An NBA Mailbag, LeBron’s Next Move, and the Wild Paramount-WBD Merger With David Jacoby and Matt Belloni

Summary

The Bill Simmons Podcast

"An NBA Mailbag, LeBron’s Next Move, and the Wild Paramount-WBD Merger"

Guests: Dave Jacoby, Matt Belloni
Date: March 4, 2026

Episode Overview

This jam-packed episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast centers on NBA storylines, including a robust mailbag with Dave Jacoby, deep dives into the state of NBA player nicknames, speculation about LeBron's next move, plenty of creative hypothetical scenarios, and a feature with entertainment journalist Matt Belloni on the blockbuster Warner Bros.-Paramount merger and its immense implications for the sports and media landscape. The tone is irreverent and insightful, mixing basketball obsessiveness with media-industry inside baseball.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. NBA Nicknames: Where Did the Magic Go?

Timestamps: 05:00–13:00

• Simmons reminisces about iconic basketball nicknames (e.g., Downtown Freddie Brown, The Glove, White Chocolate, AK47, Greek Freak, Time Lord, Slo Mo), contending that creativity has waned ("We're just not good at nicknames anymore. We're lazy. We do initials, we do acronyms, and we just don't put any thought into it." – Simmons, 05:41).
• Jacoby theorizes that modern branding and athlete marketing has led to boring, logo-friendly monikers ("No one has done this right since Kobe Bryant... It's just like, why can't we be more creative than this?" – Jacoby, 06:04).
• Listener Imran blames Kevin Durant for rejecting legendary nicknames ("Kevin Durant deserves blame for rejecting a potential Pantheon level nickname, the Slim Reaper." – read by Simmons, 06:10).
• Lively brainstorming for up-and-coming players:
  • "2K" as a nickname for Con Knipple gets the most support: "Did you see 2K hit nine threes last night? It's pretty good." (Simmons, 10:07)
  • Proposals: "Checkmate" for Stef Castle, "Jalapeno" for Jalen Brown (as a heat check), "The Giddler" for Josh Giddey (prompting laughs and a "just don't" from Jacoby, 10:48–11:16).
  • Past misses: Iverson's "The Answer" never fully caught on, as per Simmons.

2. NBA's Next Five: Picking the Top Players of 2031

Timestamps: 13:21–18:44

• Mailbag asks: Who are the five best players in 2031?
• Simmons and Jacoby quickly agree on "chalk" picks:
  • Victor Wembanyama (Wemby)
  • Anthony Edwards (Ant)
  • Luka Dončić
  • Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA)
  • Cooper Flagg
  • Cade Cunningham (gets strong backing for his future)
• Interesting "maybe"s: AJ Debanza, Darren Peterson, Chet Holmgren, Amen Thompson, Jalen Johnson, Paolo Banchero
• Simmons notes the unpredictability, recalling no one saw Ant as a future star a few years ago.

Notable Quote:
"This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.... There might be somebody we don't even have on our radar right now." – Simmons & Belloni, around 17:24

3. NBA Mailbag: Wild Hypotheticals & Awards

Timestamps: 21:48–46:54

The NBA/Challenge Crossover

• Who would dominate a "Rivals" style reality season?
• Jacoby’s favorites:
  • Cade Cunningham & Ron Holland: “Cade’s the brains, Holland’s the athlete—maybe too crazy, but a winning combo.” (Jacoby, 24:04)
  • LaMelo Ball & Joe Mazzulla (for comedy and chaos).
  • Draymond Green as the ultimate TV villain.

Parental Controls on Streaming

• Mailbag Q: Should Netflix have cable-edited movies for kids?
  • Both agree: Nah, just parent in real time. ("Let the kids watch whatever… they're going to do it anyway." – Jacoby & Simmons, 27:33–27:42)

"Best/Worst Brother" Awards

• Fun NBA sibling power rankings proposed.
  • Best worst brother: Ausar Thompson.
  • Worst best brother: Tyus Jones ("It's a little unfair because Jones and the Martin twins are kind of on the other side of their peak." – Jacoby, 38:26).
  • 19 pairs of brothers currently in the NBA.

Sad NBA Rafters

• Saddest arena banners? Hornets (Bill Russell, Bobby Phills, Andrea Stinson), Clippers ("zero, nothing"), Timberwolves, Grizzlies.

Other Mailbag Highlights

• Who's the worst player to ever average 20 ppg? Options: Mike James, Ricky Davis, Dana Barros, Jordan Poole, but "Never Nervous" Purvis Ellison is the consensus pick (57:50).
• Winter Olympics pentathlon: They riff on what 5 events should make up an all-around contest.

4. LeBron’s Epic Farewell: The 30-Team Retirement Tour

Timestamps: 64:37–69:47

• Mailbag proposes LeBron signs one-week deals with all 30 teams: "Every team gets one LeBron home game... He's not going to win the title no matter where he goes. Why not generate news in every local market?" (Bill reads, 65:14)
• Simmons and Jacoby love the idea, imagining the logistical and commercial frenzy:
  "This is basically Taylor Swift's Eras tour, but basketball and LeBron." – Jacoby, 68:59
• Added bonus: Guarantees LeBron a ring if he ends up on the champ.

5. Warner Bros x Paramount Merger: Media Mega-Takeover

With Matt Belloni
Timestamps: 74:01–128:50

The Setup

• Paramount and Warner Bros. are merging, creating a “super app” and an IP behemoth.
• Names debated: “Paw Brothers,” “Warner Mount,” “Peace Guy.”
• Simmons: "Is this the most faith anyone's ever shown in their son?" (re: Larry & David Ellison running the merged empire)

Strategic Wins & Perils

• Belloni: David Ellison’s comp is Jerry Buss handing Lakers to the kids, but with more polish and tech cred.
• IP is king: Batman, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, 90210, March Madness, AFC NFL package, etc. are now under one roof.
• The merger’s real value: IP chills (especially valuable as AI content explodes), content library crossovers, and the sports arms race—NFL, NBA, March Madness, UFC, golf, etc.

Financial & Industry Fallout

• $79 billion debt (plus junk status!) stuns all.
  "That's, like, every NBA team combined." – Simmons, 88:08
• Belloni predicts massive layoffs, ruthless headcount reductions, and consolidations—"a gut punch" for LA and the industry.
• Winners: Ellison (“very nice guy”), Zaslav (grotesque payday for financial engineering), Netflix (gets a breakup fee & lets rivals take on more debt).
• Losers: HBO employees, everyone in LA entertainment, and Warners employees facing another round of downsizing.

The Sports Angle & NFL Rights

• Paramount now boasts a wild sports roster—NFL, March Madness, Champions League, UFC, boxing—and will cross-pollinate across networks.
• Who has to have NFL rights? (Paramount/CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN = “mission critical.” Amazon = “like to have.” Netflix/YouTube = “luxury.”)
• Apple TV's role is discussed—uncertainty for live sports, despite big moves like F1 and MLS packages.

The State of Streaming, AI, and LA

• App design and bundling: Netflix leads, Peacock criticized ("20 minutes to find anything!").
• Belloni on AI: Studios value IP like Batman because it's one moat even against AI-generated content.
• Los Angeles creative future: "It needs a boost. Podcasting, influencers, and YouTube supplement the gap, but job losses threaten the city’s character." (Simmons, 124:57)

Succession-Style Cynicism

• Zaslav as a "winner" despite gutting his company and profiting grotesquely.
• Saudi/Qatari ownership stakes in the merger are flagged with dark humor.
• The “incentive” structure of media and content is dissected: studios and cities will have to fight to stay relevant and solvent, as the business moves overseas and into new tech.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "We’re not good at nicknames anymore. We're lazy. We do initials, we do acronyms, and we just don't put any thought into it."
  Bill Simmons (05:41)
• “Two, three Wemby moments a game, you're like, I don't know if I've ever seen that.”
  Simmons, on the NBA's new must-watch star (35:00)
• “Cade’s the brains, Holland’s the athlete—maybe too crazy, but a winning combo.”
  Dave Jacoby, on imaginary "Challenge" teammates (24:04)
• "The league's fucking loaded right now. No, you're not winning it."
  Simmons, on NBA title odds for aging stars (33:19)
• "This is basically Taylor Swift's Eras tour, but basketball—and LeBron is [the star]."
  Jacoby, on the 30-team LeBron retirement tour (68:59)
• "That's, like, every NBA team combined... That's $79 billion in debt."
  Simmons, on the Warner Bros-Paramount merger (88:08)
• “He’s a very nice guy... I don’t know if he should be running one of the biggest content monoliths we’ve ever seen, but at least he’s not in it for the payoff.”
  Matt Belloni on David Ellison (94:42)
• "We did a good job and not talking about Trump… I'm glad for both of us."
  Simmons (128:35)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 05:00–13:00 — The art and decline of NBA nicknaming
• 13:21–18:44 — Predicting the NBA’s top five players in 2031
• 21:48–46:54 — Mailbag: wild NBA hypotheticals, sibling awards, and more
• 64:37–69:47 — LeBron’s 30-team "Eras Tour"
• 74:01–128:50 — Matt Belloni breaks down the Warner Bros–Paramount merger
• 87:00–90:00 — Deep dive into merger debt and industry outlook
• 101:00–103:00 — The shifting power of sports rights (esp. NFL)
• 124:00–127:30 — LA’s identity crisis in a changing media ecosystem

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Tone & Style

Simmons blends pop culture references, basketball nerdery, and media industry savvy, riffing with Jacoby in a purposely casual, “old friends arguing over a bar table” style, while Belloni brings sharper analysis but goes with the flow. The mix is playful, skeptical about corporate power, and laced with inside jokes and nostalgia.

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Summary Takeaway

If you missed the episode, you missed an all-encompassing tour through the 2026 NBA, the state of creative sports media, wild fan fiction for players like LeBron, and a masterclass on the seismic Paramount-Warner Bros. merger from one of the best industry explainers in the business. All delivered in Simmons’s fast-talking, opinion-heavy style—with plenty of laughs, Easter eggs, and "wait, what if...?" hypotheticals to satisfy both sports diehards and media junkies.

Transcript

[Bill Simmons]

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[Dave Jacoby]

Tremphya is a prescription medicine used to

[Bill Simmons]

treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu like symptoms or if you need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about tremphya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit tremphfireradio.com. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. We are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network where on the Rewatchables it is officially CR Month. That's right, Chris Ryan picked a bunch of movies. We did Sicario on Monday night. We did it live on Netflix. You can watch on Netflix, you can watch on Spotify, wherever you hear podcasts. We have Fargo coming next Monday and then the next one after that is going to be To Live and Die in la, which we've been waiting to do forever. A classic. And then the fifth one is going to be LA Confidential and we're going to let everybody vote for the fourth one. So if you follow the rewatchables on Twitter, we'll have some choices for the fourth one. There's some pretty good we're going to have 12 movies. Vote every day for one of the four and then we'll make the finals the fourth day between the three winners. So that's what we're doing. Coming up on this podcast, Dave Jacoby, my old friend from my Grantland days, my ESPN days, he is coming on to do a mailbag with me. We have like 2/3 of a mailbag but some really, really fun basketball questions, some good nickname stuff as well. And then Matt Bellany, who you can hear on the town, we are going to talk about the Warner Brothers Paramount crazy merger and all the ramifications and ripple effects. So action packed podcast for you today. We're take a break, bring in Pearl Jam and then my old friend Dave Jacoby. This Episode is brought to you by Expedia. You got to love a good deal. Whether that's a quarterback on a short, low risk contract who competes like a top tier quarterback, like a Brock Purdy Once Upon a Time. Or Expedia's bundle and save feature, which allows you to combine flights, hotels and cars into one package for impressive discounts. And not just that, but if you're a member, you can book an item now, add select items later, and still enjoy bundled savings. For instance, if you're a football fan, you want to go to the championship, conference championship, the super bowl, wherever it is, and you don't know your team's going to be, and all of a sudden they're in. What do you got to do? I got to get a hotel. I get a flight, I get a car. Expedia can do all three. You never know when your team's going to be in a big game. Use Expedia. Now that is a winning strategy book. Now with Expedia, Dave Jacoby is here on a Tuesday afternoon. You're the first person who doesn't like the chairs.

[Dave Jacoby]

I do not like the chairs. I don't like the way they look. I especially don't like the way they feel.

[Bill Simmons]

You don't like the way they look? What's wrong with the way they look?

[Dave Jacoby]

I sink into them too much.

[Matt Bellamy]

Right.

[Dave Jacoby]

And I like a high top. And my posture will be better, less poochy pooch. And right now my knees and nipples are at the same plane.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, you want a posture thing.

[Dave Jacoby]

I want my knees below nipples.

[Bill Simmons]

Dating back to Jalen and Jacoby when we had the first chairs. And I would make fun of you that you were an invertebrate with the camera angle.

[Dave Jacoby]

Well, there's someone who wrote a very serious email that was like, you got serious problems.

[Bill Simmons]

Who wrote that?

[Dave Jacoby]

It was stranger.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Dave Jacoby]

If you're just listening to this, Bill has something that I had in, like, 1992. What is that thing?

[Bill Simmons]

This lap desk.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah. You've got the bean bag underneath the. Well.

[Bill Simmons]

Cause I like to. We're about to do a mailbag. I'm very excited.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't want to have the mailbag too low on my lap because then I'm doing this and coming up. So it's. It's out of necessity.

[Dave Jacoby]

It's a posture move.

[Bill Simmons]

And plus, later, my wife's gonna bring me dinner and I'm just gonna eat it right like this.

[Dave Jacoby]

It's a posture move.

[Bill Simmons]

So I did a whole thing about nicknames when Max Kellerman was here. People pointed out some nicknames that I missed, including Downtown Freddie Brown. I'd like to apologize to him.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'd like to also shout out, Downtown Julie Brown.

[Bill Simmons]

Who stole it from Downtown Freddie Brown. Slick Watts. The Boston Strangler, Andrew Toney. Great one, Dr. Duncan Steen. Remember loving that as a kid. The Microwave, Vinnie Johnson, the Mailman, The Chief. White Chocolate was a big miss. The glove, Big Country, AK47. And then currently Greek Freak, Time Lord and Slo Mo. I bring all this up because the whole point of the initial thing was we're just not good at nicknames anymore. We're lazy. We do initials, we do acronyms, and we just don't put any thought into it.

[Dave Jacoby]

I've got a take on this.

[Bill Simmons]

Let's hear.

[Dave Jacoby]

One thing about the sports media world that really bothers me is when athletes launch their brand or their logo, it's either their number or their initials. No one has done this right since Kobe Bryant, who just stole it from

[Bill Simmons]

a sword on Kill Bill, who had a couple chances. Yeah, he tried a couple different gimmicks.

[Dave Jacoby]

Just initials. It's just like. Or like DA7 or something. It's just like, why? Why can't we be more creative than this?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that's. So Imran from San Francisco has a theory on this that we've gotten lazy. Oh, he blames Kevin Durant. Tough year for Kevin Durant. Emron. He says Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant deserves blame for rejecting a potential Pantheon level nickname, the Slim Reaper.

[Dave Jacoby]

Slim Reaper.

[Bill Simmons]

And instead asking people to call him the Servant, which no one wanted to do. Players realized they could just reject nicknames that didn't fit their brand. And now we have these vanilla corporate nicknames instead. Just a thought. Do we put this on Kevin?

[Dave Jacoby]

I don't think it's pretty fair, but Durantula was great. Slim Reaper was great. And then he's like, I am the easy money sniper. Okay, Easy Money Sniper.

[Bill Simmons]

Slim Reaper was an all time great nickname. We could have called him Slim. We could have called him Reaper.

[Dave Jacoby]

And it also, it visualizes it. Slo Mo is a great nickname, but you can't, like see it. You know what I mean? But you can see him. They've got the graphics of him in the hood and with the sickle and everything. So, yeah, maybe it is Kevin Durant's fault.

[Bill Simmons]

My thing with nicknames like Slick Watts is a good example. The nickname has to become how we say the person's name. It can't. Like, we've had some nicknames over the years. When it's like the nicknames over here. I even didn't really love the answer for Allen Iverson. He just. It was just easier to call him AI. I know people like to push the answer. I never personally called him the answer. I always called him Iverson or AI.

[Dave Jacoby]

It doesn't roll off the tongue.

[Bill Simmons]

Ultimately, where you want to be is, like, Clyde the Glide.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Neek. Shorten your name. Whatever. So, anyway, Peter T. Had an idea. There was a lot of concanipple suggestions, which people know. People know how to get into the mailbag. Just bring up concept.

[Dave Jacoby]

You sent me some of the questions. I was like, oh, these people are just tailoring it, Right?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, Listen, it's a human algorithm. Peter T. Said. He said mailbag, nickname submission. Con Snow. Bill's illegitimate son in Charlotte, like Jon Snow and Game of Thrones. He said, as a Duke fan in Colorado, I love that your pod is now 25% Jokic and Knipple talk. I resent that because I feel like it's 50% Boston talk. 25%.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm taking the over on a 50.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, okay. Now let's get to the good stuff. There was a lot of Stefan Castle. What are we doing here? This guy needs a nickname. I think people agree. Right?

[Dave Jacoby]

Can I push back? Khan is a unique name in itself, and Castle is a great last name. Why do we need to upgrade these?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, just wait. Jude from Westport said it had to be something castle or medieval related. He proposes the dungeon. He's locking someone down. He's sending them to the dungeon. Like, I'm not against it. You've been locked down the dungeon? Jacob and a few people suggested this, wanted to call him the Moat, because a moat is perimeter defense for a castle. So it's like you can't cross the moat. Oh.

[Dave Jacoby]

Do you know one you haven't thought of?

[Bill Simmons]

What?

[Dave Jacoby]

That you didn't bring up off night. Oh, for Davion Mitchell. Yeah. That's a great nickname.

[Bill Simmons]

You don't like nicknames? Mac Breen yelling. Nobody is crossing the moat.

[Dave Jacoby]

Nobody's crossing.

[Bill Simmons]

A few people suggested this, though, and I think it's the winner for Stephen Castle. Checkmate. Sure you don't like it?

[Dave Jacoby]

No, I like it. I like it.

[Bill Simmons]

And Checkmate rises to the occasion. I don't know. I'm going to work. I want to hear somebody test drive it. Khan. A lot of people go in Defcon 3 or Defcon 7, which is his number. Not quite there. Con Air doesn't really work.

[Dave Jacoby]

No.

[Bill Simmons]

And then a couple people suggested 2k. 2k is good.

[Dave Jacoby]

2k is not bad.

[Bill Simmons]

2k is good.

[Dave Jacoby]

2K is not bad.

[Bill Simmons]

2k had 35 last night.

[Dave Jacoby]

That's not bad.

[Bill Simmons]

That's as good as we've heard about syllables.

[Dave Jacoby]

That's one thing about the answer. The word answer doesn't roll off the tongue the same way that 2K does.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you see 2K hit nine threes last night? It's pretty good. The bigger question is, do you need a nickname if your name's Khan?

[Dave Jacoby]

No.

[Bill Simmons]

Which is. So if we had a nickname czar, the nickname czar would probably be like, we're good. His name's Khan. It stands out.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah. It'd be so hard. I mean, if you're going to do something with con knipples name.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Nipse is right there.

[Bill Simmons]

Nipsey.

[Dave Jacoby]

Nipsey. It's right there.

[Bill Simmons]

We had a Nipsey wrestle a bunch of people. For Jalen Duran suggested Bull Duran.

[Dave Jacoby]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Not bad.

[Dave Jacoby]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

This was the best one. I can't believe how good it is. More than one suggestion. So I don't want to give anyone credit. Josh Giddey.

[Dave Jacoby]

Don't. Just don't. Just don't. Just don't. Just don't.

[Bill Simmons]

Josh Giddy the Giddler. The Giddler had a triple double last night. He could have the old 90s poster with, like, he's dressed as the Riddler, but it's instead of a question mark. It's a gift.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm not sure. Maybe like, October. Josh Giddey deserved this nickname, the Giddler. But, like, it's too close to something else.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, so Your favorite is 2K.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Dan from Denman island in Canada suggested he was one of the checkmate suggestions for Castle.

[Dave Jacoby]

Where's Danman Island?

[Bill Simmons]

Out on Instant Canada. He wanted to. He suggested for Kayson Wallace, Twitch. Cause he has such fast twitch reflexes that we just start calling him Twist. I don't think he needs a nickname.

[Dave Jacoby]

There's a motocross mental militia guy named Twitch.

[Bill Simmons]

He was great. This is the best one. I don't think he has the right person for this, but it's one of the best names I've ever heard. He said for Jaylen Brown to call him Jalapeno because this is what my group of friends who have a basketball draft call him because of a typo. But it also fits for when he's on a heater. That's a better name for somebody you play pickup basketball with. Jalapeno. It's like our friend Juan we call him Jalapeno because he just gets hot in these games. Maybe, but you don't like Jalapeno?

[Dave Jacoby]

A typo. I don't. You know, any nickname that you have to sort of, like, explain with more than one sentence? I'm out.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you like Jalapeno as a heat check nickname, though?

[Dave Jacoby]

Only for, like, one of my friends.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So our best one is 2K.

[Dave Jacoby]

2K.

[Bill Simmons]

All right. So Alex Lyons wrote in, there's this guy, Rabbi Avila from St. Louis. The guy with the goggles, the 610 center. You've seen him. College basketball. He has three nicknames. Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm in.

[Bill Simmons]

Steph Blurry and Milt Chamberlain. All of them. So maybe he'll save the nicknames.

[Dave Jacoby]

Cream Abdul Jabbar.

[Bill Simmons]

Is it Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Steppler is pretty good, too. Okay, next question is from D. Bob in New York. Who do you think will be the top five players in the league five years from now? So that'll be the 2030-31 season, he said. It's a fun exercise. You never would have predicted Shea or Wemby. Top five. Five years ago, the top five players in 2021 were Giannis, Joka, Jambi Curry, Luka Lebron in some order. To me, in 2031, there's two locks. Ant, Luca. But anyway, he's basically like, who do you have?

[Dave Jacoby]

This was harder than I thought it would be.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought. I agree.

[Dave Jacoby]

This was harder than I thought it would be. And one thing that I'm not going to allow is Ugo Gonzalez being part of the conversation.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you see him last night? It's 16 rebounds.

[Matt Bellamy]

I did.

[Dave Jacoby]

I did.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

But this was harder than I thought because my question for you is, like, there's a couple. There's a bunch of 29 year olds who will still be in their prime. But when I'm looking at some players, I'm like, luka will be 32.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, can we do the chalk picks? So if we're just going chalk, it's Wemby, Ant, Luka, SGA. Whoa.

[Dave Jacoby]

Luka and SGA are 32 years old.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm just saying chalk.

[Dave Jacoby]

Oh, did.

[Bill Simmons]

This is safest bets for five years from now. Safest bets.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

And I would have Cooper Flag as my fifth chalk guy. He'll be 24 at that point. Everything we've seen how much better he's gotten just in the last two years.

[Dave Jacoby]

Luca and Shay at 32. I started to think that there are others out There. Yokich is going to be 36 and he probably wouldn't be playing.

[Bill Simmons]

He's out.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I wrote down I had different categories, Cade and Maxi.

[Dave Jacoby]

There's a lot of 29 year olds. Kaden, Max, you're on my list as well. And Edwards. But he's in.

[Bill Simmons]

Edwards. Edwards. So can we put Wemby and Ant in bold?

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes, absolutely.

[Bill Simmons]

Can we put Cooper flag in bold or no?

[Dave Jacoby]

He'll be 24. Yes, you can. I think there's no way he's not awesome in five years.

[Bill Simmons]

There would have to be some sort of knock on wood, terrible injury, but

[Dave Jacoby]

we're not even having that conversation. Wemby's in.

[Bill Simmons]

You know what I mean? Wemby, Ant Flag.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I could offer you AJ Debanza, Darren Peterson, dp, dnp, Chet Amen, Thompson, Jalen Johnson, Paolo with a big resurgence. Anybody else?

[Dave Jacoby]

Jalen Johnson is on my list. I'm so. I'm glad you didn't bring up Tatum.

[Bill Simmons]

He's going to be too old. He'll be like 33. There's a little bit of me down

[Dave Jacoby]

just for karma, but there's a little bit of me that's looking at Maxi like, I don't know, could be top five because you have to play defense too.

[Bill Simmons]

He'd have to be in the low 30s point wise for like four straight years in a row. Basically where Mitchell is now. You wouldn't even put Mitchell in the top five right now.

[Dave Jacoby]

No.

[Bill Simmons]

So probably not.

[Dave Jacoby]

Is there a world in which Jalen Johnson becomes like an all around jack of all trades, 9 assists and like 25 points a night guy?

[Bill Simmons]

The problem is you have to really win to be in this conversation. Yes. His Duke season didn't go well and he's never won anything with Atlanta. So you're really projecting with this.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, I think we're there. I don't think there's anybody else on the list that we're missing.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay. So Wemby, it's interesting that you would

[Dave Jacoby]

put Cooper in bold, guaranteed, and not even mention Nipsey.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't want to put that on two kids.

[Dave Jacoby]

It's a lot. It's a lot to ask of 2k.

[Bill Simmons]

I think Cade should be in there though. Cade will be high 20s at that point.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Like 20, 28, 29. So I think he would be my fourth pick. And I'm sorry, I think Luka's still going to be there. It'll be year 13. Luka, 32 years old. He's already moves like a 39 year old.

[Dave Jacoby]

That's what I think about Luka and Yoka.

[Bill Simmons]

Good or bad?

[Dave Jacoby]

Maxi relies on athleticism that diminishes over time. Luca doesn't do anything athletic.

[Bill Simmons]

So you wouldn't have SGA if he was still this good in five years. You're now talking about the best guard career anyone's had, other than Michael Jordan. It would be better than Jerry West. It would be better than every guard we've ever had.

[Dave Jacoby]

I also think they're going to win a lot, too.

[Bill Simmons]

That's why you might put them in.

[Dave Jacoby]

They're going to. He's. He's borderline there.

[Bill Simmons]

So two spots for Cade, Luka, sga.

[Dave Jacoby]

I think. God, it's hard. This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, here's the other thing. There might be somebody.

[Matt Bellamy]

We have no idea.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, we wouldn't have said Anthony Edwards in 2021, he's the number one pick, but we wouldn't have said Anthony Edwards will be one of the five best guys.

[Dave Jacoby]

And both Edwards and Cade didn't have the kind of like Cooper rookie year.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm going to say Cade. Ah, shit. It's hard to leave out sga.

[Dave Jacoby]

It is.

[Bill Simmons]

Especially now that they're the villains that we need in the NBA. I started that on Sunday.

[Dave Jacoby]

Explain to me why Cade won't be better at 29 in 5 years than SGA.

[Bill Simmons]

The case would be really physical style. Putting miles on him. The next four or five years physically might break down okay. Those big physical guards. It's almost like a big physical receiver or something would be the case. I don't believe that his team's going to be good. He's going to have Bull Duran the whole time.

[Dave Jacoby]

They're going to bring in a second creator.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, they'll have somebody. Giannis, a great.

[Dave Jacoby]

It's a great nickname.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm going to say Cade. You know, I'm going to say SJ over Luca. I don't.

[Dave Jacoby]

I don't know about Luca. I don't know about Luca. At 32.

[Bill Simmons]

That video the other day, which I actually thought was kind of a big deal, and normally I'm like, don't overreact to when guys get mad at each other on the bench.

[Dave Jacoby]

I could talk about that for hours here.

[Bill Simmons]

Here was the key piece that I didn't think enough play. There was. I think it was Vanderbilt sitting next to him.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, it was Van Dough and he

[Bill Simmons]

was watching the whole thing. If you watch the video, he's watching them go and he's watching it was

[Dave Jacoby]

the most important thing that Vando did all year.

[Bill Simmons]

He's watching, and he's watching. He's watching. JJ walks away, and it looks like Luca went out to put his arm out, but JJ walked away, and JJ didn't seem put the arm out as Luka was putting out. And Luka got mad and stood up. And I think it was Vando.

[Dave Jacoby]

It was Vando.

[Bill Simmons]

He's watching out of the corner of his eye and stands up with Luca to block him from chasing JJ down the sideline. If you watch everything he's doing, it's the stuff like we're at a bar at 2:30 in the morning, and our buddy is like, oh, don't let him go over there. And we're just kind of watching him the whole time. It's like, oh, there he goes. We gotta get him out. That was the vibe. I didn't think it was good.

[Dave Jacoby]

I don't think it was good at all. And the first person that it made me think of was Nico Harris. And I've said this on the mismatch, but I've always felt like there's just more to the story of what happened in Dallas. And I think that they hated each other. And he was like, guess what? You can be gone. I have that kind of power. I think it was personal, and I think it was vindictive. And I think that he hated seeing Luca every single day. And I think that Luca was disrespectful towards him and probably vice versa.

[Bill Simmons]

They clearly thought he was a dick.

[Dave Jacoby]

Exactly. And you know what I mean? These things aren't reported. I'm not reporting anything. But I think that that happened. I think there's a lot of incidents like this behind the scenes that we didn't see.

[Bill Simmons]

There's two types of people, and I'm in the wrong camp with this. My wife, instantly, if something's happening, she knows, right? When you have little kids and the kid is going down the pool, walking towards. Crawling toward the pool or something, and there's the type that goes, oh, no, that's bad. And then you act. Or there's the person who sees that and they're moving immediately. That was Jared Vanderbilt. He saw it immediately. I don't think I would have stood up.

[Dave Jacoby]

And what's the second time? I would have been like, what are you?

[Bill Simmons]

I'm the one who would have. I would have sat there for the extra second, been like, this is bad. And Luca would have walked by me before I realized that I should be

[Dave Jacoby]

stopping it because you. I Don't like to compliment you, but you're an excellent room reader and floor seer.

[Bill Simmons]

Not in the instinctive. This is going. This is bad. What are you. Which side are you?

[Dave Jacoby]

You know, I rushed a conflict. I enjoy the conflict. I enjoy tension. I enjoyed just the weirdness of it all and like, saying things that I probably can't take back and probably shouldn't say.

[Bill Simmons]

The best version of this I've ever seen was our friend Jalen Rose. There was one time, one of the NBA shows we were doing and there was people were arguing. I was one of the people arguing. And we're walking off after the thing and Jalen goes, turn your mic off, Bill. Like he just said, we do turn the mic off. He's immediately like, ready?

[Dave Jacoby]

I know. You don't have to say it. I know you're going to say something that you can't regret.

[Bill Simmons]

Turn your mic off.

[Dave Jacoby]

And that microphone is going to broadcast to the truck.

[Bill Simmons]

Shout out to him.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, next question. Gus from Texas. I saved this for if we're ever going to do a mail back together. He said, longtime BS Pod fan. Thanks, Gus. Longtime fan of the challenge. Always love when those two worlds collide. But it's been a minute. If the NBA did a rival style season like the challenge, who would your favorite pairings be? Who would be the CT west team that would dominate? Who would be the messiest, funniest. So I sent this to you.

[Dave Jacoby]

I just want to tell Gus that I love him very much.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a great question.

[Dave Jacoby]

It's a great question.

[Bill Simmons]

Two man teams. This is the rivals thing that we love. So would they have to be rivals?

[Dave Jacoby]

I spent more time answering this question this afternoon to myself than I did than I've put into anything I've done professionally in 10 years.

[Bill Simmons]

You were the right part. This is it. This is your vortex of all the things you care about.

[Dave Jacoby]

I have found the perfect pairing from the NBA to go to the challenge.

[Bill Simmons]

But one thing I was thinking rivals or just the challenges.

[Dave Jacoby]

He said rivals. Right? So I did think of sort of pairings that would be mismatched. We'll say, right? Like they're not real rivals because, oh, diabate and like Beefstu, that's not going to work. You know what I mean? Or like Dylan Brooks and LeBron. That's not gonna work. But I was thinking, I was like, they did something like this. Do you remember the season that had like Sean Merriman and CM Punk and like Lolo Jones?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that was weird.

[Dave Jacoby]

I remember thinking I was like, this is the Lolo.

[Bill Simmons]

Quit.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah. And then she came back another time. But I remember sitting there being like, this can't work. But the athletes weren't as good at the challenges than you would think. And of course, this first person that came to my mind was Johnny Bananas, the goat of the challenges. And, like, what makes him good at this and what makes him good at doing this is he's in great shape so you can run the final. But he's really good at room reading, like we were talking about earlier and playing the social game and finding out who's aligned with who, getting the right people out at the right times. So I was thinking of a strategist. So my first answer is going to be a team that I think would be successful.

[Bill Simmons]

So not Kevin Durant.

[Dave Jacoby]

Not Kevin Durant. But the fun answer is a team that I really want to see. And I'll give you that next. I think that I landed on teammates. They're not rivals. But it would be Cade and Ron Holland, because Cade is very mature, very measured. He's very intelligent and articulate.

[Bill Simmons]

Cade and Ron Holland. I was not expecting this.

[Dave Jacoby]

This is where I ended up. Now I've got a fun one, though.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Dave Jacoby]

The fun one is obviously.

[Bill Simmons]

So why Ron Holland, though, over other people on the team?

[Dave Jacoby]

I think that Ron just.

[Bill Simmons]

Cause he's such a good athlete.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes. I think that his type of athleticism, he can, like, climb up stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

So he'd be like puzzle guy.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes, exactly. Because obviously your mind goes to beef stew or whatever, but I think he might be just a little too, like, big for this. And I think that Ron Holland's a nice little level of crazy. And I think Cade will be sort of like the brains of the operation. Holland will be, like, a little intimidating and like, a little wild card.

[Bill Simmons]

So they'll be in the bunk beds and Cade will be like, let's. Let's bring over Draymond Green. We gotta align with him.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes. And my favorite pairing for this, and I used a coach, is LaMelo Ball and Joe Missoula.

[Bill Simmons]

Just imagine, like, Joe Missoula, he's too crazy.

[Dave Jacoby]

He's got, like, a blindfold on. And LaMelo balls outside the fence. It's to your right.

[Bill Simmons]

It's to your right.

[Dave Jacoby]

And Joe Mazzullo's just like, what the fuck? Lamelo, he just rips the blindfold off and just chases after Lamelo, who's just laughing and running around in circles. Like, that pairing, to me, would be the one I would see the most.

[Bill Simmons]

That's great.

[Dave Jacoby]

It would be perfect. Joe Missoula should be on the challenge.

[Bill Simmons]

I think this is. This would be an unbelievable vehicle for Draymond Green, too.

[Dave Jacoby]

I think Draymond would be great.

[Bill Simmons]

I think he'd be the most compelling character. He'd definitely get kicked out of. At least if he did 10 seasons, he'd get kicked out of three of them. He'd complain about all kinds of stuff. He'd probably get into it with TJ at least once or twice.

[Dave Jacoby]

I wouldn't mind Durant either. You see with him, with Tyler Herro and the Miami Bench and like that starting five show.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, but Durante would just team up and get out in the first episode.

[Dave Jacoby]

What would you do to Draymond?

[Bill Simmons]

Be like Cara Maria. See, now nobody, nobody, nobody watching this knows what we're talking about. We're not talking to alternate language. Who would. Who would be the Laurel of this? The big bully.

[Dave Jacoby]

Oh, I love Laurel so much that probably Beefsteak. Draymond.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, well, Draymond's more of like, Laurel's nasty. I guess he is more the Laura.

[Dave Jacoby]

Laurel's nasty. She will dress you down for no reason.

[Bill Simmons]

Who would be the good guy? Would it be Gurry? Everybody likes Gurney. Like how everybody loves Mark Long.

[Dave Jacoby]

Everybody loves Mark Long.

[Bill Simmons]

Remember when he came here, we didn't have challenge pod. That was fun. Thanks, Gus. Sean from North Carolina, I wanted this question for you because you have kids. I only sent you a couple questions. You don't know a lot of these.

[Dave Jacoby]

I know.

[Bill Simmons]

Said we used to live in a proper country. I would catch all sorts of classics on tv, including the slightly sanitized version of Die Hard on tbs. Streaming services are great, but I wish they had a cable edit option. That way I could show my 10 year old kid Terminator Terminator 2 without it being inappropriate. Do you think Netflix should add this? The parent cut of different movies? Well. And would you watch this with your kids?

[Dave Jacoby]

You have older kids than me, and I was around when they were younger. And I learned one thing that I've taken from the Simmons household is just like, you want to see Halloween and you're six years old.

[Bill Simmons]

Cool.

[Dave Jacoby]

Here's a kitchen knife.

[Matt Bellamy]

You know what I mean?

[Dave Jacoby]

It was just like. Or like cursing in front of your kids. You were very, like, throwing into the fire. You know what I mean? And I do that at my house as well when it comes to content. Like me and my son, he's 12. We watched Psycho Killer over the weekend. Oh, you know what I mean? Like horror movies, sex scenes. I'll be like, close your eyes. You know what I mean? But he doesn't really do it.

[Bill Simmons]

So that's the thing. You have to know where the bad parts are in your cover. So I don't think we need the edit option.

[Dave Jacoby]

It's not necessary to do this. And I also. I took a page from your book. It's just like, let the kids watch. Whatever.

[Bill Simmons]

They're gonna do it anyway.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, it's fine.

[Bill Simmons]

You can either, like, put your head in the sand and pretend like you're controlling it, or do it with them and just kind of put hands over their face.

[Dave Jacoby]

One of my daughters gets super scared, so she won't watch. Fine.

[Bill Simmons]

Like you're watching Terminator with your kid, and all of a sudden that guy's like, I came across time for you, Sarah. And you know, they're about to get it on. Like, you know what? We're gonna fast forward this part. Yeah, we'll just tell you. It's gonna get romantic here. We're not gonna watch it together, and you just move on.

[Dave Jacoby]

My kids won't watch things from the 20th century.

[Bill Simmons]

I came across time for you, Sarah. One of the great pickup lines in the history movies. Like, what woman's not at least making out with you after that? You came across time.

[Dave Jacoby]

I came across time for you, Sarah.

[Bill Simmons]

Thank you. This is from Alex in Delray beach, and I've gotten this email a bunch of times from people about the 0304 kings. Are you familiar with them? Chris Weber's out for. He's torn ACL in the postseason. Previous year, Peja has his random MVP season. One of the most random top four MVPs ever.

[Dave Jacoby]

Aforementioned white chocolate, right?

[Bill Simmons]

They're 40. No, he's gone by then. They have Mike Bibby. They're 43 and 15 through 58 games. Weber comes back, and as Alex points out, the return was disastrous. Stakovic's efficiency plummeted. The Kings lost 10 of their final 16, fell to the four seed, bounced in round one. Now Tatum is coming back. His history destined to repeat itself. So there is a doppelganger for this comeback that I forgot about.

[Dave Jacoby]

Bill, I thought we were going to talk about the Kings.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Dave Jacoby]

And then at the very end, you're just like, oh, the Celtics.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you remember this Kings thing?

[Dave Jacoby]

No, not really.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I didn't really remember it either. I didn't remember the pager piece, but was it.

[Dave Jacoby]

I remember, like, Lakers series and, like, divots and like that kind of free.

[Bill Simmons]

Give us your quick. Will Tatum screw Up the Celtics take. I know you've done it on the mismatch already.

[Dave Jacoby]

No. Adding good players to your team.

[Bill Simmons]

That's why I feel it helps. Is he better than Bailey Sharman?

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes.

[Dave Jacoby]

You play like 14 minutes, too. It's like adding good players to basketball teams doesn't screw them up.

[Bill Simmons]

So I did say one thing in the weird documentary they've made about his comeback.

[Dave Jacoby]

Wait, you're watching that?

[Bill Simmons]

No, this was a thing on Celtics Reddit. He said he didn't come back to be a role player. It's like, oh, it's fine. Okay.

[Dave Jacoby]

One of my basketball philosophies is like, there's only one ball. I hate there's only one ball.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Share the ball. Guess what? If you score, I score. Jayson Tatum makes teams better.

[Bill Simmons]

We'll be fine.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Steve B. Writes, what if Steve Kerr does not have a contract for next year because Steph is winding down and Wemby is winding up and he's replacing George Popovich to make a second run in a dynasty. I just like that he called him George Popovich.

[Dave Jacoby]

Popovich. I think Steve B.

[Bill Simmons]

Too. Steve B. I was wondering, like. So Kerr, let's say he leaves this year and the warriors are going to be out of the playoffs. Like, they're. They're. I think they're going to shut Step down. I just. My spidey senses are. Like, he said. Yeah. It's going to be like 10 more days. There's only 39 days left in the season. What are they going to. Even when he comes back? They already lost Jimmy Butler. They're not good to begin with. What are they going to play? 2 playing games with Steph with a not 100% need. Like that team should go for a lottery pick.

[Dave Jacoby]

KP's already got illnesses.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. KP is not coming back like that. That season's watch.

[Dave Jacoby]

Is Horford going to carry you to the second round?

[Bill Simmons]

Kurt leaves. Thanks for everything. I'm going to take a year off. I'll do media. Hopefully it comes to the ringer. Then San Antonio, who knows? And if anything ever happens on that team, then they might be. You wait for that or you wait for the Knicks or some awesome job. You just do media for a year. When you do media for a year, your stock just rises. You see that every time.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. So you don't think he's going to replace George Popovich?

[Dave Jacoby]

I don't think he's going to replace George Popovich because Mitch Johnson's doing a good job. That's the problem. That's going to be available to him. And Mitch Johnson wasn't supposed to be the head coach at first.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe he. No, he wasn't.

[Dave Jacoby]

Could you see a front office thing maybe where it's like he's not on the bench but he's just sort of like part of the.

[Bill Simmons]

I could see part of the thing. My honest answer for this is I don't think he coaches again after this. I think he did. He did it since 14, 15, did 11 years. He set up his son to potentially be a coach down the road. He won four titles. He won. How many did he win with the. He won 1, 2, 3, 5 with the Bulls and Spurs. He's won nine titles. It's done. It's a wrap. Just do media.

[Dave Jacoby]

There's media's gonna be on the rewatchables. That's great.

[Bill Simmons]

I would love to have six on the rewatch.

[Dave Jacoby]

K month.

[Bill Simmons]

Martin in New York writes, where does Al Horford rank on the I left my marriage for the stripper twice, and to no one's surprise, it didn't work out.

[Matt Bellamy]

This.

[Dave Jacoby]

You saved that one for me. You saved that one for me.

[Bill Simmons]

He left the Celtics twice because he thought the title window was closed, only to be instantly proven wrong 20 games into the season. And he did it twice. It is a tough beat for Al. I never understood the I'm going to go chase the title with Golden State part. What title did he think he was chasing? You're in a conference with okc. What do you think's going to happen over there?

[Dave Jacoby]

Also, like, they need you. Yeah, because it's like post is sort of their other big. At the time, before they got kp, I had never. I'm back to the Warriors. I never really saw it this season for the Warriors.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought they'd go over the 46 or whatever, but I didn't think they were.

[Dave Jacoby]

But what did everybody say last year after they added Jimmy Butler? If you look at the numbers, they were the best team in the history of the NBA. And I was kind of like, yeah, they were like in a playoff game for like two months in a row to kind of like get in to the plan.

[Bill Simmons]

The thing about NBA history, the older you get, the harder your chances to win the NBA title. That's one of the things I've learned. And the only chance you have is if it's like a weird down year for the league where there's not a lot of stars and there's a couple bad drafts. Some of the younger players didn't pan out, then you can kind of sneak in. League's not like that right now. The league's fucking loaded. No, you're not winning it. Like I even look at Durant on Houston, and Houston, you know, we'll see what happens with them. They've hung around, they're going to be a three seed, but they're still going to have to rely on Durant for 10 straight weeks in the playoffs to win a title. And he's 37. I just think it's unrealistic. We saw in 22, remember Tatum took it to him in that net series. He was 33 in that series. He's four years older than that. Let's take a break and then I have some more Mailbag questions for you. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel's putting you in control right from tip off. That's right. You get to choose your reward. Play it safe, go for it. Whatever your style, you're in control. I'm going to figure out some sort of bet for the Celtics Charlotte game, but I think it's going to be a close game. I think it's going to have a lot of points and I predict my guy 2k con knipple some threes from him. But just in general, I think it's going to be a fast pace, a lot of points game. I'll figure out what my final play is. Check it out on my Twitter account. No matter how you play, FanDuel's giving you the power to choose your award, own your game this NBA season. Head to FanDuel.com BS to make your pick. Get in the game and play it your way. 21/ select states are 18/dc, Kentucky or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See [e-mail], game problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org chatcan 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 michelobaltra.com courtside Michelob Ultra Courtside 2526. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents. 21+. Begins on October 1, 2025. Ends on June 30, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official [e-mail] courtside for free entry, entry deadlines and prizes and details. All right, more Mailbag with Jacoby Mercury P. I don't know if that's a nickname or a real name. I'm so glad you're here for this question. He's proposing two new end of the season awards. The Marcus Morris award for worst best brother. Oh, so you're the best brother. But you're the worst player of all the best brothers.

[Dave Jacoby]

Wait, the worst best brother?

[Bill Simmons]

Out of all the best brothers of the combos, you're the worst one of all the best.

[Dave Jacoby]

Oh, so the Lonzo Ball would win this year?

[Bill Simmons]

No, that. No, we'll go into it. But he also has the Seth Curry award for best worst brother. So you're the same.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm so confused. Mercury P Has got.

[Bill Simmons]

No, no, we're going to walk you through. There's three. So there's really three categories. There's worst, worst brother, which would be Yanis's brothers.

[Dave Jacoby]

Thanasses.

[Bill Simmons]

They would win these. Sadly. They're nice guys, but they would win the award for worst worst brothers. For players.

[Dave Jacoby]

They're nice guys, but they're the worst players. How do you go out for coffee with the.

[Bill Simmons]

If we had all the brothers and we did a draft, they would get picked last.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Best worst brother. So of all the second best brothers, who is the best? Second best brother. That's got to be Osar Thompson, right?

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think.

[Bill Simmons]

I'll give you the other candidates. Mo Wagner. Champagne. Aaron Holiday.

[Dave Jacoby]

No, not a lot there.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Champagne. It's not Rod Harper and the Celtics are, you know, Cam Christie, one of the Spencers. Pick one. So. Yeah, but here's where it gets interesting. Worst, best brother. So the brother combo, better brother. The better brother. Who's the worst better brother?

[Dave Jacoby]

Oh, God.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, so I'll give you five candidates.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Keegan Murray and his brother Chris. Max Christie and his brother Cam. Caleb Martin, brother Cody. Tyus Jones brother Trey or Justin Champagne and his brother Julian. I think the answer is Tyus Jones.

[Dave Jacoby]

It's a little unfair because Jones and the Martin twins are kind of on the other side of their peak. You know what I mean?

[Bill Simmons]

The answer's the answer. We're doing the awards. Probably Tyus Jones. Yes, probably Tyus Jones. It wouldn't have been Tyus Jones last year because the two year he's just playing better.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah,

[Bill Simmons]

interesting. Best, worst, best brother.

[Matt Bellamy]

Here are the nominees.

[Bill Simmons]

But do you know how many brothers there are in the league right now?

[Dave Jacoby]

More than there's ever been in the past.

[Bill Simmons]

19 brother combos. Combos, yeah. Or 19 sets. Two brothers. Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Wow, that's.

[Bill Simmons]

Wait, 19 combos.

[Dave Jacoby]

That's 38 people.

[Bill Simmons]

38 plus we have some 300. We have three holidays and three into Kupos. We have 40 brothers.

[Dave Jacoby]

So if there's 50 and there's 500, it's like a 10% of the league.

[Bill Simmons]

Turns out DNA is important.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Matt T. Says me and Nick Wright missed the most obvious coaches for the black versus white all star game gimmick that Nick suggested.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm not at liberty to speak on this idea.

[Bill Simmons]

No, hold on.

[Dave Jacoby]

Into a microphone.

[Bill Simmons]

He said Larry Bird should coach the black team and Magic Johnson should coach the white team. And bridge generational divides. And then you flip it with the coaches.

[Dave Jacoby]

All right, I might have.

[Bill Simmons]

I really like that idea.

[Dave Jacoby]

No, see, I'm gonna push back on this. One of the scenarios. Cause I've thought about this a lot too. It's not gonna work. I've played this. I've played this hypothetically.

[Bill Simmons]

Not gonna work.

[Dave Jacoby]

Three days of traction over and over again. I was like, this is not gonna work. But one of my favorite hypothetical scenarios in this hypothetical game is the white team jumps out to like a 10 point lead in the first three minutes and Black team calls a timeout. And in that huddle, the discussion that black team has is just to be a fly on the wall. Listen to that. And I think if you have a Caucasian head coach, you don't get that same conversation. That's my concern there. And also the race war that would come along.

[Bill Simmons]

This is from William McGlynn in Sydney, Australia. Oh, he said he just watched Katie go for 27 and 17 and thought about how he got waived for no reason by the Sacramento Kings. He mentions how it's interesting that this has happened more than you think. The Cavs waved Isaiah Hartenstein, The Grizzlies waved Stephen Jackson. Danny Green got waved by the Cavs, picked up by the Spurs. Alex Crusoe got waived by okc, picked up by the Lakers. And he asked what my favorite one of all of those were.

[Dave Jacoby]

Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

And I think it's interesting. I think it's Stephen Jackson because they actually win the 03 title because of how Steven Jackson played in the playoffs.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

If you go back and look at a bad bat. Danny green as well, 2013. But they don't win in the Finals that he gets hot.

[Dave Jacoby]

Remember game one, game two? He had like 35.

[Bill Simmons]

He was MVP heading into game six.

[Dave Jacoby]

That's just completely forgotten in history that Danny Green was the best player on the final mvp.

[Matt Bellamy]

He was.

[Bill Simmons]

But I think it's Stephen Jackson because he actually swung the title.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

If you go back and watch those games, he's like the number two guy on the spurs, and he brings us all the smoke and he brought us a bunch of joy. He was very pivotal in the melee.

[Dave Jacoby]

He's also really fun to have around the office. When I was at ESPN in la,

[Bill Simmons]

we gave him his first media chance on the Grantlin Basketball Hour.

[Dave Jacoby]

He had a real presence. He had a real presence around the office. You knew when the elevator doors opened and Stack came out.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it was a good time. Glenn shepherd says, I'm listening to the podcast with Kellerman. Crazy that you went from discussing nicknames into discussing Darren Peterson's tattoo of Michael Myers. And the Boogeyman is sitting right there as an incredible nickname. Do you like Darren Peterson more if his nickname was the Boogeyman? And we also haven't had a Boogeyman. Boogeyman's pretty interesting.

[Matt Bellamy]

Pretty good.

[Bill Simmons]

Because we had Boogie.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes, Boogeyman's pretty good.

[Bill Simmons]

The boogeyman had 45 last night.

[Dave Jacoby]

And the boogie. There's been a resurgence of boogeyman lore because of John Wick and Baba Yaga. So, like, it is time to come back.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe that's the nickname Baba Yaga too.

[Dave Jacoby]

Hard to say Baba Yaga goes down Baba. Yeah, but Boogeyman would be a really good nickname. But I don't. I think that person has to be scary.

[Bill Simmons]

Multiple readers were disappointed in me that I didn't stick up for Darren Peterson more when he has a Michael Myers tattoo. And I'd like to apologize to everybody.

[Dave Jacoby]

I had no Idea. He had a Michael Myers tattoo.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a pretty strong statement. All right, Ryan in Chicago wants to know, what five events would you include if there was a Winter Olympics? Pentathlon, distance, speed skating, cross country skiing, and downhill skiing are the most obvious. 3. Would you round it out with ski jumping and luge? Ski jumping, definitely.

[Dave Jacoby]

I don't know about luge, ski jumping and luge, but.

[Bill Simmons]

So you have distance speed skating. I think you have to do the fast speed skating, too. Right. Cross country skiing would be the last event. Downhill skiing, I think ski jumping's the fifth. And I think we're good. Ski jumping will be amazing.

[Dave Jacoby]

So what are we creating exactly? The best five.

[Bill Simmons]

Some pentathlon.

[Dave Jacoby]

Just a random pentathlon. We're not gonna do any figure skating.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm 10, I think 10.

[Dave Jacoby]

Figure skating?

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Dave Jacoby]

Hockey.

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Dave Jacoby]

Figure skating. Okay. This is just like. So it's sort of like one athlete can do all of these things.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Because when you think about decathlon, it's like jumping, running, endurance, little shot putty

[Dave Jacoby]

here and there, strength.

[Bill Simmons]

It's all these things. So for Winter Olympics, it would have to be skiing, skating, endurance would have to be the 5 out of 10.

[Dave Jacoby]

The jump would be nice. I like a little jump.

[Bill Simmons]

The jump would be. So the jump's not fun anymore because everybody. There's no danger, and everybody's good at it. But if you had these guys where it's like, the joke is, his weakest

[Dave Jacoby]

man told us he hasn't trained much for the joke.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, this is from Joshua Tabor, College Station, Texas. If you had to bet your entire net worth on one current NBA player to win at least three championships over the next 10 years, who are you taking?

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay, well, it's a different proposal for each of us because it's the net worth part.

[Matt Bellamy]

But

[Dave Jacoby]

I had trouble with this. I think the only answer is Victor Wembanyama.

[Bill Simmons]

I had sga, and then Wemby.

[Dave Jacoby]

I thought about sga.

[Bill Simmons]

I think SGA because of the OKC situation.

[Dave Jacoby]

Exactly. They're going to cycle in more young players so they'll stay under the cap.

[Bill Simmons]

This would be an interesting fanduel future that they couldn't do because you'd have to realize it over 10 years. But I think SGA would be like a minus 150 favorite.

[Dave Jacoby]

I think so, too. And I wrote down in my notes, just institutional knowledge. Just like they've won a championship before. Same front office, same coaching staff. You know, they're going to have to, you know, cycle through some roster Spots, but they've got tons of picks. Sorber and Popich are the last two first round picks don't even play.

[Bill Simmons]

You know what's funny about Sorber? So the Clippers and okc, they had the pick swap as part of the Kawhi trade last year. OKC gets Clippers pick, they take Sorber. Think this is what happened. And then the quip. Scott number 30. And they took Niederhauser, Neaterhauser. I bought stock last week. Had a whole argument with Mike Tolan in my seats about it because we went to the Minnesota game. And I'm like, I really like this guy. And he's like, no way. And I'm like, I'm buying the stock right now. So Tolan's my witness. He's good. He's young and runs and jumps and I fucking like him.

[Dave Jacoby]

I feel like they were like Zubot. You had a great year for us last year.

[Bill Simmons]

It's not exactly working this year, but

[Dave Jacoby]

we've got Cold Cannon Kneezer, John Jacobs, Jiggleheimer Schmidt coming off the bench. He's good.

[Matt Bellamy]

He's good.

[Bill Simmons]

Clippers are kind of interesting. If Garland can come back and actually look like the Garland from the first 50 games of last year, which we haven't seen in over a year.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, I know.

[Bill Simmons]

Like them though.

[Dave Jacoby]

I understand why they did what they did. They're kind of interesting. But that trade was great for everybody.

[Bill Simmons]

If you get the somewhere fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth pick. I've started to work on this draft. So they get the Pacers pick if it's five through nine. Otherwise it gets pushed like six years. There's like fucking awesome scores in that range. Every guy from five to nine is a guy who could average like 25 points a game in the NBA at some point maybe.

[Dave Jacoby]

It seems like there's a 40 point game in college basketball like every. Every week.

[Bill Simmons]

These guys are like real every week. Acuff's my favorite out of all of them. Like Acuff's going to come in the league and immediately be a guy. So anyway, I thought that was a good trade. So we have SJ and Wemby. Who would you put third? Ant or Hugo Gonzalez?

[Dave Jacoby]

I can't make a case for Flag. Really. I think it's SGA and Wemby.

[Bill Simmons]

It's too hard to say with me.

[Dave Jacoby]

Think about it. Three. Three championships in 10 years.

[Bill Simmons]

Last guy to win three titles. What do you mean, last guy to win three titles?

[Dave Jacoby]

Is there a question mark at the end of that?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Oh, Steph. Curry.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It doesn't happen a lot.

[Dave Jacoby]

No.

[Bill Simmons]

If you're talking generationally,

[Dave Jacoby]

I had no idea you were asking me a question. You're like, last. Gotta win three titles. It's like, what?

[Bill Simmons]

Steph won four, Duncan won five, Kobe won five. If you're just going this century, three's like, a lot like, Bird only won three.

[Dave Jacoby]

LeBron.

[Bill Simmons]

LeBron won four. Yeah, yeah, it's hard, but LeBron was in the 03 draft. We're talking about the next 10 years. Curry's the last modern guy who won three titles. Even Durant only two. Klay Thompson heads are like, what about Klay? There's second part to this question from Joshua Tabor in College Station, Texas. If you had to pick one current NBA star whose legacy is most at risk of looking completely different in 10 years, either way better or way worse, who is it and why? I had a specific guy for this.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay, please.

[Bill Simmons]

No, you go. I wait. You're the guest.

[Dave Jacoby]

My problem with this question is all of my answers were negative.

[Bill Simmons]

And I was like, that's where my head went. You know what I mean?

[Dave Jacoby]

I was like, these were just, like, bad answers. Mine were Zion and Ja.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, interesting.

[Matt Bellamy]

I've.

[Bill Simmons]

I've already given up on those guys. To me, that that would be a positive if it changed.

[Dave Jacoby]

Well, I think Zion, it could be, like, 10 years now. It could be like, do you remember that guy, Zion Williamson, played in the NBA?

[Bill Simmons]

I think Luka is the answer to this.

[Matt Bellamy]

Oh,

[Bill Simmons]

Zach and I did a thing on the Sunday pod. Something I noticed with Luka's MVPs, how he only had a top three and a top four. I heard that, and I wasn't doing that because I'm intrigued, but I wasn't doing it because I was like, he should have more. It's like, because we do that with LeBron, it's stupid. The only person who you could definitively say should have more MVPs than they won is Michael Jordan. He should have three more MVPs. He should have won nine. I think he won six, whatever it was. But the three that he didn't get, it's fucking stupid. When you go back, it's like, I can't believe we. He didn't win that year.

[Dave Jacoby]

Michael Jordan.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Also, like, would you rather have calmer alone?

[Bill Simmons]

The 97 one is one of the worst ones, but the 93 was ridiculous. When Barkley won, there was another one in, like, 89 or 90. But with Luka, this is. Next year's gonna be year nine.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm intrigued by this bill, but what

[Bill Simmons]

if he just turns out to be like Dominique Wilkins who made the finals once, and it's like, statistically the most awesome, and he's in there with all these greats, and then it's like he had 1 top 3 MVP, 1 top 4 MVP, only made the finals once, and that's just kind of his career.

[Dave Jacoby]

All right, counterpoint.

[Bill Simmons]

Counterpoint is the ceiling's still high.

[Dave Jacoby]

Well, it's not only that is his style of play. We were just like 10 minutes ago talking about him in 5 years being one of the best players in the league.

[Bill Simmons]

And.

[Dave Jacoby]

And I also think that what happened to him in this trade, however it happened, or whatever really happened behind the scenes, I have no idea what actually happened, but he ended up. He, like, teleported to the Lakers, you know what I mean? And this team is not built for him. So we. We saw what happened when Nico did a very good job building a team for Luka.

[Bill Simmons]

Doncic Pro Nico stance. Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, he did a really good job. We were all celebrating this guy, you know, with the pj, Washington and Gafford or whatever. If you did. The Lakers are not built for Luka to be successful. And I think that when LeBron is gone, they will build a team for Luka to be successful, and they'll have some good years.

[Bill Simmons]

I see you're a glass half full on that.

[Dave Jacoby]

I am.

[Bill Simmons]

I think there's a Tatum. Tatum coming off the Achilles in a possibly negative way. Just like he made first team all NBA a few times. He has two top four MVPs, but can he get back to where he was or was that the peak?

[Dave Jacoby]

Or like Jaylen Brown sort of like, stays in this number one spot and he sort of perpetually just sort of goes into, like, a role.

[Bill Simmons]

The other guy I had was Lamelo. What if Lamelo? What if Zach had some good stuff about him on my pot Sunday night? What if we are now at this awesome Lamelo moment where he's just going to be really good for, like, nine years, and he's remembered as this really fun guy who's done a lot of playoffs, and he's just like, oh, man. Remember when we were worried about Lamelo? He's awesome, you know?

[Dave Jacoby]

You know, I love Lamelo so much. He brings me so much joy to watch. I'm so glad that you're now on this team. We argued about Lamelo before he was drafted. Do you remember that?

[Bill Simmons]

It took me six years to warm up.

[Dave Jacoby]

I was in on Lamelo early, and I said, this on the Dismatch. Every time he has the ball, he's just looking around. He's like, what's the coolest thing I can do with basketball right now? That's all he wants to do, is cool stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

As they've gotten better, he's pulled it back a little bit. He's like, he's become more of a winning player, I think, than just, I'm out here to have fun and make highlights.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes.

[Dave Jacoby]

And one Lamella thing with that said,

[Bill Simmons]

he did drive the Hummer across the Guardian into or across the yellow lines into that car. That was very concerning. Like, that was.

[Dave Jacoby]

That was why I'm looking at my phone. Because. Because I saw it and I was just like, that makes no sense. It's not an intersection. He's not making a turn.

[Bill Simmons]

Wasn't great.

[Dave Jacoby]

I would say that the judgment still

[Bill Simmons]

scares me, but I like where it's heading.

[Dave Jacoby]

I know you're watching a lot of Hornets games.

[Bill Simmons]

I do.

[Dave Jacoby]

And I do want to get your take on this. This weird substitution patterns in the end of the fourth quarter with LaMelo ball.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I think they're trying to. It's 27 minutes a game. I think sometimes they'll put a more

[Dave Jacoby]

defense lineup, but it's not offense defense, though.

[Bill Simmons]

So it was last year. That was one of the things where they just started benching at the end of the games. They seem very concerned about putting too many minutes on him. And kind of like, it's like when you have. When you have kids and you have a win with the kids and you're like, we're having a really fun time with the ball. Let's go before something bad happens. Of course.

[Dave Jacoby]

I just feel sometimes like he'll be not in there with three minutes left, and I'm like, oh, I guess they're going to finish without Lamelo. And then with like two minutes left, they'll put him in. Yeah, it's weird.

[Bill Simmons]

Corey Wallace writes, just listen to the alien rewatchables. Bravo for pointing out how much cats suck in general. I like to tell people that the bigger cats get, the more likely they are to hunt you for sport, the bigger dogs get. They still lick your face and want pets, like all good boys do. Also, I could go on and on cat shit indoors. They cover said shit with their paws. They walk on tables and counters. What are we doing here? There needs to be more negative coverage of cats and media.

[Dave Jacoby]

This is wild. First of all, I just want to say Mallory Rubin is very important to me, and you just can't I can't go anti cat and be pro, as pro Mallory Rubin as I am. So that puts me in a bad spot.

[Bill Simmons]

I was in the same spot even worried about doing this email in general. It is a good point, though, especially if. Does your Instagram algorithm ever send you cats like. Cats like hitting dogs in the face and stuff?

[Dave Jacoby]

I did get that same clips, those AI clips that you got where it was like, oh, is it cats fighting bears or whatever? In the first 20 seconds you're like, oh, my God, cats can beat up bears. And then you're like, oh, this is just fake.

[Bill Simmons]

It is an interesting point that the bigger cats get, the more they become predators.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

And the cats that we have as pets are just the mini version of those predators.

[Dave Jacoby]

But the first thing that came to mind was, I think it was that Liam Neeson movie When the Wolves Were the Gray, I think it's called.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Do you remember the wolves in that movie?

[Bill Simmons]

So that could be dogs.

[Dave Jacoby]

Those are dogs and they're. They are pack hunters. And Liam Neeson was at the edge of his life for two. Two hours in the cold.

[Bill Simmons]

I remember I was. This is in the 90s. I was dating this girl and her family had a cat. We were staying at her house and I went down to get a water and I heard this weird noise. And in the foyer of her house, the cat had a mouse trapped. And it was like doing the Michael Madsen and Reservoir Dogs. Like, it's like, I'm not going to kill you yet.

[Dave Jacoby]

Duck in the middle.

[Bill Simmons]

Really enjoying it. The cat didn't know I was there and I was watching. It was like just torturing this mouse before it finally took it down. I was like, this cat's a fucking psycho.

[Dave Jacoby]

I love how much you were enjoying it. Like a voyeur just sitting there. The cat didn't even know I was

[Bill Simmons]

watching rest of our dogs. He was like, I got you stuck in the corner. Yeah, cats. I don't know.

[Dave Jacoby]

I've never had a tough go with cats. There's two cats. They were Siamese cats, but they were twins. So they were Siamese twins, but they were not conjoined. That makes sense. And they just sat in this closet in my parents room and they hissed at you if you walked by. And I'm like, what is the point of this?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's not.

[Dave Jacoby]

Like, what are we doing?

[Bill Simmons]

Stephen in Ohio wants to know. He was reminiscing about the Ricky Davis year before LeBron came, which would have been a great 30 for 30. And by the way with the way they're picking 30 for 30 topics these days might actually be a 30 for 30. He averaged 20.6 points per game. It was the year he had the fake triple double. And he said, yeah, I know you've talked about how easy it is for a lot of people to get to 20 points on a bad team. But he did want to know who is the worst player to ever average 20 points per game in a season. So I did. I didn't tell you.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm not prepped for this one.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I prepped for it. I went on basketball reference.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

First of all, I was very surprised how hard it is to average 20 games. It was like less people than I thought. And I had to do a lot of different stuff with the basketball reference.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm trying to think is.

[Bill Simmons]

So I went. I tried to figure out like between 20 and 22 points a game seemed like a good. Because there were so many people. I had to like narrow down the sample size and then they'd buy win shares and pr.

[Dave Jacoby]

Let me ask you a follow up question. I'm gonna give you know, you're gonna know.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

We're in the middle of like a scoring boom right now. But where. What is this the scoring peak? Or was this a previous boom in a previous era where it was like 150, 160? There was no.

[Bill Simmons]

That was in the early 60s.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

So we're taking those people out of the pool.

[Bill Simmons]

So all I did was go back to 19. The merger season.

[Dave Jacoby]

Copy that.

[Bill Simmons]

I'll give you six players who will average 20 points a game. Mike James, 20.3. Ricky Davis, 20.6. Dana Barrows, 20.6. Made the all star team that year. Never nervous. Purvis Ellison, 20.01 year. Huh. Tony Campbell, two years in a row in the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves. But I think our answer at 20.3 points a game. Jordan Pool. Jordan Pool averaged 20 points a game

[Dave Jacoby]

counterpoint on a certain night. Jordan Poole looks really good.

[Bill Simmons]

And the other counter would be. He actually really helped them in the NBA Finals. Helped them win a title.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So. So maybe it's Mike James I'm kind of looking at.

[Dave Jacoby]

Never nervous purpose.

[Bill Simmons]

So the other thing that was interesting about that, it was the only time he ever averaged like anything close to that. He had like one big year, but for the most part he was like between 7 and 13. So maybe that's the answer. Never nervous.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, that's my answer. It's just he's not. He doesn't exactly jump off the screen when you watch him play basketball. He doesn't exactly jump when you watch him play basketball either.

[Bill Simmons]

Ricky ended up on the Celtics, which I know you remember. Of course he had nights where you're like, wow, this guy might be an all NBA player.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yes. And that's my pool. That's my pool retort too.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Is like Jordan Poole had nights on a certain night. Yeah, they're putting up 40.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, so there's two more great questions.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay, let's do it.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm going to give you the second best one first and then I'm really excited about the last one. This is from Jay in Charlotte. He heard the Hornets deep dive that Zach Lowe and I did and about. Zach was joking about raising a divisional banner. Wanted to know who had the saddest rafters in the American sports scene. So I just concentrated on basketball. As a Hornets season ticket holder, he has to nominate. He calls it the Spectrum Center. Currently, The Hornets have three things hanging in the rafters. Number six for Bill Russell, which everybody has. Number 13 for Bobby Phils, who tragically died in a drag racing accident. And the Charlotte sting jersey. Number 32 for Andrea Stinson, who averaged 12 points a game in the WNBA. They've never won their division, made in Eastern Conference finals or won a playoff series since the arena opened. The most famous basketball movement in the arena is a drunk guy in a purple shirt taunting Dwayne Wade and hitting two threes in a game six to close out the game when he had seven threes in the year. Is there a sadder rafters in American sports? So I did the research on this, but I just wanted to present that Charlotte case for you. So Bill Russell, who didn't play for them, Bobby Phills, who tragically passed away, and a WNBA player and no division or conference title. Anything.

[Dave Jacoby]

I don't think you can get sadder than that.

[Bill Simmons]

I'll present to you the Memphis Grizzlies.

[Matt Bellamy]

No.

[Bill Simmons]

Any rafters either. Bill Russell, Zach Randolph, Tony Allen. I'd still go with Charlotte, Minnesota, Bill Russell and Malik Saley who tragically passed away. And that's really it. I don't think they have anything else

[Dave Jacoby]

they're going to do. Garnett.

[Bill Simmons]

They haven't done it yet.

[Matt Bellamy]

They won't go back.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, but didn't they just sort of

[Bill Simmons]

like Orlando only has Bill Russell and Shaq, but they must have the 95 Eastern Conference title, whatever. And they made it no. 9, so they'd have two. The answer is actually the LA Clippers. Oh, zero. Anything they have no retired numbers.

[Dave Jacoby]

What?

[Bill Simmons]

And they've never won anything. They've never won a conference finals. They have nothing.

[Dave Jacoby]

What about like a brand or something?

[Bill Simmons]

They have nothing. They put high school uniforms of California players in their thing. I'm not kidding. They don't have a single retired number.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm trying to think.

[Bill Simmons]

They didn't retire Bob McAdoo's number who won an MVP in the Buffalo Braves. They didn't retire. Basically. Name anybody. Chris Paul. Chris Paul maybe will be the first one. But they just. He had this terrible experience with them. Blake Griffin. Maybe you get to a point where you retire Chris Paul, Blake Griffin.

[Dave Jacoby]

I think you do that. That's pretty sad, though.

[Bill Simmons]

Couldn't you at least retire Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson together? Just have.

[Dave Jacoby]

That was a great year.

[Bill Simmons]

It was a really fun year. We enjoyed it. But yeah, the Clippers have nothing. That's so. They are the most impressive.

[Dave Jacoby]

I feel like just if we're just going with just rafters, you might be right. But it really touched me when he was like, nothing's even happened in this arena. Notable. Yeah. In Charlotte. Cause I was thinking about the one thing would be LeBron staring at Michael Jordan before he dunks at a playoff game. That would be like the most notable thing that's happened in that arena in my memory.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, now 2K is going to be raining threes.

[Dave Jacoby]

2K. They should put him in the rafter already.

[Bill Simmons]

This is a little sorbet appetizer for you. Before the last email, John from Jersey City had an email for Conspiracy Bill. Oh, I love it. I thought I could turn you on to the latest NBA conspiracy. The Nets rigging the 2026 lottery. I'm a Nets season ticket holder. This is the upcoming ladder. When I got my ticket renewal price for next season, I was shocked. They raised prices 24% for the same seats next season. Last year they raised it 3%. The only rationale I can think of is to upcharge their season ticket holders who have sat through the mess of the last two years. Because they must know something the rest of us don't. I'll tell you this. Conspiracy Bill did darken the room and smoke the pipe a little bit and thought about this one. Why would they raise ticket prices 24% coming off a terrible season? They don't have a single signature player other than, like, Michael Porter Jr. Michael

[Dave Jacoby]

Porter Jr. Jaegor Joman.

[Bill Simmons]

Jaegor demond what made them raise prices.

[Dave Jacoby]

But it's a large.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a sizable lead. Yeah. Conspiracy Bill was intrigued huh. Kyler Dickey, by the way, wanted to know.

[Dave Jacoby]

I'm not buying that one though. The rigged lottery.

[Bill Simmons]

Listen, Conspiracy Bill got his people together.

[Dave Jacoby]

They had a meeting about it.

[Bill Simmons]

Tyler Dickey. This is another sorbet. He said when you talk about crazy stories of the season, everyone's like Katie's burners. That was the craziest. Won't get crazy that he points out the trailblazers head coach got arrested by the FBI one game into the season. I'm not the historian of the game that you are, but I've never seen or heard anything quite like this. No one cares about Portland, so this is easily swept under the rug. Did Chauncey actually mess with our players playing times and development and control outcomes? Did he cut minutes so player props would hit unders? Why is this not a huge deal to anyone else? I don't know. Why isn't this a huge deal?

[Dave Jacoby]

I don't know.

[Bill Simmons]

Ramona just wrote a huge piece about him today about how he had to like sell his house and he had $5 million bail. Like this is like a major, major gambling investigation. And he was in the poker.

[Dave Jacoby]

And I can't say I know Chauncey that well, but he was around ESPN when I was there and he is like, just like the most responsible, measured person I've been around in a. I

[Bill Simmons]

thought he was the nicest guy.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, like, it's not like some of the stuff you hear about like Malik Beasley, like, oh, that's a little weird. But like Chauncey was just like a sweetheart.

[Bill Simmons]

That's a good point. This one kind of just went away. Not sure why.

[Dave Jacoby]

I think it was because it's so long ago. And also the Katie Burner thing, like he made a Twitter account and it was in like a group chat, you know what I mean? So he's not like, it's not even like public facing tweets.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Somebody in his group chat just violated his privacy.

[Bill Simmons]

Somebody betrayed the chat. Yeah, that seems to be what happened.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, last question from Dan in Manhattan Beach. I can't wait for your reaction. I didn't send this to you. What if instead of signing with any one team for next season, LeBron makes his retirement tour an actual retirement tour by signing a one week contract with all 30 teams. Every team gets one LeBron home game where he starts and plays and they sell thousands of limited jerseys. New York finally gets Knicks. Knicks. LeBron. Minnesota gets an ant. LeBron team up. Miami gets heat. Reunion. LeBron. We just keep going. He's not Going to win the title no matter where he goes. Why not generate news in every local market?

[Dave Jacoby]

Never happy.

[Matt Bellamy]

Great idea.

[Bill Simmons]

I couldn't pin holes in it.

[Dave Jacoby]

There's also this thing hanging on where it's like, I have no idea where LeBron's going to play next year. It's just like, there's no sort of like natural.

[Bill Simmons]

I did this on the pod Tamisa, with Zach.

[Dave Jacoby]

You did a Golden State thing.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, because I don't think Cleveland, I think Cleveland has a chance to win the title every year and it's Donovan Mitchell's team and he's not going to be like, cool, let's add LeBron. Like, he, it's his team. Jalen Brunson, it's his team. These guys don't want the LeBron retirement circus coming into their thing. They'd rather just win the title. Be my guess.

[Dave Jacoby]

Does if he goes to the warriors per Conspiracy Bill, does that team a championship team?

[Bill Simmons]

No, but it's, it's like a curry and LeBron last ride.

[Dave Jacoby]

Porzingis and like Jimmy Butler off an injury. And like that team is not that one last ride.

[Bill Simmons]

Curry goes to Charlotte to end his career. So I tried to think about could this 10 day thing work? And I actually think it could.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay, hold on. Curry going to Charlotte, that's going to take shots away from Nips.

[Bill Simmons]

It's an older.

[Dave Jacoby]

Oh, it's like a mentor. I'll be the best shooter.

[Bill Simmons]

2k and him will pass.

[Dave Jacoby]

2k. Kind of like a Chris Paul Wemby thing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He's there to shepherd him into superstardom. So if it was 30, he'd have to play for 30 teams. It's. It's 60 games total. Right. So you play one home game, one road game, or two home games?

[Dave Jacoby]

Why the road games?

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe just the home games. Maybe it's a two game home stand. Limited edition jerseys. You'd have two jerseys for everything. It's like a fucking cash cow. It would actually be kind of amazing. And the Celtics would be like, Whoa, our LeBron game is coming up on March 4th.

[Dave Jacoby]

Oh, the tickets would go out of control.

[Matt Bellamy]

That could be why they raised the

[Dave Jacoby]

ticket prices in Brooklyn. Because of the LeBron game next year.

[Bill Simmons]

Or is LeBron just going there next year?

[Dave Jacoby]

No.

[Bill Simmons]

For a financial piece of the team. Or Joe just said, that's it. That's his thing. So if he played on every team, this would. First of all, it would be an amazing. Nobody's done it before.

[Dave Jacoby]

The league just brought in two new partners and took billions of Their dollars. And this is a little gift they can give back.

[Bill Simmons]

How about this? LeBron's into golf now, plays in these different cities. Two home games, and you can sample the best courses in each city over the course of two days.

[Dave Jacoby]

This will never happen. But it should happen.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought it was an almost unassailable idea. I loved it because. And then he ends up on the last team and that's the team that has the chance to win the title and you just kind of slide in. It's like, oh, I had a really good time when I was on Minnesota in December.

[Dave Jacoby]

Guarantees a ring for LeBron. Yeah, I only played one game. They won the title.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't even think about that.

[Dave Jacoby]

Guarantees a ring.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, Everyone who played for the team gets a ring.

[Dave Jacoby]

I mean, this is on the level of Ewan House talking about a guy with a metal baseball bat playing for the Wizards. This will never happen. But it is intriguing. It's one of those things where it's like, okay, this won't happen, but if it did, what's the problem?

[Bill Simmons]

It would be cool if he started out with the shitty teams and then gradually got to. And then OKC was like, we'll do it, but it's gotta be in December. We don't want to screw with our team too much.

[Dave Jacoby]

Cause I was thinking about like him on the Jazz and I was like, uh, you know. You know what I mean? I was just like, well, I don't know if I'm gonna even tune in for that one. Or like the Wizards.

[Bill Simmons]

I did think, could there be a scenario where he only picks 12 teams? But then I think the other 18, there'd be some fan base that'd be like, what the fuck? And I do like the idea of him having the one game in like Memphis. Just fucking weird. He's wearing a grizzly jersey.

[Dave Jacoby]

But the thing is, is that city's on absolute fire. It is like a. It's like basically Taylor Swift's eras tour. But basketball and LeBron is basically what it is.

[Bill Simmons]

Every game would be an event. I think Bronnie also has to come. So it's co. It's. It's two 10 day contracts. You have to get both guys.

[Dave Jacoby]

Every text thread that I am on would be, which LeBron game are we going to?

[Matt Bellamy]

Right? It would.

[Dave Jacoby]

Like the second the schedule is released, every text thread that I'm on would be like, which one are we going?

[Bill Simmons]

He does Knicks Nets back to back. So he has Knicks week and then Nets week. He's in New York for two Weeks. He's doing all the shows.

[Dave Jacoby]

Huge. Oh, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

This is amazing. It's so cool to watch the day show. It's a great idea.

[Dave Jacoby]

This is a brilliant idea.

[Bill Simmons]

Dave Jacoby, you can hear him on the miss hear and watch him on the mismatch with Verno. Chris Vernon. How's Verno handling another tanking season?

[Dave Jacoby]

You know what? He's not handling it well.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Dave Jacoby]

But I think that we're doing everything we can to support him.

[Bill Simmons]

It's tough when you're whole, when you put your stake in the ground. We aren't gonna take. We got Triple J and Joe when they play together.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yep, exactly.

[Bill Simmons]

And yeah, it's going.

[Dave Jacoby]

It's not going great. He's watching a lot of college basketball.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, that's good.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Good to see my friend. Now it's time for a special segment of the show. It's called Value Mount Rushmore. And it's brought to you by Domino's. I love Domino's. I'm gonna talk about real value. No hype, no buzz, just decisions in the game that actually get you more than you pay for. Like how Domino's best deal ever gets you any pizza with any toppings for 9.99. What a steal. Now strap in while I break down my top four value plays. The Clippers just did this. My first one would be when the Clippers traded Zubots, who's making 20 million a year so they could start playing the rookie center more. Niederhauser, who makes like 2 million a year. What a deal. If Niederhauser can be put up most of the stats that Zubots puts up. Great. I just saved 18 million. That was a good one. Late round fantasy sleepers, always. Awesome. I always like to do running backs at the end of drafts because you just draft the backups or rookies and just hope you strike oil with. With one of them. Futures. I like what the. Like, looking for futures ahead for like the NBA, NFL season, NFL. You always look for the bad team that has a good schedule the next year and a new coach is a good one for the NBA, the team that starts to stack the lottery picks and then all of a sudden, even though people don't have high expectations like Charlotte this year, maybe they'll make a jump up. So that's a good one. And then a fourth one. Glue guys. Always good when you're. If you're building a sports team, invest in those glue guys. The Celtics have a couple good ones. Jordan Walsh. Hugo Gonzalez. Hugo Gonzalez. Sorry. Just people that you know they're not going to be max contract guys, but you can throw them out and rely on them over and over again for 20 minutes a game. Anyway, the highest tier move you can make for your wallet is Domino's Best deal Ever Order any pizza with any toppings for only 9.99. I always do thin. I like the I like the gluten free crust, I like it well done and I like the double pepperoni with extra cheese is my favorite. Get Domino's Best deal ever today. Prices higher in some locations. Select this online only offer from February 23rd until April 6th. Size availability varies by crust type. Max 7 toppings 6 foot New York style and Pancrust stuffed crust. Extra Excludes Excel and specialty pizzas. Minimum purchase required for delivery. Prices, participation, delivery area and charges may vary this episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by Spectrum Business Fast, reliable Internet means everything for your business and even this podcast. That's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with Internet, advanced Wi, Fi, phone, TV, mobile services plus 24. 7 US based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business, so visit spectrum.combusiness to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This episode is brought to you by Hotels.com Save youe Way is a new feature on Hotels.com and it's as simple as it sounds. When you book a trip as a Hotels.com member, you decide how to use your savings. Take the instant savings now or bank the savings as rewards for later. It's your call only at hotels.com Save youe Way is available to loyalty members in the US and UK and hotels with member prices. Other terms apply. See site for details. All right, my friend Matt Bellamy is here. You can hear him three times a week on the Town, which you can also watch with his fancy video setup. It's a great podcast. You can also read his newsletter, part of the Puck newsletter world. Very essential. Especially lately. There's always stuff going on. And just recently Warner Brothers, which has been passed around like a Yankees Christmas gift since 2001, seems to have finally found a home. Somebody wanted finally wanted the snow globe. They wanted to keep it.

[Matt Bellamy]

And finally, I don't know if it's finally, we may be doing this all again in five years.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh well, today that the Paramount stock got downgraded to junk status so everything

[Matt Bellamy]

they just paid their their debt was downgraded. Yes, yes.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, so I have so many ways to go here. I don't think there's been enough Talk about the merger name. You've been joking about this on your pod. Because they could do the acronym. They could do pwb. They could do Warner Mount, which you've said a couple times.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, that's my preference.

[Bill Simmons]

Does the Paw Brothers interest you at all? Paw Brothers or Paw. Just calling it Paw with, like, a paw print.

[Matt Bellamy]

I thought you were gonna go Peace Guy.

[Bill Simmons]

That's their current.

[Matt Bellamy]

Their current monitor. It's Paramount, Skydance. They do Peace Guy, which Craig Horlbeck loves.

[Bill Simmons]

So do you think Paramount just absorbs it and it just stays Paramount and that's like kind of their ultimate trump card?

[Matt Bellamy]

I think ultimately, perhaps that will be the route. The funny thing is, though, the Warner Brothers is much larger than Paramount. So if you're really looking at the. You know, what the brand is and what to do moving forward, you call the whole company Warner's or Warner Brothers. Or Warner's Paramount. And then you keep the streaming service as HBO or hbo Max.

[Dave Jacoby]

Right.

[Matt Bellamy]

And just kind of fold Paramount into it.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, none of us were ever happy with wbd Warner Brothers Discovery. It was just a complete mess. And everything Zaslav did was just bizarre and crazy and including his victory lap last week, which you excoriated him for. And yet he's going to walk away with like, $800 billion.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's. It is unbelievable. The company lost two thirds of its value under his leadership. The only thing that raised the stock was the prospect of it being sold. And he lucked out. He has these. The. The world's fourth richest man who's got a son who happens to love Hollywood. It's the. It's the greatest thing in the world. And all of a sudden there's a bidding war because Netflix is like, oh, well, we'll take that. We'll take HBO and Warner Brothers if it's for sale. And all of a sudden you got a bidding war. All you need is two bidders, and then next thing you know, the stock goes from $7 a share to $31 a share at the sale.

[Bill Simmons]

Unbelievable. And some people were buying it when it was like, 1819, hoping that we did get to the mid-20s. This. So I was really trying to think about this, and I was thinking about real life and culture. Is this the most faith anyone has ever shown in their son?

[Matt Bellamy]

Well, I don't think anyone in the history of the world has had the wherewithal that Larry Ellison does in terms of just sheer wealth. I mean, I guess Elon has what, like 10, 12 kids that will someday be old enough to, to have to deal with his money.

[Bill Simmons]

But this is like in Game of Thrones. Queen Cersei's like, joffrey, we're riding with you, baby. We know you're 17 and we know you're a sociopath, but I think you can handle the Seven Kingdoms. Yeah, well, we'll see this in culture, but not in real life.

[Matt Bellamy]

Wait till Don Jr. Runs for president, then we'll really see what, what's going on there.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I was going to say the Bushes would be the other analogy. Right, like, like Senior Bush, like kind of grooming Junior Bush, but not in a situation where you basically incur 79 billion in debt plus the junk, which is now 3% on top of the 79 million. I've never seen anything like this. And I, I gotta be honest, I'm not smart enough really from a mass standpoint to understand it.

[Matt Bellamy]

Well, isn't there a correlation in sports? Aren't there? Legendary Sports zone, I mean, Dr. Buss, perfect example, Dr. Buss, you know, and his kids running roughshod over his empire. I mean, there's gotta be a million examples of very savvy sports owners who turn their entire kingdom over to their kids and all hell breaks loose.

[Bill Simmons]

Here's the difference. So I did think about that. And we see this in sports all the time and almost always it goes horribly. And the kids, you know, they're basically, their qualifications for the job is I'm related to my dad and he's the rich guy who made all these things. They're not self made, all this stuff. In this case, David Ellison has tried to put in the time for the last 10 to 12 years to try to figure out like, I want to be a content mogul. So it's a little different than in sports. Sometimes when somebody's like, okay, I'm going to fold shop. Here's my son, he's now the CEO and he'll be in charge of all of our basketball moves. You're like, oh, no. David Ellison really does seem like he, he's, he's ready for the moment. I don't know if anybody else thinks he is, but it seems like he has a point of view and, and, and a style and a take on this, right?

[Matt Bellamy]

Certainly. And he definitely put in the time. We can argue about how successful Skydance was because their biggest successes have been essentially putting up money and glomming onto original franchises. At Paramount, he had, you know, he had Top Gun, he's done Mission Impossibles, he had the Terminator franchise, and he did Those movies to varying degrees of success. So he hasn't made a huge impact via Skydance, but he's put a lot of money into movies and he's made a lot of TV shows. So in that sense, he has been kind of auditioning for this. But now he is in the absolute big league. I mean, he's gone in a, in, in a year and change from being a guy with a semi successful production company to arguably the second or third most powerful person in Hollywood.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Because I'm trying. There's been so much glass half empty. I'm trying to think like, okay, what is the glass half full side? What are his wins so far?

[Matt Bellamy]

He gets credit for the. The Tom Cruise relationship and Top Gun Maverick, which he actually produced and made happen. And he gets credit for, I mean, Mission Impossible. These last couple Mission Impossibles lost money, so. But they were kind of plagued by Covid charges and ended up being some of the most expensive movies of all time. He has built the TV business is not bad. He actually, he's done Reacher, he's done Gracie and Grace and Frankie, which lasted seven seasons on Netflix, which is kind of unheard of. So he has had wins in tv. He's a producer. Some producers, you know, some shows are hits, some movies are hits, some aren't. That's very different from what he is now. He is an owner operator of the two of the five legacy studios. And it's just, it's unbelievable how much power he's amassed. He has news now. He's never had news before. He's got. I mean, he's now the proprietor of the arguably the most lucrative NFL package, the AFC package. On Sundays, he's got ufc, he's got golf, he's got March Madness. Now he owns all of March Madness. I mean, it's pretty unbelievable.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, so I wrote down all the stuff he. That they have now. The content empire. Right. 200 plus million subs. Now, I don't know how many of those are repetitive. I guess you find that out in

[Matt Bellamy]

the US in the US antenna just did a study where it's 7.5 million subs overlap in the US I don't know about overseas.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Matt Bellamy]

But it's less overlap than with HBO and Netflix. There's a much bigger overlap there.

[Bill Simmons]

Hbo, Paramount plus cbs. An entity that I think got just discounted during this whole process. Pluto.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, they got Pluto.

[Bill Simmons]

One of my favorites. TNT, TBS.

[Matt Bellamy]

I mean they own nine zero two zero. That's a big thing for them.

[Bill Simmons]

902 and oh, they have all the challenges, TNT, TBS, Comedy Central, Discovery, MTV, all those which I guess can just run as ghost ships on cable for as long as we have cables.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, they're zombie networks and they will just milk them for the ridiculousness money. And that's it.

[Bill Simmons]

CNN and CBS News, which, who knows that they're even going to decide they want to be in news. And if you're going to talk about ways to cut debt, if they don't care about news to begin with, that could be just a place that sadly, they would just chop.

[Matt Bellamy]

They're going to chop. I don't think they're going to kill it. CBS, CNN, CNN still throws off a lot of money from affiliate fees because it's a. You can't not carry CNN for like the five times a year that people tune in to watch some kind of breaking news moment. Yeah, like this weekend. Exactly. But There are about 3,000 people that work at CNN and there is a big overlap in terms of the product with CBS News. So that is a. The perfect place to start cutting.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Sadly, Bleach Report, they have, they have all this ip, including DC Comics, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Looney Tunes, Game of Thrones, Top Gun, Mission Impossible, Star Trek, et cetera. And that's the biggest thing that shifted, I would say, this century with. With the studios valuing that old IP more than ever. And now we're moving into the AI Era, and it's even probably twice as valuable as it was.

[Matt Bellamy]

If we look at what's going on with AI and there's soon going to be anybody can create anything at any time. Right. And YouTube is about to be flooded with AI generated content. So in a sea where everything is possible, what isn't possible to recreate, and it's known intellectual property, you cannot recreate Batman with AI Unless it's licensed, which they may do, but they will own Batman, and you can do whatever you want with Batman. And I think that's honestly why Netflix was so interested in buying Warner Brothers, because Netflix is increasingly taking on YouTube. Yeah, they're doing podcasts, they're doing all these other things that eat up innings and eat up time on the service. And if they see AI coming in, they wanted all of that ip, in addition to the Hundred Years of Movies in the library, to put on the service.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. So like, for instance, say on the Godfather, there's a world where you could just do your own Godfather sequel between Godfather 2 and Godfather 3 and create all of the AI and it sounds insane and awful, but like, this weekend, I Saw a commercial where somebody used. Was it Airbnb? They used Golden Slumbers from the Beatles for a commercial. And I'm like, that song's kind of sacred. This is now a commercial song. But we're just used to this now. All the songs we grew up with in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s are just commercial jingles now.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, but they're getting paid, right? That's the difference. You have to pay for that.

[Bill Simmons]

But people will get paid for this Godfather kind of stuff, too. Exactly. It just feels weird.

[Matt Bellamy]

But I guess, I mean, Disney just did a deal with OpenAI to hand over all their characters for Do It Yourself content. And interestingly, in that deal, they did not give the voices and they did not give the actual physical human likenesses of the characters that are human. So if you have Luke Skywalker, it's the animated Luke Skywalker. It's not Mark Hamill. And that's because of the guild. The union regulations, they don't let you do that. You have to pay money for that. And Disney just said, okay, you can have Lightning McQueen and Yoda, but you're not. They're not going to sound like lightning McQueen and Yoda because they. That's still intellectual property. That's controlled.

[Bill Simmons]

So that. And this is the wild, wild west coming up, where we don't know. You know, what if Fox just says, hey, the Simpsons go to town, just make sure you pay us. And all of a sudden there's just.

[Matt Bellamy]

Well, that. Yeah, Homer Simpson is involved in this open AI deal.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Matt Bellamy]

Not Homer's voice, because you have to get the voice separate from that. That. That image. But you're going to be able to do Homer Simpson videos on OpenAI and Disney very soon.

[Bill Simmons]

You also get the paramount library, the WB library, and two giant studio lots. Here's the thing. So 79 million. 79 billion in debt, plus the 3% junk piece. So that's even higher. Paramount only controls two things right now. When they merge these companies, which will take a year, assuming they merge headcount and subscription prices. Other than that, they have no idea how this is going to go. But those are the two things that they can finagle the price however they want. They could chop 60% of both companies and merge it into some smaller company. They could also raise the subscription price to some crazy number and do a little like what Disney and Hulu and Fox have tried to do, which has been really confusing. Like, you can't. It's really hard to get one of them. You kind of have to get all three. And they download.

[Matt Bellamy]

They're pushing people to the bundle is what they're doing.

[Bill Simmons]

Which is where we're headed with this. Right. And It'd be like $35 a month and you get HBO and Paramount and you get to watch football on cbs. And that's where we're headed, right?

[Matt Bellamy]

What, what they are saying is that there will only be one app. It will not be a bundle. It won't be like the Disney Hulu ESPN situation. They are saying that these are going to be combined into one. They're calling it a super app and that it will be something like, let's call it HBO Max. And then you go open it and then there's Paramount plus tile and there's an HBO tile and there's a CBS Sports tile, that kind of thing.

[Bill Simmons]

So we've never really seen a deal like this with somebody that is a really proud tech person that cares about this stuff and is like, we are going to innovate and do all. We have all these different ideas. Like, Netflix has a great main page. You go to Netflix, it knows what you like. It knows how to push things in front of you. And they're the best at it. And you go to other pages like, Peacock is just a quagmire. You go to Peacock.

[Matt Bellamy]

Peacock still doesn't know that. I go there every Sunday morning to watch snl. They do not know that game.

[Bill Simmons]

How do I do it? Can you guys tell me?

[Matt Bellamy]

It's unbelievable.

[Bill Simmons]

The worst app of all time.

[Matt Bellamy]

And then you finally get to SNL and it shows you the last 10 minutes of the episode that you previously watched. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I never watched the last 10 minutes of SNL because I turn it off after Weekend Update. I want. Just show me the latest episode.

[Bill Simmons]

What's the new one? What's the new traders like? They just can't figure it out. So subscription price will be one way to make the money back. I still don't know. Like, I've heard you, you've talked on different pods about how do you get this, this debt down, all this stuff. 79 billion is like a brain breaker.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's a lot.

[Bill Simmons]

That's. That's basically the entire Western Conference of NBA teams.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. Honestly, they're going to have to cut a shit ton of costs. They're saying 6 billion that they're going to take out. It's going to be more than that. And they're saying that there's a lot of synergies and that they, you know, they will probably move everybody to one of the two physical lots and sell the other one. That's a couple billion dollars there. There's a lot of things they can do, merging CBS News and cnn. There's things that are going to result in headcount reductions, but also just like physical, you know, presence reduction and costs of, you know, office space and things like that. So you'll start to see those that, that come down. But the real risk here is that they. It can't come down enough and that this company just essentially becomes all about paying off debt and they're just cutting costs and reducing output and servicing the debt. And it's. They're not actually investing in making this a good, you know, productive company like you should be, which is.

[Bill Simmons]

I can't remember the first time I came on your pod and we talked about this. This goes to the heart of how stupid these media mergers are.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I just don't understand them. They never work. I don't even when you look at Disney and Fox, like, I don't know, would Disney run that back if they, if they could do that one over again, would they?

[Matt Bellamy]

I'd love to. Certain quarters of Disney would run that back. Bob Iger insists it's great. And I don't think final. I listen, I go back and forth on this. I don't know if Disney is where it is today as one of the companies that you assume will survive the streaming wars if it didn't acquire all the content engines from FX and from Hulu and from, you know, the Fox properties. Putting the Simpsons on Disney. I don't know about that. That is. That is above my pay grade. There's probably some McKinsey study locked in the vault with Walt Disney's head somewhere, just like, this is what we got out of Fox. But they spent a lot of money and it caused a lot of debt issues for Disney. And they're still kind of digging out of that. They got Avatar, though. They got a lot out of it, but it was a lot. Now we have a better example in Warner Brothers Discovery because that was a transaction that produced about $55 billion in debt. And Zaslav and his team essentially spent the next three years trying to pay that down. And then that's where we had, you know, cutting the Batgirl movie and firing thousands of people and all these things that kind of. They took a hit to the brand and luckily for them, they found someone to come along and buy this company. But if they hadn't, it would have been a downward spiral.

[Bill Simmons]

I think so. Would you say the best analogy for what Zaslav did here is he bought this house he couldn't afford in a neighborhood that he liked. Real knew right away basically that he couldn't afford to keep the house and that this was going to go really badly unless somebody else was driving down the street and said, whoa, I really love that house. And that was his only out. That's basically what happened, right?

[Matt Bellamy]

The rich kid, the rich kid in school, he happened to befriend, and he just decided that he'd really like that. And then another guy said, I'd also like it. I don't want the rich kid to have it. And then all of a sudden, it's a bidding war. I mean, if you look at the initial projections for Warner Brothers Discovery, they said that they were going to have $14 billion a year in EBITDA, which is a metric for profits. And it never even delivered in that first year. That first year came in under their estimates. And it's because the linear TV business, which is where these companies make most of their money still the linear TBV business is collapsing faster than people anticipated or that they let on. So they're like, oh, wait, we thought we were going to 14 billion. Now we only have 12 this year, and next year we have 10. And finally, when they're selling this company this past year, it's down to 8.5, and it just keeps melting, melting, melting. And that's. It just throws the entire business trajectory off. They had to find a buyer who

[Bill Simmons]

didn't know that the linear TV was going to die dramatically. Like we knew this 10 years ago. What do we do?

[Matt Bellamy]

But it's a matter of how fast it melts.

[Bill Simmons]

As soon as high speed Internet was here, it was a matter of time. I think one other thing with these mergers that never gets enough credit, and I say this as somebody who's worked in a couple big companies, they're so destabilizing. And I don't think people you wouldn't know unless you were working in a company, they either got acquired or acquired somebody else. But from the moment it happens, it's Hunger Games. And you have repetitive departments all over the place. And you have people looking over their shoulder and people looking for other jobs because they don't know if their job's gonna exist. And it's just this amount of tension. Like if Spotify merged with somebody tomorrow, I'd be terrified. I know what I'm dealing with now. I don't know what I'm dealing with. Another company.

[Matt Bellamy]

Right. And if you look at these Warner Brothers and HBO people, they just. They have different bosses all the time. And with different bosses come different objectives, different strategies. And in a creative business, it's really hard to operate from a position of uncertainty and change. You look at some of the most stable places, like Universal, which has had the same ownership for the past 15, 16 years. The film studio at Universal was able to build up these franchises and build up the illumination business to have Minions and Super Mario. And they had the relationship with Christopher Nolan. Yeah. You take a bet on Oppenheimer and then he's going to give you the Odyssey, and all of a sudden you've got the biggest filmmaker. They have the Spielberg relationship. All these things. It takes a lot, and it takes a stable team to do. And when you are changing the rudder every couple of years, it's just a lot more difficult.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, look at Amazon right now. Amazon's been trying to get into all kinds of different. And every three months they have another rework.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's amazing.

[Bill Simmons]

I know.

[Matt Bellamy]

And they still haven't gotten what they want out of that entire purchase of mgm, which is a freaking James Bond movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Matt Bellamy]

They had to buy out the Broccoli family because they essentially refused to make any movies for them because they hated them.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. I want to do some Winners and Losers. Winner. The first winner. We talked about him before, but David Allison, who. I gotta say, I've only heard, like, at least decent things. I don't. He's not like a King Joffrey character where people are like, what a prick. Oh, my God.

[Matt Bellamy]

He's a very nice guy. Very nice guy.

[Bill Simmons]

Everybody seems to like him. I don't know if he should be running one of the biggest content whatever monoliths we've ever seen, but he at least seems like, not like a Zaslav thing where he's in it to get some sort of payoff at the end. I don't think that's his intention.

[Matt Bellamy]

No. He seems to be in it because he genuinely likes this business and wants to make good things. Now, we can argue about his taste. He's made a lot of movies that are not great, and he has much more commercial taste than, say, like, his sister, Megan Ellison, who is a great auteur, producer, and financier of movies until she ran out of money and her father basically said, enough's enough, but that

[Bill Simmons]

would make her not a good financier, by the way, who I would say Megan Ellison maybe wasn't a good financier because the movies Great taste.

[Matt Bellamy]

Good taste.

[Bill Simmons]

Great taste.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes. Made some very good movies.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Matt Bellamy]

But I'd put her rewatchable number up against David Ellison's and I bet she has more.

[Bill Simmons]

That would be an interesting battle. All right, winners and losers. First of all, 79 billion in debt. I just. Staggering. I'm giving that a winner just because I didn't even know it was possible. That sounds like at a Star wars.

[Matt Bellamy]

You made the debt away.

[Bill Simmons]

It's going to be a record. I think that's it. I think we've paid.

[Matt Bellamy]

I don't think anyone did this. I guess these lenders like Apollo and these, these big lenders ever.

[Bill Simmons]

I think 79 is going to be. This is like Barry Bond sitting 73 homers. We're never topping. I'm making it a winner.

[Matt Bellamy]

And much like that, we will come to question how it all happened.

[Bill Simmons]

Loser. Everyone's scared of AI and what it might do to content. This is like your D day because this is now the first time somebody that has. And Brian Phillips wrote about this for the Ringer this week. Somebody with real insight and awareness and ability to use data surveillance. Name anything evil that, that we're all afraid of.

[Matt Bellamy]

TikTok, don't forget.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Matt Bellamy]

David Ellison's father Larry is one of the investors in the U.S. version of TikTok.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Matt Bellamy]

And they still are talking about this like magical digital fairy dust that they're going to sprinkle over the whole company and turn it into a big tech media powerhouse. And not sure quite how that's going to happen, but I'm sure it'll be bad for the culture and our data and all these other things.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it's going to be. AI is going to probably come in a bunch of different ways for content. I think for when you're talking about editing movies and producing movies and some of the, some of the stuff that has just jobs that have existed for 120 years. I'm sure that's part of their plan. Right. We could cut the cost here, here, here. We could just have. Instead of having 200 people on this movie, we could have 70.

[Matt Bellamy]

And that's throughout Hollywood though. I mean there is a push right now. The thinking is these movies cannot continue to cost $200 million to make, especially in animation. But even in other sci fi effects driven movies, they've got to bring the cost down. And AI is going to be a big part of that.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, I have a controversial winner. People who make content because. Yeah. All right, I'm gonna land this plane. You're Gonna be confused for most of the time. I think if Netflix got Warner Brothers, I think we would have moved into a dangerous place with content that I would compare to this. And I'm in an Al Keeper fantasy league where we can keep guy, we can keep 10 keepers, we have minor leaguers and all that. And sometimes somebody will get a big lead in like July and you have to decide like, do I want to chase this guy or would it be stupid to chase this guy and make trades? You know what? I'm gonna let him win the title and I have a better chance next year. I think Netflix's lead would have been especially like with the know how and the intelligence they have. I actually think could have turned into a situation where everybody else is like, yeah, we're just gonna pick our spots. We can't compete with those guys. And I don't know if it would have been great for people who do movies, television shows and documentaries specifically, because who's bidding against them if everybody is just going to be careful because they can't beat Netflix?

[Matt Bellamy]

Not a bad take. I agree. And obviously if this merged company can get its act together and become that third or fourth big player alongside Netflix and Amazon and Disney, that creates a, ultimately creates a more robust market. If there are four real players that can buy your project at any given time. And then God knows what Apple is doing.

[Bill Simmons]

Apple, if you're a relatively famous person who looks good in a giant thumbnail.

[Matt Bellamy]

Exactly. And, and they're going to overspend on whatever you want to do.

[Bill Simmons]

Jennifer Lawrence, come on up. We got an Apple show for your pose. Take a picture.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes, yes, I know, but you're a

[Bill Simmons]

divorced mom and your, your husband's been murdered. Go.

[Matt Bellamy]

The. The. That is essentially what Ellison has been arguing and what they're going to argue to regulators to approve this deal is that this was a necessary evil to get Hollywood modernized for the tech era. And that these are globally scaled companies and Hollywood has never faced globally scaled media companies before. It's always been an oligopoly of only these five or six studios can distribute movies worldwide. And that's why, frankly, that's why they stayed in existence for a hundred years. Now that's all gone with the Internet and you have scaled television companies and they need to combine to chase that. And it's going to be painful in the short term. It's not. No question, taking these buyers out like when Warner's and HBO were competing against Paramount and all the rest, it was just better for buyers. But if this goes through it will be painful. And then maybe this company can build up and become a real scaled player. Because I certainly not taking your best projects to Paramount right now. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

And if you think about 2017, 18, 19 pre Covid, there were just a lot of people that had money and wanted to do stuff and were competing against each other. And then that slowly died after Covid.

[Matt Bellamy]

Well, and there was television, there was cable television still making original shows. Now that's all gone. Cable television not making original shows, certainly not in scripted. So it's just the streaming players and a little bit of broadcast TV and they're, you know, it's just, it's just

[Bill Simmons]

a lot less felonies. I, I decided to watch the Survivor season for the first time in a while because it's five or fifty. It was a three hour season premiere. CBS is basically like, guys, we gotta go three hours. We have two police shows, two doctor shows, two fire shows. We, we have football. We don't really have a lot going on. So we're just gonna have this from 8 to 11 tonight. Sorry. And guess what? I watched it fast forwarded through all

[Matt Bellamy]

the commercials and you know what? They're doing a shorter shoot. Jeff Probst came on the town and was talking about how they do a shorter shoot on location now than they used to. And then the episodes are now often longer than they used to. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

And he's now AI. I don't know if he announced that on the pod.

[Matt Bellamy]

He's AI would not surprise me.

[Bill Simmons]

He does not age anyway. That's my glass half full is that maybe this will lead to two heavyweights competing for projects constantly. Which I'm not against. I might be wrong. Another one.

[Matt Bellamy]

I got one loser. I think I have losers coming. Continue, Continue.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I have another winner. The NFL. Cause Goodell, who's just a genius with this stuff, puts that little thing in like, hey, if there's a merger, we get to redo our deal.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So now, now Skydance in the NFL, you don't need to, you know, it's not hard to figure out that they're going to be have the hometown advantage. Yeah, but nobody really has an advantage with Cadell. And whatever he wants to do to get more money, he's going to do it. So if he decides like I've decided, we have Friday Night Football and we're going to use AFC teams and sorry, cbs, you're just going to have to eat shit because we're going to have good games on Friday night. CBS would be like, okay, fine.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, all right. Not much you can do. I mean, they've been slowly taking games away from those big packages. The one thing I would say is that I do think the NFL still needs broadcast. I don't think you're going to see them completely abandon cbs.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think you will either go

[Matt Bellamy]

to Netflix or something like that. They know their customer and the customer viewer still wants that broadcast experience.

[Bill Simmons]

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[Dave Jacoby]

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[Bill Simmons]

So I met an alien.

[Matt Bellamy]

If you've fallen out of love with

[Dave Jacoby]

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[Bill Simmons]

So I have seven. Seven suitors for the NFL. When this all opens up, you tell me absolutely have to have it. I'd love to have it. Or this is a luxury. Those are the three answers. Cbs, Paramount. I feel like that's a We absolutely have to have it, right?

[Matt Bellamy]

100% agree.

[Bill Simmons]

NBC.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes, agreed.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, we're two for two.

[Matt Bellamy]

That is they have the number one program in all of television. It's an anchor of their entire sales strategy. And the Olympics are only every four years. NBA so far has not performed as much as they want it to.

[Bill Simmons]

What are you talking about? Every game ever is the most watched game we've ever had.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, these Nielsen numbers. Let's see next year when the big data is compared against the big data. But I, I it's a little less than cbs, but I still think NFL is must have for NBC.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we agree. So that's two Fox I think is must.

[Matt Bellamy]

Oh, there it's it's mission critical. If what is Fox without NFL? What. What are they.

[Bill Simmons]

They have to have it and they've, they've seen, they've seen both realities when they've had it and when they haven't had it and they don't want to go back.

[Matt Bellamy]

No, that's what the bank of America analysts. They just downgraded Fox because of this whole prospect of the rights going up because there's. What are they going to do? They have to just eat it.

[Bill Simmons]

Espn? Yeah, I think they're a have to. We have four have to have it. We're four for four. I think they're a have to with

[Matt Bellamy]

all the plans that ESPN is making and how much time they have put NFL on ABC as well. Yeah, like that was not supposed to be the case. And they've renegotiated those deals to put Monday Night Football on ABC a lot. So I think it's a must have

[Bill Simmons]

more on them in a second. Amazon is our fifth suitor. I would put them in the need to have it, but it's not a game breaker.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, I'm putting them in the middle category. I think it's a like to have now. They love it and it's one of the only things that consistently works on Amazon and they feel that they've made great strides in getting better games and the productions are better and they've finally, they've convinced that last cohort of people to watch. You know, when, when they first started and took the games from Fox, the ratings went down just because some people in this country didn't know where to find the game. So they forgot about it or whatever. Now they're bringing in more of those people and they, it's sort of a cornerstone of their offerings. But like with anything with Amazon, it's a, it's, it's a luxury. They are a sales platform. They want you to buy more toilet paper and all of this content is just in service of buying more toilet paper.

[Bill Simmons]

And they need three or four things like the NFL to accomplish that goal. I agree. I wouldn't say they're on the level of the first four, but they're one level below. And then the last two are Netflix and YouTube, which I would say are luxury needed. But you're not crying yourself to sleep if you don't get it.

[Matt Bellamy]

Exactly.

[Bill Simmons]

You'll be fine.

[Matt Bellamy]

I agree. And especially Netflix, because they see the numbers and they have a big initiative to increase their advertising sales and the NFL can do that, but they're just not going to fall over themselves to steal away a full package of games. Unless it makes sense. Unless it's like bespoke, you know, the international games, I've always thought that they're going to. They're going to eventually evolve into one international game per week or for, you know, 12 of the 17 weeks or something like that. And they will carve out those games for a 9am or 8am game every week. And it will be on Netflix because it will be global.

[Bill Simmons]

So 12 international games. Netflix owns all 12. And by the way, some of those are already on NFL Network. They could just easily sell them to Netflix. Take the Germany game, take the iron.

[Matt Bellamy]

Take them away from CBS or Fox. So be it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. And by the way, the NFL would tell cbs, hey, we're going to take these games. You want to fight cbs? Like, okay, take them.

[Dave Jacoby]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, so that's five. There are no other suitors, right? That's seven.

[Matt Bellamy]

Well, where's Apple?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, where is Apple? Where's Apple? You tell me.

[Matt Bellamy]

Are they even in this? That is the eternal question. Are they interested? They have not wanted to dabble. They, they have said that, you know, they like their, their F1 deal that they just did. They want. They like their MLS deal or the MLS might have a word about that, but they have not. They have not wanted to just get a game or two here or there and we'll see. You know, the MLB did a whole Friday night baseball thing with them. I mean, who knows if that works? There's just so many MLB games.

[Bill Simmons]

But I think the problem is how many people have Apple tv. I think is the scarier question, because I don't think it's a lot.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's not a lot. And they're now doing things about that they're putting. They're selling through other things. They just did a deal with Roku to sell through Roku. They capitulated and they sell through Amazon.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm glad you brought that up. I thought that Roku thing was fascinating.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's interesting because that's their main competitor.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it was a wave in the white flag, basically.

[Matt Bellamy]

Absolutely. And they did it earlier with Amazon. They basically came out guns blazing saying, we are Apple Incorporated. We are the platform that everybody has to have. And everyone's like, not really when it comes to premium video. And they basically raised the white flag and said, okay, we'll sell via Amazon and we'll sell via Roku, and hopefully we'll raise our numbers.

[Bill Simmons]

I like Roku. One more winner here. Well, I have a couple more, actually. Netflix, who Look, I love the spin. And you've been on it too, about like, wow, this is. All along they were trying to push this deal and if they didn't get it, it would still was great for them because they sat on it. I don't think that's true. They spent a lot of time on this. Nobody likes to spend a lot of time to not get something. But they did get.

[Matt Bellamy]

Have your stock go down 30%.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, but they did, they did get $2.8 billion as a breakup fee, which they can just now put toward, toward those international NFL games you mentioned and other stuff.

[Matt Bellamy]

And a big competitor has taken on almost $80 billion in debt to go after this deal. So they got them that. They also, you know, the Ellison's wanted to buy this company for $19 a share in the fall, right. And it went up by, what is that, 40% just because Netflix was involved in 30, you know, 19 to $31. So that's a lot.

[Bill Simmons]

It would be funny if the Mavericks had been able to use this strategy with the LUCA trade, where the trade went through and then the other teams were like, you didn't get enough? And then the Mavericks like, we didn't get enough. The deal is now we're accepting bids still. And it was like the Lakers were like, wait, we had a deal. What happened?

[Matt Bellamy]

Can you imagine if that were true in sports? If you could accept a trade and then everybody could react and up the offer. Right. Because all it would do is create a lane there for fan bases to go completely nuts when a trader's made. And then the ownership would have to respond. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that was why they never wanted to leak it out. Loser. Everyone at hbo, probably because they can spin this all they want. We've been in this scenario before, ironically, with HBO, with AT&T wherever. It's like, no, no, it's going to be great. Everybody's going to work together. I'm going to go glass half empty on this. We'll see. But you mentioned on your podcast how Casey Bloys, who's I think probably the most respected TV executive or one of them, his contract's up next year. I think he saw what happened to Richard Peppler in the 2000 and tens when Stanky and ATT took over. And this is. I want to see how this plays out for me.

[Matt Bellamy]

Listen, Kasey has it in his contract that he reports to the CEO of the company. So if Paramount wants to honor that and have him report to David Ellison and not have to report to all the streaming executives that Ellison has hired, including a woman, Cindy Holland, who was at Netflix, who I don't think he, she and Casey would, would mix well together. Maybe that will work out. Ellison said straight up, HBO should stay. Hbo, do what they do best. Easier said than done.

[Bill Simmons]

What happens if they're bidding on the same project?

[Matt Bellamy]

Exactly. What, what happens then? I mean, that's. There have been examples of that. Netflix famously has a culture where you can get a no from one division of the company and then you can get a yes from another. So they do have competing arms there within the same company. I don't know what would happen there if they had, if that, that situation existed. I don't know if they'll have the resources to continue to do what they do. The HBO process is really rigorous. They don't just put stuff on. They are not afraid to scrap a pilot and start over. We just, we had Rachel Sennett on the Town with I Love la. They completely reshot that pilot.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Matt Bellamy]

And most places would just say just cut bait and be like, okay, busted, pilot, we're done. But with hbo, you know, famously with Game of Thrones and like, they just, they work it a lot longer and you can see in the product and I don't know if that's gonna be allowed anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

Glass half full. Bill would say HBO is so different than Paramount from the audiences they're going for that maybe this can work.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's definitely complimentary. You know, they have that CBS style audience on Paramount, plus they have NFL viewers. They have, you know, the, the sports people. And HBO is not that. They have a different cohort of people. And maybe one plus one will be three here.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe strong emphasis on the M. And maybe the winner, the sports piece of Paramount, which now has the NFL, the AFC side, mlb, NHL, Champions League, March Madness, the Masters, ufc, Zephyr Boxing, which they just launched like, I mean, I'll throw this in with loser espn, who has Monday Night Football, college football and college football playoffs, college hoops, Wimbledon, US Open, NBA, NBA Finals, hockey, wrestling, pay per views. Like it's kind of. Even when you add all the Paramount stuff against espn and suddenly ESPN doesn't look worldwide leaderish in the same way. Right.

[Matt Bellamy]

And here's the interesting thing. It's in these deals where Paramount can start to deploy these sports across all of these new cable networks that they own. So you're going to see UFC on TNT or maybe even hbo, and you're going to see them try to get the most out of these sports deals and keep the Price of those cable networks as high as possible for as long as possible because that's where they make their money.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Winner, NBC Universal. Just because they can position themselves as. We're over here. You don't like some of the politics of Paramount, all that stuff. We're just trying to do good stuff and, and, and be here and we, we have stability and come.

[Matt Bellamy]

I don't know if I agree on that one.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Matt Bellamy]

I would put them in a loser. They. Listen, you remember they were in, they made a bid on Warner's. It wasn't a very good bid and I think it was just to get the, you know, a look at their books. But NBCUniversal doesn't have a global streaming product. They have Peacock, which is only domestic. And in fact their leadership just said today that they're not even trying to be global. They're, they're good with domestic. That is not a long term strategy. They need something, they need some kind of transformative deal. I think if they want to be considered one of the global players here. Otherwise they're just going to get left behind. Well, they have a great movie studio though.

[Bill Simmons]

Great app though. Peacock app.

[Matt Bellamy]

Oh my God.

[Bill Simmons]

Takes 20 minutes to find anything. I don't know, I feel like they can still position themselves as like the underdog that could against this and try to try to align with some other people and be like all these. Everyone's spending so much money in this arms race and we're over here and we're disciplined and we have this business might work.

[Matt Bellamy]

Who knows, maybe, maybe they'll do a joint venture with Amazon to get global or something. I, I don't know. But. Or get bought movie studio. They have, you know, they have NBC. They've got a lot of sports still. So it's not like they're bad. They've been bulking up on sports. They got NBA and mlb. So it's not like they're not players. It's just the global streaming strategy piece is, is really tough.

[Bill Simmons]

But is it okay to just have a good business and not try to conquer the, conquer the universe?

[Matt Bellamy]

Look at Sony. Sony doesn't have any global streamer at all. Yeah, they don't have a general. They have Crunchyroll. But Sony didn't even try to enter the streaming wars and they preferred the arms dealer strategy where they just sell their stuff to everybody else. And it seems to be working out well for them. They had K Pop Demon Hunters on Netflix. Biggest movie of all time. They have their movies now. They got $7 billion to license their movies to Netflix.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Matt Bellamy]

Now it's a multi year deal and it's global, but that's a pretty big vote of confidence in your studio to get Netflix to pay you $7 billion to get the first run on the new movies and to be, to be able to air some of the old movies as well. Like that's why these companies are worth what they are worth. Because they have 100 year library of movies.

[Bill Simmons]

I would rather be them than Paramount with $89 billion of debt. Just, just, just for the record.

[Matt Bellamy]

Well, and then what's going to happen if Netflix goes after them? They're not officially for sale. Sony. But you know, if you want a company that's at least semi comparable to Warner Brothers as a studio, not the streaming component, Sony is sitting right there. They're not for sale. They're owned by a Japanese company. But who knows?

[Bill Simmons]

Sony and NBC Universal. And that kind of level. I think it's okay. I think it's like in sports. You don't have to be The Dodgers spending 700 million do on salary every year.

[Matt Bellamy]

How dare you.

[Bill Simmons]

You might be okay being in the NL Central and just banging out wins and playoff appearances.

[Matt Bellamy]

If that's good enough for you, then that's fine. I prefer the Dodgers.

[Bill Simmons]

Loser. Everyone that works at Warner's brothers. This is just brutal.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's awful.

[Bill Simmons]

This is like an all time.

[Matt Bellamy]

And the gut punch. They were kind of coming around to Netflix.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, they were.

[Matt Bellamy]

Netflix was saying the right things. We believe in theatrical now and we're gonna. This is gonna be a vertical merger. We're not gonna fire everybody. We love what you do. We're gonna sell to other platforms. Then boom, within 48 hours it's like yanked away from Netflix. And all of a sudden it's not only the Ellisons who have turned CBS into more like Fox News, which is what people at the Warner lot do not like. And then they say all of a sudden they're going to smash together two studios and fire thousands of people,

[Bill Simmons]

lose their movie theaters. Because Ellison basically said we're going to do 30 movies over there. I don't believe that number at all.

[Matt Bellamy]

That seems, seems aspirational. Let's just say that.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I don't believe that.

[Matt Bellamy]

I mean, Netflix tried to make 30 movies a year and literally you watch some of those movies, they're not even finished. Right. Like they're, they were just pumping them out to get them out because they needed that engagement machine and that. And to put 30 movies a year in theaters, you got to have a higher bar than just kind of some of the Netflix slots.

[Bill Simmons]

It's two studios, though, so it's really 15 movies from each studio.

[Matt Bellamy]

It is. Which is more than each of those studios produces currently.

[Bill Simmons]

Fair winner, Zaslav. I hate making him a winner. He's going to make a crazy amount of money. It's unbelievable. This worked out for him, Bill.

[Matt Bellamy]

You're going to say crazy. I'm going to say grotesque. A guy should not make $800 million off of a financial transaction that causes thousands of jobs to be lost. Like, what are we doing? I know. It's all about the shareholders, and he delivered for the shareholders, and that's where his compensation was set. If the shareholders do well, he does well. But. But it. It feels. It feels like insane that this guy who managed the company down, down, down and then got lucky when someone wanted to buy it can make that kind of money.

[Bill Simmons]

It's almost like a plot out of succession.

[Matt Bellamy]

Absolutely.

[Bill Simmons]

Like. Like, it's like a season three, season four plot where they're like, we'll buy it. We'll ruin the company. And then blah, blah, blah. I know. My last loser is the city of Los Angeles, because we're gonna have a ton of people that, that are, you know, that are gonna lose their jobs out of all this, which is terrible. You have these two lots. I'm still suspicious they're gonna keep both lots in the same kind of. Who knows that?

[Matt Bellamy]

I think they'll sell one. The question is, will they sell one?

[Bill Simmons]

Who are they selling it to? Well, maybe Netflix.

[Matt Bellamy]

Netflix has wanted the Paramount lot, so maybe Ellison will sell. This was Craig's idea. On the town, by the way. It's brilliant. They should sell the Paramount lot to Netflix. Have them move in, and then everybody at Paramount. Warner Brothers goes to Warner Brothers.

[Bill Simmons]

Interesting. We found out on your pod the other day, Craig loves the Saudis. We found that on the Friday pod.

[Matt Bellamy]

He's big Saudi fan. Yeah, they got to be winners here. They're the Saudis. If this deal goes through. We don't know if what the money configuration is, but it was announced a few months ago that the Saudis, the Qataris and the Abu Dhabians, they have funds that are in this deal. So all of a sudden, they're going to own a piece of CNN and CBS News and all of these outlets that are pretty powerful in terms of potential propaganda.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, they already own the Lakers, so nobody. Nobody seemed to care about that. No. But where Los Angeles is now, this whole decade, Covid, the Hollywood, just all hell Breaking loose over and over again. All the strikes, the fires, which, the lack of accountability basically from everybody that runs the city and the state, which has just been disgusting to watch over and over again. The coverups afterwards that people are reporting about not even noticing. I've never felt more uncertain about the future of this city. The city that you have Netflix moving an entire building, an entire campus in New Jersey so they can get better tax credits and build a bunch of stuff there. And all these people bolting these studios empty. No matter. You could go to Sunset Gallery, you could go to all these places that used to be packed and they're just not anymore. Nobody has a plan for any of it. The governor of the state is now running for 2028 election instead of worrying about the state he's in now. And it's, it's just the worst shape we've ever been in with all this stuff. Now on top of it all, these people are going to lose their jobs.

[Matt Bellamy]

I agree with you to a point.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay?

[Matt Bellamy]

I am, I am from Southern California and I'm old enough to remember like the late 80s, early 90s with the riots and the gang wars and like where you literally. I was from Orange County. You literally would not go to la. Like, it was, it was bad. And, and this is not that, like, LA is a pretty nice place to live. We both live here. It's a great city to live in. But this is a existential moment for this particular industry that I think is a key driver of the economy. It's not the only driver. There's many, many different things about LA that make it what it is, but I think it's an underrated aspect of what makes la. LA is this creative class of people that come here to work in the entertainment business and that has, that needs a boost. It needs some kind of incentive or, you know, maybe the, the city should declare both of these lots to be landmarks that cannot be developed. So we don't get the Paramount lot turned into condos so that when this industry does come back, whether it's a new version that is AI powered or creator driven, or these studios get their acts together and there is a growth mode that they can come back and all these places can get filled with activity again. I do think it will happen. It's just cyclical and we are in a very big down cycle right now.

[Bill Simmons]

It's awful. I mean, they built this bridge in downtown LA that they lit up every night. They spent years and years building it, and within a year, everybody stole the copper from it. And now it doesn't light up at night. And it was like, what was all the traffic for. For five years? Like I. I don't see a lot of planning and strategy with. I remember when I moved here in 2002, you'd meet people and you'd meet people in your kids pre K and stuff. What do you do? Oh, I'm a writer. Oh, I'm an entertainment lawyer. Oh, I do props for movies. And everybody seemed to work in the industry somehow. And the more that these jobs and these companies push that stuff, either they're pushing to leave LA and go somewhere else or their jobs are disappearing. I just think LA is going to lose a lot of what made it la. It's just not the same city if that happens.

[Matt Bellamy]

I agree. But I do think things are changing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Matt Bellamy]

How many people do you know that work in the podcast business?

[Dave Jacoby]

True.

[Matt Bellamy]

A lot now.

[Bill Simmons]

A lot.

[Matt Bellamy]

A lot of those are here. How many people do you know that work in the creator business? There are full on agencies and production studios and you know, YouTube has a huge presence here. These are things that were not in LA 10 years ago. So the entire notion of the business is changing there. No, there's no pilot season anymore. Although they're doing some pilots. But pilot season used to be a thing. People would move here because there were a hundred pilots of TV shows that were made between January and March every year and it was like a boom town.

[Bill Simmons]

That doesn't happen every year too, by the way. It was like the NFL playoffs. You knew it was happening. You could rely.

[Matt Bellamy]

Now they.

[Bill Simmons]

Now we don't even have upfronts.

[Dave Jacoby]

I know.

[Matt Bellamy]

Wasn't it. Wasn't that your idea to have a Pluto Channel just for busted pilots?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh yeah, yeah. Like, I think we could still do it.

[Matt Bellamy]

Play old pilots.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, we could still do it. There's a million of them.

[Matt Bellamy]

And you'd see big actors who were on bad pilots before they became famous. I just, we.

[Bill Simmons]

We just did Fargo for Rewatchables for next week and one of the tidbits was that Edie Falco was in the Fargo TV series developed the year after the movie. And if it had become a TV series, she's not Carmela Soprano. Amazing, right? And it's like there's a million stories like that and now we barely make any TV pilots. But I think when you have like the New Jersey thing I thought was alarming. When Netflix feels like this is just better for us to do this than to stay here, that's when it's okay.

[Matt Bellamy]

But that the days of Netflix being building a production studio in la, there's just not the land for that. They got a swath of land there.

[Bill Simmons]

True.

[Matt Bellamy]

Potentially run roughshod on whatever they wanted to do. They did the same thing in Alberta.

[Bill Simmons]

They could have given them city of industry. I still don't know what happens there. Just give them the whole place.

[Matt Bellamy]

You could. Yes, you could.

[Bill Simmons]

But there's a couple strip joints.

[Matt Bellamy]

There's not the infrastructure here. There should be. I agree that there should be incentives in place here. And I feel like this state is kind of getting its act together a little bit with some of these production incentives. It's better than it used to be, but it's not competitive with these other places. They want it more.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Matt Bellamy]

And they're just. They're going to get it because there's been this acceptance that people in LA will just like, they will be filled anyways. And they're not filled. These studios are not filled.

[Bill Simmons]

It's crazy to watch what's happening. These places were packed all the time and they're just not. Well, one guy who really wanted it,

[Matt Bellamy]

David Ellison, he has a chance now. He can build a huge production studio in LA if he wants.

[Bill Simmons]

Where's he going to get the money? He's already had 79 million plus 3% of debt.

[Matt Bellamy]

Let's see if he can do billionaire.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, well, that. The other thing is they're involved peripherally with a bunch of the sports stuff too. Right. These European teams, the NBA, Europe League, there's all kinds of IP that can come from that. So it's a daunting job. I don't know if he's ready for it. He certainly doesn't have the life experience or the work experience to run anything like that. But I also don't know if anyone does. I don't know who could have done this. You're talking about.

[Matt Bellamy]

Listen, it's out of another era. Yeah. We take it for granted these days that these CEOs and people who run Hollywood are in their 60s and 70s. But like in the 80s and 90s, the people running the studios were like 32 years old. You know, Jeffrey Katzenberg was reinventing the Disney Animation Group when he was in his 30s. He would know he was in his 30s, but at Paramount he was in his 20s. And like it used to be normal that you ran companies in your early 40s. Now it's less so.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we did a good job. And not talking about Trump. I'm glad for both of us. Matt Bellamy, you have Monday, Wednesday Friday every week. And producer Craig, who you keep throwing under the bus and saying he loves the Saudis, but it's fine. We share him. We share custody of Craig.

[Matt Bellamy]

The heart wants what the heart wants. And I am happy for Craig. And he'll live very. He'll live in comfort for his entire life.

[Bill Simmons]

If we were being held off a cliff like the kids in the good son at the end and Craig was holding onto us, who does he let go? We're going to have to give him true sound and find out.

[Matt Bellamy]

Me, of course.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Matt Bellamy]

He loves you.

[Bill Simmons]

You take him everywhere. You take him to these parties.

[Matt Bellamy]

I do. I do take him to parties.

[Bill Simmons]

You put in one time because you live on the same side L. A with him.

[Matt Bellamy]

That's. That's true. But you made him a star. You gave him a fantasy football show, so you made a star.

[Bill Simmons]

All right.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Good to see you. Thanks for. Thanks for all the time.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes, thank you.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Jacoby, thanks to Bellany, thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. I'm going to be on this feed on Thursday. Don't forget about rewatchables Sicario. That's already up. Fargo. Coming next week. It's CR month. Buckle up. Hold onto your seats. Good times. I'll see you on Thursday. 21 in President select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 in President D.C. kentucky or Wyoming. Opt in required rewards are non withdrawable. Restrictions apply including bonus and token expiration leg requirements and max wager amount C terms at sportsbook.fando.com, game prom call 1-800- gambler 1-800-my reset. Call 888-79-7-7777 or visit ccpg.orgchatinconnecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org In Maryland, Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-550 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE NY or text hopeny in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.