The Knicks (and a Crowded East) With Zach Lowe, Plus Anthony Jeselnik on Book Clubs, Roasts, and Stand-Up Comedy in 2026

19:57Bill Simmons:It's to me, I feel the same way about them as I did with the 94 Knicks. Like ultimately, like your biggest moment of the season. and it's just not incapable of no fans. Like the Knicks, that 94 Knicks team really came down to John Starks had to make a shot and none of the Knicks fans really 100 % trusted him. Well, the Kings... Same with those Kings. It was like Doug Christie. It was Turkoglu who wasn't totally ready yet. It was Chris Webber who wanted no part of the situation. Peja infamously has an air ball in overtime. They just, they weren't. They didn't have the one guy who's like... Mike Bibby was kind of their only I got this guy but they needed the second one.

20:32And he also got... Elbowed by Kobe in the face. Elbowed by Kobe. Allegedly fouled Kobe.

20:38Bill Simmons:Right. Kobe took him out. Kobe guarded him down the stretch at one of those games, too. But you go back and watch Shaq and Kobe in 2001 in particular, but any of those three-peat years, and they have games where it's like, how did anyone ever beat this team? Like, they were just, particularly in 01, when basically nobody beat them ever when they tried. It's so weird even to watch the spacing from back then. Oh, yeah. And I don't even know how you compare errors anymore. I almost feel like, I feel like basketball kind of has to end with the 2010 finals. And then there's like this new version of it that comes the year after.

21:13Bill Simmons:And it's like this, it's almost like movies where movies have these different eras where it's like silent films and then black and white. And then like in the early seventies, the modern movies come in and just feel different. You watch the stuff from, I don't know, pick it, pick any finals. It does look different. Two bigs who can't shoot on the court almost all the time. The 86 Celtics in game forward, for some reason, this was on one of the socials. I was like, okay, I'll watch the last three minutes of this. And they had Walton and McHale and Bird. And I think they had a fourth forward out there with the guard.

21:48Bill Simmons:And they're just all crammed in. And McHale is getting double teamed. Nobody is spacing it. But Bird actually spaces it and hits a three. And he has so much space. Like nobody's within five feet of him. And it's just like, how did they not realize that that's what you should do? And that would have gotten Kevin McHale more, whatever. But we didn't really realize it till like 2013. Daryl Morey, unemployed, unemployed GM. Daryl Morey was like, you know, what's, you know, what's a big deal? Three is 50 % more than two. I think we should do that. You know what else is good? Spacing. Yeah. I wonder who, who gets credit for the spacing.

22:23Bill Simmons:I wonder who figured that out. I mean, you got to give Dan Tony a lot of credit. Maybe the 09 magic. You're going team. Yeah, Stan Van Gundy was ahead of his time. I'm just trying to think of different teams that probably figured out. Because they really spaced it out around Dwight. And then they would shoot more threes. But then they would also have the mismatch of Dwight against whoever trying to get the rebound. I think the most tactically underrated coach in NBA history is Rick Adelman. Like, in terms of spacing, inverting the floor, using his bigs as passers from the elbows. Like, he was—I'm glad he got his due when he got in the Hall of Fame.

22:54I had been advocating for him to be in the Hall of Fame for, like, 10 years before he got in. I think he's also deserves a lot of credit. I don't know why we're talking about this. This is what we just thought we'd turn the mic sign and go.

23:04Bill Simmons:Well, we were talking about the Knicks. I could do movie reviews if you want. I just watched a bunch of scary movies. Well, you said, why are you on a scary movie run? My wife was out of town. Like, I got to watch all these movies before she comes back. She can't tolerate them. Obsession. I'll just do one word reviews. Obsession. Fine. It Follows. Liked It Follows. It Follows is good. Scared me a little bit. Good gimmick, too, for just to talk about in life. The Invitation. Have you seen The Invitation? Who's in that? No one that I know. It's the dinner party. Yes. It's a dinner party. It's a dinner party.

23:37I don't think I've ever been so uncomfortable for two straight hours of my entire life as I was watching The Invitation. I mean that in a very good way.

23:43Bill Simmons:Did you see The Invite? That's new, right? Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Ed Norton. No, I have not seen that. Penelope Cruz. I should do that one. I don't know if your wife would like it. She's got very... Plain? No, she's got... No, a plane movie? Or too good to watch on a plane? It's like a dialogue. Oh, that's a good plane movie, yeah. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. I want to talk about Thursday nights because Thursday night football got even better with FanDuel. Well, how did that happen? With early win, a fast start could be all you need to win big. For Falcons versus Packers, just bet the money line.

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24:54Bill Simmons:Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Look, it's right here. It's football season. You can now get BOGO deals every single week on game day favorites, like wings, pizza, fries, snacks. I like all those things. My Sunday routine, because I know I have the podcast at night, I go a little healthier on the Sundays, you know, it's not something I would normally do, but when I know I have this, I want my brain to be working right. Usually you should try to find the best possible salad place. Maybe a deli that has some, some soup and like a wrap.

25:37Bill Simmons:Yeah, I know I'm old. I can't, I can't do it like I used to, but that's what works for me. Whatever works for you. Do it on Uber Eats. Basically whatever game day calls for, you can get almost, almost anything on Uber Eats with deals every week. Uber Eats, official on-demand food delivery partner of the NFL, and you can order now. For alcohol, you must be of legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. All right, want to do Eastern Conference quick? Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're into this. So Nick's at the top. We should mention, you, me and House, are going to do over-unders.

26:15Bill Simmons:Yes. House is coming out to LA. You can't come, but you're going to be in the TV. We're going to make it work. We're going to make it work. I appreciate your flexibility. These aren't futures. Like, we're saving all the future talk. I had two questions for you. Okay. The first one is, it feels like we have 11 playoff teams in the East, but there's only eight playoff spots. And I'm giving Knicks, 76ers, Celtics, Raptors, Pistons. This is in order of the odds to win the conference. Cavs, Miami, Orlando, and then Indiana, Atlanta, Charlotte. Okay. Three of those teams will not make the playoffs. Okay.

26:49Bill Simmons:So if you had to lean. Who's not making it? If you had to lean right now. And neither of us are nearly done with our prep. And this season doesn't start for a month. So this is more like a leans. Okay. Where would you lean for your three that you don't think are making it? I'm X-ing Charlotte out right away. And the odds suggest that we should. They're way below. There's a big gap between them and then Atlanta and Indiana above them. I was surprised by the over-under for them. but maybe I shouldn't have been. I think it's 39. For sure. You thought it would be higher? I mean, that team was, last year was, would they finish the last two-thirds of the season?

27:29Bill Simmons:They were like 37-19 or something crazy. Top five, both ends of the floor somehow. Pretty dramatic drop-off, but I guess it would be LaMelo-based. And, you know, LaMelo, they got a lot of youth. They got a lot of depth. I think they're going to be a good team. Like, don't get me wrong. I just put them number one. We ranked of the seven playoff, seven teams who have not won a playoff series in the 2020s. I ranked them number one as like the team I most like to be the GM of. But I don't, I think in this field, I'm a little lower on Atlanta, I think, than the over-unders and the lines are. I just think they have a lot of questions to answer about, was their defense that was a top five defense for the last like 40 games of the season, was that a real thing?

28:11Or was that a product of like a little bit of luck and a lot of scheduling? Is that real? and if it wasn't real, do they have to play a bunch of their shaky to non-shooters more together because they're their best defensive players? What does that do to their offense? They have like very little size. I'm a little worried about Atlanta so I'll take Atlanta,

28:29Bill Simmons:Charlotte. They took the lottery pick who we have no idea if he's going to help them out at all this year. Which is fine. They're playing the long game. Atlanta's sitting there like just watching. I don't think they care if they're good this year. I completely agree. They're playing the long game. They're like, we had a ton of assets. Well, maybe some of these other teams will make panic trades to try to get into the playoffs. They never got involved in Giannis, right? And we'll be the last man standing whenever the next big thing that actually fits us comes through. They had some improbable stuff happen last year, like Alexander Walker just turning into a 20-point scorer.

28:59Bill Simmons:I don't know if that was real or not, but we'll find out once and for all. I mean, I love Nikhil. He was making like crazy threes. No, he was like making A-list scoring shots. Like off the dribble, corner threes with hands in his faces. Like hands in his face. It probably was real. I just kind of want to say it again. He's real. I think he's... Let's say it a second time. So we have the same first two. I had the most questions about those two, and so does FanDuel, and so does the betting public because they are not in the top nine. So who's your third then? Go ahead. Just say it. I know who you're worried about.

29:34It's hard. I'm going to say...

29:38Bill Simmons:Oh, boy. Oh, boy. So is it fair to say it's down between Miami, Orlando, and Indiana? I would put more teams in the list. You'd put more? Would you put Detroit in there? I think someone, no, I think Detroit, well, we got to see what happens with Durin. Like the fact that they did Asar Thompson before Durin and on a timetable like where, like, I don't know if Durin was even close last year when he was in Asar's boat of like going into your fourth year versus now he's done with his fourth year. That's an interesting one. I still expect that deal to get there. I think it was interesting that Thompson's, one got 50 million more than the other.

30:14Bill Simmons:Well, Amen has been better. I mean, Amen averaged 18 points a game last year. But I wonder what that's like with the brothers. Obviously, they're twin brothers. They're on each other. You know, I would hope that it would be like, we just got almost$400 million guaranteed to us. Like, we're good. Should we buy a house together? Well, you only have one kid. I have two. I was trying to figure out how I'd manage the egos of that with those were my two kids. And it's like, Amen got 205. Osar got 155. Maybe they can do like, didn't the Morris twins just have one big, they just had like one bank account.

30:48Or like one, they considered it like we collectively made whatever amount of money.

30:52Bill Simmons:You guys made$360 million. Guaranteed. Share it. Yeah. You guys are good. But this is what, anyway, I will say, I do think one of these teams toward the top seven is going to underperform because of injuries or randomness. The safe pick is Orlando. I will say Orlando for now. I just have enough questions about their offense. And just the sort of – it makes me nervous when teams are going into a season knowing, like, if this doesn't work, someone is getting traded. Like, just the financial reality is someone's getting traded. And so I'm a little nervous about that. But I also think Orlando – New coach.

31:31I think he's a good coach. I think Sean Swain is a good coach. I also think Orlando – I've said this before. It's like being slept on as a top six candidate. So I guess I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth. I don't know, but if you're forcing me to pick, I pick, I'm picking Orlando. I think Detroit has too much like built in infrastructure to fall that far.

31:48Bill Simmons:I don't understand the Dern thing at all. It like, it feels like a real stalemate on what each side thinks the person is worth. But I think if you ask the general consensus of people who are smart, who follow the league, like us, I would say it's a huge mistake to pay any center$40 million and up a year, unless it's Jokic or somebody like on that level. So what would you do? I, I don't know the Sacramento thing. Sacramento loves me. I love that's, that's become one of my favorite, you know, they, they, they're winking at me again. These reports, it's like, why do I have to take what these agents are telling me hook, line and sinker?

32:32like just for the scoop, like just to say he's got max offers already out there. Like, okay, maybe, maybe he does. I don't know. Like fine. Who cares?

32:41Bill Simmons:this is like the classic Daryl Morey move of where in this case, he did have the max or offer with Harden where the teams, it's like, Oh, you know, Harden's agent. It's like, yeah. Okay. So he's stuck at four for 50. And it's like, fuse with us. That's five for 80. No question. We'd max, we'd max them out. And now you plant that in the agents there and it's like, I mean, Houston would pay us that. And now you're so I feel like teams are teams are seeding that. Let's game it out. Like, let's let's go back like two months to to pretend like there's a little or a month and a half to pretend that there's a little more like flexibility among the other 29 teams who now have their rosters mostly filled, etc.

33:24You could pay Jalen during$40 million a year, which it seems like is going to happen. Because even the reports of them being apart are like, they're now just like 10 million apart over five years.

33:34Bill Simmons:They're at 190 and he's at 40 a year. So yeah, you're basically there. Don't figure that out. B, dare him to take the qualifying offer. I think the deadline for that is October 1st where he has to take it or not. You know why I'm rooting against that? Why? Because I want Cooper Flagg to be the first person ever to do that. Okay. You're really, you're open about this. Because he's from New England, that's it, and he's a Celtics fan? You're just that soft, just soft-hearted? He's from New England? Yeah. That's how you're going to phrase it? From Maine. First of all, his family is the first family of Maine.

34:09Bill Simmons:Like, screw the bushes and Kennebunkport. It's the flags now. Okay, but I didn't know you were this passionate about Maine. These were like 86 Celtic fans on my level, playing on the way to practice DVDs of the 86 Celtic games. This is like the Celtics family. You just got legitimately upset at me, I think. I just like, this is, this would be like if my son was Cooper Flagg. He'd be like, yeah, we'll see what happens with that Dallas qualifying offer. The moment I could get him to the Celtics. If your son were Cooper Flagg, you'd already be investigated by Wachtell. Yeah, I'd be Uncle Dennis. You'd be out.

34:46Like the deal, there'd be a paper trail of like you emailing just unsolicited emails to Brad Stevens being like, just telling you, Brad, like, I know you're not going to reply to this email, but Pablo's texting me.

34:58Bill Simmons:Hey, it's Pablo Torre. Can we talk? We'll come for the minimum. Listen, man, it's don't count us out. So would you sign and trade during? Would that be your move? I would. I would. I think when you're paying your center in this, whatever the salary cap system is, over$40 million a year on top of Thompson and Cade, you're not winning the title with that. So Thompson taking— Those are your moves. That's your team. So Thompson taking a deal, I don't have—you sprung this on me, so I don't have my laptop, but it's a percentage of the salary cap where it's, like, viable for the three of them to get paid if they get Durant at, like, 40 or 38 or 37.

35:39Yeah, no, it all makes sense financially.

35:41Bill Simmons:But— Flexibility. But what's your team at that point? So, okay, so here's the counter. And I get what you're saying. And I think it's actually maybe the smartest course to take. I don't know. But you do need a center. Like, you need some center long-term to pair with Cade. And he pairs with him about as well as you're going to get. But the playoffs were not good. Not for$42 million a year. He's either 22 or barely 23. He's almost 23. um and he's gotten better and kate loves him like they're very close he's gotten better he's worked on stuff he's improved every year so i just think like again it might be the right move right because you trade him flashback two months ago you trade him you get let's just make it up a decent player three first round picks and a swap something like that then you have to then parlay it's like the celtics with the jalen brown paul george trades like it's the next move that is going to define whether the controversial move is the right move or not.

36:42And so you have to actually make the next move. And it's, I think, harder. I think a lot of GMs would be risk averse and say, like, I don't know if I can make that next move and get me something that fits at least as well as this, which, yeah, the playoffs are ugly. We won 60 games last year.

36:58Bill Simmons:I don't know if anyone's winning a title paying a non-impact center. He's an impact center, but you know what I mean? Like a superstar. In the playoffs, he wasn't. I mean, let's be honest. He wasn't. Um, the other thing is shangun is like 30 a year. Yeah. Uh, something like that. It's a little more than that. I think it is about that. Yeah. 30 low thirties. I just think that's the price for the non-yokage centers for me. Would you, who would you rather have for the next five years? Shangun or Duren? If I were them and I could flip Duren for shangun, I would think about it because I'd, I'd just rather, I feel like they're at the same level and I'm just saving money.

37:36Bill Simmons:I If I ran a team, I would be so obsessed with this cap and how to do this correctly. Because one mistake, you're set back for three years. Because Sengun is like, they're not really similar players, but just in terms of like Not at all. the percentage of the cap that has now been devoted to them by young up-and-coming teams, although Houston is like half young, half not, is somewhat similar. And they both have these sort of like, Sengun is not really a three-point shooter, although he's dabbled. Duran is not at all. Sengun's a rough defender. Shingun is not a rim protector. Duren, that's the wild card is Duren's defense.

38:10Can he become a top five defensive center, top six defensive center in the NBA? Shingun will never be.

38:16Bill Simmons:Aren't there complicated advanced stats on that with Duren? Yeah, his numbers are all over the place. Like some of his rim protection numbers turn well, some don't. I think he's just okay right now in totality. But the body type and just the athleticism is so enticing in a way that Shingun will never have. But Shingun also, like, as a passer, as a post-up threat, is on a completely different level. And it's also, I mean, Shingun didn't play with a point guard last year. I'm pretty sure point guards matter still. It's one of my working theories in 2026. It's one of your great theories. But this is what we were talking about the East and who's falling out, right?

38:53Bill Simmons:Well, wait a second. One last thing on Shingun.

39:00Bill Simmons:Trying to think of him and Cade together. see one thing with durin i thought i really felt like he gave them a lot of their fuck you last year in a good way thought he you know he really just a badass game to game really really competitive and i do think that was a big part of why they won 60 games he's super physical i just don't understand what happened to him in the playoffs and i almost wish he could like even if he gave a press conference and he's like i put so much pressure on myself with this new contract coming that I cratered in the playoffs. And that was what happened. I'd be like, okay, it's an acceptable explanation.

39:33He's so young that I'm willing to just be like the pressure of the moment, team scheming for him a little bit more. Like in that first round series against Orlando, Orlando's just entire game plan was we're taking him out of the series. We're taking the Cade Duren pick and roll out of the series. We're switching everything. We don't care who that leaves on Cade if it's an unfavorable matchup. We're just not letting him roll to the basket unimpeded. And I think that just fucked with him.

39:57Bill Simmons:Who was the team that was kind of undercutting him on the alley-oops? Probably Orlando. I mean, because they were going under screens on Cade and trying to switch underneath Durant to prevent him from rolling to the rim. They were basically trying to make him— Yeah, it was Orlando. They're trying to make him just think about it as he was going up in the air. And it did seem like it fucked with them a little bit. And they still made it to Game 7 of the second round against the Nones. The route is they're going to pay him. He'll be between 195 and 200. They'll probably settle in the middle. I've been like 98 % certain that like every podcast to do, I'm like, look, he's going to sign with the Pistons.

40:32The closer this gets, the more I'm like, maybe something funky is actually going to happen. I don't know. I still expect him to pay him. I think you're right.

40:37Bill Simmons:If they could get Sabonis and like a future Kings pick. No, I'm just trying to think of, but then that just sets you back for where you are now. And then Cade's like, I love playing with that guy. Why'd you trade him? Sabonis is good. Sabonis is good. I just don't, I don't think. As you know, I would have traded for him already. Sabonis? Yeah. Not for Detroit, but just Sabonis has been out there in the front of the store with the 50 % off sign for seven months. And it's like Sabonis rebounds. You can run offense through him. He's played in big games. He has some deficiencies and he's a little overpaid, but there's only, I think, two years left on the deal.

41:14Yeah.

41:15Bill Simmons:Like, I thought the Clippers should have gotten him. Clippers, it was going to be interesting to see once this all settles down. and particularly like once the season starts and teams start going different directions than they anticipated. Who's worse than who's better? And they have other expirings. And they've got the expirings. They're like, fuck it, we'll take Anthony Davis. We'll take whoever. Like, we'll take Sabonis. We'll take whatever, whatever. We'll extend them because what else are we going to do? You didn't report this. No. Anthony Davis and the Wizards have delayed their extension talks.

41:48Bill Simmons:That was reported a couple days ago. Was it really? I missed that. Yeah. I read that on the ticker. Can you delay the things that are already delayed? Is there like a delay on top of a delay? What we found out is something can be delayed that had no chance of happening was my interpretation of that. It's like when your flight is delayed two hours. But I'm going to say I'm not above going up to the counter if I'm at the gate and being like, just level with me. Just be nice guy. Is this like a fake two hours? Yeah. Or is this like a... Like, should I go get a beer and a burger? Like, what are we talking?

42:19Should I prepare to get a car ride home? Like, what's happening here? What's really happening?

42:23Bill Simmons:Did we ever figure out why Dallas traded Anthony Davis? Why'd they trade him? It seems like he immediately had more value than for what they traded him for from the moment they traded him. Well, they got two crappy picks, right? They got two crappy picks. They got nothing. They got fucking beyond the poo-poo platter. It was like yesterday's poo-poo platter that was in the freezer. I think they did get a couple assets, like some tradable goodies, whatever. And they got off a guy who doesn't play and wants$55 million to whatever million dollars a year. Yeah, but they didn't have to pay. It's not like they were forced to pay him that.

42:58Bill Simmons:Look, I agree. I would have kept him for the summer and waited for somebody like Golden State to be like, shit, we might be able to get LeBron if we also get Davis. It's a good point. It's a good point. I think it was a we've just got to turn the page altogether. Last couple of years, they're almost making me wonder if Dallas doesn't know what they're doing. They have a new regime now. So, all right. So you have Orlando as your third playoff team. Third missed, missed the playoffs. If I, if I had to pick, but I'm not, I don't feel confident about that. I feel confident in Charlotte and I feel pretty confident in Atlanta.

43:27I don't feel confident in Orlando. That's the line for me.

43:30Bill Simmons:I think I would take Miami as the third team. I don't really love the stuff they did this summer. And right as I was like, I don't really love what you did this summer other than getting Giannis. Then they did the Peli Larson extension. And I was like, man, you did the Jovic one last year. That was awful. I don't know who they thought they were bidding against for that contract. That was, I still haven't seen him play three games in a row that I liked. Um, but then the Larson who I liked Larson last year. I just don't know in this market where things have gone, who's getting these contracts. These are contracts we were handing out 10 years ago.

44:10Bill Simmons:Why are you paying people 15, 16, 17 million with this new market where every summer now there's going to be guys available like Anthony Simons for six? Why are you paying 16 and why are you locking yourself in a, you're not winning the title? I just don't get shit like that. Is this like a reverse, reverse jinx where you're so scared of Miami and the zombie heat that you're trying to bury them early? Not scared of Miami at all. Okay. I'm really not. I don't, I don't, nobody's been able to explain to me how Bam Adebayo and Giannis are going to successfully play offense together. Still waiting to see somebody break that down.

44:45On Pelo Larson, I think he was going to start before they got Klay.

44:51Bill Simmons:Yeah. They love him in a way that I don't think they ever have loved Jovic. Like, they really believe in him. And yet, I was still surprised at the deal. Like when that, I just thought if they could get him for 11, 12 million a year, maybe, but like at basically the mid-level, I was a little surprised. I think it would have been a good game show for like, we just did a zoom and you called me and like Pelley Larson extensions in any guesses. And I would have been like three for 25 higher three for 29 higher. We just wouldn't be going for like an hour. It'd be like three for 50 higher. Like, what?

45:32Four for 60. Yeah, I mean, look, the Heat, Giannis and Bam, they do overlap a lot. It's the number one question on their team. How is this going to work? The number two question is they have acquired a lot of shooting, but none of it is pull-up shooting, really. I think they're going to struggle in that sense. I just trust— Who's playing defense on this team? Giannis, Bam, Davion Mitchell, Andrew Wiggins. Who's guarding Jason Tatum?

45:55Bill Simmons:Andrew Wiggins. Andrew Wiggins, okay. And a little bit of Bam, I think, because Bam and Giannis allow you to do so much defensively. They'll play some zone. Andrew Wiggins did guard Jason Tatum really all four years ago. I mean. So Giannis Bam, Andrew Wiggins, Davion Mitchell, and Pelley Larson. That's my crunch time five with maybe Klay Thompson in there. Could be. Could be Klay. They have a lot of guys. That's welcome to the play-in. Well, look, they generally thrive in the play-in. So if you're asking me, like, if you're just asking me who's making the playoffs, they can get in through the play-in too.

46:25Bill Simmons:Now, if you told me I was getting 75 Giannis games, you have my attention. 65? What would you put? Like, you refuse to bet your life. 60. So if I gave you over under 59 and a half, you'd go over? I would go over.

46:47Bill Simmons:So it's going to be around 60. Pina and I had the over-under, I don't know if you saw this, of how many, they clipped it on Instagram, of how many... the over-under at how many games Phillies projected starting five plays in the regular season. Oh, 25? And I think I said the over-under at 22 and a half. Yeah. You would go over?

47:12Bill Simmons:So, Embiid's 39 games. It's right there. Like, it might be under. Yeah, it's under. It is. The Philly thing will be fun because there's, like, four different Philly teams all happening at the same time. We'll have your, like, we don't have Embiid tonight, team. that we don't have LeBron tonight, team. We don't have Embiid or LeBron. We might not have Jalen Brown tonight. It'll just, every night, they'll keep us on our toes. I'm going to enjoy it. I think Boston, Philly, and maybe Cleveland have a little bit more, this could go wrong volatility to them than is being talked about. I think they're all...

47:48Boston, it's already been factored in. The most likely outcome is that they're all about good and meet expectations. I just feel, I mean, the downside for Philly is obvious, right? Just like injuries, chemistry, whatever. I just, I'm fascinated by the Cavs and like Peyton Watson, how that's going to work offensively. Do they have enough depth? Is this, is this Harden, Mitchell, Allen, Mobley? Is that really a big four that's taking you where you want to be? And yeah, I know they read the conference finals. It was a pretty unconvincing run to the conference finals and they got shellacked once they got there.

48:21Listen, it's a strange rule. It's really hard to make the final four.

48:25Bill Simmons:like we downed them on it because it was so bad when they got there, but it's still, it's a 30-team league. Okay. Wow. I didn't expect this. No, I'm just like, it's like your 2019 Blazers that you love. I did like that team. But like you make the Final Four, that's not nothing. No, it's not. You win two playoff series. It's not nothing. And they should have won Game 1 and they completely fell apart and then the Atkinson quote happened and all of a sudden their season was over. I did feel bad making fun of the Atkinson quote again on Twitter last week when I said, at that point, the Mets had a better run differential than every team in the American League West.

48:59So analytically, they were a playoff team. I felt a little bit bad. It is that bad of a quote, though.

49:04Bill Simmons:It's going to outlive him. It's going to be in our lives for the next 50 years, and I'll probably be dead when it's still going. Most shocking. So you reminded me of Cleveland game one. Nick's comeback against Cleveland in game one. But that wasn't shocking because none of us stopped watching. I'm going to make you rank the shock or surprise factor of the three landmark Knicks fourth quarter comebacks. Well, I was going to say the Neesmith game was more shocking than all of them. So I argue with my Knicks fans. Because that game was legitimately over. They all are obsessed with the Ananobi game.

49:38It was one of the greatest games I've ever been at. Incredible comeback. I just don't— You never gave up on it. It's the most shocking. The Halliburton-Neesmith game is still more shocking to me than the Ananobi game.

49:51Bill Simmons:I'll put aside what that game's called. I think it's probably the Neesmith game. Because Halberns had a bunch of different games, right? Neesmith. Halberns, that was the greatest run of clutch shot making maybe in the history of the NBA in one playoff run. I'm so excited to have him back. I am too. And I like that it's, you know, the Tatum thing was weird last year where he came back and they put all these big minutes on him. And I think they made a huge mistake and said that at the time. Halberns got a good 18 months here. We haven't talked about them, but they're down in this group with Orlando.

50:20Bill Simmons:Yeah, they have the 10th best odds. To me, they're a playoff team. I'd be shocked if, I think Zubats is such a game changer for them. And he wasn't as good last year as he was two years ago, but they've never had anybody like that. So when I talk to people around the league about like, all right, so what is the, why are the numbers low in Indiana? Like, give me the Indiana can't get it back argument. It's Halliburton. It's Halliburton. We don't know what he's going to look like. It'll take Zubats and Siakam some time to figure out to fit together without a spacing five. See, I don't agree with that because I feel like Siakam plays.

50:56Bill Simmons:There's some Kawhi similarities who Zubat's played with, right? He's played with six, eight scoring forwards who have the ball at the top. You know, I don't know. I feel like he's going to. He's a smart player. And so is Pascal. And the one I hear more than any of that is people are really worried about their depth. Like TJ McConnell lost a little bit of a step or half step last year. and then it's like Oubre Toppin Jay Huff maybe Jairus Walker maybe Ben Shepard why maybe Jairus Walker well just like who's in the rotation I like Jairus Walker if you gotta go nine deep who's I like Ben Shepard I like all those guys well the Kelly Oubre signing was a shot across the bow at Ben Shepard and Jairus Walker like hey if you can't play like this guy at least comes in and does what Kelly Oubre does was really good in the Celtics series like guarded both wings I'm higher on their depth than most than the skeptics are like I think Oubre is solid I think Oubre Toppin fits them like a glove they'll play him at the five some if the huff thing doesn't work out mcconnell not like mcconnell was so essential to their finals run yeah it's just like a come off the bench and fuck the game up guy that him losing a little bit of juice last year is worrisome or he's listening to this podcast right now in the weight room going i'll show these fucking guys the best he's never ever had um toronto seems to have for them that the fourth best odds was that was the other thing that jumped out to me for the East.

52:17Bill Simmons:They're plus 850. And I just think it's putting a lot of stock in Kawhi, who's at 35 and who, you know, has pretty checkered 2020s from a playoff standpoint, from a durability standpoint, availability standpoint. But this is, so, yeah, you're talking about win the East. Yeah, I'm just like that. This is what I can't get. Just looking at all of them, that one jumped out at me too. Like, they're the fourth best odds. I'm very high on the Raptors as a regular season team. I just don't know why anyone would expect Kawhi to be able to get through. You're talking three playoff series after a functional regular season.

52:55When again, I will repeat it until the proverbial cows come home. He has not finished a second round playoff series since 2020. It's not completed one. The Clippers competed in several of them. He was either injured for them or got injured in them, got injured in the first round.

53:09Bill Simmons:He won two playoff series in seven years. Three. Well, he won. You're right. He won too. Yeah. He wasn't there for the end of the Utah series. So I just like, I would love the idea of the Raptors making the finals. I just don't think Kawhi will play three playoff runs without getting injured. Or I would bet against it. Celtics tidbit. Yeah. Hugo and Shireman. Phenomenal shape.

53:38Bill Simmons:Entire organization has been stunned by the work they put in over the summer. I like. from my mouth to God's ears. So now I'm picturing like Celtics HQ at the practice facility where all the offices are. You know who doesn't have baby fat anymore? Hugo. This is what I'm picturing them just walking around like Mike Zarin runs into Brad Stevens like, Brad, see Hugo today with his shirt off? Looks great. Looking great. This is all they're talking about. No, I think this happened. But did you see Baylor? Like he's benching a little bit more. Like I was watching him in the weight room. He was grunting.

54:07Like just forget Derek White and Jason Tatum and Mitchell Robinson. and like just we're obsessed with our sixth and seventh or seventh and eighth guys.

54:17Bill Simmons:Also, Paul George, Mike Conley, vets. Good locker room, guys. Mitchell Robinson, vet. Some adults. Nice mix. Look, I think they're going to win a lot of regular season games. It is funny now. More and more stuff's coming out or why they did that trade. At least we know why they did the trade. What more came out? It's just they thought they ran their course with those two guys. And that was that. And they hit the wall and they want to do this now instead of a year from now. And that it wasn't sustainable. I mean, you will never forget the trade. You were getting a colonoscopy. Well, I found out from my wife.

55:04Delightful experience. People haven't got their colonoscopies. I loved every minute of it. I walked out and the doctor was like, you need to come back in seven to 10 years or whatever it is. Five to seven years. I was like, I'll come back in three. Tell me when. If you think it's safer, I'll come back in three. You know, great rest. I got a cookie and some juice afterwards. I didn't even find the prep that bad. I kind of enjoyed the prep as like a mental challenge. I like the prep and I would do it again. And he was like, settle down. You don't need to come back in three years. But if you change your mind, you know where to reach me.

55:40Bill Simmons:So out of the two of us, whose fingers are more likely to work this year? I mean, I think it's your fingers are. I'm like a plus 500. You're like minus 350. Yeah, you need to. It's been so long. You're like one of those guys who's been in a frozen sleep in space for 12 years. You wake up out of the pod and you're like, what's happening? I'm like, what was the movie I watched? Were they? Oh, the aliens. We did. We did. We watched those aliens. She woke up and it's 55 years later. That would be me writing. Might be. So what happens? I turn the document on and then. Might be the most scared I've ever been watching a movie.

56:19Sleepover, middle school, aliens. I was like. Last hour. I was legitimately terrified. I think the first two aliens, each of them are masterpiece movies. And I like being scared. I like the sensation of being scared. That was one where I went over to the other side of like, I like being scared. I like being scared. I like being scared. I'm ready for this movie to be over because I'm too scared. you know

56:41Bill Simmons:at the UCLA game on Saturday I met the future of UCLA basketball who is the best 17 year old in the world this kid they got the Serbian yeah oh the guy who's making like 6 million dollars or something 2 year NIL deal I don't know if you've watched this I'm just I'm gonna be the first person to tell you this this is gonna be your favorite player 5 years from now right 6 foot 9 just going going going but passer but like little Luca but like honestly like a little Magic Johnson-y with the way he goes but it's like and I asked him I was because I asked if he had played with Jokic before and he said no I haven't gotten a chance to play with him yet but I was like oh you met him I met him met him like I talked to him and I and he was like he hadn't played with him yet but he really wants to he's been in America for like five years five weeks but I was like I watch your YouTube clips it's clear Jokic has tripled down to your generation in Serbia.

57:39Bill Simmons:It's like, oh, yeah. So we might have all of these, the second generation Jokic from Serbia, all of these kids who are going to be playing like the 86 Celtics. Well, someone has to shoot at some point. Right. But yeah, this will be your favorite player. You didn't answer your own question. For what? Like what three teams are you not, are out of the playoffs? Well, I have two of them. I have Charlotte and Atlanta. You answered Miami. Wow. I would lean more toward Miami. It's Miami-Orlando. It's one of the Florida teams. And I would lean toward Miami because I don't trust Giannis to play 70 games.

58:10Bill Simmons:And that team was a 500 team last year who lost, you know, some key people in what turned out to be a really terrible trade for Milwaukee. I saw a video of Jame Haquez couldn't bring his dog into a restaurant in Milwaukee. You're really different, different times. He was, he was living his life in Miami. That was Wisconsin. Speaking of dogs, here's something that happened to me in Los Angeles at my hotel. okay never seen this before guys staying at the hotel i was in the gym went to gym workout this morning crowded gym in la it was like there's eight people in a hotel gym that's pretty crowded yeah guy brings his dog never seen that before dogs just and it's like a big dog it was not you know i love dogs but la is out of control with dogs so he's he's sitting in the gym walking around the dog's just meandering around the gym while the guy's on the treadmill and so i i go to the elliptical machine because this is my old man workout day.

59:02I'm going to do the elliptical. The dog is sleeping underneath one of the pedals of the elliptical machine so that if I press down, I'm going to like smush the dog. And I'm like, what's what? I'm not sure what my social, like what I'm supposed to do here. Do I get the guy and be like, yeah, you get the guy.

59:20Bill Simmons:So it's a bad job by the guy. So what I did was I just got on the machine, hoping the dog would wake up and move. And he did. He just woke up. But I'd never, I've never had to I'm almost 50 years old and it was a social situation that I had never been in before. People bring their dogs into grocery stores here. I mean, you see that in New York sometimes. I love dogs. I'm against that. Yeah. Dogs shouldn't be where food and drinks are. Dog in the gym was a new one for me. Dog in the gym's interesting. Yeah. Why did we talk? So Miami? Yeah. I just trust I guess I just trust Giannis plus Bam plus Spoh plus they're pretty deep plus 90 euro pat rally yeah i but like so that all right so we have enough faith in the knicks obviously celtics pretty proven track record of missoula ball winning a lot of games philly detroit i'm just i'm gonna skip philly for a second detroit me personally like they won enough games last year by being tough and nasty and it would be one of the most dramatic fall-offs not an injury in the history of the league i think they're over under is like 48 and a half for something.

1:00:25We're not going to spoil it. But like, I just think by giving a shit about every game to the degree that they do, it's hard for me to see them falling out of the top six. Cleveland has enough raw talent that despite what concerns I might have fit-wise, I feel like that's enough of a regular season floor. Toronto, we talked about. Cleveland not winning

1:00:43Bill Simmons:45 games would be shocking. Now, the question is if this was, what was that year when Phoenix didn't make it when they were like 48 and 34? Yeah, the year they tried to tank and won 48 games. It's like 14 or 15 with Dragic and Isaiah. All the point guards together. 2014. Philly, I just, I can't wait to see it. Because what if Embiid plays 30 games and LeBron plays 45 games and suffers a hamstring injury and is old? Like, there's some downside potential with Philly. Like, now Jalen is a good, Jalen and Maxie is a pretty stable floor. I guess that's what the numbers are betting on. And second year VJ.

1:01:20Bill Simmons:Yeah. Yeah, they're in the Pat Steelers game yesterday. TJ Watt was talking about Rodgers. And he was saying how Rodgers wasn't 100 % last year because he hurt his back doing squats. And he was like, yeah, the whole year his back just wasn't right. But, you know, he's old. And I was thinking, like, LeBron's going to be, what, 41 this year? He's already 41. Yeah, so he'll be 42. Yeah, New Year's Eve. Isn't his birthday New Year's Eve? Yeah, 42. That's the problem you get old is you have little injuries like that. And even if you're Superman like he is, you know, they don't, you just, it's like, oh, my hamstring hurts.

1:01:57Bill Simmons:And then it just hurts for like a month and a half. So we'll see. I, Embiid, to me, this is the, I mean, at all the make or breaks, this is it. Like, if you can't get a full season out of him this year, then it's never going to happen again. But you guys redefine full season, though. Full season's got to be like. I'm saying like, if you can't play, he's played, I looked it up. He's played over 2 ,000 minutes twice. I mean, I just expect I would be wildly happy as a basketball fan if he played 55 regular season games. Why not just play him once a week? Fine, whatever. I don't know. Whatever it takes.

1:02:35Bill Simmons:The problem is when he gets in a groove, he wants to keep playing and they can't kind of stop him from himself. And that's always been the issue with it. It should always be like come from a position of strength. just sit out wait till the Friday game that's how you're going to have to handle them I don't think they will and then LeBron I think is going to have a huge FU on his shoulder this year because there were certain the Lakers didn't want him since February anyone who thinks there's any other answer other than that you're fooling yourselves I thought he left the Lakers on his own volition anyone who believes that but it was also interesting that San Antonio .

1:03:16I don't know. I never got the San Antonio one. You have to sell me on that one. If I'm San Antonio, I'm like, we just made the finals already. I just...

1:03:26Bill Simmons:Would you rather have LeBron James or Tobias Harris for one year? So you're telling me you'd rather have Tobias Harris. It just, there's a lot that comes with LeBron. I got to really change the way my whole team plays if I get LeBron. Do you? Yeah. I mean, not all the time like it was. Did you watch their last four minutes of all their playoff games last year? I kind of felt like they needed somebody like LeBron. Oh, yeah. And he had some nice last four minutes against Houston, in particular when everyone else was injured or Reeves was just coming back. I don't know. I just, I really like that the most for everybody.

1:04:03Bill Simmons:I get why Wemby, I'm sure, wants to make his own way in his own career and probably wants no part of the circus that comes with LeBron. See, I would have ranked. Maybe LeBron wouldn't have wanted it either. I would have ranked them behind, among good teams, behind Minnesota and Denver as like the most fun, sensible LeBron. He's not living in Minnesota. Was he living in San Antonio? He just respects the franchise that much? Maybe he does. I mean, Rich Paul angled De 'Aaron Fox there. Well, the one thing we learned from, I can't believe we're talking about LeBron. The one thing we learned from this Philly thing is it was the decision he thought he could make to try to win the title.

1:04:39Bill Simmons:Yeah. I don't think there's any other reason he went there. It's not like, oh, I've always wanted to play for the Sixers. But that's something. Listen, he was going to Cleveland. I don't know what happened. I can't wait for the story. And it's something, something happened. Unlike, and to your point about Minnesota and Denver, he gets to live in New York City playing for the Sixers. So there's like, it's not even. Maybe he'll like Philly. And House has talked a lot about the golf quality in Philly, but he's not even going to live there. He's going to live. I mean, she's going to live everywhere, I'm sure.

1:05:07Yeah.

1:05:08Bill Simmons:This is all leading to House playing golf with LeBron somehow. I, who knows? Can't roll him out. Can't ever roll out house with golf. All right. You have a podcast. People are going to hear this on Tuesday. You'll be doing a podcast that is also going up on Tuesday. All Western conference with Rob Mahoney. And then you'll be back. We're going to do a over unders, both conferences. I think October 12th, 13th range is what we're looking at. I'm trying to do it a week before this season. I felt the season starting on the 20th this year. And I felt like, I forget when we did it last year, but. Too early.

1:05:40We did it too early. We did too early. A couple things happened.

1:05:43Bill Simmons:Yeah, I think this is going to be better for us. All right, Zach Lowe, good to see you. Always fun. Hey, Fando is making this your most rewarding season ever. And what does that mean? Well, boosts, promos, teasers, new rewards club, teaser recommendations from the Ringer 107 crew. We got a bunch of stuff and we're going to have some fun. We're going to compare different betting scenarios and pick which is more rewarding within each scenario. Here's what they laid out for me. two-team six-point teaser or hitting an underdog parlay. I mean, hitting the underdog parlay, especially like if you had the Raiders last week or the Saints, that's the best because you're taking a flyer on it, but it's also you put some brains and some thought into it.

1:06:28Bill Simmons:Winning a bet on a last play defensive TD or a Hail Mary. Hail Mary is obviously the winner. There's nothing more fun than winning on a Hail Mary other than maybe a last second half-court shot. win your favorite over under futures or correctly predict the exact order of the NFC South. Well, the NFC South is impossible to predict. Nobody's ever done it. So I would say winning your favorite over under futures because it's actually realistic. Using rewards club, profit boost tokens, or game intelligence. Trick question. FanDuel provides all of them. So you don't have to choose. You get all of those things.

1:07:02Bill Simmons:So every week, check the FanDuel app to see what's waiting for you and make it. I'm telling you, it's going to be your most rewarding season ever. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down ready to watch the game only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows your live games from your favorite teams all in one place right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero.

1:07:40Bill Simmons:Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24 seven and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. Anthony Jeselnik is here. It's been a while for us. It has, it's been a few years. Yeah. I'm always available for you when you want to podcast, but you're a busy guy going around. I appreciate that. Now you have a new thing that's coming to the ringer that you've been doing for a while. I do. I'm excited that we can finally announce it.

1:08:14Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's been negotiated for the last three and a half years. Yes, it took a while. I mean, I just started Justlin' Book Club in January, and I thought maybe I'll do it for a year and then see if I want to take it somewhere. And then you guys came knocking fast. That's hard. You guys knew we had to get in there early. and now September 30th. It'll be on The Ringer. Coming on. And weekly. Weekly. Yeah. That was, we really had to twist your arm a couple of times. I didn't know. I mean, I've been doing it in my living room trying to get people to read books and was prepared for failure. Trying to get guys to read books and my audience is 85 % man.

1:08:50I'm like, I'm prepared for failure. Like no one watches. And then it took off and just kept getting bigger.

1:08:56Bill Simmons:What was the first one you did? The first one I did was Jim Thompson's The Getaway. Right. And people loved it. People loved it because it has a crazy ending. Yeah. They liked hearing me talk about it. And when I was talking about it, I was like, oh, I enjoy this. I'm good at this. And then I interviewed an author. I got my friend of mine, Isaac Fitzgerald at Skylight Books to promote his book. And it was so easy and fun and funny that I thought, oh, I can do this every week. And then I committed. So not only am I going to be doing the book club, getting guys to read a book a month, we'll be talking about new releases getting in guests we've already got some we managed to find and get Greg Rosenthal for the first episode how'd you get him?

1:09:37you find him in? we had to go through a bunch of people but eventually his wife relented and let him come on the pod that's one of my favorite things

1:09:46Bill Simmons:that's like your lifelong friend yeah absolutely who's just this random other who for some reason has never worked for The Ringer even though we all know each other he'll be here one day one day we're waiting we have a seat ready for him He's the last employee left at NFL Network. Like the dead last guy. Everyone else is either at ESPN or gone. Right. But one day we'll get him here. Now that I'm here, I can bring him in. This is it. Our powers combined. You're the gateway drug to Greg Rosenthal. Exactly. Exactly. We've got a bunch of like celebrity guests, fun guests. I think it's just going to be a fun hang whether you've read the book or not.

1:10:17That's the thing that surprised me about the book club is people would be like, I haven't read this book yet. But listening to Anthony talk about it made me want to read it. So do you think people listen to it but haven't read the book yet? Mm-hmm. it's like when you would watch Siskel and Ebert back in the day, you haven't seen the movies yet. They're having, they're not even out yet, but by based on how they talk about it makes you want to see it. Even though I described the whole book, you know, I'm spoiling things, but I think that's okay. If the book is, is great.

1:10:42Bill Simmons:Yeah. Cause we had that with rewatchables where people will tell me they'll listen to the episode and then they'll decide if they want to watch the movie. If I hadn't, if I hadn't seen it, I'm like, we're like deep diving this movie. You're just listening to the episode, raw dogging it basically without knowing, the act of what's happening in the movie. Yeah, but some people do that. If they see people passionate, they just want to hang out and listen to people talk about things. Yeah. And with social media now, we're like podcasting everything. I think people just want to feel smart. You know, it used to be about like influencers and you want to talk, people wanted to hear you talk about money and talk about like the inside baseball stuff.

1:11:17And now they just want to feel smart. So they want to feel like they watched the movie. Or pretend they're smart. Pretend they're smart, sure. But I think people want to watch a book club. I think now is something that couldn't have happened a few years ago here at The Ringer. But now, you know, you've seen what happens with movies today, TV today. I think it's all about books now. I think books are the new frontier.

1:11:37Bill Simmons:Well, I noticed, what was that one? And this isn't one you would do in the book club, but that one that came out, the book like nine months ago, The Lady in the Hamptons Who Was Getting Divorced Out of Nowhere. The Stranger. And it became, like with my wife and her friends, it was all they talked about for three weeks was this book. And everybody had read it or had an opinion of it. and one person knew a friend of hers was friends of hers in high school. And I was just like, Jesus, books. We're still doing this. Yeah. It's happening. When something hits the zeitgeist now, now that I'm weekly, I would do The Stranger Now.

1:12:09And we came up with a bit, the ring of verses, whatever we'll end up calling it, where somebody on your staff. Yeah. And I didn't know the staff. Like, I've never seen a podcast in my life. You know, so I was coming in here fresh. You're on the road, you're busy. This is the most attractive staff I've ever been a part of. We're trying. We got in a Zoom with like 20 people and I was the ugly one. I could not believe it. But I said the staff, you know, put out a challenge. Challenge me. I'm reading fucking Dungeon Crawler Carl right now, which I never thought I would read. But I'm going to talk about with one of your staff members.

1:12:41I think Mallory, I want to say. Oh, my God. Maybe I'm wrong. That'll be the longest podcast you've ever done. We'll see. I can cut someone off if I need to.

1:12:50Bill Simmons:She's three hours ready to roll every time. Yeah, we love her. I've been working with her for 14 years. She was down to read that book. And I'm halfway through it now. It's something I would never read. But I just want to talk about what people are reading. You know, getting guys to read it all. But you're talking fiction. Mostly. Primarily. Primarily, yes. Unless something really hits. Like, I was thinking of you the other day. I was reading about Daryl Dawkins' autobiography. Oh. That is like the most fucking insane. Even I don't have that. I believe it's an autobiography. And it's insane. And I was like, oh, maybe that's how I get Bill on the show, is you read Daryl Dawkins' autobiography and we talk about it.

1:13:27Bill Simmons:So you would have to recommend it to me or vice versa? I think we just have to agree in advance, whereas other people, I'm like, challenge me. I forget one of the guy's names gave me a list of five books and says, if you want to read one of these, I'll come on and talk about that. Because your staff is great. I want to mix it up with the Ringer staff. Well, you have the 250-page limit, though. For my book club, the year one is 250 pages. I think this month's book we'll be doing, our first episode of The Ringer is The Glass Hotel. It's like 300, but it's a quick read. You know, there are some books, there's a 250 page book that takes you a month because it's so dense and the language is different that I'm trying to pick good writers.

1:14:05Bill Simmons:So you went through David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest. No, I would never. I read that book. That was like 810, something like that? And then there's like an index you have to go to to read the book, and which is impossible. But you know how if you're ever in a car and someone is like, hey, take your phone and put some music on and you're terrified that you're going to be judged by what you put on. Right. I feel that when I'm recommending books for the book club. That like this has to be something that I love and I think people are going to respond to. And what are the genres that feel like they suck you in the most?

1:14:38I mean, it's about the writing more than anything else because I've had books. I've had a crime thriller. I've had like a book about like a memoir of divorce. you know, like a fictional memoir, but it's just the writing is great and I fly through it. You know, that I keep talking about the sense of accomplishment you feel when you finish a book versus binging a TV show, you know, or finishing a video game. I mean, these are all great art forms, but you don't walk out of the odyssey feeling like you've accomplished something. But if we finish a book, you feel like, oh, I did something with my time that I'm kind of competing with doom scrolling more than TV and movies and sports.

1:15:14Bill Simmons:you know right like one of the things i thought was interesting about you is you said your favorite writer that you read was joan didion and i was like oh he's like he's really in this yeah i mean she's like a deep cut well one of i'm one of my favorites when i was growing up was brett easton ellis yeah his favorite was joan didion so like yeah once you get into it and reading 12 books a year is the goal you know for justin book club but i'm hoping that by reading 12 books it makes you want to read more and the more you read the more you enjoy reading it's like working out. You know, it's hard at first.

1:15:45Your muscles are sore. But once you get into it, you know, you get those endorphins going that you want to read different kinds of books. You don't love every book you watch. Like you don't love every movie you watch, but you enjoy seeing movies and you get this education as you go. You know, it's like a Tarantino-esque, like I see with the reference there. I see what they're talking about now because I have this education of film.

1:16:07Bill Simmons:Well, one of my ideas for you, because as we were trying to figure out how to do weekly like you have to have some easy ones some layups sure and i definitely wanted you to do at least one like 90s comedy autobiography or 80s or just something where but i think i didn't even know what it would be i think all of the when you'd said they wrote these back before the internet yeah but it was also a book where like the book tour would be talking about the crazy things that were in there yeah yeah but we didn't have the screenshot era because I think there's like a distinct before and after with the biographies and the autobiographies from like basically pre-2010 post.

1:16:47Bill Simmons:You can see it in the magazine features too. Yeah. People would say crazy shit. Oh, yeah. And it would be like, you might see it and you might tell like your wife or whoever like, whoa, did you see what this guy said in GQ? And then they would go away. But they would even do that on the, I mean, yeah, there's like the John Wayne Playboy interview. The Playboy interview was nuts. I was telling you how I've been reading all these Playboy interviews, and these directors are just torpedoing actors. They're torpedoing other directors. And you're like, oh, my God. Yeah. Anyone did this? Now we have Tom Cruise saying nothing for an hour.

1:17:18I know. I mean, I miss the days of Sean Connery admitting to beating every woman who's ever dated to a TV interview. Yeah. And being totally cool with it. Yeah. He's like, look, you know. Was great.

1:17:32Bill Simmons:You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Autobiographies aren't as much fun for me as the unauthorized biography after they die. Right. When you can just go to town. Who was the one who did that? Kitty Kelly? Kitty Kelly? I think that was her name. She would do like, somebody would die and she would have the unauthorized right after. Yeah. And it was always like, you're getting all your sources from like the valet. Yeah. And like somebody who was her maid for two years. And I wouldn't say it was the best collection of people. You want warts and all. I just want the warts to be quite honest.

1:18:04But now like everyone makes their own documentary. They produce their own. And it's like at the end, it's like, now I have an animal shelter. And you're like, I don't care about this. You know, you want to make yourself look good. There's always one thing they want to correct in the record that I hate those documentaries. I want to see something that's brutal. But even better now is the fictionalized version. Like there's this book, it came out a couple of weeks ago called Life of M by Rachel Cusk. And Rachel Cusk is like up there with Joan Didion for me as one of the greatest writers of all time.

1:18:34And she wrote this book. It's like about Natalie Portman. Like it is. She doesn't say Natalie Portman. I read about Natalie Portman. And that is like under 200 pages. And it is a character assassination.

1:18:46Bill Simmons:But didn't Natalie Portman know she was doing it or like participated a little bit in the beginning and then backed out? In the novel, it's like they become friends. They both live in Paris. And it's like, I would love to do your biography. And she's like, great. That would be great. And then sees the project at the end and is like, I hate this. And that's the end of the book. We don't know what's fiction and what's not. She never says, I'm actually friends with her. This is based on her, but it is her. And it's wonderful to read. I know critics haven't been as kind to it, but I loved it. I'm going to read it this weekend now.

1:19:19Bill Simmons:You got me excited. You will fly through it. Like that's the book. That's what I'm really looking for is that book that you just start and you can't believe how fast you tore through it. So are you a Kindle guy or are you a. So this is a sad story because I don't think I read. And so, I mean, my whole library is just all books, like books I actually read. And I think it's the biggest reason I've ever been successful is I just read. I was an only child. I read everything. And I have to read everything on the iPad now. The reality is I need to, I have bad eyesight. I need to get my eyes fixed. But as I've gotten older, the books, the print, unless I have like perfect light.

1:19:55Bill Simmons:So I read on the iPad and I don't, and I, what ends up happening is you end up reading faster or zooming through or like i don't think it's the same experience so the what really has to happen is i gotta get my eyes fixed i i love the kindle i feel like i'm a reading machine yeah you can highlight things and go back to them if you want totally and i'll buy the physical copy to have on the shelf i like physical i get a lot of advanced physical copies but so you do kindle i do i do apple books whatever that on the ipad i think the ipad's worse because you get the blue light the kindle's got that white light right it's warm and it doesn't hurt your eyes because So my eyes are going too.

1:20:30Bill Simmons:I changed the light on it, made it a little better. Okay. The Apple books though, they'll do like, they'll have sales. They'll have books that'll just be like$199,$299, but they'll be like real books. I'm like, all right, fine. And I saw my own book on there once for$299. No, I was, the book came out 17 years ago. Okay. That's better. I was like, I'm kind of excited it's on there. I hope this will make somebody buy it. See, I have real money. I'm a touring comedian. so I can afford full price books. I buy books two or three times. I get the full price books too. I'm just saying like books, like I don't want to spend$20 and then I don't know if I'm going to read it, but it's like$1.99 or I don't check it out.

1:21:08I have a lot of books I bought on the Kindle and that I never touch because I read about it. The copywriter does a lot of heavy lifting for me because there's so few books for guys now. Yeah. Everything is the woman on the fucking train or the woman who found out her husband's having an affair that when I see a book that's written for men, whether it's by a woman or not, I buy that book and then sometimes I just don't get to it something else excites me I get excited by new books because there's a hype there you know I compare it to watching Saturday Night Live as it airs as opposed to watching it a couple days later you lose something when you're not watching it live reading it the week of is fun for me

1:21:45Bill Simmons:I used to get I mean I buy so many books on Amazon I've had Amazon since like 1998 and one of the reasons I loved buying the books was I knew when they'd come I'd read them because I ended up buying it. Versus in a bookstore, you can talk yourself out of it. But when you're like buying them online, you'll be like, oh, I'll get that. I'll get that one too. But now I have it. All right, I got to read it. That was how I knew the book club was taking off. It was not just the video count, but Amazon was selling out. I would announce the book and Amazon was like - Your book influencer. It'll be like in four weeks, you'll get it.

1:22:15But I partnered with a place called bookshop.org. It's like the anti-Amazon. And they were like, we guarantee, we'll get them to reprint these books that you're picking. because I'm picking books that are three or four years old. Yeah. Like, we'll make sure we have hundreds of copies so that we don't sell out because Amazon was like, we can't keep up. Because the other one's eight books

1:22:33Bill Simmons:is the other one. That's, they have the older books. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's good, but there's like five or six of these sites. I think the Barnes & Noble one does good with, they have a bunch of, a bunch of inventory. They're cool. I don't go on the site, but I do enjoy going to a Barnes & Noble now. We have a great one in the Grove. It is great. It is great. It's like four floors. My first job in LA was working at a Borders Books on La Cienega. I worked there for like three months before they fired me with cause. I was a terrible employee, but I loved working in that bookstore. What were you doing?

1:23:05Bill Simmons:Insulting their customers? My job was to be the security guy. So I had to help customers, but it was also like stop people from stealing and everyone stole. They allowed homeless people to come in and read books. So it was mostly wrangling them. But my job was just so boring that like if you see someone stealing something, let them. Don't stop them. I'm like, I don't have anything to stop them with. Right. But I was just, I got so bored that it became clear. This guy doesn't want to be here anymore. And they got me out of there. We had a great bookstore in Coolidge Corner in Brookline, which is right next to Boston.

1:23:38Bill Simmons:Brookline Booksmith. Is it still there? Still there. So many of these ones are gone. Like there's a couple in LA that there was one on Sunset that actually just got hit by the water flood. Not Book Soup. Yeah. Book Soup got hit? It got hit. And I don't even, I'm not positive it's reopened yet, but there's not a ton of them in LA. No, there's a few and they're good ones. Skylight Books is great. Last Bookstore, both locations are really cool. But BookSoup was my jam. Yeah. But in the past, since the pandemic, the pandemic almost helped books. You would think it would shut bookstores down. Yeah.

1:24:12But this place, bookshop.org, I've partnered with, said that since they've started, because they give part of their proceeds to help local bookstores. Nice. More bookstores have opened than have closed every year since the pandemic. And that used to not be the case. They were getting shut down by Amazon. And Barnes & Noble is kind of putting more money into it. I like when you walk in and see what the employees have written on cards. Like what they think is good. Then that like gets me to - We don't have that anymore.

1:24:36Bill Simmons:It's really like, because video stores are gone. Yeah. So book recommendations. I don't even know what else would you find where it'd be like, Johnny really loves this William Goldman book. I tell you what you do is you subscribe to Justin Like Book Club on The Ringer. And I'm going to give you, I'm going to tell you exactly what's up. every week. If you want new books, if you want old books, if you're like, hey, I love this. What else is like this? That's the big thing with a book is you find something you love and you're like, what is the author of anything else or what is in the same vein that's been good for us?

1:25:06Bill Simmons:You can do some mailbag stuff potentially. I love mailbags. At the end of a book club, people will ask about the actual book and then there are questions like, how do you read on a Kindle? Do you like the percentage on the corner? How do you juggle multiple books or audio books. Okay. People get insecure about their reading because they don't know what's okay. Like people who forget the book they just read. Yeah. You know, I read 50 to 100 books a year. I can't remember most of them by the end of the year. That's okay. Just the actual art of reading or the act of reading, letting your letting words come into your head is the point.

1:25:39It's okay to forget everything. People who review books for the New York Times say they forget everything. And that's just natural. That doesn't mean you're not reading well.

1:25:48Bill Simmons:Well, your brain's like a nightclub you've got a you have a capacity you got to kick some stuff out so if a book stays with you that means it really it really hits you in the heart and the head because i had a lot of weird things with books like because i would read i read everything like through college and then i stopped reading fiction as much when i was really trying to get my sports column going because i was trying to like figure out my style and my brain's a little spongy so if i'm reading like a certain writer it'll like mess with the writing and so i stopped reading i basically stopped reading fiction like in the mid 90s and i really gravitated toward non-fiction stuff all sports stuff collections sports and i really love sports and tv movies and uh and some like real life stuff like i would go in phases like i like i had a watergate phase in 1992 and i read every watergate book that was possible to get or like jfk assassination stuff like that but for the the most part like any sports book anything about movies anything with essays i always liked like the different collections of essays but yeah um so i so i'm complete opposite of you i was always non-fiction and you were more of the fiction side i just getting sucked into a story and liking the character and it's like the empathy you get you walk a mile in someone's shoes yeah you know someone who's completely different from me you feel like you were them if you watch john wick you're sitting in the theater and you kind of feel like john wick read a book starring john wick like you are john wick and that that to me is more valuable than non-fiction i'm not trying to knock non-fiction uh but i think everybody whatever works for people as long as you're reading a lot of guys just think fiction is like not serious or it's a waste of time and i think it i think it could not be less of the case of it being a waste of time i think you're getting gaining empathy and you're getting information most of the things i've learned have been from reading novels but uh non-fiction i forget these facts you know i forget and a lot of it's in celsius you know which i can't handle so i uh i like i like fiction over non-fiction but i i think i'm sure we'll have some non-fiction in there i've got andy richter coming on oh so he wrote a book about the making of the movie elf and so we're gonna have him on and just see see what happens yeah i mean you've seen elf right yeah i like that i have not seen elf really i swear to god It's kind of in the Christmas rotation now.

1:28:05It is, but I'm not like, you're not going to believe this. I'm not the biggest Christmas guy. My birthday is three days before Christmas, so I've always been kind of mad at Jesus. And so I've avoided most Christmas movies.

1:28:17Bill Simmons:There was a story recently that Jesus was only 5 '1". That was a story that was going around this week. I mean, I definitely heard he sucked at basketball. 5 '1"? He was terrible. Seems short. And Christians seem really into finding out more facts about Jesus. They want to know what color he was. What was his height? Now we know he's apparently 5 '1". Where did you hear that? It was passed around on one of my text threads. Jesus was the short king of Nazareth. He was 5 '1", 110. But this is, you know, a gajillion years ago. 110, they weighed him? Apparently they had scales back then. Oh my God.

1:28:51Yeah. I mean, that must have been good news for the carpenter who made the crucifix. You know, like, don't worry. He's only 5 '1".

1:28:58Bill Simmons:This will go fast. I used to read a lot of collections and stuff. Like short story collections? Yeah, short story collections and also like magazine. But my favorite was, I had all short story faves, but my single favorite writer is Raymond Carver. Raymond Carver is amazing. A master. Yeah. Everything by him is fantastic. So when Shortcuts, the movie came out, that was like a collision of different worlds for me. I was psyched and then I was let down by it. I thought it didn't really capture him. You know what I love? Did you ever do this? when I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to see rated R movies for a while.

1:29:32When I was like a little kid, I was a big reader early on, but I could get the novelization. I love the novel. Like I read the novelization of Jaws, the revenge and in the novelization, it's amazing. The shark kills fucking everybody. And in the movie, he kills like three people and they bring one of them back to life in the director's cut because the Jamaicans got mad. But the novelizations of like Predator was awesome. And they would do, I don't think they still do them. tarantino did one after um once upon a time in rollywood he's got a new one coming out for about like a cliff booth that i can't wait to read but i love it's coming out in december yeah the movie is but then he's writing a novelization where i think just a continued story i don't know if he

1:30:12Bill Simmons:even wrote the script for no he wrote i think he wrote a fictionalized book about cliff booth yeah that i think he's timing toward when the movie comes out yeah yeah i'll definitely read that one of the things i was doing it was just a boredom thing during covid and then i kind of kept going with it but i was you know we've done at this point we've done like 450 rewatchables movies but a lot of them were movies that came out of a book so i was like oh this would be fun to get the books for different rewatchable movies and now i have like a hundred of these books and you forget like how much movie ip came from i mean the easy ones to remember like jaws godfather shining but sure there's a shitload of other movies that just started as either a short story or a book.

1:30:52But a lot of times the movie, I don't think the book is always better. Like The Godfather, the book is insane. Like it's got that subplot about like the woman with the vagina is too big. Yeah. Like if they put that in the movie it would have been amazing. The closest I can think to the book is as good as the movie and they're both masterpieces is No Country for Old Men. Remember seeing that movie in New York the day it came out being obsessed with it. Like I can't wait. I'm going to see it right away. Buying the book to fly to LA and reading it on the flight because it's a short book. and then seeing the movie again when I landed.

1:31:23And like the combination of the two in your head, like there were lines of dialogue I thought were in the movie that were just in the book, that it's the perfect. If you read Fight Club. It's very, that's right. Fight Club's another one. It's like, it almost fills in the blanks of the movie that it can really help to read the book afterwards. And I think they're both equally valid and important.

1:31:42Bill Simmons:Godfather's funny because there is that whole, there's all this extra stuff that when they were making the movie, they must've been like, uh. Yeah. Stay away. The book Jaws has like a lot of local politics. A lot. We were like, this is not nearly as fun. Yeah. A lot of the mayor. Trying to figure shit out. Amityville Horror was a good book. I haven't read that one. There were some good 70s, 80s ones. Like, you know, Shining was obviously amazing. But like Shawshank Redemption was, what do they call it? Like those half books? A short story? It was like more than a short story. Yeah, it was like a novella.

1:32:14Bill Simmons:Yeah. Stephen King, I mean, doesn't miss. I'm still fascinated by the fact that he hates The Shining he hates the movie and won't give it up he there was some sort of contractual thing where he wasn't allowed to criticize it anymore really? yeah I think there was he was so critical of it I think something happened where they were like I mean they missed the boat I mean it's over but you read the book and I can see having read the book yeah because Kubrick just did his own thing with it he pushed back they made a different version of a Stephen King blessed. The one with the guy from Wings as Jack Nicholson.

1:32:50Yeah, Stephen Webber. Yeah, yeah. Maybe not the same chops as Nicholson. Yeah, no. And comparing the two was rough. Yeah. Did not enjoy that. But the book is great. The book is great.

1:33:02Bill Simmons:So are authors starting to try to butter you up now? I think it's about to, once this gets released, I think it's going to come in. But we've had no problem getting guests. Yeah, you have a whole, but no, but this is like, we think you're going to love this book. Like, you're now in the feelings hurting. I've gotten a lot of that. I've gotten a lot of like, I self-published this. It sounds like it would be good for you. Yeah. Because guys are having a hard time getting published with books for guys. I'm hoping I can change that. But if people reach out to me, it's dead in the water. If you reach out to my manager, you kind of know what you're doing.

1:33:35And I'll usually take that book. But the hard part about...

1:33:38Bill Simmons:You like finding your own. I like finding my own, sure. But I'm now, I'm deep enough that I know an author like I've got a guy coming on who wrote a book called The Art of Fielding have you ever read that? Oh yeah Amazing book he's got a new one coming out Chad I read that book It's with an H Chad Harbach something like that Chad Harbach Yeah He's coming on this he's already going to be a guest That was one of the last fiction books I read It's an incredible it was an easy recommendation to people it's 600 pages but it's great Yeah He's got a new one called The Brightness and he's going to come on and talk about that So if I know the author it's an easy like yes give this to me and they have a thing your staff told me about it called NetGalley, where I just wrote, like, I'm the book reviewer for The Ringer, and I request books in advance, and I get it right to my Kindle.

1:34:20And so that has changed the game. Oh, it's like screeners for TV. I don't ever want to be trashing books on the show. You know, I want to read things that I love. It's a celebration. And tell people to love them, too. And just get people reading. But Chad Harbaugh I'm really excited about. The hard thing is that we're in LA. And most writers are in New York. So it's like, hey, I'd love to come on. I'd love to do a zoom and in the beginning we want to keep it in the studio i think there's attention to being in the same room as me versus being on a zoom uh that i i don't i used to do i used to interview

1:34:52Bill Simmons:everybody in the pre-covid and post-covid it's just let's go it's way different i just don't like the zoom interviews i don't think it's the same and it's harder to control it's harder to connect with people it's easy to sit there and smile yeah you know when you're really like face to face you have to think about things there's a pressure there so especially in the beginning we're going to keep it in the studio and have people come to us. But I've been surprised that people who are willing to come out here to talk to us. We've got this woman named Paula Bomer wrote one of my favorite books of last year called, oh fuck, what was it called?

1:35:27Paula Bomer. Paula Bomer wrote this amazing book and it's basically like a different take on American Psycho. American Psycho as a loser. And the guy's just a total piece of shit that you hate him the entire book and cannot wait for him to get his comeuppance. And I loved it. It's like a furious book. It was in my top 10 and no one else's top 10. And she's like, I'll fly to you to come and we'll talk about that book. I mean, the book company should probably

1:35:52Bill Simmons:send these people here because it's going to probably help the book. I think that's what's going to end up happening because I'm the only guy doing this. There's a lot of women doing it. Reese Witherspoon's making a ton of money because she buys the rights to the book before she has it in her book. Yeah, I don't like that. Or they hold up the book and that's it. or they do the thing if you see it on like TikTok where they hold the books backwards and like these five books changed my life and they talk to you for 20 minutes and then they show you what the books are I hate that like you're gonna know up front what we're talking about and I'm gonna make you excited to read the book as excited as I am to have read the book my 21 year old daughter reads a lot of the kind of books you would expect her to read that get made into Amazon like eight episode shows and movies and those kind of things like young adult or like yeah like those YA like somebody is vacationing in Martha's vineyard with her uncle and there's a murder and you know those kind of things she reads all of those and she always knows from the book when it's gonna oh this will end up being a movie and I do think they look at that there is like a market for that but what's interesting is when it's like this like trying to turn zodiac into a book is like a whole yeah into a movie I mean is a whole different like I mean I grew up like I read a lot of Hardy Boys Case Files.

1:37:05It was like a modern day take on the Hardy Boys. That was, I like, I love those things. I'm sure you read Matt Christopher when you were a kid.

1:37:12Bill Simmons:So I had every Hardy Boys book. I had the old blue hard covers. I had a bunch of those, but those were kind of like corny even by the time we were kids. Hardy Boys Case Files was like, they were like at a Comic-Con, you know, solving a murder. And it was, the blue books, they'd be like, who stole the candle? Like that kind of shit. But this was like, someone got killed. Like a scary monkey on the front. Mm-hmm. Matt Christopher was, I always felt like he, the best sports younger person writer was Alfred Sloat, who did, he did a couple of great ones, including Jake. We ended up doing, we did a 30 for 30 short about him.

1:37:46Bill Simmons:Okay. And then Matt Christopher was kind of like the volume version of Alfred Sloat. Okay. And those guys both nailed that genre. I read all of those. Nailed it. Because there was, I'm a kid from the seventies. Like there were, there were no books. There were, there were no books geared toward me. Yeah. So any book that was, he would eat them up. Yeah. Now I think they have a million of them now. A million of them. Yeah. Yeah. But some of the old ones kind of hold up. I think so. I met Christopher. I remember when Matt Christopher won, where it was like a kid gets kidnapped and forced to play on like a junior hockey team.

1:38:16And being like, what the fuck is going on? Like, I thought this was going to be, you know, I remember like the kid who only hit home runs. But getting kidnapped and going to a hockey team, where like Christopher Pike was a big one for me as a kid. There were like horror books that were in between like the, what was the spooky one that like rl stein had like literally horror for kids yeah and this was like horror for teenagers we're still like the moralistic but terrifying that i uh i loved i

1:38:43Bill Simmons:love stuff like that i really want people to read more i think it's getting tougher and tougher because of all the different ways to do something other than reading combined with um it's harder to find stuff on with websites and google changed their algorithm yes um it's harder to sustain some of these bigger pieces. Like when we launched Grandland, that was kind of like the last real wave of really people getting behind like big, high platform journalism, big pieces, big essays, big pieces. And it was free. You could just go on and look at it. I think people want to take control. I think people just don't know what books to read.

1:39:20You walk into a bookstore, you're overwhelmed. I'm just going to try to be like here. You're overwhelmed unless it's like,

1:39:26Bill Simmons:Bobby really likes dot, dot, dot. And they have those little like the blue color things with the Rex. Yeah. So you're like better than all those guys. Fuck those guys. Yeah. And I've got some, I've had some weird picks. I've had some picks. People are like, I can't believe you recommended this insane book, but I like insane books. Right. Have you ever, have you seen the movie, The Coffee Table? Who's in it? It's a Spanish horror film that came out a couple of years ago. Uh-uh. It's about, I'll spoil it for you. It's about a guy brings the baby home. They just have a baby, brings the baby home.

1:39:56he accidentally drops the baby on this coffee table baby dies and the rest of the movie is him trying to hide this from his wife and family as they come home and they're like where's the baby like it's a horror comedy because everyone's like laughing and just they're excited about this and it's the most terrifying horrifying movie I've ever seen and I watched it with the biggest grin just like how did this get made how did they get money in Spain to make this film with books you don't need a budget you can do anything with your imagination I think film especially with like AI and the studios consolidating that film has gotten worse.

1:40:30You've got to play to the masses whereas books can play to the individual. And I'm just trying to find if you're an individual who likes me, who likes The Ringer, I can find the books that will flip your switch.

1:40:41Bill Simmons:One thing that's definitely happened over the last 15 years is I think there's a sameness to a lot of the internet writing from a stylistic standpoint. If you go back, I used to do this test especially when we were trying to figure out Grantland. Like if you hide somebody's byline, could you tell who the writer is? Right. And back 15, 16 years ago, uh, if you did that, you'd be like, oh, I know who that is. Oh, I know that's. And I think it's a lot harder now. Whereas in books, I think people have a lot more time, space, and kind of the freedom to just be like, here's my style or here's the way I'm going to write it.

1:41:15Yeah. Um, the algorithm rewards imitation, you know, they call it the, the, whatever the dead internet theory is, it's just like, you just do the same thing. you look at like Instagram you can start doom scrolling it's the same joke yeah by different people with no shame that with books you have to be at least have some original idea and book critics aren't always right you know I think they're compromised in a lot of cases that it's like this is just what I like you know and you have to trust me and I think people people do I've been setting this up for years like I didn't just decide I'm going to just start a book club because I knew it could be come off as corny trying too hard like oh he's trying to jump on a trend.

1:41:52Like for a year before I started the book club, I picked a new book every Tuesday. Yeah. Like the one book for guys, but like by the copywriters I read and read it in a week and reviewed it just so that my top 10 list at the end of the year would be thorough. And that took off. And then I said, okay, let's do the book club now, now that I have bonafides, anyone can hold up a book and say, this is what we're reading this month. And you never hear about it again, but we're going in depth. We're for real.

1:42:18Bill Simmons:I think you should brand it differently than a top 10 list. It should be like a top 13 list or top 11 list. It's my top, it's my top 10 books of the year. Not like the top 10 books of the year. It's mine. And mine is very specific compared to what the New York times would say. It's just like what, what at the end of the year, when I look through all the books I've read, it'll be like 50, 60 books. What do I remember? What has stayed with me? What's haunted me? But this is, I say, I like this because I think most of the time when people do lists like this, they're very conscious of what people will say about the list.

1:42:52I got a lot of, you only have three women. You only have like, and it's like, I'm just picking every book. When you open it up, it looks exactly the same. It doesn't matter who wrote it, you know, what their gender is, what the race is. Every book looks the same. And that's what I'm going by. That, uh, that I don't, I don't pay any attention to that, but I think people would be annoyed if I did.

1:43:11Bill Simmons:I don't either. I, I did at the end of last year, I did this list of my the first 25 years of the century. There were all these lists about different movies. So I did a list of my 50 movies I watched the most times in the 21st century. So I was like, I'm not proud of this list. This is just the list we're going down. And the number 16 was Limitless. And I was doing it with the Chris and Sean and I was going down the list and I got to limit. And it's like, look, I can't control the list. This is just, this is what the heart wanted. I've just watched Limitless a bunch of times. I'll tell you, the book was better.

1:43:48The book, I read the book right when it came out. Yes. That was based on a book. Limitless is where he takes the pills to make himself a genius. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The book is incredible. The movie sells out at the end. I need the book for my collection. At the end of the movie, he's like, I weaned myself off magically, and now I'm still a genius. Yeah, now I have superpowers. The book is not like that. The book ends badly. But the book is great.

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1:44:47Bill Simmons:How about Bryce Young? Who would have expected this? I don't even think Bryce Young was picked in the fantasy leagues. Anybody was in, unless everybody did a run on quarterbacks and there was none left. And yet Bryce Young, uh, incredibly reliable, uh, as a fantasy quarterback, who would have thunk he's been better than Drake may he's been, um, way better than basically everybody in the league. except for Josh Allen, who's been the best guy. Anyway, somebody like him has been awesome. I liked what I saw from Tyler Ward and Devon Vele over the weekend. Ashton Gentry has been pretty fun if you like the Raiders.

1:45:25Bill Simmons:Anyway, these players had it in the bag as soon as they stepped on the field. And with Uber Eats, you can have almost, almost anything in your bag and on your doorstep. Enjoy game day deals every week, all season long for alcohol. You must be of legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. product availability varies by region. See app for details. This episode is brought to you by Carhartt. We spend a lot of time talking about football, the players, the coaches, the big players, but there's a whole other team we rarely think about, the people who make the game possible. The workers building stadiums, paving parking lots, growing the grass, welding the goalposts, even making the footballs.

1:46:00Bill Simmons:They're committed to their craft and they're doing the work long before kickoff. Carhartt is proud to outfit those crews. So next time you're watching a game, take a second to appreciate the people behind it. Learn more at carhartt.com slash join the trades. This episode is brought to you by 7up. Okay, this one's a case for conspiracy bill. Let's bring them in. Ever notice lemon is everywhere from lemon recipes to lemon scented cleaning supplies? And when it comes to lemon lime sodas, why is lemon always first? There's a reason. A shadowy organization called the Eliminate has been padding the stats, keeping big lemon in the lead for decades.

1:46:36Bill Simmons:But let me tell you something. The sip is about to be flipped. 7-Up is fighting back, swapping Lemon Lime for their new Lime Lemon Soda. Now, Lime comes first. 7-Up, flip the sip. You said something interesting in one of the interviews you did that you felt like there was a shelf life with being a stand-up and that you were very aware of, you know, there's a finish line here. How long have you been doing stand-up? It's almost 25 years now. Yeah. When did you feel like you were good at it? I would say, I mean, good versus great. Like I thought I was good, maybe six or seven. I knew I was different enough that people were paying attention.

1:47:19Like six, seven years in. I came from the alternative comedy scene. So like to get attention there and to do well consistently and then starting going on the road. And it was after the Trump roast when I was selling out clubs and people were coming to see me. I was like, Oh, I've got my own thing and I'm, I'm delivering on the promise. Right. And then now, nowadays you have to put out a special every couple of years. So I would just tour everything. And then when I ran out of places to tour, I do the special. And then by probably the third or fourth special, I was like, oh, I keep doing this. I knew that I was great.

1:47:51Yeah. And then you start to see people are like, when are you going to do something different? And it's like, I'm not. I like what I do so much. I want to go joke, joke, joke and try to make you think I'm going one way, go the other. That's what I get off on in stand-up. Right. That the idea of going up there and being like, let me tell you about my life now, like, it sucks to me. If I went and saw Stephen Wright and he was like, I'm going to tell you the story of my childhood, I'd be furious. I'd be furious. I want Stephen Wright to tell jokes. Yeah. So I think there's a shelf life on, I think for certain comics, certain comics age better than others.

1:48:26You know, I think Nate Bargatz is going to age incredibly well. Sebastian Maniscalco has aged very well. But there's some that have not. and I don't know how well my thing ages. And you say a lot of athletes retire because of the preseason, because of training camp, not because of the games. Yeah. That I think maybe I'll finish an hour and be like, I don't want to write another hour. Maybe I want to write a book next time. And if that's as satisfying to me as writing these jokes, then I'll keep doing that. But...

1:48:54Bill Simmons:That's what all the athletes say. It's not, they could still do it. I forget who told me that. Somebody put it the best. Wasn't Peyton Manning. I can't remember, but somebody was just explaining, like, I could still do it. Yeah. But it's the off season and getting up in fucking mid-August. Yeah. And knowing that I have to wake up at 530 in the morning to get my body ready for four hours for a game that is three. I just didn't want to do that anymore. And I hate to be a bad comedian who's just trading off the reputation. I'm on tour. I just started a theater tour last weekend with my newest hour.

1:49:27I did clubs for six months out in theaters. And I love this hour. I think it's a return to form. I call my last hour my pandemic hour. It was like, let me throw this together. It was like, I want to go out for 20 years and I'm going to figure it out and get it done. And this time I really took my time and put out the best hour I possibly could. And I love this hour. I've got some of my best jokes I've ever written. But after this, like, maybe that's it. And I might do a Tosh where Daniel Tosh doesn't put out a special in 15 years. He just has the hour. And whenever he feels like touring, he just goes out and tours for a little while.

1:50:02That sounds nice to me. Like Leno never put out a special. He just had the hour. Seinfeld hasn't done one in years. Just to have an hour that if somebody wants me to come out and do a casino or a festival, I have it. But we'll see what the special market looks like in a couple years. But I'm doing every other weekend, one show a night because I'm getting old. And those two show nights, you know, three cities a weekend were starting to fuck me up. That I think I can give my best to the audience if I'm doing one show a night.

1:50:31Bill Simmons:What's the process of getting the show ready? Like when you're starting from scratch, how many months are we talking? I mean, I came up pretty quickly with this one just because I felt like there was a fire under me. I was happy with the last special, but not as happy as I was with the one before it. And I was just like, let me kind of get back to basics and just write. Like I've got 70 jokes in my act right now. I wrote 1 ,400 jokes to get those 70 and then was just hitting the improv. Trial and error. Trying them out. Yeah. Putting them together. And the artwork came together pretty quickly.

1:51:05And then I went into comedy clubs and felt like I don't really need to do a year of clubs. Six months will be enough. And then go to theaters and just kind of save myself.

1:51:13Bill Simmons:Yeah, because I stopped writing, I don't know, eight years ago. But it was really the process that I didn't feel like I could commit to the process in the way that I could stay at the level that I wanted to stay at. Was it like staring at a blank Word document and hitting those first, like, you felt like you were repeating yourself kind of thing? I wasn't even repeating myself. It was almost like what we were talking about with athletes, like the sitting down and the process of it. Unless I was doing it day after day after day, I almost, like, I was compared to, like, golf, where people can, you can go out and play golf once a week and you'll be okay.

1:51:48Bill Simmons:But to actually be good at golf, you got to play every day. And I always looked at, like, the best stretches I ever had as a writer were always when I was writing all the time. I was consumed by it. It was all I was doing. And the busier I got and the more stuff I was doing, it was just, I felt, I don't feel like it's something you can do as one of the four or five things you're doing. I didn't want to get in that position. I get that. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons I think I was as good as stand-up as I became was because I never got into acting. Yeah. You know, I never got, I never wrote a screenplay.

1:52:17I was just like, this is going to be my thing and I've got to commit to it because I have nothing else. Right. But if you have something else, stand-up is so hard that it's easy to gravitate towards the easy.

1:52:26Bill Simmons:But you're on a set for three months and you got, and then somebody wants you to write a book and you're doing that. And then it's like, oh shit, I got to do my, and that's when it falls apart. Yeah. But doing this, I mean, I'll be 48 in December. Yeah. Like I think the fifties might be my book writing time, uh, if it works out that way. And, but if I think of one joke after this hour is done, then I've got to write an hour just to, to do that joke. it felt like we hit a run with comedy where um the kind of stuff that makes you and i laugh probably um everyone you couldn't there was a meanness factor that had to be toned down for a little bit and then it came back post-covid and now i feel like it's back but it can only be in different formats so i'm sure you're navigating that constantly when you're in these oh definitely i have to kind of answer i was like i always compare myself to you watch deadwood right Yeah, in the past.

1:53:18Like, Deadwood, in the beginning, Al Swearengin is the villain for the first, like, three episodes. Yeah. He's the guy who runs the town, and then just worse people keep showing up. And then he's the good guy by the end of it, just because of everyone around him. And that's how I feel in comedy. Yeah. That, like, I started out as this villain, like, this character on stage, and then, like, real kind of awful people started showing up, and I was like, oh, I hate this. That I think, post-COVID, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of, you know, comedy used to be a lot of, like, I'm a piece of shit, and here's why.

1:53:45and now it's like that times 100 and it's not as clever it's not a character it's like what they really believe and they're kind of playing into that audience i felt like i had to constantly kind of prune my audience i didn't want the toxic part of it i wanted to get rid of those people and respect the people that i'm entertaining people buy tickets for my show and sometimes you have to tell people to fuck off uh and that's not the easiest thing to do but when you have a big audience i don't mind losing some people uh just so i don't have the assholes the row we had that

1:54:15Bill Simmons:whole roast era in the 2000s in the beginning of 2010s which was one of the best ways to even discover a new comic oh i mean it's definitely how i got discovered it's how whitney cummings got discovered you know jeff ross built a career off of it uh giraldo that was like his whole thing lamp and i'm not gonna do roasts anymore jeff ross yeah 2006 i gotta i gotta pivot see in six months, Jeff. That's great. We still make fun of him about that. I mean, he's still the greatest. He went the other, he's still, yeah. I think pound for pound, he's been probably, he's killed the most times that arose.

1:54:49He found the right way to do it in order to keep doing it. Whereas I can only do three. Whitney did three. You know, most people did three and got out and moved on. Drada was miserable at the end, like doing those things. Oh, yeah. Hated them.

1:55:02Bill Simmons:Lisa Lampanelli did a couple of them. She did like three or four and then really wanted to get away from it. Like, it's not that fun after the first couple. But Jeff found a way to make it fun for him and for everybody else. Well, now it feels like they can't happen without him. No. I think he signed some contract that they can't do it without him. He's just that even if we try to have one right now, I think he would just barge through the wall. Like the Kool-Aid man. Like, it would just be like, I heard you doing a roast. There's a roast? I heard. Yeah. But the Netflix ones, I feel like, have killed it even more because they don't edit them.

1:55:32Those things need to be edited. Comedy Central did everyone a service by editing those down and changing things around. Yeah, I went to the...

1:55:39Bill Simmons:Jimmy did, when I was working for Kimmel, he did, let's say, Pamela Anderson or Courtney Love, one of them. Pamela Anderson movie. Yeah, Courtney Love was there. And it's a long day. And it drags. People bomb. And you didn't feel it as much in the Brady one, but I thought the Kevin Hart one, you really felt like this is what happens when you go to edit these things. I don't know. I mean, they must have asked so many people before they got to Kevin Hart. Because Kevin Hart's been being roasted his whole career. It's his thing. What are you going to say? And then getting people to... And people don't want to do it when it's live.

1:56:12It's hard to get the celebrity that you could get on Comedy Central because they knew they'd be protected in some way.

1:56:18Bill Simmons:I thought they were dead after the Chevy Chase one because that one was actually depressing. I love that one. I'm sure it was more depressing the unedited version. You weren't involved in that one, were you? No, no. But when I got to Trump, I was like, I want to watch these all. And they were like, good luck finding chevy chase we burned that copy and i found it on youtube but it was incredible because it was like a killer lineup of comics who were just unknown like todd berry yeah roasting and no one knew chevy chase so that's why it made it tough but he has like no friends there no nobody wanted to and that's the hard thing even when they get someone where they think they're gonna get your friends yeah like they got rob low and he's like i'm gonna get you amy poehler i'm gonna get you chris pratt and they can't because they're like we're not doing this right like we don't want to sit up here and have people take shots at us that it's i think with the live you really need hungry comics who want to prove themselves and they really want the celebrities and the celebrities like why am i going to sit here and let some comic try to make their bones you know that's how i met kimmel because he did uh they remember shack had those roasts in like the early 2000s i remember a couple shack ones i mean there was like some brutal ones on that thing that Jamie Foxx destroying a man's life I wrote a piece about that and I think Jimmy was on that one or one of the other ones and I was writing about how funny Jimmy was and he just reached out to me and that's all I got to know Oh really?

1:57:35Bill Simmons:But yeah the Jeff Ross Jeff Ross that was I think I think the highlight of his career at the at the Emmett Emmett Smith roast which was the same one as the Jamie Foxx He's told me so many stories about that Emmett Smith roast that are incredible It's a legendary roast that would highly encourage people to go watch it Didn't Kimmel do Kimmel did like the roast of Carson Daly when MTV tried to do a roast and the audience just didn't understand what a roast was. And they would boo every joke. They would boo everything. But every comic could be like, it's a roast. Why are you so upset? What do you think is the best stand-up special of all time?

1:58:10Bill Simmons:Anything you did excluded? After year five. For me, it's got to be Bring the Pain, Chris Rock. You know, I've seen some great ones like Stephen Wright's HBO special is probably the one I've watched the most. but Bring the Pain has everything. There was a great documentary about Bring the Pain. W. Camus Bell did this for like AMC. Like you have to buy it on iTunes, but it's worth it. And it literally, he's talking to Ava DuVernay. He's talking to, talks to Chris. And it's about like building that. Like Chris Rock, HBO at one point was like, we need to get, we want some black comedians on HBO. Yeah.

1:58:46And they paid three guys. I think it was Chris Rock, Greer Barnes, and like someone else, like a hundred thousand to do a special, do a half hour. And Chris took the hundred grand. The other guys were like, great, showed up, did their set. Chris bought a backdrop. It was like CR, bought the rights to In Living Colors, Cult of Personality.

1:59:04Bill Simmons:He's from the Eddie Murphy generation though. He knew how to do it. He was basically doing his delirious. He won a Cable Ace Award for that. And then HBO offered him an hour. He goes to DC, opens with Mary and Barry jokes. Like he really went at it. Like if you, it'll give you a new appreciation for that special. I watched all the Chris Rock ones like a year ago because they're just all on HBO Max and you can find all of these. Yeah. And I was like a dead sports time. I always like to have stuff on when I'm working. So I just put them on and bring them. That one was so fucking good. Even 30 years later, it was like, oh my God.

1:59:40As a kid, we would watch it over and over again, just put it on. I think there was a Kevin Hart special that became the new one for the next generation. Yeah. I was at the comedy cellar. People were like, my kids just play video games with Kevin Hart's special playing on the side. And they just listened to that over and over again. But Bring the Pain to me was, and I've seen all the Carlin, you know, the Carlins were great. So when HBO would only do The Carlins have aged nicely. They have. Yeah.

2:00:04Bill Simmons:I always felt like he was like the generation before the generation of guys I cared about. Like Delirious was the most important one for me as a kid just because watching somebody, watching Eddie do all, he was already on SNL, watching him do all these different voices and I just never seen anything like it. I was a raw guy. I saw raw a million times before I ever saw Delirious and I thought it was a letdown. Probably because I saw raw first. Yeah. Raw was the more polished first of it. Yeah. But yeah, I don't think, I don't know what beats bring the pain. And killing him softly, Dave Chappelle, like young Dave Chappelle was pretty amazing.

2:00:40But nothing is like, has the fury and just nails it. Like everything just hits perfectly. I think Shane's thing

2:00:47Bill Simmons:that he did in Austin that's like basically YouTube only. I haven't seen the YouTube I saw the Netflix one. This was like four years ago or something. I think it was the one that kind of helped bring him back but it's he's doing a lot of Trump stuff and different stuff but that one was pretty fun from like a just popping up on YouTube. Oh he does Trump jokes? He did some Trump jokes. I didn't know that. Does he do an impression? He did some impressions too. I think he's I think Shane's the most interesting comic right now to see where he goes what he does I know he's doing a lot of movies now.

2:01:14I wish he didn't live in Austin but But I think he's a very interesting comic to watch. What's wrong with Austin?

2:01:19Bill Simmons:I thought it was the comedy center. The comedy mecca. Comedy mecca. I just think everyone's kind of the same. You know, he's more interesting in New York to me. Or LA. In LA, everyone's trying to be different. New York people are trying to separate themselves. When I lived in New York, everyone wanted to be Dave Vittell. Yeah. And just work on their jokes like every day and then go out at night and try them out. And now everybody wants to be Joe Rogan. And I think that's a miss. you know i remember when i moved out here um and jimmy was dating sarah at that point so she was and she was like in that in all those circles and i was shocked by how much everybody like revered a tell as like as like one of the guys when you got to see him work every night in new york i didn't understand it when i lived in la and heard about him but when i moved to new york i was like oh i get it now but in that la i was in i started that do you like his weird show uh um insomniac yeah i liked it a lot better than the porno one he did where he where he watched like blurred porno i watched a couple of those porno ones and i'm like what's happening can somebody talk to him yeah why are we doing that and he would bring stars from the movie and it just felt like somebody's vice actually spilling into their uh that was that was rough yeah but he's i mean yeah that was your sarah's like basically that's your comedy class right Oh, I mean, she was above me.

2:02:39I looked up to her. I probably wouldn't. I'm not a comic if Sarah's not around.

2:02:43Bill Simmons:Yeah. Because Sarah made standup comedy cool. Before that, you had to either be angry at the world. Yeah. Or like a nerd. Like, you're like, oh, look at my haircut. And I wasn't going to do that. But Sarah was like sexy and cool. And so I came around and it was like Patton Oswalt. Yeah. Zach Galifianakis, Louis C.K., Paul F. Tompkins. And they were all murderers, but all completely different. like if you tried to be like any of them you got caught out on it yeah and sarah was definitely one of the the best of those uh i was always struck by the community of everybody too like she you know she like jimmy would have football on sundays and like six of those people would come over and she was always popping around she would leave and go do a set and come back and say no i just did a set it's like yeah you were just you were just here 20 minutes ago which is like yeah just almost like going to get like a cup of coffee or something yeah she's almost like pathological I mean, she's a comic in her bones.

2:03:37Yeah.

2:03:38Bill Simmons:So what's the generation now? It feels like Shane has his own generation, right? Which I guess is like the Rogan and Jason. Yeah, Shane's the generation below. But it's a lot of like the generation almost got ruined by when the pandemic kind of wiped out the alternative stand-up scene. Right. Where the really different people were just gone. Well, you also had two years where you couldn't even do them. Yeah. And so any venue that did them was gone. And a lot of them went into podcasting. People are like, I like you better on your podcast than I do on stage. So people have been prioritizing that in a way I think has been bad for stand-up.

2:04:13Good for them for making money, but bad for the art form. And a lot of them have gone into this like trying to find the algorithm. Trying to be like the Matt Reif who blows up with crowd work. And they're just chasing trends. Which I think the comics that I always looked up to were like making the trends. You know, for a long time, for like 10 years, people at Open Mics were trying to be me. yeah you know and they all failed but the uh but now it's like everyone's trying to kind of just get their clip to go viral and that instead of caring about the audience in front of you that i don't know what happens this next generation i'm a little concerned i think i mean the second comedy boom kind of you would hope there would be innovation but it was more about like cashing in Thank you.

2:04:53Bill Simmons:It's interesting because I've watched a bunch of those Kill Tonys because me and my son both kind of enjoy it. It's like a train wreck. I'm not sure ultimately how it's going to set the tone, especially when it's on Netflix and it's, you know, pretty huge platform. Sure. But doing one minute. It's basically the gong show. Yes, very much so. For comedians. But having your goal be to do one minute of comedy isn't going to help you. But one of the guys ended up on SNL. Sure. But that guy, Cam Patterson, he's so charismatic. He would have gotten there one way or another. But there's guys like Chris Fleming, who is very different and has a grabbit fan base.

2:05:34John Marco Cerezi, very different, has a fan base. Rory Scoville's new special is amazing. The specials, people just started pumping them out where you could tell who got a two-special deal. Because they would say, I've got a special ready. They'd be like, great, here's a two-special deal. You need the next one in a year. and you can tell that they had a year to put it together. You know, it's like that sophomore slumping albums where it's like, oh, you just went up there to talk. You know, like, what else can I do to fill this hour? And it gets bad.

2:06:01Bill Simmons:So it's like when the bands in the 70s and 80s, they would try to be getting out of their deal and they would just release an album just to get to the second. Yeah, crank out mixtapes. Gotta get one more album to get out of my deal. Yeah. So I'm hoping that someone comes along and refreshes everything. but I and I don't pay attention to a lot of it I've tried to stay out of the comedy drama because I started a lot of it a few years ago and was like this is like I had a joke about Rogan in my last special that in the beginning of the tour I have this the joke didn't change in three years that I was touring it and in the beginning we're like laughing backstage like Joe's gonna love this joke and then by the time three years went by things had changed and the joke was exactly the same word for word but it was now it had carried this weight that It was just a different thing that I think the pandemic really fucked up a lot of people.

2:06:53Bill Simmons:Isn't that the point of stand-up comedy for people to get snippy with each other? I think so. I thought that was, we have a 60-year history of this. Not when you just go on rotating podcasts, that I was like, I'm sick of these podcasts. I'm sick of being asked how I write my jokes. I'm tired of this kind of carousel of podcasting. Are things been different? This has been a unique, refreshing take on a podcast interview. That's why I'm here. that's why I got that's why I got a fucking book club man as I was like this will be different and I I'm I'm excited to hang out with authors and not uh comedians because it just got it was fun for a while the beginning of the comedy podcast era was like how open can you be yeah how vulnerable how vulnerable can you be can you talk about your addiction and your upbringing you know I took Jeff Ross's cherry you did I his first podcast ever was at my house in like 2010 really and we we went for like i was getting a lot of i was like basically a lot of people's first podcast when i was at espn in 09 2000 and a lot of them didn't know what the format was because there weren't a lot of podcasts jeff came on talked did his whole thing it was right after he got bounced by dancing with the stars okay sal so told him he was safe and then he wasn't was that the one because i remember when you i mean that story is it's an all-time story all-timer yeah brutal for jeff but i remember you there was a podcast i don't know if it was that one or another one where you told him to his face, looked him right in the eyes and said, the best roaster of all time is Anthony Jesselnik.

2:08:18And I remember listening to the clip being like, oh my God, that's such a harsh thing to say. And Jeff Ross goes, can't argue. And I was like, that definitely happened. Yeah.

2:08:27Bill Simmons:I mean, you did have the championship belt there for a couple of years. I had a run. I had that. I had the, I had the, uh, the three, three run and then got out. I also was a big supporter of your show. The Jesselnik offensive. Yeah. I liked it. I think we did something different. It was hell to make. Right. It was hell to make. And then I had a show called Good Talk that was so fun to make and the pandemic killed it. We were a week away from filming season two. I just sat across from a comic and we were goofy and silly. Yeah. A little bit of information but mostly just messing around. And I love doing that.

2:08:59Hopefully this podcast will be more like Good Talk. But just on the defensive was just you had to rely on what was happening that week. I know, but that show was good.

2:09:06Bill Simmons:I also like Jeff's show. I thought there was this little funny era of these Comedy Central, right as Comedy Central is basically dying. Yeah. But they were still trying to do a couple things with comedians. And I thought some of those ideas were good. The Burn was great. The Burn almost ruined me because I premiered right after his show. Yeah. It was like, if we'd combine those two into one show, we would have had something great. But we were kind of competing with each other. That was tough. Because we're friends. And he'd be like, hey, once his show ended, the season two, they never aired another episode.

2:09:36But they kept them under contract for a year while my show was airing. And Jeff would see me and be like, don't make it too much like mine because they'll cancel me. And I'm like, I would love to take some of what you were doing and use it, but you really couldn't. They just had too much at once that it became tough. Like Tosh would be like, hey, that bit was something I did eight years ago. And I'm like, motherfucker, I'm not watching your show. I don't watch Tosh.0. Like I'm just trying to get through the week here. But when you had like Oscar Pistorius to talk about, it was the most fun show in the world to make.

2:10:07but if you if you just had like Obama's new tax plan it was like what the fuck are we gonna talk about yeah how are we gonna get time out of this I gave Jeff a joke

2:10:15Bill Simmons:a couple weeks ago you did? yeah he's got two now you know how he does the rest in peace variations after Dolly Parton died I texted rest in peace he's like could I have that? I like that he asks now instead of just taking it yeah of course you could have that Jeff that's great I think he I think he took it so wait one last thing on the podcast thing because I think This is an interesting topic. Sure. Not your podcast, but you were talking about it's easier to do a comedy podcast than it is to go on the road. Mm-hmm. And just you're staying at some weird hotel and you're bouncing around. You might have a shitty crowd versus like you could just be in your apartment or your house and just doing a pod.

2:10:56Bill Simmons:So you think that's going to hurt comedy? I think it hurts stand-up as an art form. I think it's good for comedians because they're just pumped directly into the listener's ears where they watch every week. and they become committed. They're like, I watch this every week. I love this guy and I will defend him to the death just because they're committed with their time and sometimes their money, if they're like Patreon fans, that they'll never turn on anybody no matter how bad the joke is. And they'll pay money, good money to see you in a theater where you haven't been working it out. You just show up at the theater and it's like, well, I've been listening to this guy for free.

2:11:28I'm going to pay 60 bucks, 100 bucks. And then they walk out being like, I prefer him on the podcast. I think people will just transition full time and they maybe eventually give up that theater money as these it's getting harder to go on the road because of you know the economy and ticket prices going up uh competition for these theaters but i think podcasting is the podcasts are the actual live podcasts are hurting the

2:11:51Bill Simmons:competition for the theaters or just a regular podcast because you can by the way there's no theaters no these theaters are all made for you know bands in 1974 yeah but they're still fun I'm going to still like with the Wiltern here and a couple of the other ones so basically between like you can get down to 200, 300 you can go all the way up to like 1600 yeah but there's I wouldn't say there's a lot of state of the art ones these days no I like the Wiltern a lot that's where I played last year I've done the Wilshire E. Bell which doesn't have fucking air conditioning it's so old but I like the Wiltern more Largo's still fun it's like a small little theater but I think just comedy got greedy and that they didn't want to do a small intimate show they didn't want to podcasting became a way to go do comedy clubs without having to do morning radio.

2:12:38And then it became a way to avoid comedy clubs entirely. Yeah. And there was something to grinding it out in a comedy club before you got to a theater. Yeah. And made sure that hour was great. And I think people don't need a great hour anymore. They just need a reputation from their podcast. So all the podcast fans show up just to see that guy, just to see the celebrity and the hour doesn't have to be that good. And not until they do a special when people see it and they're like, what the fuck is this?

2:13:02Bill Simmons:Yeah. Because when you're out on stage, everyone's going nuts because they love you from the podcast. It's like the equivalent of watching, I don't know, Steph Curry just do a shoot around versus playing in a game. Yeah. Very much so. I got to watch Steph Curry shoot some threes. Yeah. But not actually play in a basketball game. Yeah. It's an interesting time. I don't know where it goes because in general, especially like, I think people seem, especially post-COVID, there's, you're a little more self-conscious, right? Definitely. Stuff can be on social media. You can get instant feedback that, especially if you're like a growing writer, comedian, whatever, like you get this feedback early on.

2:13:39Bill Simmons:You end up doing this. You're not used to it. Well, with podcasting, the clip people have come out. I don't know if they've like ruined you at all. I know it's important to put on clips. I just, it's the tax for doing it. You know, you're going to get nailed by it 10 to 15 times a year. But you say one thing out of context and it's all of a sudden it becomes this clip and then like Jessalyn like verses and you're like what is happening why did this become a thing and they get more views than even your podcast these big verbs to be like Jessalyn that eviscerates Joe yeah yeah it used to any podcasting used to be like no one's listening to this let's just talk yeah and then that kind of changed and now that you have bring the cameras into it I think it's almost like going from like silent film to talkies yeah that the ugly people are going to get fucking bounced out of this thing like we're lucky but some of these people are in trouble.

2:14:29And I think a lot of guys who blew up during the pod, during the COVID era of podcasting, who really were making money are so sick of it. Like would love to quit, but can't. And I think you're going to see some people.

2:14:42Bill Simmons:I sadly can't comment on this. There's a couple of people I would love to jump in on that point and be like, like blank, but I'm not going to. I've been on a couple. You know who they are. Yes. Where it's like, you're running out the string. You've already sold the advertising and you want to be doing anything else, but you You are. You're an autopilot with vacant eyes. Yeah. It's like someone who was stuck on like a TV deal and they want to do movies, but they got to keep showing up for this. It's like Jason Segel in year nine of how I met my mother. Just being like, yeah, just get me out of this.

2:15:12So it'll be interesting to see. I mean, I just think technology is changing so much that podcasting has become so much more high tech. My last podcast, when I walked into these studios and you showed me around in the beginning of the negotiation, I couldn't fucking believe it. It felt like going from like basic cable to NBC. Right. It was really just like, oh my God, like you have good lighting.

2:15:33Bill Simmons:You look at the stuff we did in 2020. And I always joke about this, but it honestly looks like we're in like a fucking bunker in Iraq. And that was the look. The camera's like pointing up. It's just pointing up at my chin, like through your nose and you can't, it's fuzzy. Yeah. And I think what eventually people realized is, hey, it's not that hard. The equipment's also better now. but so much better. It's not that hard to actually make this stuff. Nice. No, I think with you, with the LA piece of this, even though I know a lot of the book people aren't here, I do think if we can build this pod up to a certain level, they're going to fly out the same way they would fly out to do Kimmel show.

2:16:11Bill Simmons:Like the, the book companies will send them out to be on the show. Absolutely. I think once we get going, I think, I mean, the fact that I, if I announce a book for the book club, it sells out everywhere. I think it's a good sign. And when new, when I start doing newer books, people are going to be like, guys just don't buy books. And if I can get guys to buy books, they will do anything. It's like when Passion of the Christ came out and became this huge movie because people who didn't go to the movies went to go see that movie. Right. And if I can get people who do not buy books and do not read to buy books and read, then I think it'll really change the industry.

2:16:44Bill Simmons:So 250 page limit for the most part. For now, next year, I'll probably go 350 because people are getting better at it. But I'm picking books that are easy reads. I'm not getting anything that's too tough. I may have some more time and again people don't have to finish the book or read it it's on it's on youtube or wherever spotify so you can finish the book later and jump in within the weekly show we'll be talking to authors about everything you know all kinds of different stuff pop culture um I mean this story I know it's too late but like you know I knew this was going to be happening yeah and that story about the guy from the price is right on the airplane looking at a child porn message board.

2:17:24Bill Simmons:I was so fascinated by that story. I'm so mad I'm not on the air right now to discuss this. Because that is a, you should have brought a book on the plane situation for sure. That I think stories like that would be fun. How flagrant did it have to be that multiple passengers noticed it? He was wearing... He was the opposite of discreet. It was like he was holding the laptop up. And he was wearing a The Price is Right jacket. which is incredible, incredible to me that I'm like, I was so mad. I couldn't discuss that story that those things I, now I'm like noticing. So now you have this little extra little piece for the pod.

2:18:02I can't wait to get some like pretentious author on the show and ask them about the guy from the price is right. Looking at child porn on the airplane. Like it's going to be, it's going to be fun. And I know what was that conversation with the stewardess?

2:18:14Bill Simmons:Like to like, Hey, three, a, I'm sure it's like, 3B. I'm sure it's like kicking someone out of a comedy club where they're like, we were just laughing. You know, like, I'm just looking at child porn. I'm not bothering anybody. You know? He was like, I'm doing research. That's always a good one. I love when they say that. The guy from The Who. What are you researching? The guy from The Who who got off, was it Pete Townsend? Pete Townsend. That was like, I'm researching a book and everyone's like, that book never came out. Yeah. You think you got to write that book then you're committed to finishing that book that he never did.

2:18:46He got off scot-free.

2:18:48Bill Simmons:Yeah. yeah there's weird shit that's gonna happen every week I'm trying to imagine you as some fiction author be like yo what about that Price is Right yeah that might be a segment we just do every time we'll get it sponsored we'll get it sponsored by the Price is Right and and then do it every week well I'm looking forward to this I can't wait to come on I'm gonna really try to figure out we'll find out the right book for you and I would love to have you on the one I was thinking was this Will Chamberlain autobiography that he wrote in the mid 70s. Where he claims 100 ,000 women or whatever? No, it's not that one.

2:19:22Bill Simmons:It's the earlier one. It's about his life on the road and how he's misunderstood and it's got weird tidbits about him getting blown by stewardesses and first class and it's kind of amazing and he's mad at everybody. It's like your classic I'm misunderstood. I'm better than you thought I was but it's like pretty revealing. I'm into it. About 70s celebrities but that was one I thought you might like. It might be too long. I don't know. I love, I mean one of the best sports books I've ever read was like about three bricks shy of a load. Yeah, Red Blum Jr. Yeah. It was like an amazing, all this behind the scenes stuff that I love books like that.

2:19:58So you find the right book and you - All right, so that's helpful.

2:20:01Bill Simmons:I have a couple of good ideas for this because we could do The Last Shot by Darcy Fry. I haven't read that. Yeah, I love that. I have, there's like 30 great sports books. So I'll figure out a good one. I want to be challenged and I want to try to get people, get people get the ball rolling on people reading again on guys reading again and whatever i have to do to do that i like i'm much more willing to talk about books than i am about comedy these days so it's it's gonna be a uh it's gonna be a fun time all right so we're launching what day september 30th that's a wednesday that's the like the book club will be the end of every month and then every wednesday will be the normal book club but we've already got we're a book through december people are excited to be on this and we're gonna have some fun guests uh starting with rosenthal and uh and i'm looking forward to that one already i can't believe you booked him during the nfl season he i mean he's doing me if we're coming in he's banging out film on the cover he's got a hard out on me yeah 10 30 to noon hard out like okay okay big timer but he's doing like eight episodes a week over there when did you become friends with him so the end of uh my freshman year at Tulane.

2:21:07And then we became best friends sophomore year.

2:21:10Bill Simmons:Football related or other stuff? No, we were in the same fraternity. We were just in different dorms, same year. And we were just the two funny guys. And then he started taking life seriously. And I stayed funny. But we both, I think because we were both successful in what we wanted to do. Yeah. Like we were roommates when he decided to leave LA and go try sports writing. And I was fully supportive when no one else was. Everyone else was like, stay in LA. When you try to leave LA, everybody tries to keep you here because they don't want to think that they should leave LA. And I was like, do what's best for you.

2:21:39It is true.

2:21:39Bill Simmons:It ends up like it's a funhouse mayor. Yeah. It's like, if he's leaving, does that mean I should leave? Yeah. And I was like, no, this is a great idea. Go. Fully supported him. And did you ever, ever, I almost left LA moment? No, no. I was like, because the only thing more embarrassing than telling people I was a comedian when you're a nobody was saying I used to do standup comedy. So I was like, I'm going to ride this. Former standup comedy. If I have to. I will never say a former. And then things just happened that weren't like an overnight success. But like I would have a good show at Largo, you know, in front of that hip crowd opening for Sarah Silverman and think, I can't quit.

2:22:19Like I was dumb enough to think it was right around the corner for 10 years, you know, but I never thought about quitting standup.

2:22:26Bill Simmons:But you never got sucked into the movie side, though. No, I mean, I would have auditions, but I was terrible at them. Like standup ruins you as an actor. Yeah. Because as an actor, you have to listen. And I'm not listening to shit. Right. I'm just waiting to say my lines. I've done some acting here and there. Somebody wrote a part for me. I'd be happy to do it. But the heartbreaker for me was Danny McBride wrote a role. He was like, I'm writing a role for you on Eastbound and Down. And Eastbound and Down, I was like, this is the greatest TV show I've ever seen in my life. And he was like, season three, we're going to have a Russian pitcher.

2:22:57He was like, my rival, can you do a Russian accent?

2:23:00Bill Simmons:Oh, no. And I was like, what do I do? One of my actor friends was like, you always say yes. If they ask if you can ride a horse, yes. And then you figure it out. And so I was like, yes, I can do a Russian accent. And the audition comes and it became clear that I could not do a Russian accent. And they got Ike Barinholtz to do it, who was amazing, better than I ever would have been. But that was like, oh, I would have loved to have been on the show. And then I couldn't watch it after that. I couldn't watch the show anymore. And then I've had auditions where they've said, that was great, can you do it faster?

2:23:30And I say, no.

2:23:32Bill Simmons:See, you would have been great in This Is The End. I could have shown up in This is the End. You could have absolutely shown up and done a scene, cut Michael Ceres' head off, whatever it took. I always wanted to play the villain, like Craig Kilbourne in Old School. Yes, I wanted to do that. And they always wanted me to play the cute guy. But I think maybe if they ever make comedy movies again, they bring me in as the villain, and I would love to do that. Well, when you were getting all these chances, it was right after Dane Cook tried to be an actor, and that didn't go well. and that was probably a cautionary tale for probably scared a whole generation of comics off because he was in like a few rom-coms oh yeah he rom-commed it up and then he got an action star yeah and that was terrifying for everyone yeah but yeah I never thought I'd be an action star but I thought I did there's a documentary about him now about how he lost he got built by his brother his brother took all his money never knew that story yeah brutal like 20 30 million yeah and then he tried to go get it all back with a big arena tour charging doubles ticket prices and didn't have the material and then lost all his fans like lost everything because of that and it's his documentary i'm sure they do not cover it but it's the first thing i've ever been excited to watch of dane cooks i'll tell you that uh put that in the clip i i did uh what was that show he had on hbo when he traveled in the van with the other comics Torgasm Yeah I kind of Hate watched that In the mid 2000s Everyone hate watched it In his defense It was supposed to be A DVD extra Oh And when he signed The deal with HBO They're like We'll make it a TV show But there's a part in there Where he reads A letter to himself That he wrote When he was 8 years old And weeps tears Actual tears Reading the letter And I had a meeting With HBO As I'm like Blowing up I'd done Aspen Comedy Festival Yeah And I meet with this woman At HBO And she's like You're my favorite comedian I love you And I'll tell you why she's like i saw you do a dane cook impression online where you made fun of him and i she's like i hate tank cook we signed this deal with him i argued against it and i had to be the one to edit to orgasm and it was the worst like six months of my life and i put one scene in there that hbo fought me on but i was like it has to be in there i hate him so much i have to put this in and i go can i guess was it the letter to himself and she's like yes it was the letter to him that uh that i will always have fans at HBO for that.

2:25:57Bill Simmons:One of my passions is the guy who did Entourage being furious about the Jeremy Pippen, Adrian Grenier commercial, but pretending he wasn't mad about it. And now he's really mad about it. And now HBO had to do a cease and desist. I don't know if you've been following this. No, I just saw it. I haven't seen the commercial. I believe that they would do that. I mean, Jeremy Pippen's doing standup now. I'm aware I follow him on Instagram. Why do you follow him on Instagram? I don't know. I don't know why to find out that he's doing stand-up. It's... Has any actor ever made the transition to stand-up?

2:26:34Not on purpose. I mean, you do it because you have nothing else. Like, Chris Kattan went into stand-up.

2:26:39Bill Simmons:Yeah. I lived in the same building as him and I was just terrified he would recognize me, but he never did. And then Jeremy Piven. But most of them... And Piven would say he did it for a charity event and caught the bug. It's like, it's not a fucking bug, man. Yeah, this is like... I'm not sure people want to see you. Right. But that's a meet and greet. That's people who want to meet Ari from Entourage. Well, I mean, anytime they've tried to have actors play comedians in a movie, it's never 100 % worse. Seth Rogen probably came the closest in Funny People. I really like Funny People. But I thought he was okay on stage.

2:27:13Bill Simmons:Funny People was a letdown. He was good in Funny People. I think the best one, from having watched them all and done the reading, there's nothing worse than the movie Lenny, where Dustin Hoffman plays Lenny Bruce is brutal. It's really bad. But I think Tom Hanks in Punchline was really good. You think he was the best? I think... But unfortunately, Sally Field was bad. Sally Field was rough than that. Yeah. That was the 80s stand-up though at the time. But I've seen arguments that Tom Hanks should have won his first Oscar for Punchline. I'm going deep dive, but there was a comedian in the movie Fame.

2:27:47I've seen... Fame was shot in Pittsburgh. I've seen Fame. I only remember the dance. and I remember

2:27:52Bill Simmons:Irene Cara I remember the chef from Mr. Rogers was in the movie yeah but the guy who was the stand up in fame was really really bad stand up I would believe it I think he's probably the bottom of the barrel for them trying to stand up in movie but it's it's so hard to do people try to avoid it for the most part oh yeah because you can't just like have that rhythm but Hanks did a good job with it you know what someone told me is that you see the TV show Barry the HBO Hater yeah yeah great show great it was originally supposed to be him trying to get into standup comedy. And I would have, but they were like, there's too many with Louie and all these, there's too much standup comedy now.

2:28:29But I would have loved to have seen that version of it. I think the version they came up with was great, but him trying to do standup comedy instead of being an actor would have been, would have been wonderful.

2:28:38Bill Simmons:Do you notice like how, like Seinfeld's still doing stuff? He's in shape. He's like 70 something and he's in shape. And really cares about, And I was asking one of his friends about, like, how is, like, Seinfeld has, why is he doing anything? Like, he's made, and he's like, he just loves writing jokes. It's like, he's never going to not love doing that. Yeah. He likes being backstage. Yeah. He likes being told he got 10 minutes. I really liked his documentary. I thought, the comedian documentary, I thought was excellent. That movie changed my life. When I say, like, 25 years, it's 25 years from October 16th, 2002, when I saw that movie in theaters.

2:29:13Yeah. I know the day it was playing near me and I went and saw it at noon and told me how to do it. You know, just go to open mics and fail. If Jerry Seinfeld can fail over and over again to build the hour, what's your problem? And I tell people all the time, too bad, like with Harvey Weinstein, that movie's gone. Unless you own the DVD. It's gone? It's gone. Really? Netflix had it for a little bit when they had to deal with Seinfeld and then it went away. And now that Weinstein's in jail, like you'll never, it'll never stream again. you can't buy it on Apple movies it's like maybe it's on Roku or some shit but you have to own the Blu-ray or the DVD but that movie is that tells you everything you need to know I think about stand up it's a great one

2:29:52Bill Simmons:and then Leno's still at the Hermosa Magic Club whatever the hell that's called I think he does that I see him at the improv now and again I see him at watch events we both end up at the same watch things and Leno is still in the mix like Leno knows he watches YouTube videos I walked up to him like I was on your show 10 years ago Joey's like, I saw your clip yesterday. You're doing great. He's still with it and in there. He says he just goes to these small towns where they have one theater that fits the whole town. And he just goes there. Everyone comes out. He has a great show. He's like a hero to the town.

2:30:26Bill Simmons:And then he's out. Yeah. But he just loves performing. He just wants to do that. Yeah. Interesting. It's hard for them to walk away. Even Letterman still. I had him on my podcast a few months ago, but he's still doing that interview show for Netflix. Oh, yeah. He could go away. He doesn't want to. No, he regrets ever leaving the late show. I mean, there's something to being important. And when you are the show, you are important. People treat you differently. Yeah. People care when you get there. They send a car for you. You know, that I think when that goes away, that's tough for some people.

2:30:55Some people just want to like be left alone. But that's those are usually like drug and alcohol people. But the sober people want that to feel important.

2:31:04Bill Simmons:And one other person. Now, this is like one of my weird deep dive internet fascinations. I did recently. Johnny Carson. He ends the show. He ends the Tonight Show. He only has one other IMDb credit after it. And it was going on Letterman's show to pretend to do a top 10 list like a couple years later. He's gone. He doesn't do anything. Nobody sees him again. He's just like in Malibu playing tennis and smoking cigarettes. He wanted no part of anything. And they'd announced that deal when he left that he's going to do specials once a year and all this stuff. No, he was gone. He's one of the only ones.

2:31:37Bill Simmons:And he was healthy for a while. after i know he probably had lung cancer i mean i read that that book his lawyer wrote i read it too and it's the saddest fucking thing i mean every marriage he had was his mom sounded brutal i mean he just i think he had some demons but i think he was i think he was enjoying his uh his drinks he's been a big winner from the social media clip era of they'll have old carson stuff with him and ed from the 70s where ed's just blitzed and they're just openly talking about it's like how is this on tv i know and just like ed long lunch today it's like oh yes yeah the other one that's the i mean the biggest winner has been norm yes i feel like norm has actually and there's a documentary coming out about him soon that i heard was great but um i think these little short clips have helped norm i think i think he's more relevant now than than he's ever been for sure and i think a lot of it is like those clips on conan he didn't do a lot of specials no he did a few towards the end and he would badmouth he'd be like that was the word the special would come out and he would be like that's the worst special that's the worst show the whole tour yeah uh but he'd sit in a couch with conan with letterman and just be brilliant he was always like one of those people like the better whoever was in the room if they were better he'd be better like because he had he had that his own podcast for a while that the clips will come out of him be great but if you actually watched it it was pretty pretty long and you know all over the place pretty sprawling but then there would be a couple good nuggets in there.

2:33:07Bill Simmons:But when he would go on Conan, he would kill. Yeah. You gave him five minutes and he was the master. But you give him an hour and he's going to fuck around for 55 minutes. Yeah. What was the, were you at the roast, the famous roast he did when he didn't tell jokes? No, it was pre-roast. But I knew people who were there and they were like, he bombed. Yeah. The comics were laughing, but the audience was furious. The audience didn't know what was going on. Yeah. Furious. And then they sweetened it. It's like amazing. But the comics were legitimately laughing. but a lot of those some of those like most famous roast sets are people bombing and then they sweetened it up Comedy Central really did people a service by fixing up some rough sets that were like genius but just weren't appreciated by the audience and that audience is drunk as fuck I don't know how they do it on the Netflix one but in the Comedy Central one everyone's just got bottles of wine already on the table and it's a four and a half hour night just throwing down their Chardonnay or whatever the fuck they put on there I got heckled by this woman.

2:34:05If I get her name, she used to be married to Clint Eastwood. Sandra Locke? I don't know. I see a picture. She had like kind of red short hair. She was in Unforgiven.

2:34:15Bill Simmons:Francis Farmer. It may have been Francis Farmer. And she heckles the shit out of me for a John Ritter joke. And I can't see her. I don't know what's happening. But she's bombed and just screaming at me for like the rest of my set. Screaming. And no one does anything. And afterwards, I'm like, what happened? And people are like, oh, it was her right back there. She would like, I'm friends with John Ritter. How dare you? It wasn't even like mean to John Ritter. Yeah. It was just like mentioning his name. Like his name was brought up. Yeah. And screamed for 10 minutes while I finished my set. Even Roseanne is like, what's this bitch doing?

2:34:48I guess she was friends with Roseanne. And I walked past her in a restaurant like six months ago. And I wanted to stop and be like, do you remember me? Fuck you. But she seemed like she was having a good time. I was like, I'll let it go. But yeah, those were the days when you could, those things can happen.

2:35:04Bill Simmons:Book club, end of September. Jessalyn Book Club, September 30th, kickoff on the ringer. People have been waiting for this. People have been waiting. I'm pumped. Together. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for coming up. Thanks for having me. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chris and Eduardo and Gahau. Thanks to Jessalyn and Zach Lowe as well. I'm going to be back on this feed on Thursday with an action-packed, all kinds of stuff on Thursday. I'm going to go big. I'm going to go like a two and a half, three hour pod on Thursday. Don't forget about the rewatchables with Law Abiding Citizen as well.

2:35:36Bill Simmons:And I will see you later in the week. Go Red Sox.

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2:36:41Bill Simmons:Call 877-770-7867 This Friday, return to theaters for Avengers Endgame Encore. I know I said no more surprises but I was really hoping to pull off one last one. Reassemble the team. Six stones. Three teams, one shot. Relive the experience. You mess with time, time tends to mess back. The story continues. Tony, this is a second chance. Don't miss Marvel Studios, Avengers Endgame Encore, early beers Friday. Get tickets now. Rated PG-13. Maybe inappropriate for children at 13. Your couch doesn't have 10 for$10 wings. Your Dave and Buster's does. Every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday. Plus 40-foot screens to catch all the action.

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