Two Crazy Play-In Games, and 2026 NBA Awards Picks With Kirk Goldsberry and Joe House

21:23So, and then obviously Denny in the first game. But look, Kobe White was fucking awesome, man. And I was electric watching him. And I know LaMelo made the play that sealed the game, but Kobe hit some big boy shots down the stretch for Charlotte to save their season.

21:40Bill Simmons:That was the trade of the year. They gave him some Amazon Prime Award. some necklace with the plays on it. They should have given him an apology for the stream going out in overtime. They should have given us an apology because there was a goddamn basketball game being played in fucking Phoenix at the same time and they're doing necklace giving. There's a fucking basketball game that's being played. Points are being scored in Phoenix, Arizona. I couldn't believe that either. The other thing with Amazon, the entire year the audio has been a split second ahead of the video on half of the Amazon games we've watched.

22:15Bill Simmons:The three-pointers halfway toward the basket. It's like, bang! It's good! You hear the crowd. It's like the ball hasn't even gone in yet. How have we not figured this out? You guys have eight kajillion dollars. They can send a tech bro to the moon, but they can't fucking broadcast a basketball game without technical difficulties. I haven't seen a technical difficulty slide on a basketball game since I was 12 years old, bro. I know. And this is Amazon? Come on, guys. And they have the plan. They've done a good job with the studio show. They've rejuvenated Stan Van Gundy for me. I did not like him as an announcer in the three-man booths on TNT.

22:55Bill Simmons:And I would get bummed out if he was doing a Celtic game. It was at that level for me. I think he's been outstanding this season in the two-man with Ian Eagle. I thought he did a great job today laying out all the storylines, what was happening, having a feel for even the Knipple thing. you know I think at one point he said something like how long are you going to stay with him which is like he's the third best player on the team and as somebody that's watched way too many Hornets games this year he started out slow like that in games and then he hits one it's a lot like clay he hits one three and he's fine it's just he never hit the three and you can see him starting to lose the confidence but Kobe White to Kirk's point saved it I have no idea how he wasn't worth a first round pick I don't know what happened.

23:43Bill Simmons:I don't know where the rest of the league was. He was an expiring contract making like, I don't know, $14 million or something. He goes, ends up going back home to Charlotte, where he's from. He went to college there. He's going to resign there. And this team, they're a big guy away house. Like you could feel it today. Like Diabate has been good in some games, other games. He looks like he did tonight. And they're, they're just missing that one. It can't be Grant Williams. It's gotta be somebody better. Yeah, and we kind of had that appraisal at the beginning of the season. One of our rare big W's was Charlotte.

24:19Our forecast for Charlotte this season was some success. We thought Con was going to be helpful. And the big question mark was, what are they going to do at the big position? I was impressed, I will say. You know, you're looking for guys that under the bright lights, we just gave Kobe White the flowers that he deserves. Now, to me, the Kobe White addition to that team, right guy, right situation, right price, right place, everything about it is situational for him. That's success. But you look at what Miles Bridges did and you look at what Brandon Miller did. Those three guys, they combined. They were 15 for 28 from three.

24:57That freaking Charlotte team shot 56 goddamn three-pointers. And those guys really saved their ass. And every time Bridges or Miller or Kobe White touched the ball, I was like, those are the adults in the room. And that's really, to me, more than anything, a testament to Brandon Miller. He's the youngest guy in that group. And he's the guy developmentally who needs to be carrying the water there. I don't want to talk about LaMelo Ball. There's no kind words that are going to come out of my mouth. 31 effing attempts, 31 and 12 for 31, two for 16 from three. And a lot of it was clown ball. He's getting, it's a clown car full of Lamello balls.

25:46Look at the clown getting out of the left side. Oh, it's Lamello. Look at the clown climbing out of the trunk. Oh, it's Lamello. Look at the clown jumping through the front. Oh, that's Lamello. Look at the three-point attempt from just inside the logo. That's the Lamello clown climbing out of the right side of the car. What the fuck is going on with this guy?

26:04Bill Simmons:He took like a 35-footer at one point. It's frustrating because he's so talented. And you're the leader of the team. You're the point guard. They don't have Bam. He's out in the second half. And I felt like anytime he wanted, it just felt like he could get into the paint or get to the rim. Like he's, they weren't staying in front of him. And Kirk, he was just settling for these step-back 28-footers when none of his threes were going in. It's like, go to the rim. The one thing Miami does not want you to do is to go to the basket. And every time you're settling. There was one big reason he didn't, dude.

26:37There was one big reason he didn't. That was Kalel Ware, dude, who was playing awesome basketball. He had five block shots, played 42 minutes without Bam out there. He had some, one of those blocks he had where he caught the ball was a clear goaltend. The refs missed. I was pretty shocked they missed it. But yeah, dude, I don't know whether to be impressed by the two of 16. the fact that he kept shooting those threes when he obviously didn't have it. And then when he needed to drive to the basket, it was almost more frustrating and made the game-winning drive. Like, you could have done that like Denny did down the stretch of this other game.

27:13Bill Simmons:But that's the lack of experience, though. And that's what, like, the older players who know who have been in these situations. Like, to me, a good example is Jalen Brown and the Celtics. Like, in a game like that, he just would have started going to the rim. Get to the basket. oh where is your last center I'm just going to start attacking him and making him challenge me they just they didn't have the wherewithal to do some of that smart playoff team stuff because none of those fucking guys have been in a playoff game Grant Williams was the only one dude Tyler Harrow almost stole it Reggie Miller style down the stretch with one of the great sequences and uh but yeah doesn't it feel like both of the inexperienced teams like when I started seeing Harrow get going at the end and Spoh on the sideline and you know Andrew Wiggins, who's won an NBA championship, Bill, I started to feel like, okay, Miami's just going to win this game.

28:05Bill Simmons:Yeah, this is an infrastructure DNA game. I was furious. I just want them to go away. I thought the other game was going to go that way, too. I thought Phoenix had that advantage in the other game, and we saw both sort of young, weird teams figure it out at the last second and get over the hump. But, yeah, for Charlotte, man, they got a lot of learning to do. That pass that LaMelo threw, it could have ended ended their season in the same way that the Duke turnover. Right. Who was that? Who shot? It was Caden Boozer. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The Caden Boozer turnover ended that season. It was very reminiscent of a player under pressure who hadn't been there before just making a boneheaded play.

28:44Bill Simmons:Well, we had three awards or LNBA spots that might have swung tonight. Because there might have been somebody who was like, multiple people, like, I don't know who to pick between flag and con. Con stunk tonight. screw it I'm going to take flag that's diabolical I really I think Hawkeyes for 6th man of the year which we do this later in the show and Kirk has Keldon Johnson spoiler alert and I have Hawkeyes and now Hawkeyes who I didn't think was very good in the game and then had the biggest defensive fuck up at the end he didn't he just let Lomel go by him I don't know what he was doing he wasn't playing 6th man he was playing as a starter because Bam wasn't in the goddamn lineup I mean, this is the thing that I want to criticize some of the end of the game stuff for Miami.

29:34I mean, Kirk was talking about Tyler Hero. Well, I didn't love a lot of it. It felt like the same hero ball that we saw really at the end of games last year as well, where this Miami team goes into now, again, no bam. So it's not really fair to criticize, but they get they turn one dimensional. No, you know, it's fair to criticize. You know, it's fair to criticize.

30:00Bill Simmons:So, Charlotte ties it on the crazy Kobe White three. We had two crazy threes at the end of regulation OT, one from Hero and OT, one from Kobe White. But they tie it timeout. Miami has 13 seconds to set up a play. I think Grant Williams was the center for Charlotte, Kirk. Yeah. So, what does Miami get? Hey, let's try to get a 27-footer from Hero at the end of the... Like, how is that your play? That was a bad possession. Get to the basket. Go to the basket. There's 10 seconds left. Make one pass. Make every fucking set of eyes on the basketball court is looking at the guy with the ball. Nobody's eyes have to shift one time because the guy with the ball dribbles the mother effing ball the whole time.

30:47I just can't. It makes me lose my shit. Well, here's the thing.

30:52Bill Simmons:I don't feel bad for Miami because they were the 10 seed. I didn't think they were a playoff team and they were who we thought they were in a lot of ways. With that said, the BAM thing stunk. So, House, we have a San Antonio-Portland line. Would you like to guess? For the series? Yeah. Oh, God. San Antonio's minus 490. Oh, no. Minus 1350. Oh, that's too much. Way too much. Yeah. Wow. What would you like to... What do you think a Spurs sweep is? Oh, I mean, that's preposterous. You don't want to guess the Spurs sweep odds? I don't want to guess. I can't. Mine is 1350. Two to one odds for the sweep, Kirk.

31:44Yeah, that's crazy.

31:46Bill Simmons:Spurs win four to one is plus 190 on Fandle. I'm betting that. the problem with 1350 is the implied concept there is that Wemby will play all the games and that doesn't really line up with our recent experience I would like for him to play all the games I want him to be healthy for all the games it may not make sense for him to play all the games he may yet still need some rest so I assume he's playing all the games You know who's going to be playing against him, though. Donovan Klingon and Robert the Truth Williams. The guys who combined two for 12 for four points tonight? Those guys? Klingon's feisty, man.

32:33Bill Simmons:He will take this personally. They definitely have 12 fouls. They definitely have 12 fouls. I think Zach Lowe is the first person to point this out. Klingon looks exactly like Gunther, the WWE superstar. He's going to Gunther it up against Wemby. There's going to be some high elbows and some shoves. and Klingon's like kind of a badass. Like he's willing to mix it up. He threw Dylan Brooks to the ground. He's a good one. He's brave enough to do that. Kirk, I have a question that's going to send a chill down your spine. Thought about this today during the Charlotte game. These young, carefree, awesome regular season teams or these stretches built around the young guys.

33:17Bill Simmons:Look how great this is. and then the old guys and inside the NBA come on and be like, Barkley does that. I don't know. I don't, I want to see it in the playoffs. And we're like, all right, settle down. Their offensive rating was this, blah, blah, blah. And then the playoffs come and the lights are nice and hot and bright. Yeah. And all of a sudden that wide open, that first wide open three didn't go in and then your second one didn't come in. And now, like you can see with Khan today, he's like rethinking, I made 275 of these and I don't know if I want to shoot this. The Spurs have a few guys in that team that the lights might get a little bright, right?

33:57Bill Simmons:From 24 feet. You thinking about that at all? 100%. I mean, these guys are 21, 22, you know, in Dylan Harper's case, 19 or whatever. Like, yeah, of course. You just hope that Harrison Barnes and De 'Aaron Fox and Julian Champagny and some of these guys. Harrison Barnes is a gold medalist and a world champion. Harrison Barnes. Yeah, so he is an NBA champ and a goal. But yeah, there's some vets there. But I think it is fair to say, and I don't think that's going to come up in a Portland series with Denny, who, by the way, has never seen this stuff, or Drew Holiday has. I'll give that to him. But yeah, I think both of these teams, Tiago Splitter is going to be really coaching his first playoff series, and so is Mitch Johnson.

34:40Yeah, I think you're worried about that if you're a Spurs fan. We haven't seen it. And the other thing I'd say, Bill Simmons, is the rules change. Remember last year, how jarring it was once we got into the postseason? What is the contact? What are the contact allowances anymore? This was a foul for six months. Now it's not a foul anymore. How is that going to affect Wemby to House's point about his fragility, his durability, and just the inexperience with that, that kind of physicality that we're going to see here in the next few months?

35:12Bill Simmons:I can't wait. the Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel the NBA playoffs are here in the form of the play-in tournament which goes on for half a week you can get better payouts this NBA play-in on FanDuel all FanDuel customers can claim a profit boost every single day of this tournament plus you can enter FanDuel's play-in palooza for a chance to win a share of two million dollars in bonus bets every day of the play-in tournament all you have to do is place a live bet using your play-in palooza token visit Fandu.com slash BS play your game with Fandu official sportsbook partner of the NBA 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC Kentucky or Wyoming restrictions apply see terms at sportsbook.fandu.com get a problem call 1-800-GAMBLER call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat Connecticut alright listen up Ralph's, King Soopers, Harris Teeter, Food for Less Kroger, many more now on Uber Eats and you get 40 % off your order of$30 or more.

36:12Bill Simmons:Maybe you're trying a new recipe and need some last minute ingredients. That's a possibility. Maybe the kids made a mess. You're lower on cleaning supplies than you thought. Whatever you need, you can get it delivered to you in as little as 25 minutes. So order now in Uber Eats. Get 40 % off your order of$30 or more with code KROGER2026 plus Uber One members get$0 delivery fees. I love Uber One. I'm an Uber One member. Orders of$30 or more save up to$25. Ends April 30th, 2026. See app for details. House, are you ready for the playoffs? You gotten there yet mentally? I'm there now. Do you have an upset for us yet?

36:56Tonight was the night, no, because the first round is not lining up. The team that I feel like Atlanta could give the Knicks some trouble, that's the only one where I really feel like, you know, I don't think the, unless there's some miracle happening with Luca's visit to, where did he go? Italy? Spain?

37:16Bill Simmons:The line's kind of doing this. I don't know if you noticed the series line. It's going this way a little bit. Lakers now plus 530 or plus 590. I can't see because one of my contacts isn't working. Plus 530. Houston now minus 750. They used to be minus 900. I mean, to me, the Lakers are a smash spot at that price. I'm probably betting it. I honestly think you're right. The playoffs are two and a half weeks, basically, round one. They'll stretch it out, even if it's 2-1 after three, and then they could potentially get Luka back for the last couple. And you know, I said this to Zach the other night, there's going to be the 55 free throw game.

37:57Bill Simmons:That's happening. Just pencil that one in. But yeah, even if they're down 3-2 heading into game six, but Luka's back. I don't trust that Houston team. I know you guys don't trust that Houston team. No, not even a little bit. So then the other weird thing that happened, we had the 9-10 game before we had the 7-8 game in the East. So we have Philly tomorrow, and that line has moved. I love Philly today. Philly was like minus 1.5 today. It's up to minus 2.5. I really like Philly in that game. Warriors, Clippers, you might as well bet on two drunk guys having a fight in downtown LA. I have no idea what's going to happen in that game.

38:39Bill Simmons:But Magic Sixers, who do you think Charlotte's rooting for in this game, Kirk Goldsberry? Oh, Orlando. I don't know if you saw the rumors on the internet today, but there's turmoil in the Magic locker room. What? Head coach Jamal Mosley, they're re-evaluating his future no matter what. No! I think your beloved Celtics, Bill, really put them into a funk heading into these playoffs. Without a question, I think it's got to be Charlotte rooting to see Orlando, who has been a complete mess over these last few weeks. And I just don't know if their offense can keep up with Charlotte on an average Charlotte night.

39:21We saw Charlotte with a really below average night tonight beat a pretty good opponent. So if they just get back to average, I don't know if Orlando will keep up. So I would say the Orlando magic. House? I don't know the problem is how schizophrenic the Magic have been they are the more healthy team for sure we don't have any confidence whatsoever in Mosley but the problem is in the bright lights maybe those guys all come together maybe they're the nobody believes in us team they were supposed to win 50 games this season they grossly underachieved but like Desmond Bain doesn't want to go out looking like a bitch.

40:05And Talo, wherever he ends up, whether he's on Orlando or not, he doesn't want to go out looking like a bitch in France. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. I'm in the direction of Orlando.

40:18Bill Simmons:We both bet on there was a Saturday game where Philly played in Charlotte and really kind of bullied them and took it to them. And if I'm Charlotte, I don't want to play them. I didn't like how that game went for them. I thought they were really physical with their guards. I thought they were physical with Khan. I thought they were physical with LaMelo. I just, I didn't like the matchup. I want to play the Magic for all the reasons Kirk mentioned as well. Turmoil in the Magic locker room. There was something this week about a team was anxiously waiting to talk to Jamal Mosley this summer. What was that story?

40:54Bill Simmons:Who was the team? I'm blanking. It was one of the teams that needed a coach. The Taipei Tigers? Yeah, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. Somebody was excited to talk to... Oh, New Orleans. That's what it was. New Orleans was really interested. Is there a difference between the teams we mentioned and New Orleans? Those all sound like the same teams to me. If you had to pick Warriors Clippers, what would you do, Hess? Not to step on Ringer Gambling Show tomorrow. Take the Clippers. Kirk? What's the Warriors injury report? We're getting Porzingis and Horford and Curry. I'm going to this one tomorrow night.

41:37Bill Simmons:The Clippers are interesting because when they play Garland and Kawhi together, they're really good. All of the minutes with those two guys on the floor are really good. Garland's the only guy on the team who can dribble. All you have to do when Garland's done out there is just press and trap whoever and just try to get the ball because they'll give it to you. They don't have a backup center. their swings kind of are hit or miss the crowd's gonna have a ton of warriors fans there this is the always the biggest issue with clipper games is you're gonna have 5 000 warriors fans there and there's a real energy if steph gets going so it's weird i would either pick the warriors to win or to lose by 20 i don't think there's any in between i think they either get blown out or they win i don't think if it's a close game i think they win it is there any conspiracy bill we don't want the Clippers in the playoffs.

42:27Anything like, oh, we do want Steph Curry in the playoffs. That could be a thing. I'm not conspiracy bill. I'm just a guy over here.

42:36Bill Simmons:House, I'm going to put my conspiracy bill booty on. Do it. Conspiracy bill did notice we did not see Scott Foster today. Ooh.

42:51Bill Simmons:Now, wait. on the one hand, Steph Curry. On the other hand, the team that was embroiled in some sort of weird aspiration. I don't want to call it a scandal, whatever it was for a long time. Well, keep that to your conspiracy head on. What did we say was going to be the funniest possible outcome of the lottery when the ping pong balls get dropped? Because if the Clippers lose, then they're in the lottery, but they don't have the pick, right? They don't have the pick, no. Who has the pick? OKC has the pick. Yeah, we don't have. That would be the worst. So OKC gets. Yeah, the Clippers win the lottery, but OKC gets the pick.

43:32Bill Simmons:I forgot to mention there was another outcome in that Portland game. Because they made the playoffs, they lose their pick, I think, to Charlotte. So Charlotte gets a pick in the mid first round. And if you've been following this draft at all, somebody really good is going to fall to the middle of the first round in this NBA draft. And it's going to be a point guard. And it's going to be like the kid from Alabama who just goes 16, 17 because everybody has a point guard. Nobody needed to take them. So that pick's like not nothing. I think Charlotte was the one that has it. I'm really excited for tomorrow.

44:12Bill Simmons:Zach poo-pooed my love of just seeing Steph Curry playing in any sort of a game that means anything. The minutes limit is weird. the fact that the other game is going to be the 7-8 game is also kind of weird we'll see how it goes House before we go you want to give us your MVP pick it would be SGA for me if I was lucky enough to have a ballot I would vote for SGA who would be your number 2? the Joker Wemby 3? Wemby 3 yeah without hesitation or reservation okay who would be your all nba fifth spot if luca doesn't qualify and fails his weird appeal and we have the three guys we just mentioned and jalen brown in the fifth spot could be either mitchell or brunson or somebody else who would you put in there i think i would put mitchell in there because he he kind of held that team together um until harden arrived and they made the push that they made.

45:19Bill Simmons:And for fourth and fifth MVP, would you have Jalen Brown fourth? Fourth seems fair, sure. With no Luka? Yeah, with no Luka, for sure, absolutely. And who would be the fifth spot for you? Because this is something else we argue about in the next segment. You could have Mitchell, you could have Brunson, you could have Kawhi. Could have Kawhi. It'd probably have to be Brunson for me, honestly. Okay. Probably Brunson. House, we're going to send you in a soundproof chamber and later on you'll hear if your picks match the picks of me or Kirk Goldsberry. Who do you have for Rookie of the Year, by the way?

45:59Con. It's not even close to me. It's not even close. I mean...

46:03Bill Simmons:It's funny how House and I are aligned a lot of the time. I just cannot, cannot under any circumstance. This isn't a year where you're having to hold your nose and choose between bad choices. Like, this is not a, who's, I'm going to use, say somebody, did the Cale Alexander Walker win it a handful of years ago? No, Michael Carter Williams did. That's the way. You're thinking of a different hyphen guy. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Like, are you, Hal, so you against hyphen guys winning these awards? What's your problem here? I just knew there was a hyphen guy that won rookie of the year because we couldn't come up with the answer to who the rookie of the year should be.

46:39That's not this year. Just, Dallas is a disaster. That is an absolute. What we are doing is saying this 19-year-old did things that a teenager shouldn't do. That's great. I don't have any issue whatsoever. Show me the winning basketball. I need to see the winning basketball. That's the part of it that's missing.

47:01Bill Simmons:And if it's a bad rookie of the year year and we're not comparing the winning stuff at all, then it's just like, all right, who played the best in a shit situation? Yeah, then you can say, okay, let's do the counting numbers. Let's do rebounds, assists, and points. But that's not this year. And I think the force multiplier effect of Knipple on this Charlotte team, the settling effect of his coming in and being so efficient with the threes, that to me, Flagg will get his flowers. Flagg deserves flowers. But how can you make any assessment of shit numbers on a shit team? Like it's what you're saying is he is the best 19 year old.

47:46Well, we have rankings for that. There's other ways to capture that. Not rookie of the year in the NBA.

47:51Bill Simmons:I just like to apologize to Kathy flag for houses, inflammatory comments. And I hope she's still a friend of the pot. My last point before we leave, man, I love flag. We all love that guy. I will say there's been some strange movement on, in these newfangled betting markets over the last six hours on that rookie of the year thing. So we could be living in a world where Lucas protest. Lucas, what is it called? Not a protest. It's a appeal. Yeah, his this appeal process may have changed the outcome of this award. If those market maneuvering the movements in these markets are to be trusted. Cooper has had some positive movement over the last six hours.

48:39Bill Simmons:Hey, last question before we go. Because, House, you didn't come on and talk about this. Rory McIlroy won back-to-back Masters. He sure did. Man. He played the Masters two years in Rome, was the best guy each time. This is a thing that happened. Only four times in the history of the golf tournament, it's been around for 90 years. The other three guys to do it were Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and Sir Nick Faldo. Three of the all-time greats. Kirk. I mean, if we had started the decade, 2020 starts the decade, right? January 1st, 2020. We start the decade, think about the things that have happened this decade, including a pandemic, Trump winning re-election, and name 17 crazy sports things.

49:31Bill Simmons:Rory winning back-to-back Masters would have been way, way up there. way up there honestly not I have to push back a tiny bit because back to back masters well I mean but here's the thing that's like Tiger Woods Jack Nicholas shit yeah it is that and he he earlier in his career looked like that's the trajectory he was on what truly makes him the figure that he is in this sporting moment is that there was a 10 year gap between him winning majors he went on this incredible drought and the The pressure built and the pressure built. And that's why last year's Masters resonated across the world in terms of golf fandom and sports fandom because he overcame something that felt insurmountable.

50:20And even during the course of the round last year in 2025, he damn near lost it three or four different ways. So this year was like a validation of the true caliber of a legacy, a legacy kind of mark that he put down.

50:40Bill Simmons:Kirk, my favorite part of the Masters, other than betting on Justin Rose and thinking that he was going to win the Masters and then he just turned into a pumpkin on the ninth hole. Scotty Scheffler, he kind of sucked the whole tournament and he was like minus 11. It was the equivalent of watching somebody put up a 35, 11, and 12, not making a shot from outside like seven feet. It was like watching LaMelo Ball. Like he struggled all game. And then you end up. That was unbelievable. No, that is so disrespectful to Scotty Scheffler. No, I can't abide it. Yeah. Don't compare it to the middle of the ball.

51:16Bill Simmons:You're going to explain house. Let me come back around. Scotty Scheffler went to the University of Texas and studied at this business school that I teach. And we are huge Scotty fans. I thought the same thing, Bill. He is playing terrible. And that's how good he is right now. He played a terrible round by his standards. All of his drives were crazy. Every time he needed a big shot, he hit it off into the woods. He missed a birdie putt that would have, I thought, really put the pressure on, I want to say, the 12th or 13th hole. In that stretch of holes house where they all gained ground, he had a chance.

51:50I was rooting for him the whole time. I still think he's the best golfer in the world, but hats off to Rory. It was a great Sunday at the Masters. It was a great weekend of golf. It was really fun. I was happy to see it. But now I'm ready for the NBA playoffs, Bill.

52:03Bill Simmons:House, I love watching great athletes struggle and get mostly to where they need to go anyway. It was like my favorite Jordan game, other than the flu game and the last game of his Bulls career, was that game seven against the Pacers when he just didn't have his legs. And he's like, I got to figure this out somehow. And just kind of patching together plays and stats with nothing. Those are always the best. Hallmark of a true champion winning with a B, B-minus game. Maybe it was closer to B-plus for him. For Rory, we're speaking of, because of how good his putting, his short game was, especially in the first two rounds.

52:41But he shot over par on Saturday and only one under on Sunday.

52:49Bill Simmons:Rory just basically played two awesome back nines. Right? Yeah. One of the back nines, he was like minus six. And then the other one was the Sunday back nine. But Scheffler, I don't think, put together any good back duds. No, Scheffler on the weekend, he was even par going into the weekend. And then he did not make a bogey on Saturday or Sunday. He shot 11 under par on Saturday and Sunday. He just could not score on the back nine par fives. He only had one birdie the entire golf tournament. And that was a miracle. Yeah, that was a miracle. Yeah, he saved that. You're right, KG. An incredible birdie.

53:32Rory's second shot on 18, man, after he hit that errant drive as somebody's rooting for Scottie, I was like, did he just do what I think? Because that was almost going to be one of the most painful moments in golf, depending on where that ball landed, man. The true Rory experience. That's it. That's the rollercoaster ride you go on with.

53:49Bill Simmons:I mean, they missed a lot of replays and live shots, but they didn't have the perfect replay of that one Rory shot. It seemed like it was going to ding and bounce backwards, which is usually what happens, and it just didn't. Somebody will cobble it together. There is emerging now some camera angles that seem like they captured it, but it would have been fun to see in real life. I have another thing I'm going to do as sports are after I settle Amazon's audio video issue where the audio is before the video of the game I'm watching. That's number one on my agenda. I think the Masters, and this is the only event that you should be able to do this, with the Masters, they should be able to grab the best announcers from all the other networks.

54:37Bill Simmons:Like, we should just have Tariqo and Van Pelt and Joe Buck should all be on holes. Van Pelt is there. He should be on a hole. He should be on a hole. 15, 16, 17. I want Van Pelt, Tariqo, and Joe Buck. And they're just there. We don't want anything else. we'll fly you in, you get your own house just work this hole on Saturday and Sunday, it's a two day thing and just do your thing, and let's go with the big boys but Torrico does the radio call, he didn't do it this year because he went to the Olympics but he does cover the Masters I don't listen to the Masters on the fucking radio I know, I understand and who would you have on the 16th hole if you could have anybody?

55:22Bill Simmons:Vern Lundquist AI Vern I want Vern forever, for the rest of my life. What hole would you put Eric Collins on? Would you put him on... What would be the most exciting Eric Collins hole? 15? A lot of big things happen on 15. Maybe 12. Oh, 12's good. Yeah, yeah, 12's good. The drama there. Real catastrophes happen on 12. Oh, jam a toothpick in my throat! He's in the water! That's it. there you go Justin Rose hit it over the green and then flubbed the chip how would Eric Kahn handle that I'm telling you just get all these dudes we just get them for two days it's best of the best it's like it's like when they make those Avengers movies for the Marvel when they put all the great actors in one movie let's just do it for the last two days nobody's against this Kirk Goldsberry pleasure to see you as always we look forward to your master's shot chart map that I'm sure you're working on by the way that would be a good idea do that I can do that.

56:26Do it right now. I'll buy one. I'll send you the memo right now. I love you.

56:31Bill Simmons:Joe House, thanks for staying up late. We appreciate it. Seeing the Ringer Gambling Show and I'm fairway rolling. And I'll be making you pop on during the playoffs as well. We're going to take a break. Coming back, me and Kurt Goldsberry are going to go through all the awards. Let's go. As you know, I've been doing Wednesday bets on FanDuel. I actually won the last two. We hit a big parlay on Wemby. That was like nine to one. And then Justin Rose, top five Masters, plus 650. That one hit too. Almost won Justin Rose to win the Masters. I think it was 35 to one. He let me down. But he still got the top five.

57:04Bill Simmons:So let's see if we can keep the streak going. I already jumped the gun. I did my play-in bet Tuesday night, Portland. That was my favorite bet of the four play-in games. But I also really like Philly. I think Philly beats Orlando. I love betting on the NBA and FanDuel. It's a brand I trust. Easy to build by bet. You know, you get your winnings instantly. Playing tournaments, always fun. Do parlays. I did like a Charlotte, Portland, Philly parlay. That was like five to them, but I like Philly straight up. I just think Orlando's ready for the season to end and they couldn't stop maxing the regular season.

57:40Bill Simmons:I am a Philly money line. Maybe throw that in with the Cavs to beat Toronto in the series, something like that. Go nuts, do whatever you need to do. So don't forget to check out my middle of the week bets. Usually it'll be Wednesday, but there might be a Tuesday I like on FanDuel using the FanDuel Sportsbook app. Don't forget to use your profit boost token to increase your potential winnings before you place it. FanDuel, play your game. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Those superior moments in the game, like dropping a buzzer beater at the last second, are worth it. It feels so good.

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59:58Bill Simmons:Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphaya, including important safety information. All right, we just traveled in a time machine backwards to before the playing games when Kurt Goldsberg and I banked this whole segment because we want to talk big picture round one playoffs. I want to do my award picks. More importantly, what an honor for you. You have a vote? I can't remember. Yeah. Democracy is back in America, Bill. Have you said your vote publicly yet? No. We're going to do this right now. Let's fucking do it. We'll talk about the playoffs later. So this Luka thing is so weird. Yeah. It screws up the top five MVP because he would be fourth on my ballot if he's eligible.

1:00:40Bill Simmons:We don't know if he is. There's some sort of weird appeal process we have to go through. I don't know why the NBA doesn't care about podcast content and dumb shows like ours where we obsess over this stuff. And then it screws up first team All-NBA. It opens up a spot for somebody. And it adds a spot on the third team for somebody because everybody moves up a spot. So I want to do All-NBA first. We'll finish with MVP and we'll hit all the other categories. So I had first team Jokic, Wemby, Luka, SGA, and Jalen, which I think is chalk, right? yeah you had that as well okay on the luke in version of my spreadsheet now i have a luke out version of my spreadsheet to your point let's talk about that because that's more interesting so luke is in if they do the weird ruling and they're like oh he flew back for the birth of his child that somehow counts as a game um it would be funny i've said this before but if silver said you know what we reject the appeal he would have played 65 if he hadn't gotten 16 technicals and maybe he'll learn his lesson now.

1:01:45Bill Simmons:And we just all moved on. All right. Luka out. Alternate first team. I have Mitchell in the Luka spot. Who do you have? I have Kawhi Leonard, which was sort of surprising as I went through this, Bill. But you look at this dude's numbers and he's nearing 50, 40, 90 at 28 points a game. He's obviously a defender. But I just couldn't justify any other pick. I know it's a controversial season for Kawhi. I know the Clippers aren't that great, but this is probably his best season as a scorer of his career. If he's ever been first team All-NBA, there's an argument that it should be this year. So I want Kawhi.

1:02:29Bill Simmons:I can't kill it. So he was sixth in scoring in the league this year. He was 7.5 net plus. Played 32 minutes a game. Career high points per game, which I couldn't believe. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. 27-9, was that what it was? Yeah. Third highest year 14 points per game ever. So of any year 14 guy, third highest we've ever had. And I think the other two were Durant and Curry, both of whom played in the 50s for games that year. Defense was there. I think it's a good pick. I just, I had a hard time putting him first team on NBA when the team was barely 500. And he was there for a bunch of those when they started, when they were six and nine.

1:03:18Bill Simmons:I just couldn't get past that. Whereas Mitchell, you know, that was a top 14 the whole year. They had some injuries. I think there's some MVP conversation for him too and was pretty steady for them for the most part. I thought he had a good year. He played over 70 games, 33.5 minutes a game, seven points per game. He's a 28-5 and six. I just felt like, I don't really feel like either of them are first team All-NBAs to be honest, but if Luka's going to be out, who else did we lose? We lost one more bad one. What do you mean? We lost to Ant-Man? What do you mean? We lost Ant. I think Ant would have been the other one who could have swam in that swimming pool.

1:04:03Bill Simmons:Oh, for sure. But did not. Okay. So we disagree on Mitchell versus... Sorry, Cade Cunningham. Oh, Cade is the other one, obviously. Cade had that spot forever and then just didn't make it. By the way, just missed it. Yeah, too much load management, maybe too much lung management. I don't know what we're going to call it this time around, but Cade Cunningham, what a travesty. Well, so let's say you could have voted 60, like let's say 60 games and up instead of 65. Yeah. Would Luca and Cade have made it for you? I had to put Jalen Brown in there, man. Jalen Brown and Cade. I know other people are going to roast me for this, but I ended up with Jalen.

1:04:47He reinvented his game. That team had no business going on the run that it went on. and he was the best player on that team all year long as they went through that incredible, surprising run. I'm not mad at anybody had Cade Cunningham above Jalen Brown, but it would have been Luka and Jalen for me.

1:05:04Bill Simmons:I feel the same way. Played almost 2 ,500 minutes. Everything he did peaked in his 10th season, which is just incredibly unusual for the NBA. There's really no... I had a whole thing. I was looking up guys who made first-team NBA for the first time in their 10th season. John Stockton in 1994, and that's it. It's the only one. And he had six seconds leading up to this. So you could say in some ways, this is one of the great aberration seasons anybody has had 10 years or later in their career. But there were reasons for it, including Tatum, him having to take the higher usage rate. I've made the case for Jalen over and over again.

1:05:46Bill Simmons:And you kind of had to see the season and see how limited the Celtics were from, can we get a reliable basket anywhere night to night? Not knowing if Pritchard was going to be on or not. I love Pritchard, but he's a little bit on off. White shooting wasn't there the whole year. And Jalen had 30 points or more 35 times out of the 70 plus games he played. And they needed him all the time. It was just always nice to know, like, all right, whatever happens, we have somewhere to go in the fourth quarter. we have somebody we're getting we know we're getting 30 to 35 from this guy we know he's going to get to the line on top of it was taking that defensive challenge over and over again against people like Shea and Kawhi um anytime they needed a stopper it seemed like he ended up on the bigger scores and uh I thought from a leadership physicality attitude standpoint he's the biggest reason they won 56 games by far yeah and we didn't get to see what Cade would have done down the stretch.

1:06:45So we were robbed of that. And that's why this is a hypothetical. Yeah. Cade had finished. I mean, the case for Cade is the Detroit offense without Cade until he got hurt was a awful, awful unit. And when, as soon as he came in the game, everything was fine. He ran that thing as well as John Stockton. He was like, he was the conductor of that orchestra and also just a great leader. And so, you know, we were robbed at the end of that. But yeah, Jalen ended up absorbing on his, not easy Bill Simmons, to deal with Jason Tatum just sliding back into the fold after doing what you do for 66 games. Now let's get back into the Jason Tatum.

1:07:26And he handled that as perfectly as anybody could have expected.

1:07:29Bill Simmons:I'm really glad you mentioned that because I don't know if that would have gone the right way all the time. Jalen gets credit for, come on back in, let's figure this out, how this is going to work. If Cade had played 70 games and we had Luka, and I think Luka trumps both those guys, Jalen versus Cade would have been an awesome argument, but we were sadly robbed of that opportunity. All right, second team. If Luka's in, I am looking at Jalen Dern, Kawhi Leonard, Donovan Mitchell, Jamal Murray, and Jalen Brunson. Three guards, which I don't love. Let's talk about this now. I'm just always voting a center for each team or at least some sort of big.

1:08:10Bill Simmons:I want my all-NBA team to look somewhat like a basketball team. I'm not going to do like just handing out the trophies for everybody. There's 100 votes, 110 votes. I forget how many votes there are. Everybody approaches it differently. That's the way I approach it. I value the eight decades of history. We had centers every year for the first seven plus decades of the league. And I'm not just going to dump that because Joel Embiid and Jokic got weird with first and second team. It got weird with Russell and Wilt. I've talked about this ad nauseum. So I have Durin, Kawhi, Mitchell, Murray, and Brunson.

1:08:51Bill Simmons:Who do you have? So I have Kawhi in this world where Luka's in, then Donovan Mitchell, Jalen Brunson, Kevin Durant. And I go Chet. I go Chet Holmgren here largely because I wanted to center in there and because defensive conversations aren't well represented in all NBA. And he's one of the most impactful. He's definitely the second most impactful defender in the league right now. I battled Chet first, Duren. Went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth on it. Fairly similar case. Duren's stats are better. Minutes are around the same. Yeah. The defensive stats for Chet are better. And Chet's rim protection stuff was pretty nuts.

1:09:33Bill Simmons:I actually, as recently as like three, four weeks ago, I had him on the bubble because I hadn't done the deep dive on all the defensive stats. Like, holy shit. He's second in rim protection. They're first in defensive rating just in general. They're 56 and 13 when he played. So 56, 36, 79 guys. So the statistical case is there. I thought the reason I went with Duren is I just thought he meant more to that Detroit team where him and Cade were the guys that the physicality, the competitiveness, the attitude that that team had came from those two guys and spread down. And everyone else kind of carried themselves the same way too.

1:10:16Bill Simmons:And when Cade went out, I was so impressed that they kept winning. And I felt like every time I watched her and I'm just like, that guy's a fucking badass. So I think that's a, you could go either way. I'm fine with it. I didn't feel 100 % on it, but 28 minutes a game for him, 70 games. They're plus 7.8 net when he played. He was sixth in rebounds. And I thought he really grew as an offensive guy. He's going to come up in another award. But I didn't know he had this in him, I guess is my bigger point. And he was there. I mean, J-Dub wasn't there. I thought it was a good chance for him to sort of emerge in an offensive role, but also sort of the second banana role.

1:10:54but for me ultimately it's like dude this guy is one of the big reasons they're the best defense in the nba for the second year yeah who are you talking about well i was talking about jaylen before but you're talking about chet yeah yeah i was talking about chet my fault no that's all um this is very confusing by the way for the audience to have this luca non-luca thing yeah i think bill and i are very very confused so thanks nba um so luca out i have durin kawaii

1:11:23Bill Simmons:Murray Brunson and Kevin Durant. And I didn't feel great about it. But here's the case for Durant. Second in minutes in the league, played 79 games, played 36 minutes a game. He was 26-6-5. He was a 52-41-87 guy. That team didn't have a point guard basically at all. and uh and he carried that and i thought statistically if you remove all the burner scandal stuff and some of the weird chemistry that team has statistically pretty incredible season we've only had three guys 37 years or older ever average 25 plus points a game him steph and lebron seems like a fitting class yeah and uh i didn't i had him third team because the burner scandal really bothered me and the whole thing i thought it affected the team i thought you could see it.

1:12:22Bill Simmons:I don't know how culpable he was in it, but I just didn't like it. But ultimately, like, I just, with all these other dudes out, I think he has to nudge up. So who did you have in that extra spot if Luke is out? I put Jamal Murray in my second team with Jalen Brunson, Durant, Chet, and Donovan Mitchell. Okay. So we're basically, we're basically the same except you had Mitchell in the non-Luca first team. Oh, I had Mitchell in the non-Luca first team and you had Kawhi in the non-Mitchell first team. Yeah, that's exactly right. Did you think at all about Brunson third team, second team, or were you just good to go with that?

1:13:05I'm so impressed by him. And maybe it's bleeding over from the playoff run, but he's just so clutch and so important for that team and ended up earning the three seed in the East. And, you know, frankly, the other guys on the team, Bill, are so inconsistent that he just has to be so high usage and so reliable as their go-to scorer. When your second best player is Cat, who I'm sure we're going to talk about here in a second, it just impresses me. So Jalen Brunson elevating this Knicks team to the third seed in a world where there's so much inconsistency around him offensively, whether we're talking about Bridges or Ananobi or Josh Hart or whoever else.

1:13:43I've always been sort of a pro Brunson guy, so I had him second team.

1:13:49Bill Simmons:Yeah, if Luka and Cade had played, I think I would have had Murray over Brunson. Because of Murray, he ended up playing 76 games or 75 games. He was sixth in minutes. He was fourth in made threes. 25, four, and seven every night. Almost, he's a 48, 44, 88 guy. And I just thought he had a harder job than Brunson, as weird as that sounds. as good as Brunson is, where that entire Knicks team is built around Brunson. Yeah. The Denver, you have to figure out. Jokic has the ball, the time. He's figured out completely how to play off Jokic, how to carry non-Jokic minutes, playing with this rotating cast of swings that were either hurt or Cam Johnson's not playing well.

1:14:39Bill Simmons:And I just thought he was so steady and so good all season. But there was no drop-off with him month to month. I didn't look at his monthly splits, but they couldn't have been much different every month. I thought he was just so impressive. It was his best year ever, right? Yeah. So I was thinking like if you switch them, would the Knicks be worse? Would Denver be worse? I think if you switch them, I think the Knicks would be around the same. I think Murray could do a lot of the stuff Brunson was doing for them, but I think the Nuggets would have been worse. It's a dumb way to think about it, but I think the way Murray played, I feel like he could fit into any team.

1:15:16Bill Simmons:I was just really impressed by him this year. Brunson, you know, as a crunch time guy, the confidence that he has and the connection he has, but there's great things with him too. A lot of good teams this year. A lot of good players this year. Okay. Now we're going to get wonky because we have a third team with some guys that I just can't believe are even in the mix. I have for my Luka, if Luka counts, here's my five. Chet, who you had. KD, who I had bumped up to second team without Luka, but he's third team if Luka's involved. Chet, KD, Jalen Johnson, Steph Castle, and Tyrese Maxey. That's my five.

1:16:06Bill Simmons:I did it. I heard you talking about it. So if Luka's out, that leaves me with Chet, Jalen Johnson, Castle, Maxie, and Scotty Barnes, which I just don't feel great about. But I'll give you the Barnes case. Well, you give me yours and then we'll talk about some of the cases here. So with Luca in, I have Murray, Maxie, Jalen, Durant. Okay. There's my big Jalen, Johnson, and Kat. So that's my Luca. So you had Kat. Okay. Interesting. I did have Kat. And then on my Luka out, I have Maxi, Duren, Jalen Johnson, Kat. And then Shingun is the beneficiary if on my ballot, if... Interesting. If Luka is not included.

1:16:54So it's crazy just for the audience. This decision is going to affect two people in a grand way. Luka Doncic, obviously, but the 16th best player in the NBA, in theory, is going to become all NBA third team or the 16th candidate. And in my case, that's Shang-Goon.

1:17:12Bill Simmons:Really, he's the 17th best because Cade and Luca and Ants out. So I guess that was 10 and 18. I looked at Shang-Goon first of all, I didn't want to have two Rockets because I hated watching them. For the most part, they drive me crazy. I had him first half of the year. I didn't love how the second half of the year went. I thought the chemistry stuff, like I always go down on like how much fun would so and so be to play with. With Shangun, I'm not always positive he'd be the most fun to play with. His teammates seem like they got really frustrated with him. So he didn't even he wasn't, I had, I just couldn't do two rockets.

1:17:57Bill Simmons:So I'll make the case for Castle Firth because I had him either way. So he finished 17-5-7. 47-33-73 on the shooting played high 60s played 30 minutes a game so one of the most impressive players I saw in person I just couldn't believe what a badass he was on both ends of the floor and goes after every single play and then when you watch him on I don't have to sell you, you love the Spurs just every play doesn't take off I feel like there's more there I feel like he sacrificed stuff for the team I think if he was on a shittier team Dylan Harper was another one that I thought sacrificed I think if Castle was on a mediocre team or a play-in team or whatever I think his stats could have been better I think he kind of just I think he's just all about how are we winning how are we winning how are we winning I think guys hate dribbling up against him trying to beat him off the dribble trying to post him up they fucking hate playing him.

1:19:04Bill Simmons:He got way better as a shooter as the year went along. That's the other thing. I care about that with All-NBA, that you actually got better as the year went along. He was over 40 % from three second half of the year. I thought his threes were going in when he took them during that streak. And I just thought he was their second best player and that team won 60 plus games. He was their second best player. And, you know, one thing you didn't say that I think is huge with the Spurs season is he's the biggest reason, Bill, I think they give the Thunder a hard time aside from the obvious Victor Wambinyama.

1:19:33Yeah. He is longer and stronger than almost any of their guards, which is insane. It's insane to even say that. That's what the Thunder are. They're just ferocious perimeter hounds. And he gives them a personality not only to counter that, but to supersede it in some ways. So he's one of my favorite players, if not my favorite player in pro basketball right now. I love to watch him. It's a treat to go to the Spurs games. He's a huge part of their team. Ultimately, his numbers don't justify his inclusion on this for me, but I'm happy to hear the sports guy giving this dude some praise. There's one other thing with him, and it's a weird...

1:20:16Bill Simmons:We have no stat for it. It said, you know when you see it. He's really malleable with their lineups. And the best guy ever for this was John Havlicek a million years ago. John Havichuk could be a guard or a forward, depending on who else was on your team. It's like, we actually have more forwards now. You can be a guard. Like, cool. Nah, we're a little light on forwards. Can you play up? Sure. Can you guard this guy? Great. Can you guard this guy over here? Awesome. Can you fit in? And I think that Swiss Army knife thing with swingmen are really hard to find. And one of the things I love about Castle is like, he can be in any lineup they have.

1:20:55Bill Simmons:You want to go four guards? Cool. Play him at the fucking four. you want to play point guard for you and handle the ball? He can do that. I think when you have a guy like that, it just becomes so much easier to be good. That team is really good. But his flexibility, I thought, was the second biggest reason that they were as good as they were. Pick a lineup, pick a situation, he can handle it. It's a great point because he can blend scoring the ball, driving it. He's so ferocious with two feet in the paint. He's a great passer. He has these turnover issues that I'm sure he's going to get past because he's just so determined.

1:21:32But he does have turnover red flags. The shooting has come along. But I have the stat that Stefan Castle is the seventh player in NBA history to average 15 points, seven assists, and five rebounds at age 21 or younger. So this might not help him for all NBA, but the guys are Magic, LeBron, Chris Paul, and then there's a couple funny ones. Ben Simmons, whatever happened to that guy. Luka Doncic, LaMelo Ball, and then Stefan Castle. So his blending, filling up the box score as a guard with those kinds of numbers, obviously he's physical enough to get boards, get extra possessions. He's a big part of the Spurs culture.

1:22:09And I think even more so than Wemby gives them a toughness with the other teams in the West. I adore the player. I think that's coming through. I know Zach loves this player as much as I do and you do too. So I hope he gets third team All-NBA as a homer. but as an analyst I ended up with a different answer there.

1:22:28Bill Simmons:So Scotty Barnes, 18-7-6, 50 % shooting but couldn't hit threes, was down to 30 by the end of the year. Did a lot of stuff for them. They ended up with a five seed. Now the 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 were all like two wins apart and Toronto I think was 500 the last 60 games. It's not like this was an awesome team but he was the key guy on the team, did the most. defensively I don't know if I have him in first team but he was right on the fringe I think I put him second team all D and you know versus putting two guys from the same team versus having a guy who is number a number five seed who's their best player I'm okay with it it's hard for me to wrap my head around him being a third team all NBA guy but the only other one I was looking at was Avdia and And, you know, he barely hit the minimum.

1:23:26Bill Simmons:He's 24-7. And I just couldn't get there with Avdi. I didn't think the team was, Toronto's team was better than Portland's team. And that's, I don't know, the winning piece matters to me at least a little bit. That's how I derived at some of these tough decisions too, is, you know, show me what you did in the standings to some extent and in the Western Conference. So Shangoon for me is like, yeah, the West is a harder thing to win in. You know, it is really thin. And I looked at Denny, too, and hats off to him. What an incredible, most improved player case he has. I did not see this coming with him as an attacker, learning the dark arts of foul baiting, as well as almost any other player his age in the league.

1:24:07For me, just can't shoot it well enough to justify that. I'd like to see him get Portland to a next level, and I could see him doing that next year. Credit to him. If this continues, he's clearly got an all-NBA future. if he continues to improve like he did this year.

1:24:22Bill Simmons:Yeah, the problem, I think they were 2-16 against the top three teams in both conferences. They got swept by the Celtics, and they got swept by the Knicks. And that's where the All-NBA, like voting him All-NBA, it's the one I might change my mind on before we have to hand in the ballots, but right now, that's who I have. I didn't consider Towns. Avdia, it would be funny, we're taping this before the playing game today, but it'd be funny if the playing game swung any of this stuff mentally, even though it's not supposed to. I couldn't get there with Towns. So he was 20 and 12, 50 % shooting. That's good.

1:24:59Bill Simmons:I just, I couldn't get there because it just, he's a lot. He's just a lot in the game. There's games where you're just like, wow, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? Yeah. And I just, I couldn't totally get there. I thought about him for the center spot, but I just don't think he had a case against Aaron and Chet. Yeah, I put him in that sort of front court, the vague front court position. I think what he does statistically is really impressive. I think rebounds remain one of the more underrated metrics in this league. Yeah. And you know, I agree. Yeah. Well, it's true. The Celtics really were a rebounding juggernaut this year.

1:25:36It's a big part of their story. And then I think what he does on offense, when he doesn't have the ball, just stretching out the defense is so important for Brunson and helping the Knicks be such an effective offense.

1:25:48Bill Simmons:Yeah. Kat's fingerprints are on that. That put me there. But again, this is a team that's in the top half of their bracket, a third seed. That means a lot to me. Um, and so I had Kat there. Uh, ineligible were Cade, Ant Booker and LeBron. If you wanted to get crazy, Harden is the only one who I took a look at when Zach does this. Zach has like 48 guys and he's down looking at like all of the Hornets and he loses his mind. I don't go that far. Harden, that traded midseason, that's a tough one. Yeah, that bothers me too. I thought he made the Cavs worse defensively like almost overnight. Like they just dropped down in the 15th, 16th defensively.

1:26:33Bill Simmons:I just couldn't get there. All right. So that's where it goes. So my All-NBA right now with no Luka is Jokic, Wembe, SGA, Jalen Mitchell, Durant, Kawhi, KD, Murray and Brunson and then Chet, Jalen Johnson, Castle, Maxie and Barnes. We didn't talk about Jalen Johnson. That was another one like figuring out second team third team all NBA with me. He was 23-10 and 8. Yeah. End of games, I just, I'm not, he's not there and they really kind of needed CJ to be the guy and then Alexander Walker when he's hot. And so it's almost like he's the overqualified third banana on that team sometimes. He's doing a lot.

1:27:19Bill Simmons:But I don't, I didn't, it just didn't feel like he had a case for being one of the 10 best players in the league, even with all the injuries. Seemed like a lot for him. No, if the season started in January, maybe, because the Hawks were that good since then. But it didn't. And you're right about the CJ stuff. And, you know, I'm a big Hawks supporter. But when they play a good team down the stretch, It is too much, CJ, and I'm worried about that in the playoffs. And that's got to ding Jalen Johnson a little bit. And then Maxie was first in minutes per game, fifth in points, fourth in steals, 28-4-7.

1:27:54Bill Simmons:And if you just want to have a second team of all guards, he makes it. Probably bumps if you don't want to care about a center. Okay, quick break, and then we'll do coach of the year. This episode is brought to you by Tax Act. Taxes, trust me. They sound far more complex than they actually are, and it's all thanks to TaxAct. They make it easy to do taxes online, offering step-by-step guidance so you can finish your taxes ahead of the April 15th deadline and get your maximum refund guaranteed. If you get stuck, just add expert assist, get unlimited help from a credentialed U.S.-based tax expert.

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1:29:13Bill Simmons:Coach of the year is between Missoula and Bickerstaff. Who did you have as your third guy in this? I put Mitch Johnson right there. Maybe even with JB Bickerstaff. I'm a big believer in what Mitch and that staff was able to do this year to help the team go from a tanking team to what was their over under? I don't mean to put you on the spot. 42 and a half. Yeah. 42 and a half to a 60 win team, Bill Simmons. Yeah. When something, again, that's one of the things that matters to me for this category coach of the year is what do we expect from you in October? And where did you end up in April? And so Mitch Johnson has a very impressive answer to those questions.

1:29:54And so he's clearly in this conversation for me.

1:29:57Bill Simmons:He was for me. Well, I thought there were four choices for this.

1:30:05Bill Simmons:I have Mitch Johnson as well. I had Jordan not for a while. Yeah. And, uh, and I feel bad. I wish, I kind of wish we could have four choices for this just in general. I don't know why they limited it to three. I think that's, that's weird. You know what? That's a really good point. I never thought about that amount coach more for the year, but, uh, really good coaches. If we have to go 15 deep for all NBA and five deep for, for rookie and, and where's the handy for rookie. Why can't we do five D for coach? I don't know. the Suns finished 45 and 37. I thought they were very well coached. But Mitch Johnson, I mean, they were the best team in the league for four months.

1:30:48Bill Simmons:Nobody saw that coming. I thought he did a really good job managing everybody's minutes, not playing people too much, figuring out different lineups. So I had him third. I have Missoula first and Bickerstaff second. And I switched on this a bunch of times. and I see the case for Bickerstaff. I just thought when they won all those games without Cade, that was nuts. It was like, holy shit, you don't have a single guy who I completely trust to create a shot. How are you still winning? The Mozilla thing's nuts. Their over-under was 42 and they went 56 and 26. The team played hard. I think they took maybe three games off out of the 82.

1:31:30Bill Simmons:The thing that impressed me the most is how they brought Tatum back into it. And I think that's what pushed it for me. The fact that they won 56 games, but also brought this star back without upsetting anything that they had just built over the last four months. I thought he had the hardest coaching job in the league of any successful team by far. I don't even think it's a question. And then ironically, that game 82 was like a perfect example of why they should win. The team is just wired a certain way. And he's the most important. It's not, I said this Sunday night, It's not Jalen's team or Jason's team.

1:32:06Bill Simmons:It's Missoula's team. That's everything they do is based on the fact that he's just a competitive psycho in a good way. So I have him first. I have Bickerstaff second. I feel bad, but I just think that's the way it has to go. I don't think it's close. I mean, I agree with what you said about Bickerstaff. I remember I was on Zach's show when the morning that we found out that Cade had the lung injury and we were like, oh, are the Celtics going to catch him? And it was like a realistic possibility. I was looking at their schedule and I was like, well, if you look at these numbers without Cade, they haven't been very, it was a really good stretch without Cade and bigger staff deserves some flowers for that.

1:32:45However, this is exactly what Joe Mazzullo did from October to March, right? The whole stretch, he did that. And he turned the main red claws into a fucking juggernaut. And it was impressive. And like I've compared, I think on your show before, it reminds me of the pop 2010 Spurs when we're load managing Manu and Tony and Kawhi. And it's all of a sudden it's Boris Dion, Gary Neal and Danny Green out there beating anybody. They have that Baylor, Shireman, Hugo. That whole team has no business where they ended up. And it to me is the most impressive coaching job. And one other point I want to get to you.

1:33:29Nobody talks about Brad as much as they should, but it reminds me of Brad Stevens, the Butler coach, like the mid-major, the chip on your shoulder mid-major guy, how he's able to turn these guys, find these guys. To extend the college analogy, he takes a three-star recruit and turns them into a player that can beat Duke or North Carolina or Florida in a tournament game. That's what it feels like to me. So I feel like his college coaching and his player development era has come to life here. But ultimately, it is Joe Mazzullo's job to get those lineups out there, to make this a really competent two-way juggernaut with players that nobody thought could do that six months ago.

1:34:14Bill Simmons:Yeah, and also losing Simons, they basically turned Simons into Tatum, but they only have two guards. and he's got to really manage those minutes. And when there's the nights when Tatum or Brown was sitting out and then you're basically just hoping you can get 35 to 30, 35 minutes from each guard and 36 from Tatum. And then you're hoping Baylor Shireman can run something in the offense like that. Like some of the shit that was going down was crazy. The other crazy thing about the Celtics season, I really thought they should have won more than 56 games. Like if you just look at Denver was the other team like this, dumb games you should go 50 50 on dumb games right like whoa that was a dumb win i can't believe we stole that versus oh i can't believe we blew that denver was like four and 16 in those games like they they always seem to lose games they should have won and the celtics there's a bunch of them were where there was a couple like end of the game rug got pulled out of them stupid losses They had, I think, two to Philly.

1:35:17Bill Simmons:There was the road games against San Antonio and OKC where weird shit happened both games. I felt like they could have. So anyway, I actually thought they could have done even better than 56, which is nuts. Yeah. You talk about it being Missoula's team. I love that take. And to me, we talk about culture way too much now in the NBA. It's become a cliche. Yeah. But when you look at how this story started, why your team ended up hiring Joe Missoula and when, and that story he got. How fortunate that turned out to be, yeah. Yeah, and now it's like, that's the coach of the year. What a story that is.

1:35:50But ultimately, like I said, Bill, this team has his personality as one of the strangest, sort of most aggro, competitive, unique personalities I've ever seen a head coach in this league have. And it works. It is contagious in the locker room. And my favorite moment of game 82, and you already talked about this a little bit on your show with Legs or maybe it was Zach, But that ATO just to drop that two for one, where is it Garza shooting from 27 feet? And I know that was the play. And that's an insane play. And it works. And it was one of those guys who nobody thought would make a meaningful shot this entire season.

1:36:29And it was just a great moment. And it comes from the mind of Joe Missoula.

1:36:32Bill Simmons:Incredible coaching job. And a little bit of revenge for him because I think he was really upset with the Knicks series and those two games. and just, you know, I think he was in the workshop. Defensive Player of the Year, Wemby's going to win. Everyone's picking Wemby. Top five's interesting. So I'll just give you my, you won't be surprised to know I am not a, I'm putting five centers on my first team defensive team. I'm just not doing that. I will do maximum two. I still want each, I still want the guards to be represented a little in a swing. So we both had Wemby and Chet, I'm guessing. Yeah.

1:37:12Bill Simmons:Did we both have Asar Thompson? No, I put both Thompsons on the second team. Okay. All right, I'll tell you. I had Wimby and Chet. I had Asar Thompson. I had Castle. And I had Kaysan Wallace, who I thought was the most devastating defensive guard I saw all year. I could not believe what a nightmare he was. And I actually think they're going to have to get rid of Dort so he can play more next season would be my guess. with what they're going to do. But that, to me, Wallace was the best defensive guard. I thought Asar Thompson was the best swing. And I thought Castle was the best kind of back and forth like attitude swing.

1:37:54Bill Simmons:And then Wemby and Chet were the two centers. So who'd you have? Well, I have three centers. I look at it the other way. Centers are by far the most important defenders in the sport. So I put three on here. Three legendary defenders, in my opinion. Wemby, who is on another level. Chet, who, second best defender in the league right now. And then Rudy Gobert, who's won defensive player of the year so many times. So, you know, I know that's not the sexiest pick, but then I add two perimeter players because I also value that. I don't want to over-index on guys who just protect the rim. I put Dyson Daniels on there, who you talk about a nightmare, is a walking deflection and steal.

1:38:31And somebody who I bet Jalen Brunson is going to be very sick of seeing here in a couple of weeks. I can't wait to watch him in the playoffs. And then Derek White, Spurs great, but also single-handedly one of the best shot-blocking guards at that position. Always seems to be in the right place on defense. Might not be the athlete, obviously, that the Thompsons or Stephon Castle is, but Derek is just the headiest perimeter defender and one of the most effective in the league. So I end up Wemby, Chet, Gobert, Derek White, Dyson Daniels.

1:39:05Bill Simmons:Interesting. I had White on my second team. I had Gobert on my second team. I had Ahmed Thompson on my second team. I have Ananobi on my second team. And I put Scottie Barnes. I did not put Bam. Bam was the toughest cut for me. And I also did not have Dyson Daniels on either team. Only because I thought as you made the case, I also feel like teams were pretty easily scoring on Atlanta all year. And it was the same reason I left Bam off. You're one of the 10 best defensive players in the league at a key position, but everybody seems like they can go for 130 on your team. So I have to reward that.

1:39:52Bill Simmons:Gobert, definitely, it's just tough to knock him off. But Ananobi was the guy that I really thought was, really jumped out to me a couple games this year. There's just nobody really, Zach and I talked about him a little Sunday, like his size, physicality, and just his style is so unique that if I was a six foot eight score, I think out of anybody, he'd be the guy I wouldn't want to see. He's so important for them. You mentioned this earlier. We still have time to submit our ballots. I do not have OG and now I'm questioning that. So who'd you have for a second team? So I have both Thompson bros.

1:40:28I do have Bam. I have your guy, Cason Wallace, and then I have Steph Castle. So, that's guard heavy. I love it. OG, though, you're convincing me, dude. I think OG is so important to guarding the exact type of players. Like Boston, right? Like that series last year. He's a big reason for that. He is a big reason for the headaches that Boston has when they play the Knicks.

1:40:51Bill Simmons:Tatum has real trouble against him. He's such a big, big, strong wing defender. Yeah. I'm trying to think if there are any other tough omissions for me here. And we're good. We can move on. Rookie of the year. Oh, we're going to disagree here. I know. I've conned. I ran in. Funny story. Spurs-Mavs game. Friday night, Bill Simmons. I ran into Kelly Flagg. She says hello. She says she's very interested who you're going to choose for rookie of the year. Did she really say that? Yeah. it was like one of those mafiosos. Yeah. Say hi to Bill for me. Yeah. Listen, Kelly flag. We still love you. We still have your, uh, your condo ready for 2031.

1:41:42Bill Simmons:When your son joins the Celtics, I have con and it comes down to, um, being on a good team and all this stuff he had to do versus, flag being on a crappy team that just gave him the car keys and said, make all the mistakes you want. You're going to be awesome someday. You'll be better in game 82 than you are in game one. Just keep plugging away and go and no mistake is bad and learn from this. And by the end of the year, you're going to be in a good place, which he was. Yeah. If I'm a rookie, I would rather be in that situation than the situation Khan was in where he was basically playing a playoff game every game from January on because they had dug such a hole for themselves early that they, you know, they're doing this trying to climb into the playoff picture.

1:42:36Bill Simmons:I think if Khan was on a bad team, I thought he could have scored more than he did. And you look at the advanced metric stuff and Khan stuff versus Flagg, like Flagg's three-point shooting was bad. I think Flag's a better player, just from a talent ceiling standpoint. And I think Flag has a chance to be a generational star. I don't really know how to vote for the rookie is my other issue with this. Am I just voting for who jumps out as they're going to be awesome 10 years from now? Or am I just to evaluate in the year? Because if I'm evaluated in the year, I made this case a couple pods ago. Khan had an incredible season.

1:43:17Bill Simmons:He led the league in threes. He rebounded, he played defense. I felt like his gravity and all the movement he has was the key to how their offense really worked. He played the whole year. He never got, I think he played like 79 games. And his team was, you know, we're taping this before the playing game tonight, but his team turned out to be a, I thought one of the 10 best teams of the last four months of the season. And to me, that just matters where I'm always going to gravitate toward the winning. Yeah, I had no idea Khan could translate this well to the NBA, let alone this well, this fast.

1:43:55An incredible Klay Thompson-esque catch-and-shoot season. And I don't say that lightly. It was Klay Thompson. And Steph are the only people who combine volume and efficiency like this. Unlike Steph, he's doing a lot of it as a catch-and-shoot guy. And I'm not going to make the case against Khan, but to contextualize it, I would say every opponent when they're playing this lowly Mavericks team their game plan was built around stopping Cooper flag when you played the Hornets you have other players to deal with specifically LaMelo ball at the end of the year Cooper leads all rookies in scoring he has more points per game more assists more rebounds more steals than blocks than con canipple he is the first rookie Bill Simmons since Michael Jeffrey Jordan to lead his team in points, rebounds, assists, and steals.

1:44:54He is going to be an all NBA player for an eternity. Maybe next year. Yeah. And this shouldn't come into the discussion. But remember, this should be his freshman year in fucking college. I know he reclassified. That shouldn't be a criterion. Don't get me wrong on this. I'm fired up because I think he's just and I appreciate how you look at the word there. is some ambiguity here. Khan has played more meaningful minutes for a more meaningful team that I hope makes the playoffs.

1:45:20Bill Simmons:And higher pressure situations too is the other thing. Like we're just game to game. He's playing teams that these are real games whereas Flag's playing games where they're just down 20 in the second quarter. And some of it's vanity. I don't want to be the guy who didn't vote for Cooper Flag in 10 years because I know where this is going, Coop. And so I tend to look at it a little differently. And then the last thing I'd say is players like Wemby, who were rookie of the year, were on awful teams. And we've seen this a lot. You know what? I went back and looked at that Wemby year because I remember voting for him.

1:45:57Bill Simmons:And I went back and looked at my notes. And he was like borderline defensive player of the year that year as a rookie. I had him go bare. I had a whole thing on my notes of like, it's got to be go bare. But goddamn, I kind of want to vote for Wemby. and he was just way more impactful. He also averaged like 24, 10, and 5 and the guy that he was competing, I think he was going against Chet. His stats were just way better. Flag stats aren't way better than Khan's. But anyway, keep going. And then Khan is handed the ball and 80 % of his shots are assisted, right? And that number for Coop is like 40-50%.

1:46:36Bill Simmons:I know, but I think there's more there with Khan. I feel like they could have done more with Khan on that. Like, I actually kind of liked when he would get around the foul line and be physical and try to, like, either take guys to the hoop or do that little pull-up. I just think that team had a lot of masters to serve offensively, whereas Dallas did not. I respect your take. And like I said, Khan has a lot more shit to his game than I would ever expect it off the bounce, getting rebounds, playing defense. This is not what I thought. So if the award were to find who's the most surprising rookie, Khan's...

1:47:11I mean, if they redrafted, Khan is probably third. I'm still taking Dylan Harper, too. Third or fourth.

1:47:18Bill Simmons:It's tough to pass Dylan Harper. It's one of the... We did this the last time you were on. It's one of the great top fours we've had. So if you switch these guys on their teams... Yeah, let's do that. The Hornets are good. That's actually like he could have fit in. It changes their style a little bit for that. Not the same kind of three-point thing, but he's bringing defense, rebounding. He could probably like, he'd probably phase back from the offense a little and concentrate more on the glue guy stuff that he was so great at and is great at. And Khan is... That would give Charles Lee like his Jason Tatum character from his Boston era, right?

1:47:58Like this giant forward who can break guys down, get you a rebound, play incredible defense. so I think

1:48:05Bill Simmons:and I think Khan would have had around the same stats I just he probably would have taken more threes maybe wouldn't have shot the same percentage because they wouldn't have been as good looks most of the time I don't I really hate this because I don't even want to pick between these guys but my my move over the years has always been if winning is a tiebreaker I gotta think about it it's not Flag's fault he's on a shitty team but do you think we can take Michael Carter Williams Rookie of the Year trophy and give it to whoever loses this year's rookie of the year. And Tyreek Evans' that would be another one I'd take.

1:48:39Bill Simmons:Vijay Edgecombe third? God, I haven't even thought about that. Yes, definitely. No, Vijay. I have to see this is the one I have to do. Dylan Harper or Vijay Edgecombe. Were those the two? It's not. Stats-wise, it's not close. But Dylan Harper was just in a different situation. So I listened to Legs on your podcast, who I thought did a great job. But yeah, he made the point. Well, if Dylan Harper's on the Wizards or whatever, we're seeing a lot more numbers. 17 and 8 guy at least. Yeah, so Dylan's dropped into a really healthy environment where he's the third guard and gets those minutes. But dude, you talk about a guy who's getting better and better and better.

1:49:18The case for Dylan is he's on a team that has won 60 games. He too has become a much better shooter earlier than we thought.

1:49:27Bill Simmons:I kind of like him the most when he's out there with Castle and Vassell and Wemby and a shooter. It's not going to take long before he's the answer there. That's the most interesting. All rookie, I had Flag, Khan, BJ, Harper, and I had Fears as my fifth guy. Fears played 82 games. Fears was there the whole time and I thought he had a couple games this year. We were like, wow, what's going on here? Second team, I had Coward, Ace, Bryant, Queen, and uh i guess will riley i don't i don't even know i'll figure out the 10th guy but uh who did you have as your fifth guy on the first team yeah so i think it's like the mvp race there's four solid guys on the first group of five uh but yeah so we go coop con vj harper and then i threw joe dumar as a bone and put derrick queen there because he gave up so much for him you got to give him that right nice uh then coward fears ace bailey your guy hugo gonzalez and then will riley so oh that's who i'll put as my 10th guy hugo great um is it hugo or hugo it's hugo but i really want to call him hugo clutch clutch i'm going sga brunson and yokage in that order i have the exact same and it's sga and then a big gap for me most improved is not a battle because it's going to be Nikhil Alexander Walker unless you haven't been watching the season.

1:50:58Bill Simmons:9.4 points to 21. Got better as the year went along and is just a complete wild card threat for the playoffs now because he's an absolute heat check. He's even more than a heat check guy. He just kind of takes over games. So I had him first. I had Durin second. And I put K to third. And I'll make the case for it in a second. Who did you have for your three? I have Nikhil by leaps and bounds and then you said Dern was second I had Dern second yeah and then I put Castle there because I didn't give Castle the award and I know some people don't like the second year jump thing you might be one of those people I violently oppose this is my least favorite Kirk Goldspier moment of the podcast he should be better this year it's the second year he's the fourth pick of the draft I'm not mad at you Bill but that's the same ding I'm giving Jalen Dern Like you're a lottery pick late lottery in his case.

1:51:52You're supposed to get better as you go.

1:51:54Bill Simmons:Did you ever think he was going to be a 21 and 11 dominant center? I never did. I won't say I did, but the first time I saw him in person, it was one of those like, holy shit, look at that guy moments that you get in an NBA arena. He's now out of the 1990s. He's like, he looks like he's Alonzo morning or he's looks like Ben Wallace. Yeah. Or Ben Wallace piston. He's the, I always say he's the perfect piston, but ultimately I think the story here is Nikhil Alexander Walker, who scored nine points a game last year for a very good team. And was a stand in the corner and don't do anything else and we'll call you when we need a three.

1:52:32And then Atlanta gives them a nice deal, comes over 21 points a game on over 60 % true shooting. So one of the only times in my career as an analyst in the NBA where I've seen somebody go from nine points a game to 20 points a game, and then their efficiency jumps too. Like that's crazy. And for me, this is the easiest vote on the whole ballot, except for a defensive player of the year. Nikhil Alexander-Walker in a walk away.

1:52:57Bill Simmons:Couldn't agree more. Shout out to Atlanta. Great signing. The case for Kata, he played, first of all, this is his fifth NBA season. He'd never played more than 13 minutes a game. Yeah. He turned this year into a 10-8 guy, over a block a game. He's played 25 minutes a game. He's gotten better as the year went along. There's actually a little more offense. All the advanced metrics, rim protection stuff with him is really solid. He's just a good player now. And it's something like you would watch him come in. My daughter always loved him. She was like, why doesn't Kata play more? I was like, I don't know.

1:53:38Bill Simmons:But you'd watch him and he'd be like, there's something here. Yeah. But now this is somebody that conceivably could be playing 25 minutes a game in the finals. This was a team before the year where you're like, well, they're losing Porzingis and Horford. Who's going to play center? I don't know. And Tatum's out. Yeah. And they have no rebounding. Yeah. I guess Garza. By the way. Yeah. We lost Cornette. It's like, I guess Garza and this member Kata, I guess he's going to be there. And turned into a real guy. And you watch these games. I've only there was only a couple times this year where you kind of could feel this was a guy that was on Sacramento three years ago.

1:54:17Yeah, for the most part, he was awesome for what the expectations were. And that's the key point, dude. I remember there were this was the second apron casualty that they dismantled this team. I thought a year ago is like, OK, there goes Porzingis and Horford. Luke Cornett's cast away. Tatum's out. that's their front court. That's their championship front court. And I remember when I was looking into the Celtics season and I'll put my hand up. I was like, this team's not going to be able to rebound. This team is not going to be able to protect the rim. And that's where I would say Keita deserves part of this conversation.

1:54:55They are now a very good rebounding team. It's part of their signature is turning missed shots into second chance points. He's the biggest reason for that. And I did not see that coming ever for this young man. So hats off to him and that Celtic staff for finding him and developing him.

1:55:10Bill Simmons:They also, they redid, I mean, they redid some strategy stuff with them. One of them was these little handoffs at the top of the key, which became like the bread and butter of their offense that he was just better at than Porzingis and Horford. And then the offensive rebounding was the other thing. He's just a good offensive rebounder. He's got good hands around the rim. So you really feel it when he's in the game. Like the best version of them usually is when he's in the game. I'll be interested to see against the Knicks. Right. If they're in crunch time against Towns, whether they go smaller with Tatum, I think they're saving that.

1:55:42Bill Simmons:And I could see Kata getting bounced or maybe Kata getting moved to the Mitchell Robinson portion of the game where it's like, just go toe-to-toe with this dude and try to hold him to a standstill. We'll see. Sixth man. I have Hawkeyes. I put Kelton Johnson second. And then I have a wild card at third. Who'd you have? I only have two. I haven't figured out the third. I'll probably just steal yours. I'm a Kelton Johnson man. I thought, you know, culturally, he's great. He won 60 games. He was in most of those games. Led all players and win shares off the bench. And again, over the Miami Hawkins?

1:56:19God, I just had a brain fart. The more substantial contribution in the league this year off the bench was Kelton Johnson.

1:56:27Bill Simmons:I battled back and forth. I don't feel great about it. But I thought Hawkeyes has basically been 15-5-5 off the bench and he can't shoot threes. But when you watch, he's pretty impactful. In an old school, like 1970s, 80s, he's doing weird kind of half post-ups or he's trying to beat guys off and he's banging into dudes. He's one of those guys you watch. He's one of those guys when you're watching him, you're going, could this guy have his own team? but obviously he can't but he'll have moments where you're like man a great heat player I remember when they drafted him it was all it was this is what we were we knew we were getting it and they got it my third pick for this category and there's a million people the shame of it is Pritchard should have been a six man but he started too many games I went with Mamu oh wow I'm not stealing this you're gonna have to convince me 22 minutes a game he was 11 and 5 he was a 52 39 75 guy his advanced stats are nuts and eye test wise I actually thought he probably should have played more I feel like he would he was one of the only bench guys I thought this season that consistently he would come into their bench was the biggest reason they started out well the first month and a half but he would come into games and I felt like he would take over games for like two minutes and it's good yeah and I think like if you're just talking about like a pure six man coming off the bench swinging a game he did it as well as anyone I saw this year and I couldn't come up with a I couldn't shake that he was the third best guy I saw do that this year so that's who I have who did you have in your possibilities Reed Shepard I feel like is the choice right but now he started the last 10 games.

1:58:29I couldn't get there with Reed because I don't

1:58:30Bill Simmons:feel like his coach was like, I don't know if we should play him for six months. Well, he should be fifth man of the year to piggyback on Wild's point. Why don't we just have a first man, second man, third man. Reed Shepard should be fifth man of the year, E-May, if you're listening. So Reed was the other one. I just couldn't get there. I don't know. It is weird because the predicament in Houston is so weird. I mean, in a world where Freddie Van Fleet is there and Stephen Adams is there. Reed is definitely like the heat check guy off the bench. Uh, and they didn't figure out. I think so. Yeah.

1:59:04Bill Simmons:All right. I don't feel great about the mama, but, uh, I just, I don't know. The heart wants what the heart wants. The heart wants mama. All right. MVP. Oh boy. So we have Luca four. We both have Luca four. Yeah. I have Luca clearly four. So Luca's bounced. I am going, it's interesting because I had Donovan Mitchell first team on NBA. Yeah. But for MVP, I'm putting Brunson fifth and Jalen Brown fourth. That's what I have. Just because that Knicks team for better and worse is just built around Brunson having to put a superhero cape on for the last five minutes of every game. Whereas the Cavs can get, I don't know.

1:59:57Bill Simmons:I'm basically splitting the vote with Mitchell as first two Mahmoud, but Brunson in my MVP ballot. So that's what I have for four and five without Luka. I have Wemby third. I have Joker second. And I landed on SGA first. And I switched SGA and Joker all weekend and really wanted to do Joker. And ultimately, the win difference and how great SGA was in the clutch. Yeah. And I just felt like, as you know, I love Joker and Joker is probably my favorite non-Celtic in the league other than Curry. And I just felt like I want to do this correctly. There's too much SGA evidence. I feel like I'm not, if I do Joker, it's almost like a personal pick versus like, what's the right pick?

2:00:48Bill Simmons:I just couldn't 100 % get there. The real problem, if Joker hadn't gotten hurt, I think he gets it. Because not only did he miss all those games, but then he came back and he wasn't 100 % when he came back. And the other thing was the clutch stuff with that team just in general, not take care of business near the end. That's kind of his job and they weren't good enough. Whereas SGA, every time last three minutes, he just took care of business. and I think his job was easier because of that team. They're so good defensively. All he has to worry about is basically, let me just be awesome and get to the foul line and then the last three minutes, I'll score every point.

2:01:31Bill Simmons:Not an easy job. Whereas Joker was doing everything, but to not vote for a guy who led the league in rebounds and assists and was sixth in points and did all the shit he did and had the best offensive career, I don't feel good about it. I don't think anybody's going to do this with the respect that the task deserves is going to feel good about who's third and in some cases who's second. This is the deepest one of these I've ever thought of. We have three legitimate candidates for MVP. We do. And we have better numbers than ever. I'll start with four and five. I have the same Jalen. Shout out to Jalen Rose, by the way.

2:02:08Big year for Jalen's on the MVP ballot. Now we have two of them on our top five. I have Joker third, which is crazy. But again, Bill, my ladder is going to be informed a lot by how the standings turned out, you know? And I think that deserves respect here. And so I have Wemby second, which was hard, by the way, not a homer pick. I wanted to put him first. Other times I wanted to put him third. And then I also ended up with SGI. I mean, he's just, the team is too good. He is on, as you keep pointing out so astutely, one of the best runs we've ever seen from a guard in the history of the sport. Yeah.

2:02:47Once again, here we are with a net rating over 11. They're just the most dominant team in the NBA, and he's it. But Joker, dude, let me give him some flowers. I was looking at on-off splits like all the nerds do when it's time to do this exercise.

2:03:04Bill Simmons:Yeah. The Nuggets are minus seven in net rating when he's off the floor. like that's that's a lottery team bill they're they're they're they they have the statistical profile of the utah jazz no no gordon half the year jam johnson not really healthy most of the year you lose peyton watson this was like when i was thinking this weekend whether i was going to vote for him or not and i was like i'm definitely the one thing and he put 400 more minutes than Wemby and when Wemby skipped the last game of the year, which I just thought was really weird. That to me, like he put himself in the third spot because they should have tried to win that game and get Denver the fuck out of the three seed.

2:03:46Bill Simmons:Like, what are you guys doing? I mean, I'm a Spurs homer. I couldn't agree more. I was perplexed by that. Wemby played 1 ,866 minutes this year. He played 29 minutes a game and he missed, I thought, a fair enough amount of games that he probably could have showed up for the 82nd one and tried to knock him out. I just, I didn't like that. Joker led the league in PER for his sixth straight year. He's 31 plus every year. Second straight triple-double season. He's with Wilt now. As I talked about the other day with Wilt was fourth, first and second and fifth, first and third. So if you add that up, less than 10.

2:04:21Bill Simmons:Joker was 8-1-1, so 10. Offensive rating, 126 when he played. He led the league He can rebounds, assist, PR, and VORP. 10.8 net. His highest usage ever. 57 % shooting. Really one of the great offensive seasons. And somehow didn't win the MVP. I can't believe it. But their record wasn't good enough. SGA, I don't know. There was a lot of close games when he just took care of business at the end. I think that has to matter, the consistency of it. And then from some of my MVP questions, you know one of them is how you remember the year one of the ways we're going to remember this year is okc becoming a little villainy and sga and the foul baiting like that was a big part of this season whereas for joker it was another great joker year i don't really you know stats that was good but we're really going to remember wemby and sga i think before just it was a typically unbelievable joker year it didn't really stand out from the other three i guess i think that's That's right.

2:05:29And I remember you doing those questions with Legler and his knee-jerk reaction was Wemby. For me, that's it to that question. The minutes thing with Wemby is really fascinating, right? Because you and I both agree on one big thing. There's too many games. And what the Spurs have to do with this dude is try to keep him upright and get him into the playoffs. And again, I thought Mitch Johnson did a great job. Yeah. Victor Weminyama is healthy. I wish they would have played him game 82, by the way. but healthy going into these playoffs. That's the number one job in an era of calf strains and hamstring injuries.

2:06:05Like, just be thankful we have Wemby. So I almost don't want to ding Victor for minutes because that's what's going to happen with him his whole career in the regular season, as long as we're playing 82 games and 16 back-to-backs or whatever it is in the NBA Cup that they went in and played the extra game in. Yeah. And SGA deserves credit for having a better record, better statistical indicators, and ultimately, like you said, just the most impressive end-to-end season of a high-volume player in the NBA.

2:06:42Bill Simmons:And not having J-Dub for most of the year. Plus 16.3 net. 9.0 free throws a game. Made 7.9 free throws a game, which was first. Clutch points, 175 points first. 59 free throws in the clutch Shot 52 % field goal in the clutch There's also some games where they just killed teams And he didn't really play I actually think he could have been around 33 minutes a game If some of their games had been closer Last four years, he's 31 a game Last two years OKC is 133 and 31 I think that's correct He's had 31 losses and he's the biggest reason by far. When you know that night after night, your guy, it's a little, it's the rich man's version of what Jalen did for the Celtics.

2:07:34Bill Simmons:You know, night after night, I'm getting this for my best player. At the end of the games, I'm getting this. And I'm just, and I know I have that every game. With you throwing the win totals and the minutes, he should be the MVP. I can't believe Jokic isn't going to win, though. I just can't believe it. I was telling my students earlier, if you would have told me that somebody would have John Stockland amount of assists and Dennis Rodman amount of rebounds when I was growing up, that's insane. They're two stats that have nothing in common with one another. You just shouldn't lead the league in both of those categories.

2:08:12In fact, they usually happen in different parts of the floor. It's crazy that he's... I don't think people are talking about that enough. This has definitely got to be the best season of anybody who's ever finished third, if he finishes third. I think he's going to finish second. But we'll see. The case for Wemby, Bill, is the defensive stuff is insane. I get it. So the Brooklyn Nets are the worst shooting team in the NBA. Okay? They're tanking. Their effective field goal percentage is 52. 30th in the NBA. When Victor Weminyam was on the court this year, opponents had an EFG of 49.7. So he essentially turns your offense into a tanking level offense just by being on the court.

2:08:53I wish we had better metrics in our discourse for evaluating defensive impact because we're always citing things like points, rebounds, triple doubles, and that's going to favor Joker and SGA. It's really challenging us to quantify the impact of Victor on defense because that's going to be his case for years to come and we have to get better. I'll take it on as me. I have to do better to articulate his greatness on the defensive end of the floor.

2:09:22Bill Simmons:What's that commercial where they're like, yep, nope. That's the E40 song, Choices, the Bay Area. That's a Chipotle commercial now. Yeah, Chipotle. That always makes me think of Wemby. When the guys driving in the basket is like, nope. Just jumping to dribble back out. Now it's gotten to the point where the guys don't even consider it. No. They're starting to move. it was like, oh yeah, I can't do that today because we're playing the Spurs and they just reset. If Denver had gotten, I was trying to figure out how many wins they would have had to have for me to flip my vote. And I think it's four, they're 54 and 28.

2:09:58Bill Simmons:I think if they had gotten a 58 and 24, I think I would have voted for Yoko, just dumb as that sounds. 10 wins behind OKC with the same kind of season where Aaron Gordon's out for half the year, so is J-Dub. Yeah. OKC's team's obviously better but I just I weirdly felt like Denver should have won more games than they did and he's got to get dinged on that too they finished with a 12 game winning streak and still were only 54 and 28 I know that was a and they beat the Spurs in the game of the year like it was that was an MVP moment when he hit that fade away over Wemby they had a stretch 39 game stretch where they were 19 and 20 and I think that kills him but I can't believe he's not going to win we'll see if he finishes second I think SGA is going to win and we'll see between Wemby and Jalen Brown alright Kirk Goldsberry see you soon do you have a playoff upset?

2:11:00if I had to pick an upset I got two candidates it's Minnesota-Denver because we've seen it before but I think Atlanta-New York is really interesting too if Atlanta can find offense beyond C.J. McCollum.

2:11:16Bill Simmons:I think Denver's going to beat Minnesota, and I actually like that so many people, including myself, are scared of Minnesota in this series because they've had so much success. Yeah. I think a fun zag is actually Denver's going to kick their ass. Atlanta's the one I'm looking at. I wonder, is there... I just wish Toronto wasn't so lousy against basically every good team. I wish everyone's just penciling Cleveland in for that series. And I don't trust them at all because I don't think they can. I just think they give up points to everybody. And if Toronto, the question for me is, I just don't think Toronto is good enough offensively to haunt them.

2:11:54Bill Simmons:But Cleveland, if Atlanta didn't play Cleveland, I think I would have picked Atlanta in that series. Like for real. Atlanta has all the makings of a team. If you look at the game the way I do analytically, they look like the best statistical profile of any team that's an underdog right now in the last three months of the season with the exception of maybe Charlotte who we'll find out shortly if they're even in the tournament. Yeah, that'll be the top of the pot in the time machine. I think Atlanta takes the Knicks to seven and loses because of their bench. I don't like their bench. They played a hell of a game the other night.

2:12:30Yeah. Their bench is like

2:12:31Bill Simmons:just never know night to night. All right, Kirk Goldsberry. Pleasure as always. Thanks to Gahau. and Eduardo as well. Don't forget about Legata, our new narrative podcast, which has cocaine in Miami and Columbia and all kinds of great stuff. You should check it out. Kirk Goldsberry. New rewatchable is coming on Monday. It's going to be Kindergarten Cop with me and Kyle Brandt. And I will see you all on Thursday.

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