Boston Does L.A., Honeymoon Harden, a Denver Hiccup, and a Kawhi Deep Dive With Zach Lowe

18:23Zach Lowe:You're just like, Luka's just all first team. It's going to be interesting, isn't it? Like, it's just someone awesome is not going to be first team all NBA if everyone's eligible.

18:34Bill Simmons:If Luka misses, like he has another stretch where he misses four to five games, maybe. But there's a level that he goes to. Even today, there was like a little two-minute stretch where he's just like, I'm just going to post this guy up, but I'm offended that you're guarding me with him. And when he misses, it's surprising. But he can have, I didn't think he was good today and he still ended up with like 27. The foul bitching stuff is the worst it's been in a while.

19:04Zach Lowe:It's back to peak. It's back to peak unwatchability. It's every single play now. It's back to where it was at its very worst in Dallas when it got so bad that the Mavs had to finally call him out publicly.

19:16Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's so bad that even LeBron's like, wow, wow what's this guy this guy's really bitching for cause but uh i don't think it helps them i mean big picture from a lakers standpoint like why did they get alvarado why didn't they do anything why did they think marcus smart was somebody like did they have aspirations to actually be

19:41Zach Lowe:good this year good use of the word aspirations thank you not with the quippers um i think they had aspirations to be good. I think that's probably if you caught them in a real moment, that's probably about where their aspirations ended and their aspirations are focused mostly on this summer when they have three first-round picks to trade. But to your point, the Knicks got Alvarado without giving up a first-round pick. The Lakers got Luke Kennard. And I enjoyed on the broadcast today how they're just, the whole NBC crew was aghast that Luke Kennard, percentage-wise, the best or second or third best three-point shooter of all time, is only taking like four, four-and-a-half threes per game as a Laker.

20:17Zach Lowe:That's unacceptable. I'm like, welcome to the Luke Kennard experience. It looks awesome on paper. And then he doesn't shoot enough to justify the lack of... This is why he's on the Lakers after being on a million other teams.

20:28Bill Simmons:You've had a few awesome on paper, don't get too carried away by the signing guys. And I think he would be the point guard on the team. I don't know who else is on that team. Aiton's been on there, but it's almost not fair to put him on. But there's just certain guys who look better on paper. Luke Kennard, I got sucked in. I thought when they got him, I was like, perfect, perfect trade. But the guy to get was Alvarado, who I don't also know where the Celtics were on that one either. That's what they give up. They gave up Terry and two second round picks and got a guy who played crunch time last night in the Rockets game.

21:05Zach Lowe:I don't think the Rockets played crunch time in that game. I think it was just the Knicks 5-0 in crunch time. But yeah, so Alvarado was one of the five and had back-to-back steals. There was a layup that I'm still not sure how he made it over a much larger player in transition. It was an incredible shot. But yeah, and obviously the crowd loves him already.

21:22Bill Simmons:And that's the thing. I mean, if I was a GM, I would have traded for him two months ago if I had any sort of playoff aspirations crossed with a home crowd. Because that's like just your... We saw it. We saw it in the brief moments when the Pelicans have mattered over the last couple of years. You see what that guy is. He's perfect. the thing that was shocking about Nick's Rockets last night was they actually got away with playing him and Brunson together.

21:47Zach Lowe:They do it a lot. They played the two of them and Shamit together too. But against the Rockets?

21:52Bill Simmons:I was surprised.

21:53Zach Lowe:I was like, whoa. And it worked. It did. It was not a good night for the Rockets. I don't know if you want to talk that one out, but another bad crunch time performance by the Rockets who had, I think, nine turnovers in the fourth quarter and they arranged from shangun threw the ball to nobody there was a backcourt violation the durant dribbled the ball off his foot i think at one point was just every manner of you know all right we got nothing shangun just iso from the three-point arc with eight on the shot clock and dribble 14 times and maybe something good will happen and something good never happened

22:26Bill Simmons:i was on two different text threads this morning with celtic fans all of us kind of getting ptsd for the EMA season that the Celtics had when it would go bad and it would just get stagnant and nobody moved and there would be no solutions to a defense kind of figuring out the offense. Because I've been on this, Legler was on this podcast like five or six weeks ago and he was talking about the Rockets and he mentioned how frustrated he was by how they used Thompson. And he was like, they really only use them like trying to go downhill and beating guys one-on-one or trying to get to the rim or kicking out.

23:04Bill Simmons:And he was like, I don't understand why they don't post him up. He'd be so devastating around the rim. They never do it. And I think his skill set, especially when he's being defended by smaller people, I think his skill set lends itself to that. I don't know why they don't do it. You're watching yesterday. He either had Alvarado or Brunson on him. And it was like the perfect example of like, just put him near the block and run the offense through him because the Knicks are going to have to double that immediately. I don't they just kind of get stagnant and then just throw it to Durant and cross their fingers seems to be their offense unless they throw it to Schengen same thing.

23:38Zach Lowe:I'll tell you what I was thinking as the meltdown happened in the fourth quarter is look I understand why Emei Odoka may be a little hesitant to trust Reed Shepard as much as he trusts his core guys who all have the same sort of skill set big rangy defense first players. Yeah. I just think there are games where Reed Shepard's got to play more. And when your offense is just going off the rails like that because you're not running anything, I just think you bring him in for Jabari Smith Jr. or Tari Eason and just, all right, we're going to run some Reed Shepard, Shen Goon two-man game, Reed Shepard, Durant two-man game, loosen things up.

24:11Zach Lowe:Like all of a sudden, boom, stuff opens up and like good things happen. And I understand defensively he's going to get picked on a little bit, but he can guard Jose Alvarado. He's got good hands. He makes plays. Right. I think they're going to have, maybe it was last night, They're just going to have to cross the Rubicon at some point of like, this guy's either a huge part of our team or we're just putting that off for another year because there are games that just scream for, with Van Vliet out, we need more of this guy in the game. And last night, as it was happening, that's all I was thinking.

24:41Zach Lowe:Can you put him back in the game?

24:44Bill Simmons:Well, I wholeheartedly agree, and I would even one-up you. I think if they don't do it, they're a cross-off team for the playoffs. I don't see it. I don't see it happening with them with the way they're, they're built. Um, they don't get transition when he's not in there, right? They just slow down. They don't get fast breaks anymore. Um, he opens the court for them. And then on top of it, what you just mentioned, like they can run two man stuff with them, but it's like the ceiling of the team. He just makes it higher. And if they're not going to get there this year with him, then they're not going to get there anyway.

25:16Bill Simmons:It's certainly not going to happen with the team they have. Um, I don't really understand it because you're just throwing away fast breaks for basically the entire fourth quarter

25:24Zach Lowe:well and that and that's one of the frustrating that not frustrating that's one of the sort of in like built in the built-in dissonance of the rockets and every team has some built-in dissonance but like reed shepherd and a man thompson are born to play fast like they are born to fly up and down the court and reed shepherd should be shooting a lot to threes and a man thompson is a speed demon and the rest of the team just doesn't play like that they're more of just battering ram of offensive rebounding and slow it down, ISO basketball. It's just such an interesting push and pull.

25:52Bill Simmons:These older guys, you have these old, famous superstars who are just used to, this is how I play, guys. I like to play this style, and we're going to do that. And I think as you get older, it just gets tougher to move into a different thing. This has not been a great Kevin Durant week. I'm going to say it was in the bottom five Kevin Durant weeks to power rankings, probably in the maybe worst three.

26:14Zach Lowe:It's not been good. It's not been good. How are you? Can I ask you a Celtics question? Yeah. Since we're coming off Celtics-Lakers. Yeah. How are you feeling two weeks into the Vooch experience?

26:26Bill Simmons:Today was not good. Today was one of those, they might actually won by 30 if Luka Garza was playing. But it's going to be rocky. It's going to be up and down. There's some nights when he looks 35. And I don't mean that as a compliment. where it's just like the rebounds over his head and he's a step slow and you just lose athleticism and a whole bunch of stuff. And then there's other nights when it looks great. I think it's certainly worth the experiment. But I don't know. I haven't been wowed. I won't be bouncing my grandkids on my lap telling them about the Vooch trade of 2026. Probably not happening.

27:03Bill Simmons:But as the two-part with Tatum, it still makes sense to me.

27:09Zach Lowe:Are you getting nervous that there seems to be like a Ramona Shelburne, I talked to Jason Tatum and he wants to make clear he's not sure, 100 % sure he's coming back or Chris Haynes tweets. Are you starting to get nervous that this may not happen?

27:24Bill Simmons:No, because if he doesn't feel good about coming back, I don't want him to come back.

27:28Zach Lowe:Okay, so you're good either way. You just want him to do what's good.

27:31Bill Simmons:I want him to feel good about it. I just think they're covering all their bases and trying not to get people's hopes up. The Missoula, I don't know if you've seen the Missoula press conferences, but they've been riveting. What has he said about it? Well, there was one today where somebody was like, was Jason out there practicing today? And he's like, yes, he was. Or he was like, was he out there for practice today? He was like, yes. And the follow-up question was, was he playing with the team? And Missoula just didn't answer and stared at the guy like a fucking maniac and just didn't answer. So they basically, their strategy is we're not talking about it.

28:10Bill Simmons:You can ask us. We're not telling you. But I think he's coming back unless there's some sort of setback. I don't think they make the Vooch trade otherwise. I don't.

28:19Zach Lowe:Him practicing would seem to suggest that the Vooch trade, no matter how much they try to sort of funnel it through in the media, that this was a trade we were going to make anyway. It's not connected. Like, I don't 100 % believe that. And I believe this. You know, they have the negotiation tactic, like who blinks first? or if you're interviewing someone, you ask them a question, and if they don't want to answer it and they're silent, don't jump in. Just let the silence just live there. Joe Mazzulla is going to wait anyone out. Joe Mazzulla will win that contest. He will stare at that dude until the PR guy's like, all right, I guess we're done, guys.

28:51Zach Lowe:Next question.

28:52Bill Simmons:You got that. You definitely got that feeling. When I look at the minutes today, Hugo played 14. Walsh played seven. Pritchard played 37. 37. And you would think 22 of those minutes go to Tatum when he's back. That would be my guess. So basically, Gonzalez is out. And Pritchard probably loses 10, and that's how you do it. Or Walsh is out. Gonzalez is cut in half. And that's how you get the minutes. We're going to take a break. We have a lot more to discuss here on the Sunday night pre-Blizzard extravaganza coming next. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel, the football season may be coming to an end, but things are only getting started on the court, on the hardwood, on the wood, as some people call it.

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31:02Bill Simmons:Get up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash. Sign up at Venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. Select schools available. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Max$100 cash back per month. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads. The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from the other ad buys.

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32:19Bill Simmons:Add expert assist to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you with expert full service. Tax Act helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details per month. Detroit first in the East. Celtics second right now. One win more than the Knicks and the Cavs. nobody else is going to crack that top four. Does it matter? Does home court matter as much as it used to with this stuff? Because I feel like last year, we hit the point where it felt like anybody could win on any court.

32:57Bill Simmons:And I don't know how that's changed from when in the 80s, all you wanted to do is get game seven at home. And even maybe in the 90s. But now we've hit a point. I don't even know if it necessarily matters if the Celtics are 2-3-4, if the Knicks are 3-4-2. Does it matter?

33:13Zach Lowe:I think it still matters. It definitely matters less than it used to for, I don't even know, a bunch of different reasons. Three point, everything from the three point shot to travel conditions. All things considered, I'd still like to have it, but I think it probably gets outranked now by matchups. If there's a matchup that's just bad for you or you want to avoid or whatever the case, whatever it is, if there's a pathway to the conference finals that is easier than the other one that is your alternative. I think that trumps, if you sacrifice home court to get that pathway, I think you would probably do that in some cases.

33:46Zach Lowe:And this may be one of them. I mean, these teams are all, they're all sort of unproven in their own ways, right? I don't think any of them is totally scared of any of the other four or any of the other three, but all things considered, I think Detroit is super happy that they will have game seven of any playoff series at home.

34:03Bill Simmons:Yeah. And that ship has sailed through the Celtics. and you fall to four and you get to play Detroit in round two, a team that you've had some really good games against and matched up pretty nicely with. And then you could have the Knicks and Cavs beat the hell out of each other in round two. I wonder if, I don't think they would be tears if that was how it played out. And then I wonder, like, who do you think, like, who do the Knicks not want to play the most? Would you say Detroit round two?

34:35Zach Lowe:Well, sort of the same thing happened last year with Detroit and New York, where Detroit won the regular season series and New York beat them in the playoffs. And we all kind of agreed New York was more talented and should have won that series. But Detroit has just pantsed them three times this year. And the Knicks can say, well, Towns was out this game and Ananobi was out that game and Robinson was out with one of them in one of the games. That's all true. But all of them have been blowouts and Detroit just has out-toughed them, out-fought them, out-played them in every possible way. So I think that would be...

35:08Zach Lowe:And the Knicks have enjoyed playing against Cleveland dating to the playoffs three years ago. So they would probably say we don't care. It's fine. But Detroit has to be in their heads a little bit. Just are we as tough and together as that team is? Because that was the really impressive thing. Watching Detroit up close at Madison Square Garden last week, they don't have a lot of shooting. We know that. We know that that's the weak spot that everyone expects to be, including me a little bit more of a hindrance in the playoffs than it is in the regular season we know they make up for it with like cutting and offensive rebounding it's smart interior passing but it's just it's one thing on tv and it's another thing in person like they didn't have duran or stewart in that game against the knicks from the suspensions and like even their role players like javante green comes in and just moves the ball like they all make the right pass they all make the extra pass they all make quick decisions caris levert is making quick decisions Duncan Robinson, quick decisions, Dennis Jenkins.

36:03Zach Lowe:No one is holding the ball other than Cade. And there's a certain, like, that level of cohesion and trust and pace within the half court really does compensate for their sort of lack of shooting compared to the other elite teams. They're really, really polished. They're polished. They're more polished than they have any right to be, given that they're still pretty young and inexperienced. And I think that will carry over into the playoffs. I think they got a lot of the playoff, like, jitters out of the way last year against the Knicks. and they're ready. I think they're ready to make the finals.

36:33Bill Simmons:It's a little like OKC when they lost that Dallas series. What was that? Two years ago? But it was the best thing probably got them ready for next year. The Pistons at least had that one series. Maybe my Hornets will have the same thing. They're feisty 1-8 battle against the Pistons.

36:52Zach Lowe:They won tonight, right? They did. Lomelo went crazy.

36:55Bill Simmons:So they had a really hard win against Washington's G League team.

36:59Zach Lowe:Yeah. If they had split their previous, they had lost two Cleveland and someone else good.

37:04Bill Simmons:Two tough late fourth quarter games. Yeah, two really good teams.

37:09Zach Lowe:I wish they had won one of those because just for entertainment purposes, I want them to butt up into the 7-8 bracket. And Philly quietly is slipping down from, they're still six, but they're just a game ahead and actually tied with Orlando in the loss column. And if that were a four-team race for six, that would be quite a lot of fun. and if Charlotte could butt their way into that, it would be quite a lot of fun. But that's another thing about, you mentioned home court. In the play-in era more than ever, I think the number one seed should be able to pick its opponent from who comes out of the play.

37:41Zach Lowe:And I don't want to get stuck with like, oh, Embiid is healthy and suddenly the Sixers are awesome and we just drew them in the eighth seed. I think you should get to pick.

37:49Bill Simmons:I would not do that, but I would do five home games in round one for the one seeds.

37:53Zach Lowe:I like that too. Reward, if we're going to have this overlong regular season and we're going to pound our fist about it. We must care about it. You can't load advantage. You can't tank. We value durability. Well, then really reward it then.

38:04Bill Simmons:Yeah. Like go 2-2-3 for round one. It's like if you want to go play in and then go against the one seed, you're going to have to really beat them. One more thing on Detroit, Boston, Knicks, Cleveland. And we're about to talk to Cleveland. I think Cleveland has just liked playing Boston for years. I don't know what it is, but it's a matchup they like. There's been some rough Celtics losses over the years. So Cleveland last 25, 19 and six second offensive rating. Um, Harden honeymoon, Harden stage is always great. We'll see how, how it's doing in round two. But, um, the one thing that I've noticed, cause they just, you know, they look better partly because they have more good players.

38:46Bill Simmons:Cause as you said earlier, Garland didn't play all year, but they always have now somebody good, really, really good with the ball for 48 minutes. Right. Mitchell comes out. It's like, Harden, stay out there and run the offense for us. Harden's averaging a 24, 10, and 5, and he's shooting 48 % from three. It's pretty good as like you're, hey, can you run the offense for a few minutes? So there's a pressure that they can put on now for two and a half hours that I think just feels a little different. And then the other thing is the lobs. Like Harden already in, what's it been, six games? It's like, hey, Jared Allen, remember when he used to get lobs?

39:25Bill Simmons:Hey, Evan Mobley, Lobs. It's just, it feels like it's opened up. And they're the team, I think they're the scariest team in the East. All due respect to Detroit, I agree with everything you said about Detroit, but the ceiling for Cleveland is the highest, I think.

39:40Zach Lowe:You might be right on the ceiling because of, you know, we've barely seen Harden, Mitchell, Mobley, Allen, and the two-way possibilities of that foursome.

39:52Bill Simmons:And shoot with a bunch of shooters, like Struess will be back at some point. Merrill.

39:56Zach Lowe:I mean, I'm not, I'm not, we're 60 games into the season and it's like they hope to have Struess back for the playoffs. I'm just so wary of like, we think he'll be back for the playoffs. I'm wary of stuff like that now in my old age of like, I've kind of heard that one before and it's a lot to ask. Right. But yeah, Merrill's there. They got Keon Ellis, Dennis Schroeder. Dennis Schroeder's a weird fit in some of their lineups, but you might be right. I think they've got a lot to learn just about how to play together. And this Mobley minutes restriction is kind of like, we just don't see him and Allen play much together.

40:29Zach Lowe:And I want to see a little bit more of them re-familiarizing with that and with Harden. But look, I mean, they've got all the tools. They were a 60-win team last year that ran into the Pacers buzzsaw and had a bunch of injuries. And why shouldn't they be the scariest team?

40:45Bill Simmons:Yeah, now the last 25 games are on a 60-win pace again. They turned Hunter, who was just terrible.

40:52Zach Lowe:And now for the season, The whole King's out for the season.

40:55Bill Simmons:And then Garland, who wasn't playing, turned them into Harden, who plays all the time. And Schroeder, who we've seen in playoff series, and he's been on almost every team in the league at this point, but he's better than somebody who doesn't play at all. The Harden thing has reached a point, because I'm scared of Cleveland, where I just have to keep reminding myself that James Harden's on that team, and there will be a playoff series where maybe he can do James Harden things. But honeymoon Harden's a pretty potent thing.

41:24Zach Lowe:He's had some of his greatest playoff moments, and there have been some against your team. Against Celtics. That Philly Celtics series from a couple seasons ago, which Celtics won in seven, he had two, game one and four, I think, two of his finest playoff moments.

41:39Bill Simmons:Can I say I'm going to shock you and just be super positive about James Harden? Yeah. I mean, he's one of the 40, I forget where he is in my pyramid. I think I have him in the 30s, right? So he's one of the best 40 players of all time. He's also somebody that has been in situations where everything had to revolve around him, which was both the strength and the flaws of all those Houston teams, where everything ran through them for better or worse. It's really interesting when he can just jump into different basketball situations and he's like a basketball chameleon and he just becomes like a different version of himself overnight.

42:17Bill Simmons:He has this very, and we saw it in Brooklyn too, on your greatest theoretical team ever, where there's this unselfish facilitator. I don't really need the ball and I'm just fun to play with James Harden. That's like this alter ego he has. It's almost like the name should be like Jimmy. It's like, oh, it's Jimmy Harden.

42:37Zach Lowe:Jimmy Honeymoon Harden. That's how he starts on all these. I'm just going to be, I'm just here to help out.

42:42Bill Simmons:Just here to help out. I really like that version of James Harden. It's easily my favorite version. The I'm just here to make everyone else better and fit in is like really fun to watch. And I just kind of wish he played like that.

42:57Zach Lowe:Because of his size and his vision, I think he actually has the ability to make life easier for Donovan Mitchell than Darius Garland did. I think Mitchell is going to get easier sort of closeouts and gaps to attack and easier catching two threes than Garland could give him. And Harden is just a different kind of pitch than the Cavs have had. Just like a bulkier slowdown physical. He's just like Garland was part of like more part of the system that Kenny Atkinson and Jordan and all them built of like all this cuts and ball movement in motion and do this because he was small and more of a shooter.

43:33Zach Lowe:Harden is just as he would put it, he is the system and he can be a different sort of system for them. Just like a change up when Mitchell is on the bench. I like that. I think this, look, these four teams are all really good. And they also all have, other than Detroit, I think moments where you're like, can I really trust this team? Like certainly the Knicks have moments like that.

43:54Bill Simmons:I think Detroit playing them over and over again for two weeks would eventually be a detriment for them. Because so much relies on Cade. I think that's going to be their fatal flaw ultimately. I just don't see a second guy I really trust. It's too hard to just have one. and this has been what's killed Harden over the years. It's what, you know, Luka's had more playoff success recently than Harden probably has. But same thing where it's just, see the same thing over and over and over again. I think teams get used to it in a different way, but we'll see. A team that I didn't think I had to worry about was Denver.

44:28Bill Simmons:Who is, what do you think their record is in the last 32 games?

44:33Zach Lowe:Well, I know they're three and six in their last nine games and they were, what, nine and six without Jokic. So I'll go 16 and 16. that's their answer.

44:42Bill Simmons:Hey, look at that. They're a 500 team for 32 games. Now, there are reasons for that. Jokic missed a bunch of games. Aaron Gordon's out. They were getting this incredible out-of-nowhere Peyton Watson season that he got hurt. They don't have Gordon and Watson. They got screwed today by this little-known thing that the gamblers love when it's three games and four nights and the fourth game is a day game. It's like... Cleveland as well. Cleveland as well. It's like death. It's a really bad thing for the team that's playing the three and four. Their last six losses, they lost to Detroit twice by two and three.

45:16Bill Simmons:I watched both of those games. They could have won both of them. They didn't. OKC beat them by 10. They lost to Cleveland by two. Could have won that. Lost to the Clips by one. I still don't know how they didn't win that. And today they were handily winning Golden State, beating Golden State. Jokic looked like he was on his way to a 35-20-20. And then all of a sudden, Golden State had that weird thing where just guys started getting hot Al Horford left his body for about 20 minutes. Curry was on the bench doing like crazy Curry yells. And all of a sudden, Golden State was up eight. And Denver lost again.

45:50Bill Simmons:Their last win against a good team, January 7th, Boston, in Boston. And that was without Jokic. They do not have a lot of good wins here. And I'm still not going to panic because they don't have Aaron Gordon. And I'm not going to freak out about this.

46:07Zach Lowe:Well, that's where the panic is. Is that are they going to get him back? Because even with Watson back, and Cam Johnson is now back, and Watson's not, they don't have enough force, I don't think. And that's like, there's no, right now with Watson and Gordon out, there's almost no limit to how small you can play against the Nuggets other than Jokic, who you obviously need size for. And there's, because there's just nobody to punish your smaller guards on the block, on the glass, the way Aaron Gordon would seal for post-ups against smaller guys that like swung quarters of important playoff series for them and i think they just need that level of forcefulness that they don't really have another vehicle for and they're starting five are in their core group other than valanchun valanchunas and jokic and their defense just hasn't been good all year they're 22nd in defense today they were bad defensively against the clippers they were bad defensively like they just have too many miscommunications they now david adelman after the game i was reading you know draymond green was ruled out shortly before the game and the Nuggets tried to be like well one of the reasons we acted like Al Horford had never shot a pick and pop three before like we had no idea what to do oh my god this guy's shooting threes and their whole defense collapses guys are running into each other rotating the wrong place is they were prepared for Draymond Green to start and not Al Horford but like you like you shouldn't a pick and pop three from a 39 year old center should not send your entire defense into a frenzy of mistakes and it just happened over and over and over again it's like And then they got back cut left and right.

47:40Zach Lowe:They missed Reese Strother. As you know, I own property on Strother Straits. I have for a long time. Still kind of a train wreck defensively, staying in scheme. Like, it just wasn't... Their defense has not had the polish. Like, early in the season, they were playing on a string. They were playing together. They were toggling between zone and man. And they looked every bit like a team that was ready for a championship season. And somewhere along the way, they've kind of become a little incoherent. And it could just be, I actually put this to you as an even more experienced NBA watcher than I am.

48:12Zach Lowe:Is this just a wake us up in the playoffs kind of thing? Or it like we've been here so many times or I don't think it is. The other thing is like, I know he got injured and missed a lot of time and got hot after a slow start. I just don't feel Cam Johnson's presence enough in these games. I just like he's he's reaching like your famous Tobias Harris. Like, oh, he was out there status. Like, and Tobias has been out. Tobias has been out there. Tobias has been doing his thing. So forgive me, Tobias Harris. But these games go by and I'm like, oh, Cam Johnson played. That's right. He was two of seven in the box score.

48:45Zach Lowe:And I forgot that he played. This is going to be the number one thing I said after as my comeback.

48:52Bill Simmons:Cam Johnson, I saw it in person on Thursday. I had good seats. I was courtside right next to the Nuggets bench for Thursday's game. And Cam Johnson, like everyone's around, I was like, oh, there's Cam Johnson. And I'm at the game, and I just forgot he was out there for long stretches. His stats are okay. He's shooting 43 % from three. Just doesn't feel like it. And yet, when I watch it, I don't feel like Porter, who drove everybody crazy. But you always kind of felt Porter in the game, for better and worse. And Cam Johnson had two big threes near the end there where he missed both of them. I didn't think either of them were going in.

49:27Bill Simmons:I just thought he was going to be this like plug and play, awesome swing three-point shooter for them. And he hasn't been. That's one issue. Crunch time stats are pretty rough for them, surprisingly, when you have Jokic. They're bottom five defensive rating for 30 games now. Bottom five. Like you have teams that are tanking and they're bottom five. So it's a tough one because they have the championship pedigree and they have one of the, they have the best part in the world. I think. Rich Paul thinks it's Anthony Edwards. We can argue about that later.

50:01Zach Lowe:I did see that. And I was waiting for Max to push back and say Jokic's name, and Max did, and I wanted the discussion to go a little further than that.

50:11Bill Simmons:I respected that the best thing about a take like that is you have to at least see the take. So he explained it. He's like, I think the best part in the league should play both sides. Two-way guys. That's what I value. And you could make the case with Edwards, like conference finals, two straight years. He's getting better. His stats are up there with pretty much everybody in the league and he plays defense and he's better when it matters. But Jokic is the best part in the league, in my opinion.

50:40Zach Lowe:Every time I'm ready to trust the Timberwolves, and I do trust them. They do what they did tonight. They lost by 27 to the Sixers tonight. No, Gobert. Gobert was suspended. I forgot about that.

50:51Bill Simmons:But yeah, with Denver, so as you said, I'm an experienced watcher, which is a nice way of saying I'm old. Door A is, God damn it. Why did I not realize that when Gordon came back, this team was going to be a championship team? I'm so stupid. Door B is, they were telling us all season what they were and we were ignoring the science over and over and over again. And why did we think Gordon was coming back to the playoffs? And I don't really know the answer, but there are these two doors that are really far away from each other. and the big winner to me is OKC. If they can figure out a way to basically avoid Denver completely, right?

51:31Bill Simmons:Which it seems like there's a chance there's a Denver, Minnesota 3-6, which seemed inconceivable even, or a Denver, Minnesota 4-5. There's some sort of matchup where Denver or Minnesota could take each other out in round one. And I bet OKC is rooting for that, would be my guess.

51:49Zach Lowe:and we need to get some clarity on this aj mitchell thing by the way i know he's not perceived as a big part of what oklahoma city does and they just got jared mccain to kind of be this spark plug scorer creator aj mitchell is an awesome player and has not played now for a long time and i don't really get like the timetable's got a little murky but yeah i mean it's an injury right it's an injury yeah and the spurs have won what eight games in a row and how that was Spurs have won 11 games in a row, haven't they? Are they up to 11? I don't know. Those standings on ESPN say eight. But anyway. And yeah, but how those seedings three to six shake out is going to be really interesting.

52:26Zach Lowe:And that we should at least mention the other big thing that happened in regards to that this weekend was Dylan Brooks broke his hand. And the Suns now have a much harder time sort of trying to punch into that group, which I think they were going to be capable of giving it a real run. And maybe they still are, but that's a huge loss given on top of Booker's loss too.

52:45Bill Simmons:So I went on a big walk yesterday with my wife and my son. We came back and watched the fourth quarter of Phoenix. Who were they playing? Orlando. Phoenix, Orlando. I ended up doing a tweet about it because it was the weirdest game I've watched all season. It was an all-time rock fight. Jalen Green, at one point, was four for 24 and was so bad. I almost couldn't believe it. I couldn't, it was to the point where it's like, they got to take them out. Like, this is like watching a pitcher who can't throw strikes. He wasn't just missing jump shots. He was like front rimming. They were going right.

53:24Bill Simmons:They were going left. He was just a complete mess. And then in the end of the second OT, driving crazy basket makes it and then hits a buzzer beater falling out of bounds and finishes six for 26. And it was one of those games where Phoenix is just because they know they're not going to book it for a couple of weeks. They're just like, we got to let Jalen Green work this rust off because we have no other chance to create a shot. Orlando's playing crazy defense. So Phoenix is getting like no good shots. And then we go to the other end and it was just that Palo ball that is just awful to watch. Everybody's standing around and Orlando blows another one.

54:00Bill Simmons:And that's the one team I hate advocating for coaching change, but that's the one team where it seems like the coach has taken the team as far as he can take them would be my expert analysis.

54:10Zach Lowe:Well, also no Suggs in that game, but like no Suggs is a semi-regular condition for the Orlando Magic and no Franz Wagner. He's a 50-game-a-year

54:17Bill Simmons:player at this point. Yeah, and Franz is hurt for we don't know how long.

54:20Zach Lowe:But it does, I mean, we've gone over this a bunch, but it does feel like this is the year from hell for the Magic when they had year from heaven expectations and I just think a couple of seismic things could happen if they don't get out of the play-in, that's a disaster. If they do get out of the play-in and they just get rolled 4-1 or 4-0 in the first round and it's just not competitive. I think all bets are off.

54:46Bill Simmons:Well, Verno texted this to us because Verno Memphis has the pick. I hadn't thought of this, but they have like, it's a choice. It's the second best pick between Washington, Orlando and Phoenix, I think.

54:56Zach Lowe:You know what it is? It's complicated enough where I'm like, just tell me after the season which pick they get.

55:01Bill Simmons:Well, whatever the complications are, you thought it was going to be Phoenix is pick. It might be Orlando's pick, although now Phoenix loses Dylan Brooks and Devin Booker, so who knows? Yeah, so then you have the West, where you have six playoff teams, and Phoenix was supposed to be the seventh, but could go on a little free fall here. Golden State, I have no idea what to make of them. And then the Clippers, who I was there for the Mathurin-a-Sants. Mathurin-a-Sants?

55:33Zach Lowe:I'm not sure that's going to catch on, but you do you. You're a big Mathurin fan.

55:37Bill Simmons:Just, I am, and there was just a bunch of Clipper fans there who were not familiar with his work, kind of looking at each other going, what's going on right now? As he was just taking guys one-on-one. I kind of like their team when Garland comes back. We did a bet, me, House, and Sal, and Hench did Clippers to make the playoffs, Golden State not to make it. It was like almost two to one. And we did that on Friday because it was like this, yeah, you don't have Zubats. You can patch together some center minutes, but you're going to have Garland back hopefully in two weeks. You have Matherin kind of doing this weird heart imitation.

56:10Bill Simmons:You have Kawhi playing as well as anyone in the league. You have a good coaching staff. You have a team that's been winning and they don't have their pick. So why not? Like it's not a team I'd be crazy about seeing in the two, seven matchup. I'll just say that.

56:25Zach Lowe:Well, I mean, there's six, they're, they're on the verge of going from six and 21 to 500 with, by game 60, which is a very hard thing to do. and they're just objectively a pretty solid team and you know the drama I mean unfortunately there's it would be very hard for them to get out of the play-in so the drama is can they catch the Warriors for eighth and get into the upper half of the play-in bracket but yeah I mean look Garland Garland is you know I gotta see it like I gotta see it consistently before I'm like we just pencil him into the Chris Dunn starting spot and everything's gonna be great

57:01Bill Simmons:you know what Garland is? an actual point guard which they do not have on the roster That was really noticeable on Thursday. They're just running offense through Mathuron and Kawhi.

57:10Zach Lowe:It would be great. They have some defensive questions to answer that right now, they just don't play any weak defenders pretty much. I mean, they just play like Dunn and Derek Jones Jr., who's been awesome, but underrated part of their sort of good play lately is that he's back. But yeah, he'd be a great addition to their team. He'd make them one guy deeper, and they'd be a pretty dangerous team.

57:31Bill Simmons:You know what surprised me about Thursday night? Denver wanted the game and was really into it. And I don't think Jokic loves the Clippers. I don't know what the genesis of it is, but every time I've, I try to go every time Jokic plays the Clippers, every time he really wants the game and he's really into it. And I don't know, did they lose to them in the bubble? Was that what it was?

57:52Zach Lowe:No, it was the Clippers went up 3-1 and collapsed in dramatic fashion.

57:56Bill Simmons:Yeah, so I don't know what the genesis is, but Denver was playing super hard, was really into it and wanted it. and the Clippers won anyway. So I don't know. It seems like they're five behind Phoenix right now for the seventh spot.

58:12Zach Lowe:But that's a game, that's a matchup where you feel the absence of Aaron Gordon because they just don't have anyone to guard Kawhi. He's too big and strong. And you could say Watson, put Watson on him when he's healthy. That Watson is a guy who guards guards really well. He guards fast guys really well. Like he'd give Kawhi some issues because he's Peyton Watson, but there are just matchups where if you fall into the wrong place, you really feel Aaron Gordon's absence.

58:37Bill Simmons:So Raheem on the Ringer Gambling Show on Friday had this great stat about, have you heard of the 40-20 rule?

58:47Zach Lowe:Is that, oh, the 40 wins before 20 losses, right?

58:54Bill Simmons:And every champion since I forget what year, there's only been four times where somebody didn't hit the 40-20. And one of them was the post-COVID season. but it was like, I've read the 95 Rockets, I think the 04 Pistons, maybe the 06 Heat, but usually 40-20, you have to get to 40 wins for 20 losses and that's who wins the title and it's like over 90%, something like that. And this year, there's only three teams that are 40-20 teams unless the Celtics can somehow... I was going to say,

59:25Zach Lowe:don't sort change those scrappy guys in green. Pull off.

59:29Bill Simmons:Yeah, the Celtics would be the fourth. They would have to win in Phoenix, Tuesday night, conceivable now. They'd have to upset Denver on Wednesday and then beat Brooklyn at home. So they could be the fourth. But the three teams are obviously OKC and Detroit. And then San Antonio, who's been pretty hot. I know you've talked about them on your pod. Is there any sort of part of you that thinks that they could win four straight playoff rounds? Because I am of the mindset that they're too young and they have to have the taste your own blood playoffs before we can seriously talk about them winning a title.

1:00:07Bill Simmons:But they do fit this thing and there's only three teams that fit it.

1:00:12Zach Lowe:I would generally agree with you that they are young. Wemby's young and untested in the playoffs. Castle, Harper, on and on. The rookie wall is also a thing. Harper's played a lot of minutes. We'll see how he holds up. they had to demote Harrison Barnes out of the starting five because he kind of hit the veteran wall and maybe he'll get promoted back into it. He hit the old guy wall. I was trying to be nice. The veteran wall. I don't want to call Harrison Barnes old. And they did nothing at the trade deadline. We all thought they have this team that's ready to win and they have a bunch of pieces.

1:00:49Zach Lowe:Can they just get one more good player? They didn't. all that said I do think they could win three straight playoff rounds in the West just because like all of these other teams are sort of you know the Wolves are trying to figure themselves out to some degree the Rockets we talked about Denver just we just did a whole thing on Denver and they have a thing against the Thunder and I don't I wouldn't dismiss it as just small sample size theater I know the last the last couple games there were guys out but those were high stakes high like by regular season standards like the teams cared about those games and the Spurs won them and they won a couple of them handily and they had the thunder a little flustered and i i don't necessarily think that means they would beat the thunder in a playoff series i would pick oklahoma city uh but i don't think it's inconceivable that the spurs could make the finals they just they also have one of the five best players in the nba period and his that goes back

1:01:42Bill Simmons:to the mbp discussion so if they went on a real run here down the stretch they get the one seed Wemby goes up a level as all this is happening and maybe we have an 86 Rockets type of situation. Four rounds sounds excessive to me when you think none of those guys really have any of them been in a big playoff game?

1:02:04Zach Lowe:Darren Fox played Game 7?

1:02:06Bill Simmons:Harrison Barnes is the 10th guy on their team. Darren Fox played a Game 7 against Steph in Round 1.

1:02:13Zach Lowe:Luke Cornett is an NBA freaking champion. Luke Cornett,

1:02:16Bill Simmons:Kelly Olenek had Game 7 against Washington?

1:02:21Bill Simmons:All right, I have a couple quick things for you, and then we're going to talk about Kawhi.

1:02:27Zach Lowe:Could I just say one more thing about the Spurs? Because I don't think it's just the young guys thing you're talking about. I think you almost forget it as you get distant. When the playoffs fade away and you're in January and February in the regular season, and it's been a while since you've felt the playoffs, and all that, four, it's just really physically taxing. It's not just like the pressure and the noise and like the big stage. It's just like guys are going down like flies. It's a slog. It's every other day after the first round. I mean, it's really, really hard to win for a playoff series.

1:03:01Zach Lowe:You have to, and I think, I know you meant that when you said they haven't been tested and fell blood and all that stuff, but that's part of it is like feeling what it's like of, this is game 17 for us in the playoffs. Like that hurts. Yeah.

1:03:16Bill Simmons:I got a couple of mailbag questions actually about, are we sure the West is still better than the East? Okay. And a couple of people all made the same point. Like, yeah, OKC is the best team in the league. But if you go top four versus top four, are we sure the West top four is better than the East top four? It just got my brain thinking a little bit. If you had to rank the teams right now, we'd put OKC first. Who would you put second? You get either conference, the top eight teams. So who's your second best team right now? I'm still going to go Denver. I think I would go Detroit just because I don't know what I'm getting from Gordon yet.

1:04:02Bill Simmons:But I think it's, would you go Detroit third? Yeah.

1:04:06Zach Lowe:Yes. Okay.

1:04:07Bill Simmons:So it's Denver, Detroit two, three. So who's four? Would you put San Antonio there?

1:04:11Zach Lowe:I put San Antonio there.

1:04:14Bill Simmons:And then would you put the next three East teams followed by whoever is number four in the West, which would be Minnesota or the Lakers, whoever? I would probably have Minnesota over at least one, if not two, or three of the East teams. Well, we just saw that the West is still better. I have three. I want to do this new little mini segment with you called On the Record. I just want to go on the record. Okay. I just want to put my thing down. I don't think LeBron goes to Cleveland next year.

1:04:45Zach Lowe:Is it out of left field? I like that you're just going on the record with it. Okay, so elaborate.

1:04:51Bill Simmons:I don't see it. And here's why I don't see it, because I think Cleveland's a team that could win the title this year or next year. I think they have a player that is one of the best six or seven, eight, nine, whatever you want to say, guys in the league who's never made the finals. And I think they're close. And they're going to re-sign Harden. And I think they're close. And I think just being like, oh, by the way, we're going to add the LeBron farewell tour to this. It just doesn't pass the smell test to me. And I might be wrong, but I wanted to go on the record. I think it's going to be Golden State.

1:05:25Bill Simmons:That would be my bet. If you gave me the bet, Cleveland will be the favorite. The Knicks will probably be the second favorite. Lakers will probably be in the top three. And then there'll be a whole bunch of other teams. Golden State makes the most sense to me because they actually need them. And the narrative of, I'm going to finish my career with Steph Curry, the other great player of my generation. We won Olympic gold medals together. The team kind of needs me. so it's a farewell tour combined with the team needs me. I'm going to play with Draymond, Steve Kerr, who's coached me, and this is where I'm going to end it.

1:05:57Bill Simmons:Makes more sense to me than I'm just going to be awkwardly shoehorned into this team that had a chance to win a title who has a best guy in the league candidacy, at least from the guard position, just doesn't add up to me.

1:06:11Zach Lowe:It's a big bomb to drop into your team. It's just not simple of like, oh, he's coming on the minimum or the mid-level so it doesn't hurt our cap situation. It's free money. It's like... And he's bringing a 40-person camera crew.

1:06:23Bill Simmons:It just is... It's an aggressive move if you think you can win the title.

1:06:28Zach Lowe:He's not just going to stand in the corner and play 25 minutes. He's going to have the ball a lot and play 35 minutes and have to be engaged on defense. You saw it in the All-Star game.

1:06:37Bill Simmons:When he's on the court, he's going to be a principal player in the game. That's just how it's going to play out. He's one of the two best players of all time.

1:06:44Zach Lowe:So I've talked about the Warriors one a bit. I think you're right to flag it as possible. The Knicks, I probably haven't put enough thought into. Obviously, he's talked about Madison Square Garden and what that place means to him.

1:06:55Bill Simmons:Why would Jalen Brunson sign up for that?

1:06:58Zach Lowe:Well, I don't know why he... I mean, it's LeBron, I guess, but I just don't know. I haven't gone through the machinations it would take for it to happen if it's not just him coming on the minimum and the apron issues and what do they do with Cat and is Giannis still in play, etc., etc., etc.

1:07:15Bill Simmons:I think he either stays in LA or he goes to Golden State. those would be my best. All right, next one. It's kind of tied to LeBron. If they don't get LeBron, I don't, I think this is it for Steve Kerr. I have no inside info. This would be the right kind of area for him to be like, you know what? I'm going to take a year. I'll do some media. I'll try to figure out if I want to keep coaching. I'm calling it quits.

1:07:42Zach Lowe:Do you want me to say something?

1:07:44Bill Simmons:You don't have to say anything.

1:07:46Zach Lowe:I mean, look, he's been coaching without a contract beyond the season the entire year. That's always a red flag. There's always been this notion of, and he has said it publicly, that I'm tied at the hip to Steph. As long as Steph is here, I will be here, period. And we all know Steph is going to be there next year. This has been a trying couple of years for the Warriors on lots of different levels. I would not it would not shock it would not surprise me if he were not the coach next year

1:08:17Bill Simmons:and there's a little maybe Kamingo would have done better if we'd have like there's a little finger pointing stuff that's gone on since he's strapped and some of this stuff that's a real thing I just wonder if he's like you know what I'm good I'm gonna take a year off

1:08:30Zach Lowe:well I mean we saw I mean we saw Bob Myers just basically like we saw Bob Myers say

1:08:37Bill Simmons:I'm good I'm gonna take a year off yeah

1:08:39Zach Lowe:yeah I don't I don't, I'm ready for some time off.

1:08:42Bill Simmons:Yeah. All right. So those are my strongest two. I want to get on the record with predictions. I have the right to flip these predictions at a later date. I'm just putting these down. My third one is I'm not sure Darren Peterson is going to go first anymore. Which I would have bet anything on two months ago, but there's just too much weirdness with this Kansas thing with him coming out of games and the cramping and the competitiveness. And unless he's actually hurt, which is now a new theory. I think teams value competitiveness too much. It's the number one thing we've learned about the NBA in the last 15 years is you know what it's a good idea to have?

1:09:17Bill Simmons:Competitive guys. And I think this has just gotten too weird with the Kansas thing and I think there might be better picks. I know you don't care about the draft.

1:09:24Zach Lowe:No, I'll tell you this. I do care about the draft. I don't watch a lot of college basketball. I'll do my YouTubing as we get closer to the draft. By the way, my YouTubing, I don't know if you remember this from the Zach Lowe show last year. I said the number one guy I fell head over heels with based on 15 minutes of YouTubing was Connick and Apple. Yes.

1:09:41Bill Simmons:But I was also pitching him to you as you're going to love this Connick and Apple who's your kind of guy.

1:09:47Zach Lowe:Moves without the ball and sets picks. So I mean, I care to some degree. I don't watch college basketball because I just watch too much NBA. I don't have time. It's a time management thing. But I will tell you this. Knicks Pistons was, what day was that? I don't even know if I lost it. I think it was Thursday night. Yeah. I think the night before was when Peterson had taken himself out of a game. I mean, I still haven't even seen the video. of it on the pregame Knicks Pistons big game Eastern Conference clash Detroit's been in the news because of the suspensions the Knicks need to revenge every scout front office person coach at the game number one topic on their mind was what in the hell is going on with Darren Peterson I had so many Darren Peterson conversations and I just I remember talking to various people being like what what he just took himself out of the game and because I hadn't seen it they're Like, yeah, he literally pointed to Bill Self.

1:10:36Zach Lowe:I was like, I'm out. That's it. And no one knows what to make of it.

1:10:42Bill Simmons:I don't like it. I don't understand it. And it gives me Ben Simmons flashbacks to the OSU thing when he was just like, I'm out. And didn't care if they even made the NIT or whatever he did. Now, I hope that he actually has some physical stuff going on that he's afraid to make worse would be my hope. But I don't know. Just compare it to like, think of some of the great guys we've had even recently. Like would Anthony Edwards be like, yeah, I'm good. I'm going to take myself out. It just makes me nervous. So I'd want to have a lot more information on it.

1:11:15Zach Lowe:I mean, I can tell you this, the scouts in front of people I know, particularly people who are going to be picking towards the top of the draft, like a lot of their job is trying to figure out what's going on. And if there were a physical thing at some point, one of them would figure it out and would start to get around and everyone is just completely perplexed.

1:11:35Bill Simmons:It's where the band said just becomes an easier pick because ultimately you just made the key point. You're talking about guys who are going to get fired if they get this pick wrong. And that's when you just gravitate to her. You know, this guy, he's six, eight, perfect body. He's worst case scenario is going to be a better Andrew Wiggins. This is a safer bet. I'm just going to take this guy. All right. We're going to take a break for the podcast. Keep going on here on Netflix. This episode is brought to you by Panda Express. It's not always easy to show love, but there is one way to express how you feel, food.

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1:12:42Bill Simmons:Alexa learns your style, anticipates what's next and makes it happen. And now Alexa Plus is free with Prime on your Amazon devices like Echo and Fire TV. Learn more at amazon.com slash Alexa Plus. Kawhi Leonard. I can't wait for this. I wanted to do a deep dive. We're going to try to keep this to 30 minutes. Kawhi Leonard, we're going to do deep dives here every once in a while in the Sunday Night Pods where we pick a player and we just dive in. And Kawhi Leonard, I'll start here. I think the weirdest career of anyone in the top 40 for me. And he is top 40. I have him as a level four. I have the five levels that I created in my book, The Pyramid.

1:13:23Bill Simmons:Level four is the one right below the Pantheon. and he is right there as one of the best 30 guys of all time for me. I think I have number 29. He averaged 12 points a game for the first four years of his career. He was a finals MVP and a defensive player of the year before he ever made an all-star team. He's only played 766 regular season games in 15 years, which averages out to about 50.5 a game or 51 a game or something like that. Um, he's been the finals MVP on two different teams. And if you only watch the last two months of the season, you would think he was one of the best five players we have.

1:14:05Bill Simmons:I have no idea if he's going to be in round two of the playoffs ever again in his career, much less, uh, the finals. We know very little about him. He's been the most enigmatic, quiet, um, strangest player to figure out that we've had. He quit on the Spurs. I guess quit's the wrong word. Just refused to play for them anymore. didn't get along with an infrastructure that is pretty beloved where guys all love each other and he was just like I'm out I don't trust you guys I've had it and there's a lot more else to discuss but at his best at his best was right there in the LeBron Durant vicinity and is one of the 30 best players of all time and has two rings so I'll start there I mean he's

1:14:51Zach Lowe:been so good this year and relatively available enough to qualify for all of these awards we've been talking about like i think he belongs in the first team all nba conversation for those last few spots i don't think he'll play enough to get there but he's absolutely been that good uh it's partly because yokich has missed let's say half of the last 30 games or half the games since the kawaii came back around thanksgiving he's either been the best or second best player in the league in that time span given all the games that other guys have missed but he's been that good he's been like an mvp level player right now, which I kind of thought, I'm not sure we're going to see that again for 35 out of 45 games in any season.

1:15:31Zach Lowe:And he's been that good. His career has been so weird that you didn't even get to the Cap circumvention scandal that's currently happening.

1:15:38Bill Simmons:We have a whole bunch of other shit to go through. He's only been a top three MVP twice. In 16 and 17, he was second and third and he was fifth and 20. And it's one of those when you look at the complete resume, it's both not as impressive as I thought it was going to be, but then also more impressive.

1:15:57Zach Lowe:And in an era where so many of the best players with any kind of longevity are going to crack 20 ,000 points, which used to be hallowed ground, but is less so because of the three-point shot, and he's still chilling around 15 ,900, 770 games played. He might not get to 20 ,000 points. And it's so weird that I would actually ask you, who else is in the conversation for weirdest career in your top 40 or 50 or whatever it was. Is there anyone even in the vicinity?

1:16:27Bill Simmons:See, now I'm gonna have to dive right into the pyramid. Secret doc. So I had him 31, my bad. Top of level four, Scotty Pippen 32, Kawhi 31, Dwayne Wade 30. Have them all in a row. And I think Dwayne Wade is a little more reliable. If you go on weirdo careers, Rick Barry's up there.

1:16:47Zach Lowe:Rick Barry's a good one.

1:16:48Bill Simmons:He had that whole goes to the ABA, can't play for a year. blew out his knee, lost another year. And Robinson going all four years in college. That's a good one. Then having to serve for two years and then coming into the league was pretty weird. Bill Walton's thing is super weird.

1:17:10Zach Lowe:I guess that's injury.

1:17:12Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's injury related. And then probably Dr. J just because the first part of that was ABA. I think those would be the weirder ones.

1:17:20Zach Lowe:Walton's a good call because Walton legit had a case of best player alive at his peak.

1:17:26Bill Simmons:Which Kawhi kind of got there in 2019, right? I think there was a real case for him after the 2019 playoffs, especially when LeBron went to the Lakers. That season wasn't good. And we kind of, we didn't know at that point, but it seemed like, well, LeBron's now going to move into a different phase of his career. We didn't know it was going to keep going the way it did. but I think we left 2019 thinking Kawhi was the best player in the league.

1:17:52Zach Lowe:It's the hill that I will die on. I think he should have been the MVP in 2017 when Russell Westbrook won and you voted for Harden. I voted for Kawhi. I got laughed at for voting for Kawhi publicly. I was one of eight people who voted for him. I thought he was the best player in the league and should have won the MVP.

1:18:08Bill Simmons:All NBA three times. His three-year peak from 2019 to 21 offensively, he was basically a 26, 7, and 4. For his career, 50 % field goal, 39 % three, 86 % free throw, 23.5 PR. And then playoffs, he's better. 21, eight, and three. Almost a 50, 40, 90 guy, 24.2 PR, which is 11th. His playoff run from 19 to 21 is the best great player case for him, which includes the title. 48 games, 2019, 2020, 2021. 30 points a game. nine rebounds a game, five assists a game, 51 % shooting, 88 % from the line, 37 % from the line.

1:18:55Zach Lowe:And a shot that would be the shot if the shot weren't already taken by Michael Jordan.

1:19:00Bill Simmons:Right. It's as good as any stretch, any three-year stretch LeBron had, any three-year stretch Durant had, just statistically. And then you have that game seven he played against Philly in 2019, which I know you love. Nobody in Toronto shows up except for Ibaka. the whole team is in a freezer. Van Vliet's 0 for 5. We're like, is this guy ever going to be playable again in the playoffs? Kawhi takes 39 shots, makes 16. Everyone else on the team other than Ibaka is 8 for 40. And he hits probably the most famous non-final shot ever. Right?

1:19:40Zach Lowe:Oof. Is it more famous than the shot over Craig Hilo? Maybe.

1:19:47Bill Simmons:No. Craig, that's kind of the beginning of the Jordan. Yeah. Well, it's in the running for that one. Well, a couple of things we got to talk about. First of all, his first four years of the career is 12 points a game. And his next four years was 24. How many players doubled their point total in the second four years? His Clippers career, which is 309 games, he's basically 25, six rebounds, four assists, 18 field goals a game. He averaged 9.5 field goal attempts a game first four years of his career. We had to talk about the defense.

1:20:21Zach Lowe:Two-time defensive player of the year for a non-center is extraordinary.

1:20:26Bill Simmons:So we've talked about this a lot, and this dates back to our Grantland days when Kawhi had emerged. I remember I wrote one of my last pieces for Grantland was about Kawhi as a sharktopus. There was a sharktopus movie. We did a graphic with Kawhi's face with an octopus. for me it's him and Kawhi as the best perimeter defenders I've ever seen

1:20:47Zach Lowe:him and Pippen?

1:20:49Bill Simmons:it's him and Pippen as levitating above ever and else I've ever seen I might actually throw MJ in there as number three I don't know if Aman Thompson can get there he's certainly when you think like where his age are and what he's done already I think it's conceivable is there anybody else as a perimeter defender that you've seen that can match pippen and kawaii

1:21:16Zach Lowe:gary payton didn't have enough size um there were certain guys he couldn't like he couldn't have guarded yokich pippen and kawaii could have guarded yokich or try no not those two guys i mean those those two standalone and i i think i would like to go back to watch more scott i mean scott he's one of my one of my just like i got into fights and verbal fights in college over Scottie Pippen. I was the guy that defended Scottie Pippen. I love Scottie Pippen as a player. So I want to go back and watch a little film. Just defense only, I feel like Kawhi was scarier. Pete Kawhi was maybe a little scarier than Scottie.

1:21:52Zach Lowe:Just by this much. A little stronger maybe, like a little physically like just, is this guy a tank? Like, I don't know. Immovable.

1:22:02Bill Simmons:He had that thing that the only other guy I've seen do it is Pippen, and he used to joke about it with the, when he would just decide to take the ball. Yeah. Somebody would be dribbling the ball up and Kawhi would be like, I'm going to take that. And he would just go get the ball and steal it. And that would be it.

1:22:20Zach Lowe:You could see him decide, I'm just going to take the ball from you. It's not going to be like a knockaway where then we both go chase it and I get it. I'm just going to reach out my hand, grab the ball from you, and start going the other way. Thank you for participating in this exercise. He got the 2014 Finals MVP.

1:22:40Bill Simmons:I think as the years pass, it's like, and he shut down LeBron in the 14th finals. He actually didn't shut him down. Like LeBron's stats were pretty similar to what they always were. But he did shut him down in key moments of games where they would be up by 20 and maybe LeBron would get some stats near the end. But there were, it was really the only time I remember, because Indiana would have their reputation of, oh, Paul George gives LeBron everything he can handle. It's like, not like this. not like Kawhi who just seemed completely unafraid of him and went at him and this was

1:23:11Zach Lowe:LeBron at the peak of his powers and that's the physicality thing too is like the rare guy who just is a physical specimen could go toe-to-toe with LeBron size was the other guy from that era

1:23:23Bill Simmons:and there was also Blake Griffin from that era there are all these things to him go so you have that piece his 2014 finals he was 11 for 19 from three 61 percent 18 points a game so he ends up that was one of those finals MVP by default. We didn't really know who to vote for. You could make a case, maybe just vote Duncan because he was the spiritual guy of the team. All right, biggest what ifs before we get to the biggest what if. 2017, game one Golden State. Kawhi's been awesome. You voted for him for MVP. 26 points in 23 minutes. Steps on Zaza's foot and the rest is history.

1:24:00Zach Lowe:That entire playoffs, Kawhi was insane. The entire playoffs.

1:24:05Bill Simmons:Insane enough that I think Golden State was the best team of this century. It was conceivable that he could take them on by himself and maybe give them a run. That was Durant year one.

1:24:17Zach Lowe:Durant year one. That's the best team I've seen all century. 16 and one in the playoffs. Yeah. That team is unstoppable. Yeah, I think he's so good that that could have been a 4-2 Warrior series. I don't think he beat some... He would have landed some punches. like it let's just posit that they steal game one on the road and then we have two days of like oh the Warriors in trouble the Spurs are ready for this then the Warriors win game two probably win game three and like yeah but they get another game in there somewhere

1:24:47Bill Simmons:another what if 2020 the bubble so we head into COVID there's three teams that we think can win the title the Clippers and the Lakers then the Bucks who hadn't really proven that they they'd made the Eastern Finals the year before lost to Toronto and They were probably the team that was going to come out of the East, we thought. And then the bubble happens and the Lakers get stronger in the bubble and the Clippers completely cave. And they've talked about it since about they just weren't built for the bubble. See of that. 2021, the next year, Kawhi is incredible again. 30.7 rebounds, four assists in the first two rounds.

1:25:24Bill Simmons:Gets hurt at the tail end of round two. Ends up like kind of sneaking Phoenix into the finals. And I don't know if they were the best team. Do you think they were the best team? I actually thought the Phoenix was better the next year.

1:25:38Zach Lowe:Yeah, well, that's when all the wheels came off in the playoffs. And then the wheels came off, yeah. Phoenix was a really good team, but yeah, I would have liked to have obviously seen the full-strength Clippers. He gets hurt in the Utah series that they end up winning in six. And then...

1:25:53Bill Simmons:Yeah, at the tail end of that series. And then the Phoenix also got to avoid Anthony Davis. So I'm just stating facts. I know Eddie Johnson's going to call us Waterboys tomorrow on Twitter. and fight us. And then, honestly, the biggest what if other than this aspiration thing was him demanding that Paul George be part of this Clippers situation in 2018. And it's a what if that all my Clipper fans talk about all the time. You know, the trade was Paul George for a guy named Shea Gilgis Alexander, Gallinari, who was still competent at that point, four unprotected firsts, two swaps, and then another pick.

1:26:32Bill Simmons:and we know what happened with those picks. And the question has always been, why didn't you just go to the Clippers, have all the picks, have the young players and just take some time to try to figure it out. You just won the title. It's not like you had to win the title right away. Why didn't you have more patience? Why did you demand they have to gut everything so it's you and Paul George? Obviously he would do it over again if he could. But it's a pretty good what if. Now, we didn't know SGA was going to even be an all NBA player. We knew he was good.

1:27:02Zach Lowe:We knew he was good. Like, he was clearly good.

1:27:04Bill Simmons:Didn't know he was going to be an All-NBA player, much less a two-time MVP. Knew those picks were going to hurt. And I got to say, I defended the move at the time. I think everybody did. I think everybody still would. Yeah, because it's like, you can't get Kawhi unless you do this. The question is, could you have gotten Kawhi anyway? What else was he doing? He didn't want to go to the Lakers. Like, we know that now. He was playing poker with the Lakers. Didn't seem like he wanted to go back to... What were the other options?

1:27:33Zach Lowe:That's a great question. I think the Raptors thought they had an honest chance at him, even though they knew he never asked to be there. They knew he wanted to go to Los Angeles. They felt that winning a title, he had a good relationship with Masai Ujiri. Yeah. Maybe do a one-year deal and then figure it out after that? I think that, yeah, I think they thought they had some kind of chance. But you're right. What were the other? There was no other team that was in it at the time. It was those three teams and it went on and on and on. And I don't think he ever wanted to go to the Lakers. The Lakers obviously thought they could have gotten him.

1:28:06Zach Lowe:And there was, you know, Jerry West was worried the Lakers were going to get him. But I think he wanted to go to the Clippers all along. And should you have called his ball? I don't know. I mean, it's hard to know. But clearly, in retrospect, they would have been better off just signing Kawhi and not trading for Paul George. Although Paul George was coming off the best season of his career, having finished third in MVP. And, you know, but he was awesome. stars want to play with stars man I don't know what to tell you and if you're put in that if you're backed into that corner having put so many chips into this Kawhi basket where you're following them around during the season you're at his games you're letting them know you're watching and all this stuff it would have been a tough pill to swallow

1:28:43Bill Simmons:way to hold off making more jokes about following them around and waving carrots and you really held back I was impressed there's been a couple stretches in the history of the league that are just just kind of earth shattering to look back at in retrospect. And I think one of those stretches for the league was that 2019 season followed by the COVID season. Just Kawhi sitting there being available, really for anybody, nobody knowing whether they should even trade for him or not. Nobody thinking he'd stay more than a year. All these teams kicking the tires on it, ultimately decided not to. And Toronto just saying, fuck it and doing it, right?

1:29:25Bill Simmons:So you had that. You had Golden State with a suddenly, nobody understood why, but maybe sort of unhappy Durant. And then you had the Kyrie piece. And then the fight with Draymond on court argument. And then Kyrie falling apart in Boston. And then it's like, wait, are these guys headed toward maybe playing together? So you had that. You had the where's Kawhi going. You had Anthony Davis basically saying, I want to play for the Lakers midseason. and just blowing up the Lakers and all the young players because they couldn't get the trade done. So that trade's looming. And everything's leading to that weird summer where we had the Kawhi thing, the Paul George trade.

1:30:03Bill Simmons:We had Houston getting a little rocky. And then we had... Houston traded Chris Ball for Russ. We had that. And then Brooklyn. And then we have this new season that starts with all these guys on these new teams. And then COVID happens. It will never be tough. That has to be the weirdest two years we've ever had. It's pretty weird.

1:30:23Zach Lowe:There's a lot. I mean, the Kyrie thing by itself was such an earthquake. The Kyrie basically demanding a trade out of Cleveland was right. And because that took a long time to resolve itself as well as you as you lived and know well, that was because if I'm remembering my calendar right, that came kind of after free agency that summer was mostly over and we were into like calm mode, like, oh, there's no. Oh, yeah.

1:30:48Bill Simmons:We were having our ringer NBA meetings and then everything was done. and then it was like, Kawhi is now a Boston Celtic. We're like, whoa! We like sprung into action. But yeah, so really strange stretch. Kawhi and that whole trade moves into it. I think the Clippers would do it again, but there is this alternate universe where they would have had Kawhi, SGA in his second year, Zubats, Gallinari, Lou Williams, Max Capspace to try to trade for any other guys, Patrick Beverly, Harold, Shamit, all their picks and then some other picks that they've gotten.

1:31:25Zach Lowe:That's the key because you could live in this world where if you just get Kawhi and you don't trade for Paul George, you're good now and good later and set up to be good for 15 years and maybe really good. But to get the good now part, at some point in the first 18 months, you need another guy.

1:31:42Bill Simmons:Yeah. Right. Which with the cap space and everything else, who knows? They might have traded for it. So now, so he's, it's somehow year 15,

1:31:55Bill Simmons:766 games and 146 playoff games. So he hasn't even played a thousand games combined yet. How many more years is he going to play? Would you trade for him this summer? Would the Clippers consider trading for him? And then we haven't talked about the aspiration piece of this yet. And the fact that we have no idea if they're going to get punished. We've heard crazy rumors about what the punishment might be or might not be. including there's a voided contract contingent out there that I enjoy. They're kind of like the, the Kawhi aspiration truthers that he's just going to be a free agent this summer.

1:32:30Bill Simmons:I don't think that's going to happen.

1:32:32Zach Lowe:That would surprise me, but what am I supposed to say? It would surprise me. So would that, so with the whole aspiration thing,

1:32:42Bill Simmons:I think we're prepared for all of it. Ride me out for the next four Kawhi years. What happens?

1:32:48Zach Lowe:what do you foresee i foresee the safest bet and what i would bet on is he never leaves the clippers and they are a good solid team that never breaks through in a big way but well but there is also a universe where they do have all this max caspe set up there the clippers are la they have inuit dumb maybe somebody comes i don't know who that somebody is but i think i i i bet he stays with the Clippers and it's just a marriage that lasts for whatever reason. And he rides it out as a very good player on a good team. And maybe that's it. It's like a true crime series where

1:33:25Bill Simmons:the couple, one of the couple had an affair with the Gardner and then they killed the Gardner and buried him under the house. And now they're married for life and they just have to - I didn't say all that.

1:33:35Zach Lowe:I just said he stayed with the Clippers. I didn't mention a Gardner.

1:33:37Bill Simmons:It's like a good Apple show. Who's the gardener? John Hamm and Diane Lane, and they have a secret. They have to stay together now. Diane Lane getting involved. They have to stay now for the rest of whatever. Yeah, the dirty secret is they're actually like okay positioned as long as they don't get nailed with some sort of giant suspension thing, right? They were able to get younger with Garland and Matherin, who I think they're going to re-sign. They'll have Kawhi. They have some flexibility with expirings. They're finally done with this OKC trade. And they're going to have cap space at 27, which is what they seem to care about.

1:34:16Zach Lowe:And I think they did well in the Zubats trade. I think they did probably very well in the Zubats trade. And we'll see what the lottery does. If they do land a fifth, sixth, seventh pick in this draft, that's a huge deal for them. And I think they did well in that trade. Last thing with Kawhi.

1:34:35Bill Simmons:so you see these guys when they come into the league within a couple years they're in the vicinity of where they end up right and you have some situations like Jalen Brown where it's like Jalen Brown great athlete there were pieces of it I never thought he would be as good of an all around player as he is now and as good of an offensive player I always thought he'd be a little bit flawed and a little bit But you'd always see the weaknesses with him. And he's gotten to a level higher than I thought. But it's still like if you watch Jalen Brown in 2018-19, and you watch him now, it's not... You could see that led to this, I guess is my point.

1:35:17Zach Lowe:You're talking about the Jalen Brown that the Spurs surely asked for in the Kawhi Leonard trade talks.

1:35:22Bill Simmons:But you see Durant in year two. And it's going to still look like what we're watching now with Houston. You even see like as different as LeBron is now physically, there's still a lot of the same stuff of like the head steam down, all that. If you go and watch Kawhi in like 2013 and watch the Kawhi now, it's like it's a different human being. Like he has this dead eye three point shot now. His three point shooting was always good. But now he has this like stutter step line drive in your face shot. He's got that little foul line jumper. Like his paint game is unbelievable. Like he's really one of the most gifted scorers of this century now.

1:36:05Bill Simmons:And I just, that would have been inconceivable to me going to the 2014 finals games. You've never ever in a million years could have convinced me this guy will eventually be a Jedi on offense. I never would have bought it.

1:36:17Zach Lowe:Part of it is being drafted to a good team, right? So you're not just giving the keys right away to like, oh, he averaged 27 points in his second year. part of it is that they worked hard on his shot and he worked hard on his shot and it went from a potential liability to a massive asset and part of it is just reps and reps and reps and getting better and better and it's very i think apt that you mentioned jalen brown because during the kawai thing i wrote about jalen brown for espn and about how this dilemma the celtics faced of like should we should we trade this guy for kawaii and age ourselves up seven eight years whatever it was and I wrote like if you looked at a lot of the statistical indicators and I'm talking the tracking stuff like number of pick and rolls ran pretty low number of isos ran pretty low assists out of pick and roll like they they were very similar players at that state when Kawhi was a Jalen Brown stage in his career then they were very similar players and Jalen Brown has not become as good as Pete Kawhi Leonard but he's developed in sort of a similar like the breadth of his game has taken it has taken them to places where it didn't appear that it could have gone back then.

1:37:22Zach Lowe:But it was there. It was lurking in there.

1:37:24Bill Simmons:My big case for not making that trade, and I did it on pods back then, was the profile of him versus Paul George was very similar, Jalen Brown. And it just felt like a pretty good bet that he could be as good as Paul George, barring an injury, right? And that was going to be his arc as a player.

1:37:45Zach Lowe:Another guy they could have traded Jalen Brown for.

1:37:48Bill Simmons:Right. And the question for me is, why would I trade this for a year of Kawhi Leonard when there's no chance he's going to stay? Made no sense to me. I didn't think they should do it. The other what if we didn't mention, how weird that 2011 draft was.

1:38:05Zach Lowe:Kawhi goes first. What if the Pacers never traded him? Well, you have that, but you also have Milwaukee takes Jimmer for that 10th.

1:38:14Bill Simmons:Klay Thompson goes 11th to Golden State. Alec Burks, 12th to Utah. The Morris twins go 13th and 14th to Phoenix and Houston. Okay. And I'm actually surprised Darryl passed on Kawhi at 14. It felt like he would have fit the model from some of the stuff he was doing at San Diego State. Indiana takes Kawhi 15th and then trades him for George Hill. And that was one of the first great pieces you wrote for us at Grantland when you did the whole deep dive of a trade that I think both teams were probably happy about. Because Georgia, they got to the conference finals twice. And you have to give up something to get something.

1:38:52Bill Simmons:They gave up Kawhi. But there's an interesting alternate universe where they just have Danny Granger, Paul George, and Kawhi Leonard. And they're just like, I guess we'll figure out who brings the ball up.

1:39:02Zach Lowe:It's a really fun draft all the way down because Jimmy Butler sneaks in at number 30. It's a drunk draft. Chandler Parsons at number 38 becomes a weirdly important player because of his contract and the decision the Rockets had to make to like restrict him or not restrict him. I can't remember exactly. It was a very, it was a very fun draft. Yeah.

1:39:21Bill Simmons:So the rap on Kawhi, he's at San Diego State for two seasons. His second year, he averaged 16 and 11. And he was 25 for 86 from three. And this is the college three. Shut 29%. And the rap was, great athlete, can't shoot. And then San Antonio was like, we're going to fix him in like a month. and he's basically been a good three-point shooter, I think other than his rookie year for most of his career. The other question for me is in the pyramid, how high can he go if he could put together a couple more really high-end years? Because that's where like Dwayne Wade, his career ended pretty abruptly, right?

1:40:05Bill Simmons:His peak was from his rookie year in Miami, 0-4, 0-5 season. I would say through about 13 with Miami and then he just moved into a different phase of his career.

1:40:16Zach Lowe:He was leaking oil in the 2014 finals.

1:40:18Bill Simmons:Yeah, the 33-game winning streak was probably his last great hurrah. Isaiah Thomas, I have a 29. His career ended early and then Koozie at 28. There is a chance he could move into that Charles Barkley, Carl Malone, Kevin Garnett, Bob Pettit. I have from 26, 25, 24, 23. In that range, if he can play like three, four more years, I think that's a good range for him. and maybe that's where he ends up.

1:40:43Zach Lowe:Can I give you a Kawhi stat? Yeah. So I did a little basketball reference diving. Yeah. And these are cherry-picked numbers to be sure, but I put them a little lower just to make sure I was including. I wasn't just cutting it off, like right where Kawhi hit. All right, here are the guys who in the entire history of the NBA, ABA, played at least 5 ,000 minutes in the playoffs. Now that's where I had to cherry-pick a little bit because Kawhi is at 5 ,100. So he's barely over that. But so a couple of other guys.

1:41:15Bill Simmons:5 ,000 minutes is still a lot for the playoffs.

1:41:16Zach Lowe:5 ,000 minutes, points per game, at least 21. Kawhi is at 21 and a half, I think. Player efficiency rating, at least 23. Kawhi is at 24 and change, 24.2. So 5 ,000 minutes, all playoffs. This is all playoffs. Points per game in the playoffs, greater than 21. PER in the playoffs, greater than 23. nine guys in the history of the NBA. LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaq, Jerry West, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Dirk Nowitzki, Hakeem Olajuwon. That's the whole list. Wow. That's what we're talking about. Like, that's what this guy is.

1:41:58Bill Simmons:It would have been really fun if Detroit said fuck it and traded for him.

1:42:04Bill Simmons:I don't think I would have. They had the best record in the NBA. I would have said, don't do that. But if they had done that, I would have talked myself into it in two minutes.

1:42:13Zach Lowe:It would have been... We would have been exhilarated on the trade deadline show. If that had broken at 2-12, trade deadline day, Detroit to what?

1:42:26Bill Simmons:You saw it in the All-Star game. There's very few guys that could take over a quarter like that on both ends. and you know we're going to look back in the 21st century and especially at the forward position where we had a lot of good ones and I think LeBron and Durant will levitate above the other ones as forwards but Kawhi is the one Durk had his moment too in 2011 especially and that's probably I'm probably leaving somebody out but those would be the four that I think were the most impactful forwards and winning titles on two different teams I hope he has one more run because he's really fun to watch in person is the other thing.

1:43:07Bill Simmons:I still feel like he delivers the goods and there's just nobody like him in the league. I don't even know who to compare him to.

1:43:13Zach Lowe:I mean, I would love him to have one more real run. The problem is, I just, I mean, they lost in seven to the Nuggets last year in the first round. So we didn't get to see a long run, but we just haven't had a long run since the bubble. It's just every playoffs where even when it starts promising, he gets injured.

1:43:35Bill Simmons:Kawhi Leonard, before we go, that was fun. I enjoyed our deep dive. Yeah, it's a fascinating one. Before we go. Oh, and by the way, the other thing with Kawhi is if you went around the league and said, give me your three best off-the-court Kawhi stories, how many could you actually get from people?

1:43:57Zach Lowe:It's, I mean, I don't know anyone who even knows

1:44:01Bill Simmons:like nobody knows anything about him even now 15 years in

1:44:06Zach Lowe:except for Uncle Dennis I don't think like what did Harden say when right before he got traded there was some piece where he was like I think I know him probably better than anyone in the league and I don't really know him we don't really talk much

1:44:18Bill Simmons:yeah like I was I was googling him and it was like Kawhi's married I was like Kawhi's married? I just no idea never really seen him in any situation like that before we go Winter Olympics how much did you consume? Are you just in full basketball?

1:44:31Zach Lowe:It was on in the background now and then because my daughter enjoyed it. So like around dinner in the evening, we'd have it on. I missed the hockey games. I missed both the gold medal hockey games because I was watching basketball. But we saw a fair bit of curling, figure skating, you know, luge, bobsled. We saw some of that. Now, I can't say, I can't name a bobsledder or a luger or even if I can name a couple of figure skaters, that's it.

1:44:55Bill Simmons:The hockey was incredible. the women's hockey game was outstanding and so much fun and then today the US Canada which I did not wake up for until the third period but the 3-on-3 I don't love for the gold medal I would have gone 4-on-4 for 10 minutes then eased into the 3-on-3 but as usual with hockey our goalie stood on his head and stopped everything and was just out of his mind and hockey is a lot more simple to understand sometimes than like basketball, which we just talked about for two hours. In hockey, sometimes your goalie can just single-handedly win everything for you. And you're like, all right, couldn't score on our goalie.

1:45:38Bill Simmons:And now, now we've won. And that's what happened.

1:45:41Zach Lowe:I will say it all the time. One of the greatest feats I have ever seen in sports, I only saw because one of my best friends in college is from the Czech Republic. In the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, we got up in the middle of the night every night to watch the czech hockey team because he was so into it and they won the gold medal and they won the gold medal because dominic hasik just lost his mind for i mean he was the best goalie in the world but i mean in that olympics there was a shootout against canada i think in the semi-finals where he went five for five and it was like lindras cry it was just every like a plus canadian player took a run at him in a shootout and he saved every single one.

1:46:20Zach Lowe:It was absolutely insane. It was one of the best things I've ever seen.

1:46:23Bill Simmons:Well, the most fun thing for me about this, it was awesome. I love this Olympic hockey run, but we had the Kachuk brothers who were on the US Olympic hockey team, who Brady and Keith, and is it Keith? Brady and Matthew. Keith was the dad. And everybody who's ever gone against either of their teams kind of hates those guys because they're like agitator, frustrating guys. and they've had a lot of success. But on Team America, you have to throw it aside. But now we have the Hughes brothers who are the younger versions of them. You don't have the same baggage because your team hasn't battled them.

1:47:00And the Hughes brothers were the two of the heroes

1:47:04Bill Simmons:because one scored the winning goal in one and then the other scored the winning goal today. But their mom, you know I love mom stuff with the athletic genes because I really think it comes from the mom a lot of the times. The mom was the greatest athlete in the history of UNH. She played, she was a three-sport athlete in college. She was soccer, hockey, and lacrosse. Michael Malley told me this because he went there. He was like two years older then. I had to go look it up. And then was this famous college hockey player who was like on the first Olympic team. But like just this legendary athlete and then goes and has the Hughes kids.

1:47:39Bill Simmons:And there's a third Hughes kid who could have made the team and got hurt, Luke Hughes, who's the defenseman.

1:47:45Zach Lowe:i legitimately thought you were going to say that their mom is sarah hughes the olympic gold medal finger skater from like 20 years ago no no that would have been exciting too in my head i was like it feels like she would have had kids real young if they was that sarah hughes and i don't think that i don't remember her doing that all right but better better athlete than jackie

1:48:04Bill Simmons:mcmullin another unh great exactly and then another thing which a bunch of my jewish friends were excited about this they said this is one of the great moments in jewish sports history because the Hughes brothers are, the mom is Jewish and they had bar mitzvahs. So they're like, we're claiming this is one of the great moments we've ever had.

1:48:21Zach Lowe:I'm learning a lot about the Olympics right now.

1:48:23Bill Simmons:I mean, this mom, three sport athlete in college, it's div one. It's not like it's div three where you can just kind of show up for the season. Have you booked her for the Bill Simmons podcast? I'm so fascinated. I have so many more questions. And then she married a hockey guy and they have three kids. So we're all like, you know, major NHL players. Get her and the Suns on the pod. Get her on. Guy loses his teeth, scores the winning goal right after. It's like the famous photo. And, you know, the 1980 Olympic team was the true non-Boston sports outlet of my life. So it was fun to get a little umbilical cord.

1:49:00Bill Simmons:And then poor Connor McDavid, who I know you don't follow hockey, but has had these tragic come close. He's the best part of the world. He's the Oilers. Yeah, he's been the best part in the world for years. Can't get over the hump with the cup. now loses in OT, the gold medal game, and now is becoming this tragic, tragic Charles Barkley type figure.

1:49:21Zach Lowe:But he's like the Jerry West where no one's holding it against him, right? Nobody's holding it against him. Yeah.

1:49:27Bill Simmons:No, the Jerry West is a really good example. Nobody's blamed him, but at some point he's going to end up throwing a chair through his window like Jerry West in winning time. Although I'm not sure that actually happened. Anyway, that's my Olympic report. I had a great time with the hockey team. Go USA. And then they did the Pat Riley thing today, which we forgot about. They're running out of statues. There are a lot of statues around crypto.

1:49:52Zach Lowe:But they did at least, having seen some of our recent statues, at least that one looks exactly like Pat Riley and it looks nice.

1:50:01Bill Simmons:We're getting better at stats. Social media has bullied the statue people into just being better at statues.

1:50:09Zach Lowe:Yeah, I still feel for Dwayne Wade. It didn't work out.

1:50:12Bill Simmons:Can you catch up on the JFK Jr. Carolyn Bissett show with your wife so that when we do a pod next week, we can do five minutes on it?

1:50:21Zach Lowe:I don't know anything about it. I know you're obsessed with it. I know everyone else in my life wants to talk about the Guthrie kidnapping case. I guess I got a lot of stuff I got to catch up on because I don't have a lot to add to these conversations. All right.

1:50:34Bill Simmons:Zach Lowe. Next podcast for the Zach Lowe show is Tuesday. Coming off Spurs Pistons. Hopefully, you don't get snowed in. Good luck with the snow. Good luck to everybody back east, including my poor dad who can't believe it's snowing again and my daughter who's ready to come back to California. Stay safe on the east coast there. Good luck with the blizzard. Thanks to Jack Wilson. Thanks to Chris. Thanks to Gahal. Thanks to Eduardo as well from our end. And I will see you on this feed on Tuesday. By the way, new rewatchable is coming tomorrow. We're doing Crazy Stupid Love. So stay tuned for that.

1:51:06Bill Simmons:Thanks, Zach.

1:51:07Zach Lowe:Anytime. time.

1:51:09Bill Simmons:Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Visit rg-help.com. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 877-770-7867.

1:51:48Zach Lowe:It's a season two playoff race with TGL presented by SoFi. Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern, Jupiter Lynx versus Boston Common Golf. Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern, Los Angeles Golf Club versus New York Golf Club. Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern, the Bay Golf Club versus Jupiter Lynx. Keep up, it's golf. Watch on ESPN, ESPN2, and the ESPN app.