← The Bill Simmons Podcast
The Bill Simmons Podcast
Mavericks Fans Revolt, ‘SNL 50’ Guesses, Oscars Watch, and Super Bowl Leftovers With Bryan Curtis and Matt Belloni
02:02:06
Loading summary
Transcript525 lines
- [00:00]
Bill Simmons
It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. The NBA season hitting full stride. Don't miss your chance to win some money with America's number one sportsbook. I mean post trade deadline we had one of the craziest trade deadlines we've ever had in the history of the league. We have Fox on San Antonio, Luka on the Lakers, Kuzma on the Bucks. Kidding. The Cavs got better. So you have a chance to get all these new look teams and maybe just ride Luka and his point over in the Lakers to win as a parlay over and over again as he gets vengeance on the Mavericks. Bet on fun markets like live quarter player props and parlays. Enjoy our new NBA Player Prop pages. The app is safe and secure and easy to use and when you win, you'll get paid instantly. So download the app today. Bet with FanDuel. An official partner of the NBA. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit RG Hope to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end episode for additional details. Must be 21/ and President select states gamma problem. Call 1-800- Gamble or visit rg-help.com hey, if you missed it, we launched a brand new podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network and Spotify and it's called Good Hang with Amy Poehler. First episode is dropping fairly soon. Within the next couple days you can follow it on Spotify Video Podcast too. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did the Blues Brothers in honor of SNL50. You can watch on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch a lot of the videos and clips from this podcast and the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. This is a big episode for us because this is our first video episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on Spotify. Every episode from now on will be a video episode on Spotify. You can put it in your phone, you can just listen to it, you can pull your phone out, you can watch it, you can go on your smart TV, your PS5, your Roku, your Apple TV, wherever you want to get it. Watch it on the Spotify app. Whatever you want to do. Knock yourself out. We are video podcasts from now on. I've had this podcast since 2007, so year 18. It's basically now I guess a TV show. A very low budget TV show as you could see with my hastily put together posters behind me. This podcast really fun episode. Brian Curtis Talking Super Bowl. LUCA Trade Day 10 still going. And then Matt Bellany. Talking SNL 50, the Oscars, lively versus Baldoni, most famous celebrity right now. A lot of good stuff. It's all next. First, we couldn't lose them. On the video podcast, our friends from Pearl Jab. All right. Editor at large of the Ringer, Brian Curtis is here. We're recording on a Tuesday morning, action packed. A lot of Brian's interests are in play. And we're going to talk about the Mavericks and one of the craziest NBA situations in a long time. But we'll start quickly with the Super Bowl. Hey, news flash. The Cowboys didn't win another Super Bowl. It's been over, over three decades since the last time we did have the Eagles win. We had the end of Mahomes. We had a lot of takes. Sal and I were doing stuff on Sunday night about Mahomes getting kicked off Cone Island. What was the media reaction yesterday? What jumped out to you? What did you enjoy?
- [03:37]
Brian Curtis
Well, I think we had a little bit of a Chiefs take crisis with the super bowl before the game.
- [03:42]
Bill Simmons
We did.
- [03:43]
Brian Curtis
Did you see all the people trying to make the Chiefs into villains like the pats, like the 90s Yankees?
- [03:49]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [03:50]
Brian Curtis
And they're not villains. They're just not. They're not hated on that scale yet. I don't believe. And people try to, you know, oh, we're tired of them. We're pissed off at Taylor Swift. The refs are in their pocket, and they were just trying to get us there that we all hated the Chiefs and were rooting against them. But I don't actually believe that was the case. I think we might be a little tired of them being good. We might have been kind of annoyed at the way they won games this year, but I don't think they're hated at all. And then my favorite bill was. You got.
- [04:20]
Bill Simmons
Wait, wait, hold on. On that, though. Who is. Who was the best? Who was central casting for best villain? Was it just Duke basketball in the 90s? Who was just the easiest to put right in there? Yeah, because even the Yankees, like, I hated the Yankees, but I was like, all right, Jeter. I kind of like, he seems like a nice guy. You know, there were. There was. It was more the fan base than the team itself. Duke basketball seemed like that was the easiest one.
- [04:44]
Brian Curtis
Duke was at the top of the scale. The Yankees had the thing where they were outspending everybody and kind of everybody thought they were ruining baseball. That's a good piece mixed in there.
- [04:52]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. Yeah. When you're ruining stuff. That's always a good one. I'm trying to think, who else like the Pats because of the Spygate? I felt like that in the first three Super Bowls, people were like, all right, enough with these guys. But it was a little like the Chiefs thing. But then when Spygate happened, then they became criminals, basically, and then it moved it to another level, and then they.
- [05:11]
Brian Curtis
Had a hateable coach, which is another thing the Chiefs lacked. Like, people don't hate Andy Reid. No, they just don't. Bill Belichick was hateable. Probably still is hateable in his own way, even as he's tried to rehabilitate his image all year. But I think with the Chiefs, people.
- [05:25]
Bill Simmons
Are just like, eh, they had the Taylor Swift thing. A lot of Kelsey, a lot of both Kelsey's, a lot of commercials. They were moving a little bit toward the Trump side of stuff, which I think got a couple people ruffled up. But for the most part, I don't know. My biggest issue with them was they made it so unfun to talk about the super bowl, which we talked about on Sunday night, where it's just like, if you pick them, you kind of feel. You just say, andy Reid's my home. You had no other reason. And if you didn't pick them, you felt like an idiot. So it was, I think, the worst super bowl to talk about since I've been doing this.
- [06:02]
Brian Curtis
I think so. But I, like you talk myself into the Chiefs are going to win. It's a close game.
- [06:09]
Bill Simmons
It was the first time I ever got slaughtered on a Super bowl and didn't feel bad really, at all. I was like, what are. What are you going to do? You can't go against them again. What was the other thing you were going to say about the villain thing?
- [06:18]
Brian Curtis
Well, I was just saying, like, by once, the villain thing kind of didn't work out, that you heard this amazing take on ESPN and elsewhere. People said, don't be tired of the Chiefs. Appreciate greatness when it's in front of you.
- [06:30]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [06:30]
Brian Curtis
And I was like, what a counterintuitive take. You should appreciate a great football team. Whoa, Whoa.
- [06:36]
Matt Bellany
Good tag.
- [06:38]
Bill Simmons
Go.
- [06:38]
Brian Curtis
Settle down, guys.
- [06:40]
Bill Simmons
What was it like as a TV viewer for the Brady Mahomes experience? Brady announcing the game where Mahomes goat resume got knocked backwards by about four years.
- [06:49]
Brian Curtis
So it was a little bit weird. Right? First of all, Brady actually got to go to the meetings this week, and apparently I was told there was a scene in one of the meetings where he and Mahomes were just sitting off by themselves talking.
- [07:02]
Bill Simmons
Oh.
- [07:03]
Brian Curtis
And people in the meeting. Fox producer was like, look at that. I mean, that's kind of awesome. These two dudes just talking football. It was just one of those moments where you're like, whoa, goat plus goat. Well, almost goat talking to each other about football. But then it gets to the game, and Mahomes just sucks at the beginning of the game. He was terrible. You nailed this on Sunday night. So Brady, I thought, never got to talk about Mahomes greatness in an interesting way. And at the same time, he kind of made a mistake because he didn't really kill Mahomes. He was talking how good the Eagles defense was.
- [07:36]
Bill Simmons
Well, and that's where Romo, or probably Romo, but I think Aikman would have been the best because Aikman just doesn't give a shit anymore. Aikman, I think, probably would have been the hardest on him, right?
- [07:46]
Brian Curtis
I think so. But you know what? One thing you could tell with Brady this year, and this is kind of one of the most fascinating subplots of Brady announcer experiment, was you could tell what quarterbacks he liked and what quarterbacks he didn't and what quarterbacks he thought didn't measure up. Jalen Hurts, by the way, was in the second category. Yeah, Every Jalen Hurts game, he would say, jalen hurts is better when he gets the ball out of his hands quickly.
- [08:08]
Bill Simmons
Yep. And he would get mad when he. When he held it too long and got sacked or had to run out, throw it out of bounds.
- [08:14]
Matt Bellany
Brady would be exasperated, which is a.
- [08:16]
Brian Curtis
Nice way of saying he's pretty limited. Right. Like, he can do certain things, but he can't do other things. Well, what happens during the Super Bowl, Jalen hurts kind of balls out. He plays better than Patrick Mahomes. So you could feel Brady really processing that in real time. And he sort of got. Well, he has a great instinct on when to leave the pocket because he was beating all those rushes and blitzes right by running. And he kind of got himself there. And he gave Hertz's due. I don't want to say he didn't do that, but that was just funny to hear in real time.
- [08:43]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. And it seems like after 48 hours, the second level analysis stuff is, whoa, the Eagles actually go. The 2000 Ravens and some of the other great super bowl teams. Where do they go? Where do they rank ahead of them? And then it feels like people are kind of test driving some Mahomes stuff. And even people in my life where it's like, eh, Are we sure? Like, just because they pulled out all these close games, like, why. Why don't they have explosive plays anymore? The guy's about to hit 30. Could you say he peaked a couple years ago just as an explosive, awesome quarterback? Like, there's always all these excuses around him. Are we sure? Which I remember hit Brady in the late 2000s too. We had. There was some are we sure? Stuff. So I don't think anyone feels really committed to anything. The biggest thing that shocked me, and I feel like I say this every year, and it feels like it's even. It just speeds up by probably an hour every year. But going back, we both loved Sports illustrated. In the 80s, the Super bowl would happen. People would talk about it. It would be on SportsCenter for four straight days, and then the Sports Illustrated would come out on Thursday with the final statement of the game. And then that started to shrink as the Internet came. And it kept shrinking, it kept shrinking. But even when I was at espn, Sal and I used to do Monday afternoon recaps of the Then that became Monday mornings. Then eventually we're just going immediately, as fast as we could after the game. And now it feels like the shelf life to discuss the Super bowl is 18 hours. Is it longer than that? Does anyone, even us, leading the podcast with this today? I want to do it because I love talking about all the ancillary stuff with you, but it's like, is it too late? Is it too late to talk about the super bowl on a Tuesday morning?
- [10:31]
Brian Curtis
I totally agree. I watched the Late Sports center on Sunday night after I was, I think, right before I listened to you. And at that moment, I was kind of like, am I done with the Super Bowl?
- [10:41]
Bill Simmons
Is this it? Yeah.
- [10:42]
Brian Curtis
Yeah. Like, we had a pod to do the next day. But I was like, have I consumed everything I'm going to consume about the Eagles beating the Chiefs? And the answer is almost yes, I think I had. Because, I mean, here's the other part of that. You just consume so much now. I mean, you had to wait till Thursday with that SI thing to get all the details. And, you know, what was Vic Fangio like in the locker room afterwards? I mean, SHIELD wrote that, you know.
- [11:05]
Bill Simmons
For us right away, right?
- [11:07]
Brian Curtis
So in a way, it was just all kind of there for us, and we don't really need to wait.
- [11:11]
Bill Simmons
And there's no, like, nobody's. Nobody's parachuting in on, like, Monday at 3pm with this amazing angle that nobody's thought of. You kind of know what all the angles are going to be by, you know, 10pm on Sunday night PT.
- [11:25]
Brian Curtis
I think the one exception was. Remember that year Peter King went and hung out with Tom Brady and Gisele and was it Montana up in the cabin like a week later?
- [11:33]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [11:34]
Brian Curtis
It feels so old school now, but like, yeah, we're with Brady and he's reflecting on the game and giving me like an hour. That was that. That even. That I don't think he would do anymore.
- [11:44]
Bill Simmons
I actually felt like the halftime show and the Kendrick Drake stuff and how polarized in that show ended up being almost became more of a theme on Monday. At least in. In on my text threads and the stuff I was reading, it was more interesting to read how people were receiving stuff. The hidden meanings behind some of the stuff Kendrick did on the halftime and Serena being in it. That one had these levels that kept getting revealed. That used to be how the super bowl operated.
- [12:12]
Brian Curtis
Totally. Because what player are we talking about in the Super Bowl? You know, nothing from the second half.
- [12:17]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [12:17]
Brian Curtis
You know, maybe that Mahomes pick six, which effectively ended the game in retrospect. By the way, you mentioned the Mahomes takes. I want to go there with you because it feels like Mahomes will work himself into a nobody believes in me news cycle. Because just enough doubt. Even if it's bullshit. Just enough doubt. And also, Bill Jalen hurts. Think about this. What were people talking about Sunday night, Monday morning? The Eagles defense. This was a win for the Eagles defense. So Jalen hurts both win the Super Bowl MVP and pull off the unprecedented double play of being a nobody believed in me guy.
- [12:56]
Bill Simmons
Has that ever happened before? Probably Brady somewhere in the first three Super Bowls where it was all Belichick and all the defense. And Brady was kind of the supporting character in a lot of ways.
- [13:09]
Brian Curtis
Sure.
- [13:10]
Bill Simmons
I think would be the only other time I can remember that happening.
- [13:12]
Brian Curtis
He was being an facilitator. He was so good.
- [13:16]
Bill Simmons
He was great. I mean, they basically put the game in his hands and dared him to beat them. And. And he did. With the Mahomes stuff, there's a couple fun wrinkles that could come out. He could go the, you know, the NBA player route. Like, if this was LeBron in the Mahomes spot, we'd already be getting the leaks about he needs more help. They. They didn't find him anyone this year. When Rasheed Rice went out, they could have done this, that and the other thing. They knew Kelsey was getting old. They've got to do more. He took less money. It would Be they'd basically make him a victim.
- [13:49]
Brian Curtis
Wait, I thought you were secretly injured when you said LeBron. I thought I had a secret injury.
- [13:54]
Bill Simmons
Oh, that would, that would be another one too. Yeah, he had, he had like a quad injury. He couldn't push off his right foot. Yeah, they would be, they'd be doing all that stuff. But it kind of doesn't seem like Mahomes. Not only does he not do that stuff, but he always seems at peace, win or lose, after the game. Right. I, I, we never see that stuff about, oh, this year, Patrick Mahomes is different. He's just, he's pretty, pretty even keeled, which I think you have to be as a quarterback. The interesting thing to me, which we talked about Sunday night, was I really did think Kelsey was going to retire if they won. And the Kelsey, will he or will he not retire? I think will be fun. But just in general, like, it's really hard to keep these windows open, you know, with, with NFL teams. We went through it with the Patriots a few different times. It all depends on the drafts. People wrote some good pieces about, you know, they missed on their left tackle pick this year, you know, Rasheed Rice, which would have been this awesome wide receiver pick for him. They miss. And so you can just tilt it a little bit or all of a sudden you're catchable. And I think that was the thing that changed the most coming out of this season, was like, the Chiefs not only feel super catchable now we don't have to do the thing where we just hand them the game when we're talking about it now, it's like football has opened up for analysis. So, so I'm excited for that. From a Super bowl standpoint, the Brady Fox thing At the end, $375 million, whatever it is, they certainly got a lot of ink and publicity and podcast content. He was able to go on some of the Fox shows. He had a couple decent moments, like in traditional podcast interview stuff. I don't think from a game thing, I wouldn't even put him in the top eight game guys. I heard he's got this weird Vegas minority stake and he's allegedly hiring the coach and he's involved in their draft. Like, is there a chance just this, just this is it. This is a one and done.
- [15:45]
Brian Curtis
I don't think so. I don't think he sees it like that. I mean, that's for me poking around. I think he's into this. I mean, first of all, the NFL doesn't care about the Vegas thing. You know, other than the meetings. And by the way, let's see where we are in year two with the meetings, because I'm not convinced that might. That wouldn't change in year two. I think there's potential for that to be switched up by Goodell and everything after they've gone through the one year of this with him. Limited, but if you're him, you're getting $37.5 million to work for six months. Work hard for six months, but work for six months. The NFL has said we don't care if you're a minority owner of the Raiders. It doesn't matter. I got to ask him on super bowl week what his role with the Raiders was, and he didn't tell me. And he didn't provide any detail about that. So I was like, okay, so he's not going to tell us, at least for now, about what he's doing with the Raiders. Doesn't have to come clean about it. I mean, seems like a pretty good deal to me.
- [16:41]
Bill Simmons
I have been told pretty explicitly, it's too much money. There's no way he walks away. It's too much money. And this is one thing I think people forget with the super duper famous celebrities. It's expensive to be a super duper famous celebrity because everywhere you go, you're paying for some private jet. You know, in his case, he got divorced. Like, it's as much money as he's made. He still needs way more money to sustain the lifestyle he does. And this is a $37.5 million check every year. He's not giving it up if he doesn't have to. It's not that hard of a job. It's 22 weeks. You study one game, you fly to the site. Like it's, you know, you have to keep in touch with the league a little bit, but not really. The stunning thing to me is Belichick. You know, this is not a midlife crisis. Cause he's in his mid-70s. But even he was at super bowl, you know, he was at a couple parties. He was walking around with his girlfriend. We saw him at the Fanatics party on Saturday. It's just surreal. This guy who was wearing this, you know, saggy hoodie on the sidelines, who just could care less what anyone thought. Now he's in the Dunkin Donuts commercial with the girlfriend. And this girlfriend's five years older than my daughter. There was a lot of, like, what the fuck is going on with this guy's stuff In New Orleans over the weekend.
- [18:00]
Brian Curtis
And he was wearing all the rings.
- [18:02]
Bill Simmons
And wearing all the rings, which he never. It's that kind of thing. He just never used to do.
- [18:06]
Brian Curtis
Just as if to remind the NFL, I won all these rings and you didn't hire me again.
- [18:11]
Bill Simmons
Right. I'm really starting to wonder. I'm starting. Is a working theory. I'm not done with it yet. But 75 and up are just all bets off. It's just literally, are all bets off. Or talk about owners, because in sports, as fans, we have to deal with so many old people, and we all have old people in our family. You could see what happens as they hit their 70s, then their 80s, and the judgment just gets a little. Little nuts. And I just wonder with Belichick, like, I just. I can't believe some of this. I really find it hard to believe he's coaching North Carolina, too. I get it. I understand why he did it. He didn't want to deal with owners anymore. He just wants to be a coach, all that stuff. But yet, at the same time, he's seems like the celebrity aspect of this has become really appealing to him, which I never in a million years would have guessed.
- [19:02]
Brian Curtis
It's interesting to watch that, because Nick Saban's kind of done the same thing in the college level. And another guy who, like, why would he care about this? But you know what? You go on those podcasts, you go on the TV shows, go on the Manning cast, everybody butters you up, you know. How many times did Bill Belichick get buttered up by media people when he was at the Pats last week?
- [19:20]
Bill Simmons
He didn't want to. Never dealt with them. And then he had this really strange relationship with his owner and just kind of kept his little. It's just basically in a cave, just, you know, going through film.
- [19:30]
Brian Curtis
Yeah, it's like the ESPN car wash, except it's, you know, not interviewing you. It's just telling you how great you are.
- [19:36]
Bill Simmons
All the really strange. It was the whole thing. I thought that was the weirdest subplot of the weekend. Then the funny other funny thing that I immediately thought of you. We always call it the Friday news dump. What the Sixers did with the Joel Embiid information that they held and held and held and pushed out.
- [19:56]
Brian Curtis
Oh, my God.
- [19:57]
Bill Simmons
Right after the Eagles won the super bowl, it was. I don't even. What do we call it? This is a new level of news dub. The super bowl title. Oh, we didn't want to bum out our city. This was our only chance to put this out. News Dump. What is this?
- [20:10]
Brian Curtis
We clogged the toilet so much, we. The toilet wasn't fixable. We just had to throw it away. We had to put it on the curb.
- [20:15]
Bill Simmons
Why is there yellow tape and a door locked in the guest bathroom? Don't go in there. Unprecedented. The best news dump I think, ever. I never, ever remember a team pulling that off better. This crazy indeed article where it's like, yeah, I'm probably never going to be healthy again. I might need surgery. I shouldn't have played the Olympics. It turns out all that, it's like, oh my God, if they put that out on a Tuesday, it would have been like a 36 hour story. Instead, it just kind of came and went in 10 seconds.
- [20:47]
Brian Curtis
Totally even during super bowl week. That would have been huge for a day. It would have distracted us all.
- [20:54]
Bill Simmons
What's your favorite news dump ever? I think that might have been mine. It's a really good one.
- [20:59]
Brian Curtis
You're going to have to give me a minute on that one, but that's a good one.
- [21:02]
Bill Simmons
All right, answer that on press box on Thursday. Do your top five news dumps on the press box pod.
- [21:07]
Brian Curtis
I remember last year when he had all the amazing political stories and American stories. There was this thing on Twitter. It's like, if you have anything, now's the time. Send the press release. Just print it out. No one will notice.
- [21:19]
Bill Simmons
I remember when I was working on my HBO show and we were doing the test shows and it was three weeks before the show launched. And the guy who hired me to do the show, Michael Lombardo, and he was a huge advocate. And like three weeks before, it was like Friday afternoon, like 3:15 in the afternoon. And all of a sudden this stuff was out that he was out at hbo. And it was like it was the only time I'd ever like, really experienced the Friday news dump. It was so, like perfectly calculated to just kind of sneak into the weekend with it. I was like, oh, this is how you do it. This is it. Because there's any other day or moment, this would have been the biggest Hollywood story. And they were like, this is happening right here. It still happens. We're going to take a break and then we'll come back and we got to talk about this incredible maverick situation. All right, so Curtis, you're from Texas. You're a lifelong Cowboys fan. You're a lifelong Mavericks fan. Maybe not as much, but a student of the Mavericks. They've been in your life. It's been a rocky road. There's been a lot of ups and Downs, Everything peaked in 2011 with Dirk Nowitzki and probably winning the title, beating, beating Wade and LeBron and Bosch. Then it got weird. Over the course of the decade, they miraculously end up with Luka Doncic. Cuban sells the team last year. They just seem like if you're picking six franchises you want to be for the next 10 years, they would have been one of the six because they had Luka. Out of nowhere, they trade him in the most shocking, craziest trade in the history of the NBA. And just when you think, all right, maybe this will settle down, it just hasn't. It just keeps going up a level and up a level and up a level. What? Just your big picture. Watching this from afar. Holy shit. What is your take?
- [23:04]
Brian Curtis
I feel like quoting that notorious Darren Ravel tweet. This is terrible for Dallas, but this is tremendous content because you recognize the pain. And I have never seen Dallas people this emotionally gutted.
- [23:20]
Bill Simmons
So even like Cowboys, super bowl losses, nothing.
- [23:23]
Brian Curtis
Well, so, okay, so maybe not gutted, but just angry. Like, there have been a lot of angry Jerry moments over the last 30 years. I was in middle school when they fired Tom Landry. I was in high school when Jimmy Johnson got axed by Jerry. I remember those were just crazy citywide moments of like, what the hell just happened? But I've never seen the anger like I've seen over the last week and change. Just pissed off. I mean, like visiting even with Dallas sports radio guys. And by the way, Monday was one of the last Monday, one of the all time sports radio days in Dallas history and probably American history, when they were coming back and doing their shows.
- [23:58]
Bill Simmons
Oh, morning through the afternoon, you were.
- [24:02]
Brian Curtis
Getting your first time to talk about it. And I was like, even going up to them. Wow, what a day. And they just look like gutted. I mean, you know, because everything changes, you know, this. This guy you loved, this person you were close to. The fact that it was done by Nico Harrison and Patrick Dumont. We'll probably get into here in a second.
- [24:21]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [24:22]
Brian Curtis
And the way it was done and for what they got, I mean, every piece of it is just absolutely infuriating and gutting.
- [24:30]
Bill Simmons
Well, and then this next level would happen at the home game yesterday where people are getting booed and they're removing fans, which for not. Not doing anything that bad. They're just like being fans. Like they like. I. I've never seen people get pulled out of the arena for the stuff that they got pulled out of last night. Have you?
- [24:49]
Brian Curtis
Yeah. Do you see the one guy right so they're doing Mavs karaoke.
- [24:53]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [24:53]
Brian Curtis
They come in real close, like a close up on him, and he says, fire Nico. And then the camera goes, whoop, Right?
- [25:00]
Bill Simmons
And then it's almost like he flashed. Like he pulled it out.
- [25:03]
Brian Curtis
Absolutely.
- [25:04]
Bill Simmons
And then they just got. They. They were just dumping fans, which is. That's the worst thing you could do. Like, it's. Not only did they do this crazy trade, but they don't seem to understand, like, how angry it's made people. And they don't really seem that interested in quelling the anger. It's like they're just making gasoline and pouring it on the fire.
- [25:23]
Brian Curtis
You get escorted out of the arena for saying fire, Nico for saying fire the gm. Are they going to escort the sports writers out of press row who wrote the same thing? I mean, why. Why is that not a valid opinion?
- [25:36]
Bill Simmons
Well, the other weird thing, and this spit kind of speaks to the incompetence behind the trade. How did they not anticipate any of this? Like, they. They're in Dallas. Like, Nico Harrison has been involved with the Mavericks longer than the owner, but he's there. He sees how popular Luka is. You go to any Mavericks game, it's Luka jerseys everywhere. I mean, I would say it's a top four. Fans wearing the jersey of the best player, NBA city. It's just. It's just everywhere. And little kids everywhere. 77. Just everywhere. There was a couple when I was going to the finals, there was a couple Dirks, couple old school Mav stuff. But for the most part, it was just Luka. It's like a fucking Luca army. This was their guy. They've had him since he was 18. They thought they were going to have him until he was 40. So to not anticipate that part of it is like, man, I really think this makes us slightly better, but my life is going to suck for the rest of the time. I live here. Just that alone. And then you have Pelinka on the other end going, yeah, we got to keep this quiet. Nobody can find out because he knows the moment it leaks out, the Mavs fans are going to basically riot. I've never seen anything like this from a hubris, lack of awareness dating back. Unless you go back to the 80s when the league was, you know, everyone was on cocaine and the league was fucking crazy and the teams are worth $12 million and weird shit happened. This is like out of the 80s.
- [27:02]
Brian Curtis
Yeah. How about Jason Kidd? No. Post game presser last night. Wasn't that great.
- [27:07]
Bill Simmons
Which they. Everyone Was saying this is like, never happened before with any Mavs team. We've never seen a coach just skip the presser. We're taping this at. It's 10:00 PT. We might find out today. Davis is out for, like, two months.
- [27:18]
Brian Curtis
Yeah, I mean, that was. That was also kind of a news dump during the super bowl, too. Oh, wait, AD is actually her. I mean, it. The whole thing. I mean, you say, like, he didn't anticipate it, but I feel like he did to some extent, because I feel like the secrecy was driven by Pelinka, as you say. So there were no other offers, no other suitors, but I think Harrison kept it quiet, too, because he didn't want to face the backlash. He knew it would get crushed. So in the way, like, you were kind of anticipating of it, maybe not anticipating how big it would be.
- [27:48]
Bill Simmons
Right. Well, this has. I mean, the Patrick Dumont piece of this as it's evolved. I wrote down the funniest outcomes of the LUCA trade so far.
- [27:59]
Brian Curtis
Here we go.
- [28:00]
Bill Simmons
And it's a long list. Everyone made this point. But a trade so bad, people thought shams got hacked. Let's just start there. That's never happened before in the history of professional sports, where we assumed the best reporter of a sport got hacked. Pelinka dressing like a fast and furious villain for the post trade conference. I loved. Just like, decked out. Like he was about to do a concert in New Zealand with it. Like he. Like he used to be on New Kids in the Block and now he's got a solo career. I love this one. Everyone's still pretending that Jason Kidd, J.J. redick, LeBron Rich Paul and Anthony Davis didn't know about the trade. This is my favorite. They're still doing it. It's like, this is like Playhouse Theater. If people think Jason Kidd didn't know about this trade, I got a bridge to sell you. It's unbelievable that they're still pushing this ad. We talked about this the day after on this pod, the day after the trade. AD waved his trade kicker and gave up $5.9 million in 40 minutes to make the trade work. There's no way he didn't know. It's impossible. He has this huge house out here in la. He loved being on the Lakers. He had to have known. All these people knew, and they're still doing it all these days later. Well, it was so important. We had to just keep it between the owners and Nico and Rob, and that was all. It couldn't get out. Why couldn't it get out. Why? Because you knew the Mavericks fans are going to fucking ride if it got out? Because it was so fucking stupid. That's why I couldn't get out.
- [29:34]
Brian Curtis
Totally. They tried to square the circle at that Nico press conference, which was also one of the great moments in this whole thing where he said jkid didn't know, but we were aligned on the vision.
- [29:44]
Bill Simmons
Right? Well, but then they said he didn't know till the 11th hour. It's like, you mean the 11th hour of a 24 hour day? Because there's no fucking way you traded Luka without telling Jason Kidd and talking him through it. First of all, that's insane. If you're running a basketball team and you're not going to walk through all the mechanics of here's door A and here's door B. And also they were complaining about Luca behind the scenes for like two years. And there's no way Jason Kidd wasn't a huge part of this trade. And by the way, Jason Kidd, not exactly the most standup dude over the years. Like, this is the guy who stabbed Brooklyn in the back so he could get the Milwaukee job. Like, he's. He's left a trail of bodies everywhere. And they like the nets in 2007. All of a sudden he got out of there. Like, this is not like Mr. Loyal Awesome Team employee guy. So I'm just give me a break on that. And then Lebron, like, the way he reacted to the trade after, like, if they, if they really blindsided on this, there's no way, no way that he reacts the way he did. Which was like, oh, yeah, we'll wait and see. I just think everybody knew this was better. This was a better situation for LeBron. It actually gave him a chance to win a title. It was better for AD to go to Dallas anyway. That was one of my favorites. We mentioned Nico saying they kept the trade talks quiet because neither side wanted it to leak. You mean you didn't want it to leak because the moment it got out, there's no way the fan base would've let you do it. Patrick Demont's interview over the weekend, when he said Kobe was a culture builder and Shaq, even though Kobe's coach in 2005 wrote an entire book about how awful it was to coach Kobe.
- [31:19]
Brian Curtis
And then Shaq was the guy who was always in shape.
- [31:22]
Bill Simmons
Shaq's work ethic, which was like the most famous thing about Shaq. The whole. In my book of basketball, the whole thing I wrote about Shaq was that Shaq could have graduated with a 4 0, and instead he graduated with a 37 and had a great time. Like, that was Shaq. Mark Cuban a week late doing the whole. I tried to stop it as soon as I found out, but it was too late because he probably was walking around for a week with everybody just crushing him on the trade. And finally he had to get some piece out to Mark Stein. Like, hey, can you. Can you put out that I had nothing to do with this? Like, there's really no blood on my hands. The Mavs trading Luka because he couldn't stay in shape and was always an injury risk. But then they got Anthony Davis, who got hurt in the first game. Like, you can't make this up.
- [32:08]
Brian Curtis
Somebody whose nickname is street clothes, right?
- [32:12]
Bill Simmons
Oh, this guy. This guy's better. I liked who knows that Dave McBennamin story yesterday when it was like, LeBron's camp has noticed that Luka got what he wanted right away.
- [32:25]
Brian Curtis
That was an amazing sentence.
- [32:27]
Bill Simmons
And LeBron has been pushing for this stuff for years. First of all, LeBron's played with just in the last 14 years. Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, Anthony Davis, and Luka Doncic. He plays on a Lakers team. When they traded for ad, they traded two top two lottery picks, Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball. They pushed Julius Randle out, who is another lottery pick. They traded the number four pick that became DeAndre Hunter. They put Josh Hart in the trade. They put Mo Wagner in the trade. They traded, like, two more swaps and picks, including the one that became Dyson Daniels, and they have another pick this year. They gave away basically a decade of drafts combined with the two Westbrook trades. Then they, how much can you do for this guy? So I almost don't believe that. He couldn't have. There's no way He's. He really feels like they're not doing enough for him. Anyway, I. That made me laugh. And then all the Mav stuff with just, hey, let's hold our heads high and thank Luca for his seven years. And he brought us to the Western finals and the finals, and this was great. Maverick, good luck in la. No, they did the opposite. They just leaked shit left and right. He's a fat piece of shit. Maybe he had a drinking problem. His calves could explode. Watch out for his Achilles. There's so many fucking things that are leaking out. It's the disgusting.
- [33:44]
Brian Curtis
It was. And you know me, I'm a student of the now. They tell us story. And just as soon as this trade came down. We were all on the clock, right? You guys even said it on the emergency podcast that night.
- [33:53]
Bill Simmons
We're on the clock.
- [33:54]
Brian Curtis
Here we go. But it never really came out because there's really not a reason for this, right? There's not a great answer. There's always an answer with these things, with these weird stories. What happened? What are the motives here? And the answer is it was Nico Harrison. He didn't have a good reason. He just did it. He did this stupid, incredibly stupid thing.
- [34:19]
Bill Simmons
Well, and then Dumont, the owner or the guy who's running stuff. The more I talk to people and I keep looking for conspiracy theories or whatever, and it just seems like they just felt like they didn't like that he wasn't in shape and they thought he was kind of a dick. And that just seems like that's why they didn't wanna give him 350 million. This is the all time new owner syndrome trade we've ever had. We've had so many great ones over the years where somebody takes over a team and within a couple months they're like, here's my idea. And it's usually a disaster. This is the worst one ever.
- [34:52]
Brian Curtis
Yes, but usually you're paying too much for another star, right? That's the new owner syndrome. That's the Nets, that's the Suns, right? You're going out like, let's go get an aging star and spend way too much capital. Go get that guy. This is the opposite.
- [35:06]
Bill Simmons
It's the opposite. But the spirit is always the same. It's always somebody moving into the league who's had some. Either had some success somewhere else or inherited the success he had. And they go in and within a year, they think they're smarter than everybody else. That's always the North Star, where they come in and they're like, they're just trying to do a zag, right? They're not like, I just want to come in. I want to learn this business for three or four years. Trust the people that are in here. I want to be a student of the game. There's a lot of stuff I don't know yet. It's always more like the ishbia thing where it's like, nope, everybody's doing this, so I'm going to do this. Like, Prokoroff was another classic in Brooklyn, right? He's just like, picks. What are those? Spend those. Then a year later he's like, yeah, cut costs. That was stupid. And then he just demolishes the Nets for decade. But they all have to do it. Even Ballmer, who I think was one of the better new owners. But Ballmer, he took over, and within a couple years, they had traded Blake Griffin. Chris Paul was out. And that was probably one of the more successful ones. But they all have to do it.
- [36:17]
Brian Curtis
You know what really pisses me off about this is, and this comes from a more personal place, is that you and I, before we work together, both worked with people in our lives who would make our lives hell. And it wasn't that we had, like, I care about journalism, you care about journalism intensely. And we're just butting heads over the particular vision. We would look at them and be like, you actually don't care that much. You just like having a job. And when you don't have this job anymore, you're going to go off and do another job and you're never going to think about this again. And I'm going to think about this for the rest of my life, this moment, because I'm so pissed off. That's Maverick fans to me. Nico Harrison's gonna do a couple more years of gm and then he's gonna never do this job again. And he won't think about this as, oh, that was a great failure in my life. He's like, oh, that was weird. You know, a couple weird years in my career. Now I'm gonna go work with my buddy Rob again. And, you know, it just doesn't matter. And Patrick Dumont, it'll move.
- [37:13]
Bill Simmons
He'll be out of Texas.
- [37:14]
Brian Curtis
Patrick Dumont will never think about this again. And I just guarantee it. And that is what's just particularly galling about this whole deal to me.
- [37:22]
Bill Simmons
Well, well. And also that Patrick Demott clearly was not a huge basketball fan probably the last six or seven years based just based on that one interview he gave. There's wrinkles to this that I think tie in and where basketball is kind of moving anyway. And I've noticed it with my friends, kids, especially kids maybe my son's age, and under where they. They root for the player over the team. I think video games have something to do with this. I think all the player movement has stuff to do with this. I also just think basketball's different. Guys jump around now, so it's easier to just grab a player than a team. But it's definitely one of the player empowerment. LeBron generation. This is one of the side effects is like, I like Wesley Westbrook. Now he's on the Nuggets. So now I'm a Nuggets fan. This Luka thing is the most interesting test case for this because I know of a few people who, either it's them specifically their kids or people they know who are like, my kid's a Laker fan now. Like, this is it. Like, we've actually given up on the Mavericks. He's just going to follow Luka to the Lakers. He's going to root for the Lakers from now on. I don't remember a bigger version of this in any sport. Like when Brady went to the Bucks, the Pats fans, we rooted for him. Like I rooted for him during the Super Bowl. But I was never like, I'm now a Bucs fan. Like, we stayed the Pats fan. This is actually like, it feels like they've lost fans over this, which I don't remember happening.
- [38:54]
Brian Curtis
It's really fascinating because I'm like you. I have my teams that I've had since childhood and it never changed. I never had a second NBA team or a second. Like, that's bullshit. Get out of here with that. This is the one time I wouldn't blame anybody for doing it. I mean, Dirk sitting there blessing the whole thing last night with, you know, and Luca doing the Dirk trademark shot. Dirk, by the way, greatest player in Mavs history, who after he won a title, did a diners drive ins and dives tour. Staying in shape. Remember that? I mean, so I wouldn't blame anybody if you're just a Luca fan. And now even with all the changes you talk about with what the Mavericks did, why not? Why wouldn't you just keep rooting for him no matter where he's playing?
- [39:38]
Bill Simmons
The other thing I was thinking about, just from a historical standpoint with this trade, which speaks to the fact that they had a sports business executive who doesn't seem like he was a true basketball fan. Nico. Maybe he is, but it's just his lack of understanding of the history of this stuff was really notable. And then Dumont, who clearly isn't a basketball fan, but there's been so many great players who hit kind of this weird inflection point that Luka seemed to be in, right where he's 25, he wasn't at his all time peak yet. You could talk yourself into, yeah, maybe this is never going to happen. And ironically, the Mavericks had one of those guys in Dirk Nowitzki, when they made the finals with them in 06, the MVP season in 07, and then they lose to the warriors in round one, and then around 08, it really seemed to go sideways and he had some issues. He got involved with A woman that became a thing where he had this bad relationship. In 0809, you really felt like Dirk was gettable and that the ship had sailed on him being an awesome player. And they didn't trade with that. Cuban was like, I'm never trading this guy. Cuban had a chance to trade him in, you know, in 04 for Shaq. That was when Shaq became available. It was like the obvious trade was Dirk for Shaq. He's like, I'm not trading Dirk. Dirk's our guy. And they just kept them. But there's been other guys over the years when people, when teams have blinked, when they've had, you know, they were like, ah, should we trade them? Especially when you go Back to the 70s and 80s, this is the first time in a while a team blinked. You know, even Minnesota with kg, they never traded them. The Wizards did it with C Web, but C Web, like never had any real success. Luka had real success. He made the finals last year. Did the Western finals. Like he, he was actually winning shit. So this, this is why I, I think one of the many reasons I was even going back, I was reading Houston and Hakeem olajuwon because in 92 and 93 and you can read there's a ton of stuff about this. Like he almost got traded to the Clippers. He was being shopped around. There was a Reggie Lewis possible trade at one point, like, but they never trade him, they kept him. So this happened before, but this is the rare time where the team just blinked.
- [41:48]
Brian Curtis
And it's so early to blink.
- [41:50]
Bill Simmons
It's so early.
- [41:52]
Brian Curtis
I mean 29 year old Luca, you know, maybe you never get back to the finals. You got to the Western Conference finals one more time, right? Work the, the.
- [42:01]
Bill Simmons
Then you trade him for seven first round picks and some 22 year old. That's the only way it makes sense.
- [42:06]
Brian Curtis
Yeah, and he has like two seasons in there where he plays like 45 games and you're starting, you know, long term positioning, whatever, but this is way too early to even entertain that idea.
- [42:16]
Bill Simmons
The other piece of this trade, which I'm happy to go on the record and people can clip this out and shove it in my face for the rest of my life. I'm far more aggregate this, everybody aggregate this right now. I really think this is the greatest thing they ever could have done for him professionally, career wise, motivation wise. This is the all time we did you a favor by doing this trade. They're like, I already thought he was going to win a title someday. He to me, he was the natural pick of anyone under 27 for who was going to win all of the checkpoints that he's hit as a player. But the one thing that was kind of missing was like guys carrying too much weight. Like he, you know, if you go back and you watch him rookie year, second year, he's just way skinnier and he's more explosive. Right. He added all this weight because it made him harder to deal with. It made him more physical. It added a post up game. But you know, now I wonder what between that, some of the stuff we're already reading about LeBron and him kind of. Luka in awe, watching LeBron's workout. I mean LeBron's like one of the most legendary workout guys ever. And Luka kind of maybe finally understanding this is maybe what it takes. Usually this happens when somebody's on the US Olympic team, but Luka's Slovenian. Like he was. He never was in that wimmers like. And you always have these stories like that. It's 92 had it. 2008 had it. Where they're watching the best player and they're like, holy shit, that guy's getting up at 5:30 in the morning to work out. Maybe I should start doing that. So anyway, I just feel like that's the frustrating thing for me as a Laker hater, that this is just clearly the greatest thing. Plus everyone comes to California and loses 20 pounds is the other, other thing. So he's. That's just going to happen anyway.
- [44:02]
Matt Bellany
Bill.
- [44:02]
Brian Curtis
No, I agree. And sometimes the psychology with players is like deceptively simple. We're talking about Mahomes, you know what he's going to think about all year.
- [44:11]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [44:11]
Brian Curtis
And every time there's a clip on espn. Look at that, look at that. Brady fed off that his entire career. So just imagine Luka read all those stories about being overweight. Team didn't believe in me.
- [44:24]
Bill Simmons
They thought his Achilles was going to explode. That was my new favorite one in the last week. It's Achilles, it's ticket time bomb. Oh, cool. Can you just. Last thing. Can you walk us through how this plays out in Dallas with your lifelong knowledge, appreciation, historical sense of things in Dallas, a trade that was being compared to the JFK assassination for its impact on the city. How does it play out? From an animosity, anger. Just what do the next four months look like?
- [45:00]
Brian Curtis
So here's what I would say. The Mavericks were created as a franchise in my lifetime. Like they were.
- [45:05]
Bill Simmons
They were literally 1981.
- [45:07]
Brian Curtis
Yeah.
- [45:07]
Bill Simmons
So and or 1980s.
- [45:10]
Brian Curtis
Sorry to watch them. You had. Other than that time, they pushed the Lakers to seven games in the Western Conference finals. Until the Dirk era, they were just barely a franchise. Barely a franchise. Barely rated on the Dallas sports consciousness. Way behind the Rangers, you know, for second place, by the way.
- [45:30]
Bill Simmons
And it felt like in the 90s they were like an actual. They were one of the NBA train wreck franchises.
- [45:35]
Brian Curtis
Absolutely.
- [45:35]
Bill Simmons
It was one of those three worst.
- [45:37]
Brian Curtis
People still said Clippers, but it was actually the Mavericks. Except the Mavericks would just lose the draft lottery every year. Remember that? They gave that 76ers all time wins record a ride a couple times. I mean, it was just unbelievably bad.
- [45:50]
Bill Simmons
And I remember when they traded Jason Kidd too. It totally made sense. Cause it was like, of course they did. They're fucking stupid. Of course they're going to trade him after two years.
- [45:57]
Brian Curtis
Oh my God, was that Sam Cassell and yeah, whatever.
- [46:01]
Bill Simmons
We're not sure these three guys can mesh together. So we're going to trade the best one of the three. It was like, you guys are idiots.
- [46:06]
Brian Curtis
Totally. And Cuban and Dirk made the Mavericks into a real franchise.
- [46:10]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [46:11]
Brian Curtis
And then there was another period of, you know, kind of weirdness there at the end where they kind of went, you know, they were declining with Dirk. And then Luka made them again. Like, no matter what you say, Luka's here. There's a thing to talk about, there's a thing to pay attention to. There's a reason to buy a ticket to a Mavericks game and be excited and get into the Mavericks. And now I just wonder where they slide, you know, on the sports consciousness and even talking to those radio hosts, the same thing. It's like, what's the Maverick segment we do, you know, like, what do we do? Do we do an ad segments every week? I don't think so. I wouldn't, you know, if they, they're, you know, let's say they get healthy and they're a playoff team this year. I mean they'll. Obviously there'll be some interest people being in, but I just think it's gonna be hard to slide. You've seen this happen with Boston teams before where you just slide off the map for a while.
- [46:55]
Bill Simmons
Happen with the Pats.
- [46:57]
Brian Curtis
And in this case it's not just because you're bad or potentially bad in a couple of years. It's because people are pissed at you. Like they're angry with you. They think you just screwed them over in a way they've never felt before. And I just Think there's a lot of potential there for them. Just slide into the ocean for a while.
- [47:14]
Bill Simmons
Well, I mean, imagine if Kyrie leaves. He can opt out. There's some pre HD stuff with him. Potentially. This could. This could be a house of cards pretty quickly. And then the Davis piece of it, if, you know, if. If he's just not healthy this year, like, they have a real chance not to make the playoffs because the west is so good. I was looking at the odds. Like, I bet when I was in Louisiana over the weekend, I bet on FanDuel. I bet on Golden State at, like, plus 155 to make the playoffs. They're plus 102. Tomorrow, they might be plus 170. Like, the west is, like, depending on who wins two games in a row, there's 11 good teams, plus San Antonio, there's eight playoff spots. So if you have Davis out for a month combined with, you know, Kyrie pulls something for a week now, all of a sudden you're just. You're sliding out of it. So fascinating stuff. Who. Who thought Dallas would be this crazy as a sports. As a sports city without the Cowboys being involved? I think that might have been the biggest shocker of all of it.
- [48:16]
Brian Curtis
Oh, my God. And I tell you, the words Brian Schottenheimer have not been uttered once on Dallas sports radio.
- [48:22]
Bill Simmons
That' or Jerry Jones possibly winning an Emmy for Landman.
- [48:27]
Brian Curtis
There we go.
- [48:28]
Bill Simmons
The most emotional TV cameo of the last five years. Who knew?
- [48:33]
Brian Curtis
Best thing he's done in 30 years, by far.
- [48:35]
Bill Simmons
Unbelievable stuff. Oh, I almost forgot to do this. So I was saying to you last night when we were texting, that this was the first NBA trade that I felt could be turned into a Ryan Murphy limited series on Netflix, where, listen, not to compare this trade to the Menendez brothers and Ted Bundy and some of the other things they've done.
- [48:56]
Brian Curtis
But why not?
- [48:57]
Bill Simmons
But it feels like, you know, you have characters, you have intrigue. You have the dumonts coming in as, like, the rich family screwing stuff up. You have Cuban as the old guy hanging on. You have Luca and his, like, whoever his entourage is and whatever they could Ryan Murphy that character up and make me like, no, no, Luca, it's 3 in the morning. You can't have Popeyes. You have LeBron and Rich Paul and AD and the Lakers side and Jeanie Buss and Jay Moore. Somebody could. Maybe Jay Moore plays himself. Anyway, I asked you to just go nuts with this.
- [49:33]
Brian Curtis
Yeah. So opening scene of our limited series. It's gotta be this coffee shop meeting Between Nico and Rob Pelinka on January 7th.
- [49:41]
Bill Simmons
Immortalized by a photo from some random weirdo in Dallas.
- [49:44]
Brian Curtis
And did you hear? The guy taking the photo was a Lakers fan. So he recognizes Pelinka, but he doesn't recognize Nico. Oh. Which is a great detail. So he snaps a photo. We see Bill camera push in. He's texting a friend, and he goes, I just found Rob Polinka having coffee with some guy. Which really.
- [50:04]
Bill Simmons
Opening credits. Boom. Let's go.
- [50:06]
Matt Bellany
Yeah.
- [50:07]
Brian Curtis
Theme song, hard cut.
- [50:08]
Bill Simmons
Boom.
- [50:08]
Brian Curtis
Here we go.
- [50:09]
Bill Simmons
Ryan Murphy's Luca trademark.
- [50:11]
Brian Curtis
And the only. Only drawback there is, do we want Pelinka to walk away from the coffee meeting and pick up the phone and call somebody and be like, you'll never believe this.
- [50:19]
Matt Bellany
Right?
- [50:20]
Brian Curtis
You'll never believe what I just heard. We got this going on, Mark Cuban flashback.
- [50:26]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [50:26]
Brian Curtis
Yelling at the refs, buying the team, selling the team.
- [50:31]
Bill Simmons
Oh, yeah.
- [50:32]
Brian Curtis
Kobe flashback. So we can see Polinka, Nico meeting probably at Lakers games. Right. Talking to each other.
- [50:39]
Bill Simmons
So we're going back and forth. Like the Last Dance a little bit. Okay.
- [50:42]
Brian Curtis
Yeah, yeah. This is a limited series, Right. We gotta have. Not everything has flashbacks these days.
- [50:47]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [50:48]
Brian Curtis
I was playing with some casting here, too. You gotta help me with this. I mean, I'm just so sorry. We lost Penny Marshall because Miriam Adelson. I mean, that would have been the ultimate casting.
- [50:56]
Bill Simmons
Maybe we can bring. Maybe we can bring him back. CGI now is amazing. Maybe Penny Marshall's not. Maybe it's not dead yet.
- [51:02]
Brian Curtis
Cgi, Penny Marshall. Do we want Josh Gad for Patrick Dumont? I kind of like that a little bit.
- [51:08]
Bill Simmons
Oh, that's really good. I mean, you could also go, Chris Pratt putting the weight back on after losing the weight. Getting muscular the last 12 years. Now he's going back, trying to win an Emmy.
- [51:18]
Brian Curtis
Who do we like for Cuban?
- [51:22]
Bill Simmons
Cuban's like. It feels like Jeremy Strong and a zag. Nobody expecting Jeremy Strong here. He's got the Cuban wing on. He's super personable, and you're like, whoa, Jeremy Strong is Cuban. This is crazy. Why are they doing this?
- [51:38]
Brian Curtis
He could be Pelinka, too. That's bad, because what if he's reading the Alchemist's Wife?
- [51:43]
Bill Simmons
No, Rob Lowe has to be Polinka. What are you talking about?
- [51:45]
Brian Curtis
Okay, but they have to be quoting, you know, from things and doing. Yeah, either one of those guys I could see. Actually.
- [51:51]
Bill Simmons
Who else could be Cuban?
- [51:52]
Brian Curtis
I only.
- [51:53]
Bill Simmons
I had J.K. simmons, Ben Affleck. Could Ben Affleck be Cuban?
- [51:57]
Brian Curtis
I had J.K. simmons with a wig. And of course, that was, like, great. I was like, he's too old. But he's actually only four years older than Cuban. Just.
- [52:05]
Bill Simmons
No, that's great.
- [52:05]
Brian Curtis
I like that things look different, but we can work that.
- [52:09]
Bill Simmons
So J.K. simmons, Nico Harrison. Could be 40 people that.
- [52:13]
Brian Curtis
Does anybody play Danny Ainge getting wind of this deal, like, with 30 minutes to go?
- [52:18]
Bill Simmons
No, he plays himself.
- [52:19]
Brian Curtis
Okay, Danny, we're going to cast Danny. Dirk was a tough one for me.
- [52:23]
Bill Simmons
Dirk plays himself.
- [52:25]
Brian Curtis
Okay, Luca.
- [52:26]
Bill Simmons
Actually, you could also do the thing with Dirk where it's like a 64 actor with a bad Dirk wig. And it's clearly not Dirk, because that's one of the staples of these shows where the guy doesn't actually follow sports.
- [52:36]
Brian Curtis
Yeah, somebody has to be completely ridiculous.
- [52:38]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, that's probably Dirk. Dirk's like six two.
- [52:41]
Brian Curtis
What do we do with Luka?
- [52:44]
Bill Simmons
Luka's tough. This is where you get into, like, the. The Aaron Hernandez show, which I liked. And the guy didn't really look like Aaron Hernandez, but by the end of the show, you kind of felt like he was Aaron Hernandez. So you almost need. You need somebody that's big and a little doughy and that could be anybody. Maybe you're going with an unknown for that one.
- [53:02]
Brian Curtis
Yeah. Do we need, like, a De Niro style weight gain where we send them to Italy to eat pasta for, like, three months?
- [53:07]
Bill Simmons
So they can be too expensive in the budget. You have to pretend Italy. You have to pretend it's like Palos Verde.
- [53:15]
Brian Curtis
I like. This is actually a good series.
- [53:18]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, this is pretty good. And I think the Dumont. The Adelson Dumont family, I think, features prominently in this. Just like, you really make Dumont like a villain and just a goofball who's frantically trying to read up on NBA history. Like he's reading Halberstam Breaks of the Game. Somebody told me to read this. I don't know who any of these people are. Just confused.
- [53:43]
Brian Curtis
Can we still get Bill Walton in a trade?
- [53:45]
Bill Simmons
Who's playing Skin? And who are the maps? Radio guys?
- [53:50]
Brian Curtis
This guy talking about Ben and Skin.
- [53:52]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, Ben and Skin. Who's playing Ben and Skin.
- [53:55]
Brian Curtis
Oh, my God, Those are great roles. I would have so many ideas for Maverick Sports Radio. I mean, there'd be so many. This would be unbelievable.
- [54:01]
Bill Simmons
Could people play Mean and Marcelo and Mahoney doing the reaction pot, or are we playing ourselves?
- [54:06]
Brian Curtis
Yeah, and Skip plays himself, too. Don't forget that. Because he would have some big takes.
- [54:09]
Bill Simmons
On this Skip with, like, some de Aging, like the Irishman, because we Go back into the mid-2000s when he's saying that you can't win a title with Dirk Nowitzki. Then it's like current skip.
- [54:20]
Brian Curtis
Unbelievable.
- [54:21]
Bill Simmons
Stephen A. Stephen A actor or Stephen A is himself.
- [54:25]
Brian Curtis
He absolutely wants to play himself.
- [54:27]
Bill Simmons
What about Donald Faison as Nico Harrison?
- [54:29]
Brian Curtis
Ooh, interesting.
- [54:31]
Bill Simmons
See, that'd be good. Yeah, I like it. All right. This is great. Ryan Murphy, get on it. Call us. We're ready to do this. Brian Curtis. You can read him on theringer.com, a great website. You can also listen to him on the press box. An awesome podcast. One of our. How many years for the press box been out?
- [54:46]
Matt Bellany
Eight.
- [54:46]
Brian Curtis
I think it's eight. Yep.
- [54:48]
Bill Simmons
I forced you to do it and.
- [54:51]
Brian Curtis
I've never been more thankful.
- [54:53]
Bill Simmons
No, you were receptive. I forced fantasy. You were ready. Fantasy was forced fantasy. Took like he was debating it like it was the Luka Doncic trade for weeks before he actually pulled the trigger.
- [55:04]
Brian Curtis
He seems to have gotten the hang of it.
- [55:06]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, he's doing all right. Curtis, thank you.
- [55:09]
Brian Curtis
Thanks, Bill.
- [55:10]
Bill Simmons
This episode is brought to you by Nissan. If you're planning on an adventurous 2025, you're going to need a car that can keep up with you and conquer anything in your path. The Nissan Armada Pro 4X is that car with a twin turbo V6 engine ready to propel your adventures. Up to 8,500 pounds of towing capacity to haul all your favorite toys and space for eight passengers. This unshakable fortress will chew up and spit out anything you throw at it. Learn more at the all new 2025 Nissan Armada at nissanusa.com Towing capacity varies by configuration. See Nissan Towing guide and owner's manual for additional information. Always secure cargo. All right, the one and only Matt Bellany is here. You can read them on Puck. You can listen to the town, an awesome podcast. Some have credited him with Craig Horlbeck's rise as a media mogul. I think we can still say the credit.
- [56:10]
Matt Bellany
I'd say Craig's moment really was his three minute rant about risky business at the end of a rewatchables. That was the moment. That was the moment he became a star.
- [56:21]
Bill Simmons
That was when he knew someday he could marry into the Adelson family and maybe run the Mavs. We just talked. Brian Curtis and I just talked about the Luca trade and I was saying how the Ryan Murphy Luca trade miniseries on Netflix I would just watch and we had a whole bunch of casting stuff. Is there anybody just without you knowing what we talked about? Is there Anybody that you feel like would have to be in that.
- [56:44]
Matt Bellany
Well, did you discuss James Corden?
- [56:46]
Bill Simmons
James Corden as Dumont?
- [56:48]
Matt Bellany
No. James Corden as Luca. That's. That's not a thing. So I'm gonna have to use, like, here. But it seems like Cordon is born to play the role.
- [57:02]
Bill Simmons
I mean, honestly, Ryan Murphy would probably do that because he. Ryan Murphy clearly doesn't follow sports, as we've seen from some of his other stuff. So he could be like, yeah, we'll just cheat it and make him look like he's six foot eight.
- [57:13]
Matt Bellany
Well, yeah, that and Cordon might have to lose a few pounds, but.
- [57:18]
Bill Simmons
Or gain a few.
- [57:19]
Matt Bellany
Luca might have to gain a few. But maybe we. We get Luca at one of his post beer drinking sessions.
- [57:26]
Bill Simmons
What's your Ryan Murphy miniseries that he hasn't done yet that you can't believe he hasn't done yet?
- [57:31]
Matt Bellany
I mean, is there a murder he hasn't exploited yet?
- [57:34]
Bill Simmons
Which. Is there a Simpson Bruckheimer one that, like. Do you feel like there's an 80s Hollywood one that's.
- [57:40]
Matt Bellany
Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer never really feuded. Don Simpson just sort of went off the rails and they actually, they did end up splitting, but I don't know. I'm not a big.
- [57:51]
Bill Simmons
Who Ovitz. Like the Mike Ovitz when he was the most powerful rage in Hollywood, and then it went off that. Yeah, I'm. I don't know what's left.
- [57:59]
Matt Bellany
It's. If he does another Hollywood one, I mean, he could do the Harvey Weinstein story. Like Harvey barreling through Hollywood in the 90s and 2000s, knowing what we know now about his downfall, maybe he could do that.
- [58:16]
Bill Simmons
The problem is with an idea like that is I don't know if I'd want to spend time. I felt the same way about the Donald Sterling show. Ultimately, I just didn't want to spend six hours with Donald Sterling. Even if the show is good. There's some limits I have for.
- [58:31]
Matt Bellany
I get that. I mean, you could do the comedic version. Although, Harvey, you can't do comedy with this new Lakers show that Jeanie Buss made with Mindy Kaling. Netflix, like, they. When I saw that they were that Netflix was doing a Jeanie Buss show, I just, like, winced. I was like, oh, no. But they went full comedy with it, and that worked. I haven't watched it yet, but at least the trailer looks funny because it's just a total joke, the whole thing.
- [58:59]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. SNL 51 of the many reasons you're here. So It's Sunday. I got the music invite. I didn't get the. The other one. It's what, 200 people?
- [59:11]
Matt Bellany
It's 300 people in 8H. And it is turning out to be the toughest ticket I have ever seen in Hollywood, like, ever. I don't know that there's even any sports equivalent of how exclusive this is. There are 300 seats. There are, I mean, hundreds of former cast members of the show, guest hosts, musical guests, executives that want in on this. Friends of Lorne, Paul McCartney, all of them wanted musicians.
- [59:42]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [59:43]
Matt Bellany
There's no. There's no room. They're. The overflow room is going to be a tough ticket.
- [59:48]
Bill Simmons
So you have, like, I, like, I talked to John Hamm about it in the last week, and he said he's going, right.
- [59:53]
Matt Bellany
He's in.
- [59:53]
Bill Simmons
So there's a level of, like, there's a guest host level where it's like Hanks, Jon Hamm. Like, there's probably like 20, 25 of those.
- [60:02]
Matt Bellany
And Ham probably didn't tell you this, but he's probably only in because he's hot right now. Like, he's. He's, you know, after Landman, after Morning show, after Fargo. Like, he's a hot actor right now, so he's in. But, like, there are probably some frequent guest hosts from the 80s and 90s that are not in because they are not cool anymore.
- [60:23]
Bill Simmons
And then you have 50 seasons of Cass. Some of them are dead, some of.
- [60:28]
Matt Bellany
Them are, but a lot of them.
- [60:29]
Bill Simmons
Are alive from the 80s on. And it's like they're Eddie Murphy. But then you get into, like, is Piscopo one of the 300? I would think he has to be.
- [60:37]
Matt Bellany
You'd think so. But remember, at the 40th, there was a whole controversy over Victoria Jackson being in an overflow room, and she freaked out. So, like, the cuts are going to be tough. And then you have. Actually, I heard they're doing it today and tomorrow and.
- [60:52]
Bill Simmons
Oh, really? And then you have the. The music stuff, because there's people like Paul Simon and Cartoon. Yeah. The Friends of Lauren. But then also bands like, if Bono wants to be there, like, he was. He had one of the best music performances I've ever had. So he has to get in there. So that's how they do it.
- [61:10]
Matt Bellany
Taylor and Travis, they got to be there. I mean, you just go down the list of people that are either super famous and just nobody ever says no to them, or they're friends of Lauren or they're important to the show. Like, there. I can't even imagine. I do not. I would not wish this on anybody to have to pick that room.
- [61:29]
Bill Simmons
Nobody has a plus one, I'm guessing.
- [61:31]
Matt Bellany
Oh, hell no. No, there is not going to be an extraneous person in that room. So they probably CEO of Comcast, maybe his wife comes.
- [61:41]
Bill Simmons
Well, that's the other thing. You need the rich guy circles and you need the network circles.
- [61:47]
Matt Bellany
You need the CEO of Netflix. And he has nothing to do with the show. He's just a fan. But he's powerful enough in Hollywood that he can get in.
- [61:57]
Bill Simmons
Well, they had to invite him because he could have basically destroyed SNL the last six years by doing Friday night SNL on Netflix. And he loved the show and he didn't. He's never doing that.
- [62:08]
Matt Bellany
Ted loves comedy so much, there's always the rumor that he will just decide to do a Friday night or a Sunday night version and just steal all the people from snl. I don't. I think he has too much respect for Lauren to do that. But post Lauren, all bets are off.
- [62:21]
Bill Simmons
I am positive that as long as Lauren is there, he's never doing that because he loves the show and he loves Lauren. But the moment Lauren leaves, I think Netflix just takes that entire corner and.
- [62:30]
Matt Bellany
And NBC will walk right into it, because once Lauren leaves, they will start cost cutting on the show because it's hugely expensive for what it is. And Lauren has been able to beat them back, but they will start to cut costs and Ted will recognize it and he'll swoop in.
- [62:47]
Bill Simmons
So you, you think like just the 300 people in this place, which is basically like having the NBA Finals, game seven in an arena that has 900 seats. You think they've been planning this for like six months. And they started out with a list of like 2,000 names and levels, and.
- [63:06]
Matt Bellany
They started this after the 45th. I mean, the, the entire. This is the culmination of Lauren's life work. Like, they have been planning this. Comcast is giving this the whole symphony treatment, where every aspect of the company tries to promote this thing they've been planning. They set this whole, you know, three, three day weekend thing with the music and then the documentary premieres and all this stuff around the live show. They've been building this thing up like it's bigger than a sporting event for tv. And they have, they have. Lauren, I guarantee you, has been thinking about every single person who will be in that room for more than a year.
- [63:44]
Bill Simmons
And we do not think he's retiring after the year. I'm. I'm I'm 99% sure he's not.
- [63:50]
Matt Bellany
He has said he is not. He has said he's going to do the fade out thing where he slowly brings in people to help him with certain things. But he is the ultimate decider and push comes to shove, he is in charge. We'll see.
- [64:06]
Bill Simmons
How did you feel about the documentaries and all the stuff that they did to lead to this moment? And I have some thoughts on what it might mean to the culture too.
- [64:15]
Matt Bellany
Because I only knew about the cowbell sketch from columns that you wrote 20 years ago.
- [64:20]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [64:21]
Matt Bellany
Which caused me to check it out. I thought they were generally good. Better than might be expected for promotional documentaries. The one with the old footage of their auditions, I thought that was super fun. I hadn't seen a lot of that stuff. The cowbell one was my favorite just because it was amazing. The season 11 one, it raised a lot of questions to me that I don't think the documentary answered. They did a whole documentary just on this lost season where everybody kind of got fired at the end. And it was a little bit like you felt like one of those docs where they're not telling me the whole story here.
- [65:02]
Bill Simmons
That was the most frustrating one to me.
- [65:04]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Lorne, Huge flex didn't even appear in any of the documentaries promoting his show. They had to use archive footage of Lorne. Like he didn't sit for his own documentaries.
- [65:15]
Bill Simmons
The season 11 one I was so excited for because that's such a crazy stretch of the show where basically he leaves after year five, Ebersol comes in, the show is cratering and then Eddie Murphy saves it. They figure out a way to kind of keep Eddie Murphy even though he's filming all the stuff in the first half of the show. They dole out the sketches to save it in season nine. And then season 10 becomes the all Star season with Billy Crystal, Martin Short, all those guys. And. And it's awesome. Season 10 is one of the best seasons in the history of the show. But then all those guys leave and Lauren comes back and Lauren tries to zag and hires all these young writers or young actors, new writing staff, whole thing and just misses. And I was like, they're doing a doc. This sounds amazing. But it didn't dive into the Lauren stuff. It didn't really dive into why he came back. Like the failure of the new show which he had tried to do where he owned it. He almost went bankrupt from the show and basically took the job because he needed the money. Yeah. And the Dick Ebersol thing where he was so mad that Dick Ebersol was being considered successful with the show. And that's a really fun dynamic, those two.
- [66:24]
Matt Bellany
Oh yeah. I mean Ebersol is still alive. Apparently he's not doing great. But that's another mystery is will he show up at the fifth?
- [66:32]
Bill Simmons
He has to be there. He saved the show. The show's dead.
- [66:34]
Matt Bellany
You know what? You would think so. But I don't know how well he's doing these days. And I don't know what that. The state of that relationship with Lauren is. I don't, I don't think they are close. It may be a respect thing that he invites him, but I don't know if he'll. If he'll be there. The season 11 thing is amazing. I actually didn't know about that in that whole thing where they. They ended the season on a cliffhanger of firing all the right and just kept.
- [66:59]
Bill Simmons
And he pulls Lovetts out. Lovitz is the only one. That's the other funny thing is Lovett's was the breakout star of that season which tells you about the season.
- [67:06]
Matt Bellany
It's amazing. And you can imagine they did that today. It's just like so much happened on SNL in the 80s and 90s where if it happened during the social media era it would, it would be gigantic. And it just kind of came and went at 10 to 1 in the morning and maybe people talked about it the next day, maybe there was a newspaper article and then it was on to the next.
- [67:26]
Bill Simmons
I think when they did this for SNL40 and we blew it. It was my last year at Grantland and we blew it out. We had a whole week. We did the March Madness bracket for people on the show. We did an awesome job. You can go back and read it for people listening. We had like 20 pieces. I wrote a piece right after the SNL40 show which was three hours and I think the headline was like bloated. SNL40 was actually kind of perfect. Cause that's what the show was. But the 40 year mark was really cool because the show was still really good, really relevant and still really really good at breaking stars. And it just come off that awesome cast with Hader and Sandberg and Sudeikis and Will Forte and Armisen and Kristen Wiig. And you look back at that cast and you're like holy shit. We didn't even realize in the moment how loaded these. All of them went on to do all these other things and the last 10 years they just haven't had the same success with the cast and I think that's what's different. I look at these last 10 years and it's like there's really no breakout stars that they've developed. Kate McKinnon was probably the last one and she's not somebody who can carry her own thing. She's good as being part of something, but that's what's changed in the last 10 years, I think.
- [68:42]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. And I think that that coincides with the rise of TikTok and online comedy and things that have sort of put SNL in the rearview also. Covid didn't help a live show like that. That depends on spontaneity. Like, those were rough years. They've also. The cast has gotten too big and I think Lauren would probably admit that they just have too many people. He lets them go off and do other things during the season now where like, if you look at someone like Bowen Yang who they tried to make a star and didn't really work out like he was. They had a show two weeks ago and he was in LA on the Thursday before the show announcing the Oscar nominations. And then he gets on a plane and he goes back to SNL for the show on Saturday night and then on Sunday he was at Sundance promoting a movie that he had did, that he had done. So like, is Bowen Yang even part of that cast? Part of the whole SNL ethos is that you're there all the time. You're pitching, you're writing, you're coming up with bits. I mean, he was in and out of New York during that week doing his other projects and is sort of like kind of on the show. It's just a different thing now than when you had these tight 10 person casts that had an identity to them now. It's like sort of a revolving door.
- [69:59]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. The only times they really did that over the course of the show, like Belushi was filming. He was filming 1941, I think, in season four and flying back and forth. Eddie Murphy was doing movies when he was there. You made exceptions for like the major stars. It seems like they, they've made a lot more exceptions in recent years.
- [70:17]
Matt Bellany
Will Ferrell did a couple things, but like, yeah, when Will Ferrell decided to be a movie star, he left snl. Adam Sandler left snl. Like it was a. It was a pat. It was a thing. Someone like A.D. bryant. A.D. bryant had a Hulu show that was greenlit, aired and was canceled all while she was on snl.
- [70:35]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [70:37]
Matt Bellany
Well, side career going the Thing you.
- [70:41]
Bill Simmons
Said about the cast. One of the great moments of this podcast when I was at ESPN was I got to interview Lauren in his office, which was an incredible career move for me. Not move, career moment. It was just like, I can't believe I'm doing this. I had so many questions to ask him. I got to talk to him for an hour 20. And we were talking.
- [71:02]
Matt Bellany
Did he offer you popcorn?
- [71:04]
Bill Simmons
I don't think he offered me popcorn. Maybe he might have. But I talked to him about the cast thing, and I talked to him about my theory about how the cast was like a basketball team and you had to have the starting five and the four or five people off the bench, but once you have 17 people, it's just too hard to get everyone involved. And he was explaining why he did it, and the reasons actually made sense. Where he was like, some people aren't ready for the first year or the second year. It really takes until year three that you got to develop people behind them. I think the thing they really fucked up in the last 10 years was using these celebrities for big parts. And I've said this before, not being able to break new stars with parts like Biden, Trump these things. If you go back to the history of the show, the cast members were always playing the people in the Zeitgeist, and they shifted away from that and started giving those parts to these other people. They even did it in 24, like Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris. Like, why can't that be a cast member? You know? And I think that's what shifted.
- [72:10]
Matt Bellany
Alec Baldwin killed snl.
- [72:12]
Bill Simmons
Well, I think the theory of using people like Alec Baldwin, I think, was a huge mistake. I know. It's like.
- [72:20]
Matt Bellany
It's like heroin.
- [72:21]
Bill Simmons
It is.
- [72:22]
Matt Bellany
It worked really well. People loved it. Lorne got the Zeitgeist back for. For these big, stunty moments. He started to get news articles out of who was playing who on SNL. And we saw it during 2015, 2016, with the whole Trump White House and Melissa McCarthy coming in to play Sean Spicer, Matt Damon doing Kavanaugh. Like, all that stuff was so alluring to them that they kind of got addicted to it. And it was like a drug. You get a high off it. But there's a definite downside. And the downside is the show itself suffers. And the people that are on there for four or five years, you don't even know who they are.
- [73:02]
Bill Simmons
Right. And I remember right around when it started, Will Ferrell used to do that Janet Reno dance party sketch. And then Janet Reno came.
- [73:11]
Matt Bellany
Probably wouldn't happen today.
- [73:12]
Bill Simmons
It would not. I think that sketch is canceled. But Janet Reno came on, right, if I remember.
- [73:18]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, yeah.
- [73:18]
Bill Simmons
And. And it was right at early 2000s, they started bringing the people there. Parroting on the show was really, you know, the show would go for it with celebrities. It was really mean spirited in. In a way that I used to love and my friends all loved in the 90s.
- [73:31]
Matt Bellany
You look back at some of those David Spade monologues, like, those would never happen today. The entire culture of celebrity has changed where if you do that stuff now, you have to expect that you will get blowback from those people. And some of the. They court those celebrities so much now that they can't parody them. Like, who are the two most famous people in American culture right now? I think I've said this either on the town or I forget where before, but Taylor and Travis, SNL should be going after Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey relentlessly having fun with that.
- [74:05]
Bill Simmons
But going after him totally. I agree.
- [74:07]
Matt Bellany
Totally. Going after them. But no, they don't, because they want them to come.
- [74:11]
Bill Simmons
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. How is that not. How is that not like a talk show where they hate each other and they're next to each other?
- [74:18]
Matt Bellany
I know it's the thing that everybody in the culture is happy, but Blake is married to Ryan. Ryan has a lot of friends. They're in the Taylor Swift universe.
- [74:25]
Bill Simmons
But that's what's happened. That's the biggest thing that's happened in the show this century over the last 20 years. And I remember when Tina Fey came on as Palin all those times, and then they brought Palin on and you talked about it. It's like a drug. They get addicted to the crowd reaction. And then that became like, we're going to have fun with these celebrities, but we also need the celebrities. I remember when Andy Samberg did that Mark Wahlberg sketch, hey, how's your brother? How's your brother? And it was really funny. And Mark Wahlberg got pissed and they ended up bringing him on the next week to kind of give Sandberg shit. And it was like, this isn't the show. The show was kind of mean and ruthless sometimes with celebs. And now it seems like it courts the celebrities in a completely different way, which I just think is a product of Lauren being an older guy who just. He's a celebrity himself. And that's how he sees it.
- [75:12]
Matt Bellany
Establishment. You know, the show was counterculture, and then it became the culture. And now it's sort of it's ripe for disruption, to be honest. And you could argue that everything online and TikTok and everything has disrupted it, but it is ripe for something online. You know, In Living Color sort of did it. You know, Lauren had a huge blind spot with diverse people, with black people in particular on the show. And then In Living Color comes on, taking Damon Wayans, who was on the show and famously was fired. They. They disrupted them in the 90s and had a thing going. And I think that was the last time that someone directly took on SNL and won and not beat him, but had their own success. There is a version of SNL for today's audience that would work, I think, and it's beyond something that's on TikTok. You could say that TikTok is SNL for today's audience, but there's something in a format, in an hour, hour and a half format that would work and is just. SNL's just sitting there like a. Like a buffalo wandering the Serengeti.
- [76:18]
Bill Simmons
I can't believe it hasn't happened yet. No. It's like if Netflix had done this two years ago on Friday nights, I think SNL would have been in real trouble. They would have gotten the jump on them. The other way to beat snl, that nobody is like, SNL just goes away from mid May to late September, and every four years you have a political election that's the most fun part to parody. And Netflix could have just launched a Friday night SNL show last May and just crushed it for four months. And by the time SNL came back, it would have felt like a dinosaur.
- [76:56]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. So like a, you know, summer. Summer stock, or call it do it as a stunt in the summer.
- [77:01]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [77:02]
Matt Bellany
And then you don't even have to compete with snl. And all of a sudden you've got the political conventions, you've got all the campaign stuff to yourself.
- [77:08]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. Well, this is an incredible run. The fact that it's been on for 50 years and my entire life and I remember all the pieces of it.
- [77:18]
Matt Bellany
But it is amazing. There's nothing like.
- [77:21]
Bill Simmons
There's nothing like it, especially like the music, which I was really glad they did that music documentary, even though I thought they missed a couple of things that I was just stunned by. But I just. I always. One of my favorite underrated things about the show was just catching all these acts at the greatest time of their career right as they're about to do this. And they would just over and over again get these people. And then sometimes, you know, it would Just go the other way. This was it. That was the highlight and then it was gone. I can't wait to see what happens Sunday night. I mean, it's one of the, one of the Last must see 8pm Network shows that's not sports or not an award show that we're probably ever going to have, right?
- [78:05]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, I know. It's amazing. Fanduel line. Who opens the show?
- [78:13]
Bill Simmons
Do they go music or sketch? Would be my first question.
- [78:17]
Matt Bellany
I think they will. They will do a traditional cold open.
- [78:21]
Bill Simmons
All right. So if they asked me, I would have the four or five best people in the history of show on stage together.
- [78:29]
Matt Bellany
Oh, I, I do not think they will do that because I don't think they would either because all that does is beg the question of who is the best ever. And that's a question that Lauren does not.
- [78:39]
Bill Simmons
But a couple of them are dead, though, so that makes it, you know, it's sad to say, but it's a little easier. But you take one person from each era. You take Ackroyd, you take Eddie, you take somebody from the Hartman era. Maybe it's Dana Carvey. You have Will Ferrell, you have maybe Kristen Wiig, maybe. And it's like the haters.
- [78:58]
Matt Bellany
Sudeikis, maybe.
- [78:59]
Bill Simmons
Hater. No, but I'm saying you just, you have like five or six to start. I think they're gonna go with celebrities, though. At the start. It'll be like Tom Hanks, Paul Simon. It'll be like the five Timers Club, basically. Something like that would be my guess.
- [79:11]
Matt Bellany
Maybe here's an option. What if they do an original sketch with the surviving originals from the 1975 cast.
- [79:21]
Bill Simmons
So Chevy still alive, Jane Dan, Lorraine.
- [79:26]
Matt Bellany
Newman, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morrison.
- [79:29]
Bill Simmons
Alive.
- [79:30]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. So there's five of them still alive. And I believe they'll all be there.
- [79:35]
Bill Simmons
Pretty risky. They're. I mean, some of them are like in their late 70s, but that, but.
- [79:40]
Matt Bellany
That eliminates any political problems because you don't have to deal with people who think they were the best cast member ever. You don't have to deal with the Eddie Murphy issue. You don't have to deal with any of these other things. You just say, you know what? We're going to go with the. We're going to go with the five originals and then have something written for them. You know, Al Franken can write it, Donahoe or someone like that. And then you start the show with the rest of it.
- [80:05]
Bill Simmons
I feel like he's going to take the easy way out and just start with like Paul Simon, like performing with Paul McCartney and like they'll start out with some song with some, with like an awesome band and that kicks it off. And then Chevy Chase, Chevy Chase I think has to start the show like, like officially be the one who like fall. They do some Pratt fall that they'll tape ahead of time and then it kicks to the credits would be my guess.
- [80:29]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Or here's another idea. What about something with Keenan? Ken's been on the show for 28 years. They could do a whole sketch around how long Keenan's been there.
- [80:41]
Bill Simmons
We're going to take a break and then I want to talk to you about some Hollywood stuff that's going on. All right. I love having Bellany on in mid February because the Oscars is coming. It's usually just a fun time in general for Hollywood. We have the oscars in about two and a half weeks. Conan O'Brien's hosting the movies are weird. Fantasy seems to be the only one who's happy with the movies. I just think fantasy's happy with movies every year. And then we've had some really advanced level negging of different movies. That has really hurt.
- [81:17]
Matt Bellany
Are you aware of what's going on here? Yeah, but I'm aware.
- [81:20]
Bill Simmons
But explain it to the audience.
- [81:21]
Matt Bellany
It is sort of remarkable what is happening with the Oscars this year. The number one nominated film, 13 nominations for Amelia Perez, this Netflix movie about a transgender woman drug lord who has an adventure in Mexico. That movie has completely imploded over a Twitter scandal. So the favorite for best picture has basically been taken off the map for most of the nominations. Zoe Saldana could still win. They could still win best song. But this Twitter scandal involving Carla Sophia Gascon, who is the lead of the movie and just had some reprehensible old tweets that came up has basically taken out the movie and it is a five movie race now for best picture and nobody knows what's going to win.
- [82:10]
Bill Simmons
What do you think's going to win? What are you hearing? What's the buzz?
- [82:13]
Matt Bellany
There is the indicators that we've seen so far that are pointing towards Anora, which would be a remarkable winner in its own right because it starts with about 45 minutes of hardcore sex.
- [82:25]
Bill Simmons
I don't see it with a bunch.
- [82:26]
Matt Bellany
Of nudity in it. It's this like Cinderella story movie about a sex worker who dates this like Russian. Well, not dates, is paid to date this Russian.
- [82:37]
Bill Simmons
She dates drunk Borat. Drunk Russian borat.
- [82:39]
Matt Bellany
Drunk Russian. 22 year old Borat.
- [82:41]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, but I don't see it winning. I don't think with people over 60, that first 45 minutes is gonna work.
- [82:48]
Matt Bellany
I would have thought that it would definitely be the most explicit movie to ever win best picture by one, by far. There's one X rated movie, Midnight Cowboy, but that is pretty. Shouldn't have been rated X by today's standards. And coming.
- [83:01]
Bill Simmons
Coming Home gets pretty into it with the.
- [83:04]
Matt Bellany
And people forget. Brokeback Mountain did not actually win. Crash won that year. Yeah, but I didn't forget one of the worst. Yeah, Donut. Yeah. Crash was amazing. The, the pga. The Producers Guild went for Anora and those are a lot of older people, mostly men, but it's a lot of older people that I wouldn't have thought would have gone for Anora. I thought they'd go with Wicked. I thought they might go for A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan movie. The Directors Guild also went with Sean Baker for an aura. The only two real indicators so far of groups that overlap with the Oscar voters. This next weekend we've got the Saga. No, this week we've got the baftas going on in London, which has a lot of overlap. There's a lot of foreign voters. So we'll see where they go. And then the SAG awards after that are the indicators. But I think it's a five movie race between Anora, a complete unknown, Wicked, Conclave.
- [84:04]
Bill Simmons
Come on.
- [84:05]
Matt Bellany
And then you know, you got it. And the Brutal.
- [84:07]
Bill Simmons
The Brutalist has to be in there.
- [84:08]
Matt Bellany
The Brutalist has to be in there. I mean Brutalist is like was the favorite a couple weeks ago, but everybody I talk to like it. It's just polarizing. It's three and a half hours. A lot of people don't finish it. When they start watching it on the portal, they say, oh, I, I've seen it. But they don't actually finish it. The first half is better than the second half, but it's a real like, like Sinista movie. And those movies are not benefited by the preferential voting system that the Oscar has where you rank your choices and then when a movie is eliminated, that person's second, third, fourth go get attributed to the other movies. So it's designed to build consensus among the voters and I think consensus will benefit the more the broader movies like the Complete Unknown or Wicked or something that is less polarizing.
- [85:01]
Bill Simmons
That's Fantasy's theory for a Complete Unknown, which I don't think anyone thinks is a. I do.
- [85:06]
Matt Bellany
Like I'm on the Record, on the.
- [85:07]
Bill Simmons
Town as the best film.
- [85:10]
Matt Bellany
It could be a shocker. It could be the shocker of Oscars. Probably the biggest. No.
- [85:14]
Bill Simmons
Some people are on the right, some people are on the record that it could win. But I don't think anybody thinks it was the best film of 2024.
- [85:20]
Matt Bellany
What is the best film? I mean, come on now. This is all subjective. Enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was a delightful afternoon.
- [85:27]
Bill Simmons
I like the performances. The performances were great.
- [85:30]
Matt Bellany
The music's great.
- [85:30]
Bill Simmons
Movie's fine.
- [85:31]
Matt Bellany
You're watching, you're like, holy shit. These are all Bob Dylan songs. These are all. This is great. But I thought it was good. It's not like life changing. It's just a pleasant time of the movies. And to me, that's enough.
- [85:42]
Bill Simmons
I think it's gonna win. It's like 23 to 1. Yeah. Cause fantasy was explaining that preferential treatment thing to me last week. And these movies are too polarizing that are in there. And I just think the way the voting works, everyone's going to have Complete unknown in the top five. Maybe it's four, maybe it's three. A couple of people be like, I liked it the most. It's my one. And it's just going to kind of rack up votes. But it feels like I thought coda. We. We all bet on coda, which we talked about. Like, it just. That just seems to Oscar to me that year because the year was so confusing and it was like, well, everybody liked this movie. Complete Unknown kind of feels like. No, I get it. But Complete Unknown just feels people like Chalamet. I could see it winning. Anyway, this thing I'm looking at now, it's like 23 to 1. Yeah, well.
- [86:31]
Matt Bellany
And keep in mind, though, the Producers Guild uses preferential ballot, and that one went to Anora, so it can benefit there.
- [86:39]
Bill Simmons
So do you think Chalamet wins as we head toward it?
- [86:42]
Matt Bellany
That is the biggest question. It's Chalamet. Adrian Brody with Ralph Fiennes from Conclave as the dark horse.
- [86:50]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [86:50]
Matt Bellany
And I honestly, I do think Chalamet is going to win. I think that what we saw last year with Emma Stone beating Lily Gladstone. Emma Stone from Poor Things beating Lily Gladstone from Killers of the Flower Moon. I think that the voters, like Hollywood, is so desperate for young stars now, when there is someone that you can rally behind, people will go for it. Like, there's just, you know, Adrien Brody has an Oscar already. Ralph Fiennes, like, great actor, but, like, is he the future of Hollywood? No. I just feel like Chalamet, he. He has sort of stumbled into this amazing career, and he's both box office bankable and a good actor and sort of likable and like dates Kylie Jenner and is like a celebrity in the old school way.
- [87:43]
Bill Simmons
Yeah.
- [87:43]
Matt Bellany
I just feel like he's got the package people want to endorse and it's the way to honor the movie.
- [87:50]
Bill Simmons
And it would be the most fun speech.
- [87:52]
Matt Bellany
Oh, for sure, for sure. He finds. Are you kidding me? He'll thank his agent, his wife and be off. You know, Chalamet. Who knows what he'll do.
- [88:00]
Bill Simmons
The shocking thing to me is at least in the odds that I'm saying that Demi Moore is the favorite for the substance over Mikey Madison. Who. I thought. I just thought Mikey Madison was a lock. That was the best performance I saw all year.
- [88:12]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, but. But this is a career performance thing. Like, I get it. Aren't you shocked when I tell you that Demi Moore has never been nominated for an Oscar? Doesn't that shock you?
- [88:21]
Bill Simmons
I thought if her. About last night, she should have won.
- [88:24]
Matt Bellany
Or ghost like Whoopi.
- [88:26]
Bill Simmons
You didn't even blink. I was kidding about. About last night. I do love her. And about last night.
- [88:30]
Matt Bellany
About last night is a. I mean, that's.
- [88:32]
Bill Simmons
Be careful. It's a great movie. Be careful.
- [88:36]
Matt Bellany
I honestly, I haven't seen it in probably 20 years.
- [88:39]
Bill Simmons
But do you think the Amelia Perez lady would have won without the. Without all the stuff that happened? Was she the favorite or not?
- [88:45]
Matt Bellany
Demi Moore is a. Is a classic example of the Academy rallying around someone who is. It's not necessarily their best foot forward, but it's about time and this person should have been nominated in the past. And it's about longevity. Like she stuck it out and she got a movie role that was worthy of her. Finally. She gave a great speech at the Golden Globes, which I think was very strategic. Talked about how she was not taken seriously and how she had to persevere. The movie itself is about this desire to be young and to be relevant and to stay in the mix. She has the whole narrative around her. And I honestly think a lot of Academy voters won't even watch the movie and will vote for her.
- [89:30]
Bill Simmons
I like the movie and I. I understand why they had to play the last half hour the way they did, but it was not a fun last half hour.
- [89:37]
Matt Bellany
I would say that. No, it's. And honestly, most. Not most. I think a lot of people will turn it off.
- [89:42]
Bill Simmons
It's an excessive movie to say the least. But it was memorable.
- [89:48]
Matt Bellany
Yeah.
- [89:48]
Bill Simmons
I would never watch. It's not going to be in the rewatchables I'll tell you that much. And then we have Conan O'Brien.
- [89:54]
Matt Bellany
That Mikey Madison, while she's amazing, I would absolutely vote for her. If she doesn't win, it's because she's too new. She's not in Chalamet territory where she's a star and we want to endorse her. Like, she'll have her chance. It'll be the Austin Butler moment where he ended up losing to Brendan Fraser because Brendan Fraser had the narrative around him. He's a, you know, a stalwart actor who's done good work, finally had a moment in a movie that mattered, and they gave him the Oscar. It'll be the same thing if Mikey Madison loses to Demi Moore.
- [90:29]
Bill Simmons
It's tough when that was clearly the best performance of the year, other than maybe Chalamet. Like, for me, it was like the two performances that jumped out to me this year from everything I saw were those two.
- [90:40]
Matt Bellany
I'll be a little controversial here. I thought Zoe Saldana in Emilia Perez was fantastic. Singing, dancing, playing that character. She's the lead of the movie. They put her in supporting because they thought Carla Gascon was. Would be the lead and they'd have a chance to get her an Oscar there. But I think. I think Zoe Saldana is amazing in that movie.
- [91:02]
Bill Simmons
Baldoni versus Lively. Kendrick versus Drake, 2024 setup 2025. The year of the Beef. We could talk about what other beefs we want, but this just the Baldoni Blake Lively thing is the kind of story that would happen in, like, the 80s and 90s, and you'd read like a Premier magazine or Spy or vanity fair in 1994, some giant featured batting. You'd just be like, what the hell is happening?
- [91:30]
Matt Bellany
I know.
- [91:31]
Bill Simmons
Now this story is going and going.
- [91:33]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Now we're getting daily updates and they're setting up websites to attack each other. I mean, it is the difference between the Kendrick and Drake beef and this Baldoni gate that I'm calling it. There's a winner in the Kendrick Drake, and Kendrick won. I mean, very clearly he won the Beef. I don't think there's a winner in Baldoni, Blake.
- [91:56]
Bill Simmons
Just losers.
- [91:57]
Matt Bellany
They're both losers. They are both. I think Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively misplayed their hand here. They thought that they were going to go after this guy and they were just going to shut him down with this New York Times piece. And, you know, she was going to be able to get her reputation back because the stuff that came out during that press tour for it ends with us. It didn't hurt the movie. The movie grossed $300 million. That's the whole joke of this.
- [92:20]
Bill Simmons
I think it actually.
- [92:22]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, it should have just, like, walked away, gone their separate ways and, like, let it lie.
- [92:27]
Bill Simmons
It was the biggest movie she'd had in like, eight years.
- [92:30]
Matt Bellany
Brought her back. She was super hot after that.
- [92:32]
Bill Simmons
She was doing. She was doing, like, shark movies in the mid-2000s.
- [92:36]
Matt Bellany
She was. But she did take a hit on the branding side because of some of the videos and things that came out. And they looked at that and they're like, this is bullshit. This guy is out there seeding the Internet with negativity they believe, and they went after him to try to get her name back. I don't think that that worked. I think that the long, drawn out process here. Keep in mind, Baldoni has a rich guy behind him, an investor in his company, like a Peter Thiel Gawker. Not a situation style guy, but he's got. I forget his name, but he's got an investor in his company that is super wealthy and can afford to litigate against people like Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. He's got this lawyer, Brian Friedman, who is a attack dog, and his specialty is fighting for people's reputations as well as their legal rights. So he's not gonna lie down here and just let them run over him. They thought that they could go to the New York Times, get the Harvey Weinstein reporter to do this expose, and then he would bow down and probably settle and send, you know, give Blake Lively the rights to do a sequel to this movie. And he would go away. He's not going away. And they have just been slinging mud at each other. And I don't think either of them is benefiting.
- [93:52]
Bill Simmons
Well, you. I mean, this is your background even before you got into what you're doing now.
- [93:57]
Matt Bellany
Although I was a lawyer, I used to handle these cases.
- [94:00]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, there's real defamation potential here that, you know, the whole thing is you have to prove somebody had malicious intent with whatever they're doing. It can't be like, oh, I had this throwaway line on a podcast and then I shouldn't have said that. This is like you. Malicious intent is the key. And it feels like there's malicious intent in this, which is what's so interesting.
- [94:23]
Matt Bellany
There has to be actual malice is the standard, or reckless disregard for the truth. And the other element is it's gotta be false. If it's just unflattering, it doesn't matter. It has to be false. And I think in many of these cases, the stuff that was resurfaced by Baldoni's team allegedly was old interviews of Blake Lively speaking in her own voice. So that's not false. It may be unflattering, and there's some other stuff that they say was false. But it's very unclear who would actually win if this case ever does go to trial. Because the causation here, even if you're hiding, even if you're hiring shady characters to seed the Internet with unflattering comments, is that actionable?
- [95:15]
Bill Simmons
I was thinking more the New York Times piece of it.
- [95:18]
Matt Bellany
Oh, you mean what the New York Times published and whether that's defamation? Yes. Case, no. But I don't believe that's real. I don't think. I don't think the New York Times would lose a defamation case for going with a story based on interviews with a subject and a legal proceeding that was actually filed.
- [95:35]
Bill Simmons
Okay. Because it seemed like that, like, part of his case was they only took one side of this exchange. They had all access to all this. They only decided to print this. And that got into interesting territory. Just reading about it, I was like, ah, there's something. I could see the case.
- [95:53]
Matt Bellany
But again, the standard is whether the reporting was false.
- [95:57]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [95:58]
Matt Bellany
Was it false? You could argue that it was slanted. You could argue that it may even be misleading if you don't include the full context of something. But does it rise to the level of defamation? And should the New York Times have known and did they purposefully disregard certain facts in order to create a portrait of this guy that was false or. Or misleading? I'm not. I mean, we. During the discovery process, we will see what comes out. But from the complaint itself, I'm not convinced that. That Baldoni has a case against the Times.
- [96:35]
Bill Simmons
So you. You think this is basically a nuclear war where both sides just blew each other up and there's no winners, there's no losers. It's not even a zero sum game.
- [96:45]
Matt Bellany
My advice to them both is settle now. Go away for six months, and then come back, like, do some settlement agreement where they agree to never say each other's names again. They will never be in the same room, and they can try to salvage their reputations afterward because.
- [97:03]
Bill Simmons
So Baldoni actually, by doing everything he's done, actually, like, was able to get an equal playing field again. Because before this, felt like he was going to end his career.
- [97:12]
Matt Bellany
Depends on who you talk to. I think that his campaign has helped him. After the New York Times piece, keep in mind when that piece came out, his agency dropped him. He had a bunch of movies set up that went away. That New York Times piece did actually hurt him a lot. So understandably, he returned fire. The, the, the end result now, though is that they are just like machine gunning each other from 10ft away and they're, they're killing each other.
- [97:49]
Bill Simmons
There's a Taylor Swift piece too, that's kind of fun.
- [97:52]
Matt Bellany
Oh, my God. I mean, do you believe that she's masterminding the whole thing?
- [97:56]
Bill Simmons
No, I don't.
- [97:57]
Matt Bellany
I do think that she's probably, she probably encouraged it from the beginning. Everything that she has done in her career has been to stand up for herself, go on the offensive, fight back. If she's. Especially against. If there's, if there's a guy who's been mistreating her in the public, she's going to fight back. And she probably said to Blake, fuck this guy, go after him.
- [98:19]
Bill Simmons
Well, I don't know if you know this, but Blake Ladley has my wife and daughter's support because both of them have landed on. I don't like that guy's face as the reason to side on against Baldoni. So there you go.
- [98:32]
Matt Bellany
I did enjoy that the paparazzi happened to see him on vacation with his family and happened to photograph him shirtless in a like beefcake pose. And those photos happened to be circulated about how he was spending time with his family on vacation. So that's it. The machinations going on here, that's the really interesting thing is just the whole underground PR world with these crisis people are fighting for the, essentially the share of mindsets of people online. And that to me is a new world in crisis pr. That is pretty fascinating and something you've.
- [99:12]
Bill Simmons
Been writing about and talking about for the last couple years. Some PR people who are just absolute barracudas and some of them are in this.
- [99:20]
Matt Bellany
The woman who repped him, Steph Jones, who also rep. Tom Brady, has a. I mean, she is just the worst. The worst. She slimed me. Like I just. The level of depravity of some of these crisis PR people is, is you think it's a low and then they go lower.
- [99:38]
Bill Simmons
What was the best crisis PR TV show ever? A couple of people have taken swings at this scandal.
- [99:44]
Matt Bellany
I mean, that was a lawyer, but scandal was good. They had. Remember there was the Courtney Cox one or she.
- [99:48]
Bill Simmons
That was the one I was thinking of.
- [99:50]
Matt Bellany
Feels like an editor of like an US Weekly type, right?
- [99:53]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, yeah. And then Kendrick Drake. Is that over? Do people care Anymore. Is this going to be it or is. Is there like, another level to this?
- [100:03]
Matt Bellany
I mean, Drake's got to fight back, right? He's got an album.
- [100:06]
Bill Simmons
I know, but it's. It feels like it just keeps going and going. Does Hollywood care?
- [100:10]
Matt Bellany
No, it's a music industry thing.
- [100:13]
Bill Simmons
Okay.
- [100:13]
Matt Bellany
But I think that. I think that people in the music industry definitely care. Certainly Universal Music Group cares because they rep. They have both of them on their label and they got sued by one of their own artists for defamation.
- [100:25]
Bill Simmons
That story is nuts. Where. Where do you stand on.
- [100:28]
Matt Bellany
The NFL Certainly cared. They wouldn't let him say pedophile on the Super Bowl.
- [100:32]
Bill Simmons
They also stuck up for him, though. They let. I mean, I think there were some lawsuits behind the scene that they, they kind of aligned with Kendrick maybe.
- [100:40]
Matt Bellany
I mean, it's pretty remarkable that that super bowl perform performance aired like that is. It was a openly political, you know, a, A, A diss track. A. I mean, the fact that would have never aired on the Super Bowl 10 years ago or about four years ago, maybe even four years ago. I, Yeah, I, I just feel like that. The fact that, that, that. And, and, you know, his, It. His fans loved it. I think there were probably a lot of, like, old white people in America who, like, didn't get it or.
- [101:12]
Bill Simmons
I could feel them in the Superdome.
- [101:14]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, exactly.
- [101:15]
Bill Simmons
You could feel the energy for, like, yeah.
- [101:17]
Matt Bellany
Donald Trump not rocking along to Kendrick's.
- [101:19]
Bill Simmons
He was not.
- [101:20]
Matt Bellany
But honestly, that's kind of great. Like, I kind of love that that happened on the Super Bowl.
- [101:25]
Bill Simmons
Speaking of Trump, Hollywood during the second Trump term, very different versus the first Trump term. What are the. What are the differences you're seeing early on here?
- [101:36]
Matt Bellany
I think Hollywood is sort of in this weird place where people just don't know what's going on. The whole vibe shift. People talk about all the culture is changing and all these DEI is under attack, and all the whole diversity movement's under attack. Hollywood people are, I think, a little more cautious to speak out against Trump than they were the first time around where the whole resistance movement and there was, you know, he barely won. And, you know, there was this. This feeling of, of, you know, this, this. This guy squeaked into the White House and who is he? And the chaos now that Trump has been more normalized, I feel like Hollywood is kind of figuring out how to respond. And you've got these big media companies that are, like, openly paying him off. I mean.
- [102:25]
Bill Simmons
Well, that's what my question. Is there more. Is there more fear of him this time? Around with some of the decisions big companies are making because it feels like.
- [102:31]
Matt Bellany
There is totally, totally. I mean this is a president that's like purely transactional. It's what are you doing for me? And Disney, which had this open lawsuit with Trump over the George Stephanopoulos claims on gma, they just said, you know what, it's not worth dealing with it. We're going to pay him $15 million, settle this. And if I'm Bob Iger, that's kind of an easy decision because the last thing you want with this president is to have a politicized brand. Disney thrives on being a non political brand and it had been politicized by Trump and others. So just pay him off and he'll leave you alone. We saw today Disney put out a revise on their DEI initiatives to change their diversity language to more like talent focus, to kind of soften what they are doing in the diversity space. I think a lot of Hollywood companies are looking at Disney and what they're doing to see where they are going to go on this. They don't want to get sued by the Justice Department because they are looking to make shows with, you know, diverse people of color voices. They want to avoid any problems like that. And now we got this Paramount sale. Paramount, the studio is for sale, actually they have a deal, they're selling to David Ellison and Trump is now threatening to hold that up based on the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris on CBS, which he claims was biased. So there's a whole dealing with Trump issue now in Hollywood that I think people don't really know how to deal with.
- [104:01]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. And what happens, what happens if he goes to Disney and he's just take him off the air, I'm just going to cause incredible amounts of trouble the next four years. Or what if he goes to Paramount and says Colbert's got to go for me to even think about doing this. So all this would be bad for James Baby Doll Dixon, by the way.
- [104:22]
Matt Bellany
But it would be. That's where I look at everything through the lens of is this good or bad?
- [104:26]
Bill Simmons
But what happens if he makes that part of the thing and would somebody stand up to him or would they.
- [104:32]
Matt Bellany
Be like, ah, all right, something like that? Where if the President said I want you to fire Stephen Colbert, something like that, I think they would probably stand up against. But it's the more nuanced.
- [104:45]
Bill Simmons
Are you sure?
- [104:46]
Matt Bellany
I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
- [104:48]
Bill Simmons
I'm not sure. But it's like you think they pay 100 million a year for the show. It gets out, but it's like, oh, we were thinking about pushing my. Like they could spin it a certain way.
- [104:57]
Matt Bellany
They could, but Trump would probably brag about it and then who's next? And then it's a purge.
- [105:04]
Bill Simmons
Would you be surprised?
- [105:06]
Matt Bellany
I would be surprised with that. I think if you're running a media company, you have to think bigger picture than that. And what's the implications for a move like that? Something like what Sherry Redstone is dealing with right now at Paramount, where Trump has this $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News over the Kamala Harris interview. Everybody I have talked to in the legal world said it is a totally bullshit lawsuit, would never win. But Trump is doubling down. He's screaming about it on social media. So if you're Shari Redstone and you can get rid of this by donating $20 million to the Trump presidential library and it doesn't, and it takes away a threat to your $8 billion merger with Skydance that you want, I think that's an easy answer. You do that, you pay him $20 million and you make that go away. That, that is the, that's more like the, the kinds of stuff that's going to go on.
- [106:01]
Bill Simmons
Do you think the horrific fires and everything we're going through here in Southern California is going to change at all the way Hollywood thinks about Southern California, thinks about Hollywood as a business? Because I always felt like it was shifting that like so many people are filming stuff outside of LA and California because the tax breaks are so much better in Canada, you go to frickin South Africa, you go to Atlanta. And it always seemed like missed money. And I wonder, are they going to start thinking outside the box with stuff like that and maybe trying to bring people back?
- [106:34]
Matt Bellany
I think they already are. I mean, there's this proposal in California to double the tax credits and that was a Gavin Newsom thing that he put in place after the strikes because the strike, I mean, production was already really hurting in the area.
- [106:46]
Bill Simmons
Oh yeah.
- [106:47]
Matt Bellany
And the strikes were awful. And they had this, you know, go up to about 700 and something million in tax credits, which would be good, but wouldn't change the calculus for most productions. I mean, they're shooting reality shows outside of California now because the economics are so much better. That Rob Lowe game show, the game show for people who can't read that aired after the super bowl. That thing shoots, I believe, in Ireland because it's just cheaper to go there and fly all those people there. And that's what I Think the movement now within the industry is to try to use some of the momentum from the fires. I hate to use that word, momentum when you're talking about fire aftermath. But there is this recognition that if you. They want the industry to come back in la, there's going to need to be investment. So I think that there will be a state investment. I don't know about federal. I mean, you never know what Trump and them are going to do. But statewide, yes. And then some of these companies, you know, imagine the goodwill if Disney or Universal, one of these said, you know what, not only are we going to make five more movies in la, but we're going to build a soundstage in Altadena and it's going to employ 300 people and provide jobs that people don't have to go to Bulgaria for the summer to do their jobs in movies. And I think there'd be a lot of goodwill around that. Ultimately push comes to shove its money, and if the economics make sense, they'll do it. But there is momentum now to at least make the economics better.
- [108:18]
Bill Simmons
That's what I'm really hoping for. And most people aren't going to care about this, but we both know so many people who. You're making content and you're traveling to these crazy places and you're away from your family for four or five months and it's just like, why are we doing it this way? Why aren't we filming as much that you watch this? TV shows, movies from the 70s and 80s and everything's in LA, and why can't we get back to that?
- [108:42]
Matt Bellany
And this is not a new thing, but it has become more pronounced as the incentive to exit has gotten bigger. Some of the, I mean, you shoot in the UK, it's like a 40% rebate on everything, on star salaries. Star salaries are currently excluded in California, so you can't get a rebate on paying Tom Cruise $20 million. But in the UK, in the UK, you can get 40% of that back. And, you know, like, everybody I know is impacted. Lucas. Lucas Shaw, my Monday guy on the town, his fiance is in Chicago for a bunch of months because they're shooting a show she's producing and they're. They got credits to do it there.
- [109:22]
Bill Simmons
I sat next to somebody at one of the Dodger playoff games. He's like, yeah, I'm about to go to South Africa filming this BET show. And I'm like, is it like set in South Africa? It's like, no, no, it's just cheaper to shoot There I'm like, what you're. You. Multiple kids is going away. It's just. They feel like they have to fix that. Meanwhile, the only people that have figured out business in LA is the Dodgers, who you notice. I know, I. We have to end on that. They've ruined baseball. They figured out how to make Japan the second revenue stream they've owned. They now own Japan and California and baseball's no longer fun. You've ruined it completely. All.
- [110:00]
Matt Bellany
All revenue streams that are readily available to any Major League Baseball team should they choose to invest in their own team.
- [110:07]
Bill Simmons
It's too late now. It's basically like the Japan Dodgers is. Is a wrap. You just get everybody.
- [110:12]
Matt Bellany
Now, listen, we'll see, you know, best laid plans. A lot of by, by the mid season, we might have five pitchers on the.
- [110:18]
Bill Simmons
You feel good about this. Like, you really feel good about rigging a system like this. You feel like as long as you can sleep at night.
- [110:24]
Matt Bellany
I get it, I get it that other teams are upset about this, but this is not a. Like, they're not cheating. These are the rules. You can do what you want to do. And you know, now that football's over, everybody in la, it's Mookie bets season for everybody in la except one guy. You.
- [110:44]
Bill Simmons
This is what I would say if I rooted for the team that was ruining a professional sport in real time. I would say, hey, these are the rules.
- [110:52]
Matt Bellany
So I get it, I get it. But we've won one championship. We won the 2020 championship in, you know, sort of booby prize fashion. It doesn't guarantee anything. And if the Dodgers want to pay that, they are making so much money by investing. Yes, they have a great local TV deal. Yes, they have private equity owners that can structure these deals in a way that defers all this money and they can make that work. But this is not some system that is out of reach for most of these owners. They are choosing not to invest. And if your owner chooses not to invest, scream at your owner.
- [111:31]
Bill Simmons
Now, I'm not actually mad at the Dodgers. The Lakers are the team that makes me mad. And if you're like the Clippers and you've really thought outside the box, you build this awesome arena. It started, there's finally signs of the end with the Lakers with LeBron hitting 40 and you just. They don't have any draft picks left. Like, they're just going to suck. They're not very, you know, especially well run. It's like, here we go. We actually have a chance to maybe take this. It's way more fun to go to a Clipper game. And then in one dumb trade, the Lakers are back. Luka is going to be the guy now for the next 10 years and none of it matters. And Luka will be the biggest star in LA in basketball.
- [112:09]
Matt Bellany
Do you think so?
- [112:10]
Bill Simmons
I do. I do. And there's no way for the Clippers to combat that. Like Lucas, you don't.
- [112:15]
Matt Bellany
You don't subscribe to this whole theory that the NBA is suffering because Americans don't root for the foreign players like they do for the American players.
- [112:24]
Bill Simmons
Well, they're about to because Luka just went to their most important franchise.
- [112:28]
Matt Bellany
Well, that's. And this is a big.
- [112:30]
Bill Simmons
This is it. But I even attest he's going to be gigantically popular.
- [112:34]
Matt Bellany
Do you think Luka can get to LeBron levels of fandom? I don't.
- [112:41]
Bill Simmons
It's an interesting question. I think if it's going to happen, this is the team for it to happen. And if the trade can light the fire under him and make him truly great and he can win like three titles in a row and average 30 a game and be the best guy in the league, like, yeah, that's going to happen. We would have said it wasn't going to happen with LeBron. There was a whole LeBron versus Kobe thing in 08 09, 2010. He goes to Miami the first year he sucks in the finals. It seemed. It seemed like it wasn't going to happen for him. Like, you just never know. Luca has.
- [113:13]
Matt Bellany
I will defer to you on, you know, all things NBA, but I just have a hard time believing there's going to be appetite for Luca to star in a Space Jam sequel.
- [113:24]
Bill Simmons
Yeah, but nobody saw the Space Jam sequel.
- [113:27]
Matt Bellany
It bugged well, but he got a green lit. He got a green lit and people were buying shows from him for a while.
- [113:32]
Bill Simmons
Yeah. And now we're not.
- [113:33]
Matt Bellany
Steph Curry has a production company and people think he's a media personality. I just don't know that the foreign players have as much cachet as the US Born players.
- [113:42]
Bill Simmons
We talked about this many times on the pod. We have not seen it happen yet. I think if it doesn't happen in this case with a guy on the Lakers.
- [113:51]
Matt Bellany
Yeah.
- [113:51]
Bill Simmons
You know, especially if he becomes really good. I still, like, anecdotally, just I'm sure you feel the same. Like all the LA fans are going bonkers. Like they can't believe. So this will be the test case and I think this is the best possible guy for them to get it's.
- [114:05]
Matt Bellany
Funny, we're talking about the appeal of foreign players when who's the biggest star in LA right now? Shohei Ohtani.
- [114:10]
Bill Simmons
Right.
- [114:11]
Matt Bellany
And like no one seems to give a shit that he doesn't even speak English. He does, but not very much. And like my kid, you know, has three Ohtani jerseys. Like the frickin bobblehead night that's going to be Lucas. It was like the Beatles.
- [114:24]
Bill Simmons
So let's, let's end on this. Any LA celebrity, athlete, actor, musician, actress, you name it, walks into a restaurant right now in February 2025, who stops the restaurant the hardest?
- [114:42]
Matt Bellany
Oh, Taylor Swift.
- [114:43]
Bill Simmons
Okay, so she's clear. Number one.
- [114:45]
Matt Bellany
Clearly the number one most famous celebrity in the world.
- [114:48]
Bill Simmons
The most. Like you're in mid bite and you're just like, oh my God, it's Taylor Swift. So she's one. So who's two?
- [114:55]
Matt Bellany
Two is a tougher question. I mean, I think it's generational if it's for you and me, Leo. Right, right.
- [115:04]
Bill Simmons
So you're saying 25 and under. Maybe it's Chalamet.
- [115:07]
Matt Bellany
Chalamet maybe. Or Zendaya.
- [115:09]
Bill Simmons
I don't think it's Chalamet. Oh, Zendaya is a good one.
- [115:12]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Or maybe, maybe a music star. Honestly, the music stars are just so much bigger.
- [115:16]
Bill Simmons
There's no football star. I don't think Mahomes does it.
- [115:19]
Matt Bellany
No, Mahomes is boring. And maybe someone like Selena Gomez, for young people, she's just so immensely popular and she means nothing to me and I don't even really, like, I don't really get her as an actress, but for young people, she means a ton. Same with Zendaya. Beyond that, like, it's just so generational now. Tom Cruise, probably the biggest movie, movie star out there.
- [115:45]
Bill Simmons
It's so funny that Taylor has this locked up in like a crazy, crazy. Maybe Nobody in the 21st century has locked it up like this.
- [115:54]
Matt Bellany
Can you think of anyone else? No, no, I'd say probably most famous person in the world other than like the Beyonce or Donald Trump.
- [116:05]
Bill Simmons
Beyonce. Second. No, I'm saying as number two, maybe.
- [116:09]
Matt Bellany
Beyonce's a huge star, but Beyonce doesn't actually sell that many albums anymore. She's, you know, Taylor was the. Had the number one album of last year and the number one tour and is the number one, you know, celebrity on paparazzi radar. So I think he's in another league.
- [116:28]
Bill Simmons
The guy who's figured out the best, the best version of a celebrity is Mookie Betts. He lives in, lives in la. So there's a kajillion celebrities here. He's not that big. Like he's like 5, 9, 5 10.
- [116:40]
Matt Bellany
Looks like a regular dude.
- [116:41]
Bill Simmons
He slides in. He just goes to Laker games. He goes to like clipper games. He can just go anywhere and you kind of don't even really know it's Mookie Betts. He, he has it the best.
- [116:51]
Matt Bellany
He can bowl a 300. He, he, he makes $300 million. He, he makes a $300 million contract. And he just has a kick ass house in the valley and lives his life, you know, pretty great.
- [117:03]
Bill Simmons
You know who's up there in a stop the restaurant party standpoint. I talked about this on Sunday night is Shaq just cause of the size and how recognizable he is.
- [117:11]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, the NBA guys obviously have it.
- [117:13]
Bill Simmons
It's that huge advantage. Brady has it too. Brady's like six, six. So when he comes in, he's like six inches, nine inches taller than everybody. And you just notice him.
- [117:22]
Matt Bellany
And you can also probably push him over. Light breeze would push him over these days.
- [117:26]
Bill Simmons
Come on. All right, Matt Bauer.
- [117:28]
Matt Bellany
Dude, I know your friends. Can you tell them to eat a sandwich, please?
- [117:31]
Bill Simmons
Not friends with Brady. No, no. Yeah, I'm not friends.
- [117:34]
Matt Bellany
You just idolize him.
- [117:35]
Bill Simmons
I, well did once upon a time. Yeah.
- [117:39]
Matt Bellany
Listen, if he were, if he played for my team, I would idolize him too.
- [117:43]
Bill Simmons
Matt Bellany, you can listen to him on the town. You can read him on the Puck, an excellent website. And then what else? Anything. That's it. What else?
- [117:58]
Matt Bellany
I don't know. That's it. Yeah, listen to the town. Listen. Read my Puck newsletter called what I'm hearing.
- [118:04]
Bill Simmons
That's it. Someday Craig Horbeck will stop a restaurant.
- [118:07]
Matt Bellany
Someday he will be.
- [118:08]
Bill Simmons
It's going to happen soon.
- [118:10]
Matt Bellany
It might be T.G.I.
- [118:11]
Bill Simmons
Fridays. Thanks, Bellany.
- [118:14]
Matt Bellany
Thank you.
- [118:15]
Bill Simmons
All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Brian Curtis and Matt Bellany. Thanks to Ceruti and Kyle and Gahao as well. Don't forget, you can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can also watch this on Spotify. I hope you did because we're going video podcasts from now on on Spotify and new rewatchables we put up on Monday night. The Blues Brothers. If you missed it, I will have another podcast for you on Thursday. Enjoy the middle of the.
- [118:48]
Matt Bellany
On.
- [118:50]
Bill Simmons
I don't have.
- [118:53]
Matt Bellany
With him.