Rory’s Special Win, Beware of the Clips, NBA Playoff Gut Reactions, and the Luka Trade Part 93 With Ryen Russillo

Summary

The Bill Simmons Podcast Summary Episode: Rory’s Special Win, Beware of the Clips, NBA Playoff Gut Reactions, and the Luka Trade Part 93 With Ryen Russillo
Release Date: April 14, 2025

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1. Rory McIlroy’s Emotional Masters Win

The episode delves deep into Rory McIlroy's remarkable performance at the Masters Tournament, highlighting both his triumphs and the emotional toll of his journey.

Bill Simmons (00:04:09):
"Rory was favored, which surprised me because sometimes watching his tournaments feels like watching a roller coaster ride."

Simmons reflects on Rory's volatility during tournaments, drawing parallels to basketball players like Steph Curry who exhibit fluctuating performances within a single game. The discussion underscores the immense pressure Rory faces, not just personally but also from fans who deeply invest in his success.

Ryan Rossillo (00:05:20):
"Golf presents this unique reset opportunity where one bad shot can recalibrate everything, unlike team sports where momentum shifts more fluidly."

Russillo emphasizes the solitary nature of golf, comparing it to team dynamics in sports like basketball and football. He appreciates Rory's ability to handle immense pressure, noting moments where Rory showed vulnerability yet managed to retain his composure, ultimately securing his win.

2. NBA Playoffs: Clippers vs. Warriors Highlights and Key Matchups

The conversation shifts to the NBA playoffs, focusing on the intense matchup between the Los Angeles Clippers and the Golden State Warriors.

Bill Simmons (00:35:32):
"The Clippers are the second-best team in the West, with an exceptional offense and defense coming into this game."

Simmons praises the Clippers for their balanced gameplay, highlighting key players like Kawhi Leonard and Zubac (Zubac’s impact is further dissected later). He draws attention to their strategic advantage against teams that prefer smaller lineups, emphasizing their depth and versatility.

Ryan Russillo (00:36:44):
"Zubac is pivotal for the Clippers. His defensive prowess and ability to rebound make him a game-changer."

Russillo discusses Ivica Zubac’s underrated contribution to the Clippers, comparing him to historical greats like Gasol. He points out Zubac’s consistent performance, rebounding skills, and defensive capabilities, suggesting he deserves recognition as one of the top centers in the NBA.

3. James Harden and the Clippers’ Strategy

The duo analyzes James Harden's role within the Clippers, considering his chemistry with teammates and his impact on playoff dynamics.

Bill Simmons (00:43:39):
"Harden’s collaboration with Leonard and Zubac creates a formidable trio, though it's not the strongest big three this year."

Simmons acknowledges the synergy between Harden and his teammates but remains cautious about labeling it as the league’s premier trio. He underscores the Clippers' strategic adjustments, especially during critical moments when key players enter or exit the game.

Ryan Russillo (00:47:10):
"The Clippers have tailored their offense around Harden’s strengths, especially his ability to orchestrate plays from the point."

Russillo highlights Harden’s offensive intelligence and his ability to adapt under pressure, suggesting that the Clippers' offensive strategies are well-aligned with Harden’s playstyle, enhancing their chances in the playoffs.

4. MVP Battle: Giannis Antetokounmpo vs. Nikola Jokic

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the ongoing MVP race, with a focus on Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic.

Ryan Russillo (00:83:12):
"Giannis has been on a tear, making it hard to overlook his contributions. His consistency has been LeBron-like."

Russillo advocates for Giannis, emphasizing his all-around performance and leadership on the court. He compares Giannis’s consistency to LeBron James, suggesting that Giannis is a strong contender for MVP, especially considering his recent performances.

Bill Simmons (00:89:15):
"Nikola Jokic's offensive versatility and his ability to elevate the Nuggets make him a top MVP candidate. His performance this season is unparalleled."

Simmons counters by highlighting Jokic’s unique skill set and his critical role in the Nuggets’ success. He praises Jokic’s ability to impact the game through scoring, rebounding, and playmaking, positioning him as a frontrunner in the MVP race.

5. Luka Doncic Trade: Impact and Analysis

The podcast addresses the controversial trade involving Luka Doncic, acknowledging its profound impact on the league.

Bill Simmons (00:106:23):
"The Luka trade was one of the most seismic shifts in NBA history, fundamentally altering the landscape of the league."

Simmons expresses frustration over the trade, questioning the long-term implications for both teams involved. He discusses the strategic missteps and the unexpected outcomes that have emerged, contemplating the future trajectories of the Mavericks and their newly acquired assets.

Ryan Russillo (00:107:25):
"Trading Luka was a pivotal moment. It's reshaped team dynamics and will influence team strategies for years to come."

Russillo agrees, emphasizing the trade’s significance and its ripple effects across the NBA. He speculates on how the Mavericks and other teams might adjust their rosters and strategies in response to this monumental trade.

6. Defensive Player of the Year Race

The discussion shifts to defensive accolades, spotlighting candidates like Marcus Smart and Rudy Gobert.

Bill Simmons (00:94:56):
"Daniel Smart deserves a strong consideration for DPOY. His anticipation and defensive instincts are exceptional."

Simmons advocates for Smart, praising his defensive versatility and impact on the court. He contrasts him with other top contenders, arguing that Smart’s ability to disrupt opponents makes him a deserving candidate.

Ryan Russillo (00:95:27):
"Rudy Gobert's rim protection and defensive presence are unparalleled. He’s a cornerstone for any team's defense."

Russillo counters by highlighting Gobert’s dominance in defense, particularly his shot-blocking and rebounding prowess. He asserts that Gobert’s contributions provide a significant advantage to his team’s defensive schemes.

7. Schedule Conflicts: NBA Playoffs vs. Masters Tournament

The hosts express frustration over scheduling conflicts between major sports events, particularly the NBA playoffs clashing with the Masters Tournament.

Bill Simmons (00:123:36):
"It's baffling how the NBA schedules marquee playoff games during the Masters. It diminishes the visibility and significance of both events."

Simmons criticizes the NBA’s scheduling choices, arguing that important playoff games should not coincide with one of golf’s most prestigious tournaments. He suggests that adjusting the timing could benefit both leagues in terms of viewership and fan engagement.

Ryan Russillo (00:125:09):
"Scheduling Clippers vs. Warriors during the Masters created a logistical nightmare for fans and diluted the excitement for both."

Russillo echoes Simmons’ sentiments, noting that such overlaps create confusion and reduce the potential hype around pivotal matchups. He calls for better coordination to ensure that major sporting events do not compete for audience attention.

8. Notable Moments and Final Thoughts

As the episode concludes, Simmons and Russillo recap key moments and share their predictions for the ongoing playoffs.

Bill Simmons (00:86:13):
"Watching Jokic this season has been incredible. His ability to shine under pressure is something special."

Simmons lauds Jokic's performance, emphasizing his critical role in the Nuggets’ success and his exceptional statistical output. He foresees Jokic continuing to influence the MVP race and the Nuggets' playoff journey.

Ryan Russillo (00:98:37):
"Giannis is carrying the Bucks with unparalleled energy. His leadership could very well push the Bucks to the Finals."

Russillo underscores Giannis's importance to the Bucks, predicting that his relentless drive and performance will be instrumental in their quest for the championship. He remains optimistic about Giannis’s ability to lead his team through the playoffs.

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Conclusion

This episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast offers an in-depth analysis of key moments in both golf and basketball, with a particular focus on Rory McIlroy's Masters win and the dynamic NBA playoffs. Simmons and Russillo provide insightful commentary on player performances, strategic team decisions, and overarching league trends, enriched with notable quotes and expert opinions. Whether discussing individual accolades like MVP and DPOY or broader topics like major trades and scheduling conflicts, the hosts deliver a comprehensive overview that is both engaging and informative for listeners.

Transcript

[Bill Simmons]

You're listening to the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. FanDuel Sportsbook is the best place to bet on the NBA. We have these fun little Tuesday Friday player performance stuff. We have same game parlays. We have picks for me sometimes and boosts and all kinds of fun things. Get ready in the playoffs. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app today to get in on the action. And by the way, the Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit theringer.com RG to learn more. Listen to the end of this episode for additional details. Must be 21/president select states gaming problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com Coming up, an absolutely incredible day for TV watching in sports. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Michelob Ultra A superior light beer and the ultimate trophy. Win or lose, you're bound to enjoy the ride with a good beer in hand. McLob ultra crisp, refreshing, only 95 calories. A superior light beer. No matter the game, sport or season, Superior is worth playing for. So sign up for our ultra [e-mail] courtside and you can enjoy some of these games with a nice beer in your hand. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2025 Anheuser Busch Michelob Ultra registered light beer St. Louis, MO must be 21 + to order alcohol alcohol available only in select market. It's all next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I have a new rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. We did a movie from the late 90s that's a very light, fluffy movie that you'll probably be surprised we did, but it was a request by Joanna Robinson who came in to LA for a couple months and did a bunch of great stuff with us. So I let her pick a rewatchables and it's a good one and I was excited she picked the one she picked. I'm not going to tell you what it is that's coming up. Prestige TV is not covering the last of us, but we will be covering it on the House of our podcast and on the Midnight Boys as well on the Ringer verse so you can check out both of those. Celtic City episode seven, which basically tackles everything after Bird with the 90s, which was really grim and I was living in Boston for a lot of it. But there's no basketball tomorrow night so there's no better chance to catch up with Celtic city. It's on HBO 9pm or you can Catch up on all the episodes so far on Max. Coming up on this podcast, Priscilla and I, we recorded right after Rory McElroy run the MA won the Masters. And we thought it was going to be an NBA podcast, but we ended up talking about golf for the first 30 minutes. Then we went right into game 82. Clips warriors, all the playoff matchups, things we've noticed, some award stuff we're trying to figure out. And it's a really good podcast. First, our friends from Pearl, Champ. All right, we are recording. It is 4:30 Pacific time. Just watch the playoff of the Masters. We're going to talk a lot of basketball later. But that was one of the most emotional masters of all time. And I was trying to think, Rossillo, how many times have you seen a guy just pull the monkey off his back like that in your lifetime that you can remember? Because we've had different versions of it, right? Like we had LeBron in 2016, like bringing Cleveland the title. You have John elway endeavor in 97. There's just not a lot of those. I'm kind of choked up. I don't know what to do.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You sound a little off, but in a good way.

[Bill Simmons]

It was an emotional thing. I really thought, not only did he blow it, it's one of those things that just hangs with you for the rest of your career. And it becomes one of the first things mentioned. That's the point where we were hitting some sort of crossroads with his career that I don't know if you can come back from. And the weight of that is almost. It's worse than actually just winning the Masters and getting that off. Because you have to live with that the rest of your life, basically.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, there was the Steve Young one. Remember when he won the Super Bowl? And they actually were on the sideline, he was like, get the monkey off my back. And they were pretending they were pulling a monkey off of his back because it was the post Montana thing. But for golf, I'm not educated enough to run through all of this and tell you brings back memories of Royal Troon or anything. But I. I know that I was always frustrated with golf fans. Cause I'd be like, who do you root against? Like, what are you talking about? Root for good golf. I'm like, come on, there's gonna be a couple guys you hate, you know, And Bryson, ironically, was kind of that guy. He filled this villain void. But then once you start to understand, like, how golfers feel about the sport, it's. They don't really want anyone to have that moment they really don't like, I think. I think we enjoy it with the NBA and NFL. You're like, all right, good. I'm glad this guy choked. Cause he's just not my favorite. Or backs up all my arguments right as we get awesome game later today. But golfers just don't look at the sport that way, so. You're absolutely right. I mean, if he ends up after the shot on 17, that's going to become something of Masters lore. And then missing a putt, which looked like it really never had a chance on 18, it's not like it was the easiest putt. So it's not like he missed like a two or three footer and he's this choke artist. But, well.

[Bill Simmons]

But it was the second shot on 18 that starts it, right? All he has to do is basically do it in the platform. Just get in two putt. You win the Masters. He's in the trap. Then the hit out of the trap, just not quite close enough. He's got some work left. And that's, you know, that's golf. You need a four, he gets a five. And it seemed like Rose was hot in the, in the betting market heading into the playoff. I think Rory was still favored, which I was really surprised by because it's. Sometimes you watch those and you're like, how does this guy going to bounce back from this? But he bounced back. You know, one of the, one of the great shots. I was thinking watching him today, he's like one of those basketball players that just gets hot and cold during the same game. You know, like Steph's a little bit like this, right? Like, Steph today was like one for five in that clipper game. And then all of a sudden he gets hot and he's just making everything for about eight minutes. And that's, that's a little what the roller coaster rider Rory is like during these tournaments. He looks amazing, amazing, amazing. Then all of a sudden it falls back. Then he comes back the other way. And it's just the swings of. But I think the one thing that's different this time around is people wanted it so badly for him. You could feel it when we were on the course on Tuesday and Wednesday. He's clearly the most popular guy at the tournament now. He's taken the Tiger spot. But people, when you have that, when you have the emotion of all the people with you, they had that cutaway. Do you see that cutaway? When the people on 18 who were just waiting, the scoreboard changed and reflected that his Score had gone back, that he had gotten the double, and people were. They're holding their hands in their heads like something, like, really horrible had just happened. That's how badly everybody wanted it for him. So to come through with the pressure you have on yourself, but also all of these people, you don't want to let down. I don't even know if there's a comparison to that in basketball. You only have 18,000 people in the arena. This is like tens and tens of thousands of people all clustered around.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But that's the difference with the sport. Like, basketball doesn't really give you a chance to sit there and mope. Like, you kind of have to get back to it. I mean, most of the sports that we talk about all the time, there's. There's very little time to sit there and kind of think about what you're going through. And for him to double one, and then you send me a text, you go, hey, we may have to lead with this if he falls apart. And it's almost his anticipation that he's going to fall apart because he's played so well the first three rounds. And then I look it up, I'm like, oh. But then he's like, four under the next 10 holes. So I think it's kind of the sport. And even him going into the bunker, which, you're right, is the bigger part of him missing the putt on 18, is that he actually kind of cracked a smile. He almost laughed at himself, like, you're gonna be fucking kidding me. So that there was some emotion that he was showing, I thought was a better sign. And I also think it helps, probably playing 18 again all over to start the playoff, knowing, like, okay, in my second shot, like, I can't do that again, right? So I also think a lot of people in attendance, too, based on what we're talking about. Just the patrons, right? And their mindset of just wanting great things to happen and not terrible things that happen. It's a very positive group. There's. There's also something, too, which it's not. I shouldn't say selfish, but they want to see him complete the slam. So now he's the sixth guy to ever do it. You get to say that you were there in 25 at Augusta to see this. This is one of those. It's not Tiger's win, but it's one of the more memorable ones because he completes this career odyssey. Because if you think the start of his career was like, oh, my God, like, what? What can't this guy do we're going to talk about, like, is he going to win 10 majors or something like that? I remember one of the debate shows at espn, like after he got married, it was like, well, he is married. It's like, so he's the only pro athlete who's married and this is why he's playing bad now all of a sudden, like, I understand, I understand time constraints can change. As the non married guy, like, I'm aware that your schedule's a little tighter, but it just, it drove me crazy because he wasn't playing as well and there had to be a reason. It was like the only thing that anybody could point to. But he's never really been somebody that. I mean, his game itself is so enjoyable. I think he had a shot yesterday where I was watching. He's like 209 out, hits a six iron and he smokes it into the air too. He throws it like a dart and you're like, how did you get it that far at that angle? So he's also probably as much fun as everybody or anyone on the tour, on top of everybody, rooting for somebody for like, like him to complete this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, there's a fearlessness to him with some of the shots he hits. He had a couple today where he's in front of trees and, you know, branches, all kinds of things. You're like, wait, is he going for this?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, there's the tower shot, there's the one on the left side on the drive where he gets a decent enough bounce and then you're like, he's going to go through that or over it or what. You know, it's like the guy that never gives in to just go, let me save the hole. He's constantly thinking, like, what's the best score? Can I get on? He plays the game the way no one should ever play it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, we did a thing on my pod this week about the people that the gallery responded to the most because Tiger's basically done. And there was two different tournaments when Tiger played. It was basically the Tiger tournament was happening and the gallery's just following him. And then everybody else is playing now Tiger's gone and Rory had become the guy, but Bryson was kind of, you know, gaining on it. And you could feel like those two had separated themselves from everybody else who put, who was at the Masters, basically with the fans, with the reactions, with the interest, everything. So then the fact that they're teamed up head to head for this last one. He double bogeys the first hole and it just seemed Like Bryson was going to run over him like a freight train. The opposite happens. Then it seems like he has it. Then all of a sudden he doesn't. Then Rose makes that crazy putt on 18 right as like, you know, Rory's starting to maybe waver a tiny bit, but it's. I can't. I. The five Masters I probably remember the most. And I don't remember golf the same way I remember basketball, where I can tell you every single finals and oh, in the western finals this happened. But the Masters is the one that I've cared about the most my whole life. 86 Nicholas the Faldo Norman Masters, the Tiger in 2019 and then this one, I think were at least four of the best. I'm sure there's a bunch of others, but those are the four that the FAL don't Orman Master. I don't remember anybody not talking about that for like four days after that. Just felt like this life altering. Just never seen an athlete fall apart like that, have you? No. That was example of an athlete just completely falling apart.

[Ryan Rossillo]

It might be the only time I watched golf and cared during college. Like that round.

[Bill Simmons]

Right, right.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I mean sports are hard to find a way to. To fit into the. We didn't have cable, I think in our house for like two or three years too, on top of everything else. So it's like, all right, network tv, we don't have a ton of options. I just remember not being super dialed into 162Red Sox games during college. And I just remember that afternoon. You know, it's a. It's a hungover whatever. It's kind of is it muddy out or sunny out in Vermont? And then you realize like that really is one of those results you'll never.

[Bill Simmons]

Forget where you were and hugging him at the end. I don't ever remember anything like that either. Rafaldo felt worse about winning than probably anybody who's ever won a golf tournament. But you know, we were talking about it. We were in there. You have team sports. You have a sport like the Clippers warriors game that we're going to talk about, you know, a little bit later. And guys can affect the games. Draymond has that terrible put where he just should have gone up with it. He's trying to draw a foul and he screwed that play up. It's not the entire reason they lost. It's the thing you would think to golf. You're just by yourself. There's nobody else. There's no other reason you're gonna win or Lose. It's all you. You can't blame anybody. You're there with. With your thoughts, you're there with the momentum of it. You're there with I. All of a sudden, I just don't feel great about this drive, but I have to hit it anyway. All these little moments that you're just battling. We were saying it's the only sport where you have to be, like, insanely competitive but also completely calm. Is there any other sport like that? You have two emotions that are direct. I was talking to my wife about this yesterday, because I was explaining her the whole Rory thing, and I was like, here's this sport where you just have these two things that don't make sense together. I have to be a driven, competitive maniac, but I also have to be completely calm at the worst possible moments of whatever I'm competing in, or the scariest or the hairiest, whatever you want to say. And that's why there's so few great golfers. You can't juggle that, you know?

[Ryan Rossillo]

No, it's a really great way of putting it, because I remember when the Sloan paper came out about, there's no such thing as clutch. And I thought, okay, you know, there's all sorts of great basketball players. Like, if we want to just shave it down to down one score tied, takes the shot, and then you look at the field goal makes versus field goal attempts. Like, your favorite players have awful stats on those. Like, there's all sorts of guys you can go through and be like, this guy's a killer. And then you're like, he's 2 for 30 in these situations, you know? And then if people hate one of those guys, they'll put that up and it's like, okay. I mean, it feels a little like politics. You'd be like, what's your guy doing? You know, what's your guy shooting in that situation? Which completely eliminates, like, the shot down three with 58 seconds left to go. That ties it. It's like, that's a really clutch shot that matters, but it gets lost in the filtering with a lot of this stuff, right? So when that paper came out, it wasn't like, I didn't do a oh, nerds thing, like some of the Sloan papers that had come out early on where it talked about the ways to block shots because it wasn't always gaining the possession. But I just felt like, okay, if there's math that can't prove that this thing is true, can't we prove it in another way? And that doesn't mean, yeah, it's not true, right? Doesn't it, like, do we believe that there are people that are really tight in big spots and the sport of golf, like, probably that shows up more than any other sport. You know, I don't know if it's somebody throwing an interception. I don't know if it's. Maybe it's missing a free throw is the closest thing we have to a putt in the other sports. Maybe it's an error. But, you know, again, that's not going to happen. You're not going to have enough chances, or the math would make any sense. So if we sit here and we agree that there are people that can choose choke that are just not comfortable, then we should be able to figure out a way. Maybe there isn't Matt that backs it up, but clearly there are people that are just a little bit more comfortable coming back from that. And golf presents this reset where you open with a double for Rory, and it's like, here we go. And everybody sitting around watching just knows what would happen to them. It's going to fall apart. It's like, well, again, this is why these guys are the best in the world. There's nothing in the other sports. I don't watch a receiver get open going, I can do that. I don't watch somebody get a shot off in basketball thinking, oh, that, you know, I would like. We just. We've accepted the gap, but with golf, because there are moments where even the worst golfer can have, like, this great shot, and everybody, like kids around or your friends are asking you, like, what would you do on 18 right now? There's that disconnect where, I don't know that we appreciate the mental reset, hold the hole that these guys have to do to keep themselves in it and then ultimately win a major.

[Bill Simmons]

It's the biggest disconnect between fans and the people covering whatever sport you're going to pick and the people who actually do it. Like, even. Did you see UFC last night?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I didn't.

[Bill Simmons]

So Lopez, who ends up losing, and he just seemed tight in the first couple rounds against Vogue, and then as it went along in the last couple rounds, he kind of became who he was and even stuff like that. You think, yeah, I can see it. I can see why you get tight. What was the most nervous you've ever been professionally doing anything? Not to compare us to athletes, but it's just an interesting, interesting sidetrack.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Look, I probably the first time I ever called a baseball game, because it was the first time I was Ever on the air, the nervousness went away pretty quickly. I was definitely a little tuned up to host them, but.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, how about when you were actually established professionally, but there was still a moment where you had nerves?

[Ryan Rossillo]

The only thing I can think of is anchoring. When I had to anchor, because it wasn't something everybody told me I couldn't do it. So I was like, all right, what were you anchoring? The combine.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, interesting.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah. Because then I actually had to pay attention to all the cues and the directors and all this stuff. We're pretty close to being called absolute losers for comparing anchoring the combine to winning the Masters.

[Bill Simmons]

But I'm just talking about when you feel something that you feel like you can do, but then your heart starts pounding and the pressure comes in. Because it could be anything, Right? I remember the first time I hosted PTI.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, that's a good one.

[Bill Simmons]

10 minutes before, and you kind of sit down, you're getting in, and they hook you in. And I was just like, I'm fucking terrified. I'm like, literally, I'm terrified. And I wonder. In sports, you're not going to be like that because it's repetition and you've done so many things. But I'm sure there's moments where you're like, I'm good. I've done this a million, kajillion times, but I'm still kind of terrified. And golf has to be the number one for that. I think tennis is a good one where if like, oh, I got to get this serve in. I'm down 30, 40. I've got to get this first serve in. And that's just a different. Once you start thinking about it, it's different basketball. Like, I remember the scariest free throws. I've talked about this scary. Scariest free throws I ever saw were the Ray Allen shot game when it looked like the game was over. And then Miami hit the three and they fouled Kawhi. And they were. San Antonio was up, too, and they came to our side where our set was, and the crowd was just so loud and things were shaking, and Kawhi was like, what, 22? He had to make these two free throws basically to quench the game. And I was just watching, going, this seems too hard. I don't know how he's going to make this. And he missed the first one. He made the second. But when you're in the vicinity of something like that and you can actually feel the pressure and you're just a bystander, it's unreal. I'VE been lucky enough to. Been to a lot of different games and events where you've had that feeling. And it's just, there's no way. You can't feel it even if you're a player. Like, even, like Clippers Rockets, when the clippers collapsed in 2015, like, you could feel that in the arena. You could feel the energy shifting. So I'm sure you feel it in golf, too. Not to mention the nerves, the benefit.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Of all these other sports that we're talking about for the most part. I mean, granted, not so much baseball, but basketball. I think once you're out there and the physical part of the game takes over, you know, it's. It just, it's kind of a wake up. Like, even if you're nervous, like, it's those moments where you have time to think. In football, like, most people will tell you they don't really feel like they're ready to go until they get absolutely blasted. And then once they get blasted, it's like, okay, you know, let's, let's.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, banging bodies probably helps with the nervous energy a little bit.

[Ryan Rossillo]

With golf, to sit there and to think and you have the guy in front of their group screwing up. So everybody's kind of delayed on 18. So now you have even more time to think. But Rory's great off the tee. You know, it's. It's that second shot that we would have thought about a lot differently and would have remembered forever. Now we'll just forget it within a week, right? Which is great. Which is, which is good for Rory. But, yeah, they're just. There's probably. You know, you always wonder, like, there's, there's, like, it's not a G league guy. But if you ask NBA players, like, hey, was there somebody that you grew up with or somebody you played and be like, you know, this guy was nasty. Like, he just gave it to us all the time. And you're like, oh, what happened to him? Like, oh, coach fucked him, transfer. All these different things. You just wonder how many great golfers there are that can't handle any of this stuff. Like, if no one's around and they're just playing another guy, they're just as good as them. But once they're on this kind of platform or at this level, I just imagine it's a massive separator that we don't even think about compared to the physical skills of these guys.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, my buddy Nathan Hubbard, who co hosts the Fairway Rolling podcast with House, and his brother's on the Tour Mark, and he's talked about this on the podcast. So I'm not talking out of school. Mark got to 63 one year. He was really close. And Nathan's dream as his brother is for him to crack it and make the Masters and have his brother be at the Masters. That's the dream. And he's come close, and it's what you're talking about. He's got 95% of it, and he can't just put together the four straight days in a row or the nine holes when he really needs it in a big tournament or whatever. The one thing you need to get in the top 10 to get some exemption. And it's always like. It's always like one shot, one hole where it can't happen. And there's probably like dozens of guys like him right there, almost there. And it's just like, you know, I even look at the NBA, some of the guys that we talk about that we like watching, and you think, like, is Cam Whitmore sitting on the Rockets bench going, if I just got playing time, I would. I could potentially be an all star. There's gotta be like 50 guys in the league, right? That. Right. Tari Eason's like, I'm a second team all defense guy. I just don't get enough minutes. So, yeah, it's a razor thin margin. I think the one thing with Rory, and I just think in general authenticity, is making a big kind of comeback push in the mid-2020s. And we had this whole era with sports with the guys being told to fall down when they win a tennis tournament. And, you know, every. You could see cut to the coach waving for, what was it? Agassi? Go down. Go down after he won. And people trying to manipulate certain moments. And watching Rory just collapse and just be that overcome by winning, that, to me was the most authentic thing we're probably going to see this year, I would guess. Yeah.

[Ryan Rossillo]

And look, I give Rory a lot of credit for that because, you know, there's just. Everything's covered, right? And this has been for a long time. And so, you know, there's certain athletes, like, I'll just use LeBron, for example. Like, I don't know how you could be famous this long and have everybody like you. Like, we could get into some of the criticisms of the personality. But, like, overall, I mean, come on, it's not. It's not that, you know, like, nobody thinks he's a dick.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. 23 years.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Right. But he comes up as a. Is what, junior high age Awareness and then cover Sports Illustrated mid teens and the whole thing. And you can see with certain guys that they become famous. So now I'm not just on LeBron, I'm talking generally. Here is. It's kind of like the high school kid you see like an interview on some recruiting site and he's like, I'm all about winning. All I care about is winning. Thinking about. And it's like, you don't. You don't even care about. You probably don't. Like, maybe some of you might. But you've all watched what is the highest approval, response or explanation of yourself. So it.

[Bill Simmons]

A lot of it feels you're pandering to whatever you think people want to hear you say.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You know what you're supposed to say. You know, you're younger, you haven't really formed a ton of your own opinions on things. I mean, it's kind of impossible without more life experience to begin with. So. So it feels like so much of what we've seen over the last few years is rehearsed. And I'm not sure that I entirely blame athletes, especially a younger generation kind of coming up this way, feeling like there's no escape from any of it. Like I'm constantly. Everything I do is consumed in some way. So I may play it safe or, you know, I guess it's. It's kind of like the Russell Wilson thing where I know exactly once he does the post game, he's going to thank the offensive line. He's going to. He's going out of his way to go over this mental checkbox to just make it seem like he is the most team first dude that you've ever come across your entire life. But then you lose that connection because you already know it's coming. You've heard the same shit for years and years and years. So there's gotta be some kind of peace, especially for somebody like Rory later on or any of these other guys that get a little bit older and you just feel totally comfortable. And it's great if your default is also like a likable personality on top of everything else.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it's one of the reasons I think you and I have gravitated to Edwards, Anthony Edwards in basketball, because he's just authentic all the time, almost.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Did you see.

[Bill Simmons]

Sometimes to his detriment.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Did you see what happened the other night with him?

[Bill Simmons]

Tell me.

[Ryan Rossillo]

The crowd was chanting child support when he was at the free throw line and he started laughing.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God.

[Ryan Rossillo]

What crowd was that two nights ago? I think.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, they Had. Yeah, one of the letter. Oh, my God.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Like, I'm not. I'm not like suggesting I'm, you know, But.

[Bill Simmons]

But he knows it. He knows he's going to take shit for certain things and he's pretty open about it and he'll talk. Yeah, that's one. Well, we'll see when he plays the Lakers. Yeah, but the. Now that Rory has this off his back, I don't. I don't know who the next guy is. I guess it's homeless.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Best rounds is the Masters last year.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I was going to say Lamar, Josh Allen, maybe James Harden. I'm trying to think of guys in different sports who monkey on the back guys. Lamar's not old enough yet. Rory. We had some real years here and then we had us open last year and we've had some suffering and time spent invested in him getting over the hump for forever. So it almost has to be. Lamar's almost too young. We don't have enough losses yet. Josh Allen's too young. Like Harden would be an interesting one.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Because I think there'd have to be.

[Bill Simmons]

Harden with four straight routes.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, because, like, I don't think Allen's had bad playoff games. I think Lamar has had worse playoff games. But I think we all feel better about him as a quarterback now. Harden has a long resume of this stuff. And I'll admit, as I was watching it today, I mean, I know we're going to get into this game, but he was so good. And I've even joked, I think there've probably been a couple seasons going into where I was. Like, you'd think he's just be due to have kind of a baseline. Like, I need your floor to be higher than some of those just disastrous floor games from him that might be the pick. Because it would have to be. You know, there's some guys. There's some guys that I think of, like, look, I just think there's different ways to talk about different players and their failures and their successes. And sometimes we just want to label everyone that's failed a failure. And it's all for the exact same reasons. And it's like, okay, well, sometimes Josh Allen's going up against Patrick Mahomes, you know, so, like, are we going to shit on Josh Allen for. I mean, I guess you will if you want to do that on tv, because I've seen it. But it has to be some of your own undoing as well. And Rory had that right. So I think Harden's like, if we want to spend more Time on it. I mean, Embiid's probably not at top of mind right now because he's been hurt, but he's probably in it, but it's just not.

[Bill Simmons]

Here's a good example.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Harden's been in the playoffs every year.

[Bill Simmons]

Ray Borick is a good example because anything that happened to him was not by his doing. He was fucking awesome on the Bruins, and I loved the Bruins back then. And it really came down to they were always like a third line center too short, or, you know, one defenseman short. They never spent quite enough money around him, but he was awesome. And nobody ever blamed Ray Bork. So then when he finally went to Colorado and he won, and I was living in Boston back then, I think you were, too. Everyone went to bars to root for Colorado so that Ray Bork could finally get one. Because we loved Ray Bork, we wanted him to get one. That he didn't have the kind of tragedy and the ups and downs of somebody like Rory. So I don't know. I don't know who it is. Rory was clearly the most popular. It could be Alcaraz. Well, Alcaraz has already won. I don't know. I don't know who it is.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I was still in Vermont, and I remember because he was traded and he was teammates with one of my friends, and he told this awesome Ray Bork story, which is pretty minor, so I'm not going to build it up too much, but it's too late. But he was on the team. It's Ray fucking Bork. One of the guys, one of the younger guys is like, ray, can I get your cell or do you get a number? And he was like, why? So you and your buddies can call me drunk in the middle of the night?

[Bill Simmons]

That was his answer.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But he knew. He was like. It was. In a funny way. He wasn't being a jerk about it. That's great, because he knew, based on the way the guy was asking him, it was like. It was still this hockey God in the locker room with him being like, hey, man, maybe I'll get your number or something. And then he just. He shot it down.

[Bill Simmons]

Ray Bourque was in one of the great authentic Boston sports moments ever, when he gave the jersey to Espo when they retired in Esposito's jersey. And Ray Bourquet was wearing number seven because they had traded Esposito to the Rangers, and there was a little bit of bad blood. So then Bork came in and he was the rookie and he was awesome. And then at Some point in the 80s, they had ESPO night, and Bork came in and took his jersey off, and he had the 77 underneath. And he just gave Espo his jersey. It's fucking amazing. Amazing sports moment.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You ever interview Esposito?

[Bill Simmons]

No. I've always heard he was kind of lit. It was letting it fly.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

You had him on the radio show. Yeah.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Back in the early days. I mean, we were thrilled. We're like, man, we get Esposito for eight minutes. This is fucking week is made.

[Bill Simmons]

Just like a crazy Italian guy.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But just the second he's on the air with you, it's just on. Yeah, he was great.

[Bill Simmons]

Let's take a break. And then we have a lot of basketball to hit. Because today, nothing.

[Ryan Rossillo]

A little Simmons Masters moment, fresh from Augusta. You got anything for us?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I'll tell you this. On Wednesday, I split up with the group I was with, and I was with Nathan and I think Chang. And we just ended up on the fifth hole watching them putt. And it was Rory, it was Lowry, it was Jon Rahm, and it was Fleetwood. And in the practice round, you can kind of like, you're just fucking around. You can basically hit with whoever. I think they let them decide a little bit. So the four of them were playing, they were all gambling, and they were clear. They were buddies. And we were right there when they were all teeing off on the sixth hole. And we felt like Lowry and Rory were betting. So we were all excited, like, oh, I wonder what they're betting. Like, getting there, kind of keeping track, and just. They seem loose. And it was one of the reasons I picked Rory to win, because I was like, rory seems loose. He's like, betting with Larry. This seems good. Fast forward to when he wins today. Lowry was one of the guys waiting for him, almost like he was a family member. I don't know if you saw that. Rory comes off the course and he's hugging different things. He sees Lowry, like, huge long hug and, like, high fives. And then Fleetwood, same thing. And I was like, oh, those must be like. That's like his Ryder cup crew, you know, all his dudes. But anyway, it just. It stuck out because we had that moment on Wednesday. We were like, wow, Roy seems loose. This is a good sign because coming off last. Last summer, who knows? All right, we're gonna take a break. We'll talk. We'll talk a little warriors clips and some playoffs and some all NBA. This episode is brought to by Intuit. TurboTax Taxes was waiting and wondering and worrying. It's almost like how in the old days of fantasy football we used to have to tally the scores on a Monday and then the commissioner would just mail them out to everybody and you'd wait three days to see if you won. Those were the old ways of doing it. Now Taxes is matching with a TurboTax Live full service expert who gives your taxes their undivided attention. They can file your taxes as soon as today and while they do, you get real time updates on their progress, meaning you can get back to what's important. The game. Now this is taxes into a TurboTax. Get an expert now on TurboTax. Com this episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. During the season, every baseball team plays 162 games. It's a true test of endurance. It's not enough to have a hot month or two. You need sustained dominance throughout. Well, the same is true for your small business. It's not enough to have a great Q2, even a great year. You want year over year growth that starts with better hires that'll be there for the long haul. To find Those hires, use LinkedIn. LinkedIn has strong hiring data and insights that you won't find anywhere else to help pair you with the best candidates, from unique skills and interests to the connections you have in common. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses say that LinkedIn helps them find high quality talent. LinkedIn also lets you go beyond people who are actively applying in a given week. 171 million LinkedIn members aren't actively seeking jobs, but they are open to new opportunities. That's a big pool to miss out on if you're not hiring with LinkedIn. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com Simmons that's LinkedIn.com Simmons to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Nissan. If you're planning on an adventurous 2025, you're gonna 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. Game of the day, game 82, which I think was a lot more fun last year. This year we knew a lot of the matchups and the records, but we did have this incredible Clippers warriors game that it's tough. Every time there's a great game, you want to do the game of the year. But I think that actually might have been the game of the year because there were real stakes and both teams really wanted it, and I think both teams wanted the rest. I don't even think it was about the matchups as much as, can we get five, six days off here. The warriors definitely wanted it because they have an older team and the Clippers are playing this. You know, they're the. They have Kawhi Jenga and the game. The game was fascinating for a whole bunch of different reasons. The Clippers win. And I'm going to start here because I felt that way before the game. I think the Clippers are the second best team in the West.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Counter. Any counter.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, the only thing that I would counter is just all the stuff that all of us would say about. Okay, well, in the playoffs, like, are they a riskier bet than these other teams? But as far as who is playing the best basketball right now, they're the second best team in the West. So I'm not going to argue with you. Yeah, look, last 15 going into today, number one offense, number one defense. The Kawhi thing is real. March, April. He's playing 36 minutes a game. He's shooting it like crazy. Zoo is one of the most underrated players in the NBA. And on top of everything else, like, you can just see the difference against some of these teams that may want to go small. Because I still think there's like three or four teams that would prefer to go small. OKC can do whatever they want. Houston actually wants big. Golden State definitely wants to play small. The Lakers definitely want to play small. And so now that you have this first round matchup, four or five, like, so it's not like they're going to be, you know, I don't know. I mean, some weird stuff would have to happen. And again, looking at the seating, the whole thing, so it's not like they're just going to run through all these small teams. But if you want to go small against the Clippers, it's a. It's going to be a big problem because Zoo is such a huge part of their offense. They trust him more and he just beats the hell out of you.

[Bill Simmons]

Let's talk Zoo. Because I think it ties into a bigger thing with the Clippers. I think he's going to be on the 13 NBA for me, and I'll make the case for it later. But I can't believe. And I've been watching him really carefully the last month because it was jumping out at me during games, started looking at the stats, started talking to some people, asking like, am I crazy or is Zubot's like, incredibly important in this team? And is he kind of better than people realize? You watched a game today, he was awesome in that game. I mean, I don't know how many times he defended the rim against somebody and either thwarted a drive or changed somebody's direction on a drive, but it was between 15 and 20. Not to mention the alley oop stuff, not to mention the rebounds. And he plays. He plays big minutes every game. And I think he's played 79 games this year. He's like 32, 33 minutes a game, and he doesn't get in foul trouble. So, like, the thing I was thinking with all NBA was I've had Jaren Jackson in there all year, and I just watching Zubots going, this guy plays all the time. He stays on the court. He's gotten better as the year goes along. And to me, like, the guy that he really reminds me of is Gasol. On the Grizzlies, that 2013, 14, 15 era, Gasol, he's not the passer Gasol was, but his big how he's always in the right positions with his hands up. Players on the other team are always afraid of him protecting the rim he grabs. He's a better rebounder than Gasol was. And if you watch what the warriors today, when they were posting up Zubots, the Warriors were reacting and sending a double every time. And the Clippers, when they need baskets, sometimes they run stuff through him. So to set up the other guys, I just think. I think he's the third best center in basketball right now behind Townsend Jokic, obviously, Jokic is number one, but I think he's third. I really do.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, if you want to run your offense through him, you can. You can trust him now to catch, depending on where you want to set him up. Because, you know, we saw. I mean, there's a few different things obviously that happened in the length of an overtime game, but early on it's like, let's make sure we get some touches and let's see how Golden State wants to defend this. And so if you double him, he'll get it right out and he can swing it. So you can trust him to do that if you let him get deeper off of a drive. Like, Harden plays it brilliantly. I mean, the best thing Harden's ever done his entire career, I think, is off that high ball screen. And then you have the. You have almost basically the big shadowing you. But with Zoo, he doesn't even need to necessarily roll off the high screen. He can be just in the dunker spot. And then that guy comes over to help on the Harden drive, because Harden's just so good on that kind of stuff. And then Harden finds these passing lanes that wrap around that he made going to his left side with his left, where it looked like the angle was completely shut off is great. And if you run through the numbers, Golden State was forcing turnovers. Really good on ball defense. They got up 36, 25, 10, 52, the second quarter, they bring Zoo back in, and they close the half 35, 22. There's all sorts of numbers that just point to his impact. And then if you got to the.

[Bill Simmons]

Point where you almost feel like they have to hold on when he's out. That's how I felt in the fourth quarter. You had these Ben Simmons minutes, and you're like, they just got to make sure they don't fall down eight before Zubac comes in. That's how important he's become for them. And all the Clipper fans, that's all they talk about. They think he's, like, the most underrated guy in the league. Like, they're like Scientology.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I agree with.

[Bill Simmons]

His. But there was this Ben Simmons stretch.

[Ryan Rossillo]

If you could come speak Bill at our Zubot thing.

[Bill Simmons]

Is there. Is there a Zubotz festival?

[Ryan Rossillo]

We have a medal for you.

[Bill Simmons]

There was a Ben Simmons stretch where the warriors were like, you know what? Fuck this. We're going zone Ben Simmons. Knock yourself out at the foul line, try to make some plays. And it was. It was brutal. Like, legit brutal. And then he finally made one pass and got an assist. But I don't know if that's sustainable for them in the playoffs. Any Ben Simmons minutes now, they didn't have Batum today, and I think Batum is really important for them. And actually they can, as crazy as it sounds against the right team, even go super small with him and maybe not play Ben Simmons at all. But I just think the way Kawhi's playing, you mentioned that. Was he 24 and 7 since the all Star break and getting shots, getting to his spots defensively, he's starting to look not 100% like San Antonio Kawhi. But he's like, you know, it's reminiscent. He could turn it on.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I don't know that it's ever going to be that again. So I think you're being totally fair about that because you're just talking about he's 33, a level of intensity. Maybe they don't even want him to play that intensely. But you're right on the Simmons thing. I'm glad you brought up a tomb not being available because I was thinking the exact same thing. They go zone. It was kind of working, except they weren't corralling the basketball. So they're giving up offensive rebounds, which is one of the problems of the zone anyway, especially if you're small. And Simmons just doesn't really. I don't. I mean, this isn't breaking news, but he's not playable. When he has to think about what he's doing, it's over. So he was good enough on tapping a couple balls out. He did have that one assist, but he had two other passes on the right side where he tried to throw like a no look at one point, right? And you're just going like, what? What are you doing right now? But you're.

[Bill Simmons]

And nobody's selling them intentionally either, because that's the other piece you can do in the playoffs. Just try to take them out. Maybe they wouldn't want to do that because they want him to stay on.

[Ryan Rossillo]

The court to have seen it that way, because I felt the same way. It's like the Clippers have to survive these non Zubacz minutes, especially because Simmons is in there. And the more possessions they probably roll with Simmons, the more it's just guys screaming from the Golden State bench like. Like, don't even worry about it. Like, if he sets a screen too with the ball, if he cuts through, don't worry about it. Like, if he's not going to catch it in the post and then turn around and work us in a mismatch or something, we'll be fine. It's just they really struggle, the rebounder in that stretch.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like that Pats, the second Pats, Giants super bowl, when Chad.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Exactly.

[Bill Simmons]

I remember Chad Ochocinko was the second receiver for the Pats, and I was at the game and you could see the entire Giants coverage was like, we don't have to worry about that side of the field. We could just cover him with one guy the safety doesn't even have to shade over. That's Ben Simmons on offense. You don't have to shade over. It's like, what's he going to do? Can't shoot, doesn't want to shoot. He's not going to drive to the basket because he doesn't want to get fouled. So they're just trying to survive. Five minutes. Game back to Zubots. So he's plus 9.2 net heading into the game today. By far the best clipper he's played. 2,600 plus minutes. He leads the league in offensive rebounds for the year. He's 17 and 13 since the All Star break. He's 20 and 13. I think he's had 15 double doubles in a row. He's shooting 65% since the All Star break. And he stays on the court. That's the thing. Like Jaren Jackson. I just feel like if I like, would you be shocked in the playing game if Jaren Jackson has five fouls with 10 minutes to go in the fourth quarter of the playing game? You wouldn't be. Because he can't stay on the court. Zubacz contests all the time with his hands up, but he stays on the court. So I don't know. I just think with him and Leonard and Harden, that's. It's not the best big three of the 16 playoff teams, but it's a legitimate big three. If Kawhi is going to play this way, I think.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Look, I'm on your side on this one, so I know it'd be better if we were to disagree about the whole thing. I mean, clearly Jaren Jackson has a much better offensive game than Zoo does, but he's asked to do two different things. I mean, his skill set. I wouldn't even compare the two things. If I were with Memphis, I'd be like, hey, Jaren, you know, when the other team gets the ball and they're bringing it up the court, run away from the guy with the ball in his hands, like, stop and maybe grab.

[Bill Simmons]

Like one more rebound a quarter would be awesome.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Couple more rebounds would be nice.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe get to like nine.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, but Zoo, if you look at the rim protection, stuff like Chet's off the charts. Porzingis numbers are incredible. But Zoos are really good there as well. So. Yeah, you know, maybe the downside of Zoo was maybe you can't play five out. You know, does it. Does it impact some of the driving lane stuff that you want to do if you want to have a Norm Kawhi Harden group out there? Because I still feel like that's my favorite default of having any kind of Big that can stretch a defense a little bit. So you have to worry about the shooting. But to have Harden not have a center as much as it's going to open up some space like he's. Those two guys are just locked in right now. And Kawhi doesn't really need to drive. It's a lot of pull up stuff with him. And even Jimmy Butler who's changed the story for the warriors this season. Like you saw when they got one on one, he was too big for Butler. He's too big for him. And it's not like Butler's small or like guy, you would question his strength or toughness.

[Bill Simmons]

But so glad you brought that up.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Kawhi would get him in some spots like 12ft in and you're like, he's gonna, he doesn't have a chance. And they had to put Draymond back on him.

[Bill Simmons]

I was, I noted it cause it was weird to see. I don't wanna use the word bullied, but basketball bullied, where he just was too strong for Butler. And you always assume Butler in your head, he's like 6, 9, 2, 40. And he's just.

[Ryan Rossillo]

It gives you a chance. Well, yes, six, seven maybe, but a chance. You're thinking, okay, at least I'm matching some of this.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, this is great. Jimmy Butler not afraid of him. He's not going to get in an alpha battle with him. He's just going to do his machine thing. The other piece was Zubots and Harden together. Harden's had this before because he had it on the Rockets with Dwight during the last kind of stages of Dwight's prime and then Capella too. But I mean, I'm talking big physical centers that are around the rim. And he really used Dwight. I mean they made the 2015 west finals. That team was good. I think what he's established with Zubots is, is pretty great like that. Like they're really attuned to. They'll, they'll run that high screen at the very top and then Zubots will roll down and he's almost like a left tackle. He's just like, he's kind of barreling into guys, knocking guys over and Harden always seems to know exactly where he is. I think they're really good. I was talking to a bunch of Clipper fans over the last couple days and they were kind of deep down wondering if they were better off going to the seventh seed and winning the playing game and then playing Houston. But the rub on that is you don't get the six days of Rest for Kawhi. So this worked out perfectly. I will say. I don't think it would have been a disaster for them if they fell to seven. I think this is worse for the warriors because I don't think they want to put Miles on these dudes. And I think it's creaky to begin with. We've seen some games, like, they had that third and four last week and that Sunday game where Houston just annihilated them athletically and just seemed like they were 10 years younger than him. So now you're putting Miles on them in the Tuesday game with Memphis. Now you're starting the playoffs. You just don't. It's just you're. You're adding Miles to a team that doesn't need Miles. Curry already looks. You know, I don't know how many injuries he's nursing at this point, but it's at least three.

[Ryan Rossillo]

They needed this bad for everything you just said. And to see what Steph looked like after that time off. It's a bit like that Kyrie stuff that we used to talk about a couple years ago when Kyrie was going off because he wasn't playing that much. It was like, I can't believe. Yeah, but it was like, I can't believe Kyrie's doing this. Like, look at. He's barely even playing. And you're like, no. The whole point is he's this fresh. Like, can you imagine only having to play, like, once a week? And I'm not even turning into the Kyrie conversation, but I think it's just something to remember when somebody's not available all the time, it actually can be an advantage as opposed to losing your rhythm. So in the games or Steph came back and that match Memphis game, I was watching, like, holy shit. Like, he is flying around, and I don't know that, you know, I'm necessarily, like, looking at it, being, like, worried. He had a really slow start. Then he has 18 to send it to overtime in the fourth quarter. So it's like, okay, it's fine. He's relocating the way he should be. And, you know, I look at some of the Butler stuff because the record's so absurd. They're a completely different team since that trade in every statistical category. But maybe going to that game live against the Lakers where he decided to start playing, like, 14 minutes into the game, I'm like, you know, dude, these are. These are like, granted, they won that game and Steph was brilliant, but you're like, you're going to need to not be as passive. And he wasn't, I don't think, at the start of tonight at all. Like, he got it going, I think, when they needed him. But overall, Butler's still only taking 10 shots a game. He was taking 10 shots a game of Miami. The metrics are always great for him because the free throw rate is so absurd, but they may. I don't know if it's a. Hey, it's playoff Jimmy. So none of it really matters, but there's probably still, even with this great turnaround, probably moments for him where it's like, you need to be looking for your stuff a little bit more because.

[Bill Simmons]

The second quarter, it felt like he was taking over the game. And then he just shoot again for a while.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, he'll go through these spells where I would just think that in the postseason and his work over the last few years tells us that he's going to be that guy again. But I think it gets lost in this turnaround because he still is really pacing himself at times offensively. But the fact that he's even there has made Steph's life better, because when they were up, just falling apart, it's like, dude, you're asking Steph to run around for 20 seconds and get free, and nobody cares. Like, no other guys.

[Bill Simmons]

The free throws are huge. They stop the game. They put pressure on the other team. He's so competitive. The Clippers are a bad matchup for them. They've been a bad matchup for them for a couple years. I've been to games where I was like, how do they. How are the Clippers winning this? They would just be able to turn it on. I don't know. I wonder in a weird way if this Memphis playing game is easy for the warriors and they get the 27 with Houston, and they can somehow, from a health standpoint, be okay. This probably worked out. I know not getting the rest sucks, but playing a Houston team that has no playoff pedigree at all, that's like a really, really young playoff team. Going against Steph and Jimmy and Draymond. Right. And you can take that one and then round two, you know, potentially the Lakers or the. Or Minnesota. But if it's the Lakers, I think that warriors match up really well with the Lakers. They're just going to play small against the Lakers. It's small ball against small ball, and I think they're going to be really comfortable against them.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, I think you're right about that. I don't know if the Lakers, who want to play small Played into Golden State's hands in that last regular season game a couple weeks ago.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, intentional.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, clearly the warriors would rather go small even though they're playing post. But he's kind of that five out guy that we're talking about here a little bit. They don't want to play Jackson Hayes. I don't know if that'll be a matchup specific thing from the playoffs, but clearly their preference is Rui at center. And it's not that they're small, right? Because they're big at all their positions other than Vincent, or if Goodwin were to get any minutes, like, they're actually a really big team, but if they want to.

[Bill Simmons]

They're bulky. They're a bulky thing.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You like their girth?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I got a lot of girth.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I was trying to figure all this stuff out this morning. Like, I was going through the regular season series and then who missed how many games? And that's fucking.

[Bill Simmons]

It's the. It's the worst ever.

[Ryan Rossillo]

There's no, I did it again this year. I hate myself. It's a nightmare because even this game with the Clippers in Golden State, it's the first time everybody was ready to go. I mean, Kawhi and some of the other matchups hasn't even played against any of these teams because he came back so much later. And sometimes the schedule works out. It's like, all right, they've already played each other four times, but the fourth game was in December. So then you go, okay, well, what does that even mean as you get ready for the playoffs here? But that Houston game, I'm glad you brought up, because I was thinking, all right, is there a good part of this? Like, I. I would think the warriors would rather play the Lakers just because there's not a size thing that's looming like Zubach. Granted, he wasn't going to be in the matchup in the first round.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, in this case, it'd be a Shingoon. Like, what do we do? Do we keep Looney out? Cause did you notice in that Cooper game, the warriors were playing really well with about four minutes left, and Draymond wasn't out there. And it was Looney. Cause they needed him for Zubots. And Draymond was on the bench and the warriors, the ball was moving. They looked good. And it got to the point where I was like, I wonder if they could bring Draymond in. And then obviously they went to commercial, came back, they brought him in. But, you know, that's not that. That's when when he's not out there sometimes. I'm not saying they're better without him, but there's lineups without him that I kind of like, especially when Podzemski and Butler are flying around. I think Moody. Moody's turned into a guy that I really feel like is a guy now. Like defensively, he's really, really high level, don't you think?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Absolutely. And he deserves a ton of credit for turning himself into this. But I mean, he had plays where he stripped Norm just one on one at the top of it as they were trying to get another offense. He had the block on the left side and it's just Moody's definitely. You're right. Like he's turned himself into somebody that Kirk can probably trust, depending on what the perimeter matchups are there. But I think that Houston win in Golden State going back not that long ago, just a few days ago, it was step goes. Yeah, he's one of 10. Like that's one of those Butler games where I'm like, does. Does he need to take more than seven shots in 33 minutes? And sometimes the shot attempts get lost in the free throws. But he only took four free throws in that one. And you had 42 shot attempts between Pajemski healed and Peyton where. Well, I shot it well, but that's probably not what you want. And they. They sold out. I mean, Houston did a terrific job of not only Amend being on him, but making sure that wherever he was going, there was going to be a second defender there. So yeah, it's kind of your.

[Bill Simmons]

And they were super physical.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Is it. Is it better to be against them because they don't have the big. That scares you or is it we're going to throw a million athletes with a ton of length at Steph and so when we're done with a men, then it's going to be Tari and then we're going to have Brooks beat them up for a little bit. Like that's where Butler, you're probably going, we need you to take 16 shots tonight in these games.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that. I mean that game they played Thursday, Friday and again older team and they just seem like they had no legs for that Houston game. But that's also the fear if you're playing Houston. Cause that team is always going to have energy. They're a really tough team. One of the things I love, they.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Had a day off though. They had a day off in between there.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I'm saying the Thursday, Friday, those were two tough ones in a row because they're playing, you know, contenders.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But no, you're right. Those are big time games.

[Bill Simmons]

Ime will definitely he's proven he is not. He does not kowtow to the super duper stars in the league. He likes to start, ship to them, talk to them, likes to get his guys fired up to go against them. And they have a bunch of pit bulls to throw at Curry. They have a low post guy that's going to either force Draymond to have to guard a center or, you know, they could go that double big lineup would. Which I think is not going to be easy for the Warriors. I don't love the matchup for them, but, man, that warriors, that. I mean, that Rockets playoff inexperience you saw today, I kind of feel like they wanted that Nuggets game I watched. Did you watch the first half of that? You have that on?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah. You could look and say they waved the white flag, but it's because they were getting beat.

[Bill Simmons]

They were down 20, they were getting their ass kicked. They played everybody and they were. They were playing hard. They wanted the game. I think, you know, knowing a little bit about Ema, I think he was like, look, this is a playoff game for us. Let's treat it like a playoff game. Let's see what we got. And they sucked. So not awesome for them. And conversely, that was the best game I've seen Denver play in a while. And maybe this new coach thing, if you read about all the dysfunction that was going on behind the scenes, maybe there's something to it. It's like, it's like peeling off, you know, peeling off a huge band aid and just being like, fuck it.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I hate that we. I don't think it'll happen this time around, but we've lost Steph in the playoffs twice because of the play in setup.

[Bill Simmons]

What do you mean? Oh, for la. Oh, I know.

[Ryan Rossillo]

No, he's. He's owing three in play in games.

[Bill Simmons]

Is that true? Oh, my God, you're right.

[Ryan Rossillo]

He lost to the Lakers. And then because they lost the Lakers, they had to play Memphis. And he had 37 and 39 in those games and they lost. And then in 24, he lost Sacramento last year.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, the good news is I think Memphis just looks awful. I mean, you're not catching a team at a better time than this. Whatever is happening with this Grizzlies team right now. So I'm not too concerned about the words. They did something weird that I don't remember with the schedule and I'm excited to talk about the Matchups. There's no Thursday game this year, which I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case the last couple years. Both of the playing games are Friday. Maybe they did that before and I just forgot. So if for some reason the warriors lost that Tuesday game, they'd have to play Friday and then immediately on Sunday, which would not be awesome for them. Can we talk about all the matchups that came out of this quick? So we were his Rockets, which we hit. Do you share my same concerns with Houston? Like, yeah, I know it's in there, but playoffs are a different animal. Do you have another level to go to, or do you think there's something more there that I'm not seeing?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I think they're really good, but, you know, we're looking at a two seed that over the course of 82 games. It's kind of like our Verno ambush talking about Memphis, where it was like, hey, they were the two seed. They were the two seed. Hey, they were the two seed before all this stuff. I mean, it's like three years. You can point to them like, hey, being the two seed. The two seed. Some years sounds way better years removed than the reality of, like, what the records were of the teams that year. Denver was a 1 seed that year when Memphis was a 2 seed. And I think Denver had 53 wins and 23 when they won the title. And then if you go through the rest of the seating, I mean, that's why it's so crazy to kind of look back and you're like, hey, Memphis was the 2 seed. Well, they had 51 wins. Sacramento was a 3 seed with 48 wins. 48 wins now in the west would put you in the seven or eight seed. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So conference is so much weaker and more injuries, all kinds of stupid stuff.

[Ryan Rossillo]

So, look, I. I definitely will have hesitation about big boy playoff closing offensive minutes for the Houston Rockets. I think it's completely fair, and I think Udoko will decide on the fly. I. I would be shocked if it's a steady closing five during clutch time for them, where I think he'll go with some guys and he'll abandon others and he won't give a shit. Which is actually probably the best thing you could hope for with a coach where he's like, this night we just saw, we did a conversation on it, right? About this exact topic. And I looked. So people were giving a shit. Rockets fans like, oh, they would never do that that night. I think the next night, he benched Jalen Green with five minutes to go. In the game and then brought him in with 11 seconds left because they were down, the game was already over and it was like, can you get us a bucket here? So, yeah, Jalen's probably the best option still with Van Vliet, but I don't know, man. I've seen enough of them this year to know that it gets clogged, despite how great their record was in the clutch. Is that. Do you have anything else?

[Bill Simmons]

It's a team that looks better when they're up 10. I think this series will, I think, set the standard for lobbying the press between games to get whatever agenda you want from the next game. You know, Kerr's gonna be working hard. The whole, the whole Houston hold staff away from the ball. They're too physical with him. They're getting away with stuff. They'll send clips, they'll do that whole thing and then, you know, there'll be a backlash to that. And I just think it's gonna be a war of words. But you also have, you've Dylan Brooks in this series pre storied history with Golden State. You have a Golden State, Houston history. That's pretty good. So if this is what we end up with and a weird matchup where you have size against a team that doesn't really want to play with size and then older, older perimeter guys against this kind of new wave of perimeter guys who we haven't really seen in the spotlight like this, this. So it's a good one. I would, I would personally still take Golden State if I had to. Do you want to guess the line? Oh, they don't have a line for that yet. I do have lines.

[Ryan Rossillo]

We don't know the matchup for Memphis.

[Bill Simmons]

I do have lines for the other two. Have you looked or.

[Ryan Rossillo]

No, I haven't.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, let's play a quick guess the lines. Trademark Cousin Sal.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Okay, go ahead.

[Bill Simmons]

Lakers, Minnesota, LA has home court. What do you think? The line is on FanDuel right now.

[Ryan Rossillo]

For the series. Lakers minus 185.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow, that was really good. Minus 172. We'll talk about that in one second. Denver, Clippers. What do you have Denver as home court?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I'm going to say Clippers because look, this has been going on for a while. This is like a month of this. Okay, so this isn't new. I almost feel like this is might be Closer to Clippers minus 200.

[Bill Simmons]

Denver is home court.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Oh, so they're just going with the home court part of this?

[Bill Simmons]

I'm just reminding you. Clippers minus 150, then Nuggets minus 144. Sounds like we have some wagers to make. I felt the same way. I thought it would be like a pick them and maybe it will be by the time. By the time we get there. Clippers in six is an interesting bet. And then in the east, which you.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Probably already know, that actually shocks me. I mean, I realize that it's Denver and I know that it's Jokic, which I learned from one of the playoff previews on espn, but I. This Clippers thing is fucking real, man. So. But, you know, do we. Are we. Are we tricking ourselves? No, we're not.

[Bill Simmons]

We're not.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Ryan Rossillo]

If Kawhi gets hurt, that's. We all understand what is potentially in play for a guy that's in street clothes to close out the last four years, I think in the playoffs. But are we tricking ourselves into believing that the elevated pace, understanding Harden's tendencies, more the deer in the headlight, Game two or game four from him, and then we see it and we go, how could you have ever picked this team? Because I'm going to pick him against Denver. I don't know how far I'm going to go with it, but I'm going to pick him against Denver.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm 100% picking up against Denver. And it feels like we're in a Law and Order SV SVU episode where it's like, I've watched this exact episode 13 times. Why do I think it's not the. The dead lady's husband who's. Because he's a doctor and he seems like a great guy.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, that's him. They have to go back.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Country club.

[Bill Simmons]

Don't go back to the hospital. He's fight. This guy loved her. That's how I feel about the Clippers. It's like, this is the year Kawhi stays healthy and this is the year James Harden isn't going to shit on himself in a playoff series. So we got this.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Is there anything too. Because I want to ask you this question. Harden not having to be the one because of Kawhi. And it's like, okay, but that was supposed to be embiid. So Harden wasn't supposed to be the one in the Sixer series. But then we could have this whole other embiid play out. Tough discussion that we don't have to do this year. Is there anything to the importance of him being reduced going in that makes you feel better?

[Bill Simmons]

100%. Well, there's two things that make me feel better about him one is that this is the best supporting cast for him that I can remember him having. It's all the things you would want to put around him. If we were just like, like, I'm going to come over to your house. Let's spend the next two hours picking types of players that you would want to put around James Harden.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Let's definitely do that.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I'll come over tonight. But you'd want a rebounding center who could finish around the basket and finish alley. Oops. You'd want an older star who could be like, I've got this. That's Kawhi. You'd want some streaky shooters. Right. That's Norm Powell. That's. Who's the other streaky shooter in the team on blanken?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Derrick Jones Jr.

[Bill Simmons]

I guess he is kind of streaky. And then you'd want, like length to protect him on defense. And then he played defense. And then the Chris Dunpies. I just really like their roster. I think they did an awesome job.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I think we probably do a little.

[Bill Simmons]

Bit the Dundar Jones things. Well, I'm just saying, realistically, if you're using the salary cap.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And you had to put together a team, it's going to probably look something like this. But yeah, the Kawhi thing, this is what all the Clipper fans. I know, they're like, it's a. Yeah. But it just is. Every year he's pulled the rug out from under them and every year they believed and thought he was going to be. Finally, this is. And then the rug gets pulled out. So this is. This is like year six of this for them.

[Ryan Rossillo]

So you're saying better than Westbrook and then PJ Tucker at center.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, slightly. I think so. Let's see.

[Ryan Rossillo]

And the death screens from Zoo. Like, you run into one of his screens, you're going to get a step.

[Bill Simmons]

He. The other thing with them is I just don't. This Denver bench, I just. I'll say this. I refuse to believe Westbrook won't be heard from in the wrong way in a Clipper's nugget series. He's just looming in the wrong way because there's going to be a game. There's going to be a. Jamal Murray has to come out because his knee's not feeling great, somebody's in foul trouble or Westbrook's just going to be involved. And I've just. I've seen enough with him at crunch time. I just don't. I don't think he's somebody that can be out there. In the final four minutes of the big game.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I don't know if he will. I think that Sacramento game that might have been this past week. No, I think that that was a sign. I think that was a sign they.

[Bill Simmons]

Went with Pickett to close when they drove with Pickett.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, right. So with.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, but Pickett's like never been in any games like that. That's the thing. Jesus, that makes me poor nervous. I don't know which one I would want less.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Just probably pick full statement on this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Westbrook's actually taking, I think, too much shit on this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Resila backs Westbrook aggregate Now, if you're.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Telling me he had to not make any mistakes all season, okay, fine. And the fact that I think game of the year is still the overt 60 point triple double from Jokic against Minnesota because you had Ant and Jokic dueling each other. But you're right, the stakes are not the same as game 82. But that's my favorite game of the season. And you have the Westbrook layup for not killing clock or then the foul at the end. But because everybody was watching that game because it's one of the best games of the entire year, then it started turning like, look, if you're expecting a mistake free experience from him, then just pick a different guy. Look, even Steph, who I love, he had two bad turnovers late in this game. He got caught in the corner. He had another thing he was trying to do in the baseline, but the 18 points kind of makes up for that little bit. But with all of this because of his history, where it felt like every place he's gone post okc, couldn't wait for him to get out of the. Although I'd say it turns into the.

[Bill Simmons]

Half and half in the fridge that you have to sniff and you're like, oh, I got to throw this out.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Although I think Wizards fans enjoyed it. I think Wizards fans enjoyed when he was there. So I would add that one to like the positive part of this. And sure. Should Malone have let him gone to LA and get the vet treatment that the other guys did? I don't know. Like, whatever. That's. I don't think that's why they fell apart. But he's being thrown into the storyline of this a few times. Oh, well. Westbrook also did this and there was some complaints over the minutes I've been. Maybe because my standards or expectations for him are so low. He's done the best job he's ever done in his career post okc. Accepting his role.

[Bill Simmons]

We agree. I'm just saying.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You can't believe I'm saying it.

[Bill Simmons]

No. If he's the sixth most important person on your team, there might be some issues at this point in his career. We should have mentioned him earlier at the top, when we were talking about people taking the mantle for Rory. Now that Rory's one who would be the best people. Westbrook kind of rising up as a super sub in the playoffs, helping draft the Nuggets.

[Ryan Rossillo]

It's not the same, though. It's not the same. Like if Chris Paul gets a ring next year, by the way, shout out Chris Paul. 82 games.

[Bill Simmons]

82 games.

[Ryan Rossillo]

If he gets a ring now, it doesn't mean like, hey, I was right. So I also don't know that Rory had the as many stops, as many tumultuous stops as Westbrook did. So I don't know if that one works.

[Bill Simmons]

Westbrook, 10 years from now, it's going to be great for him. When it's a little like what's happened to Carmelo and some others where we just forget all the bad stuff. Like Russell Westbrook. He's a problem. Mvp, triple double.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Are you anticipating? Kids don't even know clips.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it could be there.

[Ryan Rossillo]

If you put together those, they're going to be like, wonder how many rings did he have?

[Bill Simmons]

25 rebounds in a game. I I'm convinced the Clippers will beat the Nuggets and also fully expect something heartbreaking to happen for them. It's one of those. I'm going to bet the Clippers and probably regret it by Game three. We're going to take a break and then we got to talk a couple of the other playoff series here. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Spring is here. My favorite time of the year. That means the NBA playoffs are here too. What am I the most excited about? I'm excited to see if the Celtics can defend their title. I'm excited to see if Steph Curry and Jokic can keep going and going and going round after round. I'm excited for the potential of an LA vs LA playoff series. It's never happened. Clippers, Lakers, never in my lifetime. Is OKC for real? Is Cleveland for real? Is SGA going to prove that he is the best scoring guard in the postseason, basically since Michael Jordan, since Kobe Bryant. Is he on that level? We're all going to find out. There's plenty to look forward to on and off the court. Like Michelobotra courtside. That's another thing. It's getting fans closer to the game with unique prizes. Plus, they're giving you a chance to win tickets to the NBA Finals. You heard me. The NBA Finals, which I hope are in Boston. Just head to michelobaltra.com NBAFinals Michelob Ultra Courtside NBA Finals Sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. Open U.S. residents, excluding Maryland residents 21 and up. Begins 9:00am ET on February 16, 2025. Ends on May 5, 2025. See official [e-mail] Rules for Price and details, message and data rate may apply. Void. We're prohibited. This episode is brought to you by VRBO Private Vacation Rentals. With vrbo, you always get the whole house so you and your fellow fans can cheer on your team in peace. What's worse than watching a game with somebody who's not rooting for the same team? You're rooting for nothing. But that's why if you book a vacation house with vrbo, you know all the people in your house. They'll be friends. They'll be family. Ideally, they'll be the ones who also root for my teams. Plan a winning vacation. Make it a vrbo this message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card is a no fee credit card that gives you daily cash back every day. That's 3% back at Apple and 2% back on every purchase made with Apple Card using Apple Pay. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on credit worthiness rates as of January 1, 2025. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City branch terms and [e-mail] all right, so we got Minnesota Lakers. This feels like a win for the Lakers. And I'm not sure who I would have wanted to play the least if I were them. But because it basically came down to the two the Clippers, Golden State or Minnesota. They were going to play one of those teams. Being in the three spots in Minnesota, I think feels like the right outcome for them because I don't know how Gobert exists in this series. So let's start there. How does Gobert exist in this series?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Oh, man. I mean, Luka, it was funny when he was tearing up. Did you hear about this? They asked him which moment got him in the tribute video and he was like, when I hit that step back on Gobert, Gobert played it great. I thought, dudes hate gobert. Kevin Porter Jr. Not afraid to get into it with everybody. Just actually important for Milwaukee lately. Playing some, some good basketball.

[Bill Simmons]

Getting into it.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Everybody, everybody.

[Bill Simmons]

What happens if he ends up on the Pistons next year? We might have to have security guards on hand for every game.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Beef stews just like, look, first practice, new guys, we beat the shit out of you. But it's just sort of like, I don't know if you saw colors older movie. Like we're just going to have to like initiate you so, you know, ice up.

[Bill Simmons]

Don't look at me.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I think you're right about that because I. It's a bit like the IME thing that we were talking about there with Finch. Like will he. Because there were times a year it like felt like he was sick of Randall. Randall's probably played the best basketball. They needed him huge in that Memphis game. He was, he was fantastic when they just ran away from the Grizzlies. Gobert is like, especially in that matchup, he's closing. But I do wonder with the stuff that we're talking about, how the Lakers prefer to be real perimeter based, if it'd be a situation where they're going to be bringing Rudy out. Because the best part about Rudy is the guy screens all night, he plays his ass off, he hustles like crazy, but nobody wants to pass to him. And then if he gets caught in a switch hunting season, then it could be, I think like, like Houston Bill, I think Minnesota, he needs like a.

[Bill Simmons]

Chengun Adams combo to make sense in a series. This they'll just going to play Luka and LeBron and Rui as much as they possibly can with Reeves and pick a guard and they're just going to spread them out. JJ as we've discussed many times, this coaching staff's done a really good job at figuring out what the matchup is and then how to exploit. They're going to exploit him and they're going to play him off the court. But. But that's going to lead to Minnesota probably ending up with Nas Reed and Randall and McDaniels and Edwards and DeFincenzo if they want size, or Conley if they don't care about it as the five they're going against. And that's going to be hard for the Lakers defensively. I think they're going to have all these. They're going to attack Reeves, they're going to probably try to get Edwards and as many switches as they possibly can against Reeves and they're going to have the same shooting stuff. And I actually think this will be A higher scoring series than I think people realize, because people think of Minnesota as this awesome defensive team. And, you know, if you take Gobert out of it, it changes a little bit. But I think Minnesota has a real chance in the series.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I think you're kind of shortchanging the perimeter guys, though. From what we've seen in the playoffs last year, the Minnesota perimeter guys. Defensively, Jaden's really good on the ball against somebody smaller. The problem is him on the ball against Luka. Like, I think we need earth against him. Right, exactly. So with Jaden's defensive resume, which I think all of us really, like, that's probably not going to hold up. And you're right, we saw some of that stuff last year.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, they could do the whole thing where they're like, let's take out Reeves. Let's. Let's try to take out Reeves as much as we possibly can, because Luke and LeBron are going to get all their stuff anyway.

[Ryan Rossillo]

What do you mean offensively? Like, focus on.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm saying, like, just make sure Reeves doesn't get going. When they have those spots where, like, you know, they take Luke out and it's LeBron and Reeves together. When it's the two of them, be like, look, we got to take out Reeves. They're never. They're never going to stop Luca. I. The thing that worries me more from Minnesota is Randall, who, as you mentioned, has been really good the last, like, I don't know, four or five, six weeks. But part of it is because he's so physical and he's. Especially if you guard him with anybody smaller. He really has been bullyballing people lately. But you're not bullyballing any of those dudes on the Lakers. Those guys have more size than he does, you know, so then it comes down to if you're looking at scoring and the end of the game stuff, it's going to be a lot of Edwards. And we've seen mixed results with that. When Edwards is like in the high 20s, you know, if he has a 31 field goal game. I never really like Minnesota as much. I like when it's a little more democratic with the ball usage.

[Ryan Rossillo]

The other thing, too, is finished on Edwards, too. Three of their games were October 22, December 2, December 2.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I looked this up. Yeah. We didn't even see, like, both full teams that we have now against each other, so we have no idea what to expect.

[Ryan Rossillo]

No, but I think attacking Luca is going to happen, you know, but they're probably just going to Double ant and then go, all right. In the McDaniels Conley minutes, go ahead and shoot. And if we get burned by that, fine, maybe it changes with Divincenzo. And then I think there's a lot of. There's a lot of room for Randall here because you're going to sell out to stop ant. You're going to keep two with the ball on him on all this stuff. You're going to have to help out Luca. You know, it depends, like LeBron energy level. You know, it's. It's fascinating because you went to that game when he came back against Chicago and it would make sense. He'd had times off, but he moved so well in that game. And then you can turn on a Lakers game two nights later and you're like, what's going on? And then against Dallas, when did you.

[Bill Simmons]

See him last week? Yeah. Didn't you go a couple games ago?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I did.

[Bill Simmons]

How did he look in that game?

[Ryan Rossillo]

It was fine, but it, there's like, clearly he knows how to pace himself probably better than anybody in the entire league. Like this is like year four or five. We talked about him like, yeah, he kind of missed spots. It's like, all right. Yep, he hit 30, 12 and 11 again, so he's doing fine. And I'd imagine that his intensity on some of the defensive stuff where I don't know that he can get away with the kind of switching where it's like, hey, you go like, I'm always staying here so I don't have to move on a switch or I'm going to pre switch something to get out of it ahead of time so that I'm not in this thing over and over again. I think in the regular season you can get away with some of that stuff. I don't know that that'll happen in the playoffs. And I imagine his intensity and the time off and a little bit it's just an easier schedule than what you have in the regular season. Even with the great intensity. Yeah, we always seem to forget that. It's like, hey, these built in days off, you're staying in the same place for a little while.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, you get like three days off between game one and game two after you've already gotten a week off. It's perfect for him.

[Ryan Rossillo]

So I think it's expected that he's going to be more intense with all this kind of stuff. But it may come down to the rui part of it where Gobert has to respect him and he's shooting from three, so If Rui's in the screen or something like that, it's like, okay, well, I can't ignore this guy. That might be the difference in all this stuff, because we all have a lot of.

[Bill Simmons]

Is Rui on your first team? I can't believe how much I ended up liking this guy. Team?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, I would say because I was.

[Bill Simmons]

Starting at about a zero with him. Yeah, I'm at about an 81.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Everything we're always talking about is based on, like, well, where were you before? Like, you really like him? No, he was an 11 out of 100, and now he's like 50. So, yeah, that doesn't mean I'm in love with him.

[Bill Simmons]

I like his competitiveness, and I do think when he's good, if he's good in a game, they become really hard to beat. I thought he has it going. It's like, oh, shit.

[Ryan Rossillo]

He reminded me a lot of Cat. Like, you sit there and say, well, Cat was a good matchup for Jokic. And you go, all right, well, you know, is it 30 points? It's really the difference in these playoff games because Jokic is going to get his 30. Was it an easy 30 or was it a hard 30? And I think Cat at least provided some kind of resistance to him. And I thought that regular season game where the Lakers put it on him, they were really good on how they didn't want to space the floor defensively. And a lot of that started with Rui being tasked with, can you just at least challenge him on catches? Can. Can you make him have to work a little bit more? And I thought he had a really good game there.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we have a lot of time to talk about that series. In the east, we ended up with Pistons, Knicks, and we ended up with Bucs, Pacers, and The Pacers are minus 230 favorites over the Bucks, which I think is factoring in. People don't seem to think we're going to see Dame again, but the way Giannis is playing the last couple weeks, and there's. There's a weird energy to him now that I kind of like. Did you see all the stuff he did with the. In the Pistons game?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I watched the whole game. I loved it.

[Bill Simmons]

There was. And there's been signs of this before. He's done this in the past a couple times. Cause I think the perception is, oh, he's such a sweetheart of a guy. And it's actually kind of a little bit nastier than I think people realize. But in that Pistons game, he was really like, fucking with them. And it got me excited for the Indiana series because Indiana has a better team. They've been playing better for three months. They have home court. They're going to push the pace. I think they're going to make it really hard for the Bucs guards just to even bring the ball up and start the offense. But yet Giannis is on a tear, and we'll see. We'll see what happens with. Could Giannis beat the Pacers basically by himself? Would be the scenario. I wouldn't bet against it. Would you?

[Ryan Rossillo]

No, I wouldn't, because I feel like we're going to look back at this Giannis stretch and go, he only won one MVP out of this whole thing. And, I mean, granted, everybody's going to remember what Jokic has been doing here, but this is almost like a Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali think in a way, because I look at the numbers, and it's not like when you watch it, it deceives you. It's just so stupid how good he is. And if you are not ready for it, I know this isn't new, but watching that Detroit game in particular, because I wanted to see how playing out Kane was coming off the great Knicks finish, so I wanted to see kind of how they were going to defend him. And then we were kind of looking at, like, playoff seating and wondering what you could have as a potential matchup with all this stuff. But he's going crazy the whole time, which is my favorite thing about him, is that he is that competitive. So when he blocks Beasley's shot, which was a huge shot in the game, and Beasley, who feels himself the entire two fucking hours of a basketball game. So they already gotten into.

[Bill Simmons]

And they play it together, right?

[Ryan Rossillo]

And Kevin Porter Jr. Dunks on Duran, which was filthy, lets him have it a little bit. Dern comes down, screens the shit out of him. Porter doesn't like him. Porter runs right into him and hits him in a way like only a smaller player can get away with doing that to a bigger guy. And then it causes kind of the melee. Like, Giannis at that point was like, all right, he is one of those guys I don't think he gets enough credit for, like, when you piss him off. I'm not saying it's Jordan, but there's. There's an alarm that goes off, like, once Giannis is pissed off in a game. So he's just going to have to get pissed off, I guess. Four times in this. Can. Can something happen to him enough where it just becomes unstoppable? Because they are the better team. And I think the Bucks are still searching for it. And, you know, even with Kevin Porter getting, getting some better nights out of it, like that's a lot of it.

[Bill Simmons]

40 plus minutes in that one game.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Asking him to cover in a playoff rotation and like, hey, don't have this fall apart. Because there's other times I'd say a couple weeks ago, I was like, what is Doc doing? And clearly Doc was like, I may need this dude. And we know how talented he is. So he was letting him kind of run the show. That Houston game comes to mind when he was just a disaster. But he's played better. But then I'm like, okay, so the Pacers, who I really like, all their depth, right? I'm going to pick Milwaukee with them. Still trying to kind of figure this thing out on the fly, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

In my favorite sports book ever, Breaks of the Game, which is about the trailblazer season, the 79 and 80 season, and Bill Walton's gone and Dr. Jack Ramsey is trying to figure out what the team's identity is and just can't figure it out. And then near the end of the season, they bring up this guy, Billy Ray Bates, who becomes one of the best characters in the book. And he's just basically this one on one ISO guy who doesn't play anything like the Dr. Jack style at all. He's not like, I pass, I cut. He's just a one on one guy. But they're starting to play better with him. And Dr. Jack has this crisis of philosophy of this guy. I don't know, he gives us the best chance to win. We just start running plays for him and he starts really playing them. I almost feel like that's the Porter thing with Doc, where he's just like, I. I'm out of moves. Like, if this Porter thing doesn't work, we're fucked. This guy can create shots for himself and other people and he plays hard. And I guess we're going to have to use him if Dame doesn't come back because he. Their best lineup has Porter in it now. So we'll see.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, because he is that good at getting wherever he wants on the floor and his athleticism and the finish and all that kind of stuff. But like, you know, is there a Lopez conversation on how that plays out? Is Kuzma gonna play great in the first half? Does Prince hit enough shots? You know, A.J. green's clearly gonna get minutes because he's a major part of the rotation. It is funny though, like when you think about the Pacers and why you'd pick against him since the All Star break, they're eighth in defense, which feels like impossible. Like that group's figuring it out defensively enough. And Milwaukee's, yeah, 16, but they had a good record. I mean, they closed 19 at 10.

[Bill Simmons]

They're eighth in defense and first in stupid losses. That would be the other case for Milwaukee. I think they need three honest games and then one game where Indiana does what they do, which is just to completely fuck up a winnable game and do two stupid things in the last minute and you can't believe they lost. So that's the recipe, I think. Think. But Giannis, like, you know, I had Tatum third MVP all year and I.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Don'T know how you can put anybody ahead of Giannis.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I think that's my point. These last four weeks, like, Giannis has to be third. He just has to. And I love the Tatum year and we've talked about it a million times. I just think he's been awesome. I think he's been awesome as a two way guy, as a rebounder, he's. I think he's fifth in points, he's top 20 in rebounds, he's top 20 in assists. It's like maybe fifth and threes. Like he's just. And he's guarded everybody in the league. But what Giannis did the last four weeks, I think he has to be third. And then if you're putting him third, this will be his seventh straight first team all NBA. And during those seven years he's averaged 30, 12 and 6, and this year he's averaging 30, 12 and 7. So this is like LeBron level consistency where people 50 years from now will be on whatever the version of basketball reference is. I'm sure it'll be some sort of AI tablet that you can just touch with your hand and it just comes out of the thin air. People will be looking at this like, Jesus Christ, about this Giannis guy. It's like the same way you look at Karl Malone seasons now and be like, oh my God, he put up 29 and 10 for 12 years.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, this will be what? This will be seven to me. He should finish third in the MVP. And I even feel bad, you know, putting him there because of how special he is. But whatever. I mean, we've got a great top of the MVP class this year, but it's going to be seven straight years with the top four finishing mvp. And you start putting that resume up against like the Birds, all timers Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he's pretty near that vicinity. Now that Shaq Hakeem Moses area in the all time grouping. He's not there yet, but I think if he keeps going for a couple more years at this pace could happen. Did you land on Mitchell fifth for the MVP spot or do you have somebody else or are you still figuring it out?

[Ryan Rossillo]

No, I'm still figuring out. We still have what, like four days?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I'm still figuring out too that because normally when on the Sunday pod, we would do a lot of our picks, but I'm, I'm not, I'm glad.

[Ryan Rossillo]

We'Re not like, oh, no, are we doing this today? I have for defensive the player of the year. I'm pretty sure I already know what I'm doing, but, but specifically on the defensive stuff, like, I'm fine with all the other things, but defensive stuff. I want to be able to make the rounds and talk to enough people because I just don't want to miss anything. I don't want to be sitting there, look at defensive box score and going, well, this guy was better than this guy.

[Bill Simmons]

If, if I gave you two of James Harden, Tyrese Halberton and Zubots and I can only have two spots for 13 Mambia though. You're, you're a modern O N B, a voter where you just, you're, you're just pick the best guys. You don't care about the facsimile of a fake team.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I mean, I, I don't know that that's true. I feel a bit like the College Football Playoff commissioner where I'm never going to give you an answer. I'm not going to talk about conferences being better than other conferences. I'm going to say that all of it's factored in. This is important. That's not, not important.

[Bill Simmons]

No set strategies.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I have fundamental beliefs, but each year is a different field. So I'm not going to tell you that I'm prioritizing this all the time because one year it may not matter as much. The standings thing, I know you guys do a couple weeks ago and you didn't seem to like that very much, but I was watching.

[Bill Simmons]

I like being you guys. Yeah. I never take anything personally, though.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I don't know if that's true, but.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, on the pod, I mean, with you.

[Ryan Rossillo]

No, but I was watching Zach, right?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Fired up to have him on the team and he was talking about his MVP vote and he was like, I've been SGA all season long and now I'm just starting to think like, how can I not vote for yogis?

[Bill Simmons]

This is what I brought to you last week. I'm really struggling with this and I don't have a pick yet. I don't.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You haven't decided who you're going to vote for MVP.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like honestly 50, 50 for me.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I, I watch the standings, right? It's C, but it's the standings and I, you know, I think there's times you maybe. I mean, could it be the tiebreaker for an all NBA? I don't think that's necessarily wrong, but I don't know, man. I don't. I'm not having a hard time with this one. I'm voting for Jokic.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, you've officially decided?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Oh, yeah, I've decided a while ago. And I wouldn't say anything's happened recently where I'm like, oh, I'm wrong.

[Bill Simmons]

I went back through all the MVPs that bothered me over the years and over.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Which one's number one?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, just over and over again. The standings driven ones are the ones where we get in the most trouble, where we don't just divest ourselves completely and be like, who's the most. Who's actually the most valuable player? Right. Like if you just. The problem with, with the SGA candidacy and he's been amazing and we've talked about he's having one of the best guard offensive seasons in the history of basketball. But if you gave Jokic SGAs 2 through 12, I'm pretty sure he would be able to win 65 to 70 games with the team that SGA has. And that's where it gets dicey. Now they're a top five team. I never want to have an MVP unless it's a team that has a good record that at least in the vicinity, right. They're one game away from being a three seed. They're one of the eight or nine best teams in the league. But when you see all the dysfunction they clearly had the whole year and over and over again, you would just watch. He would just, despite the odds, would just keep it together. And it was amazing to watch. And it's going to be the first thing I remember about this season was watching him this year. So that to me, that was one of my. When I wrote my MVP column, it was like four things. What are you going to remember first when you remember this season? For me, it's what Jokic did with this fucked up Nuggets team that fired their coach with a week left and he had like the Greatest offensive season I've seen since Jordan played. So it's like I. That's what I'm struggling with because SJ has won 68 games and he was awesome.

[Ryan Rossillo]

So dysfunction boost. Is that new dysfunction boot?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, yeah. It's like, what? Like, was it even more dysfunctional than we could ever imagined? We heard. We knew all this shit, but I don't know what it's like to play in a basketball team where you have this much animosity behind the scenes. Maybe it doesn't matter as much as we think. I don't know. Would seem like it would matter some. And it seems like they were really, really genuinely tired of Malone, which was a whole other issue beyond the whole, he's not communicating with the gm. He's spitefully playing people that the GM likes or not playing like whatever the. All that other shit. But. But the fact that they almost got to 50 wins with how Murray looked the first two months, it's kind of.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Incredible in the west they did today was 50 wins.

[Bill Simmons]

50 wins with the season they had. We did that live show in Denver. When was that? Beginning of December. And we led with a whole thing about Jamal Murray had had like eight awful weeks at that point. And that was like one of our lead things where we were like, let's have an honest conversation about this. By the way, he's never going to be the same next year.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Like, Murray's lighting it up or whatever. Then the national broadcast. Billy can. He still never made an All Star Game. He'd be like, okay, do you want to go through the years again?

[Bill Simmons]

This is like the LeBron MVP thing. Yeah. Or the Kobe MVP thing is actually worse.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I think Jokic is the best player in the world. I think his stats are close enough, depending on which metrics you want to look at. If not superior to sga. And it'd be one thing if they were a disastrous team on the season, but I didn't really have a hard time with it.

[Bill Simmons]

He's going to be the first thing I remember about this season I've never seen.

[Ryan Rossillo]

And that more so than Shireman, the way he's closed.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that's been pretty good. That's been watching. Watching some of the Joe Maz lineups. Yeah. I was bummed that it's Clippers Nuggets because I, you know, I have a vested interest in the Clippers advancing because I want to go to the games. Right.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

But I love Jokic and I want him to. I want to keep playing because I like watching him so I've just never. The stuff that he did this season, I've never seen anything like it. I've never seen somebody do more for their team. It's like, what the fuck else could he. He got every rebound. He led the offense up. He took all of the shots in crunch time. Like, he literally did everything. Jalen Williams think he was an all NBA guy or. No, just in general.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I'm not ready to answer that. He's certainly on the list. All right, Are you.

[Bill Simmons]

I have him tentatively in there right now because I think with the season OKC had and the season Cleveland had, I find it hard to believe. You can't get too. As you know, I gravitate a little bit more toward the record, especially with those late teams. And I'm between Dort and Mobley for a Defensive Player of the Year now. I haven't decided either, but those are my two finalists.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, I'm kind of leaning Dort.

[Bill Simmons]

It's another one of those. I can only judge what I've watched on TV and what I've seen in person, and I just thought he was the guy that jumped out to me this year. Daniel's a little bit too, but I think some of the stuff Daniels did, just because it was so unique, just to watch somebody poke, check somebody from 40ft for the basket. Literally haven't seen that. His hands were everywhere, his anticipation, it was awesome. But that just wasn't a good enough defensive team. So you basically have to be wembanyama at that point. The thing with Dort is it's just like. It's like old school pickup basketball. Like, who's their best guy? It's that guy. Lou. You're going to defend him, don't let him score. And then the guy doesn't score. Just refused to be screened.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I normally always am going to just. I just think it's hard to have a perimeter guy and say this perimeter guy is as valuable as this other guy is. That's a big. Who's coming over to help at the rim in the times where Mobley gets switched out of the perimeter guy and he holds up really well. So I've kind of struggled with the door Mobley thing. But I will tell you again, defensively, on these awards, I like to talk to people because it's just the one you don't want to miss. And it's a hard award to feel like, okay, I've absolutely nailed this, especially when you do the first and second team. And the Draymond push has been incredible. And I Don't want to act like you're dismissing Draymond, but sometimes there can be this push where you're like, this is a six month award. Let's remember that. Thank you. And Mobley to start the season, there's some numbers that tell you his impact was far greater in the first half of the season, second half of the season, but. But back to the original. Asking people about defensive stuff. The number of times that people just kind of stop and take a breath when they talk about Lou Dort that are working in the league every night. You can't help but be impressionable.

[Bill Simmons]

There was somebody wrote a piece about for two and a half straight months, nobody scored 30 on them. And it was. I also think, and we talked about this when Marcus won Defensive Player of the Year two years ago, which, you know, I forget who he beat. I think the perimeter defender is more important than it used to be for stuff like this. Just because all these teams have these awesome guys that you at least have to make work. And I don't know, I just. What he did to Jalen Brown in that Boston game was just nuts. But I watched them like when they played. I went to two OKC games and both times Harden was like, fucking. You could just see him, he's like, jesus Christ. And then if Dort comes out of the game, I have these other two.

[Ryan Rossillo]

So the smart one felt like a campaign though too. Like he just, he did all these interviews where he kept just going, oh, you know, we never get to win it or, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. Well, they were number one in defense. There were some good advanced metrics, but yeah, it's looking back, maybe not.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I don't know. I'd argue Rob Williams, although you could then go, okay, but Rob got to do what he did because he was on somebody in the corner who primarily it would be hopefully a non shooter. So then he could just roam and freelance the entire time. So the perimeter guys, usually it takes so much more for me to go into them. And by the way, he actually beat another perimeter guy that year. Because Bridges was in second, Gobert was third East.

[Bill Simmons]

Quickly we talked about Bucks, Pacers, Knicks, pistons. Knicks are minus 460. We've been dying for this series. I think there's going to be, as it gets closer, some, Some Pistons upset Buzz. I think it's a really hard ask if the five Knicks guys are all playing together. I was talking to a Knicks fan about this. If you catch them on a night when one or two of those five guys aren't playing, they look, you know, incredibly vulnerable with reason because they don't really have a bench. But those five guys together with breaks between the games and all the guys, they can throw a cage. This just seems like a tall ask for them tight. And I think that's why the line reflects it. I really want to talk myself into a Pistons upset case, but I think just the fact that they made the playoffs, they're six seed, they had the year they had. Cade established himself as a guy. Duran has been, you know, I think he's now one of the best young centers in the league. Some of their signings are really smart. That's kind of a win in itself. Now they're going to go in this series, they'll bang the Knicks around, there'll be a couple altercations, they'll make a name for themselves and that's probably the win. I don't if those five guys are healthy in the Knicks, I just don't see any, any way to tribute some.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Since the All Star break. And granted the numbers are a little weird for the Knicks, but who do you think's better defensively?

[Bill Simmons]

I would bet the ratings better for Denver because I mean at Detroit because all the advanced metrics are have been favorable for them. Last 30 games since the All Star.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Break, the Knicks are 11th on defense, the Pistons are 15th. So and by the way, points wise, it's a half a point. So it's not like some dramatic difference here. Now is that because Brunson was missing some of those games? Is, is there something there as opposed to. No, we have Mitchell Robinson back. But I'm with you. This feels a bit like, hey, you're going to get a little playoff season in Detroit. This is an incredible story, but you really going to beat the Knicks despite their flaws and the flaws that we would get into as they move a little bit further on. Cause that's why like the Pacers Knicks scenarios where you were like if they end up facing each other, that was.

[Bill Simmons]

Bad for the Knicks.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah. Because it kind of felt like not.

[Bill Simmons]

A good series for them.

[Ryan Rossillo]

There were some similarities where you didn't like your point guard on defense, you didn't like your center on defense, but you liked some of your options around it. But that might be the problem.

[Bill Simmons]

It's not a fun series for Towns. That would not be my ideal Towns matchup. The Pacers wouldn't enjoy that one. The thing with the Pistons that I think is just really cool is the Bickerstaff leaves the Cavs, right?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

The Cavs win in the what do they end up with? 64 wins and Atkinson is a coach of the year candidate and Bickerstaff goes to this other team and turns them around. And so you look at the Atkinson piece and you go, well, clearly he's a big improvement over Bickerstaff. And yet Bickerstaff was a huge improvement over the worst coach of the 21st century, Monty Williams. And somehow it just all worked out for everybody. So I guess I'm happy for Bickerstaff because it would have been one of those things where you just look like a schmuck that this team just played way better when you left. But now he got this other thing out of it.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But is Cade the best player in the series?

[Bill Simmons]

I think Brunson is. I would say Brunson. Brunson's awesome. Especially like in a playoff series where he's going to have breaks between games. Like, Brunson's incredible. I really. When he made the 65 game limit, I test drove what he would look like in the first O N B a spot instead of Mitchell and I couldn't get there. But I think he's been that special this year.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Were you more tempted to go Brunson or Ant for Mitchell spot?

[Bill Simmons]

I test drove Ant as well and then I did a long drive around the lap with Curry.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You went for a walk outside?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, Curry's last week, I mean, that San Antonio loss was an abomination. They lost the two biggest games they played all year where that San Antonio or losses were. That San Antonio loss on the one today, I think if they win those games and they're a three seed or a four seed, I think that's a more interesting conversation. He had it in his hands. If he was just awesome down the stretch, I think he could have pushed Mitchell, but I don't think the way they ended. And by the way, that San Antonio loss is the loss of the year that fucked up the playoff schedule nine ways. It fucked up everything because Harrison Barnes had a revenge game and the spurs with Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes celebrated like they got to the Final Four. Like this is a team that's tanking.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I'm sure warriors fans couldn't make a couple of those in game seven, right?

[Bill Simmons]

We had to take that nine years ago. Professor Celi playing stuff quickly. Who do you think the Cavs would want to face the most out of Magic Bulls heat?

[Ryan Rossillo]

You leaving the Hawks out.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, and the Hawks. All right. All four of those Magic Hawks bullseye. The Hawks are pretty grim if you look at Their actual teams they've beaten the last two months versus the teams they've lost to where it's one of those we're not tanking and a lot of these other teams we're playing are, and we're getting some wins out of it. But the numbers are pretty grim if you actually look at it. I think that's why the Magic are five point favorites in the playing game.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, the records, I mean, they're both around.500. But Atlanta's defense is so bad that I think it's just, you know, if you're going up against somebody in the playoffs, you'd probably rather have a terrible, terrible defense. Just knowing that this is going to be easy work. Even on the night where we're not feeling it, we're not making threes. Like, are we actually going to be scared of anything? As opposed to Orlando, who we know their offense at times has been unwatchable, and it's improved from unwatchable the last few weeks. But it's. It's a one, two punch of, of Paolo and Franz. So, you know, and I think you could look at some of the Miami stuff, but it's just that Miami's at best a very average basketball team. So.

[Bill Simmons]

Can I do a cousin of you guys?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

People forget.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Vaguely insulting when you start. The people forget. But in this case, I do think people have forgotten how big the Jalen Johnson injury was. That might be the number one. People forget. Like, Jalen Johnson was playing awesome. And if Atlanta had Jalen Johnson with the team that they have the rest of the guys that I kind of like some of the guys in that team, and I don't even think the Hunter trade, the guys that got back from those, those guys are playing for them. If they had Jalen Johnson, this would be a lot more interesting as a kind of a frisky eight seed that might be able to steal a game or two.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But when he was still playing, I was tracking touches. Just how many touches do you have? So it's pretty clear Jokic has more. He touches the basketball more times in a basketball game than any other player in the league. And Trey's usually right around there, if not other years, where he's led the league in total touches over the course of the entire season. During the time Jalen Johnson was playing, he'd be like third or fourth in the NBA. That's how important he was and how much they trusted him. Think about that, too. Playing off of Trey and having another guy that actually has that many touches and he looks like he's on the way to. I don't know if he's a superstar, changes the face of the franchise kind of thing, but he was really special and a lot of fun to watch. So you're right. Like, look, every summer we'll do it again. Next year we do the over unders, and we're like, you know what roster? I do kind of, like, despite some of the obvious concerns, it's Atlanta. So pencil me in for, like, another year of doing that.

[Bill Simmons]

I think that was the second biggest injury of the year in terms of the actual playoff stuff, other than Kyrie, which, if the maps had Kyrie, that's the team that they have. It's at least a team that, you know, you'd have to throw a couple haymakers against. Now. It's like, without him, it's ridiculous.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I think you're right about that because.

[Bill Simmons]

I have Jalen Johnson second, though. I. Even ahead of Wemby. Like, if San Antonio. Wemby, I don't feel like, oh, watch out. San Antonio could maybe beat. Steal a couple games from anyone in round one but Atlanta.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But don't you think. Look, San Antonio, they could be five betters. Five games better, right? They were five out of the 10 spot.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I just felt like their supporting cast felt like it was a year away. Next year.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, that's.

[Bill Simmons]

Next year would be pretty interesting. You know what else would have been interesting? If the Mavs had gotten Austin Reeves in the Luca trade, which they should.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Have just asked for, or if San Antonio would have offered a contract.

[Bill Simmons]

That would. That that could have happened, too. I just. I was talking about somebody about that this week. Like, how does Dallas not say, look, Reeves has to be in the deal or it's not happening. I just don't think. Palika, we'll talk about this for the rest of our lives. I just don't think Palinka's, like, too much. I'm walking away. No, now it's too far. There's no way he doesn't say, fine, take Reeves.

[Ryan Rossillo]

It's my favorite part. Like, forget about what it would be like lining up a putt to win the Masters on 18. Like, how would you handle that? Yeah, I do. Like, I like to take ourselves through the exercise of, if this person calls you and offers you this, will you have the balls to say no to something that you desperately want? Knowing that, okay, this fixes for all of, like, this Lakers window extending and, you know, running in Denver in the last couple playoffs. Like, hey, if something bounces our Way, like, this has actually been, I think, a more successful run for the Lakers than they actually get credit for. But because LeBron's on the team, they're held to maybe the standard. They're supposed to be a title contender. So then they're brought up as a title contender on TV shows. And you and I have talked about it, we're like, going into this year, you're like, look, they're probably not going to have the same health luck that they had with AD and LeBron the year prior. If they're healthy in the playoffs to get the right matchup maybe. But this is a team that won a title, what, half a decade ago? And here we go. Like, I don't know, I can't figure them out. Like, I don't know if I should be picking them because I can't imagine that they would beat OKC in a seven game series if they're lucky enough to get that far. Okay, but looking at, and that would be in the Western Conference finals. Looking at that moment where you're Nico and you go, well, I have to ask for more. Because Pelinka can't actually say, like, Polinka would never bring it up. He'd be like, you know, I was this close to getting Luca, but I wouldn't include Reed. And you would just go, lucas solves the next five years of your.

[Bill Simmons]

What if it's next 15 years?

[Ryan Rossillo]

Let's call it seven, let's call it 12. To get worked that bad. It's still, it's been two months since the trade and I still, I did a monologue on it the other day and I still felt like it was somewhat relevant, granted, because it was his first time coming back and he has 31 in the first half. But like, it, it's so bad that I don't think they can fire him because they all acted like they were all on the same page and they're going to have to like ride it out.

[Bill Simmons]

Where was the one guy, whether it was Dumont or anybody else, who was just like, hold on, we're trading Luka, we're not going to get Reeves, it's not Davis. Like, we're just making the Lakers, like.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Much better that Jeff Nico says, well, then they would have said no and be like, oh, no, okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Sounds great. But you can hate, can you hate.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Your own, like the one guy that had the say in it, thought the least of the asset in the entire basketball world. The one guy that exists, right? Because there's always like one guy who's like, oh, he's not that good. I think Skip tried. Skip Bayless tried to have a LeBron Rory tweet or something. Or it didn't. I don't know. It was basically just a new way to shit on LeBron and.

[Bill Simmons]

Interesting.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah. I was like, cool, tricep, pull down.

[Bill Simmons]

He's in the lab.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, he was in the lab just baking him. So there's always one person that will find a way to say the thing that, like, you can't fucking believe somebody believes. And this the one person happened to be the guy who was running the Dallas Matt Mavericks when it came to Luca.

[Bill Simmons]

So I got more intel on that trade. It was a known thing. 90 minutes before the trade, it was done 90 minutes before it was actually announced. Maybe even a little more than that.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Okay. But that's not unusual.

[Bill Simmons]

But they tried to make it seem like nobody knew until the very last second. I think way more people knew. And I think it got around the league a little bit before it actually got reported. And I think the consensus was there's no way this is true, because that can't be what Dallas got for Luca. This has to be some sort of. There's no way this can't be true. And then it was true. Because instant reaction is, wait, they're trading Luka. Why didn't they shop him? And then the second one is, wait, Reeves isn't in this. That's the whole trade. That was the second thing. And then how they hid it from everybody and didn't shop it. I guess we'll be talking about it forever. It's one of the seminal Moments of the 21st century in the National Basketball Association. This stupid trade they made.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I remember 2025 because you were able to be professional enough to go to YouTube live that night with me and Mahoney and do an hour of content knowing, deep down, for personal reasons, how much you hate this fucking transaction.

[Bill Simmons]

You know what's been interesting with the Laker fans? And obviously, I know a few of them, even. They're, like, not talking, like, crazy shit about it because they can't believe it happened. They're like, where are the Lakers? They're just like. It's like that. Like a check for a million dollars made out to nobody just floated into their front door and they grabbed it and just wrote their name and cashed it, and nobody was ever going to find out. It's one of those. It's like a fucking borderline miracle. If you're a Laker fan, you just can't believe it. Like, what did he have the other night? He just randomly had, what, like 41, 13, 45, 45, 13 and 9.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You talk about the Mavs game?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, no, I'm talking about the last game he played. He played one more game.

[Ryan Rossillo]

What?

[Bill Simmons]

On Friday night. And had another one. He's just like a normal game for him is 38, nine. It's just.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Oh, the Houston game.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it's just.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, he had 39. And it's even a typical game.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, look at 39.

[Ryan Rossillo]

It was even worse than that Dallas game, too, because in AD's not doing anything. He's like, having the bad AD game because I always think it's so stupid when the guys are on TV going like, hey, AD is not a bad player. Like, no shit. Yeah, all of us have TVs. Yeah, we all like, AD is really good and he was awesome last year. But, like, what are you talking about?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, but the other piece of it is if the Lakers had the version of AD that's basically existed since mid January, they wouldn't be in the playoffs. They'd be like a nine or a ten playing team. Right. Because they wouldn't have had AD this whole time. They would have put this huge burden on LeBron. They, you know, they would have the same lack of rim protection they have now. It's really nuts.

[Ryan Rossillo]

That's also another thing in the Lakers conversation, though, because over that 18 and three stretch where their defense was first or second in the league, it was like going for a month. Because when they added Luca, I think it was fair to also look at the perimeter defense going like, okay, but how. How is this going to hold up on the perimeter? Are these guys. Is Luca going to get hunted? I think Reeves does a good job of being in position. He's one of those guys that's smart. But clearly there's going to be times if you get him deep enough, you can overpower him a little bit. And then night tonight, like, look, I expect that we're going to see a more consistent effort, somebody that's willing to not just switch in advantages for him to rest himself with LeBron, like, I imagine he's going to play with more intensity on that side of the basketball. But the last 15, you know, whatever, you can throw it all away, but they're 21st in defense. So when they were one of the three best defenses in the NBA for over a month after they had made the trade, I couldn't. We could talk about coaching. We're giving the staff all of this credit and like game in and game out. I think they. They prep, they adapt better. It's almost like a football team going into a Sunday being like this is the game plan specific which can get lost in NBA regular season. But I'm with like that felt it just like there's no way they're this good. They're not going to be a top five defense. Like hey, it starts with defense with that group. Maybe they outscore Minnesota, but. And it doesn't really matter what the scores were before. But those are actually lower scoring games. But they had played so long ago. Again, it's pre Lucas so it doesn't. It doesn't really matter.

[Bill Simmons]

It's going to be a bitch of a playoff team to play with how they execute offense, with how hard they are to officiate, especially when they're home. This is going to be a really hard.

[Ryan Rossillo]

And again, the whole point of Luca is when it all falls apart and you need a bucket. It's 110, 110 and you're under a minute and everybody knows everything you're doing and it's game four and they're going to sell out and it's just like I'm just going to score and it's at its worst. Is it the second or third best thing in the entire league of like, hey, I need a bucket. And we have playoff success to prove that that works. As much as Boston Grant, you know, ran him into the ground defensively and all that kind of stuff. Like you traded this thing. That is the most important thing to actually succeed in the playoffs. Him with the ball, deciding what he's going to do.

[Bill Simmons]

It might be the best for. We've known this forever because if you go back when we did all our. Or you weren't with us yet, but we did the 2018 NBA draft stuff and my argument for Luke over Ayton was like, this is the league now. You have to have a guy like this. That's how you win titles. Unless you know, nobody knew Jokic was going to turn into Jokic.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But.

[Bill Simmons]

But you need. It's a perimeter game. The threes are becoming more important. Like you have to have one of these guys if you going to try to win the title year after year and the Lakers have one of these guys.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Jokic might get you the best. Look, Doncic probably get you the best shot.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, now that Jokic has mastered this thing he does where he's basically he's. I don't even know. We need a name for it when he has the ball 25ft from the basket, and he backs the guy down, does the whirling, does that thing, and then all of a sudden he's four feet from the basket. I don't know how he does it, and I don't know what it's called, and I don't know how you stop it. The only way a team seem to stop it is they send a small guard and they try to kind of out of nowhere to his blindside and try to strip him. But he doesn't have blindside because he's doing this all the time. I have a couple quick things. Oh, and then OKC versus Grizzlies, Mavs, Kings. Is there anything that says to you that would even go more than four games? Is there one team that could take a game off the Thunder?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I don't think it's Dallas, man. When they had a lineup out there, I think it was one center lineup, and I think on the Peruner, it was Dinwiddie, Najee, Clay. And then I think PJ may have been playing power forward with a center. And the amount of, like, resistance, that wasn't happening on the perimeter defensively. And even pj, who you think at least physically can hold up and stuff, he lost LeBron in one of those places. I'm just watching that going like, all right, even if AD and Kyrie were here, like, they have some lineups where they'd have to maybe switch some guys out and just go, we're going to have to hold up defensively here with some better options there. Memphis, I know exactly what it's going to look like at the end of the playoff game. Maybe it'll go in, maybe it won't.

[Bill Simmons]

Dallas gets a win because they don't have to play home again. If they. If they win two playing games, they're both on the road. And maybe during that second playing game, maybe you start thinking deep down in the deep recesses of your soul, wouldn't mind this season ending. We'll see what happens. I have a couple other storylines for you, then we'll go Bub Carrington.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Carrying the Wizards to a win, knocking them out of the one spot. I was torturing House. It was the funniest. So Utah has the number one spot. Now. The top three are Utah, Washington, Charlotte. They have 14%.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

So it doesn't matter from an odd standpoint, but it does matter if you get jumped, what the sequencing is. It just brings you closer to having one of the top three. And the Wiz, I don't know how it would have shook out if I think they were in the head spot ahead of Utah. Cause Utah won a couple days ago. It comes down to Bub Carrington with four seconds left, beating two guys off the dribble and doing a double clutch fling off the backboard. That goes in and then he's mobbed. And it felt a little Joe Milton to me. I got to be honest, Priscilla. Little Joe Milton. PTSD kicked in. It was like. You know what that reminds me of? When the Pats had the number one pick that they would have been able to trade for three first round picks because everybody loves Cam Ward and instead we're picking fourth in a three player draft. That's what I thought.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, that was a tough one for Pat's fans because you're like, well, you know what? That group competed and they can use that 25. Hey, remember when we were supposed to lose? We fought really hard. We can build on that. You're like, yep, we can build on it with less resources.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, just with less. Two less first round picks and now we're going to take a left tackle. Who should go ninth with the fourth pick.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Question for you. Would you rather the Sixers or Spurs win the lottery?

[Bill Simmons]

Spurs.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Okay. I know last week we both agreed pretty quickly without any discussion that the Sixers winning the lottery would be the grossest of all the outcomes.

[Bill Simmons]

It would be disgusting.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Are the Spurs a little.

[Bill Simmons]

No. Because the Wimby thing was. Oh. Seems like a legitimate medical thing by all accounts. Correct.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah. Yeah. I think Goldsberry's been pretty good on that. So.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I feel like they've 82 Chris everything correctly. I like that they beat Golden State in that game. Yeah. The Philly thing would be gross. Did you see? Oh, that was another thing I had on my list. Darryl said him and Nurse are coming back next season. I gotta say, I was genuinely surprised we're taping this right now. It's a little past 6:00 Sunday, so who knows, Monday morning we might wake up and that might not be true. But I was surprised to see that both guys feel like they're coming back.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You cool with that?

[Bill Simmons]

Cool with that?

[Ryan Rossillo]

From what standpoint you think it's the right decision?

[Bill Simmons]

I need more intel on who decided it was a good idea to let Joel Embiid play in the Olympics and then give him a giant extension. Whoever's decision that was should probably pay some sort of consequence.

[Ryan Rossillo]

It felt like. It felt like it was turning on Daryl. When the news came out, it was like, yeah. And ownership was really hesitant about giving Joel that deal. And you're like, oh really? The guys who have to pay the 200 million were hesitant about doing it.

[Bill Simmons]

Next topic. I only have two more. Mikhail Bridges kept his consecutive game streak alive. I don't know if you saw it today. He checked in for six seconds and came out.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah. Committed a foul.

[Bill Simmons]

So A.C. green did this when he broke his nose. Came in with a mask for I think three or four games. Checked in and checked out to keep the streak going. I both don't care at all. And I also really truly hate this. I hate it, but I also don't care.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I really hated it when A.C. green did it.

[Bill Simmons]

I forget whose one he broke. It was like Randy Smith, maybe the old Buffalo Brave. Yeah, it's like that. True. Yeah, I think that's who it was.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I'm get research on that.

[Bill Simmons]

I think Randy smith played like 900 straight games. I think the time he played in the games.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, I think it was again, I was so much younger then. Right. So it was 1996. I remember. I think there was some high fives that he gave the guys as he came out. Like he had done something cool and that just really, really bothered me.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, yeah, I think it was Randy Green. 906.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Randy Green. Were they related?

[Bill Simmons]

Not Randy Green. Randy Smith. Okay, who, who beat your guy? Johnny Red Kerr.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Oh, that's my guy.

[Bill Simmons]

844. I know you're a big fan.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Randy Smith from Buffalo State.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he was good.

[Ryan Rossillo]

He was a 14th round pick. Talk about a sleeper.

[Bill Simmons]

I think he was in the all star game. He's an all star.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Shooting guard. Yeah. Good basketball card.

[Ryan Rossillo]

He was 24th in the MVP voting. He's 76.

[Bill Simmons]

He has one of the cards of my favorite card set of all time. The 1976 Big Boy tops. Randy Smith's in there. Last thing for you. I just want to congratulate the NBA one more time for just fucking up their schedule.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Oh, come on.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't understand.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You've been nice the whole pod.

[Bill Simmons]

So you have two games that matter today, right? Yeah, two games that we know are going to matter. Houston, Denver, Golden State Clippers. Because Minnesota is obviously going to kill Utah. Why not nudge those games by like 2 hours or 90 minutes? Anything. Your whole goal is to. For people who love basketball to watch the league that you have. But then maybe also get some casual fans who are like not sure how much I love basketball, but that game was really awesome and now I want to watch more. Or hey, maybe my kid can come in and we'll watch the second half of this Clippers warriors game. That really means something. And instead you're just intentionally going into a masters that gets 10 to 14 million people and you get blown away on the last day of your season by this Warrior thing. And it's just like, it's just like a self inflicted wound. I don't get it. Either move the game two hours or move the schedule two weeks or I don't. I just. They're the most stubborn fucking league and I don't know why I love it sometimes really frustrates me.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Okay, well, I think what they're doing with Saturday, trying to give everybody like equal footing, right? Give everybody the day off, make sure it's not back to back seating stuff is really going to matter. Some years I'm not against. This year was thin.

[Bill Simmons]

We had UFC in boxing last night we were fine. And baseball, I'm back on baseball. But meaning to talk to you about.

[Ryan Rossillo]

The TV game is so competitive right now. I mean unless you just say, hey, let's make sure we're never going to be going up against the masters for games 82. Okay, does that mean you move it all to Monday but you keep moving this stuff around, the playing part of it.

[Bill Simmons]

Couldn't you nudge it two hours? Like what would Goodell do? Here's a good example. What would Goodell do in this situation if he had the crown jewel of the Sunday slate? Turns out it's Clippers Warriors. Goodell would be like, fuck it, we're putting that on NBC 8:00 on Sunday night and we're blowing this out, making this an event, which is what they should have done with Clippers Warriors. Instead they buried it at 1:00 in the afternoon PT.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Okay, but isn't the fear if you do that right, flex it out, NBA version of it, that game could be totally pointless too at some point. Or do you make that decision just days ahead of time?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, no, you make it like 24 hours ahead of time.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

We knew yesterday we knew what the most important game was. You and I were texting about it. It was like, clips warriors. This is, this game matters. Not sure if Rockets Nuggets are going to matter. We know Clips warriors is going to matter. So anyway, I just. It's a league that is in great shape and hit the jackpot with this Luca trade. It's the single best thing that happened to the league this decade and is in the running maybe since the decision and LeBron going to Miami and All the stuff they got from that as the biggest thing that happened in the league. They have this 25 year old incredible offensive player now on the single most important franchise in the league, at least from a popularity, you know, maybe second in a history standpoint. But they hit the jackpot with this. So it's in a good spot. And now you have Steph Curry playing to try to not avoid the play in against a Clippers team. That's really fun to watch. Like, I don't know, I would have blown it out. I am watching baseball again. Priscilla. Yeah.

[Ryan Rossillo]

You sent me a text about it today. I was.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, crochet was throwing a no hitter that I didn't want to tell you throwing a no hitter because I was trying to obey the no hitter rules. But. But yeah, Red Sox team, a lot of bats. Bats have been a little quiet so far but. But likable team. I've been. I'm back five year hiatus.

[Ryan Rossillo]

They have the second most runs in the American League.

[Bill Simmons]

Bats have been quite expected. More. They had a 19 run game. That's why the runs are where they were.

[Ryan Rossillo]

A lot of parity at the top of the American League. Just like Jeff Passon told us flat.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, so you're doing your pot on Tuesday and Thursday this week.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Tuesday, Thursday.

[Bill Simmons]

For some reason the playing games are Friday. I don't really understand why we didn't stagger those either and why we gave away Thursday night completely. But that's what they decided to do. And then we'll be back Sunday with.

[Ryan Rossillo]

A whole.

[Bill Simmons]

The most fun weekend of the year. That first eight games. Overreactions left and right. I'll be. I'm just telling you now I'm going to be overreacting all over the place. When are you doing your awards? Tuesday or Thursday.

[Ryan Rossillo]

I could save it to unveil the ballot with you next Sunday. Why don't we do that? I think it's more fun. I think it's more fun.

[Bill Simmons]

When is our stuff due?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I think it's the 18th.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, I'm happy to do that with you.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we already had some revelations. I don't think people realize that Jokic has maybe a little bit better chance to win MVP than people realize.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah, I don't think anybody's going to be surprised by what I've said. But yeah, you're right, that'd be something you'd be good at because I. I feel like there's times I'll text Serutti about a topic for our Tuesday, Thursday and then I Go. You know, this would be better with Bill. Like, available belts, available belts, podcast guest availability. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm talking NBA. Maybe belt availability would be the better way to title it. But you have to come up with a word. No meaning, like, I like when you do, which player has had the belt, right? The best player in the world. When did he have it? Who got it? Next? How long did this player have it? How short was this guy's belt run? Okay, so if you went through the entire league right now and say, all right, Jokic has the belt, how many other players, like, how long is the list of, like, it doesn't seem crazy where you're going, like, okay, that guy could at some point be the best player in the world. That list is not over 10 players, I don't think. However, I'd also say that we have three recent belt holders that no one could have ever seen. Even if you were being incredibly generous between Giannis, Jokic especially, and even Kawhi was like, at one point, that guy's going to be the best player in the world. And it's three in a pretty short amount of time.

[Bill Simmons]

So we, we both worked those two drafts when Giannis and Jokic got picked. And yeah, Jokic, I think had the lowest. Didn't he have the lowest jump in the history of the combine or something? Like a 17 inch vertical leap?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I looked at my Jokic scattering.

[Bill Simmons]

We were in commercial when he got drafted, right?

[Ryan Rossillo]

I looked it up. Cause I always like to go back and be like, what are what I thought of this guy, right? And sometimes it's fun. A lot of times it's horrifying. But it was like, man, this guy's like a lot of fun. And then at the end it was like, but come on, dude, give me a break, right?

[Bill Simmons]

You think he's like, Omar, what was that guy's name? Omar Samhan? That center that came in and was lighting up People of March Madness.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Well, the first time. And I would only be able to watch him on Synergy. So I would just go back because he was on the list and because I was doing my own stuff, I didn't want to just read everybody else's stuff. And then I would do the draft on whatever. I don't even know if we even talked about the second rounders when they're even picked because we'd interview so many people on the live broadcast for radio, like, radio. Back then when we did the. It was like, interview, interview, interview. I mean, then you're listing the last five picks.

[Bill Simmons]

After the interview, it's like Nick Johnson got taken. Right.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Like, we're able to get Nikola Jokic from Serbia. So when you first watch Jokic, you're like, what is this? This is like, this is hilarious. Like, I can't believe you did this. I can't believe you did that. But then, you know, again, athletically you're.

[Bill Simmons]

Just like, well, remember, once upon a time there was a Jokic versus Nurkic. Which guy should they keep Was an actual storyline. That was probably 2017 range. They have these two centers. Which one should stay?

[Ryan Rossillo]

It feels like they knew.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it seems like they knew. Yeah. No question.

[Ryan Rossillo]

But yeah, I mean, even Giannis was physically so ridiculous. But what I saw him, it was just. And I know I've talked about this before, but he was just beating up on these dudes in this lower level stuff where you didn't really even know, like what to make of it.

[Bill Simmons]

Looked like a watch game.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Also, he was 6, 6, 9.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And grew 3 inches after they picked him, which was a miracle for them. Not as much of a miracle as getting Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis and Max Christie and one first round pick, but a miracle nonetheless. All right, Rossillo, I'll see you in a week. Enjoy the playing games and everything else and good pod.

[Ryan Rossillo]

Enjoy your votes.

[Bill Simmons]

That's it for the podcast. Don't forget new rewatchables coming on Monday. I'm also going to be popping on Zach Lowe's podcast later on Monday, so stay tuned for that. Thanks to Jonathan and Ronick and Jesse and Ceruti for producing this one and I will be back on this podcast on Tuesday. Stay tuned. Must be 21 plus in President select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 + in President D.C. gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com, call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE NY or text Hopeny in New York.