ohio wants to know, he was reminiscing about the Ricky Davis year before LeBron came, which would have been a great 30 for 30. And by the way, with the way they're picking 30 for 30 topics these days, might actually be a 30 for 30. I'm leaving alone. He averaged 20.6 points per game. It was the year he had the fake triple-double. And he said, I know you've talked about how easy it is for a lot of people to get to 20 points on a bad team. But he did want to know who is the worst player to ever average 20 points per game in a season. So I didn't tell you this question.

55:14Bill Simmons:I'm not prepped for this one, yeah. I prepped for it. I went on basketball reference. Okay. First of all, I was very surprised how hard it is to average 20 games. It was like less people than I thought. And I had to do a lot of different stuff with the basketball reference. I'm trying to think. is so i went i tried to figure out like uh between 20 and 22 points a game seemed like a good because there were so many people i had to like narrow down the sample size and then did buy win shares

55:40David Jacoby:and pr let me ask you a follow-up question i know you're gonna know yeah we're in the middle of like a scoring boom right now but is what where what is this the scoring peak or was this a previous boom in a previous era where it was like 150 160 there was another early 60s yeah yeah

55:57Bill Simmons:We're taking those people out of the pool. So all I did was go back to 19, the merger season. Copy that. I'll give you six players who will average 20 points a game. Mike James, 20.3. Ricky Davis, 20.6. Dana Barrows, 20.6. Made the all-star team that year. I love Dana Barrows. Never nervous Purvis Ellison, 20.0 one year. Huh. Tony Campbell, two years in a row in the expansion Minnesota, Timberwolves. but I think our answer at 20.3 points a game, Jordan Poole. Jordan Poole averaged 20 points a game.

56:35David Jacoby:Counterpoint. On a certain night, Jordan Poole looks really good. And the other counter

56:40Bill Simmons:would be he actually really helped them in the NBA Finals, helped them win a title. Yeah, so... So maybe it's Mike James?

56:46David Jacoby:I'm kind of looking at Never Nervous

56:48Bill Simmons:Purpose. So the other thing that was interesting about that, it was the only time he ever averaged anything close to that. He had like one big year, but for the most part, he was like between 7 and 13. So maybe that's the answer. Never nervous?

57:00David Jacoby:Yeah, that's my answer. It's just, he doesn't exactly jump off the screen when you watch him play basketball. He doesn't exactly jump when you watch him play basketball either.

57:08Bill Simmons:Ricky ended up on the Celtics, which I know you remember. Of course. He had nights where you're like, wow, this guy might be an All-NBA player. Yes.

57:15David Jacoby:And that's my pool retort too. Yeah. Jordan Poole had nights. On a certain night, they're putting up 40.

57:24All right.

57:25Bill Simmons:So there's two more great questions. Okay, let's do it. I'm going to give you the second best one first. And then I'm really excited about the last one. This is from Jay in Charlotte. He heard the Hornets deep dive that Zach Lowe and I did. And Zach was joking about raising a divisional banner. Wanted to know who had the saddest rafters in the American sports scene. So I just concentrated on basketball. As a Hornets season ticket holder, he has to nominate. He calls it the Spectrum Center. currently the Hornets have three things hanging in the rafters. Number six for Bill Russell, which everybody has.

57:58Bill Simmons:Number 13 for Bobby Philz, who tragically died in a drag racing accident. And the Charlotte Sting jersey number 32 for Andrea Stinson, who averaged 12 points a game in the WNBA. They've never won their division, made an Eastern Conference Finals, or won a playoff series since the arena opened. The most famous basketball movement in the arena is a drunk guy in a purple shirt taunting Dwayne Wade and hitting two threes in a game six to close out the game when he had seven threes in the year, is there are sadder rafters in American sports. So I did the research on this, but I just wanted to present that Charlotte case for you.

58:31Bill Simmons:So Bill Russell, who didn't play for them, Bobby Fills, who tragically passed away and a WNBA player, and no division or conference title or anything.

58:39David Jacoby:I don't think you can get sadder than that. I'll present to you the Memphis Grizzlies.

58:46Bill Simmons:No, no, any rafters either. Bill Russell, Zach Randolph, Tony Allen. I'd still go with Charlotte Minnesota Bill Russell and Malik Sealy who tragically passed away and that's really it I don't think they have anything else they're going to do Carnet they haven't done it yet

59:06David Jacoby:didn't they just sort of like Orlando only has Bill Russell

59:10Bill Simmons:and Shaq but they must have the 95 Eastern Conference title whatever and they made it in 09 so they'd have two the answer is actually the LA Clippers oh zero anything they have no retired numbers what and they've never won anything they've never won a conference finals they have nothing what about like a brand or something they've nothing they put high school uniforms of california players in their thing i'm not kidding they don't have a single retired number i'm trying to think they didn't retire bob mcadoo's number who won an mvp and the Buffalo Braves. They didn't retire, basically name anybody.

59:52Bill Simmons:Chris Paul? Chris Paul maybe will be the first one, but they just, he had this terrible experience with them. Blake Griffin, maybe you get to a point where you retire Chris Paul, Blake Griffin. I think you do that. That's pretty sad though. Couldn't you at least retire Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson together? Just have... That was a great year. It was a really fun year. We enjoyed it. But yeah, the Clippers have nothing. That's sad. So they are the most impressive.

1:00:17David Jacoby:I feel like just if we're just going with just rafters, you might be right. But it really touched me when he was like, nothing's even happened in this arena notable. Yeah. In Charlotte. Because I was thinking about the one thing would be LeBron staring at Michael Jordan before he dunks at a playoff game. That would be like the most notable thing that's happened in that arena in my memory. Well, now 2K is going to be raining threes. 2K. They should put him in the rafter already.

1:00:42Bill Simmons:This is a little sorbet appetizer for the last email. John from Jersey City had an email for a conspiracy bill. I thought I could turn you on to the latest NBA conspiracy, the Nets rigging the 2026 lottery. I'm a Nets season ticket holder. This is the upcoming lottery. When I got my ticket renewal price for next season, I was shocked. They raised prices 24 % for the same seats next season. Last year, they raised it 3%. The only rationale I can think of is to upcharge or season ticket holders who have sat through the mess of the last two years because they must know something the rest of us don't.

1:01:22Bill Simmons:I'll tell you this. Conspiracy Bill did darken the room and smoked the pipe a little bit and thought about this one. Why would they raise ticket prices 24 % coming off a terrible season? They don't have a single signature player other than Michael Porter Jr. Yegor Joman. Yegor Demmon. What made them raise prices? but it's a large it's a sizable league yeah conspiracy bill was intrigued huh tyler dickey by the way wanted to know um i'm not buying that one though the ring of the lottery conspiracy bill got his people together at least to talk about it tyler dickey this is another sorbet um he said when you talk about craziest stories of the season everyone's like katie's burners that was the craziest this won't get crazy that he points out the trailblazers head coach got arrested by the FBI one game into the season.

1:02:24Bill Simmons:I'm not the historian of the game that you are, but I've never seen or heard anything quite like this. No one cares about Portland. So this is easily swept under the rug. Did Chauncey actually mess with our players playing times and development and control outcomes? Did he cut minutes? So player props would hit unders. Why is this not a huge deal to anyone else. I don't know. Why isn't this a huge deal? I don't know. Ramona just wrote a huge piece about him today about how he had to sell his house and he had a$5 million bail. This is like a major gambling investigation and he was in the poker.

1:02:57David Jacoby:I can't say I know Chauncey that well, but he was around ESPN when I was there and he is just like the most responsible, measured person I've been around. I worked with him too. I thought he was the nicest guy. Yeah. Some of the stuff you hear about Malik Beasley, you're like, oh, that's a little weird. But Chauncey was just a sweetheart.

1:03:15Bill Simmons:It's a good point. This one kind of just went away. Not sure why.

1:03:18David Jacoby:It was so long ago. And also the KD Berger thing, he made a Twitter account and it was in a group chat. You know what I mean? So it's not even public-facing tweets. Someone in his group chat

1:03:31Bill Simmons:just violated his privacy. Somebody betrayed the chat. Yeah. That seems to be what happened. Yeah. Okay, last question. from Dan in Manhattan Beach. I can't wait for your reaction. I didn't send this to you. What if instead of signing with any one team for next season, LeBron makes his retirement tour an actual retirement tour by signing a one-week contract with all 30 teams? Every team gets one LeBron home game where he starts and plays and they sell thousands of limited jerseys. New York finally gets Knicks LeBron. Minnesota gets an Ant LeBron team up. Miami gets Heat Reunion LeBron. we just keep going he's not going to win the title no matter where he goes why not generate

1:04:10David Jacoby:news in every local market never happy great idea i couldn't i couldn't pin holes in it there's also this thing hanging on where it's like i have no idea where lebron's gonna play next year so it's just like there's no sort of like natural i did this on the on the pod yeah

1:04:30Bill Simmons:golden state thing well because i don't think cleveland i think cleveland has a chance to win the title every year and it's Donovan Mitchell's team and he's not going to be like, cool, let's add LeBron. It's his team. Jalen Brunson, it's his team. These guys don't want the LeBron retirement circus coming into their thing. They'd rather just win the title. Be my guess.

1:04:49David Jacoby:If he goes to the Warriors, per conspiracy bill, does that team a championship team? No, but it's like a Curry and LeBron last ride. Chris Asporzingis and Jimmy Butler off an injury. That team is not that competitive.

1:05:04Bill Simmons:ride, Curry goes to Charlotte to end his career. So I tried to think about could this 10-day thing work, and I actually think it could. Hold on. Curry going to Charlotte, that's going to take shots away

1:05:14David Jacoby:from Nips. It's an older... Oh, it's like a mentor. 2K will be fine. I'll be the best shooter. 2K and him will work it out. 2K, kind of like a Chris Paul-Wemby thing? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, he's there to

1:05:26Bill Simmons:shepherd him into superstardom. So if it was 30, he'd have to play for 30 teams.

1:05:36Bill Simmons:it's 60 games total, right? So you play one home game, one road game, or two home games in a row. Why the road games? Maybe just the home games. Maybe it's a two-game homestand. Limited edition jerseys. You'd have two jerseys for everything. It's like a fucking cash cow. It would actually be kind of amazing. And the Celtics would be like, whoa, our LeBron game is coming up on March 4th. Oh, the tickets would go out of control. That's why they raised the ticket prices in Brooklyn.

1:06:04David Jacoby:Because of the LeBron game next year.

1:06:06Bill Simmons:Or is LeBron just going there next year? No. For a eventual piece of the team? Or Joman? Just said, that's it. That's his thing. So if he played on every team. This would, first of all. It would be an amazing.

1:06:19David Jacoby:Nobody's done it before. The league just brought in two new partners and took billions of their dollars. Yeah. And this is a little gift they can give back.

1:06:29Bill Simmons:How about this? LeBron's in the golf now. plays in these different cities two home games and you can sample the best courses in each city over the course of two days this will never happen but it should happen I thought it was an almost unassailable idea I loved it because and then he ends up on the last team and it's and that's the team that has a chance to win the title and you just kind of slide in and it's like I had a really good time when I was on Minnesota in December

1:06:57David Jacoby:guarantees a ring for LeBron yeah He only played one game. They won the title. I didn't even think of that. Guarantees a ring. Yeah, everyone who played for the team gets a ring. I mean, this is on the level of you and Howes talking about a guy with a metal baseball bat playing for the Wizards. This will never happen, but it is intriguing. It's one of those things where it's like, okay, this won't happen, but if it did,

1:07:23Bill Simmons:what's the problem? It would be cool if he started out with the shitty teams and then gradually got to... And then OKC was like, we'll do it, but it's got to be in December. We don't want to screw with our team too much.

1:07:36David Jacoby:Because I was thinking about him on the Jazz. And I was like, uh. You know what I mean? I was just like, I don't know if I'm going to even tune in for that one.

1:07:44Bill Simmons:Or like the Wizards. I did think, could there be a scenario where he only picks 12 teams? But then I think the other 18... There'd be some fan base that would be like, what the fuck? And I do like the idea of him having the one game in Memphis. It's just fucking weird.

1:07:57David Jacoby:and he's wearing a grizzly jersey. But the thing is, is that city's on absolute fire. It is like a, it's like basically Taylor Swift's era's tour, but basketball and LeBron is basically what it is.

1:08:08Bill Simmons:Every game would be an event. I think Bronny also has to come, so it's two 10-day contracts.

1:08:13David Jacoby:You have to get both guys. Every text thread that I am on would be, which LeBron game are we going to? Right. It would, like, the second the schedule is released, every text thread that I'm on would be like, which one are we going?

1:08:25Bill Simmons:He does Knicks nets back-to-back, so he has Knicks Week and then Nets Week. He's in New York for two weeks. He's doing all the shows. Oh, yeah. This is amazing. It's so cool to wear Knicks jersey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great idea. This is a brilliant idea. Dave Jacoby, you can hear him on the Mismatch with Verno, Chris Vernon. How's Verno handling another tanking season?

1:08:46David Jacoby:You know what? He's not handling it well. Yeah. But I think that we're doing everything that we can to support him. It's tough when you're whole, when you put your stake in the ground.

1:08:56Bill Simmons:We are going to tank. We got Triple J and Joe and they play together.

1:09:03David Jacoby:Exactly. It's not going great. He's watching a lot of college basketball.

1:09:08Bill Simmons:Oh, that's good. Good to see you, my friend. Now it's time for a special segment of the show. It's called Value Mount Rushmore and it's brought to you by Domino's. I love Domino's. I'm going to talk about real value, no hype, no buzz, just decisions in the game that actually get you more than you pay for. Like how Domino's best day will ever gets you any pizza with any toppings for$9.99. What a steal. Now strap in while I break down my top four value plays. The Clippers just did this. My first one would be when the Clippers traded Zubats, who's making$20 million a year, so they could start playing their rookie center more, Niederhauser, who makes like$2 million a year.

1:09:46Bill Simmons:What a deal. If Niederhauser can put up most of the stats that Zubats puts up, great. I just saved$18 million. That was a good one. Late round fantasy sleepers. always awesome. I always like to do running backs, uh, at the end of drafts because you just draft the backups or rookies and just hope you strike oil with, uh, with one of them. Um, futures. I like what the, like looking for futures ahead for like the NBA NFL season NFL, you always look for the bad team that has a good schedule the next year. Um, and a new coach is a good one for the NBA, the team that starts to stack the lottery picks.

1:10:22Bill Simmons:And then all of a sudden, even though people don't have high expectations like Charlotte this year. Maybe they'll make a jump up. So that's a good one. Then the fourth one, glue guys. Always good if you're building a sports team, invest in those glue guys. The Celtics have a couple good ones. Jordan Walsh, Hugo Gonzalez. Hugo Gonzalez, sorry. Just people that, you know, they're not going to be max contract guys, but you can throw them out and rely on them over and over again for 20 minutes a game. Anyway, the highest tier move you can make for your wallet is Domino's best deal ever. Order any pizza with any toppings for only$9.99.

1:10:58Bill Simmons:I always do thin. I like the gluten-free crust. I like it well done. And I like the double pepperoni with extra cheese is my favorite. Get Domino's best deal ever today. Prices higher in some locations. Select this online only offer from February 23rd until April 6th. Size availability varies by crust type, max seven toppings, six for New York style and pan crust. Stuffed crust extra excludes XL and specialty pizzas. Minimum purchase required for delivery prices. Participation delivery area and charges may vary. All right, my friend Matt Bellini is here. You can hear him three times a week on The Town, which you can also watch with his fancy video setup.

1:11:41Bill Simmons:It's a great podcast. You can also read his newsletter, part of the Puck newsletter world. Very essential, especially lately. There's always stuff going on. And just recently, Warner Brothers, which has been passed around like a Yankees Christmas gift since 2001, seems to have finally found a home. Somebody finally wanted the snow globe. They wanted to keep it. Finally.

1:12:05Matt Belloni:I don't know if it's finally. We may be doing this all again in five years. Uh-oh.

1:12:09Bill Simmons:Well, today the Paramount stock got downgraded to junk status. So everything they just paid.

1:12:14Matt Belloni:Their debt was downgraded. Yes.

1:12:17Bill Simmons:All right. So I have so many ways to go here. I don't think there's been enough talk about the merger name. You've been joking about this on your pod because they can do the acronym. They can do PWB. They can do WarnerMount, which you've said a couple of times. Yeah, that's my preference. Does the Paul brothers interest you at all? Paw Brothers or Paw? Just calling it Paw with like a Paw print?

1:12:42Matt Belloni:I thought you were going to go Peace Guy. That's their current monitor. It's Paramount Skydance. They do Peace Guy, which Craig Horlbeck loves.

1:12:51Bill Simmons:So do you think Paramount just absorbs it and it just stays Paramount and that's like kind of their ultimate trump card?

1:12:57Matt Belloni:I think ultimately, perhaps that will be the route. The funny thing is though, the Warner Brothers is much larger than Paramount. So if you're really looking at what the brand is and what to do moving forward. You call the whole company Warners or Warner Brothers or Warner's Paramount. And then you keep the streaming service as HBO or HBO Max. Right. And just kind of full Paramount into it.

1:13:21Bill Simmons:Well, none of us were ever happy with WBD, Warner Brothers Discovery. It was just a complete mess. And everything Zaslav did was just bizarre and crazy. And including his victory lap last week, which you excoriated him for. And yet he's going to walk away

1:13:35Matt Belloni:with like$800 billion. It is unbelievable. The company lost two-thirds of its value under his leadership. The only thing that raised the stock was the prospect of it being sold. And he lucked out. He has the world's fourth richest man who's got a son who happens to love Hollywood. It's the greatest thing in the world. And all of a sudden, there's a bidding war because Netflix is like, oh, we'll take that. That will take HBO and Warner Brothers if it's for sale. And all of a sudden, you've got a bidding war. All you need is two bidders. And then next thing you know, the stock goes from$7 a share to$31 a share at the sale.

1:14:16Bill Simmons:Unbelievable. And some people were buying it when it was like 18, 19, hoping that we did get to the mid-20s. So I was really trying to think about this. And I was thinking about real life and culture. Is this the most faith anyone has ever shown in their son?

1:14:33Matt Belloni:Well, I don't think anyone in the history of the world has had the wherewithal that Larry Ellison does in terms of just sheer wealth. I mean, I guess Elon has what, like 10, 12 kids that will someday be old enough to have to deal with his money.

1:14:49Bill Simmons:But this is like in Game of Thrones, Queen Cersei is like, Joffrey, we're riding with you, baby. We know you're 17 and we know you're a sociopath, but I think you can handle the seven kingdoms. You'll see this in culture, but not in real life.

1:15:02Matt Belloni:wait till Don Jr. runs for president. Then we'll really see what's going on there.

1:15:07Bill Simmons:Well, I was going to say the Bushes would be the other analogy, right? Like senior Bush, like kind of grooming junior Bush, but not in a situation where you basically incur 79 million, 79 billion in debt, plus the junk, which is now 3 % on top of the 79 million. I've never seen anything like this. And I got to be honest, I'm not smart enough really from a mass standpoint to understand it.

1:15:31Matt Belloni:Well, isn't there a correlation in sports? Aren't there legendary sports? I mean, Dr. Buss, perfect example. Dr. Buss, you know, and his kids running roughshod over his empire. I mean, there's got to be a million examples of very savvy sports owners who turn their entire kingdom over to their kids and all hell breaks loose.

1:15:50Bill Simmons:Here's the difference. So I did think about that and we see this in sports all the time and almost always it goes horribly and the kids, you know, they're basically, their qualifications for the job is I'm related to my dad and he's the rich guy who made all these things. They're not self-made, all this stuff. In this case, David Ellison has tried to put in the time for the last 10 to 12 years to try to figure out like, I want to be a content mogul. So it's a little different than in sports sometimes when somebody is like, okay, I'm going to fold shop. Here's my son. He's now the CEO and he'll be in charge of all of our basketball moves.

1:16:26Bill Simmons:You're like, oh no. David Ellison really does seem like he's ready for the moment. I don't know if anybody else thinks he is, but it seems like he has a point of view and a style and a take on this, right?

1:16:41Matt Belloni:Certainly. And he definitely put in the time. We can argue about how successful Skydance was because their biggest successes have been essentially putting up money and glomming on to original franchises at Paramount. He had Top Gun, he's done Mission Impossibles, he had the Terminator franchise, and he did those movies to varying degrees of success. So he hasn't made a huge impact via Skydance, but he's put a lot of money into movies and he's made a lot of TV shows. So in that sense, he has been kind of auditioning for this, But now he is in the absolute big league. I mean, he's gone in a year and change from being a guy with a semi-successful production company to arguably the second or third most powerful person in Hollywood.

1:17:31Bill Simmons:Yeah, because I'm trying, there's been so much glass half empty. I'm trying to think like, okay, what is the glass half full side? What are his wins so far?

1:17:39Matt Belloni:He gets credit for the Tom Cruise relationship and Top Gun Maverick, which he actually produced and made happen. And he gets credit for, I mean, Mission Impossible. These last couple of Mission Impossibles lost money. But they were kind of plagued by COVID charges and ended up being some of the most expensive movies of all time. He has built, the TV business is not bad. He actually, he's done Reacher. He's done Grace and Frankie, which lasted seven seasons on Netflix, which is kind of unheard of. So he has had wins in TV. He's a producer. Some producers, some shows are hits, some movies are hits, some aren't.

1:18:20Matt Belloni:That's very different from what he is now. He is an owner-operator of two of the five legacy studios. And it's just unbelievable how much power he's amassed. He has news now. He's never had news before. He's got sports. I mean, he's now the proprietor of arguably the most lucrative NFL package, the AFC package on Sundays. he's got UFC he's got golf he's got March Madness now he owns all of March Madness I mean it's pretty unbelievable

1:18:52Bill Simmons:yeah so I wrote down all the stuff that they have now the content empire 200 plus million subs now I don't know how many of those are repetitive I guess you find that out

1:19:04Matt Belloni:whenever they merge in the US Antenna just did a study where it's 7.5 million subs overlap in the US I don't know about overseas but it's less overlap than with HBO and Netflix. There's a much bigger overlap there.

1:19:18Bill Simmons:HBO, Paramount +, CBS. An entity that I think got just discounted during this whole process, Pluto.

1:19:26Matt Belloni:Yeah.

1:19:27Bill Simmons:They got Pluto. One of my favorites. TNT, TBS.

1:19:31Matt Belloni:They own 90210. That's a big thing for you. They have all the

1:19:35Bill Simmons:challenges. TNT, TBS, Comedy Central, Discovery, MTV, all those, which I guess can just run as ghost ships on cable for as long as we have cable. Yeah, there's zombies.

1:19:46Matt Belloni:There's zombie networks, and they will just milk them for the ridiculousness money, and that's it.

1:19:52Bill Simmons:CNN and CBS News, which who knows if they're even going to decide they want to be in news. And if you're going to talk about ways to cut debt, if they don't care about news to begin with, that could be just a place that, sadly, they would just chop.

1:20:07Matt Belloni:They're going to chop. I don't think they're going to kill it. CNN still throws off a lot of money from affiliate fees because you can't not carry CNN for the five times a year that people tune in to watch some kind of breaking news moment. Like this weekend, exactly. But there are about 3 ,000 people that work at CNN. And there is a big overlap in terms of the product with CBS News. So that is the perfect place to start cutting. Yeah, sadly.

1:20:35Bill Simmons:Bleach Report, they have all this IP, including DC Comics, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Looney Tunes, Game of Thrones, Top Gun, Mission Impossible, Star Trek, et cetera. And that's the biggest thing that shifted, I would say, this century with the studios valuing that old IP more than ever. And now we're moving into the AI era and it's even probably twice as viable as it was.

1:20:57Matt Belloni:If we look at what's going on with AI and there's soon going to be, anybody can create anything at any time, right? And YouTube is about to be flooded with AI-generated content. So in a sea where everything is possible, what isn't possible to recreate? And it's known intellectual property. You cannot recreate Batman with AI unless it's licensed, which they may do. But they will own Batman. And you can do whatever you want with Batman. And I think that's honestly why Netflix was so interested in buying Warner Brothers. Because Netflix is increasingly taking on YouTube. They're doing podcasts. They're doing all these other things that eat up innings and eat up time on the service.

1:21:41Matt Belloni:And if they see AI coming in, they wanted all of that IP in addition to the hundred years of movies in the library to put on the service.

1:21:51Bill Simmons:Right. So like, for instance, saying the Godfather, there's a world where you could just do your own Godfather sequel between Godfather 2 and Godfather 3 and create all of the AI. And it sounds insane and awful. but like this weekend I saw a commercial where somebody used was Airbnb. They use golden slumbers from the Beatles for a commercial. And I'm like, that song's kind of sacred. This is now a commercial song, but we're just used to this. Now all the songs we grew up with in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s are just commercial jingles now,

1:22:21Matt Belloni:but they're getting paid, right? That's the difference. You have to pay for that,

1:22:24Bill Simmons:but people will get paid for this Godfather kind of stuff. Exactly. It just feels weird. But I guess,

1:22:30Matt Belloni:I mean, Disney just did a deal with OpenAI to hand over all their characters for do-it-yourself content. And interestingly, in that deal, they did not give the voices and they did not give the actual physical human likenesses of the characters that are human. So if you have Luke Skywalker, it's the animated Luke Skywalker. It's not Mark Hamill. And that's because of the Guild, the Union regulations. They don't let you do that. You have to pay money for that. and Dizzy just said, okay, you can have Lightning McQueen and Yoda, but they're not going to sound like Lightning McQueen and Yoda because that's still intellectual property that's controlled.

1:23:07Bill Simmons:And this is the wild, wild west coming up where we don't know what if Fox just says, hey, the Simpsons, go to town. Just make sure you pay us. And all of a sudden, there's just Simpsons stuff everywhere.

1:23:18Matt Belloni:Homer Simpson is involved in this open AI deal. Yeah. Not Homer's voice because you have to get the voice separate from that image. But you're going to be able to do Homer Simpson videos on OpenAI and Disney Plus very soon.

1:23:33Bill Simmons:You also get the Paramount Library, the WB Library, and two giant studio lots. Here's the thing. So$79 billion in debt plus the 3 % junk piece. So that's even higher. Paramount only controls two things right now when they merge these companies, which it'll take a year, assuming they merge. Headcount, and subscription prices, right? Other than that, they have no idea how this is going to go. But those are the two things that they can finagle the price however they want. Like they could chop 60 % of both companies and merge it into some smaller company. They could also raise the subscription price to some crazy number and do a little like what Disney and Hulu and Fox have tried to do, which has been really confusing.

1:24:20Bill Simmons:Like you can't, it's been really hard to get one of them. You kind of have to get all three and they dangle.

1:24:25Matt Belloni:Pushing people to the bundle is what they're doing.

1:24:27Bill Simmons:Yeah, which is where we're headed with this, right? And it'd be like$35 a month. And you get HBO and Paramount and you get to watch football on CBS. And that's where we're headed, right?

1:24:37Matt Belloni:What they are saying is that there will only be one app. It will not be a bundle. It won't be like the Disney, Hulu, ESPN situation. They are saying that these are going to be combined into one, they're calling it a super app. And that it will be something like, let's call it HBO Max. and then you go open it and then there's Paramount Plus Tile and there's an HBO Tile and there's a CBS Sports Tile, that kind of thing.

1:25:03Bill Simmons:So we've never really seen a deal like this with somebody that is a really proud tech person that cares about this stuff and is like, we are going to innovate and do all, we have all these different ideas. Like Netflix has a great main page. You go to Netflix, it knows what you like. It knows how to push things in front of you and they're the best at it. You go to other pages, like Peacock is just a quagmire.

1:25:28Matt Belloni:You go to Peacock. Peacock still doesn't know that I go there every Sunday morning to watch SNL. It's like, I just want to watch the NBA game.

1:25:36Bill Simmons:How do I do it? Can you guys tell me? It's unbelievable.

1:25:39Matt Belloni:It's the worst app of all time. And then you finally get to SNL and it shows you the last 10 minutes of the episode that you previously watched. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I never watched the last 10 minutes of SNL because I turn it off after Weekend Update. I want just show me the latest episode.

1:25:55Bill Simmons:What's the new one? What's the new traders? Like they just can't figure it out. So subscription price will be one way to make the money back. I still don't know. Like I've heard you've talked at different pods about how do you get this, this debt down, all this stuff. 79 billion is like a brain breaker. It's a lot. That's, that's basically the entire Western conference of NBA teams.

1:26:17Matt Belloni:Yeah. Honestly, they're going to have to cut a shit ton of costs. They're saying$6 billion that they're going to take out. It's going to be more than that. And they're saying that there's a lot of synergies and that they will probably move everybody to one of the two physical lots and sell the other one. That's a couple billion dollars there. There's a lot of things they can do, merging CBS News and CNN. There's things that are going to result in headcount reductions, but also just like physical presence reduction and costs of office space and things. like that. So you'll start to see those that come down.

1:26:54Matt Belloni:But the real risk here is that it can't come down enough and that this company just essentially becomes all about paying off debt. And they're just cutting costs and reducing output and servicing the debt. And they're not actually investing in making this a good, productive company like you should be.

1:27:15Bill Simmons:Which is, I can't remember the first time I came on your pod and we talked about this. This goes to the heart of how stupid these media mergers are. I just don't understand them. They never work. I don't, even when you look at Disney and Fox, like, I don't know, would Disney run that back if they could do that one over again? Would they? I'd love to know if you have a truth serum.

1:27:35Matt Belloni:Certain quarters of Disney would run that back. Really? Bob Iger insists it's great. And I don't think the final, listen, I go back and forth on this. I don't know if Disney is where it is today as one of the companies that you assume will survive the streaming wars if it didn't acquire all the content engines from FX and from Hulu and from the Fox properties, putting The Simpsons on Disney+. I don't know about that. That is above my pay grade. There's probably some McKinsey study locked in the vault with Walt Disney's head somewhere. Just like, this is what we got out of Fox. But they spent a lot of money and it caused a lot of debt issues for Disney.

1:28:20Matt Belloni:And they're still kind of digging out of that. They got Avatar though. They got a lot out of it, but it was a lot. Now we have a better example in Warner Brothers Discovery because that was a transaction that produced about$55 billion in debt. And Zasloff and his team essentially spent the next three years trying to pay that down. And then that's where we had, you know, cutting the Batgirl movie and firing thousands of people and all these things that kind of, They took a hit to the brand. And luckily for them, they found someone to come along and buy this company. But if they hadn't, it would have been a downward spiral, I think.

1:28:57Bill Simmons:So would you say the best analogy for what Zaslav did here is he bought this house he couldn't afford in a neighborhood that he liked, knew right away, basically, that he couldn't afford to keep the house and that this was going to go really badly unless somebody else was driving down the street and said, whoa, I really love that house. And that was his only out. That's basically what happened, right?

1:29:19Matt Belloni:The rich kid, the rich kid in school, he happened to befriend and he just decided that he'd really like that. And then another guy said, I'd also like it. I don't want the rich kid to have it. And then all of a sudden it's a bidding war. I mean, if you look at the initial projections for Warner brothers discovery, they said that they were going to have$14 billion a year in EBITDA, which is a metric for profits. And it It never even delivered in that first year. That first year came in under their estimates. And it's because the linear TV business, which is where these companies make most of their money still, the linear TV business is collapsing faster than people anticipated or that they let on.

1:30:00Matt Belloni:So they're like, oh, wait, we thought we were going to have 14 billion. Now we only have 12 this year. And next year we have 10. And finally, when they're selling this company this past year, it's down to 8.5. and it just keeps melting, melting, melting. And that's, it just throws the entire business trajectory off. They had to find a buyer.

1:30:17Bill Simmons:Who didn't know that the linear TV was going to die dramatically? Like we knew this 10 years ago. What are we doing?

1:30:23Matt Belloni:It's a matter of how fast it melts.

1:30:26Bill Simmons:As soon as high-speed internet was here, like it was a matter of time. I think one other thing with these mergers that never gets enough credit, and I say this as somebody who's worked in a couple of big companies, they're so destabilizing. and I don't think people, you wouldn't know unless you were working in a company and they either got acquired or acquired somebody else. But from the moment it happens, it's hunger games and you have repetitive departments all over the place and you have people looking over their shoulder and people looking for other jobs because they don't know if their job's going to exist and it's just this amount of tension.

1:31:02Bill Simmons:If Spotify merged with somebody tomorrow, I'd be terrified. I know what I'm dealing with now. I don't know what I'm dealing with another company. Right.

1:31:09Matt Belloni:And if you look at these Warner Brothers and HBO people, they just they have different bosses all the time. Right. And with different bosses come different objectives, different strategies. And in a creative business, it's really hard to operate from a position of uncertainty and change. You look at some of the most stable places like Universal, which has had the same ownership for the past 15, 16 years. the film studio at Universal was able to build up these franchises and build up the illumination business to have Minions and Super Mario. And they had the relationship with Christopher Nolan.

1:31:45Matt Belloni:Yeah, you take a bet on Oppenheimer, and then he's going to give you the Odyssey. And all of a sudden, you've got the biggest filmmaker. They have the Spielberg relationship. All these things, it takes a lot, and it takes a stable team to do. And when you are changing the rudder every couple of years, it's just a lot more difficult.

1:32:02Bill Simmons:Well, look at Amazon right now. Amazon's been trying to get into all kinds of different things. And every three months, they have another reword. It's amazing.

1:32:10Matt Belloni:I know. And they still haven't gotten what they want out of that entire purchase of MGM, which is a freaking James Bond movie. Right. They had to buy out the Broccoli family because they essentially refused to make any movies for them because they hated them.

1:32:25Bill Simmons:Right. I want to do some winners and losers. Winner. The first winner. We talked about him before. But David Ellison. who I gotta say I've only heard like at least decent things I don't he's not like a King Joffrey character where people are like what a prick oh my god I've heard the worst things everybody seems to like him I don't know if he should be running one of the biggest content whatever monoliths we've ever seen but he at least seems like not like a Zaslav thing where he's in it to get some sort of payoff at the end I don't think that's his intention.

1:33:02Matt Belloni:No, he seems to be in it because he genuinely likes this business and wants to make good things. Now we can argue about his taste. He's made a lot of movies that are not great and he has much more commercial taste than say like his sister, Megan Ellison, who was a great auteur producer and financier of movies until she ran out of money and her father basically said enough's enough. But that would make her not a good financier, by the way.

1:33:26Bill Simmons:who i would say megan ellison baby wasn't a good financer because no no great taste though great

1:33:33Matt Belloni:taste yes uh made some very good movies yeah but uh i'd put her rewatchable number up against

1:33:38Bill Simmons:david ellison's and i bet she has more that would be an interesting battle all right winners and losers first of all 79 billion in debt i just staggering i'm giving that a winner just because i didn't even know that was possible that sounds like at a star wars you made the debt a winner I think it's going to be a record. I think that's it. I think we've peaked. I don't think anyone's peaked in this.

1:33:58Matt Belloni:I guess these lenders, like Apollo and these big lenders. Sure.

1:34:03Bill Simmons:I think 79 is going to be... This is like Barry Bonds hitting 73 homers. We're never topping. I'm making it a winner.

1:34:09Matt Belloni:And much like that, we will come to question how it all happened.

1:34:16Bill Simmons:Loser, everyone's scared of AI and what it might do to content. This is like your D-Day. Because this is now the first time somebody that has... and Brian Phillips wrote about this for The Ringer this week, somebody with real insight and awareness and ability to use data, surveillance, name anything evil that we're all afraid of.

1:34:38Matt Belloni:TikTok. And don't forget, David Ellison's father, Larry, is one of the investors in the US version of TikTok. And they still are talking about this magical digital fairy dust that they're going to sprinkle over the whole company and turn it into a big tech media powerhouse. and not sure quite how that's going to happen, but I'm sure it'll be bad for the culture and our data and all these other things.

1:35:00Bill Simmons:Well, it's going to be, AI is going to probably come in a bunch of different ways for content. I think for when you're talking about editing movies and producing movies and some of the stuff that has just jobs that have existed for 120 years, I'm sure that's part of their plan, right? We could cut the costs here, here, here. We could just have, instead of having 200 people on this movie, we could have 70.

1:35:25Matt Belloni:And that's throughout Hollywood though. I mean, there is a push right now. The thinking is these movies cannot continue to cost$200 million to make, especially in animation. But even in other sci-fi effects driven movies, they've got to bring the cost down and AI is going to be a big part of that. All right.

1:35:42Bill Simmons:I have a controversial winner. People who make content because, yeah, all right. I'm going to land this plan. You're going to be confused for most of the time. I think if Netflix got Warner Brothers, I think we would have moved into a dangerous place with content that I would compare to this. And I'm in an AL keeper fantasy league where we can keep guy, we can keep 10 keepers, we have minor leaguers and all that. And sometimes somebody will get a big lead in like July and you have to decide like, do I want to chase this guy or would it be stupid to chase this guy and make trades? You know what?

1:36:17Bill Simmons:I'm going to let him win the title and I have a better chance next year. I think Netflix's lead would have been, especially with the know-how and the intelligence they have, I actually think it could have turned into a situation where everybody else is like, yeah, we're just going to pick our spots. We can't compete with those guys. And I don't know if it would have been great for people who do movies, television shows, and documentaries specifically. Because who's bidding against them if everybody is just going to be careful because they can't beat Netflix?

1:36:46Matt Belloni:Not a bad take. I agree. And obviously, if this merged company can get its act together and become that third or fourth big player alongside Netflix and Amazon and Disney, that ultimately creates a more robust market if there are four real players that can buy your project at any given time. And then God knows what Apple is doing.

1:37:11Bill Simmons:Plus Apple, if you're a relatively famous person who looks good in a giant thumbnail.

1:37:16Matt Belloni:Exactly. And they're going to overspend on whatever you want to do. Jennifer Lawrence, come on up.

1:37:21Bill Simmons:We got an Apple show for you. Pose.

1:37:23Matt Belloni:Make a picture. Yes, yes, yes. I know.

1:37:25Bill Simmons:But you're a divorced mom and your husband's been murdered.

1:37:29Matt Belloni:Go. That is essentially what Ellison has been arguing. And what they're going to argue to regulators to approve this deal is that this was a necessary evil to get Hollywood modernized for the tech era. and that these are globally scaled companies and Hollywood has never faced globally scaled media companies before. It's always been an oligopoly of only these five or six studios can distribute movies worldwide. And that's why, frankly, that's why they stayed in existence for 100 years. Now that's all gone with the internet and you have scaled television companies and they need to combine to chase that.

1:38:11Matt Belloni:And it's going to be painful in the short term. It's not, no question, taking these buyers out, like when Warners and HBO were competing against Paramount and all the rest, it was just better for buyers. But if this goes through, it will be painful. And then maybe this company can build up and become a real scaled player. You're certainly not taking your best projects to Paramount right now. Right.

1:38:35Bill Simmons:And if you think about 2017, 18, 19, pre-COVID, there were just a lot of people that had money and wanted to do stuff and were competing against each other. And then that slowly died after COVID.

1:38:47Matt Belloni:Well, and there was television. There was cable television still making original shows. Now that's all gone. Cable television not making original shows, certainly not inscripted. So it's just the streaming players and a little bit of broadcast TV. And there, you know, it's just a lot less.

1:39:04Bill Simmons:Felonies. I decided to watch the Survivor season for the first time in a while because it's Survivor 50. It was a three-hour season premiere. CBS is basically like guys we gotta go three hours we have two police shows two doctor shows two fire shows we have football we don't really have a lot going on so we're just gonna have this from 8 to 11 tonight sorry

1:39:27Matt Belloni:and guess what I watched it

1:39:29Bill Simmons:fast forwarded through all the commercials

1:39:30Matt Belloni:and you know what they're doing a shorter shoot Jeff Probst came on the town and was talking about how they do a shorter shoot on location now than they used to and then the episodes are now often longer than they used to. Right.

1:39:43Bill Simmons:And he is now AI. I don't know if he announced that on the pod. He's AI. Would not surprise me.

1:39:48Matt Belloni:He does not age.

1:39:50Bill Simmons:Anyway, that's my glass half full is that maybe this will lead to two heavyweights competing for projects constantly, which I'm not against. I might be wrong. Another winner.

1:40:01Matt Belloni:You forgot one loser. I think one loser. I have losers coming. Continue, continue.

1:40:05Bill Simmons:Well, I have another winner, the NFL, because Goodell, who's just a genius with this stuff, puts that little thing in like, hey, if there's a merger, we get to redo our deal. So now Skydance and the NFL, you don't need to, you know, it's not hard to figure out that they're going to have the hometown advantage. Yeah. But nobody really has an advantage with Goodell and whatever he wants to do to get more money, he's going to do it. So if he decides like, I've decided we have Friday Night Football and we're going to use AFC teams and sorry, CBS, you're just going to have to eat shit because we're going to have good games on Friday night.

1:40:41Bill Simmons:CBS will be like, okay, fine. Yeah. All right. Not much you can do.

1:40:45Matt Belloni:I mean, they've been slowly taking games away from those big packages. The one thing I would say is that I do think the NFL still needs broadcast. I don't think you're going to see them completely abandon CBS. I don't think you will either. Go to Netflix or something like that. They know their customer and the customer viewer still wants that broadcast experience.

1:41:09Bill Simmons:So I have seven suitors for the NFL when this all opens up. You tell me, absolutely have to have it, I'd love to have it, or this is a luxury. Those are the three answers. CBS Paramount, I feel like that's a we absolutely have to have it. Right?

1:41:28Matt Belloni:100 % agree.

1:41:30Bill Simmons:NBC?

1:41:33Matt Belloni:yes agreed all right we're two that is they have the number one program in all of television it's an anchor of their entire sales strategy and the olympics are only every four years nba so far has not performed as much as they want it to what are you talking about every game ever is the most watched game we've ever had yeah these deals are numbers let's see next year when the big data is compared against the big data. But it's a little less than CBS, but I still think NFL's must have for NBC.

1:42:04Bill Simmons:Well, we agree. So that's two. Fox, I think, is must.

1:42:08Matt Belloni:Oh, it's mission critical. What is Fox without NFL? What are they?

1:42:15Bill Simmons:They have to have it, and they've seen both realities, when they've had it and when they haven't had it, and they don't want to go back.

1:42:22Matt Belloni:No, that's what Bank of America analysts, they just downgraded Fox because of this whole prospect of the rights going up because there's, what are they going to do? They have to just eat it.

1:42:34Bill Simmons:ESPN? Yeah. I think they're a have to. We have four half to habits. We're four for four. I think they're a have to.

1:42:43Matt Belloni:With all the plans that ESPN is making and how much time they have put NFL on ABC as well. Yeah. Like that was not supposed to be the case. And they've renegotiated those deals to put Monday Night Football on ABC a lot. So I think it's a must-have.

1:43:01Bill Simmons:More on them in a second. Amazon is our fifth suitor. I would put them in the need to have it, but it's not a game breaker.

1:43:13Matt Belloni:Yeah, I'm putting them in the middle category. I think it's a like to have. Now, they love it. And it's one of the only things that consistently works on Amazon. And they feel that they've made great strides and getting better games and the productions are better. And they've finally, they've convinced that last cohort of people to watch, you know, when they first started and took the games from Fox, the ratings went down just because some people in this country didn't know where to find the game. So they forgot about it or whatever. Now they're bringing in more of those people and it's sort of a cornerstone of their offerings.

1:43:45Matt Belloni:But like with anything with Amazon, it's a luxury. They are a sales platform. They want you to buy more toilet paper. and all of this content is just in service of buying more toilet paper.

1:43:58Bill Simmons:And they need three or four things like the NFL to accomplish that goal. I agree. I wouldn't say they're on the level of the first four, but they're one level below. And then the last two are Netflix and YouTube, which I would say are luxury needed, but you're not crying yourself to sleep if you don't get it. Exactly. You'll be fine.

1:44:18Matt Belloni:I agree. And especially Netflix, because they see the numbers and they have a big initiative to increase their advertising sales and the NFL can do that. But they're just not going to fall over themselves to steal away a full package of games unless it makes sense, unless it's like bespoke. You know, the international games, I've always thought that they're going to eventually evolve into one international game per week or for 12 of the 17 weeks or something like that. And they will carve out those games for a 9 a.m. or 8 a.m. game every week. And it will be on Netflix because it will be global.

1:45:00Bill Simmons:So 12 international games. Netflix owns all 12. And by the way, some of those are already on NFL Network. They could just easily sell them to Netflix. Take the Germany game. Take the Ireland game.

1:45:12Matt Belloni:If they have to take them away from CBS or Fox, so be it.

1:45:15Bill Simmons:Yeah. And by the way, the NFL would tell CBS, hey, we're going to take these games. you want to fight? CBS is like, okay, take them. All right, so that's five. There are no other suitors, right? That's seven. Well, where's Apple? Yeah, where is Apple? Where's Apple? You tell me. Are they even in this?

1:45:34Matt Belloni:That is the eternal question. Are they interested? They have not wanted to dabble. They have said that, you know, they like their F1 deal that they just did. They like their MLS deal. The MLS might have a word about that. but they have not wanted to just get a game or two here or there. And we'll see. MLB did a whole Friday night baseball thing with them. I mean, who knows if that works? There's just so many MLB games. But I've always wondered.

1:46:06Bill Simmons:The problem is how many people have Apple TV, I think, is the scarier question. Because I don't think it's a lot.

1:46:10Matt Belloni:It's not a lot. And they're now doing things about that. They're selling through other things. They just did a deal with Roku to sell Roku. They capitulate and they sell through Amazon now. I'm glad you brought that up.

1:46:20Bill Simmons:I thought that Roku thing was fascinating. Because that's their main competitor. Yeah, it was a wave in the white flag, basically.

1:46:28Matt Belloni:Absolutely. And they did it earlier with Amazon. They basically came out guns blazing saying, we are Apple Incorporated. We are the platform that everybody has to have. And everyone's like, not really when it comes to premium video. And they basically raised the white flag and said, okay, we'll sell via Amazon and we'll sell via Roku. and hopefully we'll raise our numbers.

1:46:48Bill Simmons:I like Roku. One more winner here. Well, I have a couple more actually. Netflix, who, look, I love the spin and you've been on it too about like, well, this is all along. They were trying to push this deal and if they didn't get it, it still was great for them because they sat on it. I don't think that's true. They spent a lot of time on this. Nobody likes to spend a lot of time to not get something.

1:47:13Matt Belloni:And have your stock go down 30%.

1:47:15Bill Simmons:Yeah, but they did get$2.8 billion as a breakup fee, which they can just now put toward those international NFL games you mentioned and other stuff.

1:47:25Matt Belloni:And a big competitor has taken on almost$80 billion in debt to go after this deal. So they got them that. They also, you know, the Ellisons wanted to buy this company for$19 a share in the fall. Right. And it went up by, what is that, 40 %? Just because Netflix was involved in$19 to$31. So that's a lot.

1:47:46Bill Simmons:It would be funny if the Mavericks had been able to use this strategy with the Luka trade, where the trade went through and then the other teams were like, you didn't get enough. And then the Mavericks were like, we didn't get enough. The deal is now we're accepting bids still. And it was like the Lakers were like, wait, we had a deal. What happened?

1:48:03Matt Belloni:Can you imagine if that were true in sports, if you could accept a trade and then everybody could react and up the offer? Right. Because all it would do is create a lane there for fan bases to go completely nuts. when a trade was made and then the ownership would have to respond.

1:48:18Bill Simmons:Right. Well, that was why they never wanted to leak it out. Loser. Everyone at HBO probably because they can spin this all they want. We've been in this scenario before. Ironically, with HBO, with AT &T, where everybody's like, no, no, it's going to be great. Everybody's going to work together. I'm going to go glass half empty on this. We'll see. But you mentioned on your podcast how Casey Bloys, who's I think probably the most respected TV executive or one of them, Um, he has contracts up next year. Um, I think he saw what happened to Richard Plepler in the 2010s when Stanky and AT &T took over.

1:48:55Bill Simmons:And, uh, this is, uh, I want to see how this plays out for me.

1:49:00Matt Belloni:Listen, Casey has it in his contract that he reports to the CEO of the company. So if Paramount wants to honor that and have him report to David Ellison and not have to report to all the streaming executives that Ellison has hired, including a woman, Cindy Holland, who was at Netflix, so I don't think he and she and Casey would mix well together. Maybe that will work out. Ellison said straight up, HBO should stay HBO, do what they do best. Easier said than done.

1:49:28Bill Simmons:What happens if they're bidding on the same project?

1:49:30Matt Belloni:Exactly. What happens then? I mean, there have been examples of that. Netflix famously has a culture where you can get a no from one division of the company and then you can get a yes from another. So they do have competing arms there within the same company. I don't know what would happen there if that situation existed. I don't know if they'll have the resources to continue to do what they do. The HBO process is really rigorous. They don't just put stuff on. They are not afraid to scrap a pilot and start over. We had Rachel Sennett on the town with I Love LA. They completely reshot that pilot.

1:50:07Matt Belloni:And most places would just say, just cut bait. and be like, okay, busted pilot, we're done. But with HBO, you know, famously with Game of Thrones, and like, they just, they work it a lot longer and you can see in the product. And I don't know if that's gonna be allowed anymore.

1:50:22Bill Simmons:Glass Hat Full Bill would say HBO is so different than Paramount from the audiences they're going for that maybe this can work.

1:50:29Matt Belloni:It's definitely complimentary. You know, they have that CBS style audience on Paramount Plus. They have NFL viewers. They have, you know, the sports people. and HBO is not that. They have a different cohort of people and maybe one plus one will be three here.

1:50:47Bill Simmons:Maybe. Strong emphasis on the M and maybe. The winner, the sports piece of Paramount, which now has the NFL, the AFC side, MLB, NHL, Champions League, March Madness, the Masters, UFC, Zepha Boxing, which they just launched. I mean, I'll throw this soon with Loser, ESPN, who has Monday Night Football, College Football, and College Football Playoffs, college hoops, Wimbledon, US Open, NBA, NBA finals, hockey, wrestling pay-per-views. Like it's kind of even when you add all the Paramount stuff against ESPN and suddenly ESPN doesn't look worldwide leader-ish in the same way, right?

1:51:24Matt Belloni:And here's the interesting thing. It's in these deals where Paramount can start to deploy these sports across all of these new cable networks that they own. So you're going to see UFC on TNT or maybe even HBO. and you're going to see them try to get the most out of these sports deals and keep the price of those cable networks as high as possible for as long as possible because that's where they make their money.

1:51:50Bill Simmons:Yeah. Winner NBCUniversal just because they can position themselves as, we're over here. You don't like some of the politics of Paramount and all that stuff? We're just trying to do good stuff and be here and we have stability and come this way.

1:52:08Matt Belloni:I don't know if I agree on that one. I would put them in a loser. Listen, remember, they were in. They made a bid on Warners. It wasn't a very good bid. And I think it was just to get a look at their books. But NBCUniversal doesn't have a global streaming product. They have Peacock, which is only domestic. And in fact, their leadership just said today that they're not even trying to be global. They're good with domestic. That is not a long-term strategy. They need something. They need some kind of transformative deal. I think if they want to be considered one of the global players here, otherwise they're just going to get left behind.

1:52:44Bill Simmons:Well, they have a great movie studio though. Great app though. Peacock app. Oh my God. Takes 20 minutes to find anything. I don't know. I feel like they can still position themselves as like the underdog that could against this and try to, try to align with some other people and be like, all these, everyone's spending so much money in this arms race and we're over here and we're disciplined and we have this business. might work. Who knows?

1:53:08Matt Belloni:Maybe, maybe they'll do a joint venture with Amazon to get global or something. I don't know, but, uh, or get bought movie studio. They have, you know, they have NBC. They've got a lot of sports still. So it's not like they're bad. They've been bulking up on sports. They got NBA and MLB. So it's not like they're not players. It's just the global streaming

1:53:29Bill Simmons:strategy piece is, is really tough, but is it okay to just have a good business and not try to conquer the universe?

1:53:37Matt Belloni:Well, look at Sony. Sony doesn't have any global streamer at all. They don't have a general... They have Crunchyroll, but Sony didn't even try to enter the streaming wars, and they preferred the arms dealer strategy, where they just sell their stuff to everybody else. And it seems to be working out well for them. They had K-pop Demon Hunters on Netflix, biggest movie of all time. They have their movies now. They got$7 billion to license their movies to Netflix. Now, it's a multi-year deal, and it's global, but that's a pretty big vote of confidence in your studio to get Netflix to pay you$7 billion to get the first run on the new movies and to be able to air some of the old movies as well.

1:54:19Matt Belloni:That's why these companies are worth what they are worth because they have a hundred year library of movies.

1:54:24Bill Simmons:I would rather be them than Paramount with$89 billion in debt, just for the record.

1:54:30Matt Belloni:Well, and then what's going to happen if Netflix goes after them? They're not officially for sale, Sony. But if you want a company that's at least semi-comparable to Warner Brothers as a studio, not the streaming component, Sony is sitting right there. They're not for sale. They're owned by a Japanese company, but who knows?

1:54:47Bill Simmons:I think Sony and NBCUniversal and that kind of level, I think it's okay. I think it's like in sports. You don't have to be the Dodgers spending$700 million on salary every year. How dare you? You might be okay being in the NL Central and just banging out wins and playoff appearances.

1:55:01Matt Belloni:If that's good enough for you, then that's fine. I prefer the Dodgers.

1:55:04Bill Simmons:Loser, everyone that works at Warner Brothers, this is just brutal. It's awful. This is like in all time, this sucks.

1:55:10Matt Belloni:And the gut punch. They were kind of coming around to Netflix. Yeah. Netflix was saying the right things. We believe in theatrical now, and this is going to be a vertical merger. We're not going to fire everybody. We love what you do. We're going to sell to other platforms. Then boom, within 48 hours, it's like yanked away from Netflix. And all of a sudden, it's not only the Ellisons who have turned CBS into more like Fox News, which is what people at the Warner lot do not like. And then they say all of a sudden they're going to smash together two studios and fire thousands of people.

1:55:49Bill Simmons:And I'm going to say, I don't believe that. I don't believe that number at all.

1:55:55Matt Belloni:That seems aspirational. Let's just say that.

1:55:58Bill Simmons:Yeah, I don't believe that.

1:55:59Matt Belloni:I mean, Netflix tried to make 30 movies a year. And literally, you watch some of those movies. They're not even finished. Right. Like they were just pumping them out to get them out because they needed that engagement machine. and to put 30 movies a year in theaters, you got to have a higher bar than just kind of some of the Netflix slop.

1:56:19Bill Simmons:It's two studios though. So it's really 15 movies from each studio. It is, but that's more than each of those studios

1:56:26Matt Belloni:produces currently. Fair.

1:56:28Bill Simmons:Winner Zaslav. I hate making him a winner. Oh my God. He's going to make a crazy amount of money. It's unbelievable this worked out for him.

1:56:34Matt Belloni:Bill, you're going to say crazy. I'm going to say grotesque. A guy should not make$800 million off of a financial transaction that causes thousands of jobs to be lost. Like, what are we doing? I know it's all about the shareholders and he delivered for the shareholders. And that's where his compensation was set. If the shareholders do well, he does well. But it feels like insane that this guy who managed the company down, down, down, and then got lucky when someone wanted to buy it can make that kind of money.

1:57:09Bill Simmons:It's almost like a plot out of succession.

1:57:13Matt Belloni:Absolutely.

1:57:14Bill Simmons:Like, like it's like a season three, season four plot where they're like, we'll buy it, we'll ruin the company and then blah, blah, blah. Um, my last loser is the city of Los Angeles because we're going to have a ton of people that, that are, you know, that are going to lose their jobs out of all this, which is terrible. You have these two lots. I'm still suspicious. They're going to keep both lots in the same kind of... Who knows what's going to happen with that?

1:57:39Matt Belloni:I think they'll sell one. The question is, will they sell one to Netflix? Who are they selling it to? Netflix has wanted the Paramount lot. So maybe Ellison will sell... This was Craig's idea on The Town, by the way. It's brilliant. They should sell the Paramount lot to Netflix, have them move in, and then everybody at Paramount Warner Brothers goes to Warner Brothers.

1:57:58Bill Simmons:Interesting. We found out on your pod the other day, Craig loves the Saudis. We found that on the Friday pod.

1:58:03Matt Belloni:Oh, he's a big Saudi fan.

1:58:05Bill Simmons:Pro-Saudi.

1:58:06Matt Belloni:Yeah. They got to be winners here. The Saudis, if this deal goes through, we don't know what the money configuration is, but it was announced a few months ago that the Saudis, the Qataris, and the Abu Dhabians, they have funds that are in this deal. So all of a sudden, they're going to own a piece of CNN and CBS News and all of these outlets that are pretty powerful in terms of potential propaganda.

1:58:32Bill Simmons:Well, they already own the Lakers, so nobody seemed to care about that. No, but where Los Angeles is now, this whole decade, COVID, the Hollywood, just all hell breaking loose over and over again. All the strikes, the fires, the lack of accountability basically from everybody that runs the city and the state, which has just been disgusting to watch over and over again. The cover-ups afterwards that people are reporting about, not even noticing. I've never felt more uncertain about the future of this city. The city that you have Netflix building an entire campus in New Jersey so they can get better tax credits and build a bunch of stuff there.

1:59:14Bill Simmons:And all these people bolting, these studios empty, no matter... You could go to Sunset Gower. You could go to all these places that used to be packed and they're just not anymore. Nobody has a plan for any of it. The governor of the state is now running for a 2028 election instead of worrying about the state he's in now. And it's just the worst shape we've ever been in with all this stuff. Now on top of it, all these people are going to lose their jobs.

1:59:36Matt Belloni:I agree with you to a point. I am from Southern California and I'm old enough to remember like the late 80s, early 90s with the riots and the gang wars and like where you literally, I was from Orange County, you literally would not go to LA. Like it was bad. And this is not that. Like LA is a pretty nice place to live. We both live here. It's a great city to live in. But this is a existential moment for this particular industry that I think is a key driver of the economy. It's not the only driver. There's many, many different things about L.A. that make it what it is. But I think it's an underrated aspect of what makes L.A.

2:00:16Matt Belloni:L.A. is this creative class of people that come here to work in the entertainment business and that needs a boost. It needs some kind of incentive or, you know, maybe the city should declare both these lots to be landmarks that cannot be developed so we don't get the Paramount lot turned into condos. So that when this industry does come back, whether it's a new version that is AI powered or creator driven or these studios get their acts together and there is a growth mode that they can come back and all these places can get filled with activity again. I do think it will happen. It's just cyclical.

2:00:55Matt Belloni:And we are in a very big down cycle right now.

2:00:58Bill Simmons:It's awful. I mean, they built this bridge in downtown LA that they lit up every night. They spent years and years building it. And within a year, everybody stole the copper from it. And now it doesn't light up at night. And it was like, what was all the traffic for, for five years? Like, I don't see a lot of planning and strategy with, I remember when I moved here in 2002, you know, you'd meet people and you meet people in like your kids pre-K and stuff, what do you do? Oh, I'm a writer. Oh, I'm an entertainment lawyer. Oh, I do props for movies. And everybody seemed to work in the industry somehow.

2:01:31Bill Simmons:And the more that these jobs and these companies push that stuff, either they're pushing to leave LA and go somewhere else or their jobs are disappearing. I just think LA is going to lose a lot of what made it LA. It's just not the same city if that happens.

2:01:46Matt Belloni:I agree. But I do think things are changing. Yeah. How many people do you know that work in the podcast business? True. A lot now. A lot. A lot of those are here. How many people do you know that work in the creator business? Right. There are full-on agencies and production studios. And YouTube has a huge presence here. These are things that were not in LA 10 years ago. So the entire notion of the business is changing. There's no pilot season anymore, although they're doing some pilots. But pilot season used to be a thing. People would move here because there were 100 pilots of TV shows that were made between January and March every year.

2:02:28Matt Belloni:And it was like a boom town. That doesn't happen anymore.

2:02:31Bill Simmons:Every year, too, by the way. It was like the NFL playoffs. You knew it was happening. You could rely. Now we don't even have up front.

2:02:36Matt Belloni:Wasn't that your idea to have a Pluto channel just for busted pilots? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think we could still do it.

2:02:43Bill Simmons:You just play old pilots? Yeah. We could still do it. There's a million of them.

2:02:46Matt Belloni:And you'd see big actors who were on bad pilots before they became famous. I just did.

2:02:51Bill Simmons:We just did Fargo for rewatchables for next week. And one of the tidbits was that Edie Falco was in the Fargo TV series developed the year after the movie. And if it had become a TV series, she's not Carmela Soprano.

2:03:04Matt Belloni:Amazing. Right.

2:03:05Bill Simmons:And it's like, there's a million stories like that. And now we barely make any TV pilots. But I know when, when you have like the New Jersey thing, I thought it was alarming. when Netflix feels like this is just better for us to do this than to stay here. That's when, you know.

2:03:20Matt Belloni:Okay, but that, the days of Netflix being, building a production studio in LA, there's just not the land for that. They were, they got a swath of land there. True. To essentially run roughshod on whatever they wanted to do. They did the same thing in Albuquerque.

2:03:36Bill Simmons:We could have given them City of Industry. I still don't know what happens there. Just give them the whole place.

2:03:40Matt Belloni:You could, yes, you could. Back to a couple strip joints. It's there's not the infrastructure here. There should be. I agree that there should be incentives in place here. And I feel like this state is kind of getting its act together a little bit with some of these production incentives. It's better than it used to be, but it's not competitive with these other places. They want it more.

2:03:59David Jacoby:Yeah.

2:04:00Matt Belloni:And they're just they're going to get it because there's been this acceptance that people in L.A. will just like they will be filled anyways. And they're not filled. These studios are not filled.

2:04:10Bill Simmons:It's crazy to watch what's happening. These places were packed all the time and they're just not. Well, one guy who really wanted it, David Ellison.

2:04:18Matt Belloni:He has a chance now. He can build a huge production studio in LA if he wants.

2:04:24Bill Simmons:Where is he going to get the money? He's already got a 79 million plus 3 % of debt. We'll see if he can do it.

2:04:30Matt Belloni:Billion.

2:04:31Bill Simmons:Yeah. Well, the other thing is they're involved peripherally with a bunch of the sports stuff too. Right? These European teams, the NBA Europe League. There's all kinds of IP that can come from that. So it's a daunting job. I don't know if he's ready for it. He certainly doesn't have the life experience or the work experience to run anything like that. But I also don't know if anyone does. I don't know who could have done this. You're talking about like Bob Iger. Listen, it's out of another era.

2:04:57Matt Belloni:We take it for granted these days that these CEOs and people who run Hollywood are in their 60s and 70s. But like in the 80s and 90s, the people running the studios were like 32 years old. You know, Jeffrey Katzenberg, was reinventing the Disney Animation Group when he was in his 30s. He was in his 30s, but at Paramount, he was in his 20s. And it used to be normal that you ran companies in your early 40s. Now it's less so.

2:05:24Bill Simmons:Well, we did a good job at not talking about Trump. I'm glad for both of us. Matt Bellamy, you have Monday, Wednesday, Friday, every week. And producer Craig, who you keep throwing under the bus and saying he loves the Saudis, but it's fine. We share him. We share custody of Craig.

2:05:39Matt Belloni:The heart wants what the heart wants. And I am happy for Craig. And he'll live in comfort for his entire life.

2:05:46Bill Simmons:If we were being held off a cliff like the kids in The Good Son at the end, and Craig was holding on to us, who does he let go? We're going to have to give him true sound and find out. Me, of course. I don't know. I don't know. Are you kidding? You take him everywhere. You take him to these parties.

2:06:00Matt Belloni:I do. I do take him to parties.

2:06:02Bill Simmons:You put him more time because you live on the same side of LA with him.

2:06:05Matt Belloni:That's true. But you made him a star. You gave him a fantasy football show. So you may, he may be very good at that.

2:06:10Bill Simmons:All right.

2:06:10Matt Belloni:He is.

2:06:11Bill Simmons:So any good to see you. Thanks for, uh, thanks for all the time. Yes.

2:06:14Matt Belloni:Thank you.

2:06:16Bill Simmons:All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Jacoby. Thanks to Belony. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. I'm going to be back on this feed on Thursday. Don't forget about rewatchables. Uh, Sicario that's already up. Fargo coming next week. It's CR month. Buckle up, hold on to your seats. Good times. I'll see you on Thursday.

2:06:38David Jacoby:I want to see them on the wayside.

2:06:42Bill Simmons:I want to say I don't have feelings with them on the wayside.

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