Why Did the Knicks Fire Thibs? Plus, a Belichick Debate (and More) With Pablo Torre

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Bill Simmons Podcast – "Why Did the Knicks Fire Thibs? Plus, a Belichick Debate (and More) With Pablo Torre"

Release Date: June 3, 2025
Host: Bill Simmons
Guest: Pablo Torre

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1. The Knicks' Firing of Tom Thibodeau

Timestamp: [02:15] – [09:00]

Bill Simmons opens the episode by addressing the sudden decision by the New York Knicks to relieve Tom Thibodeau of his duties as head coach shortly after an impressive playoff run. Despite leading the team to the semifinals and igniting basketball enthusiasm in New York, Thibodeau was let go, prompting widespread speculation.

Key Reasons Discussed:

1. Acknowledgment of Limitations:
   Bill Simmons ([05:45]): "This is an admission that they actually weren't as close to winning the title as maybe you think you were."

   The firing suggests the Knicks' management believed Thibodeau had maximized the current roster's potential but acknowledged the team required a different direction to win a championship.

2. Coaching Style and Player Management:
   Simmons ([07:30]): "He didn't have any desire to develop a bench at all."

   Thibodeau's tendency to play his starters excessively led to fatigue and dissatisfaction among key players, notably Mikel Bridges, whose minutes were a point of contention.

3. Commissioner Turnover and Ownership Impatience:
   Simmons ([08:00]): "The owners are impatient. This is the league now. The players run the league more than ever."

   Reflecting on the broader NBA trend, Simmons notes that modern NBA owners are quicker to make coaching changes, influenced by increased player empowerment and high financial stakes.

4. Internal Team Dynamics and Future Planning:
   Simmons ([09:00]): "They have to keep those five guys together, these four guys and Towns' asset."

   Emphasis on maintaining a core group centered around key players like Karl-Anthony Towns, with concerns about retaining talent and managing large contracts.

Conspiracy Theories and Speculations:

• Potential Coaching Replacement:
  Simmons ([08:30]): "Johnny Bryant, who I think is an assistant, some people like their."

  Speculation arises about possible replacements, including Johnny Bryant and Jay Wright, suggesting behind-the-scenes maneuvers influenced by broader team strategies.

• Possible Trade Scenarios:
  Simmons ([08:50]): "Maybe a month from now that part will make way more sense."

  The discussion hints at potential future trades, such as trading Towns for stars like Kevin Durant, although these remain speculative.

2. NBA Finals Predictions: Indiana vs. Oklahoma City

Timestamp: [09:00] – [14:30]

Shifting focus, Simmons shares his analysis and predictions for the ongoing NBA Finals between the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Key Points:

• Oklahoma City's Dominance:
  Simmons ([10:15]): "I think OKC is an absolute freaking juggernaut. They have a chance to have one of the best seasons ever."

  He praises OKC's performance, highlighting their 8-1 playoff record and their ability to consistently overpower opponents.

• Finals Prediction:
  Simmons ([13:00]): "I'm gonna say OKC in five, and it's boring."

  Predicting a series win for OKC in five games, Simmons acknowledges the challenges Indiana would need to overcome to secure victory.

• Historical Context:
  Simmons ([12:45]): "Only nine sweeps in 78 years of finals history."

  He contextualizes his prediction by referencing the rarity of sweep victories in NBA Finals history, underscoring his confidence in OKC's superiority.

3. Debate with Pablo Torre: Bill Belichick's Challenges

Timestamp: [29:56] – [115:00]

In a heated segment, Bill Simmons engages in a robust debate with sports journalist Pablo Torre regarding the current state of Bill Belichick's career and personal life.

Main Discussion Points:

1. Belichick's Personal Life Impact:
   Pablo Torre ([30:48]): "Bill Belichick's own family has been deeply concerned about this. What if I told you that his inner circle...is deeply concerned about Jordan Hudson and her presence in the building?"

   Torre posits that Belichick's relationship with his much younger girlfriend, Jordan Hudson, may be affecting his professional performance and relationships within the NFL.

2. Investigative Journalism vs. Sports Commentary:
   Torre ([37:31]): "The difference and key distinction between gossip and journalism is that we are definitively saying we have reported this and we believe based on all of these sources and facts and bits of research that it's true."

   The conversation delves into the nature of investigative journalism versus traditional sports commentary, with Torre advocating for thorough research and evidence-based reporting.

3. Media Tours and Perceptions:
   Bill Simmons ([35:01]): "It seemed like you were so serious about it. I was like, why is he treating this like Watergate? Ultimately? Who fucking cares that this guy is dating somebody who's 50 years younger than him."

   Simmons criticizes Torre's approach to the Belichick story, questioning the relevance and seriousness with which it was treated.

4. Belichick's Professional Decline:
   Simmons ([40:03]): "He was very safe, which was we talked to him about a podcast. My fear was, are you gonna be too safe?"

   Discussing Belichick's recent media engagements, Simmons expresses concern that Belichick may not be providing the in-depth analysis and candid insights he's known for.

5. Conspiracy Theories and Integrity in Reporting:
   Torre ([54:47]): "Every time she shows up at an interview with Bill...he is self-destructing and he hasn't coached a game."

   Torre suggests that Belichick's media activities, influenced by Jordan Hudson, are detrimental to his legacy and effectiveness as a coach.

Notable Quotes:

• Simmons on Coaching Turnover:
  "[07:30] 'He didn't have any desire to develop a bench at all.'"

• Torre on Investigative Journalism:
  "[35:33] 'We are rigorously investigating something in order to say, we are here to publish this.'"

• Simmons on Belichick's Media Presence:
  "[60:18] 'He just never liked the name.'"

4. Additional Discussions and Reflections

Timestamp: [115:00] – End

Towards the end of the episode, Simmons and Torre touch upon various other topics, including Tony Kornheiser's enduring presence in sports media, the evolution of sports journalism, and personal anecdotes related to their careers.

Highlights:

• Tony Kornheiser's Influence:
  Torre ([105:15]): "Tony Kornheiser is, to me, the greatest of all time."

  They share mutual admiration for Kornheiser, discussing his longevity and adaptability in sports broadcasting.

• Podcasting and Media Evolution:
  Simmons ([114:02]): "I didn't like doing it on Zoom. Even, like, you and I talking today, it was like, we could have done it on Zoom, but as you were here and it was like, let's do it in person. It'll be way better."

  Reflecting on the shift from in-person to virtual interviews post-COVID, they emphasize the importance of personal interaction in quality podcasting.

Closing Remarks:

Bill Simmons wraps up the episode by expressing appreciation for Pablo Torre's participation, acknowledging the depth and intensity of their discussion on Belichick and broader sports journalism trends.

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Conclusion

This episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast offers an in-depth analysis of the recent firing of Tom Thibodeau by the New York Knicks, exploring multifaceted reasons from coaching strategies to ownership expectations. The subsequent debate with Pablo Torre provides a provocative examination of Bill Belichick's current challenges, blending investigative journalism with personal insights. Throughout, Simmons and Torre navigate the complexities of modern sports media, player-coach dynamics, and the evolving landscape of podcasting.

Notable Quotes:

• Bill Simmons ([05:45]): "This is an admission that they actually weren't as close to winning the title as maybe you think you were."
• Pablo Torre ([30:48]): "Jordan Hudson is trying to do this thing where it's like, there's personal Bill and professional Bill."
• Bill Simmons ([09:00]): "The Knicks are relevant again. Not only as a team that wins games but as a team making news."

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This summary captures the essence of the episode, focusing on the critical discussions around the Knicks' coaching changes and the intricate debate on Bill Belichick's professional and personal life, providing listeners with a comprehensive overview of the key points.

Transcript

[Bill Simmons]

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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.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Big beef.

[Pablo Torre]

What camera can I look into? Just to stress how angry I am?

[Bill Simmons]

It's such a beef.

[Pablo Torre]

Hello.

[Bill Simmons]

We know a lot of the same people. We have a lot of mutual friends. We have a disagreement about this Belichick thing, and I thought it would be fun just to argue about it.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Embrace debate like old school 2010. ESPN. Jamie Horowitz.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, my God. Yeah. We can do. We can do PTI from hell and make Tony Kornheiser disappointed in both of us. I do want to stress a thank you for having me in your lovely studio.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Brand new. We got Sly, we got Swayze.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I wish I could say that I flew here for this specifically. If people are wondering why I'm in la, I was here for other things. Other fancy, highfalutin things.

[Bill Simmons]

You were here for an award show.

[Pablo Torre]

I was here for the Peabodys. And so when I was alerted to the beef that I had yet to.

[Bill Simmons]

Engage in from a podcast. That was six days ago.

[Pablo Torre]

That's right.

[Bill Simmons]

That nobody said anything.

[Pablo Torre]

That's right. Not a great investigation by my part. Just to figure out when and where this was said. But I was there, like, pathetically, like, looking at my phone as very serious journalism was honored. And I was, like, totally distracted. So fuck you for that. Yeah, I'm sorry, You know, ruining the crowning journalistic nomination of my life while being questioned for being a real journalist, which is what bothered me. Let's talk about that.

[Bill Simmons]

I know, but let's talk about that, because I didn't feel like I was doing that. I was. I felt like I was questioning.

[Pablo Torre]

Is this the table? This is the table, by the way, where Chris and Van were like, bill.

[Bill Simmons]

This is the table. This is the table. It's funny we brought you to the scene of the crime. I was questioning the story more than the journalism. But I think that. I think that was probably my disconnect with it was you were doing real journalism. That's the point of your show. My thing was I thought it was stupid.

[Pablo Torre]

Which part?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, just like Belichick, ultimately, he's a guy in his mid-70s, I guess he's never coaching in the NFL again. At this point, he's dating this 24 year old, and it kind of feels like he's lost the steering wheel a little bit.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, you said a number of things that I think are very interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And which is kind of why I've devoted a disturbing percentage of my life, admittedly, to this. Like Jordan Hudson. This is a sentence that I'm not proud of saying either, but Jordan Hudson tweeted or retweeted about me saying, I need a hobby, a new hobby. She's not wrong.

[Bill Simmons]

So you. So it's pretty polarizing even within your circles. Like, why do you care about this so much?

[Pablo Torre]

On the episodes we did, we've done two of them in a docu style, you know, way in which I basically unbox journalism for friends. Uh, they made fun of me. So this whole thing of, like, I. Of course, I'm here to acknowledge the absurdity of guy who won an Edward R. Murrow award for an episode about trans athletes, also being the guy who has like this. You know, the reason I'm like a dog with a bone on. This speaks to some of the. Some of the things you just said. And you. One of the things that I found baffling was that you just depersonalized Bill Belichick into a guy in his 70s. I'm like, Bill, you more than anyone else know why Bill Belichick is fascinating.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And why the archetype of him, who was the paragon of discipline, privacy, do your job, defensive strategy, Public relations mastery the guy had in his office at Gillette. Sun Tzu, the Art of War. You know, the battle is won or lost before it even begins.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And so just him as this unique archetype in American life, not just sports, but American life that you personally, of course, have a deep understanding of.

[Bill Simmons]

Six Super Bowls.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm told he's the greatest coach of all time.

[Bill Simmons]

I think he is.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, in that case, we should consider him significant enough to fact check. Certainly interrogate when it comes to why is he acting the opposite from the way that Bill Simmons remembers him.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I think the thing for me is it felt like you did the podcast for whatever reason, and it's a dopey thing, but I'm the same person who just did a Rewatchables episode about Al for Justice with Steven Seagal.

[Pablo Torre]

I was going to say, you did criticize me on a Heaven Can Wait centric.

[Bill Simmons]

I did a movie that came out in 1978, so. And also, like, when I was doing my mailbag once upon a time, when we talked yesterday, it's like, yeah, I used to obsess over a bunch of dumb shit and try to answer questions like this.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, used to.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, maybe still do.

[Pablo Torre]

We both take stupid things seriously.

[Bill Simmons]

But I guess the difference here is I felt like you were then dining on it and doing a bunch of things and that the media tour was what bugged me more, which I'm happy to discuss.

[Pablo Torre]

So I have questions for you. One of the questions I have, because.

[Bill Simmons]

Now I guess I'm part of the media tour.

[Pablo Torre]

I was gonna say, which camera can I break the fourth wall into? Why did it bother you, the media tour? The quote unquote, media tour. And I can explain what that was, even from my perspective, of course.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay. Because I think if you're gonna do a story like this, to me, there's kind of a fun element. Right. This is like in a Nicole Smith. What was that guy's name?

[Pablo Torre]

If one of your producers can yell the name of that older man in the wheelchair who looked infirm, and it.

[Bill Simmons]

Seemed like you were so serious about it. I was like, why is he treating this like Watergate? Ultimately? Who fucking cares that this guy is dating somebody who's 50 years younger than him, who wants to be on his work emails? Is this actually an important story or is this just a fun story to get clicks? I feel like that was my issue.

[Pablo Torre]

Is that fair? You are not alone in that. More than fair, it's, I would say, a popular perception of what it is that I've done. If you only consume it via the aggregated. And this is now where I sound like you.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

I am bothered by the aggregation insofar as it did not lead people towards the story, which was exhaustively reported, citing 11 sources in which we are, in fact laughing at the story and ourselves. Insofar as, of course, part of what I do in taking stupid things seriously is apply real award winning investigative journalism, but to stories that real people find fascinating. So the thing I'm bugged by with you, beyond the.

[Bill Simmons]

You're still bugged.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, beyond the credibility.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought this was like a beef squash.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, we'll see by the end. Find out together if it's squashed. The thing that I am baffled by more than I've.

[Bill Simmons]

David Chang, come in. Let's throw some. Throw some kimchi hair.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Some knives.

[Bill Simmons]

He's cooking in the back. He's going to cook for us after this is done.

[Pablo Torre]

Chang is very. Is very, I'm sure, bothered that the two of us are.

[Bill Simmons]

No. Not only is he not bothered bulgogi beefing. First of all, Chang loves conflict.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, he does.

[Bill Simmons]

He's a dark guy with a lot of dark things inside him. But he's also like, you guys should just do a pot. It'll be fun.

[Pablo Torre]

But. Okay, so to torture the metaphor here. Right. The recipe of why I actually wanted to do this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

It was important. It is important. So I'll just give you the. The very brief log line of this.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, tell me the. What you think the most important thing is before you do the log line.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So you think this is important because you feel like this guy is losing his marbles, but he's also in charge of a North Carolina football program.

[Pablo Torre]

I think this is important because Bill Belichick himself is a significant figure and he is the highest paid employee in the state of North Carolina. He makes $10 million a year in taxpayer money and also might be making.

[Bill Simmons]

That money back for the school.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, we shall see.

[Bill Simmons]

But did you watch a lot of North Carolina football last year?

[Pablo Torre]

But this speaks to. Actually, the real reason why I'm interested is that this is not merely a. Wow. An age gap relationship story. Because frankly, this is not. My podcast is not a puritanical one in which I'm saying they should find someone more in their age range. That's not what it is at all.

[Bill Simmons]

You're not being the moral authority.

[Pablo Torre]

No, no, no, no. What this is, though, is to me, a story in which one guy who we understood to be the actual archetype of one way of living life in America as a public figure, deeply private, do your job, PR fuck. The media is now pivoting after he's thrown out of the NFL. Bill, as you well remember. Right. And has to launch a half dozen media enterprises that he hands to a woman that, yes, he met, as we reported, on a plane when she was. And this was not known until reported, 19 years old. And he says, you're gonna be my gateway into public life. And then the CBS thing happens, and that's when the floodgates open. So to me, there is a media story, there's a business story, there's a college sports story, there's a public money story, there's an NFL story. The question, by the way, of why didn't the NFL want Bill Belichick, what we reported? Well, please, I don't want to filibuster the whole time, but, like, why do you think Bill Belichick wasn't brought back?

[Bill Simmons]

He ran his course. I think Kraft probably shit on him to the other owners. And the question of, if I bring in, you own a team, it's a 5 billion, $6 billion business. You bring this guy in who thinks he's better than you, who doesn't want your opinion on anything. People just don't want to do that.

[Pablo Torre]

So what I have been reporting is that it's also. It's also the case that people did not trust who Bill Belichick wanted to bring into their building. And so this question, which you know.

[Bill Simmons]

Of, like, so you think that was the case a year ago?

[Pablo Torre]

Or what we report in the second episode is that. And I found. I mean, this is. There's a thing on the website of New England Patriots Gillette Stadium called a fancam.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Pablo Torre]

And we found Bill Belichick's seats. He has a row of seats right underneath the overhang near the 50 yard line, and they're his seats. And we found Jordan Hudson sitting there in November 2021.

[Bill Simmons]

So you could say, I think, what the record was that year, it wasn't good. Year after Mac Jones, it wasn't good.

[Pablo Torre]

And so what I've been hearing parallel.

[Bill Simmons]

To this is Cam Newton season. I can't remember.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm sorry, you. On how shady it was.

[Bill Simmons]

I've tried to block out the entire 2000s. Yeah. I don't think about 2000s.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. And by the way, parallel to this is that I've also heard that by the end, Bill Belichick wasn't exactly dialed in in the way that Even people on the Patriots wanted him to be.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And I mean from above and below. And so the question of. And this speaks to the larger question of Bill Belichick. The guy is a football genius. Without question. Without question. Yeah, but his coaching tree. Right. Think about the branches on it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Who does he got? Seriously, who does he have?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, he does a lot of his own shit. I think a lot of people have gotten jobs because of him.

[Pablo Torre]

Exactly.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, exactly. But it worked. So I don't know what's the criticism.

[Pablo Torre]

But this is the story is that Bill Belichick, freed from the NFL, in which he has been terrible at picking people around him to support him who could stand on their own two feet. And in fact, are these Remora Fish. Right. Attached to him and his business.

[Bill Simmons]

So you don't like third place, Ms. Maine?

[Pablo Torre]

Well, second runner up, I believe.

[Bill Simmons]

Second runner up. That's what we say.

[Pablo Torre]

That's what we say in the world of tough loss.

[Bill Simmons]

I was rooting for the betting market, fan betting markets. Were there odds?

[Pablo Torre]

I was hoping that there would be a Bill Simmons super boost on Jordan Hudson.

[Bill Simmons]

Same game parlay.

[Pablo Torre]

Same game parlay could have done her with.

[Bill Simmons]

What other one?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, exactly.

[Bill Simmons]

I would have tried that.

[Pablo Torre]

But the question is, okay, this guy who teams already knew to be bad at developing supporting talent from a just managerial perspective. And let's just. I will name them so you don't have to. Right, Matt. Patricia. Right. Josh McCall.

[Bill Simmons]

Josh is overqualified offensive coordinator under qualified head coach.

[Pablo Torre]

Your guy, Mike Lombardi.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, he needed Raiders to get this job at Carolina to get a job of some.

[Bill Simmons]

But that's just people taking care of whatever. I mean, we know a lot of people, no question. Maybe even in the media.

[Pablo Torre]

Maybe even. Maybe even people that we both know or used to know and like. So no question. But the point is, when it comes to Bill Belichick now leaving the Patriots and being trusted with staffing a building, teams didn't trust who was around him. And one of the people who was around him, I'm saying as early as November 2021 and certainly by the time of the Ring Camera, which was released in November 2023, but happened to be taped because again, I took a stupid thing seriously and went to the Airbnb after summoning an army of geoguesslers. You know what geoguessr is like these guys.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't listen to that podcast.

[Pablo Torre]

I know. I don't think you listen to either podcast in full.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I'll say this.

[Pablo Torre]

Can we just establish that well, first it's okay, but I just want.

[Bill Simmons]

I think the disconnect here is. I didn't understand. Part of the point of this podcast is you will investigate something, no matter how stupid it is.

[Pablo Torre]

But also I will make the case as to why it's actually worth your time.

[Bill Simmons]

You think this one wasn't stupid because of all these things, the case you're laying out with Belichick. My thing is, where's the line when you, when you deep dive something like this? Where's the line where it's like, all right, I probably shouldn't do that. Versus, no, this is fair game. Like, let's say Popovich. Like Popovich has, I think, a stroke, right, In October, November. And then it's like, is he coming back? Is he not coming back? If you just dove into that, why aren't they telling us the truth about Greg Popovich? You could have done good journalism about it. But is that a story you would want to do? I would say no.

[Pablo Torre]

And we haven't, incidentally, although there have been rumors that I think both. So I think this is an important distinction, actually. And I thank. And I thank you for letting me articulate what journalism even is anymore, because you're right. Like, the Columbia School of Journalism might not co sign everything I'm doing from a just topic selection perspective.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

But that's why I launched this independently, you know, like, I wanted to pick the stories and investigate the stories and prove that these stories, according to my own curiosity and journalism, were worthwhile. So Popovich, for instance. Yeah, I don't think that. I don't think that private medical records for a sick man alone justify a deep dive multi part investigation.

[Bill Simmons]

I would agree.

[Pablo Torre]

But give every other ingredient that we've been talking about with the Bill Belichick story in there, and it's like, yeah, I want to make a docu style treatment of something that legitimately, I think, has connections to real stories that we've been covering without full knowledge for years. And so a parallel one to this, by the way, and I'll bring it up because people have criticized me for it as well, is the question that was at the heart of the whole Stephen A. LeBron beef.

[Bill Simmons]

That was the. That was the other time I felt like.

[Pablo Torre]

So to me, right.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't should because to me, that's about Kobe's widow and maybe decisions that she made at the funeral. And why are we talking about this?

[Pablo Torre]

Well, I think to get to that impression, you got to explain why it's plausible that that might be the takeaway from any understanding of this beef between Stephen A. And LeBron, what really happened. And so to me, like, what I like to do is because, Bill, I know that you know lots of stuff you don't say into a microphone.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Me, too.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, you're doing the curious thing.

[Pablo Torre]

And it's important for me to use this network of strange weirdos that I have gotten to know, famous people and GMs and owners.

[Bill Simmons]

And you do know a lot of weirdos.

[Pablo Torre]

My Rolodex over. I mean, I started Sports Illustrated as a fact checker.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

I've collected since then through ESPN and otherwise, a bunch of people who, for some reason, trust me. And what I want to do is take these nuggets that you both. You and I both find fascinating.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And turn it into reporting insofar as I can actually report them out. And so the LeBron thing, LeBron not being at Kobe Bryant's memorial, right. On paper, in isolation, as an aggregated headline, is so beyond the pale. Right. Like, it's bad taste. Anybody can mourn how they wish. And all of that is true. Right. On some level, in isolation. That's true. But to me, the story was. Wait a minute. How is it that the most public celebration of a man's life at Staples center live. Beyonce, Jimmy Kimmel. Right. Every celebrity, every. It was a royal. It was a state funeral. And so the question of.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, not. So there was reporting that he was.

[Pablo Torre]

There, and there was reporting specifically that he was there. That was strange because no one could provide any indication that there was consensus around it. It was all very confusing.

[Bill Simmons]

So the hook for you is you felt like this was a piece of the Stephen A. LeBron thing.

[Pablo Torre]

It was a thing that everybody was arguing about in public, but no one had reported.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And so I was like, I'm gonna point this out.

[Bill Simmons]

That's when you're like. That feels like an episode for me.

[Pablo Torre]

And in the episode in full, just to be very clear, on my show, I do explain all of the context and the reasoning, such that people who are skeptical about my ethics or my motives understand why I think it's interesting. And all I can do is hope that they find it persuasive. And if they don't.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, the ethics. The ethics are one thing, because you're doing real reporting.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

The motives are where you open yourself up a little bit, because from afar, somebody could look at it and go, you're just doing this because you want clicks.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so.

[Bill Simmons]

And I'm sure you've heard that, but.

[Pablo Torre]

Bill, I think everybody who's ever made something online has heard that true. It's like, unfortunately, the death of the classifieds in newspapers, the death of the cable bundle in television has led us as independent media people to have to subsist by basically putting onto an altar your content and hoping that the sun God, that is the algorithm, shines upon us.

[Bill Simmons]

The algorithm's getting worse and it's worse.

[Pablo Torre]

And so to me, it's like, yes, we have to play the game. And it's not. Look, it's not Hollywood, where it's one for me, one for you. That's not what I'm doing here. I believe in every episode to a degree that is almost disturbingly sincere.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

But to me, the whole game here is if I'm going to do a Peabody Award nominated episode about why it is at the end of their lives on death Row, all of these sports fans spend their last words, literal last words, shouting out their favorite sports team. Which leads us to an episode in which we go to a supermax facility in Texas and a man named Charles Flores, who was unjustly sentenced because of police hypnosis, ends up being the character. Like, that's not going to be as popular as the Belichick stuff or the LeBron stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

You're doing the Belichick stuff to get people to listen to the. That's.

[Pablo Torre]

We need to.

[Bill Simmons]

That's how I feel with the Star wars rewatchables setting up out for Justice.

[Pablo Torre]

I just want you to acknowledge that you just compared my Peabody nominated journalism to your Star Wars.

[Bill Simmons]

I was using an analogy.

[Pablo Torre]

Noted. I'm a Star wars fan, so I have no.

[Bill Simmons]

I get it. It's a one for us, one for you.

[Pablo Torre]

But it's not even specifically just that, because it's not. Look, you know, I'm trying to think of the Hollywood example.

[Bill Simmons]

But wait, are there, I mean, are there ideas you went down the road with and you backed off after? Must have been. Right. So what are the reasons you back off?

[Pablo Torre]

Because I don't think I could get it on the record. I don't think I could report it. I don't. So even more troublingly, I think the question of, like, what is journalism today? To me, the fundamental question, the difference and key distinction between gossip and journalism is that we are definitively saying we have reported this and we believe based on all of these sources and facts and bits of research that it's true. It's not. I heard this thing might be true, might not be. No. We are rigorously Investigating something in order to say, we are here to publish this.

[Bill Simmons]

So for Belichick, then, you're reporting and you're trying to determine these things are true. So the things that are true are teams backed off for him in the NFL partly because of this weird Jordan Hudson situation.

[Pablo Torre]

You believe they were aware of this, had questions about the ring cam video? I don't think they knew necessarily that she was at a game in November of 2021, but I do know that lots of people around the Patriots knew that. That she was around.

[Bill Simmons]

See, I would say the thing that was more. I'm not to sidetrack you, but the thing that was more troubling with Belichick was the way he was doing that job. And I've talked about this on the pod, where he's basically doing everything at some point because of your age does not become sustainable.

[Pablo Torre]

Correct.

[Bill Simmons]

And he's trying to do all the draft, all the free agency, every single aspect of everything. And the proof that he couldn't do that was in all the moves from basically, like, 2017 on with the roster, the draft picks, the free agent signings. It just felt like. And that was. I still felt like he was an excellent coach, but the other stuff was submarine and the coach, which was him.

[Pablo Torre]

And this is why I think this is a story. So I should say this on our call, and we're gonna jump around here. So forgive me, but, like, when you called me saying you should come on my show, I reminded you that I emailed you.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

So the media tour, just to close the loop on that briefly, I responded to incoming requests because people found the story fascinating and because the New York Times, Vanity Fair, certainly every NBC, Good Morning America, everybody wanted a piece of America. I mean, Belichick went on, Steve Brahan.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it's. But it actually seemed like some people just took the story and didn't credit you for their reporting. Also that I thought that was an interesting wrinkle to it, where you started the ball rolling and then it just became its own story. But people would have mentioned the podcast.

[Pablo Torre]

So part of what's weird about doing investigative journalism in this way on a podcast is that people sometimes just assume that I'm also simply aggregating. And so they're just facts that are exclusive to my reporting that people just started reprinting in papers of record. And I'm like, this is strange. Again, I asked for it. I'm doing podcasts, investigative journalism. But it's not. It's. It's. It's been funny to watch how that's.

[Bill Simmons]

The last seven, eight years thing.

[Pablo Torre]

You think so?

[Bill Simmons]

I do, I do. I think that's a. I think social media plays a big part of that. The Apple news, where, you know, people just click, oh, what's that story? And, like, some pick a generic magazine and they basically just have the bones of a story. I think AI grabs some of this stuff, too.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, I know. I know that all of this feels harder to fact check. And so fundamentally, for me, the question is, what am I fact checking? Is it interesting? Can I solve this mystery? Can I advance public knowledge, even if that knowledge is mostly interesting to sports fans who take sports very seriously? But politics are like this, by the way. So there are lots of Trump stories, for instance, where the story itself is deeply stupid.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Like, the actual thing happening is stupid. But if you consider the people important, you're like, an interesting development in our understanding of this very significant American. And that's my perspective on how sports is both smart and stupid. And you know this.

[Bill Simmons]

It is true.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm in a building that is premised on your empire doing something very similar.

[Bill Simmons]

To that sliced on staring at you right now.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, that is a great one.

[Pablo Torre]

I feel many great Americans gazing upon me as I try to figure out, am I doing something that is worthy of attention or cravenly seeking it because I'm a creature of the Internet who wants the algorithm to love me.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

I am not unself aware about the way in which it's really hard to disentangle those two premises. But what I told you in the email was like, bill, I think you'd be uniquely qualified to have a view on this. And it's because of everything we've got into, unfortunately, because at this table, while talking about Heaven Can Wait, you said I was pretending to be a journalist.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't say that's not what. You know what I meant, though.

[Pablo Torre]

Now I'm just making fun of you.

[Bill Simmons]

But my thing was, if you were approaching it like this was, like, important journalism, and I just didn't feel like it was.

[Pablo Torre]

But do you understand, though, why I understand it better now?

[Bill Simmons]

That's why I wanted to talk to you about it. Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So I get why you're doing what you're doing, but you have to understand how I was seeing it. Whereas, like, it just seems like you're thirsty and you're trying to get clicks and then doing a bunch of interviews about the podcast.

[Pablo Torre]

So. So.

[Bill Simmons]

And I like Belichick. And there's a small piece of this that felt A little mean to me because I don't know what's going on with him because that's. That's over here.

[Pablo Torre]

Shall we talk about what's over here?

[Bill Simmons]

I think we should. I. I think this is kind of alarming how this has gone for the last couple months. And again, I mean, obviously I'm a lifelong Patriot fan. I really admired everything he's built and stuff. And something about this makes me uneasy. I think this is really weird. Which I guess is the whole point of why you did the podcast.

[Pablo Torre]

Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill.

[Bill Simmons]

But I think there's other stuff that was weird that happens in sports where I'm like, eh, maybe leave that on the side. So the question is whether. But you're making the fact that he's the highest paid employee in North Carolina like those. All right, maybe.

[Pablo Torre]

But what if I told you now again, not to quote 30 for 30, you know, language back at you. What if I told you.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

That Bill Belichick's own family has been deeply concerned about this. What if I told you that his inner circle of actual coaches on staff, including a certain Mike Lombardi, is deeply concerned about Jordan Hudson and her presence in the building?

[Bill Simmons]

Who's the one? Edelman or Gronk, one of those somebody said on a pod, they've all. Somebody. Somebody who is kind of in the circle.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Talked about it. Being concerned. I thought that was. And then there was some Instagram stuff too, with who? Is it like somebody's wife or somebody's.

[Pablo Torre]

The people around Belichick, professionally, personally, as well as the administrators at North Carolina, their life behind the scenes has been shaped, reshaped, blown up by having to deal with Jordan Hudson. And when they hired Bill Belichick to this job, they thought they were getting New England Bill Belichick. They got. I cannot stress this enough. Something like the exact opposite when it comes to PR in this way is now the thing we're stressed out about. This guy who could handle the media alone by saying nothing, has this person who's on tape at cbs. And I can tell you, by the way, I don't know if I've made enough of a deal on my own shows about this. Wherever she goes, shows. Well, what I'm trying to say is.

[Bill Simmons]

Wherever you mean episodes.

[Pablo Torre]

Episodes.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay. I didn't know there was a show out.

[Pablo Torre]

We're doing a spin off. Doing a spin off. That's just me. Just me stalking Jordan Hudson. Pablo Torre finds out what life is like in general.

[Bill Simmons]

That would be good for algorithm.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, it would. Yeah, unironically it would work, but I don't want to do that. But what I'm saying is, every time she shows up at an interview with Bill, like what she did on the Pivot podcast, again, I'm so deep in the lore here, so forgive me if I'm just like. Part of what happened after my reporting was that North Carolina had to clarify. She doesn't work for us. She's not going to be around here. She is only handling Bill's personal stuff. And I ask you, right in this era, can there possibly be a distinction between Bill Belichick person and Bill Belichick, the face and head of North Carolina football? Like, how can you, when you're promoting a book in which. Nope, that's Bill over here. Of course, it's all. It's also Bill Belichick, the North Carolina representative. And so the idea that there is any sort of dividing line, some wall between the two, is part of the farce. And when it comes to her in interviews, what I was trying to say is everywhere she goes, cbs, these media ventures, behind the scenes over that off season at NFL Films in Mount Mill, New Jersey.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, all of this blew up. The Hard Knocks deal.

[Pablo Torre]

Everywhere she goes, there is a trail of wreckage that suggests that the man who is basically undefeated against the media and press conferences is not only losing the public relations war, he is self destructing and he hasn't coached a game. And so behind the scenes, all of these people are like, again, family, coaches, people around the building that hired him. And again, the chancellor at Carolina wanted him, A.D. bubba Cunningham. Bubba Cunningham did not.

[Bill Simmons]

That's his actual name.

[Pablo Torre]

His real name is Bubba Cunningham. It's a bit on the nose.

[Bill Simmons]

Sounds like a movie script about Belichick and AD Bubba Cunningham. As a script, a lot of the.

[Pablo Torre]

Story is on the nose in terms of like, wow, it's really like that. Yes. So there is a power struggle, but.

[Bill Simmons]

It goes back to the last couple years of the Pats, when it felt like the wheels were starting to come off a little bit. And they bring in Jared Mayo and Kraft anoints Mayo as the successor and is still on Belichick's staff. And it seems like it's gonna be one year, two years, three years, whatever it is. And Belichick stops talking to Mayo, basically, by all reports. And it's just super weird. And at the same time, apparently he's with this Jordan Hudson.

[Pablo Torre]

But listen, these are the things that are all happening outside of public view. Yes, yes. When Kraft says that.

[Bill Simmons]

But I Think it got. I think it was weird with them. And look, I mean, this. Wickersham wrote about this in 2017. I got mad on my podcast about that because we're protective about the Pats. Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And I get that.

[Bill Simmons]

And Wickersham's reporting was dead on. I've had him on many times to talk about it. But the Garoppolo thing, Alex Guerrero, there were all these things. Kraft versus Belichick, all of these things where people were like, there's a problem. There's a problem. And everybody was like, we're fine. We're winning. We're fine. And then it all leads to the Dynasty. And Belichick writing a book where he does mention craft.

[Pablo Torre]

And also the Apple TV documentary.

[Bill Simmons]

That's what I meant. It's called the Dynasty.

[Pablo Torre]

Right?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that Apple documentary in which it's.

[Pablo Torre]

So the public relations war. Right? There's Kraft, there's Belichick, now there's Jordan Hudson. There's everybody trying to control a story that has been deeply embarrassing for everybody involved. And it reminds me of something that Seth wrote in his book. Seth quotes Bob Kraft saying, bill Belichick was an idiot savant. And I believe that the more I learn about Bill Belichick outside of football, there is this notion of a guy who is a total genius at football, who has proven in terms of who he surrounds himself with, the decisions he makes, how the people around him are afraid to deal with him, even as they are literally in the same room watching Jordan Hudson rolling their eyes. Some of the coaches on staff. I believe that there is a great deal of this man being a genius and also a fool. And if that feels rude because Bill Belichick is someone you Revere, I just ask you to do the thing. Revere's strong, but Jordan Hudson is trying to do this thing where it's like, there's personal Bill and professional Bill, and for right now, I will do the same.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, football Bill.

[Pablo Torre]

Genius, Personal Bill. Utter super fund disaster. And that's what the story is.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, you could feel some of it last year with all the media stuff that he did, where all of a sudden he was on like, five, six different things.

[Pablo Torre]

Was any of it good, in your view?

[Bill Simmons]

I thought there was some inside the NFL stuff that was interesting, but for the most part, he seemed to me, this is a problem. A lot of times when coaches do media for a year or two years, they don't really want to say anything because it might be coaching again. And I thought he was very safe, which was we talked to him about a podcast. My fear was, are you gonna be too safe? Cause we've seen that over and over again with people. That's why Doc Rivers was amazing to have on pods because he didn't know if he was coaching again or not. But he still said shit. He still was like the doc that you would hang out with if you weren't doing a podcast.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

I never felt totally that way with Belichick.

[Pablo Torre]

What I have been told from people who worked for, I mean at this point I'm talking about a half dozen humans that dealt with Bill and Jordan together at these media ventures, right? Yeah, I mean I talked to 11 sources in total. But I'll be more specific to these media things that launched last off season. They explicitly encountered Bill Belichick and Matt Patricia using the media to audition to get back into the NFL and they were deliberately de facto tanking. No one understood why. Bill Belichick in the pre production meeting was one thing and then on Mike he was so bland as to destroy the very premise of why they were paying him all of that money. And it was very clear by the end he and Jordan Hudson had a plan for what this was going to be. And throughout that it was so bad as to, I mean be admitted by the people who were responsible for the idea like talking to them now they all know this was disastrous. And in fact I found it fascinating that like Peyton Manning's not having Bill Belichick back. That was just announced this past week.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought he was bad on the Manning cast.

[Pablo Torre]

He's gone, he's off now.

[Bill Simmons]

Where he was good was when it was talking about in the past, when he could talk about like lt Ed Reed and that's when he'd really open up because those guys were retired and they weren't somebody he would potentially be coaching or coaching against. Where was long, which I thought was.

[Pablo Torre]

Was planned and, and where was long snapper monologue, Bill Belichick, the guy who loved the minutia of like, oh wait a minute, a left, a left footed punter. He's charismatic almost right. The stuff of the, the specifics and the history of football he's so good at. But what we saw was a guy using the media to get back into the NFL and now at Carolina openly using it. I mean so I would say even frustratingly and almost irresponsibly, given that he was entrusted as the host of shows in one case with Matt Patricia as his co host speaking to like the Remora Fish kind of dynamic of like neither of them wanted to be good at media. They wanted to be NFL coaches.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought there was an idea for him. If he really wanted to have an awesome podcast and committed to it, I think it would have been amazing.

[Pablo Torre]

What's your pitch?

[Bill Simmons]

No, I just think when he was doing all these different pieces of what he was doing, but what he really cared about was the NFL films footage, the breakdowns, kind of teaching people about football and what was happening in the moment, I think would have been really good. But I also don't feel like he wanted to do it. He wasn't going to talk about weaknesses. He wasn't going to be like, here's the problem with Trevor Lawrence. Here's why he struggled for five years. Look at his mechanics. Here's how I would attack him if I was playing him. He wasn't doing any of that. So once I realized that in mid September, I was like, I'm not consuming this anymore. But I think you could argue it worked. He got four or five different paychecks, right? It seemed like his goal was to make a ton of money for one year and then come back and get an NFL coaching job in February. And that did not happen.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, in fact, the contract with Carolina has this fascinating buyout clause that just passed. So congratulations to Bill Belichick for not exercising his $1 million buyout clause to get out of Carolina. It dropped after June 1st from $10 million to $1 million because he was trying to engineer an escape hatch. If the NFL said, you know what? We watched a half dozen Bill Belichick media ventures in which, by the way, the COO of Bill Belichick Productions is Jordan Hudson.

[Bill Simmons]

So is that your reporting that was out there?

[Pablo Torre]

That was on LinkedIn, that was her on her bio being like, I'm the COO of a company that's not incorporated as an LLC anywhere, but was de facto the person you had to negotiate with. And in fact, Bill Belichick requested, after calling her brilliant, to various media partners, hire her for six figures. Like this was not just, she's the girlfriend and she's very young, it's she's running the business. And his, even more crucially, his public Persona, which is the key evolution here. Private man becomes public figure. And how he does it is so illustrative of, again, all of these industries, media, business, college, the NFL, on and on and on, that we've been talking about.

[Bill Simmons]

This episode is brought to you by Cognigy. Customer service can be so frustrating. Waiting on hold, being transferred around, repeating yourself. So flip the script with Cognigy's AgentIQ AI. Their AI agents do more than automate. They collaborate seamlessly, integrating into any system. AgentIQ AI works alongside your customer care team to deliver service, support and experiences at scale, reducing costs and making customers happy. Experience Cognigy's agentic [e-mail] 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 or 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 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 Redfin. I love looking at real estate. You could be in the market to buy or rent whatever it is. You might just like scrolling around, seeing what's out there. You might like checking out neighborhoods, then going to Google Earth and then checking out the overhead thing in the neighborhood. I don't know, whatever floats your boat. You might like looking at big mansions on the water in Massachusetts. I can neither confirm or deny. I've never done that. Whatever reason you're looking, I recommend the Redfin app. Redfin. It's gotten better every single year. It makes it fun to search all the homes for sale, apartments for rent in your neighborhood, filter for price, beds, baths, square footage, so much more. And if you find a place you love, Redfin makes it really easy to go see it in person. Schedule a tour right now from the app. Plus, if you're looking to sell, Redfin agents know how to get you the best price possible for your home. That's because they close twice as many deals as other agents, and with a listing fee as low as 1%, Redfin's fees are half of what others often charge, which means you'll have more money to put toward your next home. So whether you're looking to buy, rent, or sell, Redfin's got you covered. Download the Redfin app to get started. Can we go big picture on journalism stuff, please? Cause these were your bones initially. Where'd you go? You did Columbia grad.

[Pablo Torre]

No, I went to Harvard, and I was a.

[Bill Simmons]

Where'd you go to grad or you didn't? You just went right in the Sports.

[Pablo Torre]

Illustrated fact checking department after college. My origin story is that.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I just remember hearing from you when we were doing Grandland and you were doing Jeremy Lin stuff. And I was like, who's this guy? And then it was like, he's 23. It was like, jesus. It was one of those.

[Pablo Torre]

It was one of those. Frank Isola still, you know, makes fun of me because I was the guy, like, with this story, who emerged kind of out of nowhere for a bunch of people and had these scoops that were beating, certainly for Jeremy Lin, like the New York media ecosystem, but also the national, because we had Kang at.

[Bill Simmons]

Grantland who was doing great stuff, and you were doing great stuff, and it was like the two of you felt like you kind of owned the story for. I don't know. How long was that story? A month?

[Pablo Torre]

It felt like.

[Bill Simmons]

It felt like two years.

[Pablo Torre]

It felt like it's still going for me, actually. No, it was. It was two weeks and change in terms of his actual run, but in terms of his, like, actual significance as a figure. Yeah, a month. Couple months. But Kang was writing, I think, very thoughtful, like some reportage, but, like, a lot of essayistic stuff. And I was the guy who had the Jeremy Lu wired in. Yes. Because again, I have this weird Rolodex of people. He was a freshman when I was a senior in college.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Ryan Fitzpatrick was there when I was there. One of the first interviews I did in college, I was covering the heavyweight crew team, and I interviewed then Olympic rower Tyler or Cameron Winklevoss. I don't remember which one I.

[Bill Simmons]

Social network guys.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Pablo Torre]

One of the. Winklevi was one of my first interviews.

[Bill Simmons]

Winklevie.

[Pablo Torre]

So anyway, the point being, I went to Harvard. I wanted to go to law school. I did the thing where I had a panic attack taking the LSAT because I wanted it too much, and.

[Bill Simmons]

You had a panic attack?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, man.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, for, like, an actual one.

[Pablo Torre]

I, I need, I need. There's an Asian person in here and I just need them to affirm me as somebody who is reasonably having panic attacks during tests. I need. I.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes, but you were taking the test.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And I do think, I don't think that's ever happened. The only time I don't think that ever happened to me taking a test, probably because I felt like it probably wasn't going to turn out that well.

[Pablo Torre]

I was going to say Holy cross playing, I don't know, like beer pong. You didn't like have a. I had two, five.

[Bill Simmons]

Freshman year. Went up though.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh God. Yeah. Look, I care deeply about school.

[Bill Simmons]

So you're going to be a lawyer.

[Pablo Torre]

Or like there's an alternate world in which I am a lawyer right now.

[Bill Simmons]

So if you don't have a panic attack during the LSATs, I probably go.

[Pablo Torre]

To a, a law school that, that I dreamed of. And I never do journalism full time because I did not. I first one of my family, born in America, parents from the Philippines, like structure and a roadmap towards American success in some conventional graduate school way was absolutely the gravitational force in my life. And because I failed, not failed literally, but like, because I bombed a test, which is a nightmare for me, I had to figure out what do I do in this gap year. And in that gap year I said the thing I've been doing for fun this whole time is writing sports.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And I'd been an intern at Sports Illustrated because I love sports and have always been a sports fan and nerd and fan of writing. I mean, I'm also somebody who read Sports Illustrated growing up and like worshiped these long form bonus writers, you know, so fact checking. Gary Smith and Scott Price and Tim Layden and all of these guys. Tom Verducci, like, that was my job and I nerded out on it. I had to cross out every word in their stories to make sure it was true. What an incredible dissection of how to do this job at the highest level. And so for me.

[Bill Simmons]

When did you go to ESPN though?

[Pablo Torre]

2012. The fall of the Jeremy.

[Bill Simmons]

Linear espn.com or mag.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't remember magn slash.com, but Chad Miller.

[Bill Simmons]

I was doing five jobs up there.

[Pablo Torre]

I was remembering that you were.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I don't have a lot of long term memory from that era.

[Pablo Torre]

We were living very different existences at espn.

[Bill Simmons]

Mine was just tired all the time. That was one of my existences. Two small kids. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, yeah, but to.

[Pablo Torre]

Be clear, I Also grew up reading you.

[Bill Simmons]

Thank you.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, I didn't say it was.

[Bill Simmons]

Good, it was really good.

[Pablo Torre]

Genuinely, though, like, the idea of, wait a minute, I could evolve a medium into something that feels more like me and my sensibility. Like the progression of what I went through from like Harvard to Sports Illustrated to ESPN to getting on to around the Horn RIP and then PTI and then doing like cable political news now and doing other stuff. Like, I've been waiting to do something that feels more like my own sensibility. And so to get from wherever I started, guy who didn't want to do this professionally to guy who cannot imagine what it would have been like if I had gotten the score I wanted on the LSAT in which I'm not in this room right now, a terrifying sliding doors possibility that I never got to do this.

[Bill Simmons]

Why couldn't you have done what you want to do with ESPN Daily? I don't understand that part because that was a daily podcast with a lot of resources. So did you, like make a mistake with how you attacked it or you felt like it was too entrenched with.

[Pablo Torre]

The idea I wanted to do as soon as I realized what. So to credit the New York Times Daily as like the original sort of format that ESPN Daily essentially looked at and said, we want one of those. The idea of a two way conversation into which you slide docu style elements. Interview, tape, scoring, editing, structure, all stuff, you know, from documentaries. That was so eye opening to me as a host and producer that I realized I wanted to do this for stuff that I reported instead of stuff that other people did.

[Bill Simmons]

So you just basically have reporters coming on and you're just setting them up and they're talking about their reporting and you're basically just a cruise director. Yeah, cruise director driver.

[Pablo Torre]

It was like. But by the way. And part of it is, but why.

[Bill Simmons]

Couldn'T you have changed that, though?

[Pablo Torre]

So I really liked doing that because I was truly getting to do a. In my ambition, an even better execution than the written piece was because I would pick like this story could be something that's three dimensional and has like interview tape and can make this into a docu style. I started calling these things and this is very lame, but talkumentaries like conversations that also felt like documentaries. And that was the sort of medium that I still work in now. But I found it to be something that left me too busy to do the passion projects where I was like, man, this format is so perfect for me if I can evolve it and report these myself. And being A cruise director in which I have to bring energy and smiling and selling stuff that sometimes I didn't want to do as much as the other stuff that became something that I would have done, frankly. If I think, to be very blunt, ESPN cared more about it.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And it was just sort of like.

[Bill Simmons]

But in, in their way, they care about it because they gave it resources, but that doesn't mean they cared about it in the correct way. I would say.

[Pablo Torre]

I believe that they liked the idea of.

[Bill Simmons]

They were like, no, this is it and you have resources for it. Do this.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. And by the way, it no longer exists. Right. So Mina did it, then I did it, and then there was a rotation of people who did their best with a staff that was overworked. And in the end, it's not around anymore because I don't think they ever fully understood the potential. And so for me.

[Bill Simmons]

Are you saying ESPN didn't understand the potential of a podcast in that way?

[Pablo Torre]

Our lives are quite similar in that way.

[Bill Simmons]

You and I are so different.

[Pablo Torre]

No, it's crazy. It's crazy to see what has left ESPN in the world of podcasting From a pure cynical, self interest perspective.

[Bill Simmons]

The podcast you have now. Did you spitball with Ride Home at all?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Oh, Eric and I, I mean, look.

[Bill Simmons]

Because what you're doing. I don't know if he told you this, but he wanted me to do this show in 2009 called Bill Simmons Investigates. And I still have the email. He sent me this long email. He was basically like, we're taking your mailbag and just investigate the dumbest things. And I think this could be a TV show. And at that point, I kind of knew where I wanted to do Grand Lane. I wanted to do Budget.

[Pablo Torre]

Fine.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't want to do a TV show, but I always thought it was an interesting idea and it was a great email. And I didn't know if that was what led to part of what you're trying to do. Not the idea, but a piece of it.

[Pablo Torre]

Eric mentioned this to me, like maybe a year into the show because it.

[Bill Simmons]

Was a great idea, dude.

[Pablo Torre]

The whole idea of using journalism to solve stupid and, or serious and, or smart, funny mysteries is. It's funny. Like, I talk to people like, I'm using journalism to solve mysteries. And some journalists will look at me and be like, you mean do journalism? And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm kind of just rebranding what journalism is. But that's kind of the point. It's a great. I mean, look, my brother helped Me come up. My younger brother, who is not sports fluent really at all, except Tottenham Sports. He loves Tottenham Football. He helped me come up with the name. Pablo Torre finds out. And I think that only once the name crystallized did it become clear that this was a through line, through my curiosity. And so the whole idea of, yes, I'm going to investigate something, solve a mystery, that man. I think the name ended up crystallizing the ambition in a way that I only realize in retrospect. But I would have loved to have subscribed to Bill Simmons Investigates, in which I don't know how.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know how I could have.

[Pablo Torre]

Done it as dreams you would have done, but I don't know how I.

[Bill Simmons]

Could have done it for espn. I don't know how I could have written my column.

[Pablo Torre]

It would have been, man, I can tell you that this thing is my second child, this show, and I take it.

[Bill Simmons]

I think that's the way you have to do it. Yeah, it's the way you have to. Honestly, that's the way you have to do anything.

[Pablo Torre]

It's probably unhealthy, honestly, but the Belichick story, to me is such a thin slice of my brain, but the thing that everybody wants to talk about. And meanwhile, I have, like, these other things that I'm, like, working on right now that I find to be in many ways so much weirder and more important. And. But by the way, I. I reached out to you when we did the LeBron tape, the Knicks video, to recruit LeBron. The Sopranos secret video.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, I already knew that story, though.

[Pablo Torre]

But I. I got the tape, Bill. You can actually watch the video. You can see James Gandolfini and Edie Falco in this weird apartment acting like a super sweet 16 video for LeBron James at the behest of James Dolan. In which the next face you see after they play this scene, in which, by the way, yes, turns out the Soprano subreddit was very excited about this. They're alive. Like they're in the cinematic universe somehow looking for an apartment.

[Bill Simmons]

The Soprano subreddit is still going.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, as a metaphor, maybe, for the topic at hand. Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't even know it existed.

[Pablo Torre]

I remember it still went going.

[Bill Simmons]

It sounds great.

[Pablo Torre]

So the point being, though, that, like that video in which, by the way, the first face you see in this episode, and we got the whole video, is Donald Trump. James Dolan assembles a murderer's row of people, and in that list, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Harvey Weinstein. Like, you see all of it. And then we also got the Harvey Weinstein. I mean, wow. Yeah. We also got. My favorite part is that they also. And no one had known this before, they did versions of this for Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. And so we have the alts where it's like the same script, but they swap out the names, and it's just like the comedy of. Again, behind the scenes. How does the team that has everything lure LeBron James? And the reason I reached out to you was that you've long been on this thing with the Knicks and LeBron where the Knicks messed it up.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, part of it was, I think they. Donnie Walsh was running it.

[Pablo Torre]

He was in a wheelchair, and he.

[Bill Simmons]

Was in a wheelchair, and they wheeled them in, and it just was. Wasn't great.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, the missing.

[Bill Simmons]

I think they were like, wait, this guy's running the team? He seems old and weak.

[Pablo Torre]

But the missing piece is that enrolls Donnie Walsh and this contingent. And again, LeBron has everybody visiting him in this hotel, in this. Sorry, this building. And into the boardroom, it's these delegations. The SUVs roll up, and it's the Clippers, and it's all these teams. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Sterling didn't really win the room over. It was tough for him.

[Pablo Torre]

But into the room walk the New York Knicks. And the lights darken, and they press play. And this video starts. And so the missing piece was like. What's it actually like to have seen this? What I can tell you is that after I published the episode, people in the Bronze camp were like, thank God people finally understand what that was like. They didn't have the tape either. But again, because I'm a kind of unhinged dog with a bone on these, like, sports culture mysteries, I take as a point of pride that I got to finally close the loop on one of these ongoing. Yeah, like, urban legend, but actually real stories.

[Bill Simmons]

So, like, the lottery stuff. It's a frozen envelope. Have you done that one yet?

[Pablo Torre]

So I've been doing reporting around this. I'll spoil a little bit of it. I just know that there was one NBA owner I talked to recently who was absolutely convinced this is rigged.

[Bill Simmons]

It was the easiest one to rig because it was seven envelopes. I studied it. I remember doing a mailbag thing about it at some point. I studied it. There was one that seemed a little bent, but the footage was really grainy. And the way apparently he could have done it if you were gonna do it. I don't even know if that you could do It. And by the way, it would be massive fraud and a whole bunch of terrible things that come out of it. But if you froze one of the envelopes and made them extremely cold and your finger, like, you can see his hands going in there, and if you just felt the one, and you would know that's the one, that's how you would do it. I think now with the ping pong balls, I don't know how you would do it.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, I think there's still well on the frozen envelope theory. I talked to David Falk, who was, as you know, Jordan's agent, E Wing's agent also, and I asked him about NBA conspiracies, specifically that. And the gambling, you know, alleged suspension, retirement, Michael Jordan, you know, which you've talked about also endlessly. It's very surreal, by the way, to get these conspiracies directly from you at this table, having heard you.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, those are. I mean, those are the two most famous ones.

[Pablo Torre]

But so I asked David Falk about them. He's. He's the agent for both men. A unique perspective. And he says, the Jordan one, that's bullshit. Doesn't make any sense. But the Ewing one, he says, I could kind of see it. And I'm like, okay. And so we have this conversation and the whole thing about conspiracies in the NBA and in life, the triggered conspiracy.

[Bill Simmons]

Bill, by the way, I've noticed right.

[Pablo Torre]

Now, I felt the temperature change.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Hair standing on my arm.

[Pablo Torre]

The barometric pressure in the studio has shifted.

[Bill Simmons]

They didn't realize he was going to show up today.

[Pablo Torre]

Ah, it's an honor to meet you, conspiracy fan.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, he's right here.

[Pablo Torre]

The thing about NBA conspiracies and conspiracies in politics, in life, is that the difference between truth and plausibility is an interesting distinction, because if you have either truth or plausibility, people care.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And so now we've come all the way back around to the difference between gossip and journalism, between clickbait and something that's popular, between algorithms and curiosity. Like, yes, these are hard things that have eaten the brains of everybody in America because there are incentives to be dishonest in the service of some larger conspiracy. But sometimes, sometimes there is truth. And that's what journalism is trying to get to.

[Bill Simmons]

Sometimes you learn things as the years go on and you get a tidbit and you go. And then it makes you revisit. Like, for me, I forget when Shaq did this. Shaq told the story. Might have been on a podcast about how David Cern asked him if he wanted to be warm weather or cold weather before the lottery. And he said warm and then Orlando. And he's like, that's something that happened. So then you hear that and you're like, wait a second. And now you have to go backwards and revisit, you know, the. Especially 84 where. Or 85, the lottery. I think that it's by far. If you look at all the teams, by far you into. The Knicks was the best case scenario for them. The Jordan one. Here's the part that's never added up.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And if I had to put a ratio on it, I would go 80, 20. I think he actually, like, there was no chicanery. He just. He was upset about his dad and retired. Every story about this dude, which we revisit now because we have to argue about the goat, contractually, all of us, like once a month, every story is about what a homicidal competitor he was. Most competitive guy ever. Competing on everything. Be in the airport waiting for bags, and he would pay off the baggage handler because he had to win that badly. And we're all supposed to accept that he just shut that off and left basketball after he'd won three straight titles because he had nothing left to prove. So were you homicidally competitive or are you the kind of guy who can just shut it off because you have nothing less to prove? I've never reconciled those two things.

[Pablo Torre]

I think that is one of the things that's most fascinating big picture about sports to me is that here you have the greatest winners, right? So we start with Belichick. We get to Jordan, the greatest winners who have assembled everything that everyone else lusts after, and still there are these gaping holes in what makes them feel fulfilled. And that, to me, is why sports is. Sports is both the perfect metaphor for everything else. It's also just on its own fascinating. And the Jordan stuff, I mean, look, I think that when it comes to. I mean, I'm the type of guy who found. This is. This is the other story that I did where people were like, this is beneath you. And I'm like, I got bad news for you. This is eye level for me for months, right? I'm seeing these stories about Marcus Jordan dating Larsa Pippen, and I'm like, on one level, unbelievably superficial, empty, vacuous, tabloid trash. For someone who's an NBA fan who grew up watching the Bulls, the idea that Scottie Pippen's ex wife is dating Michael Jordan's son and everybody around Them is like having to deal with this.

[Bill Simmons]

And on top of it, Pippen and Jordan had the fallout after the last dance. Like, there's some layers. Exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the timeline was not merely, wow, interesting through the lens of history, actively contentious now informing our understanding of how Michael Jordan operates, how Scotty Pippen operates. Who cares about what the power dynamics on a team being re litigated decades later in public through their loved ones and former loved ones.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

So what I did was, and this is again, my insanity is that I listened to every episode of the podcast that Larsa Pippen and Marcus Jordan were hosting together, which very few people remember.

[Bill Simmons]

How many episodes was that?

[Pablo Torre]

I think they did about a dozen. It was called Separation Anxiety and it was horrible.

[Bill Simmons]

You listen to all 12 episodes of that?

[Pablo Torre]

I'm a journalist.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh my. Like, were you doing other stuff? Were you playing like video games? Like, how do you just concentrate on that? Just sounds horrible.

[Pablo Torre]

Just know that parenting a child while having that in the background is probably something I'll get sued for by my daughter.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, yeah, fair.

[Pablo Torre]

But what happened was we did all of that and then the coup de grace was I invited Marcus and Larsa together onto my show and interviewed them and got to talk and confront them about this story. And it resulted in a number of New York Post headlines in which they called me miserable and that I was unfair to them and all that stuff. Which is okay because they shouldn't necessarily like what I have to say to them. But the question of, is it true and interesting and significant for a certain quadrant of people that actually is in my audience, I think that's kind of. That's what I enjoy, is like, yes, it is kind of envelope pushing to take this seriously. But if I can prove to you that it's worth your time, then I think everybody got what they wanted here.

[Bill Simmons]

So you're basically taking somebody's on a text thread with four of their buddies who love sports. And there's this Larsa, Pippa, things happening, like, what the fuck is going on with this? That's an episode for you.

[Pablo Torre]

For me, group chats and texts from people who are like, I don't know if I can say this or I heard this is a huge source of just incoming ideas. And the question is always, can I do this responsibly and accurately and rigorously such that I can still plausibly be considered a journalist by the Murrow and Peabody people, while also satisfying my friends who I use as like these proxies for my audience? Like, I like to take Stories seriously, but not myself, so seriously, and that's why I'm here, is to say, like, yeah, please do laugh at me. Like, I am not here to be insulated from criticism. Just know that I am so bizarrely prepared to discuss it if you have questions that all I ask is the ability to explain maybe what people did not hear or listen to because it got clipped out. Because that's the game too, and I am not fighting it. I just want people to look at the. The stuff in totality.

[Bill Simmons]

So if somebody wanted you to do an episode about how Kornheiser didn't leave his house for four years other than to play golf once a week, do you bat that around with somebody else? Or is it just like an instinct? Like, I can't do that. That's not gonna work as an episode.

[Pablo Torre]

The first question I ask myself is, does voice modulated Bill Simmons still discernibly sound like Bill Simmons?

[Bill Simmons]

Bill Simmons AI in French.

[Pablo Torre]

Can we get you a spot chat aib?

[Bill Simmons]

It's different languages.

[Pablo Torre]

We had to.

[Bill Simmons]

It's going to be great for a lot of us. I can't wait.

[Pablo Torre]

We turned down. I mean, not that this is a noble position, but we turned down there was an offer from a tech company that will remain nameless to like, hey, you have an archive of shows with people talking in this conversational way. Can we pay you to train our AI bots? We were like, no.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that sounds.

[Pablo Torre]

No, you can't. And by the way, parallel to that is this media tour thing. Like, Harvey Levin and TMZ asked me to talk to him about Belichick, and I said, I don't think I can do that. I think my standard for the lowest brow programming I can do is the Bill Simmons show. And so that's why that was a dick.

[Bill Simmons]

We were getting along so well. What the hell?

[Pablo Torre]

I'm sorry. Remember when you founded Grantland? Wasn't that fun? That's. That's the spirit of what I do is honestly, like, we have so many friends in common. Because your coaching tree said I would do the compliment thing. Right? Your coaching tree, unlike Belichicks, it's a tree. I don't know what kind of tree.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know. I don't know. It's. A lot of great people have passed.

[Pablo Torre]

Through my life, and I have become friends with them in part sometimes because I first encountered them through things that you had made. And we then went on to become friends who then text me, what the fuck's happening with you and Bill? In which I say, I don't know. I'm not sure he knows what my show is, but I'm happy to explain it. But then also, it is the recognition that who you choose to surround yourself with is kind of the through line in all of it, in the reporting I did with Belichick, in why I'm here with you, and to the degree that, you know, the media is a bizarre, chaotic industry that I now am trying to navigate as an independent training wheels entrepreneur with a show. Yeah, man, I'm like, I could use good ideas. I could use help. I could use people just saying, hey, they do stuff that is like this that you might enjoy.

[Bill Simmons]

So are you getting pitched ideas and concepts and you're like, ah, doesn't pass. Ah, maybe, like, what's the. What's like the incubation process.

[Pablo Torre]

I am. My staff makes fun of me. Like, we miss staff. We. You do realize you have two producers over there who are like, no, but.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, like, what's the staff?

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, we have them in the credits of every Friday episode in which we shout them out. But I tried to make.

[Bill Simmons]

Is it like researchers, like all kinds of people?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, we have a couple of people who are devoted. Everyone does more than one thing. But yes, I wanted to make a mini newsroom because what I can't do is we do three episodes a week.

[Bill Simmons]

So we call Pab Voltorre's Deep Pockets.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, Dan LeBatard's Deep Pockets, man. I'm using his money to fund a weird project that no one really asked for. But is the thing that I'm like, trying to make sustainable. I am somebody who wanted to hire people to simulate what feels like a modern newsroom. Tongue in cheek, but not in which. Yeah, I get tips, but more than that, I'm like perpetually pressure testing these ideas that I have. So my phone, my Slack channel is just an endless stream of me pitching my staff ideas. Like, I think we should do this, but we gotta make these calls. Can we do that? I found this weird nugget buried in this other thing. There was this bankruptcy filing. This is a breadcrumb for a future episode. There's this bankruptcy filing that I think everybody would find fascinating. If I can get to the bottom of it. These are my skill, if I have one, is hopefully trying to discern whether someone who's not me would find something that I find interesting. Chang's golf career, you know, I wanted to do. When you got. Were you with him at a golf course?

[Bill Simmons]

Chang was supposed to be. I was. Was Chang was his dad wanted him to be a PGA golfer.

[Pablo Torre]

I was walking around with, like, torn rotator cuffs getting, like, Tommy Johnson.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, he filmed 35 straight weeks of Netflix episodes, and his body, like, literally broke down.

[Pablo Torre]

I wanted to do the episode, and I've talked to him before about this, and I'll just spoil it because you have first dibs. Yeah. Like, the secret world of food at Augusta beyond, like, the stand in front, but, like, the secret. You know what I'm talking about.

[Bill Simmons]

They don't. They just don't do. I mean, I guess you could. You're not gonna find any of that from Augusta.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, this is why. This is why I do what I do.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, so you think you could.

[Pablo Torre]

I think I'm gonna wear a trench coat, and David Chang's gonna be the top part, and I'm gonna have a mech suit underneath where, like, mission impossible.

[Bill Simmons]

Like a David Chang.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. One ticket, please. And we walk into Augusta together. Yeah, man. I'm. I. Yes. By the way, I. I love doing stuff, and this can sound very retrograde and. And edgier than I think. I love doing stuff that people don't want me to do. Like, if I find something interesting and the people in charge of it are like, no. Now I'm like, well, what do you got to hide? Why don't you want people to know that there's a secret special, like, food court for rich people? The Illuminati in the back of Augusta?

[Bill Simmons]

You know what would have been a good episode that you can't do now? I was obsessed with this for, like, two years when Stern was commissioner, apparently, at every NBA party. I think I've talked about this. He loved pigs in a blanket, and they had to be at every NBA function and party. And there was this one party where they didn't have NBA pigs in a blanket, and he freaked out and was really upset about it, and I was like, this sounds amazing. I don't know if that's quite an episode, but David Stern's obsession with pigs in a blanket feels like the formation of something.

[Pablo Torre]

I hesitate to inform you that I would have greenlit that.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't. I don't know if there's enough. It feels like there needs to be a second piece to it.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, what kind of pigs in a blanket? We're talking about the microwavable kind. Is David Stern want, like, super bespoke?

[Bill Simmons]

Like, so somebody told me that, and then at, like, I don't know, nine months later, I was at one of those functions, and they had Pigs in a blanket. And I was watching him eat it. And I was the most rich I've ever met in my life. I was like, he's eating the pigs in the blanket.

[Pablo Torre]

And there's a metaphor. There's a metaphor there for Scott Foster. Somehow, you know, I was like, yeah, you gotta Dick Bavetta, by the way. I'm sure you've had this experience, but, like, when you do stuff that the NBA doesn't love sometimes.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, I hadn't had that experience ever.

[Pablo Torre]

Never. But the number of calls you get, like, just even uttering Scott Foster into this microphone, I'm gonna like Tim Frank, if you're listening. I'm sorry that I did this, but, like, yeah, man, I would love to make a pigs in a blanket metaphor for NBA officiating and the dial they turn to get an outcome. Not explicitly to conspiratorially rig a game, but just like, more scoring, less scoring, more fouls, fewer fouls. Just like, big picture stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

This has been out there for a bunch of years now, and I think people are at least a little bit aware of it. There's a reason they released the ref assignments the day of the game. There was also rev stats that I think some gamblers took advantage of in the 2000s. But just in general, teams can. This is the big thing people need to understand about officials. Teams can complain about how a game was called, they'll send the things, and then the league will tell the officials for the next game, like, they're getting away with too much stuff. They can't do that. Or they'll give them some sort of directive that will then shape the next game. And it's one of the reasons the games will feel a little differently. Like, if Neesmith. And we're taping this four, game one of the finals, if Neesmith is just hounding SGA and he's just bumping him and touching him, and it's like crossing the line, but they let it go. The league will then tell the rest for the next game. Like, here's footage of Neesmith. You can't let him do this.

[Pablo Torre]

Point of emphasis.

[Bill Simmons]

That's the good version of this. There might be some more sinister versions of it too.

[Pablo Torre]

So I think it's true in the.

[Bill Simmons]

Past, maybe not now.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, I think it's inevitable that the NBA, because you officiate games at the end differently than you do at the beginning, is inviting an arbitrary. I know it when I see it. Standard, which is up for interpretation, judicial interpretation that varies depending on what the instructions are. That game. The thing, though, about. And I love this. This is a thing I have looked into and that I want to do something with. But again, I'm happy to just talk about it a bit. The complaints that teams make to the.

[Bill Simmons]

League pointed with video.

[Pablo Torre]

What I've been told is that the teams that complain the most often. I'll name two of them. I'm curious if you're surprised. One is the New York Knicks.

[Bill Simmons]

Huh.

[Pablo Torre]

The other is the Oklahoma City Thunder. Just like which teams file the most complaints because of stuff that causes them to think we got jobbed. And it's, I'm told, reliably those two teams are among the most offended. And, yeah. Liable to file paperwork conspiracy.

[Bill Simmons]

Bill was on alert for game six of Knicks Pacers, and it was interesting. They let basically Brunson and Halberton get manhandled the whole game. So they basically. Just because Halberton was dripping the ball up and there Bridges and Ann and Obi were like, clubbing him as he's just dribbling a straight line. I was like, Jesus. But they were just as physical with Brunson, I think it's better. I think social media has really evened it out because the darkest moment, other than Donaghy and other than the artest melee of the 21st century for the NBA, I think, was that 06 finals and how appalled everybody was by how I was officiated.

[Pablo Torre]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

And I think Wade shot 25 free throws in game five. But it's just. It didn't sit right. Cuban staring down Stern after a loss which has never happened before since. In the history of the league. Him just from the court, staring at him, stink eye.

[Pablo Torre]

Do you miss David Stern?

[Bill Simmons]

I do. I think he was starting to really lose it at the end, and it was time for him to retire. And obviously people come and go.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, from the planet or.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, but for jobs and from the planet.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

There was something about how he shepherded stuff that I thought was. Maybe it belonged to its own era. He just didn't put up with shit.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, what a. I think Adam Silver has succeeded in ways that are indisputable financially.

[Bill Simmons]

Although maybe that's not his fault.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, what's your take on tripling the cba?

[Bill Simmons]

No, it's not the money they made. It's what it did competitively to the league with all the aprons. I think it's really going to badly fuck up the league.

[Pablo Torre]

So to that point, by the way, as we're looking at the second apron, basically doing something that The NBA has always needed more of which is reduce the platform in the most expensive settings for superstars to be even more important. Right. Like, that's the. The thing about the second apron and Adam's tenure, I think, is that it's just very funny that he learned at the knee of David Stern and operates behind the scenes so differently. And I think David Stern. What would wwdsd. What would David Stern do? Is a question I ask myself very often when it comes to.

[Bill Simmons]

It's funny when people get to that point, because I actually think Belichick was at that point. How people put together their roster was almost like, would you sign this guy for 85 million? Well, would Belichick do that? Probably not. And he had hit that point at least through the mid 2010s, and then it kind of faded away. But I think Stern was, for the most part, had really good instincts. I thought near the end, I thought he'd lost. I will never understand the OKC Seattle thing.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, oh, oh, sure. When he was running the team or when he relocated the team.

[Bill Simmons]

No, when he let the OKC guys buy Seattle. To steal them and steal them away. I'll never understand why the conflict of interest with the New Orleans owning that.

[Pablo Torre]

Franchise basketball reasons remains just an amazing thing that I still marvel at, man.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Lowe's knows that taking on more projects should be rewarding. That's why loyalty members get more every day with rewards for every home or business purchase. Plus shop weekly member deals to get access to free standard shipping. So what are you waiting for? Join my Lowe's Rewards for free Today loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details@lowe's.com Terms subject to change. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever finish a movie and the next thing you know, you're totally obsessed? Like, I'm talking about ordering a book about 70s film lighting or buying the soundtrack on vinyl. Kind of obsessed. Whatever it is, prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into. Head to Amazon.com prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes. Wait, we don't have a lot of time left. Cause you gotta fly to la.

[Pablo Torre]

Gotta fly? Yeah, home. Gotta fly.

[Bill Simmons]

I had more topics for you, though. We gotta talk Kornheiser.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Cause I've never really talked about him on a podcast with somebody who's actually worked with him and spent real time with him because I think it's hard. He's a hard person to explain. And it was interesting thinking about him in the context of around the Horn Ending whether that show would go to an hour. And I heard those rumors, and I was like, there is no way in a million years Tony will go to an hour unless they pay him some ungodly sum. And even then, I don't even think he'd want to do it.

[Pablo Torre]

Dollars per minute is the stat that Tony Kornheiser values.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He's like, I'll do it, but here's the prep. But anyway, you know, I first did TV with him in 09, and I'm sure you remember losing your PTI virginity as well. When. The day I was September 09. When were you.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, my gosh. I think I filled in. This must have been five or six. Phil, I'm old now, man. I don't remember the exact.

[Bill Simmons]

So mid-2010 somewhere.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, exactly. No, no, no. It would have been 2013, 14, probably 2014.

[Bill Simmons]

So I did four days. I flew to D.C. i was still writing my column, and I was completely terrified. And Kornheiser basically walked me through a young puppy on a leash on the sidewalks and help me kind of bait and just sold everything I did. And by the end of it, I was like, all right, I think I actually understand the mechanics of this now. Now, it's going to take years to figure out how to do it, but I get it. It was like, one of the best educations I ever had in four days.

[Pablo Torre]

He's my goat. Tony Koreser is, to me, the greatest of all time. And I say that not because, whatever, he would appreciate that. I say that because when it comes to a teammate on TV who presents as very hard to win over once he agrees that he can trust you, he is the best salesman of the person across the desk from him in the history of television. And he's smart and he's funny and he's quick. And for all of the things we've been saying, the through line of this episode is also what happens when you get older. His fastball is still humming.

[Bill Simmons]

Man, I know it's. I don't like when he says, like, I'm done.

[Pablo Torre]

They want to get rid of me.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm like 2015.

[Pablo Torre]

And he's wrong about that. He is so sharp still. And in not a. I'm grading on a curve because he's like my TV grandpa sort of a way, but merely in the way of I've done a lot of TV at this point, and he is still so good at it.

[Bill Simmons]

And see, that's the age difference between us, because I was called him Uncle Tony.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm Grand.

[Bill Simmons]

And you called him Grandpa. We're in a different generation. Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

He went to my wedding.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm not surprised.

[Pablo Torre]

I invited him and he said, I'm going to leave at 9:30. And he left at 9:29. And I'm amazed it was at 9:30 exactly. Well, he. So I. He went around and shook everyone's hand because it was also kind of like he was the guest. He was the celebrity guest.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And everyone loved it. Tony Kornizer, to me, as just what he is in real life, is so much. Anyway, he doesn't want me to say too many things in public about what we talk about personally, but my God, he's so fun to talk to. And the fact that we share him in common as a person that we adore and will be both confused when we have to recap why we did this show.

[Bill Simmons]

We probably should have done it sooner anyway, because I've had a good time.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, man. Like.

[Bill Simmons]

But yeah. The thing with Tony, I think my favorite thing about him is the phone will just ring you very few people where you just get a call and I'll be like, all right. I know this is going to be 30 minutes, but I'm excited for it. And then he's just. There's no hello, how are you? He's just right into the conversation.

[Pablo Torre]

It's always a cold open.

[Bill Simmons]

What is going on with. And then it's just. You're just kind of doing a show with him.

[Pablo Torre]

It's the best.

[Bill Simmons]

But that's why, like, you know, I. I actually think PTI is now underrated fur.

[Pablo Torre]

People don't understand from a pure metric perspective, the highest rated show in the daytime lineup. Still. Still. We talk about all the other shows a lot still. Number one, doing.

[Bill Simmons]

Doing stories that are like 10, 11 hours old compared to, like, the advantage. Get up and first take half.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

By the time it gets to those guys, the story's, like, done. There's been now in the podcast era, there's a million podcasts that are out every day and people have already reacted and done their thoughts. And then those guys come in and they're. To me that the two of them together, it's like an old married couple that still, like, works a hundred percent. It's a lot. Inside the NBA is the same way. Like, those guys just still work as a group.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And that's just the way it is.

[Pablo Torre]

It's chemistry. It's chemistry. You can't fake it again. You do know it when you see it in that regard. And Eric and Matt, producers of PTI and the staff and Tony and Mike, they take it again. They take it seriously, but they don't take themselves in the way that they do the show so seriously. And Tony and Mike.

[Bill Simmons]

No, but Tony takes one thing seriously. And I can't speak for Mike because I think Mike's easygoing. Like he would have gone to an hour and been fine with it. Tony's very committed. He's pot committed to the structure.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

He won't change. They haven't. What's really interesting about that show, they haven't really added anything to the structure. It's still done the same way. That fourth segment with the birthdays and racing through, that's from 2004. I don't know. I don't know how many years it took them to figure it. Tony will not touch that and he will get mad if you even suggest it.

[Pablo Torre]

Tony refuses to say the words pardon the interruption because he just never liked the name.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

He always says, welcome to pti, boys and girls. He noticed, just like he is. I mean, when I say he doesn't take himself seriously, I mean in the sense of he's willing to be laughed at.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And will be the class clown and perform. And that is a key trait I find in television. But he's also so deeply devoted to why PTI has worked. And I think it's because he and Mike see this as an extension of their journalistic selves. You know, they're not in locker rooms anymore. They're not. I press Mike still.

[Bill Simmons]

No, but they still have the DNA of it. I mean, Tony wrote some of the better features of the late 70s and early 80s. Like he has a whole era that nobody even remembers anymore.

[Pablo Torre]

I was talking to somebody who is not a sports fan, but just read randomly. They were doing research.

[Bill Simmons]

The Rick Barry one.

[Pablo Torre]

No, but Rick Barry being an asshole and that being a Sports Illustrated feature. It's an all time great story.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought that was probably the best thing. What were you going to say?

[Pablo Torre]

So I didn't know about this one, but while in LA this weekend, someone who's a big. Bring it full circle again. A Star wars fan was like, Tony Kornheiser for the Washington Post for the Style section, did a piece about the Empire Strikes Back. And I'm just like. And this person didn't know that Kornheiser did this and like got this column that was so funny and smart and all.

[Bill Simmons]

So like, from like 1980.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. And like, Tony has been out here doing the shit that we say we're innovating new forms of media, and it's culture and sports colliding. Tony's been out here doing stuff for whatever year. I mean, it's crazy. 50 years.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He had. I remember the last couple years out of espn, he had this whole thing. He kept saying, like. And I was like, you know, pretty close to him at this point. And he would always be like, well, when Len, Tony, when Mike and I turn it over to you and LeBatard. And I was. And finally I got mad at him and I was like, you gotta stop that. I don't want to take over pti. That's your show. You guys are gonna die with that show. Nobody wants to take that show. Nobody wants that responsibility. It's your show. Like. Like, stop even thinking that.

[Pablo Torre]

That's. That's the thing is that as much as Tony likes to talk about, oh, take over the thing, they're gonna should.

[Bill Simmons]

Die when they don't want to do it anymore. I think nobody should take the show over.

[Pablo Torre]

I agree.

[Bill Simmons]

Come up with another idea.

[Pablo Torre]

I also fully think that the show will die when they die.

[Bill Simmons]

They literally had the set.

[Pablo Torre]

They. I mean, they're not gonna stop doing it.

[Bill Simmons]

Wilbourne was doing get up the last couple weeks, like Wilbur's Motor's available.

[Pablo Torre]

Wilbon's Motor is a remarkable thing as a prospect. Wilbon. I don't think there's been a lot of people at that age who've done. Who've done it this way.

[Bill Simmons]

I was always. The year I was doing the countdown with Wilbon and Magic. Those guys were just machines that could come to life on camera and we could have. We would be like. They would give us this big meal. They'd give us. Cause we were taping the show. It'd be like 4:35 o' clock, West coast time. And then we'd have to be there for the basketball come back in so they'd have food and those guys could eat like entire dinners and go out there two minutes later and just. Just light up.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And I was like, that's a skill I'm not sure I will ever have. And by the way, I'll just have a small salad because I don't want to be in a food coma and seem like I'm luggage on this.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Farting on air is probably not the.

[Bill Simmons]

Best career choice anyway. So I. So you agree with me that show should die with them?

[Pablo Torre]

Look, I.

[Bill Simmons]

When they don't want to do it, I think that should be it for the show.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't Think there's any following them? I don't think that that show could be done without, I think, as a fill in love being a substitute teacher.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Have no illusions that PTI should be mine or whoever else's once those guys leave. I wouldn't want that burden. Like, talk about being set up to fail, you know, just being set up to disappoint people. Like, yeah, I'm not Tony and Mike, and I miss them too, would be how I felt every time I would fill in as the hypothetical replacement.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm sorry, I'm here.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Like, I also wish they were still here.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. It's better when they're in person, though, which we were talking about before we started, like. And that was one of the things Covid really fucked up because the Zoom made it easier. I used to interview everybody. We had all these people coming in, and then people asked why I don't do the interviews as much anymore. Which I think we're going to change because we're building a couple studios. But I just didn't like doing it on Zoom. Even, like, you and I talking today, it was like, we could have done it on Zoom, but as you were here and it was like, let's do it in person. It'll be way better.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. It's like we could have a phone call in which both of us immediately start yelling at each other, which is what happened.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

But then it led to a conversation that, to me, I think, clarified that even if Bill Simmons guy I grew up reading may not be a subscriber to my show, Conspiracy Bill absolutely is. And I'm so glad the Conspiracy Bill.

[Bill Simmons]

Is now he's aware of, like, and subscribe.

[Pablo Torre]

Conspiracy Bill. He's intrigued. Yeah, I can tell.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, what. What show. What episode would you want me on.

[Pablo Torre]

Would be like, oh, I like the way you're thinking Conspiracy Bill.

[Bill Simmons]

No, what episode? Like, what would be the best use of. It doesn't have to be Conspiracy Bill. It could be Bill. But what would be the dream episode for you?

[Pablo Torre]

There are actual answers to this that I will tell you about as soon as we're done recording.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, interesting.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't think that I'm not going to take you up on something that might actually be worthwhile.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm, like, born as. I don't really like to travel anywhere.

[Pablo Torre]

Noticed you maybe come to. Can I say the neighborhood we're in? Or is that. Am I doxing you if I say that you made me come to this neighborhood?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we're at the Spotify Studios in downtown la.

[Pablo Torre]

Very convenient.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that's why we're building studios elsewhere to try to fix some of this.

[Pablo Torre]

In all honesty, I am very glad you asked me to do this.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm too. I, you know, because I felt like, you know, when we do like the, like any pod, we have these little asides, you get caught up. You're trying to make the host laugh, whatever. And then sometimes, you know, as I explained, I didn't love the Belichick stuff, but I get why you did it. So I think I have a better understanding of the whole thing, which is the whole point of why we wanted to talk.

[Pablo Torre]

What you're saying is that Bill Simmons finally investigated.

[Bill Simmons]

Bill Simmons investigated. Pab Otori, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

[Pablo Torre]

You're very welcome.

[Bill Simmons]

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Pab Otorre for coming to downtown LA to talk to me. Thanks to the Knicks for doing something interesting for the top of the podcast. And thanks to Eduardo and Gahao as well. You can watch this as a video podcast on Spotify. You can watch on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel as well. And don't forget new rewatchables, new Prestige TV podcast. I'm on those as well. I'm going to be back on Thursday night with a big, juicy fat podcast right after Game 1 of the NBA Finals. In the meantime, if you want more basketball, listen to Zach Lowe. I think he has a new podcast. I think we moved it up to Wednesday and the ringer NBA guys as well. The mismatch. We're still going to be on Friday. So we got a lot of basketball content for you this week. A lot of stuff on the website as well. I will see you on Thursday night. 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 100 Gambler or visit rg-help.com, call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org chat in Connecticut or visit mdg.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline ma.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.