Chuck Klosterman on the Cinema Revival, Sports Tsars, Owners and Commissioners, Analytics, U.S. Soccer Groundhog Day, and State of Reading

20:21Bill Simmons:Well, it's another sport that you need money to get really good at.

20:25Chuck Klosterman:which sure but that's i mean that's you know it's like a uh it's not like there's just not not like there's not money here well the best example is enough money in the united states for enough people to play golf i mean it's like um true i i don't it's i mean i i i like this question actually like i you know i don't follow obviously i don't follow soccer i'm not watching these games but i find this this concept real interesting because one it's just this belief that as the United States, anything that we want to be good at, we should be able to be great at. You know? It's like we should just be able to do it.

21:00Chuck Klosterman:Like, we have the resources. We have the people. But it kind of is proof that, like, there's just a different way of thinking, you know? I mean, I had mentioned that thing about, you know, after, like, the Chinese, you know, revolution. Have you ever seen the documentary on General Zhou's chicken? No. Okay. It's fascinating for a ton of different reasons, but particularly for one. Okay. So it was just sort of, it's also kind of like a history of like Chinese food in the United States. So, you know, after like, you know, the railroads were built, there are all these Asian people in California. And, you know, and they did this, they made up this draconian law, OK, where it was like if you were of Chinese origin, you could only operate a restaurant or a laundromat.

21:52Chuck Klosterman:Like they changed the laws of who could own these businesses. And so the people there did something that's just incredible to me. It's like they got all the people, all the Chinese people into like essentially a big meeting or whatever. And they said, look, if we all open restaurants here in San Francisco or whatever, we're going to kill each other. Like we won't be able to survive. So here's what's going to happen. You and your family, you're going to go to Kearney, Nebraska. You're going to open a Chinese restaurant. You and your family, you're going to go to Stillwater, Oklahoma. You're going to open a Chinese restaurant.

22:25Chuck Klosterman:And they just sent these families to these places where there was no one else like them and said, you know, open a Chinese restaurant. And that's why sometimes you drive through a town, like a small town in the middle of the country. And like they have like a subway, a grocery store, but there's a Chinese restaurant there. You know, it's like like it really worked. OK, that's the kind of mentality that I don't think like it's not a very American way of doing it. It would be really hard to do that, to take Americans, put them together and go like, look, I'm going to send you someplace you don't want to live.

22:56Chuck Klosterman:You're not going to know anybody, but you're going to start a business because it'll be better for all of us if we do that. You know, it's just I don't know if the way that the like the if the U.S. mentality, like the things that we're good at, maybe create problems that make it very difficult for us to improve at things that don't naturally count. You know what I'm saying?

23:17Bill Simmons:That was really interesting. Right. Did they figure out who came up with the general Gao or Sauer? Here's the deal.

23:25Chuck Klosterman:There is no general Zhao. Okay. There used to always be this idea. There used to be all these. Okay. They basically took a Chinese food and they were like, we got to make this palatable to Americans. Yeah. Like what's it, what's it, you know, there's going to be people who have never seen Chinese, you know, this is the past. People have never seen Chinese food before. They're going to be freaked out. So we're going to use chicken and we're going to make a sauce. It's kind of sweet and kind of crispy. And we're going to throw some broccoli in there. Then there were all these kind of myths about it.

23:51Chuck Klosterman:Oh, General Zhou was a general, and when he would win battles, he would reward his troops with his food. Or General Zhou, when he was fighting battles, needed an easy food to make to feed his troops, you know. So that's what they ate when they were, you know, sort of out in the wild. None of this is true. And then even though General Tso's chicken is a completely constructed Americanized food, there's now sort of an issue over its authenticity. Can you use white meat in it? People say no. Traditionalists say no. How spicy or sweet is the sauce supposed to be? Like even though this thing was a completely manufactured concept, there's now a debate over whether or not it's real.

24:34Chuck Klosterman:You know, and it's just what's great about this documentary is it really does show like this is how culture actually works. Like things that that become so entrenched in our life. It's like we seem to think in some ways that like they're arbitrary or that there's some puppet master. And it's kind of a weird hybrid of those two things where it's like you can't control how people feel about things. We can't really control how people feel about soccer. Every four years, they try. Like the soccer community in the media tries to do this every time the World Cup happens. They try to convince people that both soccer is going to become more popular and that it's actually more popular than you realize, that people actually already like it.

25:19And you're just not going to talk people,

25:21Chuck Klosterman:like they got to actually feel that way.

25:24Bill Simmons:Which I think is what's happened in the last 15 years. 15 years or so, I actually feel like more people do like soccer, myself included. They do.

25:32Chuck Klosterman:No, there's no question about it. But in the 2000s, it did feel like they were, that community was trying to sell us on it

25:39Bill Simmons:versus it actually being the reality.

25:42Chuck Klosterman:It's also unique in that it has a different meaning in the United States than in other countries. The idea of liking soccer. Like the idea of liking, you know, when you think about, say, in the UK or whatever, like, you know, like the book, like Among the Thugs or whatever, like, it's like that was the world for people who were cut out of everything else.

26:04Bill Simmons:Yeah.

26:05Chuck Klosterman:It's like, they don't have a relationship to art. They don't have a relationship to making a lot of money in entrepreneurship, but they have this thing. Soccer is for like the kind of person who has, you know, that's what their union in the United States, it's the opposite that if you're really into soccer, it tends to mean like, well, you kind of have a globalist mentality and that you're kind of, you're not like some sec football fan or whatever. Like you're, you know, you're, They call it the beautiful game or whatever. And they read how soccer explains the world and these things. So I think that the rise in popularity of soccer in the United States is also the rise of a certain kind of person.

26:43Chuck Klosterman:That there's a certain kind of person who likes to see themselves as a sports fan who is not a retrograde thing. It's like that they're sophisticated. And you really see this on social media. Like there's every time the World Cup happens, there's these people who want to like suddenly become like soccer tacticians and want you to describe all the things you're not seeing.

27:06Bill Simmons:Yeah.

27:06Chuck Klosterman:And it's like, oh, it's like I know you like watching, you know, you like watching baseball or whatever. But like we know this is how it is. So it but you're right. It is more popular for sure. There's no question. I was when I wrote about soccer back in the 90s, I was wrong about that. Like soccer is going to become, um, like one of the major U S sports if it isn't already, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to do well in the world.

27:33Bill Simmons:Kevin, there's history with it too, because people have teams that they picked, you know, when this was happening to that, like I wrote that piece about picking in premier league team in 07, I think. And I, at that point I was in my mid thirties. Um, what you're seeing now is people are picking their team when they're eight or nine, like they become an art and now those people are in their 20s so they have like the same way you would pick any team it's not like they jumped in late that's been part of their lives and i think that's that's what's probably changed the most but i still feel like you know big picture with the soccer stuff um like we basically what we've been certainly around is the concept of the sports are and you know which i've joked about for 25 years but we actually saw a glimpse of it when trump did the red card thing and got it lifted for Balgan, the striker of the American team.

28:28Bill Simmons:And there was some wheeling dealing going on. And I was thinking about, I don't, this is the first summer I'm like, we actually might need somebody whose job that is for real. And I've made the cases in the past, but even like with this Kawhi situation right now, it's ostensibly supposed to be the commissioner of a league, right? But it almost feels like we need somebody who has more oversight than that, who can be like, yo, what's going on with this aspiration thing? Like, we have to come up with a decision. Somebody who could float around who has, I don't know, a little bit of authority. And I don't know why that's not a job.

29:05Bill Simmons:Like, we have a department of transportation. We have all these different parts. What part of America generates, like, more money from an entertainment value than sports? And why wouldn't we have more oversight over it?

29:21Chuck Klosterman:Well, you know, when you would first mention the sports czar thing, like back when we first started doing the podcast, it was more like a joke. I will admit it doesn't seem insane now in that same way. We're just talking about youth sports. Yeah. Like if I was sports czar, before I would deal with anything with pro sports or college sports, I would first get involved with youth sports. that is the place where it really does need. It seems like somebody could have enough oversight to say like, look, this way, this isn't good for anyone. It's not good for the parents.

29:54Bill Simmons:Well, it's the same thing with the NIL and the college conferences where it's like, all right, we've now drifted to this place that I think everybody feels like is pretty rocky. Like this could maybe be not sustainable in 10 years. So how are we going to fix this? And nobody seems to care.

30:11Chuck Klosterman:well like the situation like with the texas tech quarterback and the gambling stuff it's like there was a point when it was like this seems crazy but what can we do like what could really be done here like there is there isn't anything that can really like it's not really made up that way it's as crazy as this is it's like pro sports are actually probably you know a little more stable than all the things below it i mean it's like there's just right at least pro sports has

30:38Bill Simmons:commissioners and billionaires and smarter.

30:41Chuck Klosterman:The thing is, though, it's like the commissioner's tough because he's working for the owners. So, of course, it always seems like the commissioner is not doing what they should be. And if there was this next level, if there was this next political level, I mean, the problem, of course, is that people do not like the intersection of sports and politics. And they'll go like, well, people don't like it when it's against them. It's like, well, that's going to happen half the time. it's like it's not you know you should look at the world cup or whatever like you know mandami coming out and he's like i'm looking forward to like morocco be upsetting france or whatever and it's like that's a weird thing to say kind of i mean it's like i understand why he wants that i understand his feeling but it's like that that is it's not really it's not really necessary to like i i don't i don't like when this happens when we i was having a debate about this with some people over text just yesterday kind of it's it it's it whatever a political figure uses sports in any way it seems to make things less comfortable for everyone well we saw it twice with trump right

31:49Bill Simmons:we saw when he went to game three of the finals in the next the next loss yes and then we the red card which um just made people crazy that he got involved right well especially since so many people

32:03Chuck Klosterman:who love soccer hate Trump. So they didn't know how to feel about this. It was like the most complex day of their life sorts. It's like the person I hate most has done this thing. I need more than anything. It's like, you know. Right.

32:15Bill Simmons:Yeah. And also like technically the red card was kind of ridiculous. And it's weird that that act would cost somebody a game and a half. But this goes back to like even the concept of a sports are like, hey, what's up with this red card situation? So you're basically out like like in the NBA where they have a commissioner. when he elbowed uh the naz reed and he got kicked out of that game by world cup rules he would have also had to miss the next game and adam silver looked at that and said all right that's that's kind of dumb we're not gonna he's not gonna lose two games for that so he brings him back there was like common sense prevailing which i'm not sure we always have we gotta take a break

32:53Chuck Klosterman:oh if you a sports star it can't be a world sports star though so it's like how could no No, it would have to be an American sports star. Yeah, so it's what they could end up.

33:02Bill Simmons:Wait, we had to take a break. I wanted to talk commissioners with you for a second. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Did you know you can use TikTok to connect even more to the sports you love? I love a lot of sports. It's not just highlights. It's everything around the game, including the sports community. You can find breakdowns at classic basketball plays. I love that. Deep dives on baseball stats, even videos on how athletes train and recover. I guess they don't have podcasters. There are people teaching strategy, sports history, and ways to improve your own jump shot. Mine doesn't need improving.

33:37Bill Simmons:It's a great 18-footer. It's kind of like the biggest locker room ever, and everyone is sharing what they know on TikTok. Join the fun. Download TikTok today. So we're talking about how leagues and World Cup, all these different things, youth sports, all these different things could run, do any of the sports are. But then the commissioners of these different leagues that we've had forever, you know, going back to, I don't even remember what the first NFL commissioner was in baseball. We had, you know, most famously when a commissioner used his power in the 1900s, it was the Black Sox scandal. Yeah.

34:16Bill Simmons:That was the first time where a commissioner was like, I actually need to take over and take control of a situation that got really bad. And I have the authority to do so from the owners. And I was thinking about Adam Silver, um, and just in general commissioners, cause we've seen this with Goodell. Um, when a commissioner takes over a league, they come in initially and they care about the sport, the sport itself and the, the good, the good things that can, that they can, um, affect them the sport, but then also the owners and the business side of the owners and making everybody more money and making the, making the league healthy and sustainable.

34:58Bill Simmons:Right. So you have these two separate things. And what's interesting is the owner, the commissioner will come in with the, you know, a little more idealistic. Right. And then as the years pass, they basically become Michael Corleone, Godfather too. It's all about the business. And we see this over and over again with everybody. And I don't, I don't really know why it happens, but I feel like we're seeing it right now at the NBA. And I think silver for the most part has done a good job, but, um, some of the things that are happening with the league, the second apron thing they did, the CBA that they negotiated with the players to put in basically a hard cap is having so many bad ramifications already for team building, for players staying in the same place.

35:41Bill Simmons:And they did this to basically protect the owners. And so everybody could make more money. Now they're going to do expansion, which I think is, I, I personally think that hurts the league and I would much rather see them relocate. They're also doing this NBA Europe thing. And all of these things are really smart financial moves, but I don't think any of them have made the NBA better. I think the NBA is in a worse place than it was four or five years ago because they're making business decisions and not league decisions. And when I say that, everyone in the league gets mad at me. And then it's like, well, why, you know, why are you so hard on Adam.

36:17Bill Simmons:And, and, and I it's to me, that's not the question. The question is, is his job to elevate the league or just make money? And they would argue, well, both, but have you elevated the league this decade? And I, and I don't know if the answer is yes. And even I look back to the COVID thing and when they had the COVID, they come back, they play the bubble playoffs, they start the next season, they have to do 72 games or whatever. They ended up 71, whatever. And there was that grind and then playoffs. And then the next season, there was basically no off seasons for two years. They basically played almost three seasons in two to try to keep all the money the same.

36:57Bill Simmons:And I think it had real damage, um, to the players and to the teams and the competitiveness of the league. And that it was just kind of like, well, we had to do it that way. Everybody can't lose money. Um, I I'm just, I'm concerned about the intentions of the league. and and even some of the owners they've let in like this portland owner some of the stuff he's done yeah um you know and and you know they they greenlit this dallas owner i still don't know what mark cuban sold um but just in general i just think the league's in a weird place so what's

37:33Chuck Klosterman:your take okay like the thing you said about how they begin sort of with the good of the league league, what's good for the sport, how can we grow this over time? And then eventually it becomes this thing where they're just kind of like the owner puppet. Well, I mean, the first part is like how you get the job. It's like they're trying to pick a new commissioners. They talk to guys about basketball and about the meaning of basketball or its place in the world and all these things. But then as soon as they're actually doing it, then it's like, well, okay, but remember, you work for us. We need to make money.

38:06Chuck Klosterman:I'm glad you have those ideas. Try to implement those ideas while also doing exactly what we want. The amount of money is part of it. I mean, it's just the sheer mass of money, the expansion, right? You can make a lot of arguments over why expansion is just going to water the league down. There's already too many teams tanking. There's already too many games where you turn on and no one's playing how old you know putting two more teams in their help you can't really make the argument for it except that the buy-in is now you know in that so what every every owner gets what if this one i think you know the number so it's like

38:46Bill Simmons:so if they get let's say they get seven and a half billion for each team yes it's 15 billion for the combo there's 30 teams they would they would all get a check for 500 million dollars that they You wouldn't have to share with the players, by the way.

39:00Chuck Klosterman:So, you know, because so if that check, you know, is like, you know, 80 million dollars, it's possible somebody can go like, well, though, it's like this could hurt the league. Maybe in the long run, it could cost me money, you know. But when the number is 500 million, it's just too big. It's like the expansion. They're going to expand the NCAA basketball tournament again to like 76 teams now. Is that the number next year? 76.

39:25Bill Simmons:They're going to expand World Cup, too. to probably, they'll probably go to 48.

39:29Chuck Klosterman:I do not know.

39:30Bill Simmons:Or 64, I forget.

39:31Chuck Klosterman:A single person. I've not talked to one person who's like, I think the NCAA tournament needs more teams. I think it'll be better if they do that.

39:39Bill Simmons:Yeah, but here's the difference. No one thinks that. Difference with the NCAA, it's completely rudderless and lawless right now, right? Who's in charge? Nobody even knows. And people just do whatever they want and they're afraid of all the big universities and people can just form new conferences and super conferences. And we're in this situation. we're in now where you have UCLA who's flying around to all these different parts of the country, which makes sense if it's the football team, but not if it's like the cross country team or the women's soccer team, just flying all these, these alleged college athletes are just flying around because of, because we've just let college sports go to shit.

40:19Bill Simmons:I think the NBA is a little different because they have actual control over what they should be doing, where the team should be, how many should they have, what should the salary cap be that could be, you know, I just think when we get to the point when, you know, and there's a lot of reasons why Brown and Tatum couldn't have stayed together, but when it makes no sense for them to stay together financially, that's not good. Because if you go back to the league that we loved and we grew up with, you're basically saying, all right, I loved watching the 80s Lakers and Celtics. and it was really fun when MJ and Pippen were together.

40:54Bill Simmons:Well, I don't know if Pippen, they have to do that Pippen, the famous Pippen trade now in 94, right? We don't get those other three titles with MJ and Pippen because Pippen's on Seattle. You know, Kevin McHale's not on the Celtics in the mid 80s because they absolutely would have had to trade him in like 1985 because they couldn't have afforded max contracts for Bird and McHale. And honestly, I think this is what the league wants. I think they want complete parity like NFL. I don't think they want teams to be good for more than three or four years.

41:24Chuck Klosterman:Well, one thing I think, and this kind of happened this year, to be honest, is, you know, I felt that from a consumer perspective, this was a real troubling NBA season. Like it's just, you know, I've mentioned this so many times, I just, I can't count how often I tried to watch, you know, look forward to a basketball game and realized a bunch of guys weren't playing suddenly or it's just single. but they're always like when the playoffs happen and the playoffs yeah we're great bailed out at the end and that kind of happened we had this great sort of western conference final where this guy suddenly is like oh this is the new will chamberlain or whatever then he goes and plays the knicks becomes the villain it's like for if you're trying to write it if you're the nba trying to write this narrative it can't be any better than this yeah plus they lose to the knicks one of the most likable teams yeah i can remember in a very long time but also from new york it's just like this contradiction like it all kind of works out at the end i think that's kind of how the nba sort

42:25Bill Simmons:of looks at this right but like you know and then they had a great draft with a whole bunch of great

42:29Chuck Klosterman:players that came in have all these problems people will forget people will forget when they see these amazing games they'll just sort of be like oh yeah i still you know you know fantastic or whatever right i wanted to ask you something about jalen brown though and uh not really about him, but sort of about kind of the debate going on around him.

42:48Bill Simmons:Okay.

42:48Chuck Klosterman:And I'm sure you probably talked about this already, but maybe not in this specific way. So, you know, if you, I listened to like Bob Meyer talking, or maybe it was Windhurst. It was kind of, it was a rational guy, right? It was a rational guy talking about analytics. And what do you think they said about the use of analytics? What's the rational take about analytics in basketball? What are you supposed to say if you're like not a crazy person?

43:12Bill Simmons:you're supposed to say it's part of the puzzle for evaluating a player in a team exactly it's not the it's not the part but it's part of the process okay but can that be like can it if if you know

43:30Chuck Klosterman:like one of the the the stats that was really hurting you know jalen brown was i think was it was one where it was like yokich was number one and then he went down a little bit in the play it was the one that him yes yeah okay him and de rosen were the ones to buy yeah and when you look at all the other guys it actually did seem pretty accurate it was like yokich was the joker was the best player but he didn't play as well in the playoffs so it went down like he kind of went down the list it kind of made sense yeah like if if the idea is that analytics watch every game that the you know the human eye sees one but analytics sees them all um can you actually say we need a hybrid of these two things i mean it doesn't work that way in chemistry if we're doing chemistry experience experiments we can't be like we got to measure everything out except when we use you know uh uh like a radioactive material then we're just going to eyeball that because that's like like if something has kind of a numeric underpinning yeah you can act you know it doesn't have to kind of be all or nothing either you have to say that we're not going to look at this because this is a good point.

44:39Chuck Klosterman:I think I don't know if it can be both. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Kind of. It seems counterintuitive. It seems like it should like a reasonable person to be like, well, of course you consider this, but you also got to consider the old stuff. But if it's numbers and it's math, isn't don't you have to sort of accept it in totality if you accept it? Yeah.

45:00Bill Simmons:House and I talked about this a little yesterday because I I went back and I looked at, there was 85 guys ever who had a usage rate of 30 % or more, and then averaged at least 28 points a game. There's 85 guys ever in the history of the league. And then if you rank those guys by like win shares and BORP and some of, you know, some of the better advanced metric stuff that we can understand, Jalen was like the worst or one of the worst on every list. And the best guys in the league that you would think would be the best guys we're the best guys in the list. So then the question becomes, can you have outliers with numbers like this?

45:41Bill Simmons:Or is this telling you like, yeah, the eye test is actually fooling you. It's a tough one for me. And I tried to explain it when I talked to House about it. Because I obviously watch more Celtics. I watch the Celtics the most out of any team I watch. I have the most opinions on them. I have the most thoughts. I have the most memory of year after year. And I just thought he was really good last year. And it was one of the only times like what I saw with my eyes did not match the stats. Usually I'm like, oh, I see that, but I can see this too. This one, I'm like, I'm seeing this and you're telling me this instead.

46:21Bill Simmons:But the good news is they did win 56 games and maybe that's the ultimate advanced metric. And you could argue like, well, how'd they do that? But so it's possible you can just have outliers with stats, right? It's not a massive sample size.

46:35Chuck Klosterman:How can that be? I mean, I'm not even disagreeing with you, but I'm saying like, how can there be like... Well, here's a good example. If numbers are in a sequence, there isn't sometimes where a number actually is larger than it seems. That actually six items is more than eight items sometimes. If we're using these, if they're actually doing what they're saying they're doing, right the the idea of the outlier doesn't really i mean it's granted these are still humans here's

47:03Bill Simmons:where it applies though so iverson's a good example too with the 2001 sixers where iverson was a pretty flawed player by the by the stats year after year because it wasn't a good three point shooter he needed the ball a lot defensively even though i loved iverson but you know he was five foot ten so you can take advantage of him and you really needed to build the right kind of team around him to protect him. Right. And you couldn't have, like, he played with Jerry Stackhouse. It didn't work. You know, he needed like people like Eric Snow, Aaron McKee, Theo Ratliff, these Keith Van Horn, these people that filled specific roles, trying to build the right kind of team to make Iverson succeed.

47:43Bill Simmons:Right. So if he comes out of the lineup from that and the team's built around him specifically, it's going to be weird. Right. Maybe it may, so maybe the on off stuff will look better with him, but it doesn't change the fact that they built this specific team for him that really only succeeded once. Like he lost in the playoffs every year, except for Oh one. And you could argue no one, like Toronto took them to seven Milwaukee. The next series is one of the most rigged playoff series we've ever had. Like, like the ask any bucks fan about that series. So he didn't have as much success as it seemed.

48:16Bill Simmons:And then every other year he had no success.

48:18Chuck Klosterman:so people revere iverson is iverson argument for or against analytics you're saying it's an

48:23Bill Simmons:argument for analytics i think but that's the thing i think he's an argument for and against because they succeeded and made the finals in 2001 and the analytics are actually a little bit more favorable to him that year than the other years but he's basically playing the same style every year so it feels like the team they put around him affected his numbers in the right ways so last year with Jalen the Celtics were supposed to be a 500 team the only way they were going to do better than that is if he played 90 % of the games had this huge burden scoring wise and had to guard the other guy's best player and do all this stuff that nobody thought he could do and he did and they won more games than they thought but then the analytics said well

49:06Chuck Klosterman:I don't know they were supposed to win 50 games you said

49:09Bill Simmons:no they're supposed to win 41

49:10Chuck Klosterman:why are they supposed to win 41 Because they didn't have Jason Tatum. Yeah, but who said they were supposed to win 41? What was the thing that said, if you remove Tatum, this is a 41?

49:21Bill Simmons:Well, you also removed Porzingis and you removed Drew Holiday. So they lost three and Al Horford. So they lost four of their best seven guys, including their best guy. And Vegas looked at that and all the advance. Everybody who runs numbers is like, eh, that's a 500 team.

49:37Chuck Klosterman:So do you suspect that the 41 number was mostly an analytic conclusion? Or was that a conclusion of this hybrid where they were using analytics?

49:48Bill Simmons:It's tough because I think it was kind of people throwing that number in the middle because they didn't know if the Celtics were in a tank. So it's almost like that's the safe number. And if they tank, you don't get killed. And if they don't tank, you don't get killed either. But I never thought a million years they'd win 56 games, you know? So that's where it's like, and that's where the ITETs just didn't match the analytics in that case. Here's the difference, though. Baseball, which we've discussed in the past, that is a mass sport. In basketball, the teammates and who you put around people and your bench can affect on-off stuff.

50:23Bill Simmons:If your bench is awesome, your on-off stuff's going to look worse than it is. Somebody like Denver, who's had no bench the last few years, Jokic comes out, they crater. You could see with Wemby in the San Antonio games, when he came out, they were crater, so his on-off would be better. but baseball is just math. And as we've discussed in the past, it's made it less fun to argue about because the argument's solved by math every time. There's just, that's it. You're just like, oh, here's the evidence. And then the argument's over.

50:53Chuck Klosterman:I'm not, because what I'm expressing when I'm asking these questions, I don't want to seem like I, I'm really unsure about this, but like, does it not seem possible that, you know, there's been all these, I've heard all these discussions about why the Celtics would have done this. And what no one seems to be saying is this possibility. Maybe they just didn't want him. Oh, I think that's, I mean, there are analytics team who look at him and they're like, we don't, he's actually, we actually don't want him.

51:22Bill Simmons:I think what they, but what they didn't want, I think is the, him as a complimentary player did not make sense to them at$57 million. dollars. If you're paying him to be the best guy on your team and you're trying to overachieve, maybe that's worth the money or contract is also real large.

51:41Chuck Klosterman:The money for two years. Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, I, I, I, it's just, I mean, if, if the, if you think about analytics as like, this is like, as just like a small tool, I guess, but if you think of it as something that's like a real thing. And this is a way to understand the world. I mean, maybe that was just, does this trade still like, have you kind of changed your view on this trade? Do you feel better about it now? Or do you feel worse?

52:10Bill Simmons:No, I still don't like it. I maybe understand it a tiny bit more. I do think it was more of a personality trade than an analytics trade. I just feel like that felt like they ran their course. And when Jalen ran the team last year, now he can't go back to the other way of doing it. The question for me is like, you know, you have these people that own teams. It was interesting that more teams didn't go after him. And I thought that that piqued my interest. Like, what are the reasons? Is it like if you're some owner on another team, do you look at him and be like, I don't know. I saw him going at Stephen A.

52:46Bill Simmons:Smith last week. I'm not sure that's the kind of guy we want around here. Like, I just kind of want guys who are just going to play some basketball and go hang out with the kids in the community.

52:57Chuck Klosterman:Or like some other guys like, I trust Brad Stevens. Why does he want to get rid of this guy?

53:01Bill Simmons:Well, that's another piece of that too.

53:03Chuck Klosterman:Why are they doing this? There must be something else there.

53:09Bill Simmons:But that's a real thing though. Why is this person trying to sell his car so frantically? You'd be like, huh? What's wrong with the car? It's a nice car. I thought you loved it. Now you'll take half price?

53:22Chuck Klosterman:I would guess people don't want to trade with Danny Ainge. because they feel like he might screw him over.

53:28Bill Simmons:The Lakers just did. Well, one of the things that's happening in Boston is they're talking about the new owner, Bill Chisholm, who's a VC hedge fund background, and people really worried about... And I don't think this is a fault of his, but a lot of the moves he's made since he took over the team were shedding salary, right? Because they had all this tax stuff. And now if you're going to defend him, you'd say, well, there are all these penalties with the tax stuff. There's repeater tax. there's frozen picks you can't make two for one trades like it really does hamper the way you can build a roster so but they got rid of porzingis they got rid of drew holiday they let luke corneco now they they traded simons for vucevic last year which was whatever and then jaylen goes for paul george who's a year less on his contract and makes like three four million less but it did make me think because I was reading this book, you know, this book, Tall Tales by Terry Pluto.

54:24Bill Simmons:Okay. I was zipping through that because I was, I was interested in owners and I was, it has some good stuff about the owners back then. And I was thinking there's five eras of sports owners.

54:35Chuck Klosterman:Five eras. Okay.

54:37Bill Simmons:We're in the fifth era. Okay. And I don't know how this era plays out. First era basically takes us all the way through the sixties and it's the people that own teams are like local business owners and families. right wasn't like very rarely was it just somebody who was like mr moneybags it was like that the guy who owned the syracuse nationals he owned like a bowling alley you know walter brown the guy who owned um the celtics you know wasn't like the super rich guy

55:07Chuck Klosterman:it was not an impossible dream to own an nba franchise during that time right and it's very

55:12Bill Simmons:doable and maybe you didn't want to own it you know and same thing for nhl maybe had a little more money because there was only six teams. So they were a little more desirable. Um, but then we go into the seventies and eighties, which is the era we remember as kids. So now you get wealthier people. You get like the Dr. Jerry bus types, you get the goofy characters. Like we grew up with Charles O Finley, people like that. Like these people were like, you know, their own documentaries. And then you would get that. I wrote down misguided local heroes, people who felt like They either had to save the team or keep the team, but maybe they didn't totally know what they were doing.

55:50Bill Simmons:We had the Sullivans in New England for the Patriots. There was local guys, but they really kind of over-skied. What's that saying when you shoot over your skis? Yeah. The third era, this is 90s now, legacy kids, ego guys, and smarter local heroes. We had some ego guys coming in here and be like, Like, I'll buy whoever.

56:17Chuck Klosterman:So it's like Mark Cuban, you're kind of saying? No, we're not there.

56:20Bill Simmons:Mark Cuban's the next era. This is more like 90s. Like, oh, it'd be cool if I owned a team and it's starting to, you know, the prices are starting to go up. I'm going to get in. But you also had the kids from the families. There's now, like the Celtics had Paul Gaston, who was Donald Gaston's son, who was terrible. But there was a lot of like legacy kids. Dolan takes over the Knicks in 2000. The fourth era is the 21st century. And this is internet guys, guys with internet money, early VC guys and smarter legacy kids. And all of a sudden, now you have, you have like the guys who bought the Celtics, where it's like Wick Grossbeck, son of Irv Grossbeck, one of the most respected, you know, business guys out there.

57:05Bill Simmons:And he buys it with Steve Pagluka, who I think was with Bain Capital. And they're like, we'll buy the Celtics. We're going to blow this out, make it bigger. That happened with the Red Sox. That happened with the Warriors. There was real purpose to this where, oh, these are better assets in these big cities. We're going to blow them out. And they were right. The Red Sox are worth 20 times probably what they paid. Now in the mid-20s, I feel like we're in this massive money state where you just need a shitload of money to buy any team, right? So you have like, you buy the Broncos. It's like the Waltons, right?

57:44Bill Simmons:You buy the, the, the, the, uh, Lakers. It's the guy who had the Dodgers and probably has like, you know, Middle Eastern money behind them. Um, the guy about the Celtics, he puts this whole consortium together and then gets as the final piece, the, I think second richest family in India throws in another billion. And the groups that are being put in with Vegas, these are now buying these giant, giant things. And I guess the question is why? What are these people trying to get out of this? And how do you gain value when you could argue that the value is already there? So if we wanted to buy the bears right now, let's say the bears became available.

58:27Bill Simmons:What type of person wants to buy the bears? It's not somebody who's like, I lived in Chicago and I'm rich. That guy has no chance. Okay.

58:36Chuck Klosterman:So I, I don't know what era, according to your kind of sequence there, this fits down. This is three or four, but I remember there'd be kind of a cliche a lot of times that it was like these rich guys buy these sports franchises and they're not trying to make money off this. Like it's like a tax write-off. Like they, they make their money.

58:54Bill Simmons:That's the second era. Yeah. That's that's like when John Y. Brown bought the Celtics and he own Kentucky fried chicken.

59:00Chuck Klosterman:But now like when you look at someone like Jerry Jones and like what he paid for the Cowboys in 1989 or 88 or whatever year it was, what it is now. It's like now that it's, I guess it's completely sort of lost its relationship to the idea of like the ultimate rich guy hobby. Like, you know, like I think there was a time when it was like a rich guy was like, yeah, my friends buy racehorses, you know, I buy, uh, the, you know, the the boss of Bruins or whatever that's what happened to the Celtics over and over again they

59:32Bill Simmons:would have these guys buy it in they'd have it for two years and they'd sell it I mean because now you're buying something that I mean as long as the world exists as it does now it's like it's

59:45Chuck Klosterman:an asset that's just going to be worth more and more because it's almost like it's kind of like you know um uh when I uh I first started making a little money I remember my dad trying to tell me he was like, come back here and buy a bunch of land in North Dakota. I was like, I'm not going to do that. That would have been a good idea. Because they can't create land. He's like, they cannot make more of it. And I was like, now I obviously, I should have done that. I mean, I like, I probably, it would have been smart.

1:00:13Bill Simmons:You'd be like the new Taylor Sheridan. You just have this giant ranch.

1:00:17Chuck Klosterman:I thought it was just a crazy thing he was suggesting that I do. I was like, buy it. But, you know, there's so now these franchises are these things where it's like, you know, it is the thing itself. The rest of the world is becoming this sort of this kind of digital, almost like false simulacrum of reality. But these things are real. So I suppose a guy who would be buying the bears, he would be saying like, well, I'm really investing in in many ways the NFL. and that there's this thing that, in his maybe opinion, is one of the few things that is not only stable, but has the potential to get bigger in big ways.

1:00:58Chuck Klosterman:You know, like, I think that it is, the meaning of the franchise has less to do. There was probably a period where it was like, I want something kind of for me, for fun. Like, I love sports, so this is a way to do it. Like, I think if you had become extraordinarily wealthy when you were a young person, you would have attempted to buy into some sports franchise. I believe.

1:01:22Bill Simmons:Oh, no question. Well, I remember this really was like the late 2000s when at one point I remember writing about this for ESPN. It was pre-Grantland. And there was at one point it was like nine or 10 NBA teams available because including New Orleans, which the league had to take over. Like, think about that. They couldn't even sell New Orleans for like, I don't know, 500 million or whatever they wanted for it. Because there was this lockout coming. They were really scared about what was the future of the business. What's going to happen with media? What is the internet going to mean? Everyone kind of looked at it the wrong way.

1:01:59And I remember when Lacob and those guys bought the Warriors, I think they paid like 360 or like 400 or something.

1:02:07Bill Simmons:And it seemed like a lot. And they outbid, what's his face? the, the, the Ellison. I think that's who, or the Oracle guy, one of those guys. And everybody's like, wow, that's a lot of money. And I was either writing about it or talking about it. I was like, that's, that's an amazing purchase. Like they, they just bought this, everyone loves that team in the Bay area. That's one of like the seven best teams you can own. Like it's been poorly run for 20 years. Now I have, now you have that asset. You can turn that into something great. The problem is there's not a lot of those opportunities, I don't think, anymore in 26.

1:02:44Bill Simmons:Like, even the Bears would be, if you get the Bears, that's amazing, right? It's the third biggest city. It's the only team. But you're paying, like,$11 billion. Like, right now, the Seahawks are available. And there's two groups going for it. Supposedly, who knows if Balmer's going to be in it. One of the people is Wick Grossbeck, who combined with that Indian family, the middles. and that might go for like$9 billion. So if he was on right now, I'd be like, why would you do this? The answer would be, no NFL franchise has ever gone down in value. Right? That's why these guys get in. It's like, go back and look at the values.

1:03:27Bill Simmons:Five years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Is the arrow just pointing like this? Yes. Well, why is that? Because people love football, live rights, media, all that stuff. So I guess the answer to your question is, it probably is still a great investment.

1:03:41Chuck Klosterman:Well, I mean, it certainly seems that way. Although it's just like, you know, it's so easy to forget things. Like, you know, like, do you remember why Monday Night Football moved to ESPN? I don't. I used to know this. So bizarre. And ABC was like, Desperate Housewives is more popular. Right. They didn't want... Now that seems impossible now. That if you had a chance to have a primetime NFL game somewhere, what could you possibly be like? Well, this TV show could be bigger. That wasn't that long ago.

1:04:15Bill Simmons:No, that was what happened. You have the right thing, but it was, they could have had Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football.

1:04:21Chuck Klosterman:Well, that was part of it.

1:04:22Bill Simmons:And NBC ended up getting Sunday Night Football because Disney decided, I think this was Iger to say, well, Disney, we have Desperate Housewives. It's a huge night for us. You take something like the NBA. It's like, why do these values keep going up? Because people want to buy in because they want to own teams. You have a lot of wealthy people that have extra money that they can spend. But you also have a league that seems to be perfectly willing to just let everything kind of go, all the prices, all the salaries, everything just go up and let it, and that's It's just how it's gonna go. Franchises are gonna go up, players are gonna make more money, the media rights are gonna make more, and the tickets are gonna go up.

1:05:03Bill Simmons:The ticket part's gonna be the one that's gonna be hard because already the cap went backwards because the local TV stuff wasn't what they thought. Local TV revenue got really hurt, the national TV revenue went up. But if the ticket prices keep going up, but they can't solve the schedule piece and having the players be more available in regular season games, Now you're really playing with fire, I think.

1:05:29Chuck Klosterman:But we kind of say this was everything with concert ticket prices, movie ticket prices.

1:05:35Bill Simmons:But it was concert tickets. You're paying for Taylor Swift. You know Taylor Swift is going to be in the arena for the date you paid.

1:05:40Chuck Klosterman:That's true, I guess. That's true.

1:05:42Bill Simmons:If you paid for Warriors Come to Portland, you're like, I want to see Steph Curry. And then he doesn't play. Are you less likely to go see the Warriors the next time they're in Portland? I would say yes.

1:05:55Chuck Klosterman:yeah but i would think more so the thing is okay using taylor swift as the example okay she plays so fire whatever five nights on the last night yeah worst ticket was eighteen hundred dollars okay so that's the worst seat in the place on the fifth night was eighteen hundred dollars to me it's less the security about knowing whether or not she is there the question becomes like how, how is what I'm getting worth what I'm investing? Like you say with the, the, the warriors come to Portland and even if Steph does play. Okay. Uh, so I, you know, I can take, you know, what is the, what is the price point where it's like, this doesn't really, I can't do

1:06:38Bill Simmons:this. Yeah.

1:06:41Chuck Klosterman:Because there's always going to be people who can do it, but at some point, even they will be like, this is crazy. Like, you know, like, you know, you, uh,

1:06:53you would, well, always have enough money to pay for these things.

1:06:58Chuck Klosterman:But I think at some point, somebody's being like, it's just, I can't justify it. Like it's ideologically too weird. Like I'm not going to pay$3 ,000 to see a play or something. And people would be like, even if I have a billion dollars. Like, I'm not going to pay this much for that. Um, I wonder if like, will this, will that become what it is? Not, not the idea that you're, that you're not getting your money worth, like that you're missing Steph Curry or whatever, but like the event itself can't equate with the amount of costs.

1:07:30Bill Simmons:This leads into the movie conversation I wanted to have, but we're going to take one more break. Are all batteries the same?

1:07:38Chuck Klosterman:That's like asking if all soccer players are the same. Take Messi, the most decorated player ever. Is there any other player who has achieved that? No, just him. Now take Duracell. Is there any other battery with Power Boost ingredients inside? No, just Duracell. Goats only trust goats, because they're built different. And Messi only trusts Duracell.

1:08:05Chuck Klosterman:This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.

1:08:30Bill Simmons:This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights, and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit GoogleStore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, Internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.

1:09:00All right.

1:09:01Bill Simmons:So we were talking about tickets for movies. And I was thinking about this with The Odyssey, which actually went to a screening for it. So I didn't have to get tickets.

1:09:09Chuck Klosterman:Did you give your response to the movie yet? Because one day on social media, I just saw all these people saying, The Odyssey is wonderful. The Odyssey is amazing.

1:09:17Bill Simmons:Yeah. I mentioned the tail end of a podcast last week. I was just saying, I thought it was awesome. You know, it's under embargo until it comes out. I'll have more thoughts. but I thought it was an awesome movie theater experience. I had a great time. And there was a lot of care and great casting and a whole bunch of things. But what's interesting is post-COVID, we had this moment in, I think it was maybe late 2000s, early 2010s when they started to try to shove 3D down our throats. Remember? It's like 3D is the next thing. You got to get 3D TV, 3D theaters. and nobody really liked it. It took like three years, but they were able to charge more money for the tickets, all that stuff.

1:10:01Now they have half stumbled

1:10:03Bill Simmons:and half because of the best directors, like seeing their movies on these awesome theaters. Now it's like this 70 millimeter and all the IMAX. The experience of going to the theater is actually back. It's been an amazing resurrection this decade, which seemed inconceivable. even pre-COVID, but definitely during COVID, like, wow, movies, oh my God, TV, you're just going to watch everything from home. And that's flipped. But now there's this next piece, and I wonder if it's going to happen. And you think about it with something like the Odyssey, where Odyssey, it's like, oh, it's the 70 millimeter and Universal City here in LA.

1:10:42Bill Simmons:Oh, I want to go the Friday night. It's just the tickets are gone. Next night, gone. Tickets are just gone for a month. do you think we're going to get into a world where like the best 25 tickets or best 30 tickets, the best 30 seats in a theater when these things come out are going to be treated like we do with sports where it's like Odyssey Friday night, thousand dollars in ticket for the, for middle row center, best seat in the thing. It's not, it's not gonna be$25. It's going to be a thousand. And do you think people would pay it?

1:11:18Chuck Klosterman:um short answer yes um i think what is going to happen or might already be happening is the idea of seeing movies in theaters now is going to become closer to a luxury experience it's sort of like the lowest tier of the luxury experience because you know when people talk and And, you know, this is a common thing now. It's like Tom Cruise, I guess, is the forefront of this. You know, we must save movies. Movies are important. The experience of going to a movie and eating this popcorn and all these things. Like this is central to the American understanding of like how we understand the world. Movies teach us this and all this.

1:12:02Chuck Klosterman:But so we're trying to save that, right? There's this real attempt to save this.

1:12:07Bill Simmons:like the Nicole Kidman walking down the stairs with that smile on her face sitting in the chair what was that for AMC that you know that little preview they would show and Nicole Kidman be like

1:12:16Chuck Klosterman:the magic of movies but this is what I think is kind of getting like it like could be like kind of a misstep or maybe not a misstep I guess there's maybe no other way to do it but I think when people talk about the magic of movies and the experience of movies and how that is so different, it's actually a somewhat simpler experience than we're now sort of evolving into. The thing that was magical about a movie is that like the screen was big. It was totally dark. Nobody was talking. You're just looking at the thing. So the reality becomes that screen. There's not, no other part of your life is there.

1:12:59Bill Simmons:And you're feeding off like some reactions from everybody else, like laughter, scared silence, all that stuff.

1:13:06Chuck Klosterman:You're sharing it with other people. But I think it was mainly just that to me, maybe I'm just speaking from my own experience, but it's like, for me, it was sort of like, when you go to a movie, that's all that's happening. There's no other part of your life that's going on. You're only with the movie. Your vision of site is encompassed by the screen. That's all that is. That is reality for you for two hours or whatever.

1:13:30Bill Simmons:You zone out of everything else in your life.

1:13:32Chuck Klosterman:But now they're sort of like, well, okay, we've got to make this something people that's different from their house. So it's like the seats have to be better, you know, and maybe we're going to give better food or feed them during this thing or doing all these things around it and stuff. I think that that will sort of make it into, like I said, this luxury experience where it's like you have to pay a lot for all the trappings of seeing the movie, even if the movie is now almost secondary. It'll be something like, I suspect in the future, 20 years from now, there'll be people who are like, we really got to take the kids to a movie.

1:14:12Chuck Klosterman:They got to know what that's like, because maybe no one will do that that much, because there'll be one theater down or whatever that will be this high-end place.

1:14:19Bill Simmons:See, I would argue it's gone the other way. And people are going to movies more than ever. I think especially with the younger generations. Yeah, I think it is. I think especially with people 25 and under, which I don't think we're going to movies quite as much for a little bit there. I think it's back. I think especially like, and they've found out ways with like the 70 millimeter, um, or the IMAX, like the special experience of it combined with like horror movies are the hottest they've ever been in years and years.

1:14:55Chuck Klosterman:That's like people have been talking about that for like two months.

1:14:58Bill Simmons:But it's kind of happening. Like what just happened with obsession was really unusual. Like over the course of movie history, we've seen hit horror things before this became like something else. And it, it infiltrated culture in a way. I talked about this on a podcast last month, but I felt like TV had taken the baton from movies for setting cultural conversations in a consistent, just kind of elevated way. And it feels like it's shifting back to movies now, and TV's just getting worse. And these TV shows are just like Bs and B pluses, and then the movies are where the really interesting stuff is happening.

1:15:38Bill Simmons:We've seen a bunch of them come out this year already.

1:15:41Chuck Klosterman:does it not seem though like the cultural conversation about obsession and backrooms seems to be about the idea of those movies being popular though no there's there's stuff coming out do you feel like the ideas from those movies especially obsession i don't know if you followed

1:15:59Bill Simmons:some of it but obsession has led to some some pretty intense discourse and it's a little like what's happening with the WNBA now where it becomes like this, this kind of thing that we use to discuss all the other things we want to talk about anyway.

1:16:16Chuck Klosterman:That is interesting because it's like, you know, uh, sometimes I think we've talked about it. I think you and Derek Thompson have talked about this idea that, you know, it's possible to follow the NBA in one of two ways. Like you can watch the games or you can just follow the narrative and the discourse. And it's almost as if we're doing this, we're doing this. And then like they do it in a way that's actually much more elevated than the way the NBA does it. Right. I mean, it's like the WNBA, it's just, it's, it's incredible to follow is something. If you're not watching the games, it's just still, it's just crazy.

1:16:53Chuck Klosterman:The craziest thing about WNBA. Yeah.

1:16:57Bill Simmons:No, there has not. And Sir, it wrote a really good piece for the ringer about this this week, that now that now politics has gotten involved and there's, like, you know, and it's, I think that's probably going to unfortunately get worse and worse. But what's interesting is, um, I really want to talk about movie theaters, but I did want to say this one WNBA thing. Um, have you seen Olivia Miles play a little bit like her glasses? Yeah. I think probably the most fun WNBA player for me. I like the links anyway. Cause I, I just for, you know not like i like the celtics but that was kind of the team that i was you know fair weather fan rooted for um but but miles is like pretty special and it's crazy to me that all the discourse has just centered around caitlin clark and our team's being mean to her and then politicians coming in and it's and and the commissioner being terrible which is you know a topic people should talk about.

1:17:59Bill Simmons:Um, but it's not like they don't have like page Beckers and Olivia miles. Like these are really fun people to watch play basketball. And none of the dialogue is about them. Like nothing. It's all about all this other stuff. I've never seen anything like it.

1:18:14Chuck Klosterman:Well, I mean, they just, uh, I, I mean, it's always like it's just, it's just, there's just no there's no league like this it's just you know it's like where uh you know it's like something happens to caitlin clark you just know immediately now like you know she gets punched or something and you're like now she's got to apologize for getting punched like it's got to happen like you know it's like like it doesn't it it's so and like listen like the 11th best guard or something by the players or something that'd be like if it was like well the bigger yeah the bigger somebody was like eddie van halen's the seventh best guitar player in los angeles or something it's just it's so weird um i i i can't think of any when caitlin clark came into the league i think a lot of people would have been like boy you know it's just gonna get sickening they're gonna ram her down our throat all we're gonna do is hear about it literally the opposite beyond the opposite it's like it's like i i just you know it's just it's so i i i guess in a way just in the past couple years yeah they left her

1:19:24Bill Simmons:off the olympic team which she clearly just should have been on because she's the most popular women's player we've had it's the same reason like lebron and durant will be on the 2028 olympic team for the men like sometimes you got to do it the nike who you would have thought would have gotten behind her right away like they did with tiger woods like did the opposite i don't they It took like forever to put her shoe out. The players definitely seem like they resent the attention she got. I don't know whether they don't like her or not, but they're not doing any of this stuff I haven't seen to Olivia Miles, who's come in this year as like the rookie phenomenon, and she's not getting knocked around.

1:20:05Bill Simmons:At the same time, it's been kind of fascinating, a little bit fun to watch. It's almost like there's like a hockey element to the league now.

1:20:13Chuck Klosterman:I really like the old, like, Nick's Heat series. It's like really animosity on both sides. Or whatever. I just, you know. But it's kind of bad. The WNBA almost seems like kind of like the psych op where it's like someone's like, you know, these stereotypes about gender and race and sexual orientation. We've got to bring these back into the world. like let's put them all into this league and have them just sort of there's just nothing comparable to it I can't think of anything that's comparable to it and it's

1:20:46Bill Simmons:I just don't know how it plays out what's ironic is the quality of play is easily the best it's ever been like the games are good like you watch some of these games like this is like really good basketball like it's a lot of I just think the the play has evolved so much and yet I don't feel like people talk about that at all. And it almost seems like you're better. Like, I'm sure this will get cut out and aggregated in some way than, you know, but that that's how this is gone where it's become like almost political to even talk about it anyway.

1:21:20Chuck Klosterman:And here's a really good example. And controversial by saying that everyone knows that, but here's everyone knows. Yeah.

1:21:27Bill Simmons:Here's, this is where I thought like, if you're going to be a giant league, so Dallas has the first pick in the draft last summer. Right. and they take UConn Guard, who's Paige's former teammate. Yeah. Who they - Brilliant move.

1:21:42Chuck Klosterman:Brilliant move in terms of getting people to talk about the WNBA.

1:21:45Bill Simmons:Well, and they had been in a relationship at one point and they don't seem like they were. But if you go back and you read all the mock draft stuff and everybody's like, why are we trying to make a big deal of this? It's like, if this happened in the NBA, this is all we would talk about for months that they didn't take who the best person in the draft was. And now you think like they could have had Miles and Paige Beckers together who I think, you know, are probably as fun or maybe even more fun to watch than Caitlin. And they could have been on the same team. I don't even know how that would have worked, but holy shit.

1:22:19Bill Simmons:If this was the NBA, we would, this would have led like seven podcasts for me.

1:22:24Chuck Klosterman:Yeah, yeah.

1:22:25Bill Simmons:Just pretty funny. Yeah, so people are like, you know, I think, we'll see how it goes with the league, but it does feel like this Caitlin situation. I talked about it like two months ago. I don't think, I think it sapped some of the joy for her. I don't think she ever wanted any of this. I think she just wanted to play basketball and shoot threes.

1:22:46Chuck Klosterman:I can't imagine what it must be like to be her. She seems miserable. She is having a singular experience in American history. Right. Like, I mean, she's not the first person who's ever dealt with problems as an athlete. but like her specific experience is so strange and she seems to be handling it extremely well by just saying nothing and letting it all happen around her but it's got to be wearing on her i

1:23:14Bill Simmons:mean i just i don't know it definitely is if you if you go back and you look at even footage from her like three four years ago versus now like she looks like she's carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders now by the way she's making a lot of money she's famous like there's a lot of good things that come with it. It's just, this was not what was happening with Steph Curry in like 2013 and 14, where it was like, who the fuck is this guy? He's not, he's the 11th. The 11th best guard thing, which granted was, you know, a player poll. And I think too much has been blown out of portion for it, but there's just no way if you actually watch the league, there's no way she's not one of the five best guards.

1:23:50Bill Simmons:You can say she's fifth, third, whatever, but it was just like, Like, you know, it's the whole thing's just bonkers. Anyway.

1:23:57Chuck Klosterman:Can I make my bold prediction now? Oh, go. Let's hear it. Okay. This is my, it's the bold prediction. Okay.

1:24:07Chuck Klosterman:Sophie Cunningham.

1:24:11Chuck Klosterman:In the next, maybe I'm going to, I'm going to say 2050. It's going to be vice president of the United States.

1:24:24Chuck Klosterman:she's going to be vice president of the United States by 2050. I think that, you know, I think that will be the year. I think that will be the, that will be, I don't know what party she'll be in.

1:24:33Bill Simmons:Is there an election that year? Yeah. 42, 38, 34, 30. Oh, so it'd be like 2048 or 2052.

1:24:41Chuck Klosterman:2040. Okay. Yeah. I don't, I don't know what party she'll be in. I don't know anything about her political views, but she will be the vice presidential candidate, at least the candidate.

1:24:50Bill Simmons:I love this. I hope we still have the internet. um, in 20 years, 20 plus years that people can be like, Oh, remember, remember that, that guy Chuck, you know, I was, I was pretty wrong about Cooper flag.

1:25:07Chuck Klosterman:Okay. So I feel I'm going to go the other way and take even bolder attempts, you know, even bolder predictions. I don't know what it is. Like I have no, you know, it's something about the fact that she wears like, she wears those sleeves on the court, something about the way she triggers inbound plays at the end of games makes me think she will be someone's ideal vice president. She's a likable personality. She's definitely likable.

1:25:32Bill Simmons:I thought the finger-pointing thing was one of the funniest things that's happened in like three years. I thought it was like genuinely hysterical. And she was just... She kept it going for 25 seconds. Yeah, and at one point she kind of cocked her

1:25:46Chuck Klosterman:head to her side and I was like, that was... She really is funny.

1:25:51Bill Simmons:Well, I don't know. Now that World Cup's going to be done, there's going to be no sports on. I feel like I care about the characters in the league now in a way that I haven't before. I have real opinions on the teams. I like Minnesota the most. I also like watching Indiana. I like watching Beckers. Wilson on Vegas is... I don't even know what her NBA equivalent would be at this point. She's basically putting together a Kareem 1970s kind of run. But there's a lot of good stuff going on. Did we have any more things you wanted to hit on? You said you had a big picture thought about movies. Did we hit it?

1:26:29Chuck Klosterman:Oh, well, you know, this is, you know, sometimes you guys with the ringer, like, you'll do these live events.

1:26:40Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:26:41Chuck Klosterman:You know these live events. If you ever do a live event around the watch. We have. Yeah, I know. I'm saying port, okay? Yeah. I'm not angling for this, but I'm saying if you do. I'll go there tomorrow. I would like to be the person who, like, moderates the event. Because I think something interesting has happened. Okay, I'm going to start this with a compliment, okay? Like, I think it can safely be said that you absolutely changed sports writing when you were writing a lot of ESPN. I think that that was an incredibly, you know, like, I think that you altered the way people wrote about sports. And in some ways, maybe even, you know, thought about sports.

1:27:24Chuck Klosterman:But it can really alter the way people consume sports or watch sports. I feel like now, you, Sean, and Chris, and Amanda, your co-host, like, the whole idea, sort of like the success of the Rewatchables, has had a very interesting impact on the culture of how the average person thinks about movies now. Okay, explain. And I would like to interrogate that idea with you guys.

1:27:51Bill Simmons:You want to do that in Portland instead of a live rewatchable?

1:27:55Chuck Klosterman:Somewhere like that, you know? Because it's almost as though the rewatchables and the big picture and you, all this together, you have kind of created this aesthetic for consuming film and what's good about film. And I find it to be a very interesting kind of collection of ideas. And there's some things like you really overrate and sort of made things like, like I feel like you guys obsession with Tom Cruise is weird. I feel like you've now made heat and overrated movie where for a long time it was underrated and now it's vastly overrated.

1:28:34Bill Simmons:I'm so excited.

1:28:35Chuck Klosterman:we were part of that like there's there's like a a variety of things i just sort of the idea of like what a movie's supposed to do in your life i think that this has been like a real kind of like you like you've affected movie culture and i think it's very interesting not in a negative way but in a different way in a way that's that surprised me to me i would have thought all right

1:28:56Bill Simmons:so counter you don't feel like a lot of that stuff was in there already like we like tbs would show Shawshank Redemption every two weeks for, you know, 20 years. Like, I do think people were rewatching stuff over and over again. I remember even with my, like going back to the Boston sports guy days when I was writing about like sports movies and stuff, we were all watching the same 20 sports movies over and over again. I don't know if that's the case. But here's the difference.

1:29:22Chuck Klosterman:So if it's like 1999 and they're like reshowing the Shawshank Redemption and someone is at home and they're like, oh, well, I guess I'll just watch this. I've seen it. It's good. I'll watch it. Now you've sort of created this idea that there's a meaning to that. Because it used to be people who rewatched movies, those were people interested in filmmaking, cinematographers. That's why you would rewatch a movie. You guys have sort of introduced the idea of rewatching movies for the content.

1:29:55Bill Simmons:For nitpicks and what it meant

1:29:58Chuck Klosterman:in the moment all that shit yeah it's um and it's and what i love is that sort of it sort of dovetails with like my ongoing you know slow cancellation of the future stuff i always talk about because it seems as though the idea that what we have in the world of cinema now is kind of just going to be the world that we exist in going forward we'll just sort of re-watch and re-interpret and remake and reboot these things over and over again right i just think it's i I think that there is something that is changing about what a movie fan is supposed to be now. And that there was a time when the idea of being a movie fan meant you liked a specific kind of movies.

1:30:38Chuck Klosterman:And now it means you support movies ideologically. Like the political idea.

1:30:44Bill Simmons:But it's more than just us. Like there's other movie podcasts. I think Letterboxd is a big piece of this. Sure, that's part of it. Which, by the way, that's the one part I've never dove in on the Letterboxd. I always make fun of Sean and Chris about this, where it's like...

1:30:58Chuck Klosterman:I haven't either, I guess. Oh, I won't. But even like the idea of Sean buying all these Blu-rays and stuff like that. It's a different kind of possession. He's possessing them seemingly more like artifacts than ways to watch a movie. Or a combo.

1:31:17Bill Simmons:Yeah, the physical meteor. It's interesting. I found this piece I wrote. Um, cause we were doing Ali for rewatchables and I wrote about Ali back in 2001, whatever that was. And I had written a piece heading into the holidays, my favorite DVDs. Um, you know, if you want to buy stuff for the holidays or ask for stuff here, all these different DVDs I like, cause I really liked DVDs back then. And I realized I'm actually the king of physical media at the ringer, not Sean. Cause I have this column. He didn't have, he doesn't have anything. I mean, as 2001, I had like 30 DVDs. So I don't know. I feel like I should get more credit for that.

1:31:50Bill Simmons:I was talking about the director's commentaries and the deleted scenes. I was doing this years ago. So I don't think Ben and Sigurd's credit anymore.

1:31:58Chuck Klosterman:I mean, this is a tough thing in a way for you to respond to, but like, okay, you know, you did that list, you did that episode with Sean and Chris about your most rewatchable.

1:32:08Bill Simmons:My 50 most rewatchable, yeah.

1:32:10Chuck Klosterman:Yes, and I think I saw this clip of you mentioning Limitless. Yeah, yeah, number 16 Limitless. Yeah. Why do you think that happened? why do you think that specific moment was what people were so like that almost seemed in a way to be uh like a like a like a like a totem of your entire sort of film world because that's

1:32:33Bill Simmons:kind of what you know why do you think that was i it seemed like people liked that pod because um it was just a thing everyone was doing all those lists the whole the first 25 years all these different movies, TVs, all this stuff. And the premise of that list kind of, I think, just flipped it where it was basically the premise was, I can't defend this list. These are the 50 movies I've watched the most the last 25 years, and I'm going to rank them from 50 to one. I don't know why this was the list, but this was the list. And then I got to limitless at 16. I think it was the reactions of Sean and Chris.

1:33:10Chuck Klosterman:I think the reactions made the clip.

1:33:13Bill Simmons:Yeah. But we've No, we've all been working together for 15 years. So it's like we have like a shorthand with each other.

1:33:19Chuck Klosterman:But it's sort of in some ways described, I mean, I guess if somebody was like, if they were like writing an academic paper about it and they were kind of like Ringer Noir or something, or like what is the Ringer aesthetic for what makes a film great, you know? Yeah. And it's like all these things, it's like, well, it's kind of like, oh, Michael Mann, you know, anything he does is great. But it's also this idea that it has to be like, hyper-populist. But it also has to have kind of a major star, because you guys are really into stars more than acting. You like actors way more than acting. You like the people, right?

1:33:56Chuck Klosterman:And so, of course...

1:33:58Bill Simmons:We've had movies that we were going nuts about the performance more than who did it. There are always exceptions.

1:34:04Chuck Klosterman:I'm doing broad strokes here. I'm sort of describing what is the overall...

1:34:09Bill Simmons:To me, Limitless, though, is the ultimate rewatchable, because it's a pretty dumb movie. But it's got a great premise. You put yourself in the thought of how far would I go if I was in the shoes. There's good actors. It's well done. And it's just easy to watch.

1:34:23Chuck Klosterman:It's also like it has essentially low stakes in reality. You don't really look at that, you know. But it also has high stakes in terms of like you say, like the pitch, the concept of this. I just think it would be interesting to... I feel like when I listen to the rewatchables, you guys are always kind of like talking around these ideas, but they're always there. Like what is, you know, and I just, I think it would be interesting.

1:34:52Bill Simmons:So we just did rewatchables about She's the One, the Ed Burns movie from 1996, which is not a movie that should probably be on the rewatchables, but it's a really interesting movie to talk about. And that's always what the premise of that podcast is. Like, is there a good conversation to be had about this movie? What is the reason for it? Sometimes it's easy because it's a classic. You've come on. You've done a bunch of them with us. Did we do Reality Bites?

1:35:22Chuck Klosterman:We did Reality Bites. We did J.K. Yeah, yeah. Reality Bites is a perfect conversation

1:35:29Bill Simmons:for rewatchables because we get to go into Gen X and Early Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller directing and the music that's in it.

1:35:37Chuck Klosterman:Kind of like that, the strangely brilliant part of this is like when Spielberg goes on through Rewatchables, right? In some way, and like he's really up for it. He really watched it. Yeah, he loved it. It was shocking. In some ways, this kind of Rewatchables concept has tapped in to like the primitive primordial feeling people have about movies. Like what they, like what is really important about these movies to them. like the reason that like you know 2001 or whatever is important to him he can talk about all these little detail he knows Kubrick knows all these things um but it's like it's like I it's more like I want to say this about the movie I want to be able to say this thing that resonates with me because that that show was like what the meaning of this movie is you know right yeah well

1:36:28Bill Simmons:that's the thing you have like I watched Kramer versus Kramer a couple nights ago just because it was on and I still have Cape, but we've already done that on rewatchables. Like I wasn't watching it to scout it for the next one. And sometimes when you've seen movies a bunch of times and then you're watching them again, you're watching them for different things, right? Totally. And for whatever reason, I started watching in this time and I was really focused on the structure of how they do it with the Dustin Hoffman character, the first 20 minutes versus how things change and how much they're showing and not telling, which I think for some reason, I had Taylor Sheridan on the podcast a couple weeks ago and he was talking about how he structures storytelling and how the mistakes people made.

1:37:09Bill Simmons:I thought he had some really interesting comments in there, but one of them is he thinks, basically one of his takes was everything's overwritten. I want to show stuff to you. I want you to feel the location and I'd much rather dwell on an actor and how they're reacting versus having this witty repartee back and forth, which you can have too. And there's this great scene in Kramer vs. Kramer near the end when Dustin Hoffman, he's lost the suit, right? Meryl Streep's going to get the sun. And they have one last breakfast together, and they're just kind of making the French toast, which earlier in the movie, they make French toast, and it's a disaster.

1:37:52Bill Simmons:They spill it like it said. Everything goes wrong because they haven't made a meal together. by the end of it it's just like the routine of them making the french toast and they never say anything and then the kid starts you know he's the kid wells up and it's like this emotional moment but i was thinking like you know i was watching this time and i'm thinking like this is this is like a the kind of thing you should show young directors like that are thinking about how do i make a movie like little moments like this that we don't seem to have in movies in the same way anymore. And I feel like they're starting to come back.

1:38:25Bill Simmons:So I wonder like the next generation of people that are moving into movies and making films are really starting to think of these moments now, instead of just being like, Oh, I, if I can do two movies, maybe I'll, maybe I'll be able to do a Marvel movie. You know what I mean? In general, though, movies are becoming less visual. But my, my point is maybe it's going back the other way because obsession has moments in it. I thought Obsession was really interesting. But Obsession has moments that are all about the visuals. It's all about the choices the actress is making, you know, with like some of her faces and stuff.

1:39:02Chuck Klosterman:Well, I mean, it's a visual medium, but by saying it's getting less visual in the sense that I always hear these things now that, well, I mean, like actually your buddies old Matt Davin and Ben Affleck talk about this, how like Netflix wants you to give exposition at times for no reason because people might be folding. The streamers, yeah. there's yeah so that that's you know it's kind of the opposite of like what Sheridan would be saying or whatever that you know if you're folding laundry while his shows are on I suppose you might not know what's going on

1:39:30Bill Simmons:I would argue the streamers have different different kind of I don't know things they have to solve right like in a streamer there's so much content now and they've been open about this there's so much content you have to grab somebody in the first four minutes or they go right you click on it I don't know if I like that. You're out. If I'm going to a movie, I'm stuck there. I already made the decision to go. So whatever ride you take me on for the next two hours, I'm not going anywhere. I already bought my ticket.

1:40:03Chuck Klosterman:When you texted me about this podcast, you'd mentioned that Atlantic story about the end of reading or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:40:10Bill Simmons:That's another piece of this.

1:40:11Chuck Klosterman:It seems like the reading might be over or whatever. you know um so uh a couple weeks ago um i read this book it's a book called stoner you're familiar with this novel no my whole life people have told me to read this book and i assumed it was because the guy must be stoned all the time that's not what it is uh it's about it's you know it's it's just about the story of this guy it starts in like you know it's you know early 1900s and kind of goes through his life and it's a really quiet novel and um now i'm reading a book called uh you know Butcher's Crossing by the same author, similar kind of tone in some ways.

1:40:48Chuck Klosterman:But, you know, it reminded me of how, like, how you're reading these books, you know, and everything that you visualize has to be described to you. Like, you know, everything about the way the guy's hair sits on his face, the way he walks into a room, all of these things, you know. And it is, you know, it's really deliberate. And it's easy to understand why the way things have changed makes reading novels harder now. And that we're just so accustomed to the idea that we're just going to have like a passive relationship. Like this thing's going to be dumped on us. What everyone looks like. I think part of the reason that people struggle reading now is because it's like they just aren't willing to imagine everything they have to imagine.

1:41:43Chuck Klosterman:Like, it really is. It's been an erosion of the potential for imagination. Like people are just like, I'm not going to spend time to visualize what a green shirt looks like. I just want to see the guy's shirt, you know. um and i wonder if this part of you know everyone thinks this this this reading situation is all solely because of phones and the internet and i think that is the biggest factor but i also wonder if our imaginations now have changed in a way that it makes very difficult to understand anything that isn't obvious like you know that that because it's where it's work to surrender the reality yeah you know do you think people like i i feel like more people in my life listen to books

1:42:30Bill Simmons:than read them is the other interesting piece to this they're basically like more elaborate podcasts but like my wife is more likely to listen to a book than read it at this point and i don't know what that means either and you know a lot of it had to do with the overcoming

1:42:47Chuck Klosterman:of what was a prejudice. Like when I wrote my first book in 2001, there isn't an audio book. And at the time, the idea of doing an audio book, I mean, they almost said like, well, you know, that's for people who can't actually read, ha, ha, whatever. It's for blind people or whatever. Now it's like, it's almost like half the market. Like the book I have coming out this September, I'm recording, doing some of the audio stuff next week. And it's, you know, now any book I write, I will always do the audio for it. But it's great. Because I know people want that. People want to hear the other. I did want to mention one thing that I find is kind of interesting.

1:43:28Chuck Klosterman:It kind of ties back to this.

1:43:29Bill Simmons:Wait, I had more on books.

1:43:30Chuck Klosterman:Okay, go ahead.

1:43:33Bill Simmons:Because I had this office where I used to do my podcast and it became, before we moved out and finished this thing, the studio we have now. and so I fixed the office and I really like my wife was making fun of me for weeks because I was like really like I should post a picture of it on Instagram um putting all my books in the right show yeah well so well I read photos but I redid it I found more books in the attic and now I have even more books and I have it stacked and I had these two shelves of basketball books but I found this, I found these two basically things of, of paperback books that I had, not like the smaller paperbacks, but the bigger ones.

1:44:13Bill Simmons:Cause you know, in the nineties we would buy the paperback books cause they were cheaper. Right. So I had, I had basically like 10 years of books I read that were just in these two things. So I added that to the thing. And, and then I was looking back and I was looking at all the books and I've actually read all the books, you know, and it's, it's a lot of books. And you think like, fuck, this probably shaped 95 % of the choices I made in life were all these books I read because I was an only child. I read books all the time. So did you. And so when I read this stuff about how people don't read anymore, reading has turned into texts and internet stuff and Twitter and Reddit.

1:44:55Bill Simmons:And people are reading the same amount, but they're not reading the actual books. Like the question I get the most from everybody, you know, if people are like people with young kids who want to be a podcast or a writer or somebody who's breaking into business or somebody who's in college, like, hey, do you have a tip for me? And I'm always like, fucking read. I feel like the reading, that was how I learned everything. That's how I learned how to pick styles. That's how I learned information. That's how I learned what happened in the course of history and how to not repeat the same mistakes or decisions people made or analyzing the decisions.

1:45:28Bill Simmons:And every book you read is going to have a different effect on you. But that's the part that scares me is that if people are reading less and they're just going to these other things, is it affecting their brains in the same way? And I don't know the answer to that.

1:45:43Chuck Klosterman:Yeah, it's wild. One thing, okay, so this book I have that's coming out in September, I'm doing an interesting event in October. okay um so the book comes out in september but i am doing a book event at new york comic-con okay now i was completely baffled when this was initially thrown at me i have to say it is my son's ultimate dream it's the greatest thing that could have possibly happened you know so we're all going to new york to go to the comic-con or whatever so i don't even care if no one comes to this event because in my mind i'm like well okay these people are paying a bunch of money to like see the stuff you know see comic books and marvel movies and and you know magic gathering all this stuff you know how do you fit in are they going to come on to see this like a book reading or whatever like a book event then you know i was starting to wonder if maybe what will happen going forward is this maybe if reading really does kind of fade from the culture people will still buy books as collectible objects like physical media almost like pokemon cards or something it's like oh i like this author uh i know what yeah i've heard him on podcasts i've seen him or whatever i'll buy this book and this book will sort of be like the physical representation of who i who i am what my identity is what i like what i'm interested in put out in the bookshelf maybe i won't maybe it'll just be on the shelf or whatever you know but i would wonder if there is i mean i don't i mean in a way that's kind of a scary thing to think about is somebody who sells books for a living or tries to sell books for a living but i i do wonder if the possession of physical books in the future could help save books well yeah well like it'll be sort of like how um you know there was it's there was a time when people would buy vinyl records, even though they had it on CD or they had it on cassette, they like collect records.

1:47:52Chuck Klosterman:They like the gatefold. They like the feel of it. They like the smell of it. They like the idea of what it was, you know? Like maybe that's how it's going to become for books in a way that like, you'll still have to write them. You can't, the books have to be written. You'll have to put all the work in it. If someone actually does read it, it will need the merits of a book in the classic style like they won't just buy a book just for what it looks like it's got to be the thing it's got to be that if people see that you own this book they know that it's like that's you know it's all this information um so i maybe so maybe like going to like a comic-con is like a reasonable thing to do sort of like you know maybe the kind of collector that are already in the mindset it's like i buy the things that are you know important to my life like i you know guy buys like a figurine of like the Incredible Hulk or whatever.

1:48:46Chuck Klosterman:He's not going to play with the Incredible Hulk. He might not even take it out of the box, but maybe he will and he'll put it on a shelf. And it'll be like, when people see this, they will know not only do I like this, but like I'm invested in this. So I'm very curious to see what this is going to be like. I'm very curious to see if I do this book event at Comic-Con New York and people show up or not, you know, and if they want to buy the book or if they have questions, I just have no idea. Yeah.

1:49:43Bill Simmons:Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready. Because Quaker's coming in hot with morning nutrition. 100 % whole grain oats.

1:49:53Chuck Klosterman:And a good source of fiber. To fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickstart your day. And that sounds absolutely delicious. Fuel to start whatever's next. Quaker. Official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26.

1:50:13Bill Simmons:One thing about books, you said this earlier, because you mentioned Among the Thugs, which I knew immediately what you meant because I have it and I read it.

1:50:24Bill Simmons:I didn't know anything about early 90s hooligan soccer fans in the UK, right? Neither did you when you read that book. So it brought me into this whole world that I would have known nothing about otherwise. And it's, by the way, an excellent, excellent sports book. is it too easy to discover stuff like that now where you don't need a book I feel like people now would have opinions on booganism and soccer and different things and they would just know more and they wouldn't even necessarily have to read a book to learn all the same stuff we learned from the book yeah I mean there's shortcuts to it now you wouldn't have to read the book which is kind of frightening

1:51:04Chuck Klosterman:I mean the the scary thing about this is that it is possible that maybe books are just not the most effective way to learn things. I think you and I both were raised or kind of with this, but maybe it's not because I will admit some nights I'm at home, you're lying in bed and I'll just go to YouTube and I will watch, say like - Just random shit. A nine minute documentary about, oh, like the, like how primitive men were able to keep fires burning during inclement weather. And it'll be like nine minutes long. But like, I will get it all. Like I will learn this thing, you know? Or I'll like, I watched one, I think I maybe have mentioned it on another part.

1:51:58Chuck Klosterman:It was just a fascinating short little documentary about like how they selected Hiroshima and Nagasaki's in two places. They dropped atomic bombs. I'm like the conversation that led to that. That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, like, like one city was saved just because one guy at the meeting was like, I've been there. It's nice. Don't drop a bomb on there. Yeah. It's like, you know, that was like, there were these, you know, and it's these things that, you know, in a way I almost didn't even had never even invested the time in wondering about, you know. And that can be done so quickly now that you can watch so many, you can watch them at 1.5 speed.

1:52:34Chuck Klosterman:Like, you know, so even something that's nine minutes is now six minutes and you've got all this stuff. It is hard sometimes to, like, I'll write a book and I'll be like, okay, so who's the person who's going to read this? Who's the person who's going to put the time in to do this? Like, you're just kind of praying that there's 100 ,000 of these people out there.

1:52:55Bill Simmons:That would be a great Letterboxd sequel is just you log crazy things you watched on YouTube. Because yesterday, I went on my YouTube. It was literally, I was like a half hour from going to bed. And I went to search for something on YouTube. And you know, the algorithm really knows me now at this point. so for some reason it suggested this mark knopfler um this concert that he did in 1996 where he plays what some people think are the great is the greatest guitar solo of all time i think it's from a espresso love or tunnel of uh one of those um and it was on some concert thing and then he didn't like i guess he messed up like two things during this like three minute solo so he took it out of the concert so the song wasn't out there but all these people had sworn they had seen the thing and then in 2024 it appeared again on youtube and people were like knopfler guitar god it's back and they were so i watched the whole thing and it was amazing and then i was like i feel like i saw him on letterman once in the mid 80s and he did a song with the band and it was like the best thing i've ever seen anyone do with a band on late night.

1:54:12Bill Simmons:And then I went and I was right. It was 1985. Mark Loppler came in and he sang express all love with the band when the Letterman band was like the best it's ever been. Like Schaefer had Steve Jordan was there. And it's like this awesome five minutes. My point is that was just 15 minutes of my night last night where I watched those two things. And then I watched five minutes of a 1980 dire streak. And all of a sudden I was down a 20 minute dire straights deep dive out of nowhere. And that's just what happens night after night, if you let

1:54:46Chuck Klosterman:it, you know, it's very easy to do that. I mean, I, that would be a good letterbox. Well, but also it's just that the fact that like, it's all there, like you have memories that you don't even know are real memories. There's a section in, like I wrote Fargo Rock City, like in 1999, 2000, comes out in 2001. There's a chunk in that book where I talk about the strangest thing about rock videos is that you see them constantly for two months and then you never see them again right so like one summer i saw the black crows video for the song remedy every day at some point because mtv was on my house all the time you know i saw the video for remedy every day and then it was like gone and it appeared like this was just sort of how the world was going to be.

1:55:34Chuck Klosterman:There would be these things you're hyper involved with, and then it's pretty much gone unless you like buy a Black Rose DVD or something. Now there's nothing like that. Like there's nothing that, that if you experience, you have to, you know, like you know it, you know that if I, well, if I don't see it now, I can see it again, or I can see it at my leisure or whatever. I wonder if that has changed the way that we watch these things. We're not doing it consciously, But I wonder if unconsciously we now realize that these things can of course be accessed at a different time or a different way. And as a consequence, I don't have to care as much.

1:56:10I don't have to invest anything in it intellectually because it'll always be there.

1:56:14Chuck Klosterman:And that we're kind of doing this with everything now. And maybe that's why everything seems less satisfying than it used to.

1:56:21Bill Simmons:I remember I had these VHS tapes of different things from the 80s that I just recorded in in real time, including, I think three Letterman anniversary shows in a row. Right. And I was like, I would have put these in a safe. I had that, I had a whole bunch of stuff, like whole bunch of games and just things like, I'm so glad I have these. Cause if I didn't have these would be gone. And one of the, one of the VA had like the tape melted or broke and it was just gone. I think it was the Letterman anniversary ones, maybe it was something else. And I was just like, oh my God, it's gone. Now that shit's on YouTube.

1:56:58Chuck Klosterman:It is. It's true.

1:57:00Bill Simmons:It was like some of my prized possessions, you know, the Michael Jackson Motown 25 and shit like that, that I actually recorded in real time. I was like, oh my God,

1:57:11Chuck Klosterman:what would happen if somebody stole this? You should keep those though, because actually what is amazing is that the stuff that you didn't think you were recording, the ancillary stuff. Right, the commercials and stuff. Yeah. For my birthday, my wife, I guess went on eBay and got me a bunch of sports illustrators from the early 80s so i was reading through them on on july 4th or whatever and you know and like you know like there's this story about like uh uh i think i think it's a frank de ford story about like wilt chamberlain at the age of 50 i remember that one that was a good one yeah also i've forgotten about this it was like yeah he almost came back and played for the nets like you know and like he probably could have you know like almost certainly could have it's like um and you know i and i kind of did vaguely remember that story because you might remember this at the front of the magazine it's a close-up of will's hand how big his hand is and you know in that you could put your hand on it's like yeah so i did remember that story and i remember that happened but it was so weird like looking at some of the cigarette ads in this thing or like the 19th hole all the letters like the let somebody wrote a letter to sports illustrated there's no way you can't you cannot go on the internet now and find like random letters to sports illustrated from 1983, but here they all are.

1:58:27Chuck Klosterman:Right. And it's like, and it was also strange to hear, to read some of these letters and like, see like, boy, you know, people are still saying that now. Like he's, he's describing this thing as a new thing, but it's like still happening now. People complaining about announcers,

1:58:41Bill Simmons:which now we have with Alexi Lawless where everybody's just like, I can't stand Alexi Lawless. But in the eighties we had somebody else. So like,

1:58:48Chuck Klosterman:I bet if you went back and like watched like a, like a, or like when I was writing the football book, you know, I was like, went back and I rewatched like the, the Boston college Miami game or something, you know, when the foodie game or whatever, but like before it happens, I think it's like Brent Musburger talking about like Falcon crest is going to be on or whatever. Like these things I just totally forgot. He'd forget to happen. But well,

1:59:15Bill Simmons:there's this, first of all, I don't, you must've watched some of these old NFL games, just random week six, Browns versus Steelers 1978. And it just will be the complete NBC broadcast. It's kind of riveting. There's this account on YouTube called rare NBA footage, which has only 8.4, um, K 8 ,400 followers right now. And they just, he, I don't know where this person gets all the video stuff, but he'll have some good fights every once in a while. And he had, he had the, uh, when kareem punched kent benson he had that whole thing but then the aftermath of kent benson with this huge black eye being like what the fuck just happened um it feels like everything's out there there's i it just there's more and more footage people are just finding

2:00:10Chuck Klosterman:and it's really crazy point now where it's like it's almost more surprising if you can't find something but you almost expect you should be able to find it um uh yeah because there's stuff

2:00:21Bill Simmons:there's NBA stuff from the 60s and 70s where they literally didn't televise the game. So there's no way to find it unless somebody, for whatever reason, had a camera

2:00:29Chuck Klosterman:on the upper deck or something.

2:00:31Bill Simmons:There's just games that don't exist. Most famously, the Will game, but that was 1962. But there's a whole bunch of stuff. Anyway. Alright, we went two hours. We went too long. Can you plug some stuff?

2:00:42Chuck Klosterman:Well, no. I mean, I got this book that's just called Rock that's coming out in September. what's so what's rock about quickly okay i don't want it one thing i found promoting that football book i just i did so many podcasts that occasionally you'd end up saying the same thing on multiple podcasts and i really feel like a lot of people are like i kind of read this book like i heard talking about it enough like you know i like it keeps the mystery so this is just i'm gonna try to to not talk about what's in this book as much but i will say this okay so it's like it is a fictional history of rock music.

2:01:20Chuck Klosterman:It's fictional, but it starts in 1967 with the premise that the Velvet Underground's first record is released and immediately becomes 25 times more popular than the Beatles and the Stones combined.

2:01:36Bill Simmons:You told me this idea. This is a great idea.

2:01:38Chuck Klosterman:And it completely alters all of the culture over the next, you know, many years and then ends in 2002 where 9-11 has been blamed on the strokes okay yeah so but but there's a lot that happens in between that so that's those are kind of the bookends of this book wow you you really were a podcast whore for that football book well i guess you know but they can't you know people ask me to go on a podcast i'll do it why not because the thing is also they don't it's amazing how little they overlap. There's only a certain kind of person who listens to all of them, but you know. Yeah, true.

2:02:18Bill Simmons:It is like pieces of different audiences.

2:02:20Chuck Klosterman:But it could, I think it could have been a mistake though, because I did so many of those podcasts and people always wanted to talk about one section of the book. They wanted to talk about the one chapter near the end about the eventual sort of erosion of football or football receding from the culture, which now I think many people think that's what the book is about. It's like, it's like 5 % of that book, maybe at most. But I did, I probably did too many podcasts for that.

2:02:48Bill Simmons:I'm trying to think of what the Velvet Underground, what the sports version of that would be. Because I was going to say, like, if the Knicks had bought Dr. J from the Nets in 76, is the next 50 years of NBA history different? But it was, Dr. J had already been around for half his career, so maybe it's not as impactful.

2:03:09Chuck Klosterman:But the conceit of this book, though, is that all the records from 1967 till 2002, they're exactly the same. The records haven't changed. It's the perception of the records and the perception of the artists.

2:03:24Bill Simmons:So that could only be with sports. Yeah.

2:03:26Chuck Klosterman:So, well, no, a sports version would be that all the games played out exactly as we remember them. But everything we think about sports is completely reversed because of the way it is perceived.

2:03:42Bill Simmons:I'll have to think about what the I don't want to say the wrong thing here trying to think of what the basketball version of that would be

2:03:54Bill Simmons:For some reason, I was thinking about the late 70s. If the Sonics Bullet series was considered to be the series that saved basketball and Gus Williams was like Magic Johnson or Magic Johnson. And then we just go. All right, Chuck. Thank you for the two plus hours. I had a great time as always. Okay. Now you made me want to come to Portland. Well, you never do.

2:04:16Chuck Klosterman:Well, I don't have to twist Chris Ryan's arm.

2:04:18Bill Simmons:He goes there anyway, just to socialize. He comes quite often.

2:04:21Chuck Klosterman:Yeah.

2:04:21Bill Simmons:All right. Say hi to everybody in Portland for us. Thanks for coming on.

2:04:24Chuck Klosterman:Okay, bye-bye.

2:04:26Bill Simmons:All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck Klosterman. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo and Jack and Chris and everybody else at The Ringer as well. I'm going to be coming back midweek with a podcast. It's going to be a very unique podcast, probably on Wednesday. So stay tuned for that. And don't forget, rewatchable. She's the One is coming. See you next week.

2:04:52Bill Simmons:them on the wayside. I don't have feelings with them on the wayside.

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