Kawhi in Flux, Embiid’s Next Team, Jaylen vs. Advanced Numbers, and a Mini-Mailbag With Joe House

23:30Bill Simmons:I don't think they should be the determiner of a player's value. But it's interesting. Jalen's win shares were the worst out of all 85 guys. We're talking about like World Be Free in 1980. Iverson in 05. Mark Aguirre in 1984. And he's the worst. And then you go to Vorp, which is also not nothing. I don't mind looking at Vorp. Jalen was third to last. and the only two seasons worse than him in Vorp were 2010 Carmelo and 2007 Carmelo. And you look at some of the names in this list house and it is interesting. It's all these high usage forwards that never were able to really be, you can never build a finals team around him, right?

24:14Bill Simmons:Dominique, Adrian Dantley, Mark Aguirre, Carmelo, Alex English, World Be Free, you can even build a first round playoff team around him. Donovan Mitchell now. but these guys that you could throw a big burden on them and you could have regular season success but as the levels got higher that recipe didn't work anymore and I think that's basically where we landed with Jalen last year we talked about this let's go back to just us playing pickup basketball a million years ago at some point you have five guys one of those five guys needs to regularly create a good shot for everybody else right just start there Jalen was the only guy who could do that on this team.

24:56Bill Simmons:Pritchard once a week. He wasn't an offensive engine, though, Bill Simmons. I know. You say create a good shot. I don't know. The stats don't support that. Jalen Brown didn't do. It's like, oh, his effective field goal is down. Well, maybe partly because every time they played anybody, the entire defense was like, we got to stop Jalen. He's going to take 16 twos. He's going to get to the line. Let's throw two guys at him. Let's trap him. Let's attack him when he goes to the rim. Like he had a big bird and he played 71 games. And this is what we've talked about over and over again, durability, consistency.

25:30Bill Simmons:And can you be the hub of something bigger, which he did last year? And I'm, I can't accept the advanced metrics telling me otherwise. Cause I watched the season. Well, not only that again, I mean, this is respectfully as possible. He dragged a bunch of fucking bums to 56 wins. Like he was a really important part in terms of setting a standard. Those guys, the development of Gonzalez and Shireman and Peyton stepping up and Kata and like this is a team like roster wise that was going to win 41 games. That's what made sense. That was the sensible outcome. And Jalen fucking Brown was like, no, I don't accept that.

26:10I'm going to go out. And again, let's also give credit to Missoula because the game plan also called for a kind of, you know, radical, although not that radical under Celtic circumstances, way of approaching every game. But they conceded nothing. They conceded nothing. They went out and played their ass off every night. They gave it all every night. And he took on the biggest challenge every night. He's the one. Yeah. There's a reason that they all were able to collectively elevate. One guy took the lead. He took the lead. He was the leader. So I don't care about the efficiency numbers. I don't give a shit.

26:48That doesn't help me understand anything about contextually what happened last season.

26:53Bill Simmons:Yeah, there's burden and gravity and there's some things. But he also played his ass off on defense, by the way. That's why the MVP conversation had him featured, you know, Will Bond said with, you know, a month left of the regular season that Jalen Brown was his leading contender. Now, whatever you want to say about... They were first in offensive rating for the entire year, and they ended up second. Who else were their elite offensive players in this offense? Tatum played 16 games, right? Pritchard, who I love, and I actually think Pritchard could go up a level next year if there's more shots thrown his way, but I didn't know whether Pritchard was showing up night to night.

27:33Bill Simmons:He would have games where he just stunk. Sure. White was bad. That's who he is. White was bad shooting-wise all year, even though there's great advanced metrics for him. And then everybody else, you didn't know what they were getting. That tells you. There you go. The advanced metrics for Derek White offensively were very good. They're always good with him, though. He sucked. He sucked. He sucked shooting. He lost his confidence. Yeah, he sucked shooting. I'm talking about his offense. Yeah. He was awesome as a shot. Remember all the money we made betting on the over for his blocks every night?

28:05Oh, well, they... Yeah, Fandle finally wised up.

28:08Bill Simmons:to that. But part of the reason his shooting was down because he had such a big load, I think he wore down as the season went along. And that's another thing. When you're talking about advanced metrics with somebody like Jalen. And it could be Jalen. It could be a bunch of people. But the night-to-night showing up playing 36 minutes a game, I watched him during the course of the year guard Kate Cunningham in the last five minutes of games. Luca. Kawhi. Pick a guy. SGA. They threw him on. And he would accept the challenge. And I don't know. I just feel like in basketball, you have to have one guy that's like, well, at least we have this guy.

28:44Bill Simmons:They have that guy, but at least we have this guy. We're probably getting 29 to 32 from our guy tonight. And when you don't have that, you're not going to win 56 games.

28:56So with that said, his plus minus, if you go through his career,

29:02Bill Simmons:it's like shocking. I think he might be one of the great advanced metrics outliers in the history of the league if not number one every single year the Celtics were basically better with him when he wasn't on the court and I don't have an explanation for that and I'm not going to be like oh the stats are wrong because obviously they're not and I was talking to my dad about it because my dad you know pre last season Jalen went up a level last season like he really got better as a creator you know his I thought he had less turnovers, even though it doesn't reflect it. He had the ball way more. But my dad, pre-last season, they would have these two five-minute sections when they would take, six-minute sections, they would take Tatum out, and Jalen would get to run the offense.

29:46Bill Simmons:And my dad would either go to pee or go get a popcorn because he's like, I can't stand this. I hate when, it would be like going to a concert and you're going to see the Rolling Stones and it's like, oh, now we're going to play the Keith Richards song. You're like, fuck, can't you play Start Me Up? It was like, everybody goes to the bathroom. So that was there. And I, it always felt clumsy when Jalen was in charge of it, but last year was not that clumsy. I'm just telling you. Yeah. I think it's fine to look at, you know, over the, the course of, of the, the career and, you know, point out these, these vulnerabilities, these frailties to his game, but he was a flawed, durable player.

30:24Yeah, but we know from the outcomes what kind of impact he has on winning. Like the outcome of him. Including the title, the 2024 title. And being the MVP of that team. The MVP, the finals MVP. Well, whatever, whatever. I thought Jason should have won that. Enough people saw enough to believe that he earned it.

30:49Bill Simmons:Yeah. Well, I wonder, like, do they look at that season where they superpowered the role players around them, which is impossible now, but they just added Porzingis and Holiday. They had Derek White already. They had Pritchard as a bench guy. Al Horford was still there. And then you have this double forward combo in their mid-20s still, Tatum and Brown. And both of them were just a lot going downhill, shooting threes. And maybe they felt like that was the peak. They talked a lot in the press conference about the usage of the two guys together and the salary cap. I get it. The argument falls apart when you also tried to trade for Giannis.

31:29Bill Simmons:And Giannis and Tatum were going to be 70 % of your salary cap. I will never for the rest of my life understand why they didn't wait to see if this deal was available until September, October. Because I think Philly is saying yes on September 1st, on September 17th. on September 30th. I also feel like whatever happens with Jalen in Philly, you can't retroactively go and fit that to your opinion of this trade because I don't know if this is a great situation for him. Going to his Philly team, that's Maxie's team, and then when Embiid comes back, everything revolves. I just don't think his stats are going to be the same.

32:07Bill Simmons:He's going to be a... Who cares? He's a winner. They're going to win. They're going to be good. That's how I feel. I love every Sixers future I'm in. The idea of them as 8-1 to win the East, okay, I'll have a little taste of that. They're 4-1 to win the Atlantic Division behind the Knicks and the Celtics. Well, I think they're going to be motivated this upcoming season. Obviously, the wild card is, do you get 40 games out of Embiid? But those three guys are really going to help each other. I think it's going to be a really good fit. Like, putting good players on the floor, Edgecombe and Maxie and Jalen together, that's good.

32:45That's not going to be, it's going to work. I'm not worried about that at all.

32:49Bill Simmons:These were all the things I was saying heading into the 2018-19 Celtics season when I picked them to win 70 games. Kyrie, Brown, Tatum, Hayward, we're going to be unbelievable. Wow, there is one flaw. There is one. But you could feel it right away. And this is, you know, this is what you and I have loved about basketball forever. It doesn't always make sense. Like sometimes you can have a team like that last year's Celtics team where it's like, we have one guy who can consistently create a shot. We have a bunch of other guys. You called them bums, which I let it slide. I think they were young guys, role players, whatever.

33:23Bill Simmons:They were all guys that couldn't be top three guys on a team except for white. But they figured out how to make it work. And we've seen this over and over again in basketball. There's been teams where the pieces fall into place. With Philly, you have a lot of star power and a lot of money. You have Embiid, who we're going to talk about after the break. Um, it's just, you know, I, I would just be careful with that one. That is it an on paper team or is it a team that's actually going to play well together? Cause Paul George, whatever you say about him at this stage of his career, definitely knew he was a complimentary player and could kind of pop in and out.

33:59But he certainly popped in and out.

34:02Bill Simmons:I don't know if Jalen wants to pop in and out at this point. Well, if you were, if you're measuring it by how many games did Paul George play? He certainly popped into and then popped out of the entire season. pop some things into his body too. Um, yeah. So when, when we talk about like the usage rate and some of these advanced stats, it prompted me to go on this huge deep dive. And you know, I did my book from basically 07, 09. We didn't have a lot of these stats. I didn't have access to them. And there's stuff that like, I would talk, like I was looking at Steve Nash who I had, I forget where I had them, but like in the pyramid, I think I'm going to move them, But I think I had him somewhere in the 30s in the pyramid, and now he was in that cluster of point cards.

34:49Bill Simmons:Steve Nash ran the number one offense in basketball. You can go back now through basically to the mid-90s and look at all the on-off stats, all the offensive ratings, everything. He was the number one offense every year from 2003 to 2010. Last two years in Dallas, his first six Phoenix seasons, no matter who was on the team. They didn't have Amari Stoudemire for all of 06. Didn't matter. They were still number one in offense. They were number one in 08 with Shaq when they made that weird Shaq trade. They were number one in 09 in 10. Another Mark Cuban masterpiece. Well, but then you go and you look at the on-off stats for Nash and when he was off the court those last two years, they were better without him, allegedly, according to the stats.

35:38Bill Simmons:That must have been one of the reasons they let him go. So anyway, my point is, like, I do think some of these stats are great. I think Jalen might just be an outlier to some of this stuff. High usage guys on a team that's not that good. That probably should have been like a 42 to 45 win team. And for whatever reason, this type of player was able to pull 10 wins out of the regular season. But in the playoffs, it becomes harder. Yeah, well, especially with the roster construction that the Celtics had this most recent season. I just think it's a dumb way to try and capture who he is and the impact on the franchise.

36:17The only aspect of it to me that has a kind of like, OK, I can see this vibe to it is the extension. If he was really going to get bent out of shape about the extension, if there was something that happened in those conversations. Yeah. But here's the problem. The Celtics front office did not prepare its fan base in any way, shape, or form for anything like this. It was either Giannis coming to the Celtics to join Tatum or we're going to run it back. Or we're open for business. We're going to run it back with JB and then we'll see what happens over the course of the season. And by the way, running it back with JB or at the beginning of the season, at least, it's going to be a bunch of wins for the Celtics.

36:59because Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum together with the cast of characters and inserting Mitchell Robinson into it, they were going to win a bunch of basketball games. And I think that should have helped overall. Like some teams, you know, circumstances change as you get to the beginning of the season. Some teams start underperforming right away. And the best you can do is...

37:20Bill Simmons:Right, you just wait till December. Who's unhappy? Right, yeah. Paul George in July is not the answer. Like we have proof. We know for sure that a GM took a big gamble on Paul George, and that GM is not in the league right now. I'll tell you this. It wasn't the answer right after my colonoscopy. Yes, it was. You know who's the best example of the kind of Jalen season we're talking about where the advanced metrics actually kind of liked it was Iverson. Interesting. His 0-1 season where his usage, everything is just highest possible caliber. And he was on the court, was plus 5.7. And his on-off was plus 4.1.

38:07Bill Simmons:So it was around the same. Now, there's also reasons for that. They built that entire team around Allen Iverson. Every decision they made, every player they put next to him was to help hide him on defense. a physical team that can protect him and basically just shoot a shitload of shots and go nuts. And then we get to the playoffs that year and he's basically even on the court in minus five when he was minus five overall in the playoffs where he didn't have a lot of good games and they got a lot of foul help when it gets Milwaukee and all that stuff. But it is possible to build around a high usage.

38:47Bill Simmons:more likely it works out like it did with Jerry Stackhouse on that 01 Pistons team. Remember when he averaged like 30 a game and they were 32 and 50? That's usually the way it goes. Yeah. What I thought the touch point, the reference that was closest to what I might have imagined for the Celtics team was Russell Westbrook the year that KD left. Right. And he averaged his triple double. That was the 16-17 year, right? Yeah, they won, I'm going to say, 48 games, something like that. I think they won 46. Yeah. Or maybe it was 48. But they won one game in the playoffs. They immediately got, you know, dispensed.

39:27And it was similar.

39:29Bill Simmons:Remember Westbrook won the MVP because there was that one game in the weekend when he was just awesome in the last three minutes. And it was like, all right, fine. You twist my arm. You have it. But the point is Jalen could at least be somebody that you could, whether the advanced metric stats loved it or not. He could be the fulcrum of a team that could win in the mid-50s if you put the right types of players around him. I don't know if there's a lot of guys like that in the league. You know, I don't think... By the way, as great as Kawhi was last year, the durability thing is just not going to be there with him in the same way.

40:01Bill Simmons:You know, and I also wonder... I can't remember if I said this before, but if you're playing 71 games and you're going hard in all those games and you're really trying to guard and do all the stuff that Jalen was trying to do, you're not going to be 100 % for all of those games. Right. Whereas like the, we've seen some guys where they can play the 55 to 58 games and take a couple breaks during the season. Look at Paul George. Paul George took 25 games off, came back. He was 21 a game the last 10 games of the season. Then he was really good in the playoffs, partly because he took 25 games off in the middle of the season.

40:35So I will never understand why they didn't wait.

40:39Bill Simmons:and I think I'm more confused by the advanced metrics than I was before this trade because I don't really have an explanation for how they're worse when he plays and they were better when he was off the court and I think it's an advanced analytics team that was like this is multiple years now where this has been the case. What multiple years though? Just saying regular season. The years they were making it to the Eastern Conference Finals, the years they were making it to the NBA Finals. Like there's some alchemy there. There's something about the chemistry experiment that's producing more good results than not good.

41:17Like, you know, these far runs deep into the playoffs with him as the second most important player. And it's fine casting him that way. That tells me a lot about his import to the situation. Yeah, they're basically treating him like a TV show where it's like, this is ER season eight.

41:35Bill Simmons:we don't really need to pay our number two lead $60 million anymore. We can get some other actress and bring her in and basically get the same ratings. What's your reasonable forecast for the Celtics this upcoming season? Oh, I'd be shocked if they weren't in the mid-50s again. I think FanDuel has them minus 135 for the 50-plus. There's more injury risks this year with the team? No, no, no. There's 49.5 on FanDuel, and it's not minus 135 to the over. Oh, it was four days ago. 50-plus wins was minus 135, so that's different. I'm going to try and pull it up here super quick. They had the Celtics.

42:12They opened up, FanDuel opened up. They put 10 teams out with... With the actual over-unders? With over-unders, and the Celtics are at 49.5, and I guarantee you the over is not minus 135 at the moment. Well, the thing is, Mitch, assuming Mitch can play 60 games

42:30Bill Simmons:and play 20 to 25 minutes a game, 20 to 25 minutes a game. He's so much better. 60 is a lot of games for Mitchell Robinson. I get it. But he's just way better than what they had last year with Garza and Vucevic. Could not agree more. That's why I thought they should have kept Jalen Brown. And then Tatum is in the Jalen Brown spot and has been a first-team All-NBA guy four times. So you'd figure they're at least a little up there. They lose Simons and replace him with Paul George. and then you have Hugo's a year older and Shireman's a year older. More Pritchard shots, less minutes for White so he can be a little more efficient and I don't understand why they wouldn't at least be a 54 to 55 win team for the regular season plus three-pointers.

43:16Bill Simmons:They have more injury risk than they did last year. Yeah, they sure do. They sure do. Mitch, Paul George. But the thing is, couldn't they play Paul George 45 games? Oh, so it's the exact same price. It's minus 135. I got it wrong. Boston at winning 50 is still at minus 135. And the over is over 49 and a half. That's what fans will set it for. Is it minus 135? So that's it. I mean, I would think about the 55 for that. Because you figure Detroit's worse. We'll see. Philly will be better. East is tough. There's only one team that took a step backwards, in my opinion, and that's Detroit. Right. The Pacers are going to be playing, you know, to win this season.

43:57The Wizards are playing to win. Now that doesn't translate. But I don't think Charlotte is worse. I like what they did in terms of their machinations this offseason.

44:07Bill Simmons:I like what they did long term, but this for the season itself, we'll see. Well, we'll see. I like Orlando this upcoming season with a functioning head coach. And if Franz Wagner can play 60 games. Well, but look, I mean, you know, they were forecasted to have over 50 wins last season. You would think Atlanta would be a little bit better. Right. The East is tough. The East is going to be a bitch. There's only three teams that suck. I got to say the single funniest thing to me about the Jalen, and listen, and it's been discussed a little in different places, but I think Jalen's side and his agent definitely sabotaged a couple of possible teams.

44:44Bill Simmons:There's no question. There's a couple of teams. Like who? I think there were a couple of teams that they were like, Yeah, he's not going to be happy if he goes there. Name names. I think there were teams that backed off. Here's the problem with trading him at this moment now, especially, is there are not a lot of teams that can take on a$57 million contract. Like, it's under the way this thing works. But this is the unforgivable one. Go ahead. Explain to me in a million years why the Brooklyn Nets wouldn't have traded Michael Porter's expiring for, in three of the first they have for Jalen Brown.

45:20what possible answer do you have for this? You are asking for, you know, the, the, the, the, the solution to the Jesus shroud. This is the functional equivalent. Like how can you explain? There's like, like, imagine I'm Joe shot.

45:37Bill Simmons:I'm Joe sigh. And I call you. It's a phenomenon. Yeah. We have a chance to trade. Michael Porter's expiring, uh, a pick down the road. We have like a Houston pick and something else. And we can get Jalen Brown. Wouldn't your answer be like, what the fuck are you waiting for? Take the trade before they pull it off. The phenomena in the, this is one of those phenomena in the universe that has no explanation. You just have to accept it. It's not like they have another Max guy. You can't even blame like this. Are you saying that Brooklyn put this on the table? No, I'm saying Boston thought they had a chance to pull something off with Brooklyn.

46:16Bill Simmons:And at some point in the higher levels, I talked about this a week ago. It got squashed. They decided they didn't. They weren't interested in Jalen Brown. Which you. Oh, OK. I'm saying. So at the higher ones. Well, Brooklyn deciding against it makes perfect sense because they make no sense whatsoever. Because you can't make any sense out of what Brooklyn is doing. The Knicks just won the title. Who are you? Who am I selling to Nets fans next year? Please come see Brown, our rookie, before he gets hurt. Julius Randle. Here's Julius Randle. If I have Brown and Julius Randle and a bunch of shooting and young guys.

46:48Bill Simmons:That's interesting. At that point, I'm not interesting. Right. But yeah, they turned that down. It's really bad. They don't need more teams. They just need to move that Brooklyn team. We're going to take a break, and then we got to talk about Joel Embiid. All right, Joel Embiid, 57 million this year, 63 next year, 67 in the final year of his deal. I mean, we're doing the worst contracts draft all over. I mean, this whole podcast is Paul George and Joel Embiid. Absolutely amazing. Jalen's 57, 61, and 65, and Maxie's 41, 44, and 46. And the cap's going backwards. This whole thing where the cap went backwards has been, I wish I had been more focused on it heading into the draft in free agency.

47:33Bill Simmons:Like, this is nuts. It's 6 million lower than they projected it for this year. I think next year it's going to be in double figures. And by the time we get to the last year of the decade, I think it's going to be like 25 million less than they thought. So this is the most, yes, I didn't mean to interrupt. Well, no, it's just when they did the Jalen deal a couple years ago, I was like, whoa, we have to pay the whole 304 with Tatum too? Like, why did we do that? And then everybody, and it was just Celtics. Every team was like, cap's going way up. Like, that contract in a couple years. And I remember doing pods about, these guys are going to be making$75 million and it's going to be like they're making$35 million now.

48:13Bill Simmons:Well, the cap didn't go up because of all this local TV stuff. And it is one of the reasons that drove the Celtics trade. And if I'm the Sixers and I have 114 million for Embiid and Jalen, and then I also have the Maxick thing going up, who's the guy I want to build my team around? And I have Vijay Edgecombe down the road. It makes me wonder, do I need to have Joel Embiid around? I think they're going to trade Joel Embiid house. And I think they want to. And I don't care if this gets aggregated. I think he's available. I think teams think he's available. And I think Philly has been, um, pretty careful about saying we're so excited to build around and be Jalen, Max, and BJ.

48:55Bill Simmons:You haven't really heard a lot of that. Um, I think it beads available. And the question for me house, would you trade for Joel Embiid? And if you, and if you, if the answer is yes, how much would you give up? Would the wizards trade for Joel Embiid? Pick a team. I'll give you a bunch of them. yeah I'll give you the Wizards that would be Davis for 58.4 it's a straight shoot I think Philly would have to make a second trade to do something with the first apron they'd have to do a couple cap mechanics but my guess is Philly would have to throw picks into that trade to get you to take Embiid would you be interested in that?

49:35no sir no thank you I'm all set so no thank you

49:39Bill Simmons:I like Joel Embiid if you're Milwaukee would you think about Miles Turner 26, 28, 29 next three years and Kuzma's expiring for Joel Embiid? To do what? Milwaukee stinks. What's the point of adding a guy that plays 40 games a season at 60 million bucks a year? So that's a no. That's a hard no. Okay. They need to stink. If you're Brooklyn, would you think about Michael Porter just straight up for Embiid? I mean, who knows? You have to ask. But you're in charge. You're in charge of Brooklyn right now. Oh, I'm in charge. You're in charge of Brooklyn. Yes. You would trade Michael Porter's expiring for three years of Embiid.

50:25No, definitely not. You wouldn't? No. Michael Porter's expiring is worth a lot. That's worth a lot.

50:33Bill Simmons:I could have Joel Embiid, the 2023, I think that was the year he won, 2023 MVP on my team. How many games is he playing? Tell my team. Let's say you move to Brooklyn. Who are you going to see in the Nets this year? Nobody. Julius Randle? The same as ever. It's the Nets. I'm not going to see the Nets. Here's the one team, I think. Dallas. Run by Musai Uharry. Long, long-standing relationship with Joel Embiid. Okay. I think would be the one guy that would maybe be a little more favorable about rolling the dice of them. And the other thing is they have contracts. They have Gafford at 17, 18, 19 PJ Washington, 19, 21, 23, and clay at 17.4.

51:21Bill Simmons:And that can't be the trade. They'd need a third team. So you would have to bring Milwaukee into it and send Turner and Kuzma to, uh, to Philly. You would have to send and be to Dallas. That's not terrible. Um, and then you would have to send the Gafford clay PJ. You'd have to, you'd need some sort of third team. It'd be something like that. If you were Dallas, would you think about it? No. Wrong player, wrong timeline. So the conclusion we've come to is that Philly is going to have Joel Embiid on their team next year. The situation that makes sense for him, honestly, is a team that is very close to winning the title.

52:06and that team looking at, you know, it would be a Western Conference team to me in the first place. And it would be a team that feels like we can bolster our Wemby stopping power with some number of games from Embiid in the playoffs. Okay. That's what makes sense to me.

52:27Bill Simmons:Okay, what's that team? Well, the contenders are Minnesota, Denver, and Oklahoma City. Those would be the teams that I think have a legit chance. I don't look at anybody else in the West. Why not? I'm not doing that if I'm Denver. They had Valens Yunus as the backup to Joker. Yeah, but you can't have a 57 million. Denver's out. That Denver's ridiculous. They have to trade Jamal Murray for him. I'm talking about... Minnesota, I don't think can because... And you're saying they have to trade Jamal Murray for him. Two giant big guys with no point guard? Minnesota I don't think can do anything because of the second apron.

53:06Bill Simmons:I think it's too complicated for them. Even the Gobert bit, they can't. They couldn't do Gobert for a B. I don't even know if they're allowed to package players. That's another thing that's so stupid about the league right now is these, you know, all these restrictions and regulations against being able to trade. Who's the third team you had? Shout it. San Antonio themselves could acquire him. Oklahoma City, though, was the third team. They're not doing that either. Okay. It would have to be a team that's like a slightly, slightly desperate, you know, like a... I mean, it could be Houston, but Houston doesn't do anything that makes any sense.

53:43So they're just going to waste the end of KD.

53:46Bill Simmons:Forget all the teams. Would you even consider taking that contract down in a million years? Under like desperate kind of circumstances is what you said. Can Golden State fit him? Is the expiring Jimmy Butler an option here? House. Now we're talking.

54:08Bill Simmons:Now we're talking. Yeah, we can get to play off territory. Fuck it. We'll get, they had Embiid, Kerr coached him in the Olympics. He played very well for Kerr. He really tried hard for that U.S. team, Embiid did. And you use them as a luxury. The problem is if you're wrong, you've ruined the last bullet in your gun for Curry. Golden State's an interesting one, though. Yeah, the bigger point is... What if LeBron's there? What if LeBron helps? The other one is, what if Detroit says, yeah, this is actually more interesting to us than a Durant sign-in trade. I don't think they would do that either.

54:43Bill Simmons:Okay. But yeah, there's just not a lot of teams. I don't hate Detroit. I really don't. I don't hate Detroit. I do think the idea of Cade and Bede has a kind of logic. Let me do this exercise in a slightly different way.

54:59Bill Simmons:give me the over under of games by year and bead plays next three years 39 and a half per year. Oh, you're saying yes. Yes. Per year. Right. So that's one. So if his over under was 39 and a half games next season, would you bet over or under? Uh, under. Yeah. See, this is why Philly's not going to be able to trade Joel Embiid. I didn't have to sign him to that extension. If the Knicks had lost the title. Oh, that's a good one. There's some towns and Embiid starts to become, but instead it went the other way. But yeah, the Knicks, the biggest mistake Daryl made, I think of this decade, um, was not selling high on Embiid.

55:48Bill Simmons:Much like the Celtics just sold high on Jalen Brown, which I think for different reasons. It wasn't just only the not selling high. It was also the extension that was not called for, was not required. He had a murky foot situation. That extension is the most unforgivable extension in all of basketball. So we think Joel Embiid will stay on Philly even though I don't think they want him to stay. I look forward to them being asked this in a press conference. I don't know where this stuff's coming from. We love Joel. We want him back here. I think they want to have the team built around Maxi and Vijay and Jalen Brown.

56:26Bill Simmons:If they could get out that contract, they would.

56:31Bill Simmons:On Joel Embiid, Golden State, if they could just man it and they'd have Draymond, they have Yaxel and Curry and basically, and they have Porzingis, right? They'd have a couple luxuries. And basically the goal would be, can we just patch together a regular season and get into the playoffs as one of the eight seeds and then kind of see how it goes for two months? It's kind of fun. I'm into it. I'm into it. It's kind of fun. Let's take a spin. Well, the other thing that happened to poor Golden State is I think they thought they were getting LeBron and potentially AD, and now it's pretty clear they were being used by leverage as leverage as LeBron goes back to Cleveland.

57:18Bill Simmons:But I don't understand what that leverage translates into. Like, meaning what? Because the teams that are still in the running for him, the Sixers, the Heat, and Cleveland. The Cleveland thing's done. He's going to Cleveland. Okay. Come on. First of all, they hired his buddy's assistant GM. That was red flag number one. Red flag number two was they gave Donovan Mitchell that giant extension for no reason. Do you want to pay Donovan Mitchell $75 billion three years from now? Well, here's the thing. That was the, we're paying off Donovan Mitchell so he doesn't get mad when we got LeBron. You're going to be shouting this from the rooftops.

57:54We need to tell all the hoops heads out there, all the NBA lovers. It's not just that the salary cap is going in the wrong direction. The percentage of what Donovan Mitchell's salary represents to Cleveland is going. It's going to be nearly 40 % of the cap because of the way that the cap is. You're right. If the cap goes, is it any sort of danger going the other way? It's an incredible miss by the people doing the math. At the time the collective bargaining agreement was negotiated and this second apron, this hard cap was dropped into the situation. They fucked up how much money is going to be available year over year.

58:38Yes. In a material way. So we are living in an era now, and you've said this, and we just got to keep telling all our hoops head brethren, there are going to be a lot of deals done where it was done for money. Not done for basketball reasons, but for salary cap reasons.

58:55Bill Simmons:Two things might flip this. Let's hear it. Expansion. Being able to dump. They could make the expansion rules whatever they want. Okay. Right? They could say you have to take eight,$10 million and up players or however they want to do it, but you might be able to get off one of these guys. The other thing is, and I don't know if they can agree. What's the timeline for expansion? Does it marry up with how much time is left on the Embiid contract? No, the next couple of years are going to be bad. I wonder, could they institute an emergency amnesty clause?

59:36Bill Simmons:Just make that part of like, they add a year to the season. CBA. You're like, we'll add a year to the CBA, but we need a couple things back including, we're going to bring the Amnesty Clause back. You and I, the Amnesty Clause... The players don't want another year of this CBA. The players hate this collective bargaining agreement. It is fucking them up. You know they should blame themselves because they had the reps that signed up for it. The Amnesty Clause brought us more joy than just about anything. It was the Allen Houston... All of it. Just every time they had it, it was so funny to watch teams just Just pay people to go away, including your team with the famous Andre Blatch extension, which was my favorite.

1:00:15Bill Simmons:One of the all-time greats. The extension that turned into the Amnesty Clus. Yeah, maybe there's not an Embiid team yet, but I feel like that's going to be a story. And by the way, he's been pretty quiet the last couple of weeks. But I feel like there's something there with Dallas. You haven't seen a welcome to Philly JB from Embiid yet? Have we seen that? Maybe he's done it. I'm not. So you're just, you, there's no situation where you trade for him unless you were super close to a title and you had a situation like a Jimmy Butler type contract. A thousand percent. You wouldn't do it like if you're Brooklyn and be like, we have Joel Embiid, we have a star, come see Joel Embiid.

1:00:56How many games can you tell your fans he's going to show up and play? If he only plays 40 games and come see him for 20 games? I don't know. How did Philly do it the last five years? Not well. their fans are are are besides themselves the counter on mb is you you could say

1:01:12Bill Simmons:yeah i don't know his knees look actually pretty good he had all these other weird injuries and things happen that what if he's just healthy and i'm trying to talk myself into it for somebody phoenix was the other one i couldn't even figure out phoenix the salary cap i couldn't but it just felt like they would do it yeah it felt like a phoenix he had to move there'd be no doubt i mean the miles bridges thing is fucking bananas why why did they acquire miles bridges well i think Why did they have to do that? Didn't he go to Ishbia's college? Yes, he did. Seems like that could be an explanation.

1:01:42Bill Simmons:All right. Well, watch. Embiid Watch is on. We're going to take... Oh, I had another thing for you. Teams that have their own picks in 2027. We're going to do a mailbag in one second. As far as I can tell, it's only 11 teams that just have their own pick in a way that we can understand like, oh, they have their own pick. Sacramento, Memphis, Chicago, Washington, Portland, Orlando, Charlotte, Gold State, Indiana, Boston, and Detroit. And I think I'm right. Don't hold me to it, but I think those are the 11 teams. And then there's a whole bunch of new picks, swaps. Houston has Phoenix's pick. Memphis has the Lakers.

1:02:30Bill Simmons:Brooklyn has the Knicks pick. San Antonio has the Hawks, etc. I think they need to add this to the CBA too, along with the Amnesty Clause. What? This is too confusing now. Look at this document I have. New picks, swaps, and this is just a team. This is fucking... How did we end up here? How did we end up here? There's two double swaps. And I don't even know if this is all right. Like Brooklyn has Philly's pick, I think, protected one through eight next year, which they're not getting. So I guess it rolls over. Clippers have Toronto's pick. The Celtics have this Clippers pick two years from now.

1:03:14Bill Simmons:That might actually be something. Well, this is, we can't do this. But it's just, it's too, I just can't follow it anymore. The third week of June, 2027, one through 30, somebody will be picking. There'll be 30 picks in the first round. They have to pick. Who the hell knows? I hate it. Um, all right, we're going to come back to the mailbag. All right. Some mailbag questions. You can send them to BS podcast 33 at gmail.com. Actually, speaking of what we were just talking about with, uh, Brandon asked about the repeater tax. Has it run the court run its course? Teams are treating the second apron as a hard cap.

1:03:50Bill Simmons:Can they just remove it? Um, it was interesting. Stevens mentioned something I had been talking about on my podcast for years about how unfair it was that Tatum and Brown were guys they drafted that grew up in Boston, became star players. And then they basically, because of the rules, couldn't keep both of them and whether they should have stuff built in to protect the teams. And my argument was always like after five years, maybe you get 2 % off per year of the guy's salary for your luxury tax or your cap or whatever. You get some sort of benefit because then that would lead to more stability and fans knowing that they would have the same guy on a team for more than nine years.

1:04:31Bill Simmons:You're down with any of those types of ideas, right? Of course, yes. You have to persuade the ownership, the group that sits on that side of the table, that this is something that fans want. And so far, they haven't been persuaded. It hasn't shown up in a collective bargaining agreement yet. Of course, it should make sense. AJ in Toledo says, the everyone wins penalty would be for the NBA to force Balmer to swap the Clippers for the Supersonics for free. He gets to be the hometown hero in Seattle and run the team. He leaves behind the Intuit Dome and the Clippers, which they then have expansion for, and you get the LA Clippers and an expansion team.

1:05:13Bill Simmons:And that's how everybody saves face. I mean, the more interesting thing about the Balmer penalty and if there's going to be a penalty in any of that stuff is they traded Kawhi to Toronto. who was the aggrieved party in 2019 Toronto I mean the stories are out there about all of the extracurricular stuff that you know Kawhi's camp was demanding yeah those stories are out there conspiracy bill tackled this in a mailbag a week and a half ago about could this be the penalty where they just Toronto just gets their picks back and we call it a day but But it is interesting that they've removed the one.

1:05:58Bill Simmons:So they get Kawhi back, who apparently loved being there the whole time, even though he fled, like it was the Amityville Horror House after that season. And everybody's just like, yeah, and we're just good. So does this mean we're never getting a verdict or finding out what happened? Both, yes. There'll be a verdict, but finding out what happened, the league is going to say we investigated it extremely thoroughly and we couldn't connect any of the dots that suggest that there was a knowing plan by the leadership of the Clippers to deliberately circumvent the salary cap. It's a lot of circumstantial evidence.

1:06:38We're going to say we couldn't connect any of the dots. It doesn't look good. The optics aren't great, but there's no direct communication from anybody at Clippers leadership to Kawhi or to Aspire that says, we're going to try and compensate you, Kawhi, outside of the rules of the league.

1:07:00Bill Simmons:We'll see how it goes. Jermon from North Carolina wants to know why Phoenix isn't being talked about as a legitimate LeBron destination. He could be doing the 2021 Chris Paul with Devin Booker. They have talent, they have flexibility, and more importantly, it's one of the country's best golf destinations. What more could he want? Intriguing. Here's the thing. Two answers. First of all, he's going to play golf wherever he wants to play golf on whatever circumstances he wants to play golf. It doesn't, he's not tied to the locale, right? It would be, it's a nice to have for the locale to have, you know, some golf courses on the days that he's actually, you know, Right, because he's going to be on the road half the season.

1:07:46Yes, yes. And even home games, you know, if there's time stretches in the schedule, he can get anywhere. He has a private jet that will take him anywhere on Earth and certainly anywhere within the continental United States to go play golf when he finds room in the schedule. And by the way, if he needs a little bit of rest here and there, which certainly makes sense for him and for the team, then go take three days. He doesn't need to play every regular season home game and he won't play every regular season away game. He'll play some number. It probably makes sense for him to play. What do you think?

1:08:2260 games? Is that the right number?

1:08:25Bill Simmons:He has every record. that this is why I still feel like I mean one of my predictions is already coming true that he's using the entire month of July to milk this um and it's worked and everybody with a podcast every TV show has had LeBron segments ESPN seems to write a piece every two days like played brilliantly on that um I still wonder could he just wait till December January and and just keep this going for six months and kind of wait for week 17 football season to strike depending on who how many games did he miss at the beginning of the most recently completed season the first 30 yeah well yeah it was like 20 at least yeah because of the sciatica got to say i got the sciatica got the sciatica i gotta say which is makes sense fine with it if he called you as golf conciliary and was like i'm picking my team i have every record and i have four titles i'm picking my team solely for the golf courses, what would you tell them?

1:09:25Golden State. It's an all-time no-brainer. The proximity to the Monterey Peninsula and Cypress Point, that means you get Cypress, you get Pebble, obviously. You get the other bangers right there. Monterey Peninsula Club is super underrated, magnificent. Pasatiempo is within a short drive. And then right there in San Francisco, there is banger after banger. San Francisco Golf Club, the Cal Club, where Curry belongs. Olympic is there. It's just, you know, there are a dozen of the greatest golf courses that Earth has to offer in that area.

1:10:02Bill Simmons:Plus, LA is a short flight. So he's got all those. He has San Diego in that whole scene. Like, you're in the epicenter. He wants to go spend, you know, 48 hours at Bandon Dunes down in North Bend, Oregon. You know how easy it is to get with a private jet from San Francisco down to... Like, dude, you already won four titles. You're already in everybody's top three for eternity. Like, you should have fun. Play with Steph Curry. Steph has to make this pitch. Steph is the one making the pitch. You're selling out arenas. You're going to get to play golf in every course. Like, what are we doing? Just come to us.

1:10:42Bill Simmons:I don't know what he's... The Cleveland thing, I don't really understand it. What do you mean? I don't understand how... Like, if winning is the number one priority. Yeah. I don't understand how you win a title if you're playing Mitchell, Harden, and LeBron as three of your five guys in four straight playoff series. Why anyone would think that was going to work. It's a tough one. I think LeBron has to be in the hardened spot. And the only case I would say, like, why, if he decided it's Cleveland, why it's taking so long is they're trying to figure out a way to get out of the hardened piece of this when they had a wink wink with him.

1:11:23Well, I thought they already extended him, didn't they? I thought they were. They're still discussing it?

1:11:29Bill Simmons:Yeah, I don't think it's been announced. Well, they said they're working on the extension. Has it not been announced that the extension's completed? We've seen teams back out of stuff. The wink wink was, well, that's true. We have seen that. Daryl Morey is a liar, according to some. That was tough. Poor Daryl Morey. Tough decade. No, he is not.

1:11:52The extension's not complete yet.

1:11:55Bill Simmons:It is not. There's a lot of could-bes and maybes. Could-be three years. Like, all kinds of stuff. That's what I saw. It would be interesting if Harden became the sixth man on the team. Like, he went back to his 2012 OKC. the the problem with cleveland is kenny fucking atkinson i mean get get grandpa uh his smoking pipe and some pudding uh and let him you know tell you how many games they won according to the the uh ouija board charlie sends in it's supposed to be eight slices of pie for blame pie i always do blame pie i guess i had three slices in the last one and he he doesn't like that. He said, it's illegal.

1:12:39Bill Simmons:There's no word, no need to have the word pie involved. You don't say, sure, I'll have 10 % more apple pie on Thanksgiving. You say, I'll have one more slice. And then he writes, I'm a depressed Celtics fan living in the Bay area. He wants more explanation. So how many slices can be in a blame pie? At least four? Cause you can have a four slice blame pie. You could. Yes. But I, we, we had eight explanations for how the Celtics fucked this up. Did they apologize to their fan base yet? The Celtics? Yeah. They need to apologize. I'll say this. Because there's been some weird stuff going on online and people doing shitty things to Stevens and all that stuff.

1:13:22Bill Simmons:Sports, anybody that does that stuff, I just don't get it. You can be mad about a trade, like whatever, but you start calling it of social media handles and stuff. I just think you've got to take a look at a mirror at that point. I hope. I didn't see any of that stuff. Yeah, it was like shit with Brad Stevens' kids. I didn't announce all of it. I didn't announce that. That's horrendous. Let's keep it in perspective. We won the title in 2024. Settle down. I didn't like the trade either, but if you're going online to try to attack people, settle down. Keith Black says, he thinks the Matt Fries error from the World Cup game is up there with the worst sports plays he's ever seen in his life.

1:14:01Bill Simmons:And he said his top five are J.R. Smith's finals brain fart, the Bill Buckner game six error, the Colts special teams play when they put all the guys on the right side and then the snapper got overrun and the punter got tackled, the butt fumble and Chris Webber calling timeout. He thinks I should have a bracket with all the worst plays ever. That's too mean. The Matt Freeze play was iconic though. Yeah, and you have to separate even that list of contenders the stakes were radically different for many of those like like uh the buckner error um is in the same class as freeze because that's that's what was at stake i don't know how i was calling him freeze freeze whatever however you say it i don't know how to say it was just like a brain fart mistake though the the goalie having like basically an ayso error for the third goal that you would see like in an under 10 game in norco california i'm still reeling from that i'm just being like in terms of what was at stake and the horrible outcome it produced.

1:15:02The J.R. Smith one's pretty bad. Well, except for they weren't going to win that series and it was game one. And all it produced was them going to overtime. They still could have won that basketball game. The game didn't end on that play. The stupid giving up that goal. The game was over. That was it. What about Wemby whipping it off Castle's back? Go ahead and put that in the list. You can put that in the list.

1:15:29the foul was worse the foul on him fouling Brunson was worse

1:15:33Bill Simmons:AC and DC says the Jalen trade is so interesting because of two elements coexisting how lopsided and panicky the trade appears how amazing Brad Stevens has been to things that don't to things that collide well he's been amazing as an executive yeah I think so You like the Vucevic, how that went down? That was a money thing. That was a money thing and then hope. That was it. That was a money trade. That was not a basketball trade. Again, we have to keep telling the world this because that team was, you know, trending in a direction where they knew the Tatum was a possibility. They had to save money or the team was going to have$300 million in taxes, which was unsustainable apparently.

1:16:18So this is the expectation management that I'm talking about and why they should be apologizing. They should have said out loud that Jalen, as much as we love him and we'd love to keep him, we're not sure that's going to be possible. They could have said that at any point. They should have said that during the Giannis thing. They could have said this at any point.

1:16:36Bill Simmons:The thing is, I'm still not positive they were that in on Giannis. They made one offer. You said that they were. They made one offer. They never made a second one, though. It's so weird. Why? Why didn't they? If you wanted to get a new house in D.C. and you're like, I really like this house, you make an offer. And then the broker's like, Like, all right, well, they'll do this instead. And you're like, nope. I've made my one offer. Rather not have the house. Usually when you make an offer in basketball, that means you're going to make another offer. But that's the thing. The Celtics are like, yeah, I'm good with that.

1:17:11Bill Simmons:I don't want the house. It doesn't make any sense because it costs them Jalen Brown. Yeah. Anyway, AC and DC says, with something like the Luka trade, we could immediately just trash Nico Harrison and not worry too much about eating crow later. But because of how much most basketball fans respect Stevens, we have to entertain the thought that maybe we're the asshole here. Maybe he's far ahead of us on understanding the card cap and how to compete with Wemby and OKC and getting rid of Jalen. And then he wonders, has there ever been a bigger self-questioning, wait, am I the asshole trade in the history of basketball.

1:17:50Bill Simmons:I did think about this. Um, it's probably the Adrian Dantley, Mark Aguirre trade. Okay. Cause I think our reaction when that trade happened was, huh? Like they almost made the finals last year with Adrian Dantley and Mark Aguirre seems pretty unhappy in Dallas. And this is a pretty weird trade. Wonder why they did this. and then it turned out that won them two titles not saying this is going to turn out the same way i couldn't think of any other examples though how quickly can they trade paul george what are the rules now how long do they have to hold on to i mean you can some period of time okay they still i didn't know if there was like if this was one of those trades where you have to sit on them for some period of time before he comes trade eligible again i liked when new orleans said they're not trading trey murphy what are they doing Trey Murphy's going around everywhere saying like yeah I don't know where I'm going I'm definitely getting traded like talk to him New Orleans and Brooklyn the two most confounding franchises Luke Hall and Melbourne Australia love Melbourne Australia he said after hearing your list of oh no trades on the podcast with Zach should we start ranking trades for shock factor the same as earthquakes like on the Richter scale the Luca trade would be a 9.5, the largest ever recorded.

1:19:13It's true.

1:19:14Bill Simmons:You could factor it aftershocks, tsunamis, and more for trade analysis. It's a 9.9. That's a full 10. Yeah, I would argue the Luka trade was a 9.7. I think it's a 10. That's like the end of civilization. It's got to be a 10. Whatever the highest. I thought nine was like your whole city's ruined at like eight and a half. Yeah. So maybe the Luka's a nine. It was catastrophic until the league fixed the Cooper flag pick. I think a 10 would be like OKC trading Shea Gilgis-Alexander for Kevin Herter, straight up. That'd be a 10. What about the Celtics trading Jalen Brown for Paul George? And two first-round picks?

1:19:52Yeah, what about that?

1:19:53Bill Simmons:I think it's at least a seven and a half. I would say so. The thing is, we knew they were shopping them. An untradable contract. You don't have much mileage we've gotten off these Paul George contracts the last three years. What was the number one Washington Wizards Richter scale trade? Goobs? Probably Mitch Richmond for Chris Weber. That was pretty bad. You were so sad. Actually, you know what? No, it's not that. It was, we traded Ben Wallace for, hold on. I know this. The guy from Orlando. Oh God, I know his name. I'm sorry. I can't pull it right now. It was a horrendous, horrendous trade. And Ben Wallace went to Detroit and became a cornerstone, the most important player on multiple contending teams for them.

1:20:42So it was... Oh. Ike Austin. Ike Austin. Yeah, I knew I could pull it. Tim Legler was in that trade. Legs. Legs. I wonder how he feels about it.

1:20:54Bill Simmons:Ike Austin. I remember... Jesus Christ! What the fuck? I had the Digital City column back then, but no podcast. you were just an occasional character in my column. I don't think you weighed in on the record on that. But I know from phone calls, you were absolutely furious and upset because you were going to Wizards games and you were like, this guy, Ben Wallace, there's something here. And then they traded him for Rick Austin. God damn it. Tough one. All right. Now that Kyle Lowry is officially retired as a Raptor, I need a ruling. This is from Big Mo in Toronto. Is Kyle Lowry a Hall of Famer?

1:21:33Bill Simmons:six all-stars one all-NBA champion Olympic gold he will get a jersey retired here anyway but we can't control the Hall of Fame so as you know I've been constantly tinkering with this pyramid list that I'll probably die and nobody will even know who was in it I did have him on the extended honorable mention second best player on the championship team he did get 13 all-NBA once 2019 playoffs 15-5-7 in 24 games with all the defense stuff that he did. I wrote down, best love him on your team, hate him if he's on anyone else's team, guy of his era, basically, which is Lambeer, Mahorn, Bruce Bowen, those kind of guys.

1:22:15Bill Simmons:He was probably the most talented of all those types of players. And everyone gets into the Hall of Fame. So the answer is he's in. He's in. That's a great point. That's the most important point. Did Antoine Jamison get in? Are you kidding me? Yeah, he'll get in. He has 20 ,000 points. He'll be in. My goodness. The NBA is something. Jack M writes, I've heard several takes on how LaMelo will fit with Ant in Minnesota. But people aren't talking enough about the biggest problem with this trade. LaMelo Ball will be living in Minnesota throughout the winter. The worst driver of our era is going to be driving on snow and ice for four months.

1:22:50Bill Simmons:This can't end well. You're going to have to call Con and Uber and get to Minnesota to protect Ant at all costs. We cannot let him get in an automobile with LaMelo behind the wheel. Now, people have been joking about this, but it's possible we haven't joked enough about it. Like, he couldn't handle Charlotte. Charlotte's nice. It should be in his contract that he... Ubers only? Yes, yes. It's not an Uber, just a driver. I think he likes driving, though. He likes driving that crazy giant truck. Because he's going to drive that giant truck. Could be Fargo, too. Paul from Liverpool, UK he said FAO conspiracy bill myopic new salary cap rules most talent leagues after I ever had not enough max salary slots potentially disgruntled players Adam Silver now trying to rush expansion to open up more salaries and more max slots what are your thoughts?

1:23:47Bill Simmons:I don't think they're related it did make me think that I tend to agree with you. You think that the expansion will open up the cap, that the cap will increase because of the expansion? The cap won't increase. The ability to take 24 players and move them around and give some cap relief. And then if you're an expansion team, like if Embiid's unprotected, the last year of his deal, let's say they start in 27, 28. or 20. Let's say they started 20, 29. If you're Vegas, do you make a bead like one of your first picks in the expansion? Cause you get Joel Embiid for a year. Right. Okay. I get it. Except for mirrors in New York says, why is no one in the media discussing just how terrible the Pelicans rebuild is going?

1:24:36Bill Simmons:Is it a retool or repoop? You tell me Trey Murphy is still on this team. Why exactly? Missy is suddenly feverishly untouchable. Derek queen. Um, he's untouchable. Herb Jones, they're letting content with just letting him rot away in a smoothie coated hellhole. And what in the ever-loving fuck is Zion Williamson still doing there? From the outside, it looks less like a plan and more like someone forgot to hit simulate on the rebuild. What are they doing? What is this team? He forgot one. Didn't they just hire Jamal Mosley to be the head coach of that team? They did. He's hot. He's coming off a seven game playoff series.

1:25:13Well, he's hot because he was sitting on the goddamn hot seat for the entirety of that Orlando of the season. It's hot for the seat. It's in Inferno.

1:25:22Bill Simmons:Yeah, so they have... They give them in Brooklyn. I have no fucking idea what they're doing. Dumars, when he traded McCollum's expiring for two years of Jordan Poole, one of my favorite underrated bad trades of the decade. Bless up. Bless up, Joe Dumars. So they still have Jordan Poole on an expiring. They have Murphy, Herb Jones. They did not have their number one pick this year, of course. They still have Murray. I don't know. I don't know what they're doing. That's a team. Who was it? Willie Green was the head coach? Yeah. It was just two years ago, and they were on pace to win nearly 50 games.

1:25:58Of course, Zion got hurt. But there was a case to be made for Willie Green. He was quietly taking a lot of that talent, and here we are with them once again.

1:26:08Bill Simmons:They have some sort of swap with Milwaukee that I just... Yeah. It should be valuable because Milwaukee is going to stink stink. It's either 27 or 20. I don't know. There's been so many things. I have this document with all the draft picks, and I don't even know what's right anymore. But they have a swap with, apparently with New Orleans and Milwaukee, where New Orleans gets the best of those two picks. But that, yeah, that's right. I have that correct. So that's not bad. The Bucks might not be good. They are not going to be good. All right. A couple more. Watching Obsession. This is from Craig from Durham, North Carolina.

1:27:01Bill Simmons:Watching Obsession. Did you see Obsession? I didn't. Sign me up. You can pay-per-view it on wherever. Okay. Okay. Watching Obsession got me thinking about Kevin Durant. His career has all the telltale signs of a poorly worded wish coming true. That's the focus of Obsession. That's the guy makes a wish. It goes badly. All right. After being eliminated in 2016, Durant made a wish that probably sounded something like, I wish I was part of the best team of all time. He then got his chance. Unfortunately, after that, numerous injuries, foot on the line, sabotaged a couple of teams, never got the respect he wanted.

1:27:41Bill Simmons:That's an interesting analogy. He did get what he wanted. That 2017 Warriors team was, I think, the best team of this century. It's either them or they all win Lakers in the finals. Who do you have in that? The Warriors.

1:27:59Back-to-back finals MVP, right? Didn't he get it both years?

1:28:04Bill Simmons:Patrick wants to know if is Jalen Brown replaced Cat now as this generation's 90-10 guy, where he's 90 % good, but everybody dwells on the 10%. And he said, my other choice was Cat, but I think he washed himself of his sins with the last postseason. I think that's true. I agree. So, Jalen, that was that Westbrook column I wrote in 2012 about everybody has 10%. That's not great. And some guys it's more glaring than others. And Russell Westbrook was always the most glaring. And that's a little bit like what Jalen's like. Cal from Ottawa said, after watching Argentina scraped by Egypt got me thinking about Messi and his relationship with his teammates.

1:28:44Bill Simmons:I think he has to be the number one most loved teammate of all time. Who else would you add to the list? Steph, et cetera, et cetera, he goes. For basketball, I think Steph and Duncan and Nash. I'm glad you had Duncan. I agree with Duncan as well. For the last 25 years. It seems like Brunson might be pretty close to those guys. Good, good. Like that. I like that direction. And then going backwards, I think Russell is probably the all-time example of this. Jerry West was another good one. Bill Walton when he was healthy. Wasn't Magic beloved? And Magic. Magic, you know, he did get a coach fired there.

1:29:23Bill Simmons:He did get Norm Nixon traded. I don't think it was perfect, but I think everybody loved to have Magic on their team.

1:29:34um

1:29:34Bill Simmons:David B in the from the Bay Area was listening to me talk to Zach about how I thought they needed a third card in soccer um in Gaelic football and hurling oh in Ireland yeah they have similar yellow and red cards soccer but they also have a black card that works like a power play oh if you get a black card you're out of the game black card you're out of the game for 10 minutes and your team's at a disadvantage and then you come back. Oh, I like this. I started to think about how this could apply to the NBA and other sports. You get a technical foul. You're out for two minutes. Your team plays five on four.

1:30:12Bill Simmons:I got to say, I did think about it a little bit. I think for soccer, like the Balogun red card, if they had just given him the black card instead, he's just out for 15 minutes and you have to play one man down and then he comes back. I like that more than just this like do or die with the way it is now. My complaint with the Balogun red card was the next game. Even if he had set out the remainder of the game in which he'd committed that foul, I could have kind of understood that, but kicking him out for the next game... You lose a game and a half. That's preposterous. It was like the Wemby Elbow.

1:30:48That's a joke.

1:30:49Bill Simmons:Who did Wemby Elbow? Nas Reed. Nas Reed. He had to leave that game in the first half. And then if he had also missed the next game, that's like you basically missing two games. That was possible because we wondered whether he was going to get a suspension. And there was some discussion at the time around whether or not, you know, the league would step up that way. Daniel from Toronto wants to know, are the Raptors Forrest Gump and his Kawhi Jenny? They unconditionally and deeply love the person, but they walk out on you, cheat on you, dabble in rotten, sketchy behavior. and when it all goes to shit, whisper sweet nothing, so you take them back and provide a net of safety and support for their final chapter.

1:31:29Bill Simmons:I guess Forrest Jr. is the 2019 title. You don't want to guess what he said aspiration was. But I do like the analogy of Jenny Gump as Kawhi. It's pretty good. The problem is... I love you, Jenny. This next chapter, him in Toronto, it's not going to go well. Well, yeah, it ended with them getting married and her dying. Well, this is Jenny with AIDS. Right. She died. Yeah. For AIDS. Jake's never confirmed. We did a whole thing at the Forrest Gump. We think it was probably, yeah. I was there for that pod. It was in Washington, D.C. Jake Snyder said, if I could bet on when LeBron James plays his last professional game of basketball, what would the odds be for him to retire in 2028?

1:32:19Bill Simmons:but after the Summer Olympics gold medal game. Oh. Interesting. Two more years, plays for the Olympic team, does the last year's the farewell tour, and then the Olympics is the last moment. The question is, do you want 43-year-old LeBron James involved in our gold medal game? This is going to be the greatest Olympics basketball of all time. Wow. Wow. This could be a house gets divorced Olympics. I don't know how you don't come out for all the basketball for like two and a half weeks. Let's start with that. I mean, there's ways to do that and stay married, I feel like. Okay, good. That was a good answer.

1:33:05But wow, I do love the idea of LeBron having something to do with that team. I really do love it.

1:33:13Bill Simmons:Um, huge fan of the pod. I'm this is from Darren. I'm a diehard, miserable Mets and Nets fan. As a Mets fan, there's a Jalen Brown comp staring us in the face. Pete Alonzo consistently one of the top RBI guys in the league. The metric geeks all think he's not worth the big money and Mets let him go. Paid all these other guys. All of them got hurt in this time and can't do what Pete did at the plate or on the field. Um, the only thing that makes this comp perfect is if the Celtics shit the bed, please know David Stern would have made this Jalen Brown trade in a heartbeat that made me feel worse just just no question wait what does that mean j david stern would have made the jaylen brown trade he's the meds guy yeah oh saying like as the pete alonza oh um dan fahey from the north end thinks that sliding doors for the whole celtics trading jb saga is not tatum getting the achilles injury but poor zingas getting the mystery illness in the second half of 2025, which led to them not being able to beat the Knicks.

1:34:13Bill Simmons:And then Tatum getting hurt in game four. And if Porzingis is healthy, maybe less minutes on Tatum and maybe that is the thing we should point to. There's something to this theory. I do like it. Andy, well, there's a couple more quick ones. Andy from QC. I forgot to mention this to you before the draft. Andy from QC? Where's QC? QC Philippines. Oh, phenomenal. Hello, Philippines. He wants to know why we didn't make the DeBantza-Lambias connection. And ironically, AJ was the one that made it. I don't see it. I don't feel like they're, I don't see the comparison. But body-wise, I see it. Yeah. The way they present, I'll say this with no disrespect intended in any way, shape, or form towards my guy, AJ.

1:35:04Bias was a much more physical player. Yeah. And he could bully guys. We didn't see that version. AJ might grow into his body and get there. But, I mean, Bias was a beast on the block. He was capable of creating advantage out of his sheer physicality. And AJ, again, he's not there yet.

1:35:27Bill Simmons:It's so funny that he was both our favorite college players, but we didn't know each other yet. And you had even bigger ties to him because it was Maryland. I mean, I was going to games at Cole Fieldhouse at the University of Maryland. It's a top five NBA would have. It's brutal. Alex wants to know, he said, is basketball group chats having the following conversation? How many years would Seth Curry have to play to be considered the better Curry brother? Like from right now. Assuming he maintains his Dallas level splits, 11 points a game, 43%, three points. how many years have played before the sheer overwhelming numbers of his career become unassailable?

1:36:06Bill Simmons:40 more years? If he was hooping at 85, does he not become the best Curry? How do these people come up with these? It's amazing. I was going to say poor Seth Curry. Fuck that. He's had an incredible run. Yeah. I'd still think he'd have to go to 85. Jay from Halifax, Nova Scotia said the big fondue was a great Wemby name, but can't believe we didn't go with the choke monchor. Yeah, I saw the choke monchor was out there. I saw that. I enjoyed it. Sacre bleu. All right, two more and then we're done. From Chance in Oregon. Your segment explaining Truck Robinson and World Be Free in a recent meal bag was my favorite five minutes of the pod this year.

1:36:46Bill Simmons:As a millennial NBA junkie, it's hard to get the proper sense of good, but perhaps not great players from previous eras. You can piece together YouTube, Wikipedia, basketball reference. Please make this a regular segment. He lists a whole bunch of guys. He said, so many dudes. I'm on the cusp of understanding their careers. Pick a guy each week you find fascinating. First guy he mentioned was Gus Williams. Yeah. And I'm happy to do 90 seconds on Gus Williams with you right now. 1979 champs, best guy on the team. I have him as the unofficial playoff MVP for 1979. 26.7 points a game in the playoffs that year.

1:37:20Bill Simmons:He was fifth MVP in 82. He was all NBA once. second team on bay once third team twice he played in the 78 finals best guy on that team 79 championship 80 eastern conference finals and held out in the 80 81 season which I talked about in my book he had an agent named Howard Slusher who held him out because he was underpaid and and basically cost him a really important year of his prime he was the best point guard in the league house from 1978 to 1982. So this is a five-year span and then Magic took it. Or yeah, and then Magic took the torch. Lost to history because this was the lowest point in the history of the league, right?

1:38:08In terms of its exposure, it's the place that it occupied, the league occupied and the American consciousness. So Gus Williams really lost to history. When you say a guy that averaged, what did you say? 26.7 for the playoffs. No threes. There are no threes in the NBA. Look at the scores of those basketball games and think about how good he had to be in terms of inside, outside. And he was an incredible long-range shooter. He would have been awesome with the three-point line.

1:38:45Bill Simmons:Yeah, he was. And then the next year, he was 24 a game in 15 playoff games. That team was, Portland should have been the best team of that era. and then Walton got hurt. And then Seattle basically was, and they couldn't, the real problem is Dennis Johnson, who I loved obviously, but I think it was a little prickly. Gus Williams, they, there's that. They, it turned into a little bit of a, like a worse version of the Jalen Jason thing. They ended up trading Dennis Johnson in Phoenix for Paul Westphal, who plays that one year and then gets hurt. And then Gus ends up eventually on your team for two years, Washington.

1:39:19Bill Simmons:I remember. But wasn't really the same version of himself. at that point. But, um, yeah, I think, I think he was the best point guard in the league for a five year stretch, which ain't nothing. Um, and the games weren't on. I think he's somebody, he was, he was a classic bald guy with a beard, almost looked like an actor, um, could dunk on dudes would do the thing where he would go hard to the basket and wait for the big guy to come challenge it and kind of wait a second and then dunk on the guy. Uh, I loved his game. He was one of my favorite good basketball cards, um, Was really never on TV unless they're in the playoffs, though.

1:39:55Bill Simmons:That's the point. I don't think they showed Seattle era. That era that you just mentioned when we think of him as the best point guard in the league. 49.5%, 48.2%, 48.6%, 47.7%. From the field, this fucking guy. That's a bucket. That's a bucket right there. He's really good. He was fast. Those were the point guards that have gone away now. those john lucas yeah norm nixon gus williams like these kevin porter these fast guys to know how to run a team that's a great one who is our closest in modern basketball like right now yeah because i it's not brought i don't think we have those guys because i mean it's a scorer yeah i would say because these guys the impetus is more to score but like i feel like somebody like Acuff could be like that, but it's, it's like, it's the interests are more for him to shoot.

1:40:54Right. But I'm going to think on this. Who's our modern equivalent of Gus Johnson, Gus Williams, Williams. Yeah. He Dennis Johnson.

1:41:04Bill Simmons:It's the, he was like a prototype though, for those shooting point guards, basically. He was never like a high assist guy. Anyway, I loved him. Go check out his YouTube. Last question for Brandon Richter. He said 20 years ago in the mailbag, I wrote to you about instances in which day drinking before 10 AM is acceptable. And he attached the image. Okay. Um, from my old page two column. Yeah, he made it. Um, and he said today, the day before the next first ever ticket tape, ticker tape parade, I email you wondering if you need to update the list because this seems like a reasonable excuse for early morning beverage.

1:41:43Bill Simmons:I've been saving this email for you because nobody loves day drinking more than Joe House. Especially morning drinking. So when I answered this in 2005, I said, here's my official when it's okay to drink before 10 a.m. list. Great. While attending football tailgates, college reunions, or the Boston Marathon. Okay. Three winners. Yeah, good. During your final two weeks of college. For sure. Absolutely. Because there are many instances where you haven't gone to bed. You're just drinking because you're drinking. I'm not going to bed. I just stay up. Oh, look, it's sunrise. Oh, let's toast to that.

1:42:23Bill Simmons:During any Vegas trip or bachelor party or guys-only golf outing. A lot of time where you lose track of time. The sun goes down. The sun comes back up. If you pulled an all-nighter and haven't left a strip club yet, that's in there. Again. Again, this is 2005 me. sorry, I apologize in advance, before any wedding that starts at 1 p.m. earlier, anytime your in-laws are visiting, any morning when it's below 10 degrees. This is a good one. I don't know how I came up with this. Big list. If you're dating an actress and just attended a movie premiere during which she had a graphic sex scene with someone on a 50-foot movie screen.

1:43:03In 2005, who could that have been? I don't know how I came up with that.

1:43:06Bill Simmons:while living in any town in Canada that's farther than 75 miles from Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, if you've been writing for a late night talk show for more than two years, I think that was a joke about writing for Jimmy's show. If your name is Jack Nicholson, before your fantasy football draft, if you're trying to get the ball rolling so some of your other buddies get plastered, I actually used to do this. There's always one guy who got married too soon and falls for it. And then I have a mean Vin Baker joke that I'm not going to repeat because he actually had issues. I was way meaner in 2005.

1:43:39Bill Simmons:What are the other reasons that I didn't put in there? Well, you touched on it briefly. You said the... Ticker tape parade. Well, the ticker tape parade goes in, but really many rounds of golf, many, many, many rounds of golf, like a Bloody Mary on the golf course or a Bloody Mary as you head over to the first tee, that's a pretty tried and true staple. Like that, that really, um, lands for sure. Uh, I had two more that as we got older, I thought of, okay. And both involved Bloody Marys. Um, because we were, I wasn't really a Bloody Mary guy in my early mid thirties. Um, the Bloody Mary, the next day when you're hung over.

1:44:22Bill Simmons:Yeah. I just think is important and somewhat life-changing. And I think you might've even introduced me to it. You were my wife. You're good. Two sub suspects. Yeah. And then on the plane. Oh, the great call. The morning. I didn't sleep enough last night. I just want to have one drink to get me a little bit more tired. So I can sleep a little bit. Nice little Bloody Mary, and then I get a little sleepy. Or it's the rev up to, I'm going to this destination. I want to be loose. I'm going to start drinking now. To 6 a.m. flight to Vegas, cross country, and you start drinking on the flight at like 10.30.

1:44:59I'm on vacation. vacation starts when my ass is in the plane seat can i bring you some champagne yes you can

1:45:06Bill Simmons:well there's also better alcohol now that they have like my daughter drinks this uh i forget what it's called but it's bottles and it's iced tea and lemonade with something in it there's a lot of those out there yeah she likes one of them high noon surfside yeah yeah surfside that's what she likes um but people have those and they feel like they're not drinking but they're actually drinking. Yeah, they're definitely drinking. Definitely. Nice one of those over a cup of ice. That's a drink that I'll drink on the golf course at 845 in the morning. Oh, I've just played seven holes. Let me get a drink.

1:45:41You're most of your day drinking or above around golf and some sort

1:45:44Bill Simmons:of golf thing. Yes. Before the round, during the round and after the round. I don't understand how you're able to play golf when you have drinks in you. Well, I mean, first of all, I suck. So that's one piece of it. Is there a point where you feel like you're getting better and then you get worse? Sometimes it does create, you know, the taking the pressure off, whatever you're sort of feeling about your game up to that point. There's an element of that to it. And I mean, everything's within moderation. Let's be real. I'm not out there, you know, trying to make walking up the 18th fairway shit face.

1:46:23That's not the goal. Well, plus it's hot. You got to be careful. You've got to be careful. Don't want to end up having the ambulance come to the Mexican restaurant patio because I was out there for five hours drinking a dozen high noons. Trying to avoid that.

1:46:40Bill Simmons:Forgot about that one. All right, House. Have you been enjoying bed in the World Cup? I mean, I'm going to knock on wood. I don't want to say. I have been enjoying it. We've been pretty good. I'll just leave it at that. I was doing great and then I let my heart carry me with US versus Belgium. Did you not hedge out of that? I should have hedged it. I didn't. You didn't hedge that 24 to 1? Did you tell America that you had a 24 to 1 ticket, a four leg parlay and the first three legs hit and then you even put into the thread the hedge and DeBondo told you just wait until after it was Spain was the third leg and then you were set up for a perfect hedge.

1:47:20Spain won in

1:47:20Bill Simmons:regular time. An amazing hedge. It would have been a giant winner for you. I thought it was bad karma. This is why I'm stupid. But this is why I'm stupid. Oh my God. It's freaking USA soccer. I'm sorry. There's no such thing as bad karma. They stink. They put a 38-year-old dude with a man bun. This is the thing. I'm not going to go do the rant. I do understand where everybody's coming from in terms of the rebuttals to the idea that our best athlete, if we had our best athletes, we'd be better. And then there's a lot of rebuttal. There's a different thing to it, the skill set, developing the skill set.

1:47:52I do feel like I asked this on the pod this week. Where would you put Tim Ream in terms of American athletes right now? I'll give you the over under 5 ,000 fucking athletes in the United States of America. Is this guy inside the top 5 ,000 U.S.

1:48:12Bill Simmons:athletes at the moment or no? See, I don't blame Tim Ream because I don't think he probably even deep down wonders why he's the sweeper when he's 38 years old. He's 38 years old and he was our best guy to be one of our three guys who we have back to stop all bad things that can happen against the best countries in the world. So this is the problem when guys say, well, there's a fair rebuttal, like the skill set that gets developed, whatever. This dude's 38 freaking years old. He's a big man. but the 6 '4 guy from Belgium just jumped over him. Like what? Well, the other issue is I went back. I was going through, I was bummed out after we lost.

1:48:51Bill Simmons:I was going through the 2002, the run they had. Yeah. Where they beat Mexico and then Mexico started cheap shotting everybody in the last 50. It's unbelievable. One guy has like a flying headbutt, like he's in blood sport. Vasquez gets kicked out. But then we lose to Germany on a handball play. We lose 1-0. nothing we actually score a goal that hits the german guy's arm and they don't call it it would have been called the goal now with the with the var yeah we lose one nothing but that was you know when we talk about like best american teams that's clearly the best team we've had that team was actually like you know going toe-to-toe but when you think about the reasons they're going toe-to-toe they had a bunch of tough motherfuckers in that team and that's what when i think about like the World Cup.

1:49:35Bill Simmons:I've been watching all these other teams, how feisty everybody is now. There's a nasty side to these things. Did you feel like we had a nasty side? Cause I didn't see that at all. We have some great, um, tough athletes, I think. Um, but do we have, do we have nasty dudes? Freeman? Who do, who do you want to be nasty? I'm just saying like, we need to send our team to nasty camp because all these other teams, they're pulling arms, they're pulling jerseys, They're throwing elbows. They're starting shit. So this is the challenge, right? This is the physicality you're describing. We've seen this. This is why there is, you know, this instinct to go to, what if we got our better athletes out there?

1:50:14It's not the athletes. It's not the athletes.

1:50:16Bill Simmons:It's the style. It's my eyes. When my eyes see Christian Pulisic fall down every time somebody touches him, I've seen, I've been watching fucking football. I've been watching college football. I mean, you know, these guys don't get tipped over. They don't get knocked off the ball. Jalen Brunson got knocked down. He just gets up and he's like this tough little dude. And also can't get really knocked off the ball. There's plenty of physicality and he can't get knocked off of it. That dude, Dest, the fuck is that guy? Well, I was thinking the 2022 finals that we went to those games, Warriors-Celtics.

1:50:52Bill Simmons:And the Warriors basically big boyed the Celtics and the Celtics kind of didn't know how to fight back and got pushed around and all. that's kind of what the U S is like in the world cup every four years. It feels like these teams, Belgium, big boy to us, you know, and then, and Trump danced us in the locker room after the game like that. So I got it. It's not just a Tim Ream. Obviously they had some holes. There was, you know, some speed on the sides. And then can we, can we get an awesome somebody who's a stopper? Um, I mean, upon reflection, we had, we were sort of lulled into a misunderstanding around what this team's true caliber potential, you know, the true outcome.

1:51:36Bill Simmons:Yeah. When you, when you hear like people like the Bundo and CR and these people that watch premier league and La Liga and all of these dudes in these other teams have all these guys that, you know, like that number 10 on Belgium, who's on arsenal and is awesome. I don't watch a lot of arsenal, but they have all these dudes who have been in just big games all year. Right. And, our guys, you know, so I don't know. There was a little bit of an optical illusion. I still enjoyed the ride. I had a great time. It was really fun. Enjoyed it thoroughly. But yeah, this is probably where we're going to max out all the time, around the round of 16.

1:52:09Bill Simmons:Maybe so. Unless we get something else with it. I'm only interested once every four years. Good luck with DeBonson and Peterson. Big night tonight. I hope your guy, AJ, shows up. Peterson and DeBonson. Peterson's going to show up. Peterson's going to look awesome. Everybody, get prepared for that. All right. I'll talk to you this week. Thanks, buddy. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to House. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo. As always, don't forget Ali. Rewatchables, that is up. She's the one and Hitch are the next two coming. And I will see you at some point on Sunday live on Netflix.

1:52:41Bill Simmons:Enjoy the rest of the week.

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