The NBA Mega-Redraftables (2012 and 2013 Combined) With J. Kyle Mann and Joe House. Plus: Portland vs. “El Cheapo” for the Blazers With Justin Verrier.

22:40I would imagine. Because Bennett ends up in that swap with Minnesota and I'm just like, it probably ends up like a brighter timeline for Minnesota, I guess. But then they get Carl Towns. I just was kind of like working through the... Because the fact that he wasn't a glowing prospect at that point made it easier to get off of him so quickly like they did.

22:59Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's... So I'm going back and looking at the Cavs. So that would have been the 2013-14 Cavs, the year that they got LeBron. I thought, I was pretty adamant on every show and all the prep and on the telecast. I couldn't believe Oladipo wasn't the first pick. Because to me, he felt like the only sure thing in the draft. Like he was clearly, he was good in college in Indiana. The team was good. he was a little castle-ish where it was like I feel like he could maybe there's more there with him on the ball but he was a good defensive guard super athletic they finished 33-49 the next year and got nothing from Bennett so you could argue maybe he would have knocked their pick like it wouldn't have been as good maybe their record's like a couple wins better then they don't get the number one pick then they're not able to get Kevin Love There is some what if repercussions, right?

24:00Bill Simmons:That would be the only thing I said. I thought it was weird. The Bennett thing was nuts. We thought Bennett was going to fall heading into the draft. Like for real. We thought he was going to fall into the eight to 10 range, which was the reason I did the whoa thing. All right. We're going to take a break. During the break, our producers, Gahal and Eduardo, we figured out this number system because we're making this draft competitive. We're trying to win this draft. We're going to have people vote on social media. We're going to draft eight guys each from these two drafts and try to put together the best possible team.

24:33Bill Simmons:So this won't necessarily be a traditional redraft. There might be some, I need a center. I got to take so-and-so here. So when we come back, we're going to do the mega draft. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures. More than ever, America needs a laugh. Enter the Super Troopers to the rescue. The cult comedy classic returns in the most offensive installment yet with Super Troopers 3, a debaucherous bachelor party, an over-the-top wedding, a dangerous drug smuggling ring. All of them are threatening the troops' future. Fill your liter of cola and roll up to the multiplex with Super Troopers 3, only in theaters August 7th.

25:13Bill Simmons:Get tickets. Meow. All right. During the break, we figured out a convoluted way to figure out the draft order. Look at how it's numbers. We shouted out numbers. and miraculously, I got the number one pick. House is second. J. Kyle Manning. Weird how the draft order is favoring the hosts of the show. Yeah, Gahal. I'm just saying. Gahal, I'll Venmo you later. I'm not trying to be conspiracy Kyle here. But you have Snake. Snake, you get three and four, Kyle, which is key for this draft. All right, so with the first pick of the 2012-2013, two draft mega draft, Bill Simmons will select Giannis and Ted Acupo, one of the single most amazing draft stories in the history of the NBA.

26:00Bill Simmons:Falls out of the lottery. Philly, who knows they're doing the process, passes on him at 11. And I think it was probably the right move back then. I think if he went 11, we would have been like, what the? He went 11th? Jesus. OKC passes him in 12th.

26:20Bill Simmons:took Steven Adams instead. Can you... They had a chance to have Harden, Durant, and Westbrook, and Giannis. They still had Harden on the team. And Westbrook. They could have just said, fuck it. That's one of the greatest what-ifs of all time. Well, they took Adams, which was, I think, the right pick. Right? Good player. Because they needed one more big guy, but... Dallas is at 13. Two years removed from... winning the title. It was one of those things where the articles and stuff after were like, we really liked them. It's like, well, if you liked them, you would have taken them. They end up trading, doing some convoluted trade, trading back.

27:04Bill Simmons:Utah's at 14. They pass on him. They take Shabazz Muhammad, which everybody should be fired for that. And Milwaukee takes him at 15. Now, what's interesting is Dallas took Olenek at 13. Boston traded up to 13. For Kelly Olenek and not Giannis, who they could have put with Kevin Garnett and the Paul Pierce and the Ray Allen team. So anyway, and you know the rest. He's 10 all-star teams, 21 finals MVP, two-time MVP, seven times top four, seven all-NBAs. Has only made the conference finals twice, has traded to Miami. last month. And then LeBron didn't sign with them. And Dan Levitard tried to do a fanatics conspiracy thing.

28:01Bill Simmons:That was the single most ridiculous thing I've watched on social media this month. I'm just saying. Okay, Michael Rubin sold the Sixers steak four years ago. Good try. Giannis, first, you agree with that, Kyle, man? Because you don't have the second pick. Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that. Yeah, Giannis, probably the best handling big guy of all time, I would say. Best driving big guy of all time, I think is fair to say. Four players have had NBA seasons of over 30 points per game, over 10 rebounds, over 5 assists, at over 60 % true shooting, and he did it three consecutive seasons. Embiid is the other one.

28:44Yeah, you're just talking about a pretty incredible story about just kind of where he came from. His first rookie deal total was worth$8.6 million. And his current five-year deal is at almost$230 million. So, yeah, and he deserves it, man. I mean, he's just an incredible player. When I was revisiting the stats, it was making me be like, man, I mean, it definitely made me think, like, I should probably go check this Miami thing out a little bit more on a granular level again. Because, God damn, he's good, man. I mean, it's a simple thing to say, but it's the right thing to say.

29:14Bill Simmons:Yeah, and you figure he'll have two more. and this was the case was I was trying to talk myself if Boston got into him. Two more really high level seasons if he's healthy and then after that history we'll say he's going to drop. Haas, one of the things I was looking at, I was looking at my pyramid which only you have seen the list of the top 25 guys of which Giannis is one of them. And so many of those top 25 guys are just pedigree guys that we would have bet the ceiling of this was top 25, right? If you go through the top 25, Kobe's the first one where if you had said in 96, this 17-year-old kid coming out of high school and you had just said, he is going to be one of the 12 best players of all time.

29:58Bill Simmons:That would have been insane. But he did have the pedigree. He was the number one guy in high school. But then you go through the rest of them. Moses, somebody like Moses was the single biggest high school recruit of the 1970s. Like everybody was trying to go after him. He ended up going right to the ABA. um Dirk I would say is one and and Jokic is the other one um is Jokic or Giannis more unbelievable to you Jokic was the 37th pick in um 2014 what's a more unbelievable I can't believe this guy was a finals MVP and is now a top 25 story from you for when you remember them in the draft it's yokich and the reason for that part of the reason for that is do you remember what he used to look like right like that guy freak has always been a freak yeah and then freak got freakier because he got more muscular and he got taller but there was nothing when you looked at the joker to suggest that the career arc um that we've all enjoyed some people claim that the ringer enjoys it more than anybody else on planet earth that there's a lot of joker love and i think it's well deserved yeah we're weird for that sorry sorry like awesome basketball uh but yeah just throwing a match on that one the joker feels a little less likely that that's that's it yeah even if i go through the top 30 you know like kawaii who i think is a top 30 all-time guy and he fell to 15.

31:38Bill Simmons:And that one's a surprising one because nobody saw the offensive side of him coming the way it did. But he was still a lotter. Like Jokic, I think is the right answer. But I think Giannis is second. Even I look at a guy like Barkley, you know, Barkley was a top five lottery pick, was the most famous cut from the 1984 Olympic team, was awesome in college, and was the only question on him was, is he going to stay in shape? So yeah. Anyway, Giannis is... You mentioned something interesting, though, about the pedigree thing, because in 2012, Anthony Davis was coming off of one of the best American prospect years in history, where he comes out as the number one player, wins every player of the year award in college, gets a gold medal, goes number one.

32:21And if you'd said in the next decade, there's going to be a lanky power forward that dominates the NBA and gets an MVP and wins a title, he did end up getting one. But he didn't – Giannis had the career, I think, that we thought AD was going to have at the end of the day.

32:36Bill Simmons:I couldn't agree more. I think out of the last 15 years, I think the two guys I would have bet anything on were Davis and Cooper Flagg. Just like, I know those guys are going to be good. But Davis, I remember House and I watching Kentucky that year, and we were just like, holy shit, this guy's like McHale crossed with – I don't even know what. But it just seemed like the only way I think stopping him was going to be an injury. And if anything, I think it's weird because he's won a title. It's like mildly disappointing he's not first on this list. I think he's a top 75 guy all time that had top 25 potential halves.

33:16Bill Simmons:And he never got there. That's fair and reasonable. I might as well just go ahead and take him right now since we're talking about him. I am going to take him second overall on this draft. I'm not going out on a limb. He did arrive with the highest pedigree. We did love watching him immensely in college. He was definitely a can't miss. And yet he's on his fourth team. Now, of course, this was a long time ago when he was drafted. But that tells you something, right? Giannis, only one team for his career until this most recent trade. I do wonder if some number of years removed, just to finish the thought on Giannis, will look back and be like, why?

33:55Tell me again why Milwaukee had to trade Giannis. Can somebody explain to me why they felt like? Because the thing is, he's only 31 Giannis. Now, for sure, you've done the work, the leg work in terms of when do guys of this size tend to fall off? And it's off of a cliff. But that kind of also applies to Anthony Davis potentially. He's two years older. He's 33. The thing that Davis has going for him that makes him, it's a no-brainer, obviously, for him to be number two. But the all-defense stuff was really meaningful. I mean, that's for him to make that his calling card because when he arrived, I thought that the inside-outside game was going to be the thing.

34:38I thought he might be a prolific scorer. He faced the basket and shot the ball in a way that was confident. And his three-point shooting, I don't know if the numbers support this. I'm telling you the eye test. His three-point shooting early in his career was excellent, I thought. So, you know, easy pick for me at number two.

34:57Bill Simmons:I think during the 17-18 season when they made the playoffs and upset somebody, I think Portland. But I remember during that year on pods, and I can't remember if I was writing or not, there was like a moment when it seemed like he was becoming the best player in the league during the basically post-All-Star in 2018. It was like LeBron was in his last Cleveland year and he'd missed some games and he was trying to push them to get traded. And then LeBron took that title back like a motherfucker in the playoffs. He was like, no, actually, I'm still the best guy in the league. But I don't ever...

35:34Bill Simmons:If you told me in 2012, Davis is only going to have two top five MVP finishes in his entire career, I would have assumed he had some dramatic major injury. Because it just seemed like he was so talented it seemed inconceivable that he wasn't going to be an MVP and he never made it. Highest he ever got, he was 2018. He was third in the MVP. And there was that other moment he had in the 2020 playoffs when it felt like he was going to win finals MVP halfway through that series. Right. And they were up 3-1. And I think it was game five. And it was like, if he kicked ass in that game, he was probably going to win finals MVP legitimately.

36:13Bill Simmons:But he wasn't good in that game. And LeBron ended up winning and had a better series. But he never won defensive player of the year. His four-year peak was 27-11. House, he's played at 807 games and missed over 300. I mean, there's a reason we've called him every other Davis. And it has been, you know. Now he's on your team. Coincident with the playoffs. I welcome him with open arms. I do. This is a situational thing. Like sometimes when we, we all know people with, with kids that we like and families that the kids, but, and sometimes you, you're like, oh man, I wish that kid didn't have that mom.

36:53Bill Simmons:I feel like that kid would have had a better chance. You're like, oh man, that guy, that kid's dad sucks. And I do think that, yeah, there's sometimes you're like, ah, I'm not sure how much of a chance these parents are going to allow this kid. I do feel that way with NBA teams sometimes. Like Davis goes to New Orleans. What's the worst fucking team to go to than New Orleans in 2012? Like you're changing owners. They're owned by the football team. They had more weird injury medical stuff than just about any team. And, you know, this is a good, put two drinks in barrier and barrier has some good stories about New Orleans during that time.

37:32Bill Simmons:But yeah, I just feel like if you do his career 50 times, this isn't the worst version of it, but I don't think it's in the upper echelon of what I would have said. All right, Giannis one, Davis two, Kyle Mann now on the clock with two picks in a row. We know who the first pick's going to be, but I don't know who the second pick's going to be. You could probably know and guess who it's going to be, but my nerdy ass. My pick is going to, my first pick is going to be Damian Lillard. Damian Lillard, top 75 all-time guy. I think in this era of dribble shooting that kind of changed basketball in the way that we were talking earlier, It wasn't just shooting.

38:09It was ball handlers shooting the ball, changing pick and roll coverages, changing the way bigs need to perform. Lillard just kind of has the misfortune of playing in the same area as Curry because he's just one of the best shooters of all time. He's a winner. I'll go ahead and spoil it. I kind of had this, between these two classes, I had written down the best moments and the worst moments. And the best moments, I mean, it's hard to argue against dames. He's got two series game winners. you know we as we talked about before you know he put out the thunder and then he put out he blanking on it but he's done it twice now um it was the thunder twice um it well it was uh chandler parsons was guarding him on the first one and i was thinking that might have been the

38:52Bill Simmons:grizzlies maybe it's the rockets yeah um never made a finals never won a round three game western conference finals once got swept um all nba first team once second fourth third team twice fourth MVP in 2018 five year peak house 28-5 and 7 38 % from three I thought it was the right pick he's also there's a chance and we're going to talk to Barry or I'm going to talk to Barry later about the Trailblazers there's a chance he's Portland's last great player like if something bad happens to that franchise this was their last thing I'm just going to read you some highlights from my draft diary because I've got this about as wrong as you can get.

39:38Bill Simmons:I still feel like I had a winning percentage in the draft diary, but forgot to mention the Blazers picked Dame sixth because of the Gerald Wallace trade, which might've been the worst trade of the, of the 2010s, all things considered. Brooklyn trading a top three protected pick to Portland for Jared Wallace, who was about to become a free agent. And this was, I killed Billy King over and over again. And he deserved every bit of it. It's, it's like pound for pound, the worst trade of the decade. So they ended up getting six. They have to give Damian Lillard that pick to the Blazers. And it's like one of the all time, of course, even if it had been a top 10 lottery protected, they're probably doing that.

40:24Bill Simmons:What are you guys doing? But anyway, I wrote after the pick, we're watching highlights. It's me, house and Jacoby. And I wrote, these are jokes I had. What conference is Damian Lillard from again? Has any top 10 pick ever had more highlights that happen against white people? Is it Weber or Weber? Has anyone ever picked a backup point guard this high? Did they just pick Jared Bayless again? Or am I crazy? Are these highlights from division one games? These are all quotes that I wrote down that one of the three of us said. And then I wrote later, I was saying Broussard was saying how they needed someone to stretch the floor for Aldridge.

41:05Bill Simmons:And I said, Lillard can shoot. I might talk myself into this pick by midnight. I need at least two more drinks. And then Austin Rivers got picked later and I wrote, I'd rather have a 20-year-old Rivers than a 22-year-old Damien Lillard. Tough, tough draft diary for me and Dame. everybody was excited about Austin Rivers pairing with AD though I mean to be fair to you I recall a lot of excitement about that combo and Austin Rivers goes back to what I said about Davis before he went to the wrong franchise that guy was the best player in high school and I think you end up just you go down a road and then New Orleans quit on him I don't know I feel like there's another version of his career that's more interesting But anyway, what did you think of Dame?

41:52Bill Simmons:Do you remember back then, Kyle, as a prospect? Oh, God, I was working for Zappos.com back then. I was just kind of, I was just some dude who liked to talk shit about basketball. I liked him. I mean, you hear stories about him that he had like one of the best workouts. People acted like they saw Christ when they came away from that workout where they were like, this is, this guy has it. Yeah, I mean, he's an interesting developmental story. You know, Weber State, I guess he was Mountain West. I'm trying to remember what conference they're in. Anyway, yeah. I remember going to see him his rookie year, and he was going against Chris Paul at his peak.

42:27Bill Simmons:And I had really good seats. And Chris Paul just destroyed him for two and a half hours. And I was like, ugh. That's what Chris Paul did. I don't know about this Dave Bluard guy. Yeah, and then it's like, oh, he just went to Chris Paul College. And a couple years later, he's flipping it on Chris Paul. All right, now it gets exciting. So the top three went how we thought. But the fourth pick, there's some good options on the table. Who do you have? I'm taking Draymond Green. Yes, I knew you would. I had him on my board in the fourth spot as well. Okay, make the case. Draymond Green is one of the more interesting, we were talking about like a player having a sober sense of who they are.

43:07I think he realized what he needed to be in the situation that he was in. He's one of the best screeners. He's an incredible passer. He happened to play with, he's a high, high level processor on both ends of the floor. He's been, he had one of the best defensive stretches for any player in the league, starting from like 14, 15 to 2019, the run that he put together. I think he might be one of the best post defenders of all time, one-on-one. Like he's really difficult to score on. Yeah, I just think Draymond's one of the smartest players, one of the smartest players that we've had in NBA history, honestly.

43:48Bill Simmons:I don't have him in my 100 for the pyramid house, but he came closer than the next guy who I think is going to get taken in this. I did write down the five best non-center defenders ever. Scotty Pippenhouse. Okay. Dennis Rodman. Sure. Kawhi Leonard no argument Andre Iguodala interesting okay Draymond Green speaks for itself in my opinion would you put Gary Payton above any of those probably have the glove ahead of Iguodala that's the spot I think Draymond has to be one of the first four and Steve Kerr has, it's been interesting. He kind of dances around it because he's always been very pro-Pippen, like extolling his virtues all the time, talking about what an unbelievable defensive player.

44:51Bill Simmons:But he's had a couple moments where he's like, I think Draymond's might be one of the best defensive perimeter guy ever. He's in the conversation. So I think, Kyle, I think that's the right pick. What were you going to say? These are different species of defenders, though. You're talking about Peyton. He's point of attack guy. You're talking about Iguodala and Kawhi. Those are like assignment switchable, like perimeter score matchup dudes. What's interesting about Draymond is he's not a rim protector, but he's a rim deterrent to a certain level that he doesn't really have to be because he doesn't block a ton of shots.

45:24He's like a deflection machine. He just plays middle linebacker better than like hardly any player that I've ever seen. Like he's so, he's so smart. I made a video about this one time, his timing, he could snuff out plays. he had a really incredible discipline about like, I'm going to stay completely still so that this guy doesn't know that I'm about to make a play on the ball and then make a play on the ball at the last possible second. Like he's one of the best ever at that. So I'd say he's a little different than those guys, just that he guards up the food chain a little more than the Pippins and the Iguodala types.

45:56Bill Simmons:No question. Made a second team, third team all-NBA, 2017 defensive player of the year, five first team all-defenses. In the playoffs, five-year stretch, that incredible five-year warrior stretch they had where he played 104 playoff games, got suspended famously for one of them. 13-10-7, 3.2 stocks, 38 minutes a game. And I always thought the 25-game winning streak to start the year, I love winning streaks, as anyone who follows this podcast knows. I love the Miami 27-gamer. I love that 25-0. You need somebody like him on the team to win that many games in a row. He's just a maniac. He's an absolute competitive maniac, and sometimes it tilts over the line, and I think it's had real repercussions for them.

46:45Bill Simmons:It had repercussions when he punched LeBron in the balls, did the flick up. It had repercussions when he punched Jordan Poole. He's gotten dumb technicals in games, but that's just how he's wired. I'm a huge historical Draymond defender. I think he's right on the cusp of being one of the 100 best guys. I couldn't get in there just because we've had almost 80 years of great players at this point. But when you think like OKC passing on him, then Cleveland passed on him at 33 and 34. And when LeBron came back two years later, he could have already been on the team. So, all right. Kyle has Dame and Draymond.

47:21Bill Simmons:That's a pretty good start. I'll be really interested to see what House does here at five because two of his least favorite players of the last 15 years are on the board. This is going to be great. I'm so glad House is in this spot. What do you have, House? This is going to come as a surprise in this sense. I actually have come around on this guy. What is getting ready to happen? I like Rudy Gobert. I'm a Rudy Gobert fan. I'm coming all the way around. Guess how many conference finals he's played in? This is like the Tony Romo DUI video all over again. You know the answer. He's played in two Western Conference finals.

48:02You know who else only has two Western Conference finals? Anthony Davis. Rudy Gobert. Eight-time all-defensive first-team member. Four-time defensive player of the year.

48:16Bill Simmons:Would you say he's the best defensive center of the Steph Curry era? I think he would. Yes. Yes, I would. I would say that. I think since Joaquin Noah, he's been the best defensive center since. I think in a certain sense, Minnesota and Tim Connolly have been vindicated in terms of, you know, the trade that they made and what it did in terms of propelling Anthony Edwards forward. I do think that there was a role that Gobert played there. And he's the face of COVID. So, of course, he's the number one pick in the United States of America. Who announced COVID to America? Rudy fucking Gobert. Yeah, we had the Rudy Gobert game.

48:57Bill Simmons:Yeah, you're right. one second team two third team all-NBAs in the playoffs 96 games he's averaging three third teams three third teams three third teams he's been all-NBA four times in the playoffs 12 and 10 one and a half blocks a game 96 games two conference finals so your team right now has Anthony Davis with Rudy Gobert so you're going size geez yep Not great. What'd you think of that pick, Kyle? I mean, Gobert is one of the, he's a great elite rim protector for most situations. And I think just the thing that he's run up against in his playoff history is that when you're trying to paint a masterpiece, you just kind of need to iterate one step further than Rudy Gobert, because he just is problematic and AD doesn't have the same issues.

49:52Like he can't get played off the floor in the same way. He's offensively super challenged. Yeah, you mentioned just him as a teammate. He's run into that different times over his career. I had the best moments and worst moments. We've mentioned two of the worst moments for these two classes. Draymond punching Jordan Poole. Gobert touches all the mics right before COVID. The other one is Kelly Olenek injures Kevin Love. That's the other one I had written down. Yeah, that's a good one. I rewatched that one. That was brutal. So yeah, that's Gobert. I appreciate him, but I'm not, he wouldn't be somebody I would reach for.

50:26Yeah. I am up with two picks and there are two picks that I actually wrote.

50:34Bill Simmons:This is a great argument and didn't know who should go first. I'm not going to cop out and just take them together.

50:43Bill Simmons:And now I'm wavering. Well, I'm going to end up with both of them anyway. I'm going to take Bradley Beal with the six pick. Okay. Um, um, might be another, I wish he'd gone to a different franchise guy. I got to see a few of those Wizard Celtics 2017 playoff games, and he didn't shoot well in that playoffs. But I really liked the competitive spirit he had. And I remember talking to House about that after. I think House, did you go to Game 7? Did I bring you to that? No, I did not go to Game 7 in Boston. I just, I thought, I left that series thinking, this guy has a chance to be pretty special like he was really comfortable in this game in this atmosphere and if anything the wizards i thought made the mistake which i talked about at the time of like the celtics just weren't guarding john wall they were letting him shoot threes and i actually thought if they'd run stuff through beal they would have beaten us that was also the kelly linic game which we'll get to later but um that kind of turned out to be the peak for him as like a competitive player.

51:50Bill Simmons:He's never made it to round three. He's only played 49 playoff games. His individual peak, he averaged 31 a game and 20 and 21 combined. He's made almost 350 million a year. And my friend Joe House during the draft diary said when he got picked third, right player, right spot. It was a very unwizard-like pick. We needed a guy who could shoot at the basket and not at his teammates. It was a Joe House joke. Good joke. Oh, really? That's a really good joke. I wrote, hey, now, after I quoted you on the joke.

52:26Bill Simmons:Look, you pay these guys sometimes, you know what's going to happen. And I think that contract ended up being the worst thing that happened to him, unfortunately. But it feels like there should have been more here, Kyle. The arc of how this has gone down for him, some of this has happened, I know, since I've been working at the Ringer, where in the post-John Wall injury wake that we had, he put together a four-season stretch that was pretty incredible. You mentioned that, I mean, overall 27 points, over five assists, 1.3 steals, 35.8 % from three, gets the line a ton, where it was looking like, okay, this guy, we need to get him, find a way for him to play serious basketball.

53:08And he'd signed that huge contract, and he had the no-trade clause, and he had a no-trade clause in there as well. So that just drags on and on. And I just remember thinking about that. I'm like, this guy's developing and improving, but it's wasteful just because he's in such a bad situation. And then the injury stuff starts. So he's kind of had a sad arc. I mean, he'll cry all the way to the bank. Except financially, yeah. Wipe his tears with$100 bills. But it has been an odd arc for him.

53:36Bill Simmons:House, you watched him a lot. He really was like an absolutely high-level elite scorer for years. Yes. Really hard to stop. Really inside out twice. Yeah. Like just to get 30, basically anytime he wanted it. And I think could have been a score on a really good team. Just never had the right team. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm appreciate your restraint though. House. I thought you'd be a lot meaner right now. No, I mean, in terms of this exercise that we're doing, I have him lower because what was revealed in my own experience with him was that he couldn't drag winning basketball out of a situation. Right.

54:17You know, as soon as John Wall got hurt and, you know, the franchise was in disarray because directionally the owner and the general manager were kind of stuck about what was the right thing to do. Right. So they gave him a once in a lifetime contract. We'll never see a contract like that again. The combination. It was a slow motion car crash.

54:38Bill Simmons:Yeah. We knew it was happening. It was like, yes, you have to do this, but you shouldn't do it, which we, we see in football sometimes too with the quarterbacks. Yeah. It's like, ah, I don't want to give this guy 50 million a year, but what am I going to do? It's fine. The no trade is, will never be forgivable. Yeah. It will never be. There'll never be an explanation that makes sense. I'm taking Chris Middleton with the other pick. I almost took him six 39th pick in 2012. went to Milwaukee, played there for a while. His career, like if you go basketball reference, his career is a little better than I even realized that I was always a fan.

55:18Bill Simmons:2021 NBA champ, he was the go-to scorer on that team. I know Giannis had more points, but when they needed baskets, they ran through Middleton. 2021 playoffs, Kyle, 24, 7, and 6 for Chris Middleton, 44 % shooting. He averaged 20 a game for basically five years from 18 to 22 and was, you know, a good defensive player too before his body started to break down. I just thought he was a winning player and he proved it because they won the finals with him. So I really did think about him over Beal, but I couldn't get there because of the talent of Beal. So anyway, that's... If you swapped places, if you put Beal in Middleton's situation, it does make you wonder.

56:01And he plays next to a Giannis. Because he was the perfect archetype of player to play. next Giannis collapses the, you know, the defense and everybody's, you know, freaking out as he drives the ball. Middleton just had this incredible, he was one of the best isolation pull-up scores in the league for two or three years there. You know, the injury started to catch up with him in age. But man, I think, I honestly feel like people forget kind of how nasty of a scoring bag he had. People forget?

56:27Bill Simmons:Is this a Twitter video? Chris Middleton was the problem. You won a gold medal. That's another award I have. A Team USA selection tells you. I really like this game. And the Celtics made the 22 finals, partly because Middleton was injured in that playoff series. And that was probably the push over the top. All right. I already won the draft. So we're going to take a break. I have Giannis, Bradley, Chris Middleton. You guys aren't winning. It's over. We're going to take a break. Come back with House Has Network. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Did you know you can use TikTok to connect even more with the sports you love?

57:02Bill Simmons:It's not just highlights. It's everything around the game, including the sports community. Find breakdowns of classic basketball plays, deep dives on baseball stats, even videos on how athletes train and recover. There are people teaching strategy, sports, history, even ways to improve your jump shot. It's kind of like the biggest locker room ever and everyone's sharing what they know on TikTok. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Whether you're racing to build the biggest sandcastle, seeing who can throw the fastest pitch or competing in a championship match, It's always better when there's a prize on the line, like a Michelob Ultra, smooth, refreshing, and so satisfying after all that hard work.

57:40Bill Simmons:Superior's worth playing for. Michelob Ultra, Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win Superior Soccer, Basketball, and Golf Prizes at Michelob Ultra.com slash superior access. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026, Anheuser-Busch. Michelob Ultra Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri. Next pick. All right, House is on the clock. He has Anthony Davis and Rudy Gobert trying to figure out how to play them together. And Anthony Davis wants to be out of the pain anyway. I feel great about that. Are we going to the Patriot League for this next pick? You know, I gave that a nice hard look. And that is one of the things on CJ McCollum's resume that does commend him.

58:26but surprisingly the career of C.J. McCollum will outpace the guy that I'm actually going to take but the high of this guy if this poor guy didn't get hurt was superior to any high that C.J. McCollum experienced and so I'm taking Victor Aladipo

58:48Bill Simmons:it was going to be a question of where he went two time all star Yeah. Underrated injury. What if guy, right? Exactly. The defense is the thing with him, especially made all defensive first team led the league and steals made one all NBA third team, one most improved player, um, all rookie first team. So like he came in with that at that number one, I mean, number two overall pick in, in the draft. And I think he, we kind of validated it. Like he showed us, he, he did, um, lead a team in, in, uh, scoring in, in a playoff series. So it just was, you know, never promised fulfilled because of the injury situation.

59:37Bill Simmons:2018 23 5 and 5 led the league in steals 37 % from 3 so he gets picked by Orlando OKC ends up stealing him in the Ibaka trade and then takes him with Sabonis and flips him for Paul George and Old Depot goes to Indiana and becomes a star I actually deep I went on a rabbit hole with the Pacers Cavs series from 2018 do you guys remember this series round one seven didn't it seven games went seven there's a game five that's on the last five minutes of it on youtube it's in cleveland series tied 2-2 they get a lebron turnover with like 26 seconds left and they call time out and it's basically old depot to win the game oladipo is at the top they've been trapping him the whole fourth quarter but they it's just lebron and oladipo he beats lebron goes to the basket and LeBron fucking stuffs it off the, and blocks it and gets the ball.

1:00:35Bill Simmons:This was like, I think LeBron in that 2018 playoffs was the greatest version of him. Timeout, comes down, LeBron hits the game-winning three. Block three, and then it goes to seven. And they hung around in seven too, but the Cleveland won in seven. But he went toe-to-toe with LeBron that whole series. I think he had 30 in game seven. But you left that series thinking like, what an incredible trade. They got Oladipo and Sabonis for Paul George. Like that was an everybody wins trade, but he made the all-star team the next year and then he got hurt and started having knee problems. They fucked up the surgery on it and he was never, never the same.

1:01:12Bill Simmons:Where'd you have him, Kyle? Did you have him around here? Taurus Patellerton in too, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah. Just, just because of the arc and the body of work. Yeah. I ended up with him at 13, but I'm kind of, um, it's, I guess it's something about the spirit of this exercise is are we, are we doing this like a battle world type scenario where the peak version of this person it's whatever you want on a team no you get the career he had you can't it's the career that the career he had you're basically saying this is probably what would have happened now in his case bad luck with the injury but you know the uh what's interesting is we were talking about like how many guys are left from this class like still active it's crazy you go back like 2011 six guys is still active.

1:01:55It was amazing to me as I was going back the years. You mentioned LeBron. Yeah. And I got to 2011. I was like, Jesus Christ, we get to go all the way back and LeBron is still, it just really hammered home. You were talking about all the different and like whether or not AD was the best player in the world. There's so many different years where we would argue about like, oh yeah, this guy's the best player in the world. It's like LeBron, it just further cemented it to me. It's just like, God damn, LeBron's unbelievable, man.

1:02:22Bill Simmons:He has so many I'm formulating a LeBron Zag case for there is a case the career dwarfs the peak of Jordan I personally would make it did you read what I wrote? no I know yeah yeah I've had the same revelation recently yeah because you go through and there's just so many crazy games I was looking through his advanced metrics and there's just there's years where he's just like plus 21 on off you know like crazy crazy shit and a lot of playoff moments i had so many playoff moments that i literally forgot about the 2018 pacers series like a block to save the game and then a game-winning buzzer beating three in the other end and then happened in a row um kyle you have two picks you Well, let's see.

1:03:13I have good bookends here with Draymond and Lillard. I don't really know what we're going to do with Giannis if we're imagining these teams literally playing each other. Maybe Draymond can take that assignment. I need some. I feel like I have to take CJ, though.

1:03:29Bill Simmons:I feel like the reunion of Damon CJ. They're back. I'm trying to trade them already. Patriots in the house. and a good run. Here will be my argument for this, is that if you look at the way that CJ Dame played with Nurkic, you'd get a better defensive player than Nurkic at the same kind of fulcrum playmaker. Because they talked about trading for Draymond at one point, right? Or he thought about going there. There was some conversation about that. Yeah, I think if you paired Lillard and CJ with Dame, that would be a good offensive start. I've got other questions to answer, but he's too good to pass up here for me.

1:04:08So I'll go ahead and since House took Oladipo, I'll go ahead and take CJ.

1:04:12Bill Simmons:House, I was surprised with CJ just steady 20 for like 13 years. He's 19.5 points a game, regular season 20 in the playoffs. Like that's, if he's on the court, he's getting 20 basically. Yeah, no all-star appearances, no all NBA teams, a most improved player award, which is not nothing. but you know the the coming from the patriot league it's a hell of a career plus you know the um esteem that his peers hold him in um and what he did with the the basketball you know the players association and you can see him going from you know at these end of career moments he was awesome in washington not only was he good for the the young guys he was tremendously complimentary of the organization in a way that, that really, you know, build up, um, excitement in Washington for what Washington was, was doing.

1:05:06Um, CJ McCollum did that.

1:05:07Bill Simmons:I liked him as a playoff guy. I don't like him as a, should we have a second apron or not, uh, vote. Cause you know, he was involved in that second apron thing, which is really bad. Um, okay. So you took CJ McCollum with one pick, Kyle, man, who's the other pick? oh I'll go I but we can't take another non-shooter um I think I'm gonna go with Harrison Barnes with my pick I had him next all right really solid career Harrison Barnes um right place right time too in the cap spike 2016 where the Warriors decide they're gonna go for Durant and Dallas is scrambling and they're like we'll give you 90 million for four years or whatever they gave up.

1:05:55Bill Simmons:I think it was a sign-in trade too. But yeah, still around now on San Antonio trying to get a ring. Can I read you what Joe House said during the draft diary? Absolutely. Harrison Barnes gets taken seventh, so we make a bunch of he's got to be ecstatic. He didn't go to Sacramento jokes. This is what I wrote. Jacoby and I both noticed that Golden State's starting five, Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, Barnes, David Lee, and Andrew Bogut looks sneaky good on paper. Right until House says, quote, you left out the part that Curry and Bogut will get hurt. They're paying$25 million per year to Richard Jefferson and Andres B.

1:06:34Bill Simmons:Adrins, and their coach was just involved in a sex extortion scandal with a stripper. That was Mark Jackson. And then I wrote, yeah, but still. So House, you were not a going state believer in 2012. I stand by it. Put it on your resume. I stand by it. You stand by it, okay. Well, how about this? Did I know that they were going to acquire Steve Kerr and make him the head coach immediately on the heels? You didn't believe the record states for itself. I didn't believe in Mark Jackson. I can tell you that much. You have the next pick, and I'm going to guess you're not taking Andre Drummond. I kind of want to, because pedigree-wise, he's impactful.

1:07:21Like two all-star appearances. four-time, led the league in rebounding. He has an all-NBA team. I was stunned looking at his resume. Was it four rebounding titles? Yeah. Yeah, four rebounding titles. I actually think he could be an X-Pen. I think, I mean, the problem is I'm immediately conceding I have the worst team in this. And the reason is because the number two spot in this draft format that we have is a dead man's land. Because you guys are getting two guys at a time. Here they go. And it makes no sense whatsoever for this team, except for Andre Drummond is a three-point shooter at this stage in his career.

1:08:02Pretty, look at, man. He's standing in the corner knocking down threes. I'm taking Andre Drummond.

1:08:10Bill Simmons:He went ninth in 2012 to Detroit. And he's going to house his team right now. And in my draft diary that I wrote, he was dropping a little bit and they showed him. It's really funny. The camera just stayed on him, and he kind of looked at the camera and had this sad smile, and all of us liked him after, where he had this smile like, I'm a nice guy. Can't somebody draft me? Everybody likes him. And we were all kind of in on him. And then from my draft diary, Billis mentions that Drummond shot 29 % on free throws last year. What? Jacoby Yelps with a mouthful of meatballs? Mouthful of meatballs? I'm out on Drummond.

1:08:49Bill Simmons:how 29 % in college it's like he yikes he was on a UConn team that should have been a lot better that had Jeremy Lamb that was not a great sign but yeah I was going to say do we get the youthful athleticism of Andre Drummond with the sage wisdom of the corner threes but then I was going to say it's going to be a crowded elevator man it's kind of a crowded phone booth you got going there with Rudy Gobert You better hope AD's shooting development comes around under your watch. I've got all three levels. Because I got AD in the mid-range. Gobert is there for offensive rebounding. And Drummond's my corner three guy with Oladipo kick and shoot.

1:09:31Bill Simmons:Yeah, plus there's a lot of perimeter guys left. House still might be in this. I don't think House is done. I'm taking Contavious Caldwell-Pope with my pick. He went number eight in the 2013 draft. Two rings. 2020 Lakers 2023 Nuggets in those the stats for him in those series in the playoffs combined 11 points a game 38 % from three and basically played like 32 minutes a game played real minutes so we know for a fact this is a guy who can be the 3 and D guy on a championship team because he did twice six year stretch where he was 11 points a game for 39 % and And somebody that I thought clutch in the ringers, Rich Paul, did a masterful job just continuing to get him money and leveraging the Lakers and other people.

1:10:23Bill Simmons:But I know I can compete with him. And then I'm just going to... Can I do this? Hold on. Let me... Oh, yeah. Yeah.

1:10:37Bill Simmons:Eh? Can I do this? Eh? You know what? I need... Yeah. I'm going to take Dennis Schroeder here. Oh, wow. Interesting. Okay. Only because I need one more guard for my team. And there's a couple swings left, but I have swings. Dennis Schroeder, 17th pick in 2013. He's been on 11 teams. Did any of them ever end up liking the experience after the fact? We're going to find out on mine. Two OKC years, 17 points a game for them. and pretty good shooting stats. That was kind of the peak for him and a really great international guard. Somebody that anytime we were playing Germany internationally, he was always just terrifying.

1:11:24Bill Simmons:I've always kind of liked him. And even in the playoffs, he's annoying. Like he's got a lot of confidence and he's going to fit in perfectly with my team. So Caldwell Pope, Schroeder, two guys who have been in a lot of playoff games house. Yeah, I don't mind Schroeder at all. I thought that he was one of the more fearless guys on Cleveland in that playoff run just last year. Yeah. Those Schroeder-Struis minutes were kind of vital for them competitive-wise because those guys were out there getting after it. And I always hold him in high regard for what he did for Germany. I know it's kind of a silly thing, but he's a dog.

1:12:09Bill Simmons:He's a dog for Germany. We both care about that stuff. Your thoughts, Kyle, man? I just love Al's being happy for Germany. I didn't expect that. No, I mean, Schroeder has like the Rod Strickland, Robert Pack thing going on where the IMDb is just like, it's a different, it's just like an anthology show where he leaves town at the end of every episode. It's like, that was fun. And then somebody else talks themselves into him. You're right. It's like the Ted McGinley thing. Even Sacramento is like, oh, look at him in Detroit. Here's a weird contract. and almost immediately they're trying to get out of it.

1:12:45Bill Simmons:All right. How's your up again? I have absolutely no idea what to do here because all that's left in terms of pedigree, guys that I like are all big guys. I can't take it. What are you talking about? There's some other perimeter guys. I know, but I mean, in terms of who it should be and who I'm stepping over, I don't know. Do I really want to do this? Do it. Do the dumbest thing possible so you can definitely lose the draft. I think I know what's going to happen, but yeah. God, man. I mean, it's all big guys. You're doing another big guy? No, I'm not. But I think that there's two or three big guys I have ahead of who I'm about to take.

1:13:32I can't do that. There's no way.

1:13:38Bill Simmons:I didn't realize House was going to take so much time trying to figure this out. this is hard and i'm the indecisive one yeah here we go yeah well i i i put myself into a corner with this one because i can't even you might as well lean into the bit you may it's the same guy like it's either robert covington or jay crowder that's where i'm at i have to choose between one of those two that's not what i thought you were gonna say yeah go ahead go ahead I guess I'll take Crowder I guess I'll take Crowder that's where I'm gonna land you need a guy that can hit threes and can guard some wings and there's some unanswered questions but no yeah I like Jake Crowder I mean he's got a crazy playoff I had it written down here he's 115 playoff games in 11 seasons and over 3 ,200 playoff minutes that's near the highest in these two classes.

1:14:34He was just on competitive teams over and over and over again. Another giant defensive impact guy too. Like I love the defense on my team so far. I have a great defensive team. So you took Crowder? I did. I took Crowder.

1:14:47Bill Simmons:Listen, I had him close. We saw him in four seasons be a legitimate 3 and D guy for good teams. 2016-17 Boston. Boston made the conference finals in 17. He was 14 and five, 37 % three-pointer. He could guard a bunch of different guys. I liked him when he was on the Celtics. And then he was on teams that lost the finals back-to-back years. Miami, 2020. Suns, 21. And played big minute. He played 32 minutes a game for those teams. Hit threes. And, you know, it was very similar to Caldwell Pope. I thought him and Caldwell Pope, I had trouble trying to figure out who to take between those guys. Kyle, you'll have a starting five after this pick, so you're up next.

1:15:32I'm going to take Steven Adams. See, that's who I wanted to take, but it didn't make any sense for my team. I almost took him too. House, you should have just done it because that would have just been hilarious. Your team would have been a rugby team that would have been not fun to play. Well, it's not too late. There are still some big guys that I like. No, I think with the shooters that I have, especially with Draymond and Steven Adams it'll be a little interesting but he's like one of the best offensive rebounders alive so I think he's going to be a good fit with those guards.

1:16:07Bill Simmons:17 through 20 was 13 and 9 somehow he's still only 33 years old when he came into the league when he was like 17. Alright so here are our starting fives now as we head toward the benches Kyle has the first pick of the next round I have Giannis, Beal Middleton, Caldwell, Pope, and Schroeder. It's a team that actually makes sense together. House has Gobert, Davis, Oladipo, Drummond, and Crowder. So it needs some more perimeter. And Kyle has Adams and Draymond, CJ and Dame, and Barnes. So that looks like a basketball team. But this is a big pick right here. Who are you taking, Kyle? I feel like I need a wing.

1:16:53so I am going to you took Jake Crowder

1:16:58Bill Simmons:I really hope you take somebody that I don't want to take when I'm up there's a guy I just don't want to end up with I think I'm picking between two dudes here based on this guy's peak how good he was at his best do it I think I'm going to take Robert Covington Oh, I wasn't expecting that. I don't feel that bad about it. Yeah, that's a pretty good pick. He's going to, I think defensively, I'm going to have a pretty good team too. Granted, he fell off a cliff at one point. Robert Covington somehow undrafted in 2013, even though we had a slew of busts. So he, I didn't remember this. He was fourth in the defensive player of the year voting in 2016.

1:17:47Bill Simmons:Somehow didn't make an all-defense team, but then made first all-defense in 2017. And from 15 to 19, was 13 a game, 36 % from three. And was a legit defensive guy. I remember when the Celtics played the Sixers in 18, that was kind of the unraveling of the Roco was a really big guy for like the basketball ball community and the advancement. And then we just left him open for the entire series in 18 and he couldn't make anything. And I thought that was where it was like, we're sure this guy's good he ends up being in the jimmy butler trade the next year never really got it back but his peak is defensively he was he was a little jaded mcdanielsey there for a couple years i i'm having a little remorse as you were saying all that but i think i i still like him there's not a lot left house please take the guy i don't want to take do we do we we're still going with this thing yeah we have more pit we're taking eight each like there's 24 good players for these two two drafts because you know i'm not i can't do it i'm not gonna take that guy it would be super funny though anthony bennett definitely not anthony bennett just take your guy out on porter i know i i just looked at it the problem is that um covington presents better than than porter the body of work.

1:19:19And Porter's best trait is a high three-point average.

1:19:25Bill Simmons:Yeah, 40 % for his career. I was shocked by that. That's very good. Those were the two I was picking between. Yeah. The leaving open thing made me feel queasy like I'd made a mistake. But yeah. He stuck around a long time. I don't have it handy in front of me. How many playoff games did he play in? It wasn't very many. Wasn't very many. He played 527 games total. Yeah. So that's the issue. Had a really good one season on the Bulls after the Wizards traded him. Yes. And then they kind of died after that. Who are you taking as? Otto Porter. Oh, that is your pick. You seem so begrudging about it.

1:20:00Okay.

1:20:01Bill Simmons:I think that was a fair pick.

1:20:07Bill Simmons:God, this sucks. I'm just not happy about this. crying on the yacht over here with your Giannis number one pick and come on. No, I just hate this guy. I don't hate him. Hate him. I sports hate him. Oh, man. God damn it.

1:20:30I don't even know who it is. I don't even have a guess. I'm going to take Evan Fournier. Yeah, okay. I looked at him for a minute. What's there to hate?

1:20:42Bill Simmons:He played 19 playoff games and won three in his entire career. He's three and 16 in the playoffs. Just was a classic. From 17 to 21, 17 points a game, 37 % from three. And another guy who, when you watched him internationally, seemed way more dangerous than he did in the NBA. Who was the Knicks GM that gave him that contract? The Knicks. Who was it? I can't remember. It was before Leon and. Yeah, it was whoever. Was it Walsh? Scott Perry. Perry? Yeah, that was bad. Well, anyway, we're only asking him for some six-man stuff. I had that written down, too. He had a few years in a row there where you look at the numbers, and if you didn't know about him, I feel like years from now, we'll have to contextualize that for the younger generation.

1:21:30This 48 guy seems pretty good. And then there's another guy who should go over this guy,

1:21:36Bill Simmons:but I'm going to take only because I need another big guy. I've seen him in big games. He killed Joe House. His team wins. Kelly Olenek. He did do that. From 2015 to 23, he was a 10 and 5, 37 % from 3 in 22 minutes a game. And he was basically the seventh man on a conference finalist in 2017. So you could win with him. My daughter, one of her first favorite players, used to call him Father Kelly, thought he looked like a priest in a kid show. And then he tried to break Kevin Love's elbow for some reason in 2015, which was pretty weird and probably changed the course of the finals. But I forgot that he signed with Miami as a free agent too.

1:22:24Bill Simmons:Heat Culture tried to step in on him. You don't remember this? Left the 2017 Celtics, Heat Culture came flying in off top rope for him. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, I had him on House of Carbs. You did. When he was playing for Miami. Yeah. And he was there. Oh, no, it was just after he left Miami. He really liked playing for Spoh. He really liked playing for Spoh. He's like, that guy is smart. Everyone loves Spoh. All right, House, you're up again. You have Davis, Gobert, Oladipo, Drummond, Crowder, and Porter. Well, I have a couple guys that have a tendency to miss some games. I have some. I'm not going to do it.

1:23:06Nope. I need some front court fill-in. Wow. And I'm looking at my list. The guy that's played the most games of anybody on here remaining is... Jonas Valanciunas. Oh, yeah. Jonas Valanciunas. No, Jonas was in this.

1:23:24Bill Simmons:He was in the 11 draft. He was a stash. We don't get him. Oh, okay. damn I knew I fucking knew house was gonna cheat in this it's like no you have him on this this uh this warplest but he took a he took a year he was in the 11 draft we okay he was drafted in the 11 draft we did yeah I wanted I didn't do that team but yeah can't do it um okay then I'll just take Patrick Beverly that's fine I have a certain he counts either doesn't count either wait oh wait Wait a minute. I need to look at who's in these drafts then. It was his first year. House, just take Tim Hardaway Jr. Okay. He's the best guy on the board.

1:24:05Bill Simmons:I'll take him. Another shooter for you. Weirdest team. Tim Hardaway Jr., career 14 points a game, 37 % from three. Your team needed some shooting. He's there to help Miami now. He's the shooter for Miami. But how did he get to Miami? I'm just asking. just asking how did he get there on a short deal that's weird excited for the response to this Kyle man you're up well Tim Hardaway's off the board I'm so crestfallen I don't know if I can continue I have five draftable guys left so this is perfect hmm there's a sneaky one that we haven't mentioned that is on here I don't think I'm going to take him I don't think I should take a big.

1:24:54I should probably just go BPA here. I'll go with... I'm going to go with a microwave guy. You would not have expected me to do this, I don't think. I'm going to take Terrence Ross. Oh, you just stole him from me! I like that pick. Damn it! I thought that I was going to get away with it. Terrence Ross, this is one of my awards. Yeah, this is most likely to resurface with a social media clip was a problem. Oh, yeah. That's true. And I actually started making the highlight reel, so I'm going to put that out here soon. He was just a lather scorer, man. He could get going. I'm not going to lean on him hard.

1:25:35Come in and score some points. Spackle for me. That's all I need.

1:25:39Bill Simmons:He played 11 years and averaged 11 a game and was a good 36 points percentage from three. But I think his most famously was just thrown into every fake trade rumor for like four years. when he was in Toronto. It was always like, and Terrence Ross, and just always seemed to be floating around. His contract was, he was making$10 million a year for like five years. And his contract always fit with other contracts. Now this is the right time to take him. Who's your other pick? With my other pick? This is going to be your last pick. You have Dame, Draymond, CJ, Barnes, Adams, Covington, and Terrence Ross.

1:26:19Bill Simmons:One more. I wanted to take Seth. curry do you have a kentucky guy yet no i'm not that biased if it's the right pick it's the right pick uh nerlin's you're taking nerlin's no no i'm saying you were talking about the draft footage it was the nerlin's sad face draft footage was pretty was pretty brutal during that broadcast um i was i gotta say i was not a fan heading into that draft i didn't even though i knew the talent was there. I just don't like skinny big guys like that. And it didn't seem like he could shoot at all. He was a shot blocker, not a real check. He just chased everything. It's like, Will Barton?

1:26:58I don't think so.

1:27:02Let's see. It's a shit sandwich here. I'll take Mason Plumlee as my backup.

1:27:09Bill Simmons:Thank God. I was going to take him. No interest whatsoever. I was going to have... Because then Kelly Olenek would have had somebody to live with. Um, Mason Plumlee. And I think we had both Plumlee's were available in the mega draft because they were in the one was in 2012 and the other was in 2013. He was in 2013 drafted by Brooklyn first 10 years, nine and seven house 23 minutes a game. Yeah. He would have fit in on your team. All right. I agree. House, your last pick is what? Good. Seth Curry. I like the, um, character. I like his golf game. He's the worst Curry at golf. That makes me feel better.

1:27:49I know that he and I would get along great. His three-point shooting percentage is effing phenomenal. I mean, this guy had a single elite skill. It was making mostly open three-pointers. That's a really important role. And he played it for, you know, he turned that into a lengthy career for himself. Seth Curry, I feel good about that as a last overall pick.

1:28:14Bill Simmons:Married to our beloved Kelly Curry. beloved son-in-law of our beloved doc rivers beloved um brother-in-law of austin rivers who we also love but yeah that's the right spot for him and uh honestly i couldn't be happier because i like the team that i have i was really hoping i could take this guy as the last pick he's lived on beyond his basketball career in other ways um on the rewatchables we have a category named after him, the Dion Waiters for best heat check. He was a beloved Grantland guy and a beloved ringer guy for a couple years too. 13 points a game in 8 years. He only played 419 games and won a ring on the Lakers as a bench guy.

1:29:00Bill Simmons:Dion Waiters. I thought it would be great if he was the last pick in the draft and somehow this worked out. I wrote in my draft diary, Cleveland took him fourth. I wrote, they just tabbed explosive Syracuse guard, Deion Waiter, setting themselves up for an easy, anytime you could take the Big East six man of the year with the fourth pick in an NBA draft, you have to do it joke. That was kind of it. He was always destined to be a six man. And I still like his game. I actually think his career should have been better, Kyle. I like physical scoring guard. I remember when I was doing all the pods with KD, we talked about him for like five minutes on one of the pods where I was like, because he played with him in OKC.

1:29:43Bill Simmons:I was like, why isn't Deion Waiters? Like, why aren't we talking about him as like an all-star? And I think he was one of those guys all the other players really respected, but could just never put it together. There's like that Chucky Atkins award where you talk to other players. And I'm dropping some random 90s names on this show. But like, you listen to other players talk and they'd be like, yeah, Chuck could play. And you'll hear NBA players be like, Cam Reddish is another dude like that. and then they just don't stick for whatever reason. I feel like the ultimate culmination of all of this for The Ringer is if we could get some film director out there that listens to this show to put Dion Waiters in a movie in one scene.

1:30:20To be the Dion Waiters? Yeah. Where he really goes for it. Yeah. I think it might tear a hole in the space-time continuum, but it seems like a good idea to me.

1:30:29Bill Simmons:Honestly, that's a great idea. So the two guys that didn't get drafted that I thought might were Jeremy Lamb and Will Barton. And Will Barton probably should have been drafted, but it was more fun to take Seth Curry. What about Aaron Baines, role player? Oh, interesting. Yeah, if we'd gone 10-man rosters. All right, here are the final rosters. Kyle Mann, Dame, Draymond, McCollum, Barnes, Adams, Covington, Terrence Ross, Mason Plumlee. So you have size. You have shooting. I guess you're turning the team around the two Portland guards. Covington is a shutdown guy. I kind of like that team. House has Anthony Davis and Gobert, Oladipo, Drummond, Jake Crowder, Otto Porter, Hardaway Jr., and Seth Curry.

1:31:22Bill Simmons:I think he's tanking for the 2014 draft. I want to be in the relegation zone like Brooklyn. Oh, wait, they can't get the pick. All right, go ahead. Go ahead, Bill. So Giannis, my team is Giannis, Beal, Middleton, KCP, Schroeder, Fournier, Olenek, and then Dion Waiters is my eighth man. So we're going to have to, we'll do a social media graphic. We're going to open up to the people and we'll have votes. I think my team could beat your team. I agree. I like, J. Kyle Mann's team is the best team. It's a pretty good team. And my team is definitely the worst. We'll see if people agree. I think we can get you guys.

1:32:02You're good. You're good. I have a very good defensive team.

1:32:07Bill Simmons:This is fun. I mean, how sad is it that we had two drafts together and by the end of it, the last round was Plumlee, Seth Curry, and Deion Waiters. Like, we couldn't even get to 25 guys. Then Jeremy Lamb, we forgot to mention, was the linchpin of the James Harden trade. He's Jeremy Lamb, Kevin Martin, and the 12th pick, which turned out to be... Which turned out to be... Did I screw that up before? Yeah, Harden was gone already. I screwed that up. When we were talking, Kyle, about the 2012 Thunder. Yeah. No, he was on the 12 team. He was traded in 13, right? Adams was in the 12. I didn't screw that up then.

1:32:52Bill Simmons:No, Adams, I did screw that up. Adams was in the 13. Yeah, so they had already made that trade because they made that trade after the 2012 finals. It was going into the 12-13 season when they traded him. Yeah, that 12 pick was one of the things they got in Houston trade. So I'll clarify that. All right, any last thoughts, House? No, I'm glad to be done with this. You didn't have a good time? Jesus Christ. Huh? You didn't have fun? What do you mean? No, I had a great time. I'm just saying we got to a point in this draft and you just spread the names off. Like, what are we? Is it Cody Zeller time?

1:33:34Bill Simmons:honestly, it could have been. We're just guys naming dudes. There was... That's right. Just guys naming dudes. Jory Dang, can't believe he didn't get taken. I can. I can believe it. Michael Carter-Williams won the Rookie of the Year, didn't get taken in a 24-pick draft. Incredible. I'd rather have Moe Harkless. Anthony... Moe Harkless didn't get taken. Anthony Roberson didn't get taken. Austin Rivers didn't get taken. John Henson. Mike Muscala yeah Tomas Santoranski yeah Kid Gilchrist a whole bunch of people alright guys a true pleasure thank you as always for being on the Mega Draft we're gonna take a break come back with Justin Barrett right after for adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms every choice matters Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

1:34:37If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremphaya, proper training is required. Tremphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit TremphiaRadio.com.

1:35:16Bill Simmons:This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team. Nice. Imagine the player contract report is due today. Not so nice. You've got performance notes from the coaching staff. You got a salary spreadsheet from your analyst, three rounds of back and forth emails with the agent, and all of it is scattered absolutely everywhere. Well, that's where chat GBT work comes in. It's a new way to use chat GBT for bigger multi-step projects. Give chat GBT work access to your apps and files and can create real work documents. For instance, spreadsheets, slides, structured reports.

1:35:52Bill Simmons:You can bring all those to your next meeting when you don't need answers, you need help just getting the work across the finish line. Chat GPT work can move your projects forward while you stay in control. Put Chat GPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started. Just go to chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. This mailbag is brought to you by Chat GPT, the Bill Simmons podcast AI sponsor. Yeah, you heard me. ChatGBT helped me very recently sift through this Portland Trailblazers situation that we're about to talk about with Justin Barrier. And I was going to do a mailbag segment just all the way through for this, but I'm going to read one Portland email and then we'll talk to Barrier.

1:36:45Bill Simmons:This is from Fred. Huge kudos for continuing to call attention to Tom Dundon's extremely transparent plans to cheap out on the Blazers, piss off the good people of Portland, and eventually move them somewhere else. But there's a lingering big question for you. What happened to your regular use of El Cheapo when referring to Dundon? This is one of the most elite nicknames we've ever had for a sports team owner, and every time he usually made a laugh, why did you retire it? Did Dundon send you a cease and desist? Only it was a low-budget lawyer of male cease and desist printed on a square of single-plied Charmin.

1:37:21Bill Simmons:Just keeps going and going. I did not retire El Cheapo. I actually forgot to keep calling him El Cheapo. So we're going to bring Barrier in and I'm going to make a bunch of El Cheapo comments. So this is a one-question mailbag because we're covering the Blazers and El Cheapo. All right, Justin Barrier is here. You can hear him on the ringer nba show he pops on the ringer website from time we've been working together for a long time and a couple years ago varrier moved to portland oregon and i talked about on a mailbag recently um i'm really horrified by this tripwazer situation i'm not against relocation if basketball just doesn't and hasn't worked in an nba city and if the history is messed up or there's real reasons to do it.

1:38:13Bill Simmons:Portland, I used to call them the soccer moms. It was the only team in town. They genuinely loved them. They won the 1977 title, which I think once you win a title, you should never have to leave. And they get this new owner, Tom Dundon, AKA El Cheapo, buys the team. Just had a lot of success with the Carolina Hurricanes, wins the Stanley Cup. At the same time, he is seemingly torpedoing his relationship with the city of Portland and trying to get out of a lease that ends basically right before the season would start in 2030. And we could talk about some ramifications. Before we get into anything, just give me the mood in Portland right now, because I know this is a big topic.

1:38:56Yeah, I mean, the Blazers are obviously a huge deal here. And I think there would be more excitement about the upcoming season if Dundon started to serve dead cat in the concessions. and that was the only option because he has just taken what was a pretty good momentum going in off of last postseason, going into this season where the team is really competitive. We'll see about long-term ceiling, but there's like clearly something brewing after a couple of years of just going through the tanking process. And all of that is gone to the point where like on a daily basis at this point, everyone is fearful that not only is this guy trying to screw them over, but also trying to do anything that he can get a good deal.

1:39:36And if he doesn't get it, he's going to go wherever he can get it.

1:39:39Bill Simmons:And he's done all kinds of money cutting stuff, which if we did case by case, some of it, it's like, all right, I, yeah, maybe coaches shouldn't make 30 million for five years and you fire them after one. But he zagged the other way. And it's like, I'm going to pay my coach for one year. We're not going to have a lot of assistance. I'm going to, I don't really want to pay a lot for my broadcasters. Why do we have this many salespeople? And just goes through and just chops it, which is what he did in Carolina. the difference here is the arena and the language that he's been using. And the, the phrase first class experience is the phrase we're using where it seems like they're latching onto that as a way to get out of this.

1:40:24Bill Simmons:And there's a backstory with it where the Allen family that owned it, they gave the arena to the city of Portland. They sold it to them for$1. It's Portland owns the arena. it's allegedly not a state-of-the-art arena anymore. You've been there a bunch of times. I haven't been there since 2010. You can see, if you see the arena itself, their suites are pretty high. I don't know. Do they that badly need a new arena? What's your take on that? I think it depends on who you talk to. If you're talking to NBA players and people throughout the league who are used to a certain metropolitan lifestyle and like just a sort of class of like new stuff going on.

1:41:05I do think it probably pales in comparison to that. I'm on the same mindset as you probably. I actually think the zag in modern sports is actually to go something with a little bit more history and just like you could feel the weight of previous teams that have gone by because they put new big screens in there last year. Yeah. And certainly that adds a little bit of luster to it. But like it's fine as an arena. I just don't know what people expect from an arena experience. You're going there to see the game, not to see all these flashing lights and these big screens there. But if you were to talk to people who are used to going to other arenas, they would say like, all right, it hasn't been renovated since I think it was built originally.

1:41:44And it probably is behind sort of where things have been moving.

1:41:47Bill Simmons:Right. Mid-90s, there's a whole new wave of arenas that are better and more suite friendly. I remember, I think I remember this correctly. They built it so the seats are closer to the court because they don't have hockey. so it's tight and I like that there weren't I just thought like you're surrounded by fans because the suites are higher I thought the experience itself of going there was great but obviously he's not going to care about that there's been a lot of good stuff written about this and I've tried to read as much of it as possible basically can they relocate and what are the rules to that and could he just do it and basically be like, come sue me, like Al Davis, basically in the Raiders.

1:42:32Bill Simmons:The biggest thing that seems to be working against him is that that lease expires literally right before the 2030 season start, 2030, 31. The lease expires on like October 11th, but you have to file for a relocation before that if you're going to switch teams. And there's all this stuff in the lease that's like, if you file for relocation, huge penalties, we can sue you, all this stuff. So he'd almost have to figure it out. And I remember Seattle and Oklahoma city were in a little bit of a situation somewhere where you had the limbo year in the arena, but everybody knows you're leaving. And if he's going to leave, I think that would be one outcome.

1:43:10Bill Simmons:The other one is he could just be like, make up shit and just be like, we're moving. And then test the NBA, which nobody has done for a long time. Nobody's just been like, we're moving. This is my franchise. It's a free country. I'll do what I want. We haven't seen that in forever. Yeah, that's where I wonder where the NBA's position in all of this is. I don't think that they can come out publicly because Adam Silver basically answers to the owners. They are basically his boss and come out and basically undercut Dundon's leverage in negotiations and basically put out there that he's not going to let them go to Seattle or Vegas.

1:43:48I think the assumption is that those are off the market. And then the other options just don't seem all that attractive. But I don't think Silver can come out and say that. I'm curious how much soft power he's wielding behind the scenes, how much other owners are saying things to perhaps chill the situation. But in a weird way, I think the most optimism I feel is that Dundon has proven to be such a transparent, cutthroat maniac because ultimately he's looking for the best deal. And I think that Portland isn't in a position, they really don't have any leverage to not give him that. And so there's been a lot of bluster suggesting that they're going to try to push back on certain things.

1:44:24You've seen in recent days this first-class contingency. That became a big sticking point. It was in the previous agreement. So it really doesn't hold much bearing on things going forward. As you mentioned, it's part of the bridge agreement that they signed in 2024 under the Allen Ownership Trust in order to just get them to the next deal. But if anything, it seems like Dundon is just causing a stir over anything because he just wants them to commit to the deal that he thought that they had a handshake agreement with to begin with. And so it's tough to really reconcile because on the one hand, your logic brain is like, well, Portland's going to concede and give him$573 million to renovate an arena that, by the way, he said wasn't first class, which is why he needed the renovations to begin with.

1:45:13But on the other hand, he keeps bringing up these nutso things just to throw them off like kilter and to just sort of make things messy and chaotic in order to get his way. And maybe his way is just to go out of town. So it's hard to really reconcile the logic of it and just his general approach to things. It's tough because ultimately he has the nuclear bomb card. Yeah.

1:45:38Bill Simmons:If I leave, go look at Seattle. Seattle hasn't had a team since 2008. what is Portland if we don't have the Blazers, right? This happened to the Whalers in the NHL where the Whalers left Hartford. They moved to Carolina, ironically. And then Hartford, it's like, well, now you have AAA baseball and you're kind of near ESPN. And that's what Hartford is. You need these teams. They give you this credit. Look at what happened to the OKC, just getting the thunder. It completely transformed that city. So Portland has that piece. They also have a ton of history. They've had the team since 1970. The greatest sports book of all time was written about the Trailblazers.

1:46:18Bill Simmons:They've always had moments of relevancy. They made the finals in 1992. They had some fun stuff that happened during the Dame era. They had some Brandon Roy, a cup of coffee, maybe something happened. And pretty famously, a lot of bad luck with Bill Walton, Sam Bowie, Greg Oden. They've just been in the mix in all these ways. if I was a Blazer fan, I'd be really nervous because there's two things that conspiracy bill has noted. One is that you said the word chaotic, which I think is a good way to frame it. He also hasn't said anything or done anything, like literally not one thing that would endear himself to anybody in the city.

1:47:04Bill Simmons:Right. It almost seems like he's, it's like watching like marriage story with Adam driver and Scarlett Johansson, where they just, both of them want to break up and are just being as mean as possible to each other. Except in this case, it's only him. He doesn't seem to care about perception repercussions of anything. And then I think you said the NBA had to stay quiet. I don't know if I agree. Like I, I like where's Adam Silver being like, look, we don't want the team to move out of Portland. We've had a team there since 1970 and they have awesome fans like that is not going to be an acceptable solution for me.

1:47:40Bill Simmons:He just hasn't said anything. And it's very similar to the Stern thing. Stern, you could see where he was thinking in the mid 2000s. And I was talking about it in the moment, writing about it, where it felt like he almost wanted to make Seattle an example. Like If you don't invest in your arena and your team, they might leave. That might be how this goes. They kind of did that in Sacramento too. They brought this... Vivek came in and committed to building a new arena or else they would have left. And it just feels to me like a little bit of a hostage situation. How badly do you love your kid? Here's what it will cost or you might never see your kid again, right?

1:48:21Bill Simmons:This is really brutal stuff, I think. Yeah, one of my favorite things about sports is just kind of the relationship between the community and the sports team itself. Yeah. Like, it's one thing if the Grizzlies are successful. It's another team when that team, like, embodies the spirit of the city and the grit and grind thing. And they're basically have this almost symbiotic nature where, like, they're playing off of each other. Like, that's a special thing. And especially in modern times where, like, community is pretty fragmented at this point. Like there really only is internet sort of community and culture.

1:48:52And like some of the particular quirks of food and just the way dialect and everything else have almost been sanded down to like you don't really have anything. Like I honestly believe, and this might sound Pollyannish, like sports are really the only thing that we have left. And that matters everywhere. It matters particularly important than where the Blazers is really the only game in town. No offense to like the Timbers or the Thorns or the Fire who just started playing this year. It's like this is a Blazers town and it courses through the vein of this city, especially when they're good. Like Dame has a relationship with Portland and like I've never seen it before.

1:49:24It's more small market Kobe than it is a typical superstar with your team. And Dundon has proven that he does not give a shit about any of this stuff. All the things that we all care about as sports fans and his now customer base and his consumer base that he's going to have to, if he does decide to stay, try to get them to buy back into the team when he's proven that he doesn't want anything to do with it. He's just pissed off everyone and pissed over all of the history and everything that anybody cares about. And he brought the Whalers before the first day after they ratified his agreement. He has the team in his possession.

1:50:00and he goes down to LA to watch them play against the Clippers as his first game as the go-to owner. He's wearing a whaler's hat, which is just like such a fuck you symbol to everybody. He wasn't the one to move the whalers, but anybody who knows, as you just laid out, that was such like a craven pull of a team from a city that got left in the dust and hasn't been able to recover ever since.

1:50:23Bill Simmons:I was asking around, trying to figure out, why would he even buy this team? like good question like he's rich right he has a bunch of money obviously as a competitive guy and he's done it seems like a good job of the hurricanes which is a completely different league all these leagues are different right the w the challenges of owning a wmba team versus an nba team versus an nhl team you're just dealing with completely different things i don't understand why you would buy this team if you weren't buying into the community around the team in this city It's basically like, it's like somebody buying a house on a street because he likes the street and not the house.

1:51:04Bill Simmons:It's like, ah, as soon as I move in, I'm knocking that thing down. But as you're buying, you're like, no, no, I love it. I love the, I love the upstairs. The backyard's great. But in the back of your mind, you're like, I'm going to fucking take this thing down. And my fear for people in Portland is that he looked at what the expansion numbers would be, which everybody's saying between seven and eight. and he's like, ah, I could just steal Portland for 4.25, whatever it ended up being. And then I'll just move them somewhere else. And I think Kansas City is, I mentioned them a couple weeks ago and I think I was the first one to mention it.

1:51:42Bill Simmons:First of all, Kansas City can make an argument. They maybe should have a team. Like they've really grown. They have a state-of-the-art arena. They've hosted big events. I think the city's grown. They're in a part of the country that they don't really have. I think they would help. They'd help with conference alignment. But I wouldn't be Portland. And what's dangerous about Kansas City is they'll take any team. Portland's not moving to Seattle. Seattle doesn't want the Trailblazers. They have a long rivalry and a history. And they know what it's like when you lose a team. I don't think they're going to want that.

1:52:17Bill Simmons:They didn't really want Sacramento either. They want an expansion team. but I think Kansas City would be the one I'd be worried about, especially one of the minority owners is a St. Louis guy. Dundon's from Dallas. That's another thing that doesn't add up. You're from Dallas. You own Carolina. Why are you buying the Trailblazers, right? So that conspiracy bill, there's just a lot to work with with this and none of it is really that good for the city. Yeah, it would almost be like if there were only 30 houses in existence. And you just wanted one of those houses no matter where it was. Right. And he's just decided that, like, I just want one of these and I will take it wherever best suits my preferences.

1:52:57That was OKC.

1:52:59Bill Simmons:That's what they did with the Sonics. They were like, we're able to get in and we'll move them back to this is our master plan all up. Yeah. And it just like really brings up a really chilling proposition for the NBA where everything has gotten, the money has become so big now where everything is bigger business than it even was when I first started covering the league almost 20 years ago. Yeah. It just feels like we're getting, especially with all this VC money coming in, all the Saudi money slowly trickling into the league and some of this other stuff happening, where it's just becoming more for profit nakedly in a way that I wasn't really ever familiar with in sports.

1:53:34And it's almost like, what do you want from a franchise? Maybe Kansas City deserves a team. Maybe Austin deserves a team. I know that they've been mentioned. I don't see how that would work with San Antonio being right there.

1:53:45Bill Simmons:Austin's not getting a team. I think the Spurs are more likely they expand into Austin and play games there. They're not putting a team 75 miles from the Spurs. It makes no sense. And so I get that there might be slightly more attractive markets, but what does the NBA ultimately want? Portland has driven revenue when the team is good. These are diehard fans that support the team. This isn't somewhere like New Orleans, where I was for two years covering that team, where they had to try so hard just to drive interest to get people out there. When the team is good in Portland, people show up. It matters here.

1:54:19And so like, maybe if Seattle is coming, they're just like, oh, we don't need two Pacific Northwest teams. That's the really only case I can make for it. Otherwise, this is a shining example of a small market franchise. And as we've seen with this new CBA coming in, Adam's whole position is like, I want to make it so everybody can win. How can you strip out a small market team and go to your other small market owners and say like, hey, this is for everybody. It's not for everybody. It's actually then just becomes about the biggest market and the biggest profit.

1:54:45Bill Simmons:Yeah, I've had people ask me over the last couple of weeks because they could tell I was kind of mad about this Portland thing. Like, well, why don't you stick up for New Orleans the same way? And I think the difference is we still don't have evidence that the NBA works in New Orleans. And you could blame the owners. You could blame the city. It's not a big enough market, whatever you want to say, but it's just never worked. And despite the fact that they have, you know, a good handful, I don't know how many thousand fans. I don't think this franchise has ever been successful there. And we're going back to the seventies.

1:55:18Bill Simmons:They moved there already. You covered the team. And we've talked about this on pods before together. There's no, nothing you can point to and be like, see, no, no. For those three years, that's when it was kicking ass. It's just never worked. And I'm not sure they should have an NBA team. I feel way differently about Portland. Even Memphis, you mentioned earlier, like Memphis, if you're doing this over again, Memphis isn't going to get a team. That team's in Nashville. That's just the way it's going to go. But Memphis has proven that they can be a really awesome small market franchise. And that team is ingrained with that city in a really unique way.

1:55:55Bill Simmons:And I, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't wouldn't say they should move either. New Orleans would be the one I think you have to look at, unfortunately. Yeah. New Orleans has the pride, but it never really had the bones in basketball or any of the success needed to drive any sort of energy in that city, there have been flirtations with being a good team. But the best they've done is that team with Brandon Ingram where they challenged the Suns in the first round. And they were fun and scrappy and young, but then that quickly petered out. And so they really never hit the stretch of success that they would need in order to get people engaged regularly.

1:56:31And so there have just been a lot of teases that haven't amounted to anything.

1:56:34Bill Simmons:It's a football. It's pro and college football is what they care about in New Orleans. which is fine. Yeah. But when I was there, like LSU gymnastics sometimes would rate better than the Pelicans. Right. It was brutal. Right. Portland. But that one thing I did here was that, um, cause I, one of the things I was fascinated by is like, why did they let this guy buy the team? Why, why let El Chippo get in there? And apparently they only had two offers because, um, because the price of these teams in general have gone up. and then the arena deal was dicey and it's a smaller market. And then the city is definitely, you know, it's been a little topsy-turvy there for the last 10 years.

1:57:15Bill Simmons:And I just don't think they had a lot of people that wanted to buy in. Yeah, and that gets into the whole conspiracy theory about how much the real villain in the situation is really Jody Allen, who took over for Paul Allen after he died because she was kind of the steward of the trust here. And there was an offer years ago from Phil Knight, obviously a local guy who wanted to invest in the area and is getting up in age. And as you've seen with Oregon really wants to inject money into the area, into the sports team. It's really all he cares about seemingly. And it petered out quickly because the trust viewed it as a low ball.

1:57:51And it was also leaked to media and they didn't like the approach that he took. And that was kind of the end of the story. Otherwise, it was just this most recent patch here where it was the Dundon Group and Raj Sports, which also owns, I believe, the Thunder, excuse me, the Thorns. and the fire. And I think they're minor new orders for the Kings as well. And they went with Dundon and you have to wonder if the bridge agreement lease, which didn't have any protections in it to keep the team in Portland to make sure the next owners would still be in Portland, was set up so that someone could do exactly what Dundon is doing.

1:58:25And you have to start to wonder what was really in it for Jody or the trust because all that money is just going to go to charity. And so why did she set this up so that the team wouldn't just be here and well they obviously got they got snookered a

1:58:38Bill Simmons:little bit but this is so similar to me to howard schultz in seattle in the mid-2000s when um he just decided he had to sell the team and he was frustrated with the city and he sold it to this group that clearly was a dangerous threat to move it to oklahoma city and he said fuck it i'll do it anyway i just want to get out of this and he when we did the sonic boom podcast he was the secret villain of the Sonics leaving because he kind of knew what he was doing. It's like, if you're selling your house or your condo to somebody who's clearly going to knock down the house, you're going to have a moment where you're like, do it.

1:59:14Bill Simmons:How much do I love my house? Like, like this guy's going to come in and knock it down. I conspiracy bill also enjoys the Dallas piece of this with Dundon and is wondering if there's any possibility at all of a franchise swap, which we had not had for a long time. with Dallas and, um, that whole situation, which has been terrible. Maybe it's, maybe he switches, somebody buys Portland and the Adelson family ends up getting the Vegas expansion team. But I just, I just wonder if he bought this team partly as like a chess piece for some bigger move, whether it's moving it to Kansas city or St. Louis.

1:59:57Bill Simmons:I don't see NBA and St. Louis makes zero sense to me. Apologies to people in St. Louis. Sorry, but I don't see it. But Dallas is... That's the one there. I'm like, huh. This guy's from Dallas. This is Dallas's... Also, why didn't he just buy Dallas? Well, does that mean that we in Portland get Cooper flagged? Because I can tell you the one thing. Just swap franchises? Yeah, because one thing that would energize the local economy would be the Great White Hope coming to Portland. Bill Walton 50 years later? Yeah, I could see it happening. Yeah, so only two people wanted the team, apparently. And the arena thing is the biggest obstacle.

2:00:40Bill Simmons:You mentioned something earlier, though, about the new types of owners that are coming into the league. And this happened in soccer. Football's a little different because it's almost like it seems like these super rich families are moving in because it's... But in basketball, if you have the most money, you can basically make this part of your arsenal. This is something the Fenway Sports Group did where they bought the Penguin. They had the Red Sox. They bought the Penguins. they bought Liverpool and they're just kind of these rich stewards of the team you saw the Premier League almost get upended by all the money came in of people who weren't like traditional owners and what you said earlier like I do wonder is that where we're heading in the NBA people who they want to sit courtside and seem like a big shot and they just had a shitload of money to spend and they know the one thing that always goes up is the sports franchise and is this just who we're looking at next 20 years?

2:01:37Bill Simmons:People that don't care about a connection to a city. It's also in direct contrast with what Silver is proclaiming he wants the league to be about, which is these small markets we're putting in the second apron so that you don't have to spend over a certain limit. And that's the thing I don't really understand about this whole Dunton scenario because they keep proclaiming that they can't make money here. The area is dealing with economic struggles, which is very true and not something that I think anyone here would dispute. But one, the team has always done reasonably well considering its market size and the passion of its fan.

2:02:10And two, they're not spending money on the team. They brought in John Morant in a cash neutral deal. They didn't spend their mid-level exception. He's not going above and beyond. They're not even at the tax. It's not the first apron or the second apron. He's not even at the luxury tax at this point. And so it's just like his whole thing was coming into subprime money and that's his business. He's operating it more like someone that needs to really wring everything out of assets, which is why they went and swung the John Morant trade. They saw someone they can get for cheap, hopefully, that he could turn into something down the road.

2:02:43This isn't like big money coming in and we're just going to muscle everybody around. If anything, there were real concerns and rumors about whether or not this guy actually had the money to buy into the first place, because I believe he had to sell a piece of his NHL franchise in order to do it. And so it's just really all over the place. And I just don't know who this serves other than Dundon. All of this goes back to him getting what he wants and getting the best deal for himself. I don't see how anybody else, the NBA, Portland fans, Adam Silver, actually benefits for him being in this position.

2:03:18Bill Simmons:It's one of the most perplexing things about professional sports is when people buy a team and either don't take care of it, don't have the proper TLC or don't seem like they seem like they care how they're perceived by the fan base? And the answer is what we said before. Like he probably thought this was a good asset, probably leveraged himself to buy it and now is trying to wring out all the fat costs so that he can try to make it more profitable. This is something somebody said to me when the media deal happened that knows shit about these rich guy circles. It's like, these teams are becoming so prohibitively expensive to purchase.

2:04:02Bill Simmons:And this person was telling me, I think we're going to see stuff we haven't seen in the league in a long time. Like almost like back to the 70s and 80s with some of the cost cutting and weird trades. And by the way, we've been seeing it. And I honestly don't think that's why the Celtics traded Jalen, because if you look at the money standpoint, it didn't save them money for two of the three years, right? It's just they get out of that money in year three. But it was weird, you know? And the stuff with the Lakers, even what they just did and the stuff they put together and the Wall Street Journal reports that Mark Walter definitely seemed like he had a stroke or who knows how serious it was two years ago.

2:04:45Bill Simmons:And people are wondering, and that's like a heavy leverage team. I just, I don't know who's coming into the league. Like it's the weirdest time for owners since like the seventies when basically you and I could have bought a team in the seventies. We'd be like, I met this guy at Dan Tannis. He has money. I think we could buy, I think we could buy the Clippers. Um, but now it's, I don't know. I don't know who these owners are going to be. And then those are the guys who are on the committees. They're on the relocation committee. They're on the media committee. They're on the expansion committee.

2:05:14Bill Simmons:They're on the rules committee. And in the old days, they were people that really cared about the league and the sport. And I don't, are we still going to have that next generation of owners? I don't know. Yeah, it was like, it was stark when Para bought the Grizzlies originally, because that was like one of the first instances of tech money really filtering in beyond the big markets. And I think people took note of that, like, oh, things are changing here. This isn't a mom and pop shop. But I think the Walter deal with the Lakers was like the clearest indication of a family run business. one of the last few we have in this league, feeding it to a guy who is just ungodly wealthy and also backed by other money where we have to really start to question the source of it.

2:05:56And that's the whole thing. Things have been nipping at the fringes of this for a very long time, just kind of under the shroud of darkness. And the league has restrictions in place and so that VC money can't be a certain percentage of this and all this other stuff. But it's clearly eating away at things. And I do have to wonder if we're reaching a tipping point where we have an owner coming in without the money in order to really perhaps do this and then just completely strip mining it in order to run it as if it is a bare minimum proposition. And then complaining about not getting enough money to renovate an arena or else he'll just go wherever he wants.

2:06:33Like this is a pretty bad black eye for the NBA. And honestly, this is a pretty troubling stretch for the NBA pretty much this entire year with the tanking and everything like that. Honestly, Adam Silver has been at a crossroads for a while. I think this is really the moment where we really figure out if he's long for this position and like really what the rest of his legacy is going to be like. Because he came into this with a lot of fanfare by kicking out Sterling and doing a couple of things that I think a lot of people celebrated, which were in retrospect, pretty easy wins. Yeah. He's had a lot of big problems.

2:07:05And frankly, I've disagreed with practically all of them in this one more than any of them.

2:07:10Bill Simmons:Yeah. And it's as a commissioner, the bigger legacy here is. What do you stand for and who do you want to be? Right. Goodell in the NFL is pretty clear from day one. He's like, we are, you know, the most unstoppable business in America and everything is going to be about profits. And if we have to add games and, you know, jeopardize our players, we're doing it. If it's 17 games, 18 games, we're going. And that's worked for him. And that's why at least we know who he is and what he cares about. Silver, the first five years, I really thought was more in the I'm not Stern. I'm not like David Stern.

2:07:50Bill Simmons:I'm going to be more of a connector to the players and the owners. Here's my phone number. Ben Simmons. Yeah, right. I'm going to go. I'm going to do. I did the song conference thing with him in 2018. He was talking about, you know, really being concerned about the player's mental health. And, um, and lately the last couple of years, it just seems like finance revenue, money, finance driven is the job. And I don't know if that's the job. I think the job's a whole bunch of things in this case. You should care about Portland, a team that's about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the title. And, um, and a city, honestly, that kind of needs the team.

2:08:31Bill Simmons:You mentioned some of the stuff that's happened the last 10, 12 years. Like, uh, I don't know, this would, this would be a really bad one. And I, I don't have a good feeling about it. I don't have like an incredible amount of inside info, but I don't, I, everything that's happened, this doesn't feel like posturing to me. This feels like somebody who's already decided I either want to get the team out of here or bend them over a barrel and get them to pay all this stuff to basically make me want to stay. And those are his two moves. And neither move is good for Portland. Yeah, I think the only case for optimism is that he's just like sort of a craven carpetbagger who only wants a good deal.

2:09:12Right. I do think that Portland will ultimately concede because I just don't see where they have any points of leverage. Because as you mentioned, what is Portland without the Blazers? at this point. Yeah, they are. There are companies just leaving left and right. Things just haven't been great. Downtown's kind of a ghost town. I still love Portland. It's why I moved here to begin with. But it just seems like that is going to be the inevitable case. And so if they do end up signing the 20-year lease, that will be something. I wonder what the relationship with the city and the team will be from that point forward.

2:09:43And I also think that I'm most concerned about what pounds of flesh he picks up along the way. Because it's one thing if in five years, they can be sued for going out. But if he managed to wrangle provisions in this next deal, let's say that they sign a 20-year lease, but there are outs and there's no longer a threat of litigation, and he can leave in 15 years or 10 years, and it's just easier for him. I am starting to worry that that is ultimately his long-term goal because ultimately he just wants the best financial product. And if he doesn't think that's going to happen in Portland, then I think he's going to find his way in order to get that.

2:10:20Bill Simmons:And I hate to say it, but just fundamentally for your life, it doesn't make sense to own teams in Carolina and Portland. And be based in Dallas. That's right. Whereas like if you move the Blazers to a place like Kansas City, everything's a little closer to the stuff I care about. So I don't know. It feels like he bought the team because the price was, you're buying in four billions around a good price for just buying into the league with the media deal, with the expansion fees coming. You're buying up in a league that the arrow still seems to be pointing up. And he just, he got in and probably fooled some people.

2:11:02Bill Simmons:We'll see how it goes. We're staying on this one because, and if you go and you Google the stories about it, there's like new stories basically every two or three days of like some new revelation or something. we'll see how it goes. All right. What was your favorite move of the NBA move of the summer? Oof. I mean, LeBron for the minimum, probably. Not counting LeBron for$4 million. Everything that's happened, I haven't been like, whoa. It's more minor stuff, like the Clippers just getting really hot for two for 14. I was like, ah, solid deal. I like that one. But nothing like life-altering. I mean, am I allowed to mention Jalen Brown going to the Sixers?

2:11:45That was also... It's a good trade. I would say that what the Sixers did is pretty unimpeachable considering they paid virtually nothing. I agree. From last year, we were wondering whether or not Vijay and Maxie would just be cool together. That would be a fun product to watch as we waited for Embiid to come back onto the court to what could possibly be the best team in the Eastern Conference. So it probably checks that box.

2:12:07Bill Simmons:Yeah, there's been... It's really been more of like, I don't understand why that team is... playing it this way. I don't understand what that team just did. Like, there's been way more of those than, whoa, I see the vision. I liked what Atlanta did. I thought just kind of building around the fringes and bringing everybody back, but grabbing people from OKC. And now we're in the stage now as we head into the Ides of August. What's the, what's the dog days of August? What do we say for August? Dog days of August? Ides of March. Ides of March. We're now in Benedict Mathurin. Benedict Mathurin Peyton Watson territory.

2:12:45Bill Simmons:Update. Matherin's met with. So, yeah. It's time for the NBA to go away for a little bit. All right. Kaminga zone? Yeah, Kaminga. Can we get Kaminga on the minimum? We'll see how it goes. All right, Barrier. We can listen to you on the Ringer NBA show with the crew. How did I have the first year with Kyle Mango? New guy. It's pretty good. Yeah? I thought everything worked out really well. learned a lot about synergy stats that I never would have been able to uncover but Kyle's right on it alright, sad everybody in Portland for us thanks for coming on, Barrier yeah, thanks for having me today's mailbag, which we will have another good one next week, was brought to you by ChatGPT Work ChatGPT Work helps you work even harder while ChatGPT works on your projects you still call the plays, so you're always in control Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects.

2:13:41Bill Simmons:Try ChatGPT work and ChatGPT today. Available in Plus and Pro plans. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to House and Kyle and Barrier and Eduardo and Gahal. Don't forget, new Rewatchable is coming on Monday, Karate Kid 2. 40th anniversary, by the way. I forgot to mention that part as well. how has it been 40 years since we wondered what the hell was going on with Miyagi and Daniel-san for real, for the first time. That's it for the pod. I'm definitely going to have one midweek. So stay tuned for that. And, and we'll slowly ease back into, we'll just start doing some NFL. My prep's feeling really good.

2:14:19Bill Simmons:If you miss me on Mina Kimes' podcast, that was fun. And I'll be back midweek with one more. See you then.

2:14:32I don't have feelings with them On the wayside Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas

2:14:47Bill Simmons:in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Get in a problem, call 1-800-GAMBLE or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 877-770-7867.