Tatum’s Stunning Return, Wemby’s Big Weekend, and a 2011 MVP Deep Dive With Zach Lowe

17:52Zach Lowe:Yeah, it was always like this.

17:53Bill Simmons:No, but I think if Vooch was good, it was a bonus. But I think they, the Simons trade was really more about Tatum's just going to take all of these minutes and they kind of must have known this at the deadline. That was important. And then randomly Vooch breaks his finger. And I, I, I think they probably would have ended up with Garza and the Vucevic minutes anyway, because I don't know how great of a fit he was. And I, I, he was the one piece that I just couldn't, couldn't make, make sense with the group they have. So, um, if you're talking about holes, Garza as your backup center, fine. Um, how many teams is that going to really rear its ugly head against?

18:32Bill Simmons:I don't know. I think Tatum would have the ability to play small. It was interesting to watch the announcers. And, you know, I love Legos, so you obviously. It was interesting. I thought Cleveland went small for a while in the fourth quarter. And I thought it was a bigger story that Mobley just wasn't out there.

18:48Zach Lowe:Well, I was like, Tatum coming off an Achilles tear has like less of a minutes restriction than guys who are coming off sprained ankles and like toe injuries. And it's like, it's remarkable.

19:00Bill Simmons:Yeah, so Mobley, so they went small against them. And I'm wondering, like, down the road, will the Celtics respond by going small with Tatum Brown, two guards, and one of the wings? And the other thing, I think, to watch long-term with the Celtics is, will Hauser be the guy that starts? Or would they move Hugo or Shireman into that spot as the fifth guy to try and maybe move Hauser to the second thing? A couple other things really quick. well can we just

19:29Zach Lowe:stop on Vooch for a second I just think he was I agree they're not gonna like Garza's been good he makes threes they're not gonna miss Vooch pretty much at all except I think they viewed Vooch as like Keita and Garza is like a pretty small center tandem and the Knicks can go double big the Cavs go double big the Pistons are just this ferocious we'll fight anybody we're giant team and I I think that could be a matchup thing in the playoffs where, okay, we just need a bigger guy out here for 12 minutes. But hopefully he's ready by then.

20:05Bill Simmons:I think this might be the deepest Celtics team since the 08 team. Remember that 08 team when they added Cassell and PJ Brown near the end and they just had almost too many guys and they had all these different lineups and wrinkles? The fact that Shireman, Hauser, Gonzalez, as like these are real bench guys that any team in the league i think would want combined with the walsh piece like they probably go 11 deep for real now with tatum um and i i'll be interested to see how the minutes go they can use these last 20 games basically to rest some guys try some different things um on the cleveland side i did have one mobley question for you because i thought that was a pretty big cleveland game today and i thought the halftime guys did a good job of of properly excoriating them.

20:53Bill Simmons:Now, these afternoon weekend games, I just think are impossible to predict. I watched Orlando, Minnesota yesterday and Minnesota just didn't show up. And I've seen that over and over again on a Saturday or Sunday. Teams just kind of either don't show up or they were out the night before or whatever. It was weird that it took them an hour and a half to really be like, oh shit, we're on national TV and this is kind of a big game. We should really step it up here. What have we peaked with what we're getting from Mobley in your opinion?

21:26Zach Lowe:I wouldn't, I wouldn't say, I mean, what is he 24 years old? I would, I would be very hesitant to say that we've, we've peaked with Evan Mobley. Um, what's left is just what's left.

21:36Bill Simmons:What's the next, what's the jump for him? If you think there's going to be more there, what is it?

21:42Zach Lowe:I think it's all the stuff that we think might be in there, right? It's, it's a more consistent three-point shot, it's a little bit more aggression, assertiveness on offense, a little bit more with the ball against mismatches, running pick and rolls. And you hear that this is going to come every preseason. Like, oh, you should see this stuff. That's why I brought it up. And it just sort of, you know, you see it in fits and starts and for a game and then he's out for a week and you don't see him. I think there's he's still so young that peaked is just way too strong of a word. But I think the question you're really asking is like, what version of Evan Mobley do they need right now to get to the finals for a team that just made a huge trade that was clearly like a red flag of, oh, we need to get to the finals immediately.

22:26Zach Lowe:We cannot wait on Darius Garland. And do we have that version of Evan Mobley? And I will say I'm beginning to like the Cavs even more when they have the two bigs together. I feel like that has become their best look, and we didn't see that today. I want to see more of that. But yeah, that's why with this game, it was a great win for the Celtics.

22:49Bill Simmons:But I just feel like if you take out one of those four guys for the Cavs, it's a little more substantial than with some other teams. Because I don't think their 5 through 12 is really that impressive. The reason I brought it up with Mobley, his stats are basically the same. He's in year five. Basically, he's been the same guy for the last four years. like his field goal attempts set year two, he was 12 a game. Now he's 13. Um, he shot 21 % from three his second year. Now he's shooting 32%. His rebounds, he was nine in his second year is 8.7 this year. His assist 2.8. Now it's 3.8 blocks around the same.

23:32Bill Simmons:Everything's kind of around the same. And I just feel like by your fifth year, I wanted, I wanted to level up and I still think it's in there, but I also don't know, like when he shoots a three, do you think it's going in?

23:47Zach Lowe:I don't feel awesome about it, but I don't feel bad about it. I just feel like it's a shot that the defense is willing to live with. And I, I, it may always be a shot that the defense is willing to live with given the alternatives on the team that has Donovan Mitchell and James Harden and whatever else it is interesting that you know with alan out he doesn't like harden and alan just had immediate pick and roll chemistry like pocket passes lobs whatever and it just and this is not the first time this has been the case with mobley and a ball handler when alan is cleared from the picture and he's the center and the pain is all his for whatever reason that does not come as easily with him and for him as it does for a more traditional rim runner like Allen.

24:31Zach Lowe:I want to see just rampage, man. Put some shooting in there hard and loose and rampage and it just isn't as easy. For Jared Allen, it was immediately like, oh, I'm just going to get 25 points every game now.

24:43Bill Simmons:There's more there and I'm not sure what it is. The three-point shot would have to get better. The ability to punish any sort of mismatch, I don't feel like he's totally there yet. The defense is really, really good. It's not like I won't be telling my grandkids about it, but it's really, really good. And so it's, I just wonder two years from now, are we in the same spot? I think about this with certain guys in the league. Like I look at Jabari Smith that way too, who's obviously an easy year younger than Mobley. But when I watch him, because I like his game and I have a lot of Jabari Smith stock.

25:16Bill Simmons:And sometimes I'm thinking, is this basically going to be it? We're going to be at like 16 and seven and he'll hit some threes and he'll be able to guard different guys. And this is just what we're going to, this is where we're going to land. Is there going to be a jump? Will it have to be he gets traded to a bad team or is it just kind of the vicinity of where we're going to land? I don't know. We're going to take a break. I want to talk about Detroit and the Spurs and the Rockets and the Lakers and the Knicks. That's coming next. It's a lot. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by Sam's Club.

25:51Bill Simmons:It is that time of the year when you just got to get in your car and go somewhere. I've done that plenty of times in my life. Nowhere gets you ready to go quite like Sam's club snacks, the gear, super low prices on gas. They got a bunch of stuff that keep you and the whole crew rolling. And here's what you got to do. You got to join the club of yes. And at sam's club.com slash yes. And you must be 18 years or older to purchase membership and membership is subject to qualifications. Visit sam's club.com slash yes. And for details, This episode is brought to you by Venmo. Supporting your team never gets old, but here's something new.

26:29Bill Simmons:You can now pay for your game day wings and rep your team at the same time. How? By getting your college colors on your card. Score more with the college branded Venmo debit card. Get up to 5 % cash back with Venmo stash. Sign up at Venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA. select schools available Venmo slash bundle terms and exclusions apply at Venmo dot me slash stash terms max$100 cash back per month I forgot to mention at the top it is CR month on the rewatchables he's an American hero we did Sicario last week we have Fargo coming on Monday we have to live and die in LA coming a week from Monday and then we just had a vote for the fourth movie and it looks like the nice guys won the fourth movie with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe.

27:23Bill Simmons:And then the last movie of the month will be LA Confidential. So stay tuned for that. You mentioned something when we went to break. Say your Cleveland point really quick about what happens if it doesn't go great for them this spring.

27:36Zach Lowe:I just, I think they become a very interesting offseason team. And I think if, let's say they lose in the second round and it's just another second round loss for this iteration of the Cavs, we've already seen them trade Garland and you just mentioned Mobley and when is Mobley going to develop and the honest thing could be revisited. And I just like, I I'll be watching.

28:00Bill Simmons:It's a T it's a team blow up. Did they sign harder to the extension or no? Not yet. Wasn't, I think Harden had one of those games where it's like, wait, is it mid May? Oh no, it's the beginning of March. You're burying honeymoon.

28:13Zach Lowe:Heart is honeymoon. Harden over is the honeymoon.

28:15Bill Simmons:Harden might've, yeah, this might have been I left my purse at the hotel bar and now it's gone. We got to find it. The honeymoon's in shambles. Detroit. Lost today. They're 6-5 in their last 11. They are 45-18. The Celtics are now two wins in the loss column behind them. 9-2 in their last 11. The Brooklyn loss, which I did not watch. They did not have Cade Cunningham in. No Cade. And blew a big lead near the end. You know, that's fine. The loss today was a little different because they got their asses kicked by Miami. And we'll talk about Miami in a second too. Detroit, hanging on a little bit and then you watch some of these other teams in the East that have two, three, four guys who can create a shot and Detroit still, like we say every week, has the one guy who can create offense and then just a lot of good cutting.

29:02Bill Simmons:A lot of good cuts and some low post play. But not a lot of guys who can create shots and it's just the Herter trade. I just don't understand their trade deadline. I understand not we said this in the trade deadline pile when we had it I understand being afraid to mess with the chemistry but I also think they needed a freelance wing guard somebody and they didn't get it. Herter's really not playing and I just feel like they're a creator short so what do you see?

29:35Zach Lowe:I think this has been the concern all season and why none of us have been ready to crown them East champions like we would normally crown a team that was like six games ahead seemingly a blink of an eye ago, it's because you know that the offense is going to get harder to come by in the playoffs when you play two non-shooters at almost all the time, sometimes three, and you're really, really dependent on an all-world player, but he's just one player. And you have all these little subsets, right? Like Duncan Robinson flying around is kind of like a creator, even though he doesn't dribble because he creates openings and gaps and attention comes to him.

30:09Zach Lowe:And Jalen Dern can face up. I don't love these Jalen Dern jump shots that are starting to happen now. I think that's like we got to maybe a little 1995-ish. Maybe another offseason of working on that before you start busting that out in games. And I love J.D. It's like a little bit of this and the offensive rebounding is part of it. But all that stuff is harder to do in the playoffs when everyone is geared up on defense on every possession. And this has been the concern all year. I'm not going to panic. It's a late season, you know, slide. One game without Cade. Team had a huge lead. Everyone is coming back from suspension one by one.

30:43Zach Lowe:Like Beastu just got back. I agree with you. Like, we all had big dreams for the Pistons trade deadline all season, right? Like, it started with marking in, like, that's the perfect fit. And then it was clear Utah was just not going to trade marking in because he's just going to, I guess, be a jazz lifer and just maybe one day make the playoffs for the first time ever.

31:02Bill Simmons:We took a Trey Murphy spin around the parking lot. That didn't bite. It doesn't...

31:08Zach Lowe:I never really heard Detroit being aggressive and they settle on this, you know, Ivy Herder basically exchange of those two guys. There's a pick swap here and there. And J.B. Bickerstaff, maybe they should have asked J.B. Bickerstaff first, like, hey, are you going to play Kevin Herter if we get him? Because we might trade for Kevin Herter. And like, he's been a breaking case of emergency guy. And he's the kind of player that could help them. Wouldn't change their life. I think we all knew that. But yeah, I mean, look, this four-team race in the East and you want to throw Charlotte in and make it five, go ahead and do it.

31:41Zach Lowe:Can we throw in the zombie heat? Zombie heat, five straight wins. Maybe the heat just heat around and they heat their way in one way or another.

31:52Bill Simmons:So, as you know, I'm always terrified of the heat. I'd written them off this season. I saw them in person last month when I was back for Kuzi's thing at Holy Cross and the Celtics came back from a big deficit, beat them. Khalil Ware looked like he was just a Section 8 for the season. He came in for two small stints in the game. It was just a catastrophe. And it was like, wow, it's gotten this bad? Like, it was one of those. This last five games, it wasn't just winning the five. I watched that Rockets game. That's when I got scared.

32:28Zach Lowe:That was a good win for them.

32:31Bill Simmons:What they did to Charlotte on Friday night was notable, and I want to talk about that in a second. But then the one today, too, just taking it to Detroit. Hero's just back. Kiro's like, I'm actually offended that you guys forgot I was good at basketball and I was being thrown around in this trade deadline shit. Like, I'm good. Bam, I think, has gotten better offensively as the season went along. There were some pretty shaky Bam stats, but he's basically been a 22-10 guy for two months. Powell's out right now. Powell isn't even playing. So when he comes back, just thinking about them in a playoff series where you have these two heat check guys.

33:06Bill Simmons:You have Bam, who's steady. You have a defensive identity. You have a good coach. You have a couple of weird bench guys and wings. And you only have to go four and three to advance in a playoff series. I looked this up. It's true.

33:19Zach Lowe:You only have to go four and three.

33:20Bill Simmons:You can have three shitty losses and still win the series. And I just don't want to see them in a series. And somehow they've been resuscitated, Zach Lowe. And I'm just horrified.

33:32Zach Lowe:I'm already looking at a 2-7 Boston-Miami series.

33:36Bill Simmons:You can look at it right now because that would be the matchup. If we had it right now, it's Boston and Miami. Well, they got to get through the play-in.

33:41Zach Lowe:They got to heat their way through the play-in. Although, you know, six is becoming quite interesting now. Orlando is six. Philly has dropped to eighth after a nightmare weekend where Maxie gets hurt. Now it sounds like he's not going to be out for a long time, but Embiid is still out with this oblique thing. And so that has flipped almost completely. The Hawks have won six in a row. Don't look at the, don't forget about the Hawks.

34:01Bill Simmons:Jalen Johnson's played himself into like legit all-NBA consideration. I think he's there.

34:06Zach Lowe:I had him on my rough draft like two weeks ago, third team all NBA and was, people were kind of stunned. I was like, I don't know. I think he's been pretty good. And Kaminga has been good for them. I'm not, I wouldn't take like the all out victory lap on Kaminga quite yet, but he's been very good for them and definitely more productive than Porzingis who finally played.

34:22Bill Simmons:The Matt Ishbia premature ejaculation victory lap. Yeah. Hey Matt, keep it in your pants. All right. You're a seven seed. Like settle down. The moment he did that, everybody in the team got hurt.

34:34Zach Lowe:Yeah. The Dylan Brooks who took a little bit of a hit. this weekend as well.

34:37Bill Simmons:Yeah, maybe take the victory lap after the season, buddy.

34:39Zach Lowe:Well, the Bam Ware stuff has started to work and work big time. That combination in the last three to four weeks has really changed their team. And like Jaime Hawkeyes Jr., I haven't done a detailed six-man-of-the-earth dive in maybe a month, but I think, you know, he, Kelton Johnson, Nas Reed, there's a bunch of good candidates. He's just been consistently outstanding. And teams just can't keep him out of his comfort zones. He spins and drives his way into these little eight-foot flip shots seems to make all of them. And he was a huge difference maker in that win at Charlotte on Friday.

35:11Bill Simmons:Charlotte's playing right now and they're tied heading into halftime in Phoenix, ironically. But so I watched that Friday game because they were going head to head with the Tatum game. So I had on the smaller TV, I was monitoring it.

35:22Zach Lowe:You don't have to say that you watch a Hornets game. We all assume that you are watching every Hornets game. Parents watch their children, legitimate or not. That's the thing.

35:31Bill Simmons:That's the thing. It's like when I would have Zoe's soccer games on on one of the side TVs. Charlotte played well. They had 120 points. Good game. Offensively, they kept doing stuff, but they couldn't stop Miami. And I thought it was interesting. It was a little cold water being thrown on the watch out for Charlotte. They could be this year's Indiana bandwagon that I think I was on with three other people.

35:58Zach Lowe:That bandwagon is...

36:00Bill Simmons:Yeah, we didn't even have wheels. We were just like, we were basically building the foundation of it. But they had nobody in the team that could stop Hero. And I think if you're going into a playoff series, their issue is going to be stopping those Hero-Prichard, these crafty guards, these crafty heat check guys. They just don't have anyone. Like their five, their best five, everything's good except for that one wrinkle. Donovan Mitchell, I think, would be a real problem for them. And that was my lesson from that because they got 120 and they still lost. Miami's going to be heard from. And I think we can officially say the East is better than the West.

36:36Bill Simmons:We might be able to say it.

36:38Zach Lowe:I mean, you know, certainly the bottom five of the West is not covering itself in glory. No. Nor is the bottom four in the East, however. But it's a conversation now, for sure.

36:53Bill Simmons:Well, we were about to have four legitimate East contenders all with various cases going on. Cleveland took a hit today. And the Knicks were the other one. The Knicks, who I've been hesitant to trust because every time I'm about to buy in and then they had a couple of good games. I even thought that OKC loss they had was the best Knicks game I've seen. That was a good loss. Yeah, that was like, oh yeah, this could be a finals. And then they just get waxed today against the non-Lebron Lakers. There were some good stats with them. We have the number one defense, last 20 games, all this stuff. And they just got smoked.

37:33Bill Simmons:And they kind of looked like the bad version of the Knicks, this little Jekyll and Hyde thing they have going. Did you see any of that game? What did you see?

37:41Zach Lowe:I've seen pieces of it. I'm going to go back and watch the whole thing tomorrow. But I saw a team that has been, you know, the Lakers played really well in that game. I mean, that's the first thing. The Lakers said it was a good Lakers game. Really was. The Knicks, you know, their losses tend to be loud. Like the two Detroit losses. Like the Laker losses. The Cleveland loss. The Laker loss today, losing by 13. McHilbert just puts up zero. And, you know, the Knicks are... I was texting with a friend of mine who's a huge Knicks fan, and he was just over the moon after the Denver game. And just, I'm all in on the team.

38:18Zach Lowe:And that was as good of a road win as you can have in the NBA, just taking it to the Nuggets like that. and I picked the Knicks to make the finals. I haven't been convinced to pick anyone else over them in a complete way yet, but I texted him back. I was like, they seem to, no matter what kind of run they're on, you're always like one weird cat game or one weird Bridges game away from being like, ooh, something is, it's just a strange, a strange brew that way. I agree.

38:50Bill Simmons:There's a number four seed subplot with the East that I think is worth mentioning where you could be in the 2-3 and know that you're going to not only probably play Miami. I think Miami is going to get to the 6 seed. So you 2-3, if you're the 3, you play Miami in round one and then you play the 2 seed in round two and you're on the road. Or you could just drop down to 4. You could play Toronto in round one and then take your chances with Detroit. And to me, that's the more palatable path. I don't know how you feel about it, but that 2-3 feels a little quagmire-y to me. Interesting.

39:23Zach Lowe:Yeah. You know, look, Toronto is only a game ahead of Orlando and Miami now in the fifth spot. So, you know, let's right. So that could even swing even more. That was another and they can't beat anyone good. I mean, that was another great win for the Knicks. They went to Toronto and blew them out and Toronto just can't beat any of the good teams in the NBA. So to backing up your point that if you can park your way into a matchup against them, maybe that is a little less terrifying than seeing Spoh stride up and down the sidelines. and like, what kind of zone can we throw at these guys? Triangle and Touche, we bust that out.

39:54Zach Lowe:It'll blow their minds. That's the heat, man.

39:58Bill Simmons:And then the Lakers really quick. Nine and two without LeBron, which is a record that will be brought up over and over again over the next 12 to 18 hours as the talk shows kick in.

40:09Zach Lowe:You know who had never had a record like that when they were injured? Michael Jordan, Bill. That never happened to Michael Jordan, okay? Michael Jordan.

40:18Bill Simmons:I just like when it's Luka and Reeves like just remove LeBron out of it I think that's the foundation of a really good team because you could build the right team around those two guys they're going to be your worst defenders

40:29Zach Lowe:you know who else thinks that?

40:31Bill Simmons:The Lakers

40:31Zach Lowe:I know

40:33Bill Simmons:and I think they like playing together yeah they like playing together so you can see the vision I don't know why they didn't start the vision in February and this is just a really weird situation for LeBron because he's still It's not like he's washed up, but this has been a weird fit for him the whole season. We've known it. You can watch it. You can see it with your own eyes. And I don't know where he ends up next year, but I find it hard to believe it's going to be the Lakers.

41:00Zach Lowe:I do too.

41:00Bill Simmons:I still think it's going to be Golden State.

41:02Zach Lowe:I find it hard to believe it's going to be the Lakers, but as you've pointed out, I kind of find every scenario a little hard to believe.

41:09Bill Simmons:Golden State needs them. I think Golden State would be the team.

41:12Zach Lowe:I mean, Golden State needs something because this has been a hell of a depressing season for the Warriors. I mean, they still play hard and they play a fun style of play on Steph's there, but this is not going to be the most fun stretch run in Warriors history.

41:25Bill Simmons:There's been some good Warriors news. I bought a small condo on Guy Santos' Archipelago.

41:31Zach Lowe:Guy Gulch. Guy Gulch.

41:33Bill Simmons:I bought some property on DeSanto's Straits. So today, they just paid him. They did. They paid him a good, what was it? five a year for three years he's a solid player he's a very very steve kerr player like it's like it's like just central casting steve kerr player we gotta talk about the spurs too because uh yeah they had an awesome weekend they came back from 25 against the clippers i was watching a movie with my wife i had the tv on the small screen never turned it off even when it was like 75 to 50 hold on what what movie i don't want to say and okay and and could you wasn't it wasn't a movie It was this TV show called Vladimir.

42:15Bill Simmons:I'm unfamiliar.

42:17Zach Lowe:Clearly, you're not that invested in it if you have half at one eye on Wemby over here.

42:21Bill Simmons:It's with Rachel Weisz. She's like a professor. It's a Netflix show. It's basically my wife. It's her algorithm. It's just like they put the show on Netflix and then her algorithm, there's a hammer that actually comes out of the TV and hits her with it because it's so like in her wheelhouse according to the algorithm. Like, you will watch this now. So that was on and we were also watching this Spurs game. I mean, Spurs Clippers. So Niederhauser, who I was just touting to you a week ago.

42:47Zach Lowe:Such a bummer.

42:48Bill Simmons:And the fear with Niederhauser is like, this guy's a maniac. He tries to block everything. He's going to get hurt. Of course, he gets hurt trying to make some crazy block out for the year. And you could really feel it in that Spurs game because you can only ride the Brook Lopez Express for so long. Great comeback for the Spurs. I have no idea why Wemby cried at the end. I thought that was just dumbfounding.

43:09Zach Lowe:Did you weep? Did Vladimir make you weep?

43:11Bill Simmons:I would have only wept if I had the Clippers in a parlay. So they had a big comeback win on national TV, and then they really thrashed the Rockets today and looked scary. And we've talked about, is it too soon? We've had all the Spurs conversations you can possibly have at this point. I got to talk about Dylan Harper a little bit. Oh, my God. Who I've liked the whole year.

43:37Bill Simmons:I haven't seen a rookie guard like this in a long time, and I'm having trouble fitting him in the context of rookie guards we've seen since we've watched basketball. He can't really shoot, right? If it's an open three, I don't think it's going in. Three of four today. He's got this combination. He's really nice along the baseline. He likes to have his back on guys. So I guess the comparison, maybe it would be a little Jason Kidd. like very comfortable with a little space near the low block with his back to a guy ready to go either way gets to the rim. There's crazy rim stats with him. Like it's basically him and centers and big forwards with finishing at the rim.

44:28Bill Simmons:And I don't know where we're going, but I don't know if there's much of a ceiling for this because when he learns how to shoot, when he gets a floater, combined with the back to the basket with the way he uses his body and bounces off dudes and how hard he plays. I'm starting to wonder if there's some Jason Kidd kind of potential, even though they're different players.

44:51Zach Lowe:62 combined points for Fox, Castle, and Harper today. Throw in another 20 for Kelden Johnson before you even get to Wembenyama. I mean, the depth of scoring and rim attacking they have is crazy. and I what I love I mean I could not love Harper and Castle anymore I mean and aside from all the highlight plays that Castle delivers all the sort of classic attacking guard stuff that Harper has they're just so tough and so competitive and they want they want to outwork you and out physical you and I can't remember how this possession ended up but there was one possession in that game somebody on the Spurs missed and Harper had Finney Smith on him on the left side and was just like I'm getting this fucking rebound.

45:34Zach Lowe:You're not stopping me from getting this offensive rebound. He ended up tipping it out to somebody. And I think someone made a three. And it's just like, those are the plays from a rookie guard, a tap out offensive rebound for Castle, a second year guard. Yeah, give me, give me Kevin Durant. Like I'll, I'll do my best to guard him. And then, you know, you saw today, the Rockets put their shangun on him to start the game. And it had him on, on Castle for much of the game, which is a strategy that I've been saying all year. I think the Spurs are going to see at some point they saw it today, and it didn't work because castle figured it out.

46:04Zach Lowe:But those are the kinds of plays that they make at such a young age. And they're just winning. They're winning basketball plays. They are, they events a competitiveness and a toughness that rookie guards who want to score and make a name for themselves. Like you don't see plays like that. Like this team is so together. They play so unselfishly. They have sequences of ball movement for a young team where you're like a a team that's young shouldn't be able to like just bim, bim, boom, boom, boom. The ball's flying around. It's, it's really impressive. And those two guys are awesome.

46:37Bill Simmons:I'm glad you brought that up. Cause one of my takeaways watching today was they play like they've been playing together for a few years, which I think is the rarest place you can get to as a team. Like they really like understand each other and where, where the next guy's going to be and how to use each other and how to play. Even that play they ran at the end of the half when they got Wemby that three, it was It's just, they're very well prepared. Some of the credits got to go to the coach. And then everybody plays hard, which is the other thing. And it's very similar to the Celtics and the Pistons, where it's like, you're not playing if you don't play hard.

47:10Bill Simmons:The thing with Harper, usually when rookie guards that are super talented come in, they have their things they can do, right? And they're like, I can do this. I can really get to the rim. I'm a really good shooter. They'll have these skills that they can kind of dwell on, but they're not basketball players yet. and I think what's just so bizarre about him is what a good team basketball player he is, which is why I brought up the kid thing. He's just really smart. I didn't watch enough of that Rutgers team last year. It sucked. It was him and Ace Bailey and nobody else. It's amazing to me he could ever be on a bad basketball team because he knows where to go, what to do, how to play off guys.

47:50Bill Simmons:I'm just really excited for him. Big picture, you think for the league this is a disaster that they ended up with with castle and and uh and and harper with wemby and

48:02Zach Lowe:these guys are all 24 23 and under and they have they're 47 and 17 now and wemby i mean this team

48:12Bill Simmons:could win the title like for real i don't mean that's not even a hot take anymore this is one of i would say probably the number two pick you would have to win the title at this point christmas is

48:23Zach Lowe:what finally not finally christmas was when i said they can win the championship and and nothing has changed in fact it's just gotten clear to me that despite the experience factor and they would be somewhat anomalous among championship teams they have enough and they have a guy who's yeah i don't care anymore he's a top five guy and today was like you know you mentioned how the spurs play unselfishly super competitive super hard it they they drafted a bunch of guys who play that way but when your best player is unselfish and when banyama is unselfish one of my favorite things about him and uh and plays super hard no one else has any choice but to play unselfishly and super hard especially when you start winning and today you know i know we're going to talk mvp a little bit and there's just so much uncertainty about who's going to be eligible and who's going to be not not going to be eligible but today was like what wendy should be in the conversation if if I think Shea still has a clear lead in a clear case but if he's not eligible like when B as as good of a case minus the minutes he's a little behind it minutes but you just feel him every single second on the floor and the defensive dominance is just unheard of what he's doing on defense

49:32Bill Simmons:his odds during that game dropped from 20 to 1 to 15 to 1 on FanDuel that was an MVP that was an MVP

49:38Zach Lowe:performance tonight he has

49:40Bill Simmons:he's in the fourths he's in the third spot now. He's past Cade. Jokic is nine to one and Shea is a four to one. Look, I don't know if this is the 90 bowls or the 91 bowls, but we're in that vicinity with this team where you have a potential generational star and you have a loaded young cast. And the only question is when is this all going to come together? That's, that's where we are now with this team. And I went back and I looked at the 90 balls. They were 55 and 27. They lost to Detroit in seven. That was the Pippen migraine game. Jordan was probably, you know, he's Jordan. He's the best player ever, but he was a little older than Wemby.

50:22Bill Simmons:He'd been a couple of years in college and he'd been in the league for six years at that point. So he's probably a little further ahead than Wemby was, but it's the same thing. It's like these guys that you, when you're watching a basketball game like that, you could bring in my mom, you could bring in your wife, you could bring in your daughter. You could bring in my, you bring in anybody and be like, does this guy seem a little different than everyone else in the game? And the answer is yes, he does. He's doing all of these things. I don't watch other players do combined with the identity they have.

50:50Bill Simmons:And like what they did to Durant today, I thought was just a sign that you're a really well coached together team, right? They're like, we're just, we're going to do these three things to make it really hard for him. We're going to have Kelton Johnson mugging him. We're going to pick up the ball with him at half court. We're just going to make it really uncomfortable for him the entire game. And they did it. And that was one of the reasons they won. So I think about them versus OKC. If Jalen Williams doesn't really become Jalen Williams again in the playoffs, could they take out Shea? No. Could they could they make it really hard for him and make other guys in that team basically have to make plays or they're going home?

51:29Bill Simmons:Yes.

51:31Zach Lowe:Well, we've seen that. I mean, we've seen it. And we've seen it. They're 4-1 against them. And today, the Wemby, I don't know. Playoffs is different, though. But I don't know. Today, the thing that stood out to me about Wemby against the Rockets was, you see some games like this and some games where he doesn't do it. And I don't know if it's a, he was fresher in these games, or he just likes to match up better, or whatever it is. Today, he did the thing where he just, when he faced up off the dribble, he did the thing where, I'm taking an extra step to the basket to the point where I can just reach my arm out and I'm at the basket.

52:04Zach Lowe:He had one on him and Thompson liked that. He had another one against somebody else. And when he does that, you wonder, why doesn't he do that every time? And there's just something about that night, that matchup. But today he had a clear directive in his mind of like, I'm taking the extra step or half step off the bounce and just reaching my way to easy buckets. And when he has those kinds of baskets, that's when you feel helpless. That's when you feel like there's just nothing we can do.

52:29Bill Simmons:you know i remember saying this early on in the 1b experience that i didn't like how i first of all the him playing him as a guard i've always i never liked i understand they'd go through the process of it but it was like the question with him will be when does he realize that the closer he is to the rim the more devastating he's going to be and it seems like he's realizing that in real time to your point like hey i'm seven foot four and i have long arms and if i'm three feet from the basket odds are something good's going to happen he's just you know and then you talk about the defense. The Celtics play them on Tuesday, and I look at somebody like Pritchard, who was doing his thing this Cleveland game, right?

53:06Bill Simmons:All that herky jerky, low post, up fake, just maybe stick to threes for this Wimby game, Pritch.

53:15Zach Lowe:Reed Shepard made a couple over him in the lane today. I know.

53:18Bill Simmons:Man, it's high risk. Castle over Shepard. Shepard's been good the last month, I think. It's not like he's a bust or anything, but that's it's interesting i wonder if they would redo that one the rockets because they took shepherd third castle went fourth i mean i would redo it i'd like shepherd but come on i bet that i bet they would say no i i think they were just they what about after three drinks they would they would

53:43Zach Lowe:crack a little bit you'd start to hear anecdotes that you didn't hear before but they they were all i mean they were all what about after we do fireball shots uh yeah that it's good how many drinks you're going to serve them my god you crack a few readers have suggested to me that uh

54:03Bill Simmons:kd's nickname should be the burner

54:08Zach Lowe:i mean it works on in on multiple levels it's it's you guys had a for the burner you guys had a whole kd nickname discussion which i really enjoyed about how he's reaper he unilaterally was like That awesome nickname I don't like. Easy Money Sniper is better. Not Slim Reaper. Slim Reaper was just minted. It's so good. And he just didn't like it. The burner. I actually thought today. I'm a little bit surprised that road crowds haven't found a creative way to throw this in his face a little bit. I don't know if it's going to take the wall. We're not allowed to do that anymore.

54:48Bill Simmons:Crowds aren't allowed to be mean.

54:50Zach Lowe:Everybody knows. Like the fans all know now. And I feel like I'm a little surprised that it just hasn't come up the wall. I bet if they play at the Clippers, I bet the fanatics who sit in the wall will do something.

55:00Bill Simmons:I got an email. I'm trying to find it and I can't find it. Just because I was asking about the best nicknames of all time. And the guy said the best nickname of all time is Magic Johnson. People literally think it's his name. That's the last stage of a nickname when nobody even really they forget you have a real name. And I think that's a really good point. But Magic Johnson, it's such a good nickname that he had other nicknames. Right? I think some people called him Buck. Yeah. It was like the nickname for them. When you have the second nickname because your first nickname people think is your actual name, it's the final level of nickname.

55:36Bill Simmons:This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Introducing Virtual Up, the latest in a long line of innovation from Nespresso. It's innovation you can touch, sense, and taste in every single cup. With a three-second start, easy open lever, and dedicated brew over ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Sip for yourself.

55:59Zach Lowe:Shop Virtuo up exclusively at Nespresso.com.

56:03Bill Simmons:Playoff matchups. Detroit versus Philly, Atlanta, Charlotte. Boston versus Miami. New York versus Orlando. Cleveland versus Toronto in the East. Then in the West, OKC versus bizarre Golden State, Clippers, Portland, none of us are that excited to even have this series. I wonder if you offered any of those teams, you could have the 10th pick or play in round one, what they would take.

56:32Zach Lowe:A bunch of them are taking the 10th pick.

56:34Bill Simmons:Yeah, that's what I think too. San Antonio Phoenix, which we're going to have to fix that series somehow. Minnesota versus the Lakers, which would be a mismatch. And then Houston versus Denver would be our four matchups. We need some work with that. I would personally like to see OKC Phoenix and San Antonio in the one seed. Would be more fun.

56:56Zach Lowe:What is your, I don't remember if they're playing tonight. What is your current Denver concern level after Aaron Gordon came back and they got thrashed by the Knicks at home?

57:08Bill Simmons:And Murray turned his ankle. So Jokic looked better this weekend. That was a bonus. Murray did get hurt. I am now in the, hey, Denver, just fall to six and get everybody healthy. That the last 20 games don't even... But are you still... Be careful.

57:29Zach Lowe:Are you still... Do you still have faith in the Denver fully healthy? Is it a juggernaut? Or are you starting to wobble on like, well, we just haven't seen a lot of Cam Johnson and like...

57:40Bill Simmons:Oh, I'm wobbling. I wrote down in my... I had a quickie thought section I was going to do with you. One of them is Denver possible year from mini hell. Not year from hell. It's a year from mini hell. It's like they can't have a week without something happening.

57:52Zach Lowe:I call it the it's not our year year.

57:56Bill Simmons:That's fair.

57:57Zach Lowe:I don't know if they're having it, but they seem to be having a year. If you had it, it would look a lot like this.

58:04Bill Simmons:Remember there was a couple KG Celtics years where they were like 25 and 25 in their last 50. And then all of a sudden they would be in the Eastern Finals. And you'd be like, how did I ever doubt them? If I were them, I wouldn't care about where I landed in this 3, 4, 5, 6. Just like whatever.

58:20Zach Lowe:I don't think that's let's get everybody healthy

58:23Bill Simmons:yeah let's get everyone healthy I have a new gimmick for you that I'd not prepare you for completely unprepared stock draft okay buy stock in two guys right now I can start if you want

58:37Zach Lowe:just anybody in the entire NBA

58:40Bill Simmons:just guys you've been looking at not necessarily putting real estate on their island but just you're buying some stock

58:45Zach Lowe:so I'm not buying Jokic stock we're searching for buy low

58:49Bill Simmons:You're buying 2015 Jokic stock. 2016, when did he come in the league?

58:56Zach Lowe:Can you go first?

58:57Bill Simmons:Yeah, I'll go first. I'd like to put a little down. I'm going to call my guy Carter Bryan. I'd like to put some stuff down on him.

59:06Zach Lowe:You're making me angry with that one.

59:10Bill Simmons:He's really the only reason I wanted to have the stock draft. Friday and Sunday, the crowd's cheering for him now. They're chaining his name, which is a good sign. But I like that he's one of those quiet assassin, just killer swing guys. He probably is not going to get into it once with anybody. He just got, if you knock him down, he'll just get up. He's like a Michael Myers. And he's bigger than you think he is. It seems like he can guard basically everybody in the league. He hits threes. He's athletic. And they got him at the 14th pick. It was a great draft pick. And he's going to be in that team for a while.

59:45Zach Lowe:That's a great, it's a great. I'm putting down a little on him. Slam dunk runner up, I believe. So his his playoff viability. Clearly, they are trying to make him playoff ready now. And and when he was not playing much in the regular season, he's an every game player now because defensively, he's a plus he's ready for the playoffs. He's ready for the highest level of stuff. It's just going to be about his offensive readiness and not even just about his threes shooting 33 percent full hit or miss. he had a couple like plays today where you could see a little tentativeness in him when he would they they put houston put centers on him and kind of dared him to beat him and attack him and he had a couple of plays in traffic where he's like i don't know i'm gonna pivot around here and like that's the kind of stuff that in the playoffs you can get a quick hook uh if you're a young player rookie untested like that all right should i make a pick you can do one yeah we can only do one if

1:00:36Bill Simmons:you want because i had neither was my other one i i who was your other one i still have niederhauser stock. I don't care that he gets hurt. I love that. You should hold that stock.

1:00:44Zach Lowe:I'm going to hold it. Yeah. I didn't panic. I'm going to, I'm just going to, I mean, again, no preparation. I'm assuming Alex Sarr is too, too high profile for this. No, it's just the stock's higher, but you can still buy it. I'm going to buy some Alex Sarr stock and I'm going to, I'm going to sneak in right now to the Mallowatch stock market in Phoenix. I'm going to buy a little on the Mallowatch Marina. I'm going to plant my flag in there and, and just, it's got Mark Williams is hurt. And I think he's going to get some run. And he blocked four shots the other night. And I'm just going to buy now.

1:01:18Bill Simmons:Interesting. Yeah. Because I was wondering what happened to him. Because House really liked him coming out of college. He's been dominating.

1:01:23Zach Lowe:He's been like Goliath in the G League for whatever that's worth.

1:01:28Bill Simmons:Okay.

1:01:29Zach Lowe:Noah Penda. Can I buy some Noah Penda stock? Noah Penny Penda stock?

1:01:33Bill Simmons:You definitely could if you wanted to. This is a guy that I've had stock for a while from way back. sold it, did really well. I think it's low right now. People aren't seeing it. Like a little Robert Williams, the third, I know he's older, but for this summer, I think this could be one of those Robert Williams just signed for three years for 50 million. What happened? I think there's going to be another, another, another cycle for him as a guy that, that good teams talk themselves into as a playoff guy.

1:02:10Zach Lowe:three years, 50. I don't see it. I don't see it. He's just not available.

1:02:14Bill Simmons:I'm just saying like a really stupid contract that you'd be surprised by. I mean, Jakob Pertl did get a crazy extension that I didn't understand as that was happening. It was crazy and untradable. Yeah, whatever. But I think Robert Williams is going to have a moment as a free agency center with a deal higher than you think.

1:02:31Zach Lowe:Which Brooklyn Nets rookie would you prefer to buy stock in right now? And they're priced differently. Like Joman is a little higher price because he was picked. Like if you had to buy one, Are you going on the Wolf Den? What are you going in? Definitely not him. Wow.

1:02:48Bill Simmons:I don't mind Traore.

1:02:50Zach Lowe:He's pretty good.

1:02:52Bill Simmons:Yeah, I think he's 19. I think if it was like you could only keep one of these five guys who you keep in, I actually think I might keep him over the other four. But pretty rough that draft when you think of some of the other guys that were in that draft.

1:03:09Zach Lowe:Don't say that to Nets fans. They're going to be like, you're missing the three minutes in garbage time where Traore hit a scoop shot and Drake Powell guard. I'm like, it's all right. Great. Awesome. They passed on Hugo five times.

1:03:23Zach Lowe:That's unbelievable. Hugo gets in, gets in.

1:03:25Bill Simmons:Did they take Agor? They took him over Coward, right?

1:03:28Zach Lowe:Yeah, and a few other good players too. Yeah, that's a tough one. He's pretty good. He's pretty good. But again, he's pretty good on a team that's horrible and you would like him to put up a little bit more

1:03:39Bill Simmons:I have one more stock guy that I've had for a couple weeks. Jacoby, unfortunately, cornered the market on it. But Naquan Tomlin, I have a little on him. I don't even know if we saw him today. We did not. I like him. He's pretty good.

1:03:54Zach Lowe:He has an incredible story.

1:03:55Bill Simmons:It's like a penny stock.

1:03:57Zach Lowe:Yeah.

1:03:57Bill Simmons:Did you have any others? I mean... Anybody on Philly? Daryl always has one or two guys to buy in on. Barlow probably shot up a little bit.

1:04:06Zach Lowe:Yeah. He's fine. I feel like the stock is probably overpriced right now.

1:04:11Bill Simmons:All right. A couple other things really quick before we go to the two things we had.

1:04:17Bill Simmons:Rob Dillingham, just a sunk cost, I guess.

1:04:20Zach Lowe:It's not going great.

1:04:23Bill Simmons:A rare L for Tim Connolly. It's a tough trade. You do that, giving up an unprotected pick down the road. You got to feel really good about the player. and one of the things I think about and the draft's interesting because there's a bunch of really exciting scoring guards in this draft. You don't follow the draft, but it's probably the best crew of scoring guards we've had and some of them are smaller and some of them are bigger. It seems like where teams get in trouble over and over again are these undersized shooting guards or undersized point guards like the Sebastian Telfair, the Book Knight, the the guy we're talking about now.

1:05:06Bill Simmons:Like, these guys, Dillingham, these guys that you talk yourself into and they just end up, they're too small.

1:05:13Zach Lowe:Jimmer?

1:05:14Bill Simmons:Do I hear Jimmer's music? Jimmer's definitely in there, too. But it seems like that's a recurring theme that you're probably just better off taking a 6 '7 guy who can't shoot hoping he learns how to shoot versus an undersized guard.

1:05:25Zach Lowe:I just can't believe how little he's playing. He has played since being traded to the Bulls. His minutes are up a little bit lately, but I thought they would just be like, hey, just don't be afraid to make all the mistakes that Minnesota could not afford to have you make. Make them here. And are they tanking?

1:05:39Bill Simmons:They're not tanking? What are they doing?

1:05:41Zach Lowe:They're tanking.

1:05:42Bill Simmons:Okay. Every time I think they're tanking, they win. Adam Silver was at Sloan and laid the smack down with tanking?

1:05:50Zach Lowe:I saw. And his very, Adam Silver can only lay the smack down like a lawyer, like a highly trained cravath lawyer.

1:05:58Bill Simmons:But if you read, if you put it through your Adam Silver translator, the translator spat out we are changing this and there's going to be real rules put in place

1:06:06Zach Lowe:after this draft was my interpretation i don't want to hear i don't use that when he says i'm an incrementalist which is fine like there's going to be change and i i don't want to hear from the peanut gallery over here of owners that are against it we're doing it so buckle up shaq didn't know who baylor shireman was i didn't see this that's real that was tough he's been starting for the number two team in the East for quite a long time.

1:06:32Bill Simmons:Yeah, I know it's like a running gimmick that these guys don't know who's on. And I know we all love the Inside the NBA guys, but you could know who's in the rotation for the best six teams in the league, I feel like. Seems a reasonable request from the fans. Has this buck season reached everyone might get fired status yet? Because I'll give you their last 17 games.

1:06:54Zach Lowe:You're just trying to manifest Doc Rivers' podcast guests. That's all you're doing. Be honest.

1:06:59Bill Simmons:No, I'm more worried because I like Doc Rivers. I want him to have a job. They're 9-8 in their last 17. Here are the eight losses. You don't even need to. They stink. We don't need to hear the losses. No, no, no. This is pretty good. Okay. They lost by the following numbers of points. 28, 19, 28, 29, 23, 27, 18, and today 39. They don't just lose. They get annihilated. They get blown out. They had Giannis for the 27 and the 18. And we were here a week ago wondering if things were going to turn around for him. And the answer is no. So you don't think this is a blow it up this summer for them? Everybody goes.

1:07:42Bill Simmons:I'm talking GM coach. It's a reset button. Nuclear. Boom. Giannis is gone. New people. And we're doing a four-year tank full of things.

1:07:53Zach Lowe:It's definitely possible. And the honest story is not over just because he didn't get traded at the trade deadline. I think we all know it's, it's not over, but you know, I don't think they're going to trade him unless he demands a trade. I just don't think they're going to, because they probably correctly understand the abyss that's waiting for them on the other side of being completely irrelevant. And he's still 31 years old and one of the three to five best players in the league. And I think it starts with him. Now, could they make changes around him? Sure. We've seen them do that before. they've changed the coach a bunch of times and they would change the coach again in the middle of the season.

1:08:26Zach Lowe:So anything's on the table, but yeah, they, you know, I have some silver linings

1:08:31Bill Simmons:for Bucks fans. Sure. Let's hear them. They won the title four years ago, five years ago. That's it. That's just, we've downgraded that to silver lining. Yeah. I just, just go back and watch the DVD. That's one. Um, two, if there's expansion, you're not going to lose somebody you really like because you don't have eight players to protect. So that's a good one. And then... That's mean.

1:08:55Zach Lowe:That one was mean. You didn't need to. That was mean.

1:08:58Bill Simmons:Well, it's a silver lining.

1:09:00Zach Lowe:What about Thanasis? Will someone take Thanasis in the expansion draft? I don't think so.

1:09:03Bill Simmons:They leave him unprotected. And then you do have your first round pick this year.

1:09:08Zach Lowe:Yeah, you do.

1:09:09Bill Simmons:And there is a scenario where them versus New Orleans, because New Orleans has nothing to play for. They keep winning. Their picks might be around each other. so they might end up with the pick they would have ended up with anyway or somewhere around there might not they might not be like oh man we could have blah blah blah um what is your time machine yana's trade if you could go back in a month and just force a trade because i have a team i have a trade that i wish would happen because i just think it would have made the

1:09:37Zach Lowe:league more fun i can just do any team like you're going backwards a month and you're being like i

1:09:43Bill Simmons:know you didn't want to do this, but now I'm forcing you to do this on February 5th. Cause I think there's a specific one.

1:09:54Zach Lowe:Uh, I'm trying to be realistic for the bucks, right? Like I'm not just going to be like, I want them to go to the warriors. So I'm going to make a warrior straight, which you can make a plausible warriors trade. I think the most interesting one to revisit that's realistic for the bucks is either it's going to be one of three teams you're going to bring up. It's going to be either Detroit, Cleveland, or Houston. It's going to be one of those three teams. I had Houston. Yeah. Who's going in the trade, Shangoon?

1:10:21Bill Simmons:Shangoon, Jabari, and some picks. And right now, we watched that game tonight, and Giannis is on Houston. We're watching Milwaukee. Shangoon's on Milwaukee. And I just think the league's more interesting, and Milwaukee probably feels better about where they are. I know the Milwaukee fans don't want to trade Giannis. I think it is alarming that he came back, and they just got crushed a couple times. I was going to say,

1:10:44Zach Lowe:does our month timetable extend before he got injured? Because I think that was an under, I don't think that was talked about. We all talked about it, but I don't think it was, this assumption that he was just going to come back and be healthy and 100 % and never get injured again. And he's actually come back and looked good, but not like Giannis and is always seemingly at risk of some injury like this.

1:11:08Bill Simmons:Wanted to mention, haven't heard a lot from Drew Hanlon taking shots at the ringer lately about how wrong we were about Embiid. Just wanted to open the door for him if he wanted to keep taking the shots. I mean, Embiid's not playing. This is another just weird,

1:11:24Zach Lowe:just added to the list of weird injuries. But he didn't do it with Carmelo Anthony this week, I'm sure you saw.

1:11:30Bill Simmons:He's played 33, 19, and 33 games in the last three years. This is why we can't put him in the top 30 in the ringer 100. One of the parts of being a high-end NBA player is playing NBA games. That's one of the things we value here at The Ringer. There's going to be a WNBA strike, I think. I think it looks more likely than less likely. It's a disaster. I don't think it looks good, and barring a miracle, but it feels like we're heading that way, and I just wanted to say that I think that sucks. I understand the reasons from both sides, but it's just unbelievable to me that they would stop playing basketball when they finally had momentum after 25 years, and now we're not going to play.

1:12:12Bill Simmons:I have a list of teams I've given up trying to figure out.

1:12:20Bill Simmons:Bronze. I'm going to go bronze, silver, gold.

1:12:23Zach Lowe:Bronze medal, Houston.

1:12:26Bill Simmons:Silver medal, Minnesota. Gold medal, Orlando. I just give up.

1:12:33Zach Lowe:I was actually going to ask you. Orlando, quietly, has won four games in a row. I have no takes. I have no takes.

1:12:38Bill Simmons:I give up. what's the deal with that team?

1:12:43Zach Lowe:What's the deal with the Orlando Magic? Do they know how to do magic?

1:12:47Bill Simmons:They barely beat Dallas on Wednesday. Like, barely. Dallas isn't even trying to win. Then they go into Minnesota, and they kill Minnesota in Minnesota on Saturday. I just don't understand them. I don't understand Minnesota either.

1:13:01Zach Lowe:That was one of those games where you're like, what's happening here? I don't understand how this Magic Minnesota game is like, The NBA just has funny games. Yeah, Washington, Dallas, Minnesota, Milwaukee is their four-game winning streak. So forgive me if I'm going to just not go crazy over it because three of the wins are poopoo wins. The Dallas one, down to the wire, as you mentioned. The Minnesota wins a good one. They have talent. They're fine. I just, you know, we'll see where they end up.

1:13:28Bill Simmons:I really wanted to believe in Minnesota. I was dying to believe. They were 33-1 to win the title heading into that Saturday game. I was like, here we go. They're going to be a free seed.

1:13:40Zach Lowe:You're crushed by one loss.

1:13:41Bill Simmons:That's it? You're out? It's just every time we feel like we're getting momentum with, here's the mystery contender we needed for the stretch run. It's Minnesota. And then they just suck in a game.

1:13:54Zach Lowe:I'm keeping them as the mystery contender. I'm not wavering.

1:13:58Bill Simmons:That's fine. All right. We're going to do our deep dive. So we've done deep dives on, we did Kawhi Leonard. who did we do last week pretty good one last week

1:14:10Zach Lowe:I already forgot once we're done I forget yeah

1:14:14Bill Simmons:we're going to do the 2011 MVP race okay and it's topical because there were some slight parallels until Detroit fell off a little bit and Cade fell off a little bit uh oh what happened with the Hornets hold on did they did they oh they're losing okay so

1:14:37Zach Lowe:that's it we pause we now we now pause the podcast in real time because the Hornets are losing oh yeah

1:14:43Bill Simmons:the deep dive was about the Hornets last week so we did Kawhi and we did the Hornets

1:14:47Zach Lowe:yes

1:14:48Bill Simmons:we were in the 2011 MVP race because of slight parallels to what we were watching this year with Cade and there was a brief MVP case for him but now that Shay's come back doesn't matter this is probably I think that other than 2017 the most polarizing MVP race since the decision. It wasn't polarizing when it happened because Derrick Rose won. Derrick Rose had 113 first place votes out of 120. Dwight Howard finished second. LeBron James was third and Kobe Bryant was fourth. This was the season after the decision. Chicago was 62 and 20. They started out nine and eight. They finished 55 and 12. They were 24 of their last 27 games.

1:15:33Bill Simmons:And somewhere on the line, we all decided Derek Rose was the MVP. And now as the years have passed, because Miami made the finals four straight years, LeBron is who he is. This is a MVP race that people now point to as this should have been LeBron's MVP. You did not vote for either LeBron James or Derek Rose. You didn't have a vote, but your fake vote was not for either guy.

1:15:59Zach Lowe:I would have been the fourth Dwight Howard voter that season. I just thought he was, first of all, he was defensive player of the year and it was almost unanimous. It was easily the best defender in the NBA and it was maybe his best offensive season, 23 points a game, shot well. The advanced stats all loved him and I just thought, you know, it's interesting. We were, that is so long ago in sort of NBA discourse times that we were just sort of getting into like on-off data and stuff like that. And again, when you're doing these races, it's all you're just splitting the thinnest of hairs between guys who are all deserving.

1:16:35Zach Lowe:And obviously, Derek Rose was the story of the season. The Bulls were the story of the season. But one of the arguments that you could make in favor of Dwight Howard, and 15 years later, I probably over-indexed on it in picking Dwight Howard, was the on-off data that year. The Magic were awesome with Dwight Howard on the floor, and I think they were negative something. I'm trying to look it up now with him on the bench. And the Bulls were really good with Derek Rose. on the floor and really good with Derek Rose off the floor because their defense without him was impenetrable. And some of that had to do with Derek Rose.

1:17:09Zach Lowe:Some of it was probably just random luck. And I probably under underestimated the luck factor in that back in 2011. But, um, I think there's an, there's a ironclad statistical case for Dwight, not ironclad, but you could make a statistical case for Dwight Howard easily. And I just thought he was the most dominant two-way player in basketball that year. And the LeBron one...

1:17:30Bill Simmons:Wait, can we talk about Dwight first and then go to LeBron? Sure. So I had Dwight, I think I had him fifth. And I said, kudos to him for... I wrote a big MVP column that year and I said, kudos to him for getting about 11 % better this season. Blah, blah, blah. Magic's only rebounder, only above average defender. 60 % of his shots, blah, blah, blah. And then I wrote I can't give my MVP vote for one simple reason. He leaves something on the table every night. Dwight Howard should be the league's most dominant player. Then I had a couple things about comparing him to Shaq, all this stuff, Shaq's MVP season, where that Shaq MVP season, I wrote, ha, that's the Shaq we were waiting for.

1:18:16Bill Simmons:I knew he had that extra gear. That's how I feel about Dwight Howard right now. Hakeem averaged a 24-14 with 4.6 blocks, 2.1 steals in 1990. it wasn't even one of the best three seasons of his career. I keep going on that. Are you telling me his 23.1 points, 14 rebounds, 2.4 blocks, 26.1 PR is the best he can do. No way. So then I wrote, that's when you asked, wait, why does it matter? If it's better than anyone else's best season, who cares? If he peaks as a player, it's still the best season. And then I said, advanced metrics should be used to accentuate opinions. We're already leaning towards having instead of forming and shaping those same opinions.

1:18:56Bill Simmons:If Howard is Orlando's best player and he's holding something back every night, how can you say that doesn't affect the Magic? So they had the eighth best record that year. They were 52 and 30. I was saying how he gets dumb technicals. That was the eighth best record that year? Yeah. Dumb technicals, dumb fouls, disappears in crunch time. Didn't even rank in top 125 in crunch time field goal attempts. They had an uneven season. Nobody's afraid to play them in the playoffs, blah, blah, blah. How can I vote for him for MVP? That's how I felt in the moment. So I think there's an eye test piece to that where it's like, I just don't feel right saying that this guy is the best guy in the league.

1:19:30Bill Simmons:You've, you've, you've been, uh, you don't care about as much about that. You're more Spock when you do the case, you're like, here's the mathematical case. This guy is the best at this records. This, I still slide the eye test stuff in there probably a little too much. I don't know who's right.

1:19:46Zach Lowe:Well, I mean, part of the eye test is he was single-handedly making the magic a good defensive team like right by himself as easily the best defense not easily but the best defensive player in the nba i mean that has to be like when you talk about leaving stuff on the table um derrick rose was not a good defensive player that year so he was leaving stuff

1:20:06Bill Simmons:on the table but they were the number one defense they were so he couldn't have been that bad right

1:20:10Zach Lowe:no they were way better they were way better they were like a freaking juggernaut from hell without him. But that doesn't, like, again, all these guys had cases. Everything you said about Dwight is fair. And that was the end of that era of the Magic. That was the last year that team was good. Well, that was the irony

1:20:30Bill Simmons:of what I wrote, is that was his best season. And I think he was holding... Is there more there? And it's like, no, there actually wasn't.

1:20:36Zach Lowe:There wasn't. And there was, in fact, less, eventually. But it did feel like, at that time, he was holding together the last remains of that team that had made the finals and then the conference finals the next year. And they ended up losing in the first round the next two years. And then it was kind of over. And yeah, but I just thought defensively he was like, he was a floor every night. Like your floor was pretty stable with Dwight Howard in the middle on defense. And yeah, the Shaq thing is, it's so tiresome because Shaq has perpetuated it too. Like they had this rivalry over the years and then they would, you know, reconcile and then they'd be a rival again.

1:21:12Zach Lowe:He was never as, he's not as big as Shaq. You couldn't just move people out of the way as easily as Shaq could. I mean, Shaq was just, you know, just the eighth wonder of the world kind of guy. And he just was never a polished post-up player. And those were the years where they, Stan Van Gundy just sort of successfully shoehorned him into a post-up a few times a game when you've got a good matchups and we'll throw you the ball. Make you feel good about it. But just do these things you're awesome at. And you're going to be the foundation of every single thing we do offensively and defensively at you are the tentpole of everything.

1:21:43Zach Lowe:thing. And I just thought that was his best season.

1:21:46Bill Simmons:So the stuff I wrote about Rose, and it's weird because over the years, I've been like, I got the Rose thing wrong. And then I went back and read how passionate I was about the Rose case about that team was 62 and 20. He was the only guy in that he carried their offense, was the only guy on their team who really could create his own shot. Right. Who else was a little like the Detroit case this year? There was one guy.

1:22:11Zach Lowe:A little boozer.

1:22:12Bill Simmons:A little. A little. Usage was pretty crazy. In crunch time per 48, second most field goal, eighth most free throw attempts, ninth highest assist. He was doing everything. I was comparing it to the Iverson 0-1 Sixers thing. And just like, just everything was on him game after game after game. And they won most of their games, which matters. And then Boozer and Noah both, I wrote, Rose keeping the Bulls contention for three plus months with Boozer. No, miss significant time was the most impressive thing. I witnessed this season, their quest for number one seed should have been derailed in November, blah, blah, blah.

1:22:48Bill Simmons:He kept them hanging around, kept them relevant. And they were the best team that year. And whether he was the best player was the bigger question because LeBron was still the best player in the league, but that Miami season was super weird. It's interesting. What I wrote in that MVP column was that I thought Wade had a slightly better case than LeBron that year because he was more kind of stable and reliable. LeBron had all that. He was the villain that year. He was a little up and down. There were games when you didn't know where his head was. But I really said both. They were basically co-MVPs, which I talked about co-MVP seasons of 1970, Reed and Frazier, 72, Jerry Westwell, Chamberlain, and 06, Shaq and Wade.

1:23:30Bill Simmons:was really hard to separate the two guys and impact. If I had to do it over again, I think I would have Rose one. I think I would have LeBron two, Wade three, and Dwight four. And I think that's how I would go because those guys won 55 games. There was three guys. It was those two and Bosch, Mike Miller, who wasn't exactly awesome that year. They had Carlos Arroyo, Mike Bibby. Like they were grabbing dudes from the street. They were three on five, and they still went 55-27. Every game they played was the biggest game of the season for the other team. So, I don't know. When I look back at that, they were two of the best three guys in the league, other than they just wanted to throw Dwight in there.

1:24:12Can you imagine if LeBron had won MVP that year

1:24:17Zach Lowe:and then had the same finals that he had that season?

1:24:21Bill Simmons:It would have been worse than the Dirk 07.

1:24:23Zach Lowe:I mean, it would have been the all-time... There would have been columns being like, we need to revoke the MVP and give it to whoever finished second is what would have happened.

1:24:34Bill Simmons:The thing is, the animosity from the decision, he wasn't winning MVP unless they won like 60-plus games. I also think it's okay. He just wasn't.

1:24:42Zach Lowe:I think it's okay for voters when these super teams happen to take a year and just sort of be like, I got to kind of see what's going on here because the word valuable in there does give you sort of leeway to be like, well, that one guy is so centrally important to his team. And these all three of these guys just teamed up. It's why like, this is even a level up super team, but the moment Durant went to the Warriors, those guys were never winning MVP again. And I think that was fair. Like it's just like the team's too good. You have too much, like there's another, there's gonna be someone else doing more, much more with doing the same with much less than you guys have.

1:25:20Bill Simmons:I think Wade, the Wade from 09 to 11 is the most underappreciated guy of the last 20 years, how good he was. And he's like, for instance, Kobe. Why not start at 06? Well, you start at wherever. But those three years specifically, I just think, like I thought his 09 year was one of the best years any two guard had since Jordan. In 11, he's better than Wade. I wrote that in the MVP piece because Kobe ends up finishing fourth in the MVP. Wade was just better than him that year. He was better, pick a stat. He was better than him defensively. Kobe was still getting those all defense teams at that point.

1:25:59Bill Simmons:He wasn't the guy Wade was. And Wade was just as good as LeBron. And in the playoffs was actually better than LeBron, especially in the finals. I just think they were like this. LeBron that year was not, I don't think, better than Wade. He might have had better nights. But I just think Wade was like the engine of that team. And he was the alpha of that team. and really trying to keep LeBron's head into it. It wasn't until the next year that LeBron ascended and kind of went to that next level. But I thought Wade was, I'll never forget watching Wade that year, especially in the finals. I just thought he had a, I can't remember if it was game three or game four, but he had one game that was just, he was so fucking good in this game.

1:26:40Zach Lowe:In the Dallas finals?

1:26:41Bill Simmons:Yeah, it was either three or four. He was just so good. I still remember being in the stands like, holy shit, you know? And I just felt like Kobe stole some of his sunshine, I think, because they were going against each other. And everybody at that point, Kobe had become, you know, he was rising up the ladder. And I just think Wade was right there with him for years. And we don't think of it that way now.

1:27:06Zach Lowe:No, we don't. And it would be interesting to do the all-time shooting guard rankings one deep dive because Wade would be very, very high and was an elite two-way player. who just like his athleticism betrayed him fast because of all the damage that had been done to his knees. But I mean, you go back and you watch peak Dwayne Wade and he just jumps off the screen. There is nobody who can stay in front of him. I mean, he's just a remarkable, remarkable athlete. He could pass. The defense was there. It's just an unusual player. A guy that height who could block shots like that and protect the rim and play vertically was very unusual.

1:27:42Zach Lowe:And very tough. Tough and like fearless from day one.

1:27:45Bill Simmons:So that was the other thing. I was going to say, mean-spirited, and I mean it as a compliment. Like, really had an edge to him. Kobe did too. But really carried himself with almost a level of anger when he played in a good way. So that year, he was 26 a game, six rebounds, five assists. Kobe was 25, five and five. He shot 50%. Played 2 ,823 minutes. Some of the minute stuff this year was nuts. Rose played over 3 ,000 minutes. So did LeBron.

1:28:15Zach Lowe:I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to bring this up. The top four finishers played 82, 78, 79, and 81 games. Is that ever going to happen again?

1:28:25Bill Simmons:Right. I mean, that's the best thing with the Rose case is he just played. He played like 81 games, 37 minutes a game. He was their entire offense. He was in fifth gear every game. You never saw a game when he had a night off. And so the more I stared at it and thought about it and read what I wrote, read some other stuff that was out there, I still think Rose is the right call. And the fact that it was that one-sided, I think maybe it shouldn't have been as one-sided as it was, but I think that is meaningful.

1:28:55Zach Lowe:It shouldn't have been as one-sided as it was. I think it absolutely holds up as an okay to correct decision to make. I wouldn't have been my vote, but I think it completely holds up as an MVP case. And if there was ever a, we got this wrong, like MVP discussion about it, I think it would all focus on LeBron. I don't think any of it would focus on Dwight or Dwayne Wade or Kobe. I think it would be it all coalesces around did the voters punish LeBron for the decision when it was still obvious that he was by far the best player because the advanced stats will tell you LeBron was the best player.

1:29:33Zach Lowe:The advanced stats, not every stat, but the advanced stats will tell you that. And I think it would coalesce around him. And I think it's fine that he didn't win MVP that year. I think that's totally fair.

1:29:43Bill Simmons:I think him and Wade were 1A, 1B, and I'm not even sure who 1A was. Wade was plus 10.4 that year, and LeBron was plus 10.1. They were just so intertwined. I don't know how you can even say one guy was more valuable than the other. And it really was amazing to watch those guys those first three years, and it kind of culminated in the streak, right? The streak, which was one of the great achievements. And that was really Wade's last great run, I think. Because even when they got to the 2013 playoffs, he was starting to break down. um there's one guy i was trying to think did anybody have an advanced case that we didn't really fully understand in 2011 but now we understand better in 26 if we were doing it with our lens and it's clearly dirk nowitzki clearly and i i wrote some of this in the mvp thing even though i had him like eighth where they were basically like 55 and 12 when he played and then uh something like that 55 and 14 and when he didn't play they were helpless he was the only guy in the team that could create a shadow than Terry.

1:30:46Bill Simmons:They had that Roddy Bubla. They were trying to turn him into a thing for a lot of the year. No, he was untouchable. He was untouchable. Couldn't trade him. And then it all coalesced in the playoffs and they found a defensive identity. He went up a level. But his advanced stuff was, oh, they were 55 and 18 with him when he played. But he was plus 10.3. He was 23, 7 and 3. So it was a typical Dirk year, 52-39-89 and they won like 57 games so there was probably a little better case for him they had the fourth best record in the league and that would be the guy maybe if he had to do it over again maybe he stinks in the fourth or fifth

1:31:28Zach Lowe:that's a good call and I remember writing at Sports Illustrated that year that the Mavs were a contender hiding in plain sight because because of their... He missed like 10 games. I think they went like one and nine without Dirk or some crazy number like that. And that totally deflated their place in the standings. I remember that year, they played Portland in the first round. And I believe that series is 2-2 and there's the Brandon Roy game and Portland wins games three and four at home. And everyone's like, here go the Mavericks again. And then it just skyrocketed from there.

1:31:59Bill Simmons:It's a great fork in the road where it really seemed like not only were they going to lose to Portland, but then they were going to have to blow everything up and maybe that was going to be it for Dirk and all kinds of outcomes. And then all of a sudden it flipped the other way.

1:32:13Zach Lowe:Can I just say one Derrick Rose thing? Yeah. It might be the, I don't want to say rank injuries, but that injury, like Heat Bulls should have been an all-time great half-decade rivalry. It just had everything. Contrasting styles, contrasting cities, Noah calling them Hollywood as hell, just defense first, a team that was perceived as a highlight, like lob dunk, it was just everything. And then the Pacers came in and filled the void, but it was clearly like someone's got to fill the void and they were not as good as the... That should have been just four straight years of conference finals and just slugfest the whole way through.

1:32:53Bill Simmons:Yeah, there were two great LeBron rivals that got crippled because I think KG's 2009 injury was the other one, right? The two biggest injuries in either conference during this whole stretch where the KG09 and the Rose in 12 where you had teams that probably had a chance to win one, maybe even two more titles between them. And you look at the teams, Indiana was the best team they played probably.

1:33:19Zach Lowe:In the East.

1:33:20Bill Simmons:In that 2011 of 14 stretch that Miami played in the playoffs, it was probably the Pacers. Indiana took them to seven and then six two times, I think. I don't know. That Knicks team I thought had potential, but they kind of fell apart. Then you go to the 2015 when he went back to Cleveland. I mean, they played a 41-41 Milwaukee team in 15. That early Giannis with some Chris Middleton. I forget who else was on there. They played Atlanta. They played somebody else. But I just think the league is so much better than it was 11 years ago. I couldn't believe some of the teams

1:33:56Zach Lowe:in these playoffs teams back then. Those four years, they were so visibly bored with not only the regular season, but the playoffs, too, in the East. I don't remember which Raptors year it was because God knows they humiliated Toronto enough times. But it was the one where Toronto had them 2-2 in, I think it was the second round. And LeBron had this all-time quote after they won game five. Like, yeah, I think it was something like, I've been in adverse situations before and this wasn't one of them. And it was like, wow, you're just like 2-2 in the playoffs. And you're just like, yeah, we don't care.

1:34:33Zach Lowe:Just wake us up when we have to actually win. Crazy. All right, that was a good deep dive. Lebronto.

1:34:39Bill Simmons:So you're keeping Howard as your vote? Okay.

1:34:42Zach Lowe:I'm sticking with Dwight. The career from there careened sideways a few times. Got weird. Hit a snowbank, fell into a lake. Like, there's a lot of bad stuff that happened.

1:34:53Bill Simmons:I, uh, as I was researching this stuff, you know, as, as I have amnesia with half the stuff I wrote, you and I did a back and forth piece about the 2013 Lakers as it was going sideways. Okay. We exchanged emails. That was like 5 ,000 words. Yeah. It was like January or February, 2013. and it was when Dwight's season was starting to go sideways for the Lakers and Nash was looking old and Kobe was doing the thing where he's like, I'm just going to, I think it all culminated in Kobe just playing 48 minutes a game and then getting hurt. But that team went off the rails in like the craziest way. And we're writing about that in real time.

1:35:35Bill Simmons:And one of the guys we're writing about is Dwight. Like, Oh yeah, this probably, probably isn't happening. Like,

1:35:42Zach Lowe:By the way, Dwight Howard, just for the record, I wanted to say this because I spent time looking this up. Dwight Howard, one defensive player of the year that year, I think it was the third one in a row by a lot. He received 114 first place votes. The following players were the other players who received first place votes. And this was before the voting was public. Kevin Garnett won first place vote. Can't argue with Kevin Garnett. You're in. Grant Hill, 38-year-old Grant Hill of the Phoenix Suns got a first place defensive player of the year vote that year. Joakim Noah got one Keith Bogans snagged a first place vote according to SB Nation Dr.

1:36:22Zach Lowe:Jack Ramsey on a broadcast claimed that it was him the voter for Keith Bogans

1:36:25Bill Simmons:and that's when he lost his vote

1:36:27Zach Lowe:and the only other player who received multiple first place votes with two Chuck Hayes of the Houston Rockets two first place votes low post shutdown guy we all love Chuck Hayes but let's let's whoever those two people are take take it easy with with chuck hazelib

1:36:45Bill Simmons:uh last thing before we go we didn't get to our utah thing maybe we'll do it next week um i read this book i'm gonna do a quick book review i read this book called masters of the game okay by sam smith and phil jackson oh i have it i haven't read it yet so now i will be interested in your review they go through 75 players and it's basically a back and forth almost like how we did that Dwight Howard thing. It's a back and forth of their conversation with each player, but each one kind of can basically zag into this different conversation. It's one of the strangest books I've ever read. I don't understand if they had a proofreader or an editor or anything.

1:37:27Bill Simmons:There's certain guys where they don't even talk about the guy. It's like number, you know, whatever, Anthony Davis. And then it's just the whole section, some story about Phil Jackson when he coached for Albany. There's factual stuff that's wrong. Like they say at one point, Lonnie Shelton got in a fight with Bill Bridges when it was actually Buck Williams. And just, it's just, I kind of couldn't believe how lazy it was and why they didn't try to make it better. And at the same time, I got like 20 things out of it reading it. And there were some really interesting tidbits and it was worth kind of zooming through.

1:38:01Bill Simmons:The biggest thing that I learned, and I had no idea. As you remember, I used to love Pat Riley's Disease of Me and I made a big thing about it in my basketball book and I would always bring it up and all this stuff. Apparently, it was actually Lenny Wilkins' thing that he called Championship Fallout that he called during the year after the Seattle Sonics won and he talked about all these factors that happened to your team and he named it Championship Fallout. I don't want to say Pat Riley stole it, but Pat Riley definitely renamed it into the disease of me in his book. And then I thought it was a Pat Riley thing, but it turns out it was a Lenny Wilkins thing.

1:38:45Bill Simmons:And that kind of blew my brain.

1:38:47Zach Lowe:Half a life is marketing, right? Like, yeah, you know, the Winklevii invent Facebook or did Mark Zuckerberg invent Facebook? Who knows?

1:38:53Bill Simmons:Championship Fallout, it's called. So that review, that review you just gave,

1:38:58Zach Lowe:there were some plot twists within the review. I mean, I thought it was going to be a full-on pan and then it veered into like pretty interesting terms.

1:39:06Bill Simmons:There was guys where it's like, I don't understand how that's all you had to say about Chris Paul. Like you couldn't have just done two paragraphs back and forth about Chris Paul and said he went this way. But at the same time, I was really enjoying some of the stories. So I don't know, the book, I kind of enjoyed reading it as I was frustrated by it because there was some tidbits that reinforced things I heard, like they killed Elvin Hayes. You know, they talked about Dave Cowens, what a maniac he was. But there was some interesting coaching stuff with Phil, like guys that he clearly liked. Like he loved Jason Kidd and he kind of didn't like Chris Paul.

1:39:45Bill Simmons:And he was like, Chris Paul was kind of like, look at me, look at me, I'm the leader, look at me. And Jason Kidd was like actually a leader. So there were things to gleam from Phil Jackson. And then Sam Smith covered the league. And I really respect Sam Smith. And he had some really good insight on these different teams he covered. So you just kind of had to dig out the interesting stuff in the book. And that was the takeaway. But this was one of the things Phil Jackson said. Actually, Sam Smith said this. They were talking about Patrick Ewing. And the Knicks go up 2-0 in the Bulls-Knicks series in 93.

1:40:23Bill Simmons:and he said, they go back to Chicago and Ewing says the Knicks just had to win one. Just had to win one. And he goes, you never heard that from Michael down to nothing. He would say, we're going to win the next four. Ewing was just more normal than Michael. And I was like, that's actually a really interesting point. There's two types of players, right? There's the guy that would go into Chicago up to nothing and be like, we just got to win one and get it back to New York. And then there's like the Jordan Kobe type. So it'd be like, we're fucking winning the next four. Fuck these guys. and I was like, yeah, that's kind of, so it got my juices going on all these different basketball things, but I was still like incredibly frustrated reading it.

1:40:58Zach Lowe:So that's my review. More normal than Michael is a section of the Venn diagram that encompasses most of humanity.

1:41:06Bill Simmons:By the way, on Apple Books, this book is$2. So you could just read it, download it and zoom through it on your iPad

1:41:11Zach Lowe:and have a really good time. Well, let's do a book talk. So I'm about two thirds of the way through the new Larry Bird book, Heartland. Oh, what's the best thing you learned? I mean, it's just, it's all so far, it's all like he just got to Indiana State, basically where I am. It's all his, I mean, I knew a lot of his childhood growing up and his dad and his family situation. And, but I did not know as much about like how long he was actually at IU before he left. And one of the reasons why he left and what his roommate situation was. And just like, you really get a good picture of, of both French Lick and Terre Haute.

1:41:46Zach Lowe:Like, like they talk about the bars that, people would go to and and uh and some of the atmosphere around those early indiana state games but it was clearly had something with bird and this international i i was not aware or had forgotten about this team of like uh high school or might have been freshman year of college all stars that went and played internationally and in on this trip that became like a disaster they got into a ball and it was just crazy there's a lot of good stuff in there and i like that it's i don't know if we're getting to the Celtics in the book ever. It's all college and high school.

1:42:20Bill Simmons:Oh, interesting approach. We ran an excerpt of it on The Ringer. I saw it. A couple other things from that book, by the way. Phil Jackson really loved what a tough guy Carl Malone was. I almost wonder, I got to really rethink my Carl Malone because obviously I was always glass half empty on every aspect of him and even created the 42 Club to try to try to make his resume worse um because i really valued how bad he was in these end of the game things he was talking about just what an absolute intimidation guy he was and how he would intimidate like garnett rasheed wallace all these dudes wanted no part of him because he was just this tough guy his elbows were always up and nobody really fucked with him ever and i don't think i've counted that in enough with him so that was one thing and then he was talking about shack just what an awful practice player Shaq was.

1:43:14Bill Simmons:And he basically was like, as the years pass, you romanticize all the good things about a player. But it was like Shaq just ruined practice for us. We would have to play four on four. Shaq just was actually a negative influence day to day because he just mailed in practices nonstop. And it really hurt us. So you hear stuff like that and you're like, all right, that's something. It's not just about the stats.

1:43:39Zach Lowe:And then he would go score 45 and be completely unhargable. That's why you put up with it.

1:43:44Bill Simmons:That's why you put up with it. But it was interesting. I'll check it out. Yeah, I'm going to start. I'm going to try to read a basketball book a week and give a little review at the end. He really loved Jason Kidd, though. Man, it made me wonder if I had Jason Kidd too high in my pyramid, whether he should be lower.

1:43:59Zach Lowe:Why would that make you wonder if he should be lower?

1:44:01Bill Simmons:I mean, like, I have him in the 40s. Like, I'm wondering, like, because maybe I'm discounting his shot too much.

1:44:08Zach Lowe:How could any coach not love Jason Kidd as a player? I mean, he's just next-level basketball savant and tough and plays defense. He's got to be the coach's player.

1:44:20Bill Simmons:Well, I wonder. I did the pyramid before the 11 finals, and maybe I should factor that in more because he was awesome in that playoff run, even though he was running on fumes. Just being able to get to whiskey where he needed to go and be the leader of the team, all that stuff.

1:44:34Zach Lowe:I loved that version of Jason, old man Jason Kidd, because he learned to shoot threes. And he was like, I'm going to, he was like, I think I can make up a position where I play point guard and I never go in the paint. I just play like old man quarterback point guard. And I'm still such a good passer that it works.

1:44:52Bill Simmons:Would you rather have Jason Kidd or Chris Paul if you could have one guy for their whole career? Jason Kidd. Yeah, I got to redo the pyramid. All right, see, I'm glad I read this book, even though I was frustrated by it. It really did get my juices going in nine directions. So thank you, Sam Smith and Phil Jackson. $2 on Apple Books right now. Zach Lowe, this was a pleasure as always. Thanks to Eduardo and Gajau as well. Zach's going to be back on his podcast on Tuesday. I have Fargo for the Rewatchables tomorrow. And then, not sure, going to do some football, I think, on Tuesday. And then, I don't know, on Thursday.

1:45:24Bill Simmons:And then, potentially, I think I'm seeing you again on Sunday. Okay. Yeah. Sounds good. Well, you're traveling there, stuff. But we're going to figure out some sort of gimmick. Got some stuff. Zach Lowe, thanks, man. Thanks to everybody on Netflix and Spotify, and we'll see you next time around.

1:46:06Bill Simmons:gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24 seven support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 877-770-7867.