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Bill Simmons (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Vrbo Private Vacation Rentals. With Vrbo, you can save over $200 on select homes when you stay for a week or more. Say you wanted to go catch a few baseball games in Boston. Take some time off work, fly into Beantown, watch the Sox play. After that, book a VRBO in Cape Cod for a week. The world the world is your oyster. Lobster roll a clam. Chatter with the money you saved. It's your edible metaphor of choice. Next vacation, stay longer and save. Make it a verba the Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I made pop culture appearances on two of our podcasts. One was the Rewatchables. Me and Kyle Brandt broke down Out for justice with Steven Seagal. It was the most fun I think we've had for any of the four Steven Seagal movies we've had. This is great. Producer Craig was great. Everybody was great. Really fun episode. You can watch it on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch it as a video podcast on Spotify. Listen to it wherever you hear your podcast. That was one. I was also on the Prestige TV podcast because Joanna Robinson and I both watched the Better Sister with Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks, a murder mystery. I kind of liked it, had some thoughts, had some critiques, had some nitpicks. We broke all of it down. You can find on the Prestige TV podcast, which is also on the Ringer Dash TV YouTube channel. Hey, you know how I've been working with FanDuel? We've been doing Taylor Fade, doing it usually either Wednesday or Thursday. We won last week. Basically, I pick a player prop. You decide whether you want to tail me and back the pick or fade me and go against it. Either way, if you win, you get a 50% profit boost token that you get to put toward it. It's super easy. The bet's on the app. All you have to do is apply the Taylor Fade and you can decide whether you want to go against me or not. I was psyched that we created a brand new bet for FanDuel. I like being on. Yeah, I felt like the Neil Armstrong of this kind of bet. Anyway, check out FanDuel Sportsbook. Usually these are going to be Wednesday or Thursday, so I think game three of the finals is a Wednesday, so that'll probably be the next one. You can tell me, you can fade me, whatever you want to do. I like when you ride me. I think for karma purposes it's great. So check that out on Fanduel Sportsbook Coming up on this podcast, I'm going to talk about the Knicks at the very top. Because right after we recorded most of this podcast, they got rid of their coach, Tom Thibdo, who we had been talking. We'd be talking about that possibility on this podcast since April. So a bunch of things that I found interestingness, I'm going to talk about that on top. And then Pablo Tori is coming in after that. We're in a huge beef. Just we had to be security guards on both sides, really making sure that it was like in UFC when the two guys are coming in on the way in and they both have their teams. Just make sure we don't start fighting now. It's fine. I've known Pablo for a long time. I'll explain at the very top of when he comes on why he came on the podcast. But I had a great time and it was fun to have him on. I appreciate that he came down. So that is the podcast for today. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna bring in Pearl Jam, and then my thoughts on the Knicks. This episode is presented by State Farm. It's no secret that great teams need great teammates. I've been saying this for years. And when it comes to insurance, State Farm is there to help you find the right coverage for your home, car and more. Whether you need an in person or digital assist, they're ready. When life hits you with a full court press, get a game plan that helps fit your life. Talk to State Farm today. State Farm with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. All right, I'm recording the top part of the podcast here. It's about 2 o' clock Pacific time. The Knicks relieved Tom Thibodeau of his duties as head coach a couple hours ago. I was gonna have a guest, but, you know, honestly, there's a bunch of stuff I want to hit. I feel like I can do it in 15 minutes and we're just gonna go for it. I wasn't surprised. Zach Lowe came on this podcast in April. We did all of our. We did a most Intriguing Playoff People draft and we got to the hot seat category. And this was, I think, Zach's first appearance back on my podcast. And we had a hot seat category and he had a. I forget who he had. And then I had Tibbs and Zach did, like, his, like, cold body. It was like he got electroshocked. And I was like, look, I think there's a chance, you know, I don't I don't know if it's going great and, you know, if they lose to the Celtics in five or, you know, the first round's rocky. Whatever happens, I think this is in play. And there were, there were reasons. I thought that there was stuff that I heard, there was stuff percolating around. But then they beat Detroit in six, they beat Boston in six, and you know, Tatum goes down at the end of game four. They're about to win game four. They're going to take a three one lead against a 60 plus win team. And then they take Indiana to six. And they were one of the four teams left. Basketball's reignited in New York. And the question is, well, then why would you fire your coach? Well, I think there's 1, 2, 3. I'm going to give you five reasons. I'm going to give you a couple conspiracy theories as well, just for the hell of it. Five reasons Tibbs got fired. Number one, this is an admission that they actually weren't as close to winning the title as maybe you think you were if you were one of the final four teams left. And there's previous examples of this, warriors in the Mark Jackson year, before they hired Steve Kerr, where there was a feeling like Mark Jackson took us from here to here, and now we need somebody to take us from here to here. I talked about this on my podcast on Sunday with Van and Marcillo. The better example, and one that I think is weirdly applicable in a bunch of different ways Here, is the 2003 Pistons who moved on from Rick Carlisle. They hired Larry Brown. And people were really surprised because Rick Carlisle had done a good job with Detroit. He's a good coach, and as we've seen, won A title in 2011. He's in the finals this year, ironically beat the Knicks. But the question was, did Carlisle take this roster as far as it could go? And on top of it, could Larry Brown bring us up an even further level? Well, a guy who was intimately involved with that Pistons team behind the scenes back when he was very shadowy and nobody really understood what he did or what his role was, was world wide West William Wesley. He was a confidant. He was a big Larry Brown guy. He was behind the scenes with those Pistons guys and all these different ways, so close to a lot of them. I'm not saying he was responsible for the decision. I'm just saying he was there watching the effect of it. And I find it hard to believe that him and Leon Rose, who run the Knicks team right now, weren't thinking about that specific example, when they were thinking, did Tibbs take us as high as we could possibly go? Is there another level for us to go and what has to happen to get there? Did we max out with tips? In the case would be season played, the starters too much, trailed by 10 plus all the time in the three playoff series. As we talked about on my podcast on Sunday, at some point, you are who you are. And if you're down 10, 12, 15 in 75% of the playoff games you're playing, that's a really bad sign that you have to always constantly claw your way back. And then you gotta think about circumstances, too. You're gifted. A Cleveland collapse. Cleveland has home court throughout the playoffs and they won 64 games and Indiana just thumps them. You're gifted. Boston's inexplicable collapse in game one and game two, which I may or may not look at the box scores once every two days. The Celtics, in the third quarter with a huge lead of Game 1, took 20 shots, and 19 of them were threes. And you, you just think back to some of the decisions Boston made offensively in that series, how slow they played, how many threes they took, how they didn't use some of the Knicks weaknesses against them, didn't push the pace, didn't constantly hunt, Brunson and Towns. And those two games are just two of the worst losses combined as a loss in the history of Boston's franchise. And it's going to be a long time before you get over it, and that's before you get into what happens. Tatum, a Game 4. But just how they played those first two games was such a gift to the Knicks, who then went and grabbed it because they're a tough team and they have a lot of talented players. You also lose out of Milwaukee and Philly, Orlando gets hurt, all that stuff. So a lot of things broke in New York's favor, and yet I don't think they would have come anywhere close to beating Oklahoma City. Right. So the line for that finals is, I think it's minus 700 right now with Indiana. I think. I think it would have been higher if it was the Knicks. So at some point you have to have an honest assessment. Are we trying to be good every year? Are we trying to win the title? And could we win the title with what we just watched, with the coach we have, with the way the players responded to him? And they obviously looked at it and said we can. So that's one second reason. I think Tibbs, who I really like As a coach for the most part and I appreciate how much he cares. And you could feel with some of the reactions today, the press was really shocked and in a lot of cases upset that it played out this way. He's an all in all the time basketball maniac. Like a real obsessive. And he lasted in the Knicks for five years in a player's league, which we'll get to in a second. Why that's an important number. Didn't really listen to anybody on lineups, just played his guys as much as possible. There was real dissension that you could feel from March on the Bridges stuff was always weird with Mikel Bridges and him talking openly about playing too many minutes and then, oh, we hashed it out behind the scenes. That was never a good sign. And then you could see as he started to kind of change stuff, changed his defense in the Boston series, which worked, started experimenting with these big lineups in the third, in the third round against Indiana because he realized his players couldn't play seven guys against the pace that you could do against with how Indiana wants you to play. And then all of a sudden, shame it's out there and Delon, right. And guys that really should have been playing all year. And it's just when you start changing stuff that drastically in the end of May, that's a sign like maybe you didn't use the regular season to your benefit correctly. And I think that's just undeniable. We were saying, we were talking about this on this podcast all the time, like didn't understand the rotations, didn't understand the minutes, didn't understand why there was any. No desire to develop a bench at all. So you have that. I don't think that helped him once they finally flamed out against Indiana. Here's the third reason he was there five years, which doesn't seem like a long time. Well, you've heard about the 10 years of the remaining coaches, the longest running coaches in the NBA right now, 2008, Eric Spoelstra 14 Steve Kerr 2020 Billy Donovan at Chicago 2020 Tyron Lou for the Clippers and then mark Dagnaud and OKC 2020. So three of our five longest coaches showed up in the NBA on those teams five years ago. And all right, so what is that? Our owners impatient. This is the league now. The players run the league. The players run the league more than ever. The money is so high and so crazy. The turnover and the musical chairs. If somebody's unhappy with their situation, their teammates, their coach, they're complaining they have more power than they've ever had and it's just a fact. Like this is the dark side of player empowerment. You have guys making crazy amounts of money who, if they don't really like their coach, guess who's not going to win that battle? The coach. We the, the, the real eye opening one for this was Brad Stevens in Boston. Because that last Celtics year he had the team basically packed it in on him and, and really seemed like they, they just were starting to tune him out and he wasn't reaching them in the same way. And Brad Stevens was an incredible coach. He only had a seven year run for the Celtics. Think about that. So the run is usually five to seven years unless you end up with a Spoelstra situation. By the way, SPO didn't have a great year this year either. Steve Kerr, I think Dagnaut will be at OKC for a long, long time. Other than that, you know, we're going to hit a point where Doc Rivers is like the seventh most tenured NBA coach and I think he got to Milwaukee five minutes ago. I just think this is the league now. I think there's too many outlets for guys to push unhappy buttons. The league is hyper covered. Every sort of interaction on the bench, every quote that comes out of any sort of press conference, it's just, there's just a big spotlight on anything. And once there's any unhappiness at all, you could feel it blow up. And I just think it's, it's really hard. The Knicks didn't seem that happy the last four months, I would say. And I thought we talked about this on Sunday. It was so interesting that they lost game six and the Athletic immediately had this long, long as Brian Curtis would call it, the now they tell us piece, which seemed like it was just in their archives for four days waiting to get published. And it had a lot of stuff. And the two big losers in that piece were Townes and Thibodeau as we talked about on the podcast on Sunday. So there was clearly a lot of smoke here and some fire and that's why I wasn't surprised. It's why I met first mentioned in April. That's why I mentioned on Sunday's pot. I thought it was 4555 that he stayed and now he's gone. But there's two other dynamics that I think are really important for this. Mikhail bridges. He makes $24.9 million next year. They traded five first round picks for him. He can leave and sign with another team 12 and a half months from now. Basically 12, 13 months from now, July 1, 2026, if they don't sign him to an extension. They traded the five first round picks for him. They got the Villanova connection together. He's the one that we're pretty positive. Wasn't that happy this season. Talked about the minutes was just an afterthought. Offensively they were like begrudgingly get him involved. I thought he had moments in the playoffs, but also moments where he disappeared. I can't say they ran a lot of offense for him. I thought he was a better offensive player than they used him. And then you saw the way he was harassing Halbert and especially in Game 5. Maybe they should have used them a little more like that. But there was a lot of times where he just felt like the odd man out. He felt like the, the drummer in the rock band or the second guitarist. And listen, this is a league where players butter each other up. Players text each other, you should come here. People wink, wink all the time. Agents have off the record conversations with people they should be having. And the moment other people feel like that guy might be a little unhappy, you just, you kind of have to monitor it. And he's in a situation where I think he's the ideal third piece for San Antonio. Right. A team like that in San Antonio is going to have some flexibility and they have a bunch of picks. And it's a team like that that could start batting their eyelashes at Bridges in a different way. And for the Knicks, that matters because if he doesn't sign an extension this summer and bets on himself now, you're potentially screwed. And I think they have to extend him this summer, period. They have to keep these five guys together, these four guys and the town's asset, whether they trade it or keep it, they have to keep that nucleus together. And he's a huge piece of this. So if you sign him to an extension, still helps you this year going forward. You know how much money you have. And he likes playing with these guys. And obviously I, I, I just refuse to believe that wasn't a piece of this. I'm not saying he demanded they fired the coach, but you can tell if somebody's all in on their, on their coach or not. Just as a, as a unit, as a player, whatever. And this gives them a better chance to figure out this Bridges thing. Which brings me to the fifth piece, the extra dynamics. I think one of the things that was, I don't want to say underreported about the Knicks. Cause people knew about it. But there's kind of quietly a lot of people in the kitchen. And I'm not going to say there's a lot of chefs in the kitchen, right? There's Leon and Wes built this team and they work for Dolan, who's the owner, who I think really loved the Knicks renaissance. There's been reports about him hand picking where every single celebrity and everybody sat courtside every game. And I think he really was re engaged. Especially when you think like from 2022 or 2002 all the way to maybe 2021 wasn't a fun 20 years to own the Knicks and be named James Dolan. So, you know, he's in there, he's got his buddies in there. He's typical rich guy owner. So you're worried about him. Jalen Brunson's dad is an assistant coach. Rick Brunson. And Tibbs can say all that he wants about. No, no. It was great to have Jalen's dad there. Was it, was it awesome to coach Jalen Brunson but also have his dad be your assistant? We see so many times in NFL and NBA specifically when you have people coaching staff and then somebody leaves and somebody gets the job. And then you hear afterwards like, oh, man, that, that wasn't great. And that person shanked this person. I'm not saying, I'm not saying Rick Brunson shanked anybody. I'm just saying that's a weird dynamic. When you then add Carl Anthony Towns comes in, his dad is super involved, right? You have the Villanova guys as a group. These guys have all this history together, right? Jalen, Josh, Hart, Bridges. So you have all these different little factions. You have family members, you have people that have real connections to Wes and Leon, like Rick Brunson, who's one of Wes's oldest friends. He's got tentacles going everywhere. And Tips is rowing the same in the same way on the boat with a lot of these people. But then once that starts to shift, that gets a little dicey, right? And the Knicks again are locked into these five guys. Once they do that, Towns trade for Rando and DeFincenzo and they break up those contracts and they break up the flexibility. Man, we trade them. Now they're in the Towns business. Now they have to figure out how are we going to have a team built around five guys, two of whom are the really smart teams are going to attack constantly. See that as well. And then I just don't think that was great. And I think they did a nice job of pretending that everything was hunky dory, but obviously not because Tibbs just came within two wins in the finals and got fired. So there was some real stuff going on here. There's some conspiracy stuff, too. Again, I'm taping this. It's 215. It might have already be in motion now, but Johnny Bryant, who I think is an assistant, some people like their. He may. He was named one of the two finalists for the Suns job. That happened five hours later. Tibbs got fired. I'm just flagging it. There's a Jay Wright possibility that I think I floated on my Sunday podcast. The old Villanova coach, does he want to coach again? I don't know. Mike Malone sitting there. But the Johnny Bryant one, I think that's the one. I would probably shove the chips toward that bet. Whether that's a good idea, I have no idea. But if you're trying to get everyone on the boat rowing one way and you're worried you're going to lose them, the Suns, maybe the deeper conspiracy stuff is they're about to trade Towns for KD and KD doesn't want to play for tips Again, don't aggregate that. Do not aggregate that. I'm just saying it's. If you're trying to figure out why would they fire a coach when they're two wins away from the finals if they think they have a move coming. Did Katie want to play for a certain coach? Did Giannis want to play for a certain coach? I have no idea. Do not aggregate it. Just pointing out, like, maybe a month from now that part will make way more sense. Like, oh, of course. Because this guy was coming in and he wanted this guy. That's how the league works. Unfortunately, my guess would be Johnny Bryant, but in general, like Tibbs lasted five years. There were real cracks there in the last year that you could feel and you could hear when you talk to different people. And I think this is a complicated team's coach because you have Brunson, who took less money to stay with the team, at least for two years, whose dad is one of the assistants, who I promise you he's not going anywhere. You have this huge Towns contract that's got four years left after the season that just ended, that ends with 61 million. Do you keep that? How many teams would even want it with the second apron stuff? You have all the second apron stuff, looming, repeater tax stuff, and you don't really have a ton of ways to make this roster better, except for some of the lower mid level exemption stuff and whether potentially they would want to trade Mitchell Robinson, which I would not do. And could they be a Giannis team? Anyway, there's a lot going on here, but this is the NBA in 2025. You can coach a team to a four seed, you can win 10 playoff games, you can look back at an Indiana series and go, holy shit, if we hadn't blown game one, we'd be in the finals right now. Which I think is a fair thing for the Knicks to think. And you can still lose your job. And I have a ton of Knick fans in my life and they're pretty split on this. I have some people in my life who are like, thank fucking God, this is Mark Jackson, Larry Brown all over again. Thank God they did this. And then I have some other people in my life who are like, this seems super dysfunctional. And every. The Knicks, we loved that team two years ago. And since then they've traded for Carl Anthony Townsend, they fired Tibbs. So in the span of 13 months, we went from we love this team to what are we doing? We'll see where it goes. But the most important thing is the Knicks are relevant again. Not only are they relevant as a team that wins games and has really good players, including one of the best 10 players in the league, but they're making news and it's not news. Like, this terrible thing happened. They did a stupid trade. Oh, my God, why'd they do this? Although I guess why you fire your coaches or why they do this, but you know what I mean, the Knicks are relevant in a different way. And there's a moment here, and the best case scenario is this is 03, Larry Brown and the Pistons. So one other thing I wanted to say for the finals before we take a break, because I wanted to make a finals pick really quick and I really wanted to do OKC in a sweep. Even though, as you know, I respect Indiana, I've been picking them every round or picking them as a possible upset, or saying Pacers and six are the best bets, et cetera, et cetera. I think OKC is an absolute freaking juggernaut. To have a chance to go 84 and 18 or 84 and 19, you were in a list of six, seven teams in the history of the league. They have a chance to have one of the best seasons ever. I don't think any of us would say that's one of the greatest teams ever. There's a performance slash in their prime slash. They don't have One of the best seven, eight to nine players of all time at the absolute peak of their powers. Piece that they don't have. They might have it two years from now, but this is a truly great team. And I broke down on this pod a few days ago about all the way. They're just torching people at home in the playoffs. They're 8 and 1 in the playoffs. The one loss was by two points and the other eight wins were by 233 points. They just kill teams. And I really wanted to pick a final sweep because I thought everyone's going to pick OKC in five. Can I zag? Is there a smart sag actually. But man, you go through the history of final Sweeps. There's been nine in 78 years. Let's start there. So you're batting about 11%. I wasn't good at percentages. Last one. 2018. Gold State over Cleveland. Think about that series. Cleveland should have won. Cleveland could have won. LeBron played the best game I've ever seen him play. They squander that one and then end up losing in four. But that first game was pretty close. Like to sweep somebody in the finals, you have to be so much better than them. 2007, San Antonio over Cleveland's a good example. LeBron drags Cleveland in the finals. The team sucks. San Antonio's last really great spurs. Year of Duncan's prime. They kill him. Oh two Lakers over the Nets. Which we. That was the last gasp of that awesome, awesome Shaq Kobe run. They had just snuck by Sacramento. There was some buzz with. With Jersey that maybe. Watch out Jason Kidd. And then the. The Lakers just killed him. Houston over Orlando. Which was an upset. Houston wasn't even favored in this series, but that was yet another. It was like the J.R. smith game. A fluky moment of Nick Anderson missing four free throws in a row and swinging. The karma of that series in a way that I've almost never seen anything like that. You don't. You. You really have to compare it. It was like the. That first Indiana New York game from a. That was so amazing that I actually think the series just swung. Um, so anyway, they end up sweeping the Pistons killed the Lakers in 89 and that was a. We have arrived as the new champs. The Lakers were on their last legs in a lot of ways. They had some injuries. I don't think that necessarily should have been a SW a sweep. 83 of the Sixers killed the Lakers and then pre merger warriors killed the Bullets. The Bucks killed, I think the Bullets and then the Celtics, that was in 1971. Warriors were 75. And then the Celtics. Their one sweep during the Russell era was 1959 against Minnesota. In all of those cases. Pretty great teams. So you have that piece. 18 series have ended four and one. And then if you're talking about like biggest odds and how it played out just this century, teams that were favored by minus 400 or more, Denver minus 430 in 2023, they went in five. Golden State was almost 11 18. They swept San Antonio's minus 4 15, 07. Swept Lakers were 7 to 1 favorites against the Pistons in 04 and lost the series 4 to 1. The Lakers were minus 750 against the Nets. And they swept minus 2000 in 2001 against the Sixers. They lost the overtime game, won the rest. And so that was 4:1 and then 4:2 against Indiana, which was a dumb line. LA was minus 800 in 2000. I think 4 to 1 is the move. I hate doing it. It feels very bandwagony. It's +190. I think I'm fanduel. I think it's the move. I think Indiana gets one of these games and maybe even on the road. But they're going to play zone, they're going to push the pace. They're going to do that thing that they love to do where they, they play with such a fast pace. You get caught up in it. I'm like, we could play this too. And now you're on a track meet with them. But I think big picture, this is just, just such an awful matchup for them because their best thing is their guards and the ball handling goal and okc. That's their best thing is basically making life miserable for guards. That's the number one thing. That's how they killed Minnesota with Mike Conley. That's why they struggled a little bit against Denver, because Jokic basically became the guard. But just in general, this is like OKC does everything Indiana does way better. And this for Indy to win even more than one game, they would have to have win one of the first two, have a game three or game four. Cause OKC is a little more vulnerable on the road. Cause they're young. We saw that in the Minnesota series, the Denver series, even in Memphis when they fell behind by 20 plus. So I think think okc takes one kind of haymaker from Indy in the first two games. Maybe fights it off, kills them in the other game, like kills. They'll win one of the first two games by like 28. Then game three, maybe that's the one. Indy gets come out. Indiana's going nuts. OKC's feeling it a little bit. Indy's playing with crazy pace. Then OKC figures it out and they win in five. So I'm gonna say OKC in five, and it's boring. But that's my official 2025 finals pick. I'll be rooting for Indiana because I want this to be a long series. Anyway, we're gonna take a break and come back with Pablo Torre. This episode is brought to you by Vrbo Private Vacation Rentals. Vrbo. You can save over $200 on select homes when you stay for a week or more. Say, if you wanted to go catch a couple baseball games in Boston, take some time off work, flying to Beantown, watch the socks play. After that, you can do anything. You can go book a VRBO in Cape Cod for a week. The world is your oyster or your lobster roll or clamtrader. Really? It has shells, gills, and it's indigenous to the Atlantic. It's your edible metaphor of choice. They're crustacean crazy around there. Guess what? Since you stayed longer than a week, you saved over $200. You know what that means? More shellfish. I love shellfish. Hope you're not allergic. Next vacation, stay longer and save. Make it a vrbo. All right, we're taping this Tuesday morning. Pab. El Torre is here. We're beefing.