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The Bill Simmons Podcast
A Radical NBA Idea, Wemby’s Musical Comp, Despising Duke, and Baseball’s ABS Revolution With Chuck Klosterman
01:56:45
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- [00:00]
Bill Simmons
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Upsets Buzzer beaters game changing plays what happens on the court keeps us on our toes, and life isn't any different. That's where State Farm comes in. With over 19,000 neighborhood agents for when you want to talk to a real person and easy to use digital tools, State Farm is there to help when facing the unpredictable. Because in life's uncertain moments, big or small, you need to know someone is ready to assist. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Price and eligibility vary by state. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by Sam's Club. We are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new Rewatchables episode on Monday. It's it is the official end of CR Month. We did LA Confidential, me and Fantasy and Greenwald and CR and that's it. CR Month no longer with us. We're doing a one for us next week. We're finally doing Eddie and the Cruisers, so you have six days to go. Check it out. It's all over the place now on a bunch of different streaming platforms. Speaking of the rewatchables, Wednesday morning, April 1, 10am Pacific. You can go to the to theringer.com events and buy tickets for our live show that's gonna be in San Francisco on April 8th at the Tony Rembe Theater. It is going to be on a Wednesday night. We've never been to San Francisco before. It is gonna be me and CR and Mallory and Van and we're gonna be doing Basic Instinct. Second time we've done it. Way more categories this time. We've never done it in front of a live audience. I think this will be a hilarious podcast. I'm just warning you now and we really hope we see you in San Francisco so theringer.com events come see us in the Bay. Maybe we even hit a Giants game the day before. Who knows? Giants, Phillies. I think CR likes the Phillies, but we'll see. Anyway. Basic Instinct. Can't wait to see everybody in the Bay coming up on this podcast. Hall of Famer of this podcast, BS Podcast. Hall of Famer BS Pod hall of Famer Chuck Klosterman, and it's his kind of year. We're gonna talk college sports, pro sports, music, AI. We're going in 19 different directions as always. Let's take a break. Pearl Jam and then Chuck. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by Sam's Club. It is that time of the year when you just gotta get in your car and go somewhere. I've done that plenty of times in my life. Nowhere gets you ready to go quite like Sam's Club. Snacks, the gear, super low prices on gas. They got a bunch of stuff that keep you and the whole crew rolling. And here's what you got to do. You got to join the club of yes. End@samsclub.com yes. And you must be 18 years or older to purchase membership. A membership is subject to qualifications. Visit samsclub.com yesend for details. All right, Chuck Klosterman is here on March 31, 2026. The last time we saw you, you had a football book coming out and we were talking about how it was a great Chuck Klosterman time of the year. There's a lot of things happening. I feel like that's the case right now as we head into April.
- [03:46]
Chuck Klosterman
This is a good time of year for me. Yeah, I think this is a good time of year, I guess. You know, NCAA basketball tournament. What else are you referring to, though?
- [03:53]
Bill Simmons
NFL draft.
- [03:55]
Chuck Klosterman
Oh, I guess that's coming up.
- [03:56]
Bill Simmons
Sure.
- [03:56]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah.
- [03:57]
Bill Simmons
Basketball playoffs about to. Whoa, I lost my voice. Basketball playoffs about to happen.
- [04:01]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah.
- [04:03]
Bill Simmons
And then this is. Right. March. I feel like it's the calm before the storm in a lot of ways. And it's when we kind of go nuts with different theories about things. We get angry about things. Like one of the reasons we didn't even know we were gonna do a pod today. You texted me last night you had an idea about tanking. But this is like March is a month where we complain about tanking. Baseball brought in this ABS thing that I can't wait for you to talk about. But why don't we start with the tanking? Cause you had an interesting idea.
- [04:32]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, okay. Yeah, so I've been thinking about tanking. I just.
- [04:35]
Bill Simmons
It's.
- [04:35]
Chuck Klosterman
It's an interesting problem because I feel like in some ways it's almost an unsolvable problem. Like I said in my text, like, it's a little like when they, you know, they're trying to stop teams from following at the end of the game. So they're like, we're going to remove the one on one. Everyone gets two shots, but there's still no other option. Right. That's the only way to get the ball back late in the game. Sometimes you still have to do it. There's no way you can stop teams from falling. I don't know if there's really a way that you can stop teams from trying to lose. If we exist in a system where there's a draft like this and, you know. So you look at Silver's ideas, I didn't think any of them were that great. Did you like any of them?
- [05:17]
Bill Simmons
I didn't. I mean, the. Flattening, the odds a little bit. There's something there. But I didn't think any of them got even 40% to where we needed to get to.
- [05:26]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, I don't think. I mean, they might be good ideas even, but not enough to actually change anything, you know. And you had talked one time about, like, penalizing teams with, like, cap space, but I would guess the players union would lose their mind about that because there would be less money available for the players. Then I thought Mark Cuban's thing about making the games 40 minutes was interesting but kind of imperfect. I don't know if that would have a huge factor. I also. I don't. You know, you had this idea, I think, of, like, going from 82 to 72 games. Right. That's kind of your thing. But see, I. I wonder what your response will be to this. I don't think that will work for this reason. Like, the example, if I recall, you used is that, well, for, like, a guy like Devin Booker, it would go from $75 million a year to $72 million a year for him. So your argument was.
- [06:16]
Bill Simmons
Or whatever it was. Yeah, yeah.
- [06:17]
Chuck Klosterman
They won't really miss it.
- [06:19]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [06:20]
Chuck Klosterman
But the real kind of bedrock issue here is the guys not caring enough about the games. It's hard to compel people to care more by paying them less. Like, even though you say, like, well, he shouldn't miss $3 million or he wouldn't. I mean, like, let's say, like, you went to, like, Sean and Amanda and said, I don't really like the performance you're doing in the big picture. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to let you do one less a month. And they might be like, oh, and you'll be like, but I'm also reducing your salary.
- [06:48]
Bill Simmons
Right.
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Chuck Klosterman
Like, nobody has ever decided, oh, they're reducing my salary. I better get more invested.
- [06:53]
Bill Simmons
It was a flawed argument, I agree.
- [06:55]
Chuck Klosterman
So I just. I don't. I don't know if there is, like, a way to fix this. So then I started wondering, well, what if there was a way to enhance the tanking experience? If this is an unavoidable problem, maybe make the problem into a benefit. So, like, what I was saying to you is, okay, so since the All Star break. I feel like the best night for the NBA was last week, the night when, like, the Celtics played the Thunder and like, Joker had almost 20, 20, 20 triple double and Murray scored all those points. And I think it was an overtime game between the Wolves and the Rockets. But the second best night since the break was when Bam scored 83. I thought that was a fascinating thing. I know there's people out there who see this as some tragic thing, but I thought it was much more interesting than pretty much any other NBA game that has happened in quite a while. Yeah, I was thinking, so what if this was the situation and this is a crazy idea, I don't believe it'll be implemented. But I'm just, you know. So once the All Star break happens, from that point on, we look at who has the highest scoring percentage or the highest scoring night that year so far. So let's say, like, at the All Star break, what was the biggest scoring night prior to that? Like, let's say it was like, let's say Kat had 52 or something. And let's say that the highest score by any individual team had been 148. I say that from the All Star break on till the end of the year, if you become. If you put up the highest point individual total, you get 5% of the cap space from the team you did it against. Or if your team scores the most points In a game, 155 or whatever, you get 5% of the cap space of the opponent you did against. And this would just be an ongoing thing that whoever at the end of the year then has the highest point total for an individual and the highest point total for a team would get 5% of the team that they did this, because at least it would bring in the idea that you're going to embarrass these teams for doing this, that they're going to sort of be humiliated when, like, Lucas scores 72 against them. And then you play a few weeks later and someone scores 78 or whatever. The rule would have to be that, like, you know, you have to win to do this. You can't. Otherwise a tanking team might try to do this, like, just put a guy at the other end of the basket and so many points you can score. But I think it would be interesting if they, like, create the situation where for the last month of the year, we were just seeing players and teams trying to put up insane numbers for this kind of little benefit that they get from kind of destroying the taking. Teams could still lose they could still lose the games and get in the lottery and stuff, but it would actually be like, I think people would want to watch these games. If you felt that, well, there's a chance tonight that like, oh, you know, Donovan Mitchell is going to try to score 80 points or whatever against the Jazz, I think that would be much more interesting than the situation we're in now.
- [09:56]
Bill Simmons
So you're tapping into a couple things that I like, which is why I wanted to deep dive this. First of all, I'm already on record. I like the Bam game. I fully supported them going for it. And I thought the far bigger issue was the disgrace of the wizard season that's happening. And I like that they were kind of humiliated. I thought. I thought it was totally fair game. I appreciated it.
- [10:16]
Chuck Klosterman
And plus, at the end of that game, the Wizards actually did play hard.
- [10:19]
Bill Simmons
Right? Right.
- [10:20]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, that was the only time that they've played hard for how many months was the last 10 minutes of that game.
- [10:25]
Bill Simmons
Well, so something else that happened that you didn't mention when you talk about like incentivizing teams to actually care even though they're losing. So in the NBA cup, when they had the total points thing before it got to the final eight, you would see these. These teams really trying even with a minute left when they're up 12. Right. You would like, all their best guys were still out there. For the team that was losing, their best guys were still out there. They're still running plays. They're trying to score with eight seconds left. And it was kind of cool. Cause there was some sort of end game. So I wonder if they were able to put in game kind of penalties and rewards in all these different ways, like what you laid out or like if you lose by 20 points or more. Like Milwaukee, I saw some stats, I think. I think they were like 17 and 23 at one point. Now they have one of the. One of the eight worst records. But I think they've lost 20 plus point losses. I think they have something like 14 of their last 17. They just got killed. So if you had something in there, like if you lose by more than 15 points, there's also some other penalty that comes with that. Right. Like you could either do it. Like there could be bonus pools for every team that you can. You have. Your salary is your salary. But you also have some sort of a commitment to quality of your performance for the season. So if, if the Wizards are like, we're just blowing these games, we're throwing them away and it actually cost them Part of their salary. Cause they didn't care. Those guys would obviously care more. Or if you add with the teams, every 15 point loss, you lose five ping pong balls, right? 10 ping pong balls.
- [12:03]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, 15 is kind of a low number for that. You can lose by 15 trying hard. I mean, you can still lose by, you know, right.
- [12:10]
Bill Simmons
So you'd be down 12 with a minute left and it'd be like, oh, no. And that the coach would have all his guys in. He would actually care about not losing by 16 because they would lose 15 ping pong balls. I don't even. That would be more interesting than what we're doing now.
- [12:24]
Chuck Klosterman
I just. The reason I kind of like this idea that I put forward is because I like what you're describing are ways to sort of mitigate the event from happening. I'm almost saying, like the event's going to happen. How can the event become more interesting? And I love it. I love one man teams. I love when some guy's trying to score as many points as possible. I think it's really interesting when an entire roster sort of converges on this idea where we get this guy the same basket over and over and over again. I think it would actually like, I would guess you probably, like, you probably watch that Heat game down to the very end.
- [12:59]
Bill Simmons
Oh, I had it on the second quarter because I got a text that Bam had 30 in the first quarter and we had just gone home from dinner. It's like, what happened?
- [13:06]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, I didn't. From that point, the third quarter or something. It was interesting how this, you know, shows in your life, like, who are the warning people in your life? You know? But I just, I think it would like, I also imagine so. Like I said, the deal is that it doesn't keep compiling. So if, like, if the Wizards had this happen to them four times in a row, they wouldn't lose 20% of their cap. It's only whoever ends the year with the highest point total or the highest team.
- [13:34]
Bill Simmons
Oh, they would get. So you're talking about rewards and penalties. So if somebody scores the most points, they'd actually get a benefit out of it.
- [13:41]
Chuck Klosterman
Yes.
- [13:41]
Bill Simmons
The other way to get penalized, like,
- [13:43]
Chuck Klosterman
like, let's say, you know, in this situation, like with, with Bam, how it would be now, the heat would get 5% of the Wizards cap space. That way it would move over to them. There would be no, you know, eradication of cap space. So the players union couldn't say, well, this is going to actually hurt the players. Because there's less money available.
- [14:00]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [14:01]
Chuck Klosterman
But. And, but let's say now at the. Let's say this rule existed now on the last day of the year, still there would be a chance for someone to steal that. If some could get 84 or more, then, you know, so it would be like.
- [14:14]
Bill Simmons
So that would be like the Thompson Girvin last day of the season.
- [14:16]
Chuck Klosterman
It would be like that night, except in every city. The last night, the very last night. Like the purge. It would. Yes. And, or. And also it's like I say, it'd be for the individuals and for the team.
- [14:28]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [14:29]
Chuck Klosterman
So, you know, so like, it wouldn't. So. So there could be some teams who maybe don't have a superstar, but they're like, let's put this all together and see if we can score 200 points, you know, against this team. And I don't know, like, in a way it's. I feel really weird advocating this because I kind of in many ways, like such a traditionalist about sports and like, oh, but the NBA is becoming more and more of an individual sport in every way. The way it is played, but also the way it is considered the way it is discussed. They may have to say, like, okay, we're going to have to accept that a lot of the fan base is much more interested in the individual than in the team. And there's got to be ways to sort of make, you know, like, how can we make that? I don't know. I just. I think it's very. Nothing will make me flip to a game faster than an insane point total going on. Even more so than a really close game. Like a really close game. I will too. But when it's somebody, like when someone's putting up some like, kind of insane number, I just, I think that, that there's. There's. There's just something very unique and cool about that.
- [15:38]
Bill Simmons
So it could be. You could basically do a monthly. Right. So you could have six months where the highest point total of the month gets some sort of reward. Highest for the team, highest for the player. I always think whenever I hear these, like. Cause they would do this when they were talking about what would be the rewards for the NBA cup and things like that. And people always forget, like, if you're the players, if you're on the team, and it's like if, if, if you win the NBA cup, your team gets a bonus lottery pick. You get the 15th pick. Why would any player in the team care about that? They wouldn't. They would care about the incentives of money. Or some sort of like, you get two extra home games the next year instead of on the road. Things like that. They care about themselves. Money less, traveling less being with their family more having more bye weeks. Like, so you'd have to cater it that way, I think.
- [16:29]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, it could be like, say, let's say for whatever reason, they wanted to make the NBA cup really contestants. So they're like, if you win the NBA cup, you get the number one pick that would actually deincentivize the guys who currently care the most, which is the guys at the end of the bench. I'm gonna lose my job if we get the number one pick, Right?
- [16:46]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
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Chuck Klosterman
I mean, now those guys are like, I could actually use that money. Like, I could.
- [16:50]
Bill Simmons
You know, one thing I was talking with somebody about that I haven't talked about in the podcast is why it's so much easier for football to have parody and. And just kind of have a team's fortunes flip in one year. Where in the NBA it's really hard. And people think it's because of the salary cap for the NFL, but it's really the schedule. The schedule is the big secret sauce of the NFL. And you saw it with the Patriots last year and Washington the year before. Fourth place schedule, you're just playing the other worst teams. You're not on TV that much. You're not traveling that much. And you can flip it in a smaller sample size. We only have to play 17 games. And I'm wondering, like, with the NBA, could part of this be all right, well, how would they do that with the NBA? Well, you actually could. You could reward teams could have more home games the next year if they succeed, and they could be. Have home games taken away the worst. They do. So if you're. If you're like the Wizards and you're just tossing away the second half of the season, would the franchise be as excited to do that if that meant they had 37 home games next year instead of 41?
- [18:01]
Chuck Klosterman
So some teams would then have.
- [18:03]
Bill Simmons
You would just lose revenue.
- [18:05]
Chuck Klosterman
Or could you could have like 44.
- [18:07]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. So some team could have 45 home games the next year.
- [18:10]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, to the NFL's credit, I mean, they have been thinking about parity since the early 70s. Right.
- [18:17]
Bill Simmons
Since we've ever cared about the NFL, that big thing.
- [18:19]
Chuck Klosterman
It was, you know, at a time when I don't even think anyone was worried about it. Like, I don't think in 1974, there were a lot of people expressing despair that, like, there wasn't enough Parity. But he knew that that was the central thing, that if you make a franchise feel like every eight to 10 years they have a legitimate shot to win a championship no matter what their ownership does. I mean, it has changed everything. The smaller number of games probably is a factor too in that, you know, a team can start 6, 0 or whatever and they suddenly feel like they're almost there, you know, even if they end up finishing, yeah, 500 or whatever. And there's lots of reasons why this has happened. I mean, it's just, it is, it is strange how like the NBA often makes me mad in a way other sports do not. You know, I need to make me the madness because I, when I, we were young people, I remember often almost seeming to advocate for the NBA. Like it felt like the conventional wisdom was the NBA was bad, you only wanted to watch college. And I liked the NBA as a kid and stuff like that. But it's hard. I mean, it really made me disprove like pro basketball is a young man's game with a young man mentality. Because when I. It is so crazy to be. I'll see a game that I want to see and I'll turn it on and three of the guys aren't playing and it doesn't seem like the guys who there care at all. And it's like, how do you motivate guys to like, it's just not enough somehow being in the NBA and playing these games is not enough to motivate these guys. And I, I don't know what to do about it. It's a weird thing. I mean, football has the other upside that you can't coast. Like you will get hurt if you coast. But you can coast in basketball, you can coast in baseball.
- [20:06]
Bill Simmons
I like your point about how that shifted with the NBA where. Because it's been making me mad basically ever since I had a column post college. So like late 90s on just complaining about the NBA became like its own content vehicle. But in the 80s, and I'm slightly older than you, but you remember this too. The NBA was like this cool alternative. They were like Dinosaur junior Where it was like you found people in your life that liked the NBA and you would click with them and you would be glass half full the whole time. You'd be explaining to people why this was a cool league and you really loved it. I used to have a joke, even when I had my aspn.com and 020304, I would joke about how as one of the last 20 NBA fans right. And it was. And it was always about like, you people don't get it. This league is so much better than it gives credit for. And now it's the opposite. Everybody's just mad at the NBA at all times.
- [21:00]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, okay, okay, So I would say outside of 1984 to 1989 or 90, what other periods has the NBA not been in crisis? They always are. There's always something happening.
- [21:15]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, I would say late. I would say late the early 90s when it was going the best. It was going the best, but we still had magic hiv and we had Jordan go play baseball as it was going the best.
- [21:27]
Chuck Klosterman
I also remember, like sometimes in the 90s, you'd watch a playoff game and it would be 64 to 71 or something and it was like, this is wrong sort, you know, and, and well,
- [21:37]
Bill Simmons
wait, think about that though, because we talked, Zach and I talked about this on Sunday night when they changed the three point line. That was the first time you felt like the league was responding to criticisms about. But then if you go back, you could go back to 76, 77, 78, which we talked about a little on Sunday. And the big crisis back then was violence. And even before the Kermit Washington punch, if you go back the first merger season, there's all these fights and guys. And some of them are on YouTube. Kermit Washington, Dex, John Shumate, stuff like that, where it's like fights. Kareem punched, I think Tom Burleson and he punched somebody else. Yeah, and he punched Ken Benson, broke his hand. Bob Lanier, I think hit two guys. Detroit was getting all these fights and it was like, holy shit, we gotta do something about this. So. And then cocaine was in the 80s. So really this has been 50 years of this.
- [22:27]
Chuck Klosterman
It's always, there's always something like. I remember writing in the early 2000s, I had watched a game between Vince Carter and Allen Iverson and it just seemed awful because it like, like, even though as much as I say I like one man teams or whatever, it was not the best application of that.
- [22:44]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [22:45]
Chuck Klosterman
I just, it's just, it is sort of just set up in a way to be dramatic. It's almost like. And now they've almost used that as their calling card. Like this idea that you can follow the NBA without watching games. Right. And you know that's. You don't really hear that said about other sports.
- [23:02]
Bill Simmons
Well, think the NBA has become like our family member. That's had a lot of issues over the years, but we still love them. But they make us crazy. And it's. It's almost like the sun in Parenthood, the Steve Martin movie. It's like, oh, boy, the NBA is another harebrained scheme.
- [23:17]
Chuck Klosterman
When the games are good. Like, sometimes in the playoffs, they're so good.
- [23:21]
Bill Simmons
Right?
- [23:21]
Chuck Klosterman
It's like. And it's so. You know, and it's like, why can't they. Like, it doesn't always have to be this good, but it should be able to be half of this. And sometimes not even close to half of it. I mean, it's like the intensity is just gone.
- [23:37]
Bill Simmons
Well, that's what's crazy about this year is you have these four guys who are having, like, these spectacular seasons right on top of Wemby, who we'll talk about in a second, who has just now emerged as this generational guy. And then you have all these big markets that have a chance to win the title or markets that haven't had a chance in a while. And you have OKC going for back to back. And there are a lot of good stories. Even, like the east playoffs, we have 10 teams. Even if you played the 10 seed. Like, are you crazy about playing the Miami Heat in the playoff series? Like, probably not. And yet here we are talking about what we could fix for the first 50 minutes. I don't know what this is about the NBA that makes us always want to do this.
- [24:17]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, it is something about the nature of the game. Because like I say, it has never not been this way.
- [24:24]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [24:24]
Chuck Klosterman
Like, it has never. You know, when you and I first started following this, the games were like, you know, the championship game being showed after the news or whatever on takeaway. It was like, that was its own kind of crisis. Right. It can't become one. It can't become a major sport. People don't even care enough to watch it live. Then had that little window when everything seemed to change and it was kind of emerged maybe over to baseball and all these things. But I bet if we went through all our old podcasts, how many. Whatever number there is, how many we
- [24:54]
Bill Simmons
complained about the league somehow, number of
- [24:55]
Chuck Klosterman
times we're talking about problems with the NBA would come up, I wonder. 25 times. But there are 25 examples of us having a conversation like this in the span of our relationship.
- [25:08]
Bill Simmons
Well, this was one of the things I wanted to talk about today. Cause I was talking on Sunday about this expansion thing, which has just been so weird for madam with basically saying, yeah, 20, 20, they're leaking out. They're giving the expectation they're going to be adding these two teams and meanwhile they don't have the votes for the teams yet from the 30 owners and they don't know if anyone even has remotely the amount of money they're looking for. And I think one of the things that's bothered me about it and some other people is to push forward with expansion when you haven't fixed all this other stuff, when we have this tanking crisis and you also are putting out solutions that nobody seems to like. Right. And also, do you have some markets in your league that I don't think are that stable? You know, and my question that I asked you, that I want to talk about is do you think Adam Silver's job is to run the NBA as a businessman? Or he's supposed to care about the spirit of the league, raising the level of the league, making the league a better place for fans? Which goes back to the old Stern argument we used to have was like, is Stern running this league for the owners or the players? And we knew with Stern, it's like he's running it for the owners. Goodell just all the way through has been, I'm running this for my 32 owners. Like even that right now they're doing, they're going to add the 18 game season with two bye weeks. You can already see they're laying the groundwork for right now. Yes, nobody thinks this is a good idea. Not one person. We all like football and we'll put up with it. But nobody thinks this is going to make the game safer, this will make the product better. But they're going to do it because he works for the owners. Adam makes it seem like he cares about the spirit of the game and the players. Do you think he does?
- [26:59]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, I'm sure he does care, but he does work for the owners. It's maybe like, you know, like Mountain Landis or whatever. Could be like, I'm doing this for baseball. I don't care how it affect, you know, it's like, yeah, but I. It's kind of unrealistic thing now to imagine that, that a commissioner would feel like would be empowered enough to do that. I mean, would you want a commissioner
- [27:23]
Bill Simmons
that cares more about the state of the game or the state of the business? Because it seems like we always get the latter.
- [27:29]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, we would want it for the state of the game, but that's not like, I mean, that would be like, if, you know, who would you rather have, you know, running Target? Somebody who's concerned about how much money Target makes or what will be the Best consumer experience. We would all say the second category, but that's not how it is.
- [27:45]
Bill Simmons
Right, but. But shouldn't we admit that's not how it is with the NBA? Because I think the commissioners try to pretend they care. But what's interesting is baseball actually seems like they have cared about the sport and they have cared about the product, and they have been able to make these fixes, which we'll talk about later, and the NBA is not.
- [28:02]
Chuck Klosterman
Although. I mean. Yeah, but you. You think the baseball fixes were for the.
- [28:09]
Bill Simmons
I mean, well, they came out of necessity because.
- [28:13]
Chuck Klosterman
Exactly. It wasn't like. I. I don't see that as someone being like, what is. I think that from a traditional baseball perspective, that they probably kind of contradict that, but feel like we got to have people watch these games. We got to have people care about these games. The NBA is, you know, has. Has. Is so kind of into the idea of, like, player empowerment, and it's a players league that they have to be much more vocal about acting as though this is for the benefit of the. Of the guys on the floor. I guess. I don't. I don't. I assume that. That, you know, adding two franchises, I mean, it just. It doesn't seem like that will help the product.
- [28:52]
Bill Simmons
Nobody thinks that's a good idea except for people who live in Seattle and in Vegas. And I want Seattle to have a team. I just don't think. I think there's a better way for that to happen. Why?
- [29:03]
Chuck Klosterman
You've always wanted Seattle to get the team back so much. Why is that? I mean, I'm not saying that they shouldn't have one, but why is this good thing for you?
- [29:10]
Bill Simmons
Well, a couple reasons. One is, I think it's a great sports city. I thought they really, really were great with the Sonics. I thought. I honestly felt like that was one of the seven or eight NBA fan bases, and they had real history in the 70s, 80s.
- [29:26]
Chuck Klosterman
It was actually a basketball town where basketball was the most important.
- [29:29]
Bill Simmons
It really was. And they won a title. I think if you're taking a team away that won the title, you have to really have a good reason for it. And I thought the reasons they lost the team were outrageous. It basically came down to the Starbucks guy, Howard Schultz, not being able to build an arena and just being like, all right, fuck it, and just selling to this OKC group, pretending he didn't know they were going to move the team, when, of course they were. And then Stern, who's now no longer with us, really kind of wanting the team to move to, to prove a point to everybody else. Like, if you don't build an arena, you're going to lose your team.
- [30:08]
Chuck Klosterman
I really like having a team in Oklahoma City, though.
- [30:11]
Bill Simmons
But that. But that's fine.
- [30:12]
Chuck Klosterman
You could have had both. I think their geographic location has been a benefit to that franchise 100%.
- [30:17]
Bill Simmons
And I think you could argue maybe Kansas City should. Would be another team that could do really well. And even if you look at a map, like, they did this when they were talking about the teams moving, the conferences, and it's like, shit, well, how are we going to have 15 east teams? And you look at the map and there's just wide pockets of the country that don't have an NBA team even near them, and then clusters of these other teams. But the bigger picture for me is like, just talking about expansion as a financial decision. And I think that the league looks at this, thinking, well, look how much money we made from the media deal. Well, look at how much money we'll make when we sell expansion teams. And to them, that's the success. But for me, the success is, well, you have to have fans feel good about the league and the product and what they're watching, and they don't. So to me, that's a 50, 50 thing. And they're only caring about the business side of the 50.
- [31:12]
Chuck Klosterman
I just thought of something crazy. Would this mitigate tanking? What if they went back to a regional draft? So, like, if you were in the east, you're in the.
- [31:25]
Bill Simmons
Like when Wilt Chamberlain ended up in
- [31:26]
Chuck Klosterman
Philadelphia, from the Big east or the ACC or the ancillary conferences around there. Like, the teams in the Midwest could draft from, like, the Big Ten and the Mac and stuff like that. Like, you know, like the Lakers and the warriors, like, they'd have to, you know, pick from, like, you know, the teams in the West Coast.
- [31:45]
Bill Simmons
No, but then you'd have owners. You'd have owners moving, basically. What happened with DeBance and BYU, you'd have owners taking high school kids and moving them into their region.
- [31:54]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, well, but maybe we have. Okay, we gotta.
- [31:57]
Bill Simmons
That sounds like a lot of corruption.
- [31:59]
Chuck Klosterman
If you're a high school basketball player, you can only play college in the state you're in or from a state that geographically touches the border of your state. So. So, like, we can. We could just enforce a regional aspect to basketball.
- [32:15]
Bill Simmons
Be tough for Minnesota.
- [32:16]
Chuck Klosterman
A kid grows up in Nevada, he's got, like, go to college at like, UNLV or in California or something, and then he can Only play on the west coast, you know, Everybody be like LeBron. Then in Cleveland, where his whole, you know that. Where his whole life is in one spot.
- [32:30]
Bill Simmons
I still thought the best idea I've come up with is having the.
- [32:33]
Chuck Klosterman
I really like to limit mobility. I like to hurt the lives of these guys.
- [32:39]
Bill Simmons
But my favorite idea that I've come up with that I think could actually work, but they would never have the balls to do it, is having the lottery for the first. Basically like you, you have your top five teams, whatever, you figure out the lottery, the order, and then they all put in their name for who they would take first. And then the consensus first guy was like, the number one pick is Cooper Flagg. And he just walks up to the podium, he's like, you're these five teams could be your home. And now we are going to find out where Cooper Flagg wants to play. And we, we kind of shifted almost bachelor style to the player. I still feel like that idea could work.
- [33:14]
Chuck Klosterman
Or what if it was like the draft was over many days. So like the first.
- [33:18]
Bill Simmons
Oh, it's a 30 day draft.
- [33:20]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, like, yeah, like so. So the first pick happens on the first day. Let's say it's a Wizard or whatever and they pick whoever they take. Okay. That guy can go to that team or he has like 24 hours to negotiate with every other team with salary going down incrementally. So if he goes to the second year, so like, so he would be, he would be picked by. The only way he could get his max money is by going with the team who picked him. Yeah, but he could go to any other team for a fraction eventually. You know, that could be ultimately very dangerous.
- [33:51]
Bill Simmons
But that, that money thing, that's another thing I've always thought they should do. Like, the longer you have the player on your team like Steph Curry, you actually get tax and cap relief after a certain number of years. So they could try to keep players in the same city more. I mean, this is another issue, the player empowerment, which has had mostly good benefits, I think, for the last 15 years. But the worst benefit has been these teams that, you know, once their guy decides they don't want to play for them, they're stuck making these pretty terrible trades. Like Utah's trade for Mitchell was actually, they got a lot of good stuff back, right. So, you know, on paper you'd probably do that. But they also traded somebody who's one of the best 10 players in the league, who hadn't even hit his prime yet, who was under contract for three years. And that's like exactly the kind of guy you'd want to build around for 15 years. And then you look at the flip side of Sacramento. Fox hates being in Sacramento. The team's a train wreck. I don't blame Fox at all. And then his agent, the ringers, Rich Paul, starts pushing them to make a trade and kind of steers him to San Antonio because he thinks that's the best thing for him. So he has every right to do that. Fox has every right to want to get traded. But there was only one suitor for Fox who's really good. And I don't think that's a good system either.
- [35:13]
Chuck Klosterman
You know, I mean, in almost any walk of life or any kind of employment, if you do things that improve the situation for the individual, it's going to hurt the collective right. I mean, it's going, you know, like, I mean, like in college basketball right now, one thing that I've noticed is a lot of people saying, oh, you know, we complain about, you know, nil money, we complain about the Portal, but look how good these games are. Like, college basketball in some ways, seems like it's. It's been, you know, playing at a level that is kind of a new kind of apex for it. Yeah, that's because all of the good players are at the same 16 to 25 schools. In the past, there were a bunch of reasons, dozens of reasons why an exceptional player could, say, end up at Wichita State or end up at Davidson or something like that. And then. Yes.
- [36:03]
Bill Simmons
Where did Beasley play?
- [36:05]
Chuck Klosterman
Beasley went to Kansas State.
- [36:06]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, yeah, Kansas State. That's never happening now.
- [36:09]
Chuck Klosterman
Oh, well, I mean, it's still, I mean, Kansas, if you're in a, if you're in a power conference, it could still happen, I guess. But the main. More for the mid majors, kind of. It's like, right, if you got, if you, if you happen. If you've got this great talent evaluator who finds the kid that other people don't realize is going to be great, there's still. It's just like he's going to end up at Texas or Tennessee or something in a couple of years anyways. Like, they're, they'll just, they'll just ratchet up the. We have the Portal and you have unlimited money.
- [36:40]
Bill Simmons
I honestly don't mind it. I think this is where college sports should go, where we have 20 to 30 colleges in football and basketball that are almost operating like a pro league and they have different rules. And then everybody else is an Amateur athlete, basically.
- [36:55]
Chuck Klosterman
That's because you dramatically prefer the pro game to the college game in every.
- [37:00]
Bill Simmons
No, I'm just. I still feel like amateur athletics should still keep some sort of umbilical cord to the past, and right now we don't have it.
- [37:09]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, you should keep it or should, like.
- [37:12]
Bill Simmons
No, I like people going to college just to get it. Just to get a degree and be part of the campus and staying there for a few years and playing the sport because they're a big part of every, you know, just going to the school. Take having, Having roommates for four years living off campus, that. It's almost like that's not cool anymore. I know, that's. That's like.
- [37:34]
Chuck Klosterman
So you're saying you don't like what's going on now? You don't like the situation?
- [37:37]
Bill Simmons
I like what's going on for a certain select group of colleges. But not for all 300.
- [37:46]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, but, but the reason it's not happening all 300 is because of those select college.
- [37:50]
Bill Simmons
I know, but. But that's the issue. I'd like to go back to just. We had two awesome conferences and then everything else was just like college sports again. I mean, I guess that's not happening.
- [38:01]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, well, I mean, it's. I mean, that's. I know. I, I kind of. I feel like in a sense that is what's going to happen. I think that when these, the super conferences break off from the NCAA and stuff like that, and then they'll be, you know, so then, but then it will just be like, there'll be the pros and then the semi pros and then. So that. So you'll be. I mean, there won't be that much differentiation between the two.
- [38:27]
Bill Simmons
You know, There isn't. Now, like these guys, all right, these guys in the tournament right now who are allegedly freshmen, okay, the moment their team gets knocked out, what do you think they. You think they're still going to class? You think they're still on campus? Like they're done? Yeah, the whole farce of that. Like, we should just own that and make that like, this is pro sports already. We pretend it's not, but it is. And that. I just think we should differentiate it better and go back to. I know there's no way to do it because there's no czar of college sports. There's nobody who could be like, why is UCLA playing teams on the East Coast? This is the dumbest thing we've ever done. These kids are flying. You've cross country kids flying 3,000 miles to do a meet when they're supposed to be taking classes. Like, how did we end up doing in this spot? It's nuts.
- [39:15]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, yeah, I mean, that is so weird. We're like, even now, even thinking about, like, the academic consequences of this.
- [39:22]
Bill Simmons
Seems like just football going until they're adding more playoff rounds. Football is going to go until February, so you're going to have a same schedule as the NFL. We got to take a break and I want to keep going on this. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. What makes basketball so exciting? All the superior skill on the court. This has been the case my whole life. The craziest thing. I mean, Wemby stuff he's doing every game. There's two, three Wemby moments a game. You're like, I don't know if I've ever seen that. The number one thing for me is when he does the screen and roll, he's going to the basket. Somebody throws up an alley oop and he just catches it and dunks it without jumping. It's an alley oop, but it's not an oop. It's just kind of an alley. And every time he does it, I'm like, I've definitely 100% never seen that anymore. It's a superior play. Superior plays aren't just for the NBA, though. Try Michelob Ultra, the official beer partner of the NBA. And a crisp, refreshing, superior light beer. It's the beer of Max Kellerman. He just told me that. Plus, they're giving you a chance to win courtside seats, custom merch and more. Michelob Ultra Superior is worth playing for. Enter now at michelobutra.com courtside Michelob Ultra Courtside 2526. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21/plus begins on October 1, 2025. Ends on June 30, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official rules@michelobaltra.com courtside for free entry, entry deadlines and prizes and details. So you mentioned college basketball in the last. When we were heading into the last break, Duke UConn felt like just an old school. I remember where I watched it kind of basketball ending. Everybody loved it. It was fun. In social media. The memes and the videos were coming for two straight days. The camera angles. Bobby Danny Hurley just seemed like a maniac. Danny Hurley's wife, Bill Murray is somehow involved. It just kind of kept going and going and was awesome for all these different reasons. But the fundamental thing people seem to love was that something bad happened to Duke and I really do think they might be the most hated anything that we have in sports right now. I know people delighted that the Patriots sucked in the Super Bowl. I know people hate the Yankees. I know there's people that hate the Lakers and the Celtics. But they also have their giant groups of people that love them too. Is Duke the most one sided hate verse like right now that we have in pro or college sports?
- [41:53]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, and it's an eternal thing. Like the players can change, the coaches can change. It. Doesn't people feel that hatred toward them still like with these other, with any pro franchise or whatever. You know, once a team really fails for a while and you know people, you know, the Patriots or whatever, it's like if, if, if when they struggle, people be like, ah, kind of. They'll never forget with Duke. Like the guys who hate Duke, they'll hate him all the time.
- [42:18]
Bill Simmons
But what's weird is I was in college the last time people actually were kind of rooting for Duke, which was when they upset unlv. Yes, that makes sense. Within a year that flipped. I think Laettner had a big thing to do with it, which we did a 30 for 30 about once upon a time. But Laitner is like kind of the before and after his whole career. By the end of his career people are like, I hate Duke. And it's just stayed that way even
- [42:42]
Chuck Klosterman
when they upset Vegas. I mean Vegas was an incredibly cool team.
- [42:47]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [42:47]
Chuck Klosterman
So I felt like most people liked UNLV over Duke even then, even though they were the favorite. So it's not just, it's not just that Duke is so often the favorite in these things.
- [42:56]
Bill Simmons
I feel like you're remembering that long wrong a little bit. Cause Vegas was like the UNLV was the big bully. They were killing everybody. Like they were doing a lot of trash talking. And there was a lot of like the older media was getting really upset about their behavior. Are these guys role models? And then upstart Scrappy Duke did like the Hoosiers, Norman Dale trying to beat them and then. But that flipped in a year.
- [43:20]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, but we were younger. So I mean, because my memory of this was that the two most popular teams from that period was the Vegas team and the Michigan Fab Five.
- [43:30]
Bill Simmons
Fab Five I think was the first.
- [43:31]
Chuck Klosterman
And they were both kind of criticized in the same way. But this goes back. We were talking earlier how like we used to defend the NBA and now it kind of drives us crazy.
- [43:40]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [43:41]
Chuck Klosterman
I think I have this kind of growing hypothesis that's like. But Basketball is something that is made for a young mentality. And that the sort of. The individual nature of only having five guys on the floor, the fact that their personalities are really present and all these things, it makes it desirable to. To the way you view the world when you're 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, that you kind of, like, you want to. You want that sort of. But then when you become. And you mature and become an adult, you see, like, the way things work in football as more rational and reasonable, maybe how things should be, and that you should sublimate yourself to some larger idea where basketball doesn't make that same requirement, particularly among teams, like, we're talking about, like, the really entertaining teams.
- [44:31]
Bill Simmons
Wait, let's. Let's. Let's build this out. Cause I think you're right. I think part of it is basketball, as I've always said, is the most naked sport, right? You're just. You got five guys on the court. You can watch them at all times. You can watch them on the bench. You can watch them when the action's not happening or when it's happening. You can see how they interact with other people. It's almost like a microcosm of being in somebody's office, you know, or. Or being at somebody's Thanksgiving table. Like, look what's happening with the Rockets lately. I have real thoughts on the Rockets, even though I've never been in their locker room. And I've never talked to any of the players this year, but I watched them on tv, and I'm like, those guys aren't connected. They don't like each other. I wonder if it's the KD Burner scandal and no other sport works that way. Baseball's the only one that's as naked. But I think with. With baseball, we don't really see them interact other than celebrating after, you know, home runs or strikeouts. And in general, like, it's kind of an individual sport. They're all in it for themselves, but collectively, it just kind of makes sense. Basketball's not individual, and I think that's the difference. That's what hockey. We always know they're on the same page. They'll play with a broken anything. You know, they're going all out, their honors at stake at all times. Like, we don't worry about hockey players, but basketball players we talk about constantly.
- [45:54]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, it seems like basketball. You said basketball's not individual.
- [45:59]
Bill Simmons
Well, it's not individual, but it is. But you still need your. You need your teammates to succeed in basketball.
- [46:06]
Chuck Klosterman
Yes.
- [46:07]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [46:07]
Chuck Klosterman
You know, it was interesting. This year I went to a Blazers Suns game and I was really startled by the Suns bench. I could not. I was shocked how the guys were
- [46:19]
Bill Simmons
all locked in and they were so engaged.
- [46:22]
Chuck Klosterman
It's like it didn't really seem like a college team and it made me think like they could be better than I thought they were. You know, it's like,
- [46:30]
Bill Simmons
yeah, there's a few teams like that where you can. I love. This is the kind of stuff I. I still love going to basketball games and it's the kind of stuff I look at. You can learn a lot just from the behavior of teammates who aren't playing and what happens in the huddles and things like that that I just don't think in baseball you would notice in the same way.
- [46:49]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, well, I mean, totally. I mean, it's. The baseball is a. Just like there is less. There's. There will be personalities, but less. I mean, like in. In the NBA, it's like having no personality is a kind of personality. Duncan had a personality because he had no personality for a long time. Kawhi Leonard had a personality by having no personality.
- [47:13]
Bill Simmons
Oh, yeah, you say naked.
- [47:15]
Chuck Klosterman
That's actually a pretty fucking good description because it's like almost any Persona you have becomes something to be understood through. Where in. In a lot of other situations, if you have no personality, you just sort of disappear into the shadows, you know,
- [47:29]
Bill Simmons
like, that's Darren Peterson happen in this. Yeah, people are worried about Darren Peterson, that he has no personality. And he just seems. You're the point guard. You're not enough of a leader and a connector. But his personality is basically Kawhi Leonard. And it's worked really well for Kawhi Leonard. And I do think you can be that way on a. Like, Boozer's been. I thought he was really interesting to watch the last few weeks and you know, they had this terrible loss. But I always felt like he was calm at all times. Even if you watch what happens after the most devastating, you know, steal, his brother gives. Does the steal crazy 40 pointer and all the Duke guys are frozen and he's like walking. He's trying to figure out, okay, and he's. He starts walking toward the ball. He was the only one that was like thinking, oh, we still have a game. And I always thought, like, that quality is going to serve him really well. And granted, I've never seen him in person. I'm just watching him on tv. But that's why we love basketball.
- [48:26]
Chuck Klosterman
I have no idea if he'll translate to the NBA. I was so fucking wrong about Cooper Flag. I guess I'm just like. Because my thing is, like, I only watch the games. So when I would watch Duke last year and I'd be like, well, he's good, but he seemed like the second best player on this team. So I was like, I just like that he. I thought, he's going to be a very, very, very good pro who's not going to be this sort of like, will probably never win an mvp. I now think he probably will win.
- [48:52]
Bill Simmons
I really think that competitiveness, it's the thing that I always use whether to try to decide who's going to be a great prospect.
- [49:00]
Chuck Klosterman
You're probably right, but when you brought that up the first time, I was sort of like, I hear that about so many guys. Competitiveness, I mean, that's like. It doesn't. It seems to me, like. Of like a filler aphorism you use about somebody.
- [49:11]
Bill Simmons
But there's two kinds of competitiveness. There's like, oh, he's a competitive guy. There's certain guys that you can just tell minute to minute, quarter to quarter, half to half, whatever, really give a shit. And I don't know how you quantify it. You can't figure it out. In the combine, I felt that way about Castle. Castle was my favorite guy two years ago, right? It was a bad draft. It wasn't like the hottest take ever. But I really liked how he carried himself, how hard he played. And I felt like he was in a weird situation on that UConn team because they were really good. They had players all over the place. There was probably more he could have done. So I think when you're projecting guys, you have to think, like, all right, fundamentally, ultimately, is this guy a badass or not? Like, I feel that way about Burry's on Arizona. I just think he's a badass. He's going to go in the league, and I know he's going to succeed. And I wonder if sometimes it's that easy. I mean, quarterbacks, we're never going to figure out.
- [50:07]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, yeah, I was going to say, like, so Indiana's quarterback. What do you. What, using your kind of sort of like, judging their personality.
- [50:14]
Bill Simmons
My stupid Bill things. Well, one thing I like with him is he's apparently by all accounts, super smart. And I wonder, with quarterbacks, do we underrate that in some ways? Because think about, like, even the ones that, like, Favre's a bad example, right? Favre's like, just pretty dumb, gifted guy, right? Rogers, super smart. Brady, super smart. Manning, super smart. Like some of the best guys we've had over the last 30 years.
- [50:48]
Chuck Klosterman
Not an intellectual. I mean, there's so many.
- [50:50]
Bill Simmons
Like, no, but Dan Marino was football smart, though.
- [50:52]
Chuck Klosterman
Like, he.
- [50:53]
Bill Simmons
These guys that can remember, like, every play that they. You could bring up a play, like week two, your third season, you're in San Diego and they're like, oh, yeah, third quarter. Like, there's something about their brain that's different. And it seems like Mendoza has that.
- [51:07]
Chuck Klosterman
It's an incredibly difficult job, and it's a incredibly situational job. Whereas, like, you know, like, love the running back from Notre Dame, wherever he goes, he's going to be able to basically do what he does, you know, and some places, like, bigger holes than others, but, like, what he did in college and what he does in the NFL will be the same. For quarterbacks, that is not the case. You're almost always going into a totally different thing. And they can also sort of, you know. You know, at the college level, you can kind of twist these offenses around where, like, a guy makes these same three reads every time. And if he can do that, I mean, I remember watching Kellen Moore at Boise State, I was like, there's no way this guy's not going to be a successful NFL quarterback. I've never seen him miss an open receiver, but that was because he was in a situation where he had a lot of open receivers running across the middle at all times.
- [51:54]
Bill Simmons
You know, I talked to. I got to spend a lot of time with Peyton Manning last year at this conference we were at. And not to. Not to talk out of school. I don't think he would care me talking about this, but I'm really fascinated when I talk to these guys, like, when they see the other quarterbacks, what they see and don't see with either prospects or guys in the league. And if you talk to any of those guys, they always say, like, the number one thing is when you go to the line to be completely prepared in your brain for anything that's going to happen. And then to be able instantaneously to realize everything that defense is doing. And all these guys are like, it doesn't matter how talented you are, if you don't have that quality in a split second to know everything that's going to happen. It doesn't matter how good of an athlete you are, right? And learning that, getting better at that just, I'm going to the line. I'm completely prepared. I know everything my offensive line has to do, my receivers. But I Also know the seven things. And that was one of the reasons Drake may kind of sucked in the Super Bowl. Seattle was basically doing two things over and over again and he was too young, he wasn't ready for it. He couldn't unlock it. But I just wonder. That goes back to the brain thing.
- [53:04]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah. Like Jon Gruden used to have that show where he'd talk to the quarterbacks, you know, and that was always intriguing because what you were really watching when you watched that was like how really, I mean, you know, straight. Like how smart do they seem when they describe these things?
- [53:17]
Bill Simmons
Right. But then if you don't have the athleticism, you end up being Steve Walsh.
- [53:22]
Chuck Klosterman
Well.
- [53:22]
Bill Simmons
Or Josh Rosen or like pick a guy. Like, you still have to have the, the modicum of athleticism to get by.
- [53:29]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, well, there, yeah. Because there's also guys who can explain the things they can't execute. Those are the guys who end up becoming quarterback coaches usually. You know, but Keller Moore maybe being one of these people, it is, it is such a. It's just unlike you because you'd asked one time, it's like, why are we still so bad at like deducing what quarterbacks to draft and select?
- [53:55]
Bill Simmons
You know, find like Ty Simpson right now. Yes. Now he's the polarizing guy. Like some people think he might go way higher. It's a little like Jackson Dart last year. And he's become the guy everybody's been talking about. Yet he's played 15 games in college.
- [54:10]
Chuck Klosterman
It, it is. I mean, it's such a demanding thing. And I do think that it is like, I use situational. I think it's unusually situational that there's.
- [54:20]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [54:20]
Chuck Klosterman
That there are probably a lot of quarterbacks who could succeed in certain scenarios and almost none who could succeed in other scenarios. I mean, it's. I, you know, we'll, we'll. Now someone like Ryan Leaf or whatever, we almost put the totality of his bust on him. Right. So that like all his problems really were him and, you know, and, and, and, you know, breaking the law and doing all these things. But it is interesting to wonder if he had gone somewhere else entirely and been around totally different people, if he would have had a completely different career in life. I mean, I, I don't think that's unthinkable.
- [54:58]
Bill Simmons
You know, I think that. Well, look at Mendoza. He's going to Vegas. They have money to spend. They have. They hired a coach that is a very well regarded offensive coach. Kubiak seems like he's going to be Able to have some semblance of an offensive line coming out of the gate.
- [55:17]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, even if you look at him when he was at Cal compared to Indiana, he was not the quarterback at Cal, he was in Indiana.
- [55:24]
Bill Simmons
That's, that's the problem with this stuff. Well, that's like Illinois in a year goes from I'm not a top 100 guy to I might be the fifth pick in the NBA draft. Sometimes I do wonder with this stuff. I've just watched it with my own kids and my daughter's about to be 21 and my son's 18 and they've changed so much year to year in all of these different ways that it makes me think like this draft process is nuts. How would you, how do you, you're pegging these kids who are 19 and 20 and assuming when they're 23 they're gonna be the same people. How do you know? You have no idea.
- [55:59]
Chuck Klosterman
But we do this in lots of things. We still find it impressive when some 40 year old person, it turns out they went to Harvard or they went to Yale. Well, that meant they were an incredibly ambitious 16 year old who was really smart at 16 and had parents kind of pushing them. That's how you get into those schools. It is not a reflection on anything about you as a person outside of what you were like as a teenager. And we kind of do that with tons of stuff. I mean like with, you know, with sports it is, I mean, kind of a glaring situation because the careers are shorter. So what you are at 18 actually isn't that far removed from you at 28.
- [56:40]
Bill Simmons
But still a lot.
- [56:41]
Chuck Klosterman
Still a lot though, right?
- [56:43]
Bill Simmons
But in, I think in basketball, like I was thinking about Jaden Ivey this week who's obviously going through a lot of stuff and seems like he's unraveled a little bit. This guy was a top five lottery pick.
- [56:52]
Chuck Klosterman
Yes.
- [56:53]
Bill Simmons
And I don't know if he was a sure thing because he was a, you know, he's a guard, it was a combo guard, but he was somebody, you know, an incredible athlete. People really thought he was. Had a chance to be like, I don't know if an all NBA guard, but definitely an all star goes to the worst possible Detroit situation. Right. At one point they lose 20 plus games in a row. He's playing with Cade, who's better than him. So he's got to figure out a play with him last year, right. As it's about to happen for him and he's really starting to play pretty well. Breaks his leg I was watching the game when it happened, and now is in a tailspin and now is probably out of the league. And it's like, you think he's done.
- [57:34]
Chuck Klosterman
You don't think. Like, if I said he's out of
- [57:35]
Bill Simmons
the league for now, I think he could come back a year or two years from now, maybe.
- [57:39]
Chuck Klosterman
Will he ever be an NBA starter again?
- [57:42]
Bill Simmons
That I don't know, because he's lost a lot of. Could he be an NBA rotation guy? Sure. We've seen.
- [57:47]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, he was a rotation guy.
- [57:48]
Bill Simmons
We saw Ron or tests come back. I mean, anything. Anything's possible. But my point is, like, if you just played his career 30 times, this was probably the worst outcome, going to the worst possible team, having the worst possible injury, you know, and there's another outcome where he goes to the right kind of team with the right kind of infrastructure and is having a really good career now. So I don't know. This is the tough thing with the draft. I think very rarely with drafts like, Hashim Thabeet's a good example. I hope he's not listening. It was just a terrible pick. It was terrible. In the moment I was writing about it, he went second. And I think it was the draft that had had Curry and Rubio and maybe even James Harden. I think all three of those guys were in that draft. And the Grizzlies were like, we don't know what to do. We don't really need a guard. And they were just like. They took the beat. And it was crazy when it happened. That was like, oh, I know this is going to be a bust, but there's other ones. Like, how do you know with Michael Beasley? The guy was averaging. He was like one of only three or four guys ever to be, like, 25 and 10 in college. The stats were saying he might be an awesome pro. He was just a little dubious off the court. So you rolled the dice and didn't work.
- [59:00]
Chuck Klosterman
Had a career. He played on.
- [59:02]
Bill Simmons
But, I mean, he.
- [59:03]
Chuck Klosterman
Yes, but. Yeah, exactly. Yes. It was not. It was. It was not the career I'm sure he thought he was gonna have coming out.
- [59:10]
Bill Simmons
I would go nuts if I worked at a team, if I was, like, in a front off, like a GM or if I was an owner. I would spend all my time talking to people about this. I would be, like, obsessed with, how do we figure this out? There's gotta be some way to crack it, and I don't think there is.
- [59:25]
Chuck Klosterman
Well. But. Okay. So you. Like you said about Ivy, like, okay, we play his career 30 times. You think this might be the 30th outcome?
- [59:36]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, maybe like 29th. There might be one worse outcome.
- [59:39]
Chuck Klosterman
So let's say you did your career 30 times. So what outcome are you at?
- [59:45]
Bill Simmons
I did think about this once. I was basically a late bloomer professionally, but I was probably coming out of college. I probably would have been a first round pick because I'd written my sports column for all four years and I had like a perspective and then it
- [60:04]
Chuck Klosterman
was like the Omaha World Herald.
- [60:05]
Bill Simmons
I don't know. Whatever. I'm just trying to do with.
- [60:08]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, keep going, keep going. I want to hear this.
- [60:10]
Bill Simmons
And then it's like, oh, I'm going to work at a newspaper and I'm going to be on the bench for whatever. And it didn't work out. And I basically had like, not quite jaded ivy.
- [60:18]
Chuck Klosterman
But that would have been the. Yeah, that would not have been the best outcome for you to be drafted.
- [60:23]
Bill Simmons
Yes, I would say that the original
- [60:25]
Chuck Klosterman
outcome immediately, if you would have immediately got a newspaper job, even a column coming straight, I think that would have
- [60:32]
Bill Simmons
been bad for me.
- [60:33]
Chuck Klosterman
College, I don't think we'd be talking now. I don't think you'd have that house.
- [60:37]
Bill Simmons
But think about this. So it's actually a 30 year anniversary of this because it was near the end of March 96 where I left the Herald because I knew I was stuck there forever and I'd probably made a couple mistakes on my own, but I left and I didn't even have a plan. I was going to freelance. So I'm 26 years old. I'm not working or writing for everybody. And eventually I have to start bartending. And I don't think I wrote anything for like 10 months. So my career was like over. And I'm sure there's some NBA, NFL, baseball, there must be. I can't even imagine how many people are like, God damn, like they're at this fork in the road and then they end up just doing something else. But then we're wondering, should I have kept going?
- [61:23]
Chuck Klosterman
You know, it's tough to admit this because you want to think anything that happens to you is because of merit or hard work. But the biggest factor is luck. I graduated from college in 1994. If I had graduated in 93 or in 95, there is zero chance that I'm here right now talking to you. There's no chance. I think that if I had graduated in 93 or 95, I don't know if I would have ever written a book But. But because I graduated in 94 and certain things were lined up that year, everything is different. And it's the same for these dudes. I mean, it just.
- [62:01]
Bill Simmons
Well, it's not the same. I think Cooper Flagg is good no matter where he goes and what happens. Like, there's certain guys that whatever happens, it's happened.
- [62:09]
Chuck Klosterman
But although, I mean, let's say. So you're saying that you think he could have gone to any franchise and it would not have.
- [62:20]
Bill Simmons
I would argue he's in the worst position possible. This first year in Dallas, he goes to a team that the fan base is so scarred and upset about, the trade that just happened, that even as the new season is starting, they're still mad and booing the GM and chanting that he has to get fired. That's how you start. AD Gets hurt right away, Kyrie decides he's not coming back. They trade basically 80s of sunk cost. They trade him. They decide to start tanking. I don't. None of that was good. He's playing out of position, trying to learn how to be a point guard when he's not a point guard and.
- [62:54]
Chuck Klosterman
But what if he stays there? What if it's five years from now and the Mavs have never improved?
- [62:59]
Bill Simmons
Well, you could argue this. It's all. He's putting thick skin and scar tissue on himself for when they actually get good.
- [63:06]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, but we don't say that about Zion. We don't say, like, Zion's put on, you know, scar tissue.
- [63:11]
Bill Simmons
Zion has different issues, though. I mean, Zion.
- [63:13]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, exactly. But I mean. But I'll tell you what. Coming out of college, if we could somehow go back in time and someone said, you can put money on Zion being great, or Flag, I would have put money on Zion.
- [63:26]
Bill Simmons
Well, I look at.
- [63:27]
Chuck Klosterman
I think most people would.
- [63:29]
Bill Simmons
And I think, well, from a talent standpoint, yes, I would have bet on Flag. Cause I. I thought the way Zion played made me nervous. Even though I thought Zion was incredible. But all the in the air guys make me nerv.
- [63:40]
Chuck Klosterman
Sure you did stuff about Zion coming out of college. I'd be curious.
- [63:43]
Bill Simmons
I thought he was awesome.
- [63:44]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah.
- [63:45]
Bill Simmons
But I thought I was all in on Flag. I just thought. I actually didn't think he was going to be this good offensively. But when you talk about situations, it's funny. Like, the best situations that anyone entered the league in of the guys from the last 12, 13 years are Tatum and Brown in Boston. And I wonder if it's one of the reasons Brown's been so. He's gotten back like, he's in year 10 now. He's going to make an all NBA team. But he goes to that first Celtics team and they were good. Remember, they made the eastern finals his first year. He didn't even play that much. He was playing like 12, 13 minutes a game. He was a bench guy. He got to watch. It was almost like Mahomes sitting on the sideline for a year.
- [64:26]
Chuck Klosterman
Better than Wemby's situation.
- [64:27]
Bill Simmons
No, Wemby doesn't count.
- [64:28]
Chuck Klosterman
Wemby's like, well, I mean, I think he also got put in a perfect situation.
- [64:34]
Bill Simmons
It was pretty good. Duncan is probably the standard for this.
- [64:36]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, but that's.
- [64:37]
Bill Simmons
Duncan joins a really good spurs team. They tank for one year. He's next to David Robinson. He's got Popovich. That's about as. That's about as good as it gets.
- [64:47]
Chuck Klosterman
As well as when Minyama's playing. I still feel like they're kind of bringing him along surprisingly slowly.
- [64:53]
Bill Simmons
I love it. I mean, I love that 29 minutes a game is the best.
- [64:57]
Chuck Klosterman
And I would, I would be very.
- [65:00]
Bill Simmons
Wait, hold Wemby because we gotta take a break.
- [65:02]
Chuck Klosterman
My hope is that they get into the playoffs and they're like, we're gonna unleash him now. He's playing 35 minutes a game and we're gonna see what kind of numbers he puts up now. And like, you know, or I, I, I, I. Because it does seem as though they are still like he's like a. He's like a horse. And they're still not letting him run full speed. They just will not. They just. Just little glimpses. He'll gallop. That's it.
- [65:26]
Bill Simmons
I have thoughts on this. We gotta take a quick break. So every Wednesday I look through the NBA slate. I try to find us a really fun parlay that we could all do together. And of course, we always do it on FanDuel. I love betting on the NBA on FanDuel. Easy to build by bet. I know I'm going to get my winnings instantly. So we are in the last two weeks of the season, which means we could throw together a lot of big favorites that are going against teams that are no longer trying to win and add them together with a team that we like. And I keep looking at that Atlanta, Orlando game. And Orlando's in something of a free fall coming off a 60 point loss. And Atlanta seems like the easy pick in that game. And yet I wonder, is this like a playoff game for Orlando? So that might be one I do. Or Boston Miami. If everyone in Boston is playing, it'll be one of those two. But the bet would be live in the FanDuel sportsbook app Wednesday. Don't forget to use a profit boost token to increase your potential winnings before you place it. Fanduel Play your game this episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Well, marketers know the feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great. Impressions Reach reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's not such a great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that bull spend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn Ads generates the highest roas of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads you can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull. Spend advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads. Get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com SimmonsBill that's LinkedIn.com SimmonsBill Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Instagram. As a parent, I know that you're always going to worry about your teens. And while we can't keep them at home in a bubble, there are still ways to make sure they're protected like Instagram Teen Accounts. Instagram Teen Accounts have automatic protections for your teens, see and who can contact them. Plus time management tools and extra controls for parents who prefer them. And Instagram will continue adding built in safety features to help create age appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com teenaccounts that's instagram.com teenaccounts this episode is brought to you by Brooks Running. Sometimes in the sports world we see performances so mind blowing you think someone somewhere is bending the rules. Like when an unknown player comes out of nowhere and tears through the league with a dominant scoring streak. Well, the Glycerin Flex from Brooks is that phenomenon in shoe form. It provides a flexible cushion rod that's made to move with you with a breathable upper. Your shoe feels like a distraction free second skin. It's the ultimate blend between human movement and tech. So if you want to feel the best parts of your run, flex the rules, then the new Glycerin Flex. Shop the glycerin flex@brooksrunning.com so you talk about Wemby and how they're kind of easing him along. I think there's a real reason for this, and I noticed it. Seen him in person a couple times. He's so tall, and there's so much room for error when he lands or steps on things or he's up in the air that I think they've decided, like, during the regular season, the less time he's on the court, the more we're gaming the system our way that something bad. Now, he's worked on it. I've talked about how he's worked on falling. You know, he's worked on just being careful, like when to kind of jump in traffic, things like that. But he can't stop his body once it's up in the air. Cause he's so fucking tall. And that's how. That's your worst case scenario, is he's up and he lands and he's so big, and he lands the wrong way and he bends the wrong way. And I just think. I think what you said before the break was right, like, it's like a horse they're gonna unleash. I don't think it'd be more than 34 minutes. Yeah.
- [69:31]
Chuck Klosterman
some point, he's got to go for it. Like. Yeah, it's like, it's. It is like you, You. You can't say it's like he's too fragile to ever use. Like, at some point.
- [69:40]
Bill Simmons
He's not fragile, though. He's been.
- [69:41]
Chuck Klosterman
He's not.
- [69:42]
Bill Simmons
He's been pretty durable.
- [69:43]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, but what exercises or whatever. Because that was always the big fear with guys that height is there, you know, hurt their feet or whatever.
- [69:49]
Bill Simmons
I mean, when Windhorse started writing about him a while ago and talking about all the Wemby's, basically. I don't know, like musical prodigies or what other artists, whatever people would want to put in. Like, somebody who realized early in life that they're going to be special. And basically all these decisions that he made from almost being a preteenager on, like, all this stuff is going to happen to me. I got to be ready. He's like learning how to fall. He trains his legs, all the exercises he does. Learning how to speak English. Right. His English is the best, I think, of any foreign guy that's come in the league who's been a star because he was practicing it forever. Knowing that at some point I'm going to be a superstar in America and I have to be bilingual. It's been calculating Is the wrong word, but the way it was calculated. Yeah, no, he was really smart.
- [70:40]
Chuck Klosterman
Like he's a little Taylor Swift. Like he made a decision at a very young age that everything about my life is going to in some way be involved with, with success at this one singular deal. So everything about me, even the things about my personality that have no relationship to basketball, they can't in any way contradict basketball. I can't get really into something that could somehow damage this. I can't, you know, I, I, I can't love pastries or whatever, whatever the case may be, whatever choice he's making.
- [71:09]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [71:09]
Chuck Klosterman
These are, you know, wait, I really
- [71:11]
Bill Simmons
like that Taylor Swift thing. That's a good one. I haven't heard that one before. I think that's a really good analogy. Somebody who had success early. Cause he's overseas. People know who he is by the time he's 14, 15 and he's already competing successful.
- [71:26]
Chuck Klosterman
Like it wasn't like he, he was not in the basement. He's on the main floor, not working out in the basement.
- [71:31]
Bill Simmons
And also somebody who's been stared at because he's incredibly fucking tall. Somebody who's just, just been stared at differently every moment of his life basically from age 13, 14 on. When did Taylor Swift hit like 15,
- [71:46]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean 14, 15. She was meaningful. I think she had records. 13. But yeah, I still, I don't love how often Wemby's on the perimeter. I love it so much more when he's closer to the basket. But I guess that's just how it is. It's just crazy to.
- [72:01]
Bill Simmons
I know, but that's their Chuck, that's their super sauce. I know they have this like hammer this, hammer that when it's like the biggest game of the season or it's a game seven or they're down three, two in the road in a game six, like they can start moving him closer to the basket. The other team panics when he's within 10ft. If he's posting up like they, they, the defense is just completely changing every strategy they have. Once that happens.
- [72:26]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, I guess. Yeah, I still don't know like how complete his post up game is. Like, like how, I mean he looks good when he does it, but it's the regular season and sometimes he's, you know, I, I would, I would really be interested to see, see like what his bank vault of moves is, you know.
- [72:43]
Bill Simmons
Well, he's got, he already has a little bit of that embiid. I could just shoot a 20 footer. Over you and you can't block it. He's got like a little jump hook and then he's got this hook with this little turnaround where he leans over the guy. But he's usually like 7 inches taller and the guy can't block it. Cause Wemby's basically in his face. He's got this little George Gervin spin move the other way, that finger roll move.
- [73:07]
Chuck Klosterman
I've seen all those things, but I want to seem like. Like it would be.
- [73:11]
Bill Simmons
We want like a turnaround just like.
- [73:13]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, I don't know. I would just like to see what it looks like if there'd be a quarter of basketball where he's playing against a big dude and it's. He's on the block and they just keep going to him, going to him, going to him and going to him and see what it's like. Like, could this happen in a playoff?
- [73:27]
Bill Simmons
Have you seen him in person?
- [73:28]
Chuck Klosterman
Like, yeah, in person? No, I have not. I have not seen him in person.
- [73:31]
Bill Simmons
I. I would highly recommend to anyone who likes basketball. It's the must see in the sport right now. And it's the biggest must see we've had in a long time. I don't really remember the last time. Curry was probably the last one where it's like, you just gotta go see this. You gotta go watch em warm up. You gotta go through the whole thing. It was funny. Cause we were doing all that face of the league stuff. I forget when that was one of the dumbest conversations ever. And it's still dumb, but I think the overriding face of the week, face of the league. Everybody's like, who's the face of the league? We don't have a face of the league now. Could Jason Tatum be the fan? Like, this is stupid. Why are we doing this? And my attitude at the time was, you know it when you see it, you know it when it's happening. And it's happened this year with Wemby. He's the number one attraction in the league. He's. You can feel it in the games. People are going early to watch him warm up. He's. Nobody leaves their seat when he's on the court. And he's the most compelling guy they have. And it happened in the span of six months.
- [74:32]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, I guess, I guess the face of the league thing, that's just that, that just seems to be like what they talked about when there was nothing else to talk about.
- [74:40]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [74:41]
Chuck Klosterman
Because sometimes they just have things that they gotta fill up space and it's like, well, it's because no one can really even properly, like you say properly describe what that means. You know, it's like, you know, when you see it, like pornography or whatever.
- [74:53]
Bill Simmons
But, you know, yeah, we, we don't say that with like, we weren't saying that with, about music in the late 80s with like alternative music. Can Michael Stipe be the face of the face of the week?
- [75:05]
Chuck Klosterman
Music does have its own version of that, which is defining something as the biggest band in the world or the biggest artists in the world.
- [75:12]
Bill Simmons
And it's right.
- [75:13]
Chuck Klosterman
And artists and bands feel like they can sort of say that sometimes, even if it only lasts like two months. Like there's like, there is like a Counting Crows, I think a documentary or something. Was it? Yeah, well, no, I don't think it's that one because this is an earlier one where he was talking about going to Japan and he's like, you know, we were like the Beatles there. We were like, you know, the biggest band in the world. I was like, well, maybe we're that weekend or whatever. Yeah. But
- [75:41]
Bill Simmons
you have any other Wemby thoughts? Because I had a couple other quick things for you.
- [75:44]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, I, I, I, I think it is I interesting that he's sort of like, defense is half of the game, so he should be the mvp. He's like, already sort of, in a way, kind of very formally making his argument without, like, not look like he's got a lot of bravado. He's like, trying to like, logic it out. And I, I think now it, you know, in 2026 or whatever. I think that argument he makes is better than it's been in a while. You know, I wouldn't have said that in the past that, that, you know, it seemed, it seemed like offense was 80% of it and then, you know, but now it is different. I mean, it's like they're, when the games get serious, the defense intensity is pretty, pretty central. You know, it's like, you know, in a way that I remember. But so what, I mean, are you, who are you going to like? I assume that Shay's going to win mvp, right?
- [76:39]
Bill Simmons
I think he is. And I, that's, I don't know who I'm voting for yet, but that's who I'm leaning for.
- [76:43]
Chuck Klosterman
It's tough to vote against. I mean, I watch him play. I feel like long stretches go before I see him miss a shot. I know he misses shots. I know what his field goal percentage is. But whenever I watch him, he seems to never be Missing jump shots. They just seem to all go in.
- [76:57]
Bill Simmons
It's shocking when he misses. That thing you said about Wemby on defense. I was saying this to somebody the other day about. Because we never got to see Russell, but we read all the books about Russell and we saw the documentaries and clips of him and how everybody over and over again would be like, there was just nothing like this. He just blocked everything. Like he. He drove guys out of the league, guys who had like, oh, this is my little. My little skyhook that I have. And Russell would be like, you're just never making that against me ever. And the guy would just be done after that. I've never seen a better defensive player than Wemby in person. Now. I've seen defensively impactful things that, like Jordan and Pippen together. Seeing that feel kind of feels in my. In my head like what Wemby's like now. We're watching those guys together when they were aligned. I've never seen anything like that. And Wemby is like that for me too. I did see Manupo, I saw Mark Eaton, I saw some of these taller guys and how they can have even go bare to a lesser degree. So it's not like we haven't seen versions of this, but this is the most impactful I've seen.
- [78:02]
Chuck Klosterman
You know who Larry Brown says is the best defender he's ever seen?
- [78:06]
Bill Simmons
Who?
- [78:07]
Chuck Klosterman
Wilt Chamberlain in 1985. Really? She watched him play a games at UCLA against Magic and all these dudes. At one point he blocked seven consecutive shots from like all the, you know, at whatever age he was 40, whatever, or something.
- [78:25]
Bill Simmons
You know. It's finally circled around for Wilt where now all the, all the bad stuff with the Wilt experience kind of fades away over the years. And now it's just like incredible to look at everything and then the story, the positive stories last, the stats last, all that stuff.
- [78:41]
Chuck Klosterman
His. His stature in my mind is rising. I now think that prior to the merger and sort of when the NBA changed in the late 70s, I think Chamberlain is the greatest basketball player.
- [78:51]
Bill Simmons
We've. We've been arguing about this since I've known you. Quick topic, abs. We could probably end on this.
- [78:59]
Chuck Klosterman
You had a whole bunch of interesting. You had some weird theory you wanted to throw to me.
- [79:02]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. But I didn't want to go longer than 90 because I wanted to save stuff for next time. But we should do abs, which has completely changed baseball in five days. It's changed the experience of watching it. I think it's made it better. It's something for everybody. Like my buddy Hench, who's a complete maniac and is. I'm on multiple Boston threads with him, and I think I'm on four threads with him, but is always, like, getting up. Loves getting upset and riled up about stuff. ABS is like his Venn diagram, because there's always something to get upset about. Either the initial call can be the worst call, and you're mad at the umpire that you can't believe you missed it. The challenge that you got a strikeout and then the challenge happened and now the strikeout's gone for your team. That's terrible. The guy who does the challenge, but he missed it. The guy on your team, like Roman Anthony, had one. You know, he does this and it's like, nope, you were actually wrong. And now I've lost a challenge and it just brings all this stuff to it. But what's interesting is how the fans react to it, especially in the home games, where it's like, oh, that's not a strike, and they'll show it and it's like, not a strikeout, and the fans, like, cheer like a hit happened. I think this has been a home run. I love abs. Well,
- [80:25]
Chuck Klosterman
my position on this is pretty clear. I don't like the employing technology for officiating. I think it's dumb.
- [80:32]
Bill Simmons
Okay, let's hear the case. Did you like it for tennis? It made tennis better.
- [80:39]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean, tennis is kind of an interesting example. It's one I never think about. I just don't think we need to do it. I don't think it's necessary. I think that the. That. I mean, and then this will. This will also make no sense. It would almost be different if. If we went to complete technological officiating, that there were no umpires, there were no referees, we might be going there. Well, that's going to happen eventually. Somehow that I guess I would be a little more comfortable with because it would almost be like saying, like, well, okay, the sport is different now. The sport, there's no human element to the way the sport is sort of governed.
- [81:19]
Bill Simmons
But what's the good thing about it? What's the good thing about having, like, the Red Sox, one of the reasons they lost Saturday's game was there was this umpire, CB Buckner, who's just an all time bad umpire. And I think he only got 88% of the calls right. So one of every nine pitches he just missed. And it's like, how. How is that? How is. How is that better? Than just having an automatic strike zone where we just know each one is.
- [81:44]
Chuck Klosterman
I guess, I mean, it's just part of it. I would say that it's just part of it that. That these games are played by people and they're governed by people. And that's good. In. In the same way you're, you know, there's going to be errors in baseball. There's going to be go. You know, there's going to be errors in officiating and umpiring. And I don't. I, it, it just. I.
- [82:05]
Bill Simmons
It's funny because I feel like I'm arguing against you, but I, I like 90% agree with you. I'm just saying I like abs, but I, I think this is not ruined basketball, but made basketball worse. Like this constant reviewing of stuff or.
- [82:18]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean it there. I mean, this is so. It's. I'm making an argument that even. It feels weird to make. Even though it's what I believe, sort of, which is that when I see the, like, the idea that, like, you know, it's a pitch. Right. You know, yes. It can be the difference between out and a walk. I realize that. But it's a pitch and it's sort of that. So this is too complicated to just handle with us. We can't do this. We can't. We can't fucking watch a baseball and make a decision. And these games that ultimately, yes, money is on the line. People are gambling. These guys care a lot. They are exhibitions. These are social constructs. Do we really need to use cameras and lasers and all these things to understand whether or not it's two and two or the guys out? It does. It seems dumb to me. It, like it's just, it. It's. You know, we're like, like, I'm trying. I'd love to come up with some like, perfect analogy for it, but it's like, I mean, you know, well, this is not a perfect analogy, but it's something similar. It's like sometimes you hear people wonder why music from the 60s and 70s and 80s seems to just not go away and that the music since then, for whatever reason, seems to be more disposable. And it shouldn't be. It shouldn't. You know, if anything, it should be an improvement because they have that music to kind of look back on and use. But I think part of it has to do with that. When there was less ability in the studio to fix everything and make everything perfect and find ways to make the vocal ideal every single time. The things that we heard in music that were imperfect are actually the things that sort of humanized it and made us drawn to it. And now we're seeing this sort of this perfect version of music where every vocal is perfect, where every. You know, where they will just punch in the guitar or the keyboard or the drum or whatever it is until we have a perfectly sculpted thing, Something about that subconsciously we understand to be sterile and sort of distanced from us and not really human. And I think that now, the reason it's not a perfect analogy is because one is art and one is sports.
- [84:48]
Bill Simmons
But.
- [84:49]
Chuck Klosterman
And these are. You know, I think that things that we do that distance the sort of. The visceral, human element from sports probably make us feel less about it or care less about it. The outcome, yes. Will be more accurate. We will have a more sort of precise understanding of who actually won this or who actually lost. But it's like. I think that it makes it less important and less meaningful and less real. So, I mean, that's a kind of a.
- [85:25]
Bill Simmons
This is. You're not the only one who feels this way. I think the difference is how do we avoid calamities and things that swing games versus how do we strive for 100% accuracy? And I think the NBA is in this. In this mess right now.
- [85:42]
Chuck Klosterman
The first thing to do is to remove the idea of the word calamity from what we just described.
- [85:47]
Bill Simmons
I know, but it's people.
- [85:47]
Chuck Klosterman
Oh, is it the calamity?
- [85:48]
Bill Simmons
Well, remember Mike Renfro?
- [85:50]
Chuck Klosterman
That was the last discussion we had.
- [85:52]
Bill Simmons
I know.
- [85:53]
Chuck Klosterman
That was really weird.
- [85:54]
Bill Simmons
It all starts with Mike Renfro.
- [85:55]
Chuck Klosterman
We had that discussion. I feel you walked away from that. Or we walked away from that with you sort of making the argument that, like, it would have been better if we could have used instant replay in that scenario.
- [86:06]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. Because Houston could have beaten Pittsburgh.
- [86:08]
Chuck Klosterman
We would not be talking about it at all if that had been the case. If we had instant research.
- [86:13]
Bill Simmons
So you like bad things because then they're more interesting.
- [86:16]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, sometimes, yes. Sometimes things are meaningful because they were imperfect. And if you had ironed it out flat, there is absolutely no way we would be talking about Mike Renfeld this many years later. If they'd have been like, we checked it. It was a touchdown. Even if Houston had won that game and beating the Rams in the super bowl, that would still be. We would not be something we would care about the way we do about the human problem. That was the manifestation of a guy having to make a decision about something he saw in real time. That's what Sports is.
- [86:49]
Bill Simmons
I know. And in the NBA, you're really feeling it because they only have its replay for some things. But then if there's like, sometimes goaltending, they'll just miss. And then they'll replay it after the commercial, be like, whoa, they missed a goaltending on Keda. It's like, guess what? We all lived. It's fine.
- [87:06]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, yeah.
- [87:07]
Bill Simmons
And then it's like, block charge. Let's look at this for four minutes. Like, I just can't believe how stupid some of this stuff is.
- [87:14]
Chuck Klosterman
And. And, you know, it's okay if we
- [87:16]
Bill Simmons
called the block charge wrong. Let's keep the game moving.
- [87:20]
Chuck Klosterman
I mean. Cause, yes, we. We're like, we're doing this. We care about these sports. I know someone could listen to this and be like, well, if they don't care about the outcome, why are they watching these things? But, like, it is crazy to me when you're watching a thrilling basketball game. Late in the game, a guy hits a jumper, they're now up one. Oh, we gotta stop to see if it's 0.7 seconds on the clock or 0.4 seconds on the clock. Yes, I know. If it's 0.2 seconds, you can't catch and shoot. There's all these reasons for it, but it kind of takes something that's just electrifying and be like, okay, now let's go do our taxes for 10 minutes and then we'll come back and make this decision. I. I don't think it has improved sports. I just. I don't think. I don't think that these things have been a real. They still sometimes get things wrong and then they seem doubly uncomfortable. Like, we actually did all. You know, we actually looked at the thing again, and it didn't change anything.
- [88:15]
Bill Simmons
Well, it's funny because some of the people that hate all the advancements, like technology, are already predisposed to hate abs stuff like that.
- [88:23]
Chuck Klosterman
But, I mean, I. I'll admit I haven't watched any baseball yet this year, so maybe if I saw this.
- [88:27]
Bill Simmons
No, you gotta watch the fact.
- [88:29]
Chuck Klosterman
I like the fact that you say, like that, you know, the. The player has to, like, hit his head and do it himself.
- [88:35]
Bill Simmons
You gotta do it immediately.
- [88:36]
Chuck Klosterman
You can't definitely think. Yeah, it was actually maybe Nick Wright had said this, had this idea that, like, in the NBA, when a player, like, twists his finger, like, go check it. Like, that should be enough to trigger it, because so many of those guys are wrong, right? I mean, those guys are wrong all the time.
- [88:52]
Bill Simmons
And then you lose, like, you lose two points. If you're wrong, you lose the challenge.
- [88:57]
Chuck Klosterman
Like. Like, you know, like, Luca will ask for something to be changed.
- [89:00]
Bill Simmons
It's an automatic loss.
- [89:01]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah.
- [89:02]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [89:02]
Chuck Klosterman
It's like, you know, Luca, I. I mean, I'm sure you bet you've talked about this before.
- [89:07]
Bill Simmons
It's demented.
- [89:08]
Chuck Klosterman
I can't imagine a guy whose game I should like more, who, as a player, I hate. Luka is my least favorite player in the league. He complains on every. He has a really terrible Clippers team. It was like that. You know, they had, like, Chris Paul and all.
- [89:26]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. And Blake Griffin. They're mad about everything.
- [89:28]
Chuck Klosterman
He's worse than all of them. Yeah, he is worse than that entire team. And sadly, Joker's starting to become a little that way, too. He used to never complain. I see him more and more complain.
- [89:39]
Bill Simmons
That's because. Whoa. Joker has confident. Joker has reasons, because he's just getting annihilated game after game. I think he's just fed up with it. Well, also, I strategy of guarding him, just beating the shit out of him, I guess it's.
- [89:51]
Chuck Klosterman
I believe he is right when he complains in a way which I never believe with Luca. Like, I never believe it. You know what's.
- [89:57]
Bill Simmons
So you're. Because you tapped into something interesting. Talking about you. Like, the human element of. It's okay if we screw up some calls. That's what human beings are like. Like, SORA just basically was a huge bust, Right. I don't know if you followed that at all. But OpenAI spends all this stuff on Sora, and when it's happening, it's like, look how amazing this is. We'll be able to take all of these characters and things you like, and you could make videos out of them right away. And everybody's gonna love this. And it turns out it was just an incredible amount of money and a lot of time and energy and all this time that the company was spending to make this video product that people didn't even really like that much and weren't using that much. And they were like, cool.
- [90:39]
Chuck Klosterman
They didn't really want.
- [90:40]
Bill Simmons
Didn't really want. Which is the metaverse, too, which Zuckerberg spends tens of billions of dollars, whatever he spent, to try to create this alternate universe people could go into. And people were like, I'm good with the one I'm in. Thanks anyway, though.
- [90:56]
Chuck Klosterman
And it's just like, these are, like, steps, right? So, like, they're creating this universe. We can live this other life. And people are like, well, that sounds kind of fucked up to begin with. And then if they even try it, if they go into it, they're like, well, I guess this is something. What's going to have to happen is they're going to have to keep failing and making these steps and failing making these steps and failing until they come up with something that when people use it, they're like, oh, this. I've always wanted this. As it turns out, it's like, that's how it's going to be. No one's going to want this stuff until they see something and they're like, oh, I guess I didn't realize that it was my dream to have this sort of experience. I mean, I. I remember with all these things, the Pontivo came out and it was described to me, and I was like, when am I going to need to freeze television? Why would I ever need to stop television? Like, you know, it's like, it seemed so idiotic to me. And then all of a sudden, at one point, I used it in the way. Like, it was like, this is actually what I needed. And now if I'm ever at a hotel and I can't freeze the tv, then I'm angry about that. This technology that I couldn't even envision 30 years ago, I'm now upset about if I don't have it at all times.
- [92:07]
Bill Simmons
I think the funniest one for all of these that's impossible to explain to anybody under 30 years old, is how we never knew the score of games we were watching. Like, if you went into a bar or you walked into the living room and your dad was watching a game and there was just no score and no time, there was no context to any of it. And then occasionally they would just flash it.
- [92:28]
Chuck Klosterman
That has inadvertently. I'm glad we have that. But it has inadvertently led to greater social isolation. And here is why. Because it used to be if you walked into a bar and the game was on, you'd ask somebody, have something to talk about with the person right away. That would never be seen as a weird question. You'd be like, what's the score here? And they would tell you. And then maybe you could tell if the guy wanted to talk because he'd be like, oh, it's 2114, but Steve Bartkowski's hurt, or whatever, you know? Yeah. Oh, you want to talk about this now? It's like you have nothing to ask the person.
- [93:05]
Bill Simmons
You have nothing to that. That was a big loss. Cigarettes was another one. A huge loss. Cigarettes were an unbelievable social Connector. They never greatly. Lung cancer, million bad things. Serum bronchitis.
- [93:20]
Chuck Klosterman
You want to talk to somebody separate. You ask her, do you want to have a cigarette or whatever. You don't smoke that much. Maybe she only smokes. You act like you do so you can. It was a. It was. I used to go to. To like shows in Fargo when I was first covering music there. I didn't know any of the people in the scene. It was kind of weird to stand there. So I would just smoke cigarettes. It was something to do. It was something.
- [93:40]
Bill Simmons
Or the group. The group outside having sex and you ask somebody for a light and you're off and going that. So you lose that and you lose asking people for the score. I don't. And then plus people. More people on their phones now when they're in public, which we didn't have either.
- [93:55]
Chuck Klosterman
Drink less. Now all these things, like all these things that in a vacuum you could be like, well, it might be good for society, but when you put them all together, it's just as people never talking to anyone about anything and never needing to. And then getting to this weird point where it feels like an imposition if they do. Like, and I'm not saying I'm totally different from this. I just find that I think I used to be much more open to random conversation than I am now. It happens so rarely that when someone just starts talking to me, sometimes I think they're crazy.
- [94:29]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [94:29]
Chuck Klosterman
Like maybe this is an insane person.
- [94:31]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. But you must get recognized by some people.
- [94:34]
Chuck Klosterman
Oh, well, that you can always tell. That you can always tell. You can usually tell if a person is coming to talk to you and they know who you are or as opposed to they're just talking to you because they're normal. Right. It should be normal. It shouldn't be weird for someone to start talking to me in line at the grocery store. But then it happens so rarely now that you kind of think it's weird when it occurs. I don't. I don't know.
- [94:58]
Bill Simmons
Some people have that natural welcoming. My wife's like this. My.
- [95:01]
Chuck Klosterman
My wife is too. People.
- [95:03]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [95:04]
Chuck Klosterman
You know, like if she sits on an airplane with a stranger, that stranger
- [95:08]
Bill Simmons
is going to talk. 104 hour combo. Yeah. And other people just give off the. I'm probably going to just read this book. Welcome to. We kept the receipts presented by Taxact where we look back at our predictions, figure out who deserves a victory lap and who is completely off base. Taxact helps you with actual receipts, like the kind that you can use for tax deductions or credits and the ones that help you get your maximum refund every tax season. So, um, let's see, I'll give you one good one and one bad one that I had before the basketball season. I was really bullish on San Antonio being good and I think. I think their over was like basically 43 wins. I thought they would go over that. It was one of my locks. And I just thought this Wemby thing was going to happen faster than people realized. I did not think they were going to be a finals contender, but I did think they were going to be really good. So that was a good one. Conversely, I just assumed like everybody else that Phoenix was going to stink. It felt like a rebuilding, revamping year for them and meanwhile they're going to be like the seventh seed in the playoffs. So not only did I miss this one, but their owner taunted me on Twitter about it. So you win some, you lose some. We kept the receipts presented by TaxAct this tax season. Make your max refund the one prediction that actually pays off. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. This episode is brought to you by Panda Express. It's not always easy to show love, but there is one way to express how you feel. Food. And what better way to say I love you than with Panda Express's delicious, authentically cooked American Chinese cuisine. Whether it's eating with someone you love or while watching the team you love, you can pick from tasty options like orange chicken, honey walnut shrimp, kung Pao chicken and black pepper sirloin steak. Have you eaten yet? Order now or visit a Panda Express near you. This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Like an expert coach, TaxAct offers step by step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes. Get tips along the way. Add expert assist to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you. With Expert full service, TaxAct helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve. Expert so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. Last thing and then we'll go. This is a quick one. My son has been going backwards with music. My son loves music.
- [97:40]
Chuck Klosterman
Is he back to the 40s now?
- [97:41]
Bill Simmons
No. He's been listening to classic rock.
- [97:45]
Chuck Klosterman
Okay.
- [97:46]
Bill Simmons
And he was listening, so I almost wish there was videotape that I could have just sent you each time where he'd come over to me and be like, dad, Velvet Underground was pretty good. The other day he Came by, he's like, I've listened to all four Led Zeppelin albums. I think I liked three the most four second. And just started going through Led Zeppelin. I was just thinking, like, did you
- [98:09]
Chuck Klosterman
tell him there was more than four?
- [98:11]
Bill Simmons
Oh, yeah. He knew he had just gotten the first four. But I was thinking when I really loved music and got into it in the early 80s, and it was like my dad was listening to Bob Seger and Springsteen and a couple of these other ones, and then the Simon and Garfunkel concert album. And then from there it's like, well, I need my own. And you start listening and buying stuff. And we only really had like 15 years of. So this is 1982 for me. We only had like 15 years of albums to go back and check out. So I remember, like, Bad Company, Greatest Hits. Remember getting that? Like, oh, greatest. Or like, Steve Miller had the Greatest Hits one and Elton John had a Greatest Hits. Like, Greatest Hits were a good way. We didn't have Spotify back then. Good way to kind of learn the best of different bands. But then we had this incredible 80s for music, and then the 90s were even better and we had all of our. All this new music that we spent more time listening to. But now, if you're my son and it's 2026, he has 60 years of modern music to go back and listen to. And I wonder if that's part of the reason there's less of a necessity to listen to new music than there used to be, because you can just go backwards and has this also happened with movies?
- [99:31]
Chuck Klosterman
Absolutely, that is the case. I mean, it's. Yeah, that particularly since, like. Because modern music, modern rock and pop and hip hop is still operating in the same kind of modality as the previous music, it's quite difficult for it to surpass it. Yeah, I mean, they're making. You know, they're using the same instruments with the same sort of length of song, is basically the same verse, chorus, verse is still sort of the same structure. Like, it's like. So you really are competing against the best of everything because it hasn't changed enough. I mean, that's why when they talk about the slow cancellation of the future, this is part of it. I mean, it's like, if the future continues to be retro reinterpretations of the past. Well, it is. It's, you know, it's pretty difficult for anything to be more interesting than the interesting thing it's trying to replicate, you know, but you're. But you are right, if it was in the early 80s. You know, the, the expectation was, well, you really only have to go back 20 years. You know, you're getting the beginning of the Beatles then, and you're getting all music going forward. So it's like, you know, it was, there was a lot of music there, but it was possible. Now it's that much more difficult. Plus, we've also sort of expanded the possibility of things that were once not seen as remotely canonical being things that you're supposed to know about. If you care about music, you know, like it was. There are many. It would have been very possible if, say, you, like, you wrote the music in the early 80s, somebody would be like, well, there's some shit you don't got to worry about. You don't got to worry about abba. You don't got to listen to those records. Well, now, if your son is really into pop music at any point, you would be like, you need to listen to these ABBA records too. Like, I mean, there was a whole bunch of things that almost anything that had any kind of cultural tenacity now seems more important that, that, that it's important enough to revisit where there are many things, even, like talking about Bad Company or whatever. Like, there was certainly a time in the 80s when I would, if, if we would have been hanging out and you would have listened, wanted to listen to Bad Company, I would be like, what the fuck for? Like, why would we listen to this now? It doesn't seem that way now. It seems like, well, there's some, I
- [101:48]
Bill Simmons
feel like we just would have argued all the time.
- [101:52]
Chuck Klosterman
I don't, it's, it's hard to imagine.
- [101:54]
Bill Simmons
I don't think we would have had. We, we would have been bonded on basketball and football, and I think musically we just would have been completely different with everything other than Van Halen, who we both would have loved.
- [102:05]
Chuck Klosterman
Well, I, I, I mean, it depends what age we maybe Police.
- [102:08]
Bill Simmons
I don't know. There would have been a couple.
- [102:10]
Chuck Klosterman
I didn't like the Police when I was, I mean, it depends if we were really young, if we were 13, I don't know. If we had been 18, it would have been like, do you like drinking? We're friends. Like, that's all. I mean, I was very open to people when I was 18. Like, if they wanted to party, that was all it took.
- [102:25]
Bill Simmons
You know what I was like.
- [102:26]
Chuck Klosterman
You know, I had friends who had nothing in common with me at all, except we went to these places Friday night and Saturday night, and then sometimes Thursday and Sometimes Wednesday. Like, that was all. That's all it took. That's all it took to be friends, you know? Now, I don't know how that, you know.
- [102:44]
Bill Simmons
You know, what's the best for that is restaurants. People who work in restaurants, you're thrown together almost like you're in, like, people in a prison. How, like, the people in Shawshank would become friends, Just they had nothing in common. They're just like, hey, you want to hang out in the yard? Restaurants, because you're on the same schedule. And if, like, this guy also smoked Marlboro Lights, you just became friends. That was all you needed, that we both go to bed at 4 in the morning and.
- [103:09]
Chuck Klosterman
Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to work in an office, right? If everybody has the option of working at home or going in the office, everyone would say, I want to be at home. Because then I can, like, I can do my laundry too. I can do the thing. And yet, I mean, I'm sure I would have. Want my whole life if given the option of not going to the office. I would have taken it. And yet, 90% of the people in my life who are important to me, I met in an office. Like, I was so lucky that I was in, you know, the office at Spin and Office in Akron and the office in Fargo and the office in my college newspaper. Those. It's like there's this kind of intangible loss to these things. So this kind of shifts we've made in society that again, like I said earlier, better for the individual. Much better for the individual in that singular experience, much worse for society as a whole. These things that help. You know, it's like, Maya, when the Walkman came out, you know, they were like, oh, the Walkman. You know, it's gonna be terrible. It's gonna be people walking around listening to music in their own world.
- [104:15]
Bill Simmons
I remember that.
- [104:16]
Chuck Klosterman
They'll be. Yeah, you know what? They were fucking right. That totally happened. That totally happened. When they. When MTV was out, what were the critics saying? Oh, it's gonna change. You know, they covered stupid. Yeah, yeah, it totally happened. All the criticisms of television from the 1950s, they did happen. All like. All of these things that are seen as like, you're so out of touch. This new technology is great. How can everything people are currently saying about AI is going to happen? Maybe not to the full totality of we live in a dystopia, but all of the things that we think will probably be a manifestation of this socially, I think they will probably be true just because it Always seems that way. The people who overreact are the ones who are right later.
- [105:03]
Bill Simmons
I'm more optimistic about that. We just did. I won't say the movie, but we did a movie that was really big for next Rewatchables that was really big in the 80s. And we were talking about basically what you said before about when these things that would happen in the 80s, sometimes these movies you liked, you liked because they were always on and you eventually talked yourself into them, right? And I was thinking, and I made the comparison about in music, when people listen to albums and we actually had more time to listen and talk about different albums. We also had less stuff to do eventually, like the seventh best song in the album to become your favorite song in the album and stuff like that, which is also what was happening with some music and TV shows in the 80s. But now everybody moves so fast from one thing to the next. I wonder if the same kind of devotion will be there for these different things. I think about weird shit like that now. You know what I mean?
- [106:09]
Chuck Klosterman
I remember I wrote a thing for Grantland, which was about sort of the idea and the problem of nostalgia. And one of the points that I was sort of making, which I do think is true, is that part of the reason that we feel nostalgic for things from the past was not even necessarily because of our experience with it or what the thing was. It was the pure repetition of hearing a song over and over and over
- [106:36]
Bill Simmons
again, or a movie or anything over
- [106:38]
Chuck Klosterman
and over and over again. And, you know, I think with music, it is unlikely that that will happen. With video experiences, I don't know, because it does seem like. I know it's with my kids. They still are very comfortable rewatching things that they like, that they'll just kind
- [106:58]
Bill Simmons
of, you know, my kids as well.
- [107:00]
Chuck Klosterman
Oh, I think there's a natural thing of it. I mean, I used to. There were many, many books that like novels that I read multiple times when I was young. I can't imagine that happening now. Like me reading a new novel and then be like, I'm going to read it again in a year. It just doesn't seem like that happens. But when you're young, you're really like that. You know, I think you're almost teaching yourself how to understand the thing. Like Season on the Brink. I read that book, I bet, at least three times in high school. And I do think that a lot of the way I think and write about sports is really based on that text. Because I was like, well, this is how it's supposed to be done. This is the tempo, you know? And I'm not saying that's the greatest book ever written, but I loved it. And it was sort of. It was like, you have to like the book Animal Farm. I read the book Animal Farm so many different times in my life. And I think that it's some point you read these things enough that you kind of think like, well, okay, this is the structure. This is how it's supposed to be. This is how it's supposed to work.
- [107:58]
Bill Simmons
You know, I'm glad you said that, because I've probably mentioned this in the past a couple times. But when people ask advice for writing, like tips, what are your tips other than. And you just tell them, like, just keep doing it every day. Like, this is the number one thing. Never stop, keep going, keep pressing. But one of the things that I loved that I think really made me better was I had probably, I don't know, eight to 10 books that I would just read over and over again and kind of study what they did. And they were books where the writing style wasn't even really, like, my style in certain cases. Like, my favorite book ever was Breaks of the Game, which I really made an effort to read every 12 to 15 months just to cause it would kind of reset my brain with. And my style was nothing like Halberstam's style. And the style of that book was nothing like what I was writing. But I would get a lot out of it, and I don't really know why. And it was the repetition of the choices that he made were really helpful to me. And I don't know, it's just. It's like putting on an album you've heard a hundred times, and it would just make you think about stuff.
- [109:03]
Chuck Klosterman
Hunter S. Thompson supposedly used to literally retype Ernest Hemingway stories.
- [109:09]
Bill Simmons
Really?
- [109:10]
Chuck Klosterman
He would. Yeah, because he wanted to know how it felt to write, like, these short kind of crisp sentences, like, how it would be. And he would. So he would literally retype them on a manual typewriter. Now, I've never done that, but I understand that idea. I. You know, I like. Yeah. When I was a music critic, so many records I reviewed, you know, having listened to twice or three times, especially at newspaper. Sometimes it'd be like, get the right. I don't think. I know. Like, I really don't understand any record until I've played it 500 times. When I. When I mean understand it, I mean, not make a decision of whether or not I like it or if it's good. Or bad, but like. Or for me to really, like, being able, like, have thoughts on it that are both meaningful and original. You know, it's like, it's got to be. It's a lot. It's a lot of times before you really understand things. And everything about our culture is trying to stop people from doing that. They're like, you don't even have to read the thing anymore. You can just type this thing in and it will give you a synopsis of everything that's been written about it. I mean, it is. We are moving in a direction where deep understanding of things is not just becoming rare, but irrelevant. Like, stupid. Why would you.
- [110:28]
Bill Simmons
There's more answers, too. There's more ways to unearth things. Like, even I mentioned my son earlier getting in music, which is fun in its own right because he just comes in with these takes, knowing nothing. So, like, he thinks Smashing Pumpkins are just better than Nirvana, which is an interesting argument to have, but he just likes their songs more and he doesn't understand why they weren't bigger than Nirvana coming out of the 90s. So I was explaining to him all
- [110:53]
Chuck Klosterman
the time, I mean, that's real taste, though. Yeah, like. Like when. When somebody has an opinion like that, a young person like that is like, it's not found knowledge. They were not convinced to think this. Like, my son one time was telling me that he was like, these late period George Harrison songs are as good as the Beatles. At first I was going to be like, what the fuck? Was like, no, actually, what he's. It was like, this is a good thought he's having.
- [111:20]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, yeah.
- [111:21]
Chuck Klosterman
You know, it's like. It's like he.
- [111:23]
Bill Simmons
It's an unsullied thought without any.
- [111:25]
Chuck Klosterman
Without reading or hearing anything like, like, you know, like, you know, when you. Like, you know, when you. Before you take mushrooms for the first time, they'll tell you, well, you'll be able to think anything you want. And in your mind you're like, well, I can already think what I want, but you can't. There are things in ourselves that stop us from having certain ideas. So sometimes when a kid is listening to music like that, or your son's listening to music like that, there's like this kind of enforced ceiling of collective knowledge does not exist. So he can actually think whatever he wants about it. A guy interviewed me once for a book and he was saying, like, you know, he was much younger than me, and he was like, you know, it was really interesting because I went back and I love Nirvana and I loved Soundgarden. And I loved Alice in Chains and I loved Stone Temple Pilots. I thought they were all great, but I guess Stone Temple Pilots is terrible. And I was like, no, actually right the first time. Like, what if you were actually just listening to the music? There's people like me who was listening to the music and also taking in all this other ancillary bullshit that was affecting the way I was understanding it. It's like you understand it for real.
- [112:31]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. My son, it's a good point. My son, he even found a Smashing Pumpkin song that I didn't know about somehow called the Boy. And it was one of his favorite ones. And he is like, do you know this one? And it wasn't on any of the albums and I somehow missed it. I really liked that band and it
- [112:47]
Chuck Klosterman
was, they had a lot of records.
- [112:49]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. Yeah. So it was on like a re release thing or whatever. And it was, he was right, it one of the best seven or eight Smash and Pumpkin songs that I've heard. But I like that he Deep Dove. And I think that's one thing. I think from what I've noticed from my kids, they really like something. They go all in on it and then it kind of goes to the next thing sometimes, but then other things stay. And that gives me more hope that they'll circle back to the things that kind of resonated the most, which I, I, I would hope that's how it keeps going.
- [113:25]
Chuck Klosterman
I just, it I makes me nervous. It makes me nervous.
- [113:30]
Bill Simmons
I think you're rightfully nervous. All right, we'll end on that. We'll end on that disappointing topic, football. How'd your book do? Good. Seemed like it did really well.
- [113:40]
Chuck Klosterman
Relative to other books, it seems to be doing great. It's hard as hell to sell books now, especially nonfiction ones. But yes, I was very pleased. I mean, I'd say, of course, of all of the books I have released, the, this like release, however you look at it, was probably been the most fun since the very first one in a lot of ways. Like, it, it has went great. I think I did like 25 podcasts or something.
- [114:06]
Bill Simmons
It's unbelievable.
- [114:07]
Chuck Klosterman
It's just crazy how it is now. But that's just how, that's how it is, you know?
- [114:10]
Bill Simmons
You were like a borderland podcast whore. I was watching it from afar. I was like, wow, look at this guy.
- [114:16]
Chuck Klosterman
I just went on whatever. I mean, it was like they kept saying, do you want it? They want you to be on this one. Will you be on it? And I'll be Like, well, why not? Like, it's because these. What also is shocking to me. Maybe not shocking, just maybe predictably surprising. A podcast can be extraordinarily popular and yet completely unknown to every single person who doesn't actively listen to it. Like, it is just wild. It was not. Like, there's been nothing else like this where, like, you know, you could be somebody. Like, you didn't watch the TV show Dallas, but you knew Dallas was a popular TV show. Like, you didn't like Nickelback, but you knew Nickelback was huge. There are these podcasts with massive audiences that every single person I mentioned them to would be like, what? I've never heard of that. I've never heard of it. You know, and then when I was in New York doing some of these and like, you're kind Chinatown or like on. On that Lower east side. And like every time you see like a dilapidated office building, you go in it and it's all podcast studios. That's like. Like, how many podcasts are being put out there? It is just a. Like, it's bizarre. It'd be like, I mean, it must have been like, you know, when they always say, like, you know, at one point, like, the city of Chicago had like 150 cubic daily newspapers or whatever. That's kind of what it's like now, where it's just like all these people being able to do this, you know, it is. It's fine. There's nothing. There's no downside to it, but it's strange.
- [115:44]
Bill Simmons
I think that's a good analogy, though, because, like, you think about whatever time that was in America when every city had seven newspapers, but if you lived in another city, you didn't know anything about the other seven newspapers in like, Boston or Chicago. It's kind of what it's like. All right, Chuck Klosterman, great to see you as always. Thank you for the time. I will see you during the NBA playoffs. Okay. All right, bye.
- [116:05]
Chuck Klosterman
Bye.
- [116:06]
Bill Simmons
All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahal, as always. Don't forget theringer.com events. Tickets go on sale for our WeWatchables live show in San Francisco on April 8th. So on April 1st, 10am Go there, get tickets, and we'll see you in the bay. I'm going to be back on this feedback one more time on Thursday with one more podcast. See you then. Must be 21 plus on President select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 Plus. I'm present in D.C. kentucky or Wyoming gaming problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY RESET. Call 888-797-777 or visit ccpg.orgchinconnecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org In Maryland, Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE NY or text HOPENY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-786. This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Like an expert coach, TaxAct offers step by step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes. Get tips along the way. Add expert assist to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you. With Expert full service, TaxAct helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details.
- [117:52]
Chuck Klosterman
7.