Westbrook’s Slide, the Phoenix Fallout, Celtics Rumors, and Half-Baked Ideas With Jackie MacMullan

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 10:00: Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis, Dwyane Wade, Fanduel Sportsbook
2. 10:00 – 20:00: Joel Embiid, Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis, Ben Simmons
3. 20:00 – 30:00: Anthony Davis, Chris Paul, Evan Mobley, Jalen Brown
4. 30:00 – 40:00: Ben Simmons, Jalen Brown, Ben Wallace, Duncan Robinson
5. 40:00 – 50:00: Reggie Lewis, Adam Silver, Gilbert Mudge, Robert Sarver
6. 50:00 – 1:00:00: Chris Paul, Adam Silver, Jackie McMullen, Jalen Green
7. 1:00:00 – 1:10:00: Marcus Smart, Ben Simmons, Jalen Brown, Kevin Wilds
8. 1:10:00 – 1:20:00: Ben Simmons, Joe Ingles, Joel Embiid, Marcus Smart
9. 1:20:00 – 1:30:00: Frank Gore, Darren Williams, Chuck E. Cheese, Russell Westbrook
10. 1:30:00 – 1:40:00: Larry O'Brien

Notable quotes from "Westbrook’s Slide, the Phoenix Fallout, Celtics Rumors, and Half-Baked Ideas With Jackie MacMullan"

• Hundreds if not thousands of times is watching an elite superstar which certainly russell westbrook has been in his career and watch him come back down to earth with everybody else i mean it is painful to watch.

  about Russell Westbrook · at 6:29

• One in six in his last seven playoff series and the one that they won was that one with chris paul and chris paul of the ball in the last play right right ended up couldn't but…

  about Chris Paul · at 10:20

• This nba season we could do an all-star team of guys that have covey now with joel embiid as our starting center with you know tobias harris middleton i mean the list goes on and i mean i think it's really affected.

  about Joel Embiid · at 17:31

• All right so kyrie you mentioned coved you mentioned this weird season with kyrie ben simmons there's a lot of weirdness oh i know sky's going down it's it's and the fouls which we'll talk about later the kaibri thing kyrie's going to.

  about Ben Simmons · at 19:14

• That was anything close to that well we did you know a reggie lewis investigation when reggie died and that was the worst story i've ever worked on and there was a bunch of us working.

  about Reggie Lewis · at 41:54

• Well i mean the league's going to investigate it'll be interesting to see how adam silver handles this he had a lot of courage when it came to donald stirring courage that was…

  about Adam Silver · at 46:47

• Going to happen i'm pretty sure why would you do that okay is marcus smart still on the celtics in three months better question not sure me neither yeah that's a better question.

  about Marcus Smart · at 1:00:41

• The next episode all right we've got bed bull dame day larry o'brien's the bar a gym that looks like a store marathon coffee the living room of highlights gucci flag for referees annoy ahoy set sail to where we annoy your troubles.

  about Larry O'Brien · at 1:27:54

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Ben Simmons — Person · 10 mentions · first at 19:18
• Russell Westbrook — Person · 6 mentions · first at 6:33
• Reggie Lewis — Person · 6 mentions · first at 41:56
• Chris Paul — Person · 5 mentions · first at 10:24
• Jalen Brown — Person · 5 mentions · first at 18:52
  That's the thing your mind goes to will he be like one of those guys where like jaylen brown is he still used an inhaler like he's still messed up from kovid nine right later…
• Marcus Smart — Person · 5 mentions · first at 1:00:44
• Joel Embiid — Person · 4 mentions · first at 17:35
• Adam Silver — Person · 4 mentions · first at 46:50
• Frank Gore — Person · 4 mentions · first at 1:22:55
  He's just the guy who was like better than darren williams who by the way is fighting frank gore did you see that story i'm so into it i think frankfurt is gonna get destroyed i really do i think he's gonna get his.
• Nikola Jokic — Person · 4 mentions
• Anthony Davis — Person · 3 mentions · first at 9:39
  Lebron comes back and once they stop the nonsense and play anthony davis at the five i mean just give it up people that's what you need to do that's your best lineup you know that you have all the data to tell you that regardless of what.
• Will and Ariel Durant — Person · 3 mentions · first at 16:04
  I don't know if lebron is on it i think he can play his way back into it but yeah he can durant's been unbelievable durant giannis curry and joakids are the four best players…
• Gilbert Mudge — Person · 3 mentions · first at 43:04
  Said me why does this matter why is it even important you know and i said well because gilbert mudge this attorney is getting sued by donna lewis reggie's wife to the doctor…
• Robert Sarver — Person · 3 mentions · first at 47:18
  The other way on robert sarah because we've all been hearing these rumors and these innuendoes about robert sarver for years we've known about this so now knowing it and actually reporting it are two.
• Darren Williams — Person · 3 mentions · first at 1:22:53
  State farm commercials he's just the guy who was like better than darren williams who by the way is fighting frank gore did you see that story i'm so into it i think frankfurt is gonna get destroyed.
• Jackie McMullen — Person · 2 mentions · first at 1:35
  Again that's a good one that is up as well coming up jackie mcmullen and i are going to talk about basketball three weeks in and a bunch of subplots that have developed and then my old friend kevin.
• Kevin Wilds — Person · 2 mentions · first at 1:42
  Weeks in and a bunch of subplots that have developed and then my old friend kevin wilds from the espn grantland days he's now on fs1 he's gonna come on to talk about the art of the take when you're doing those.
• Mark Keith Morris — Person · 2 mentions · first at 37:55
  Score i'll tell you this that was a cheap shot by mark keith morris i agree it was it actually reminded me a little everyone forgets the reason that our test melee started yeah was because at the end of a game.
• Nathan Hubbard — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:00
  So we had nathan hubbard and nora princioti do a little podcast for the ringer dish feed called every single album where they went through taylor swift's albums one by one.
• Ryan Rosillo — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:57
  Princeton amanda dobbins we're doing two succession shows this week and we're dragging ryan rosillo on this pod i think it's gonna be we're putting up wednesday night…
• Dwyane Wade — Person · 1 mention · first at 6:00
  Same stuff he did in the past it's a little like what happened with dwyane wade when that's a good thing because when he got older he never added the three-point shot and he became this he could have the moments he could get.
• Evan Mobley — Person · 1 mention · first at 25:33
  He still has it when he needs it because 100 percent cleveland comes in he's hearing a lot of stuff about evan mobley right and in the fourth quarter of that game he's like…
• Kyrie Irving — Person · 1 mention · first at 31:11
  Oh my god i mean who blinks first like who plays first ben simmons or kyrie irving who plays first kyrie i think for the reasons you laid out but doesn't ben simmons have to play at some point shams had something in that.
• Ben Wallace — Person · 1 mention · first at 38:07
  Yeah was because at the end of a game that didn't matter anymore our tests really cheap shot fouled ben wallace and wallace was that's what ben wallace like lost his mind he's like are you kidding me and the yogic thing there's a good angle.
• Jimmy Butler — Person · 1 mention · first at 39:25
  Playing him again but you know what's funny about that like so yeah that's jimmy butler bam out of bio can do that but not really he's a really pretty sweet kid you know he's a…
• Duncan Robinson — Person · 1 mention · first at 39:31
  But not really he's a really pretty sweet kid you know he's a big strong physical kid like poor duncan robinson you know he's like into this come on man leave me alone i just…
• Jalen Green — Person · 1 mention · first at 57:04
  Christian wood yeah he's another guy and the rookies i think have been good like jalen green i don't know what he's going to be coming he has no idea what he's doing on defense like sorry but he's there he's got the basics he's got the he's.
• Joe Ingles — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:16:07
  Guess i'll have to wait till next year like oh hold on i can play in a loving environment with patty mills and joe ingles and they had said all the right things and matisse…
• Patty Mills — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:16:07
  Guess i'll have to wait till next year like oh hold on i can play in a loving environment with patty mills and joe ingles and they had said all the right things and matisse…
• Bam Adebayo — Person · 1 mention
• Daryl Morey — Person · 1 mention
• Giannis Antetokounmpo — Person · 1 mention
• Kyle Lowry — Person · 1 mention
• Linda Kyle — Person · 1 mention
• Nora Princoti — Person · 1 mention
• Stephen Curry — Person · 1 mention
• Tyler Herro — Person · 1 mention
• Zion Williamson — Person · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• NBA — Company · 5 mentions
• Miam Heat — Company · 2 mentions · first at 39:11
  And he struts away and turns his back on him because this is that miami heat team like they're really trying to establish themselves as the bullies right and you see like this is the identity they want so he does that he's trying to.
• Chuck E. Cheese — Company · 2 mentions · first at 1:29:02
  Can put music behind this tired of the same old night out at the bar well come on down to chuck e cheese it's like top golf but with chuckets literally there's just a bunch of…
• Fanduel Sportsbook — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:37
• The Ringer Podcast Network — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:39
• Boston Celtics — Company · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• Larry O'Brien — Concept · 7 mentions · first at 1:27:58

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 so we had nathan hubbard and nora princioti do a little podcast for the ringer dish feed called every single album where they went through taylor swift's albums one by one and people loved it they loved it so much we were spinning it off into its own feed it is up you can get it wherever you get your podcast listen to spotify because spotify is the best but you can get it on any platform be ready when red taylor's version comes out on friday nathan and nora be ready for the podcast subscribe follow every single album on spotify or wherever you get your podcast we're also brought to you by fanduel sportsbook as well as the ringer podcast network i mentioned every single album getting its own feed at the top the prestige tv podcast i went on there on monday talked about the morning show which is just horrible with uh nora princeton amanda dobbins we're doing two succession shows this week and

0:57 we're dragging ryan rosillo on this on this uh on this pod i think it's gonna be we're putting up wednesday night yellowstone the two hour and twenty minute season premiere me ryan ricillo chris ryan so subscribe to prestige tv if you haven't heard riscillo break down yellowstone and kohlhauser um just buckle up put your seatbelt on get ready check it out uh new rewatchables went up as well van lathan and i did ransom which had its 25th anniversary this week and we talked about kidnap movies and van just said no why over and over again um that's a good one that is up as well coming up jackie mcmullen and i are going to talk about basketball three weeks in and a bunch of subplots that have developed and then my old friend kevin wilds from the espn grantland days he's now on fs1 he's gonna come on to talk about uh the art of the take when you're doing those daily talk shows and then half-baked

1:54 ideas they're back one of the greatest gimmicks we've ever had on this podcast dating back to the espn days kevin wilds is gonna be doing half-baked ideas it's all coming up next first our friends from pearl jam

2:24 all right jackie big balling and saying we're taping this it is one o'clock pacific time so it's before the three games tonight but that's all right there's lots of basketball stuff to talk about i want to talk about the lakers i think you do too always a fascinating experiment of just a bunch of old guys that don't compliment each other you have the westbrook thing and something really fun happened lebron had a minor injury he's out it's not fun to not have lebron but then it opened the door for westbrook to try to be westbrook and it's such a mess and this is a guy i voted as one of the 75 best guys of all time i don't 100 regret that i don't i voted for him yeah i think he belongs he won an mvp i think he he's on there but man you watch he's hitting a version of his career that's really dangerous and we've seen this go badly for a lot of nba stars over the years i know you have are we hitting the danger point with him

3:16 where he's just not a good player anymore well i know he's putting up stats but you know what i mean he's not like a winning impact player you know what he is he's a player bill who's starting his decline and refuses to acknowledge it right so the best players that live and stay in the league for a long time are the ones that are like okay i got to change the way i play because i can't i don't have the same physicality that i had or i don't have the same speed i don't have whatever and let's be honest i mean westbrook has never been a great shooter so it's not like you know he all of a sudden lost his shot never really had it but he could kill you in so many other ways and some of those ways are letting him down i i think he's being asked to do a lot obviously they've had so many people out besides lebron um you know we could list them all for you but one of the ones too is like and no one talks about him but like i

4:06 just think horton tucker you know they haven't had him yet this year and i think he's a guy he's just a guy that gives you another ball handler to calm things down a little bit and i think westbrook probably i don't care how old you are you go to a new team especially the lakers and you feel the pressure to perform and i think he's just trying to do too much you know the other thing is i was looking at his splits he always starts slow he's always better in the second half of the year like significantly better so i think it's a little too early to proclaim him you know doa but at his age it's really really hard to maintain now he's an incredible shape we know that too but i mean he is he's leading the league in turnovers and it's not really close at the moment if you look at the la i was looking at his stats and you know the rebounds and the assists the stuff he's always going to get but always the shooting stuff is

5:00 alarming the last few years so you think like even in 2017 which was his best three-point shooting year which was 34 percent yeah right yeah but since then just three-point shooting is 29.8 29 25.8 last year's 31.5 this year is 25.6 so you have that his field goal percentage is 41 41 so he's missing six out of every 10. but then the free throw attempts those have really gone down too in his mvp season he was 10.4 and he was a battering ram was always getting the line now that's at 4.8 so and then you mentioned the turnovers he's at 5.1 which would be the second highest now you made a good point he does start off slow sometimes i also kind of think this is who he is like you look at even if you take his stats for the last four years combine them together he's 44 28 from three six point three free throw attempts so he's it athletically he's not doing the same stuff he did in the past it's a little like what happened with

6:00 dwyane wade when that's a good thing because when he got older he never added the three-point shot and he became this he could have the moments he could get hot right but then when he went to cleveland that year and it was like ah what is this and then he kind of tried to reinvent himself as a sixth man that's what it reminds me of yeah and again remember he went to chicago had the brief thing in chicago was a complete disaster and again that goes back to my point of the hardest thing in the world and you and i have seen it hundreds if not thousands of times is watching an elite superstar which certainly russell westbrook has been in his career and watch him come back down to earth with everybody else i mean it is it is painful to watch and you know that's why lebron to me has always been so exceptional because it really hasn't happened to him now you know and that's that's i think what sets

6:51 him apart from almost all the others because it did happen with michael i mean we were there i was there covering the wizards in fact i flew down there in his final days and talked to him and and you know i was asking him i was sort of trying in a roundabout way asking him if he regretted doing it coming back and he didn't because in his mind they see in their minds they're always the best and by the way that's why they are the best because they're all about positive self-talk so russell westbrook i'm sure there's some doubt there but he can't listen to that we're not right now not without these other guys out with all these other guys injured but you know if you're if you're looking at it and you're saying okay we took on russell westbrook and we gave up kyle kuzma who's flourishing in washington we gave up kittavis caldwell paul who's flourishing in washington you know stop me anytime now well and harrah who's been

7:41 awesome i don't know if he was ever gonna work with the lakers but he's been really good for the wizards yeah he's like his clipper days you know and then you know and then caruso's he i don't he wasn't part of the trade but he's in chicago doing pretty well so that's i think exacerbates the problem is that the guys that you were you know that that they got shipped out so they could take care of you and manage you have really flourished in their new roles you know i thought it was weird i didn't like it when it happened and i you know i've been on the record i think we talked yeah we talked about it i was like i don't like this trade i don't see how he fits and it actually feels a little worse than even i thought it was going to be because i did think westbrook is has been a good enough player over the years that he would figure out all right how do i fit in but you know when you're a one-man show

8:30 and you have the ball at the time and now you're at the point of the career that he's at i don't i don't think we saw rondo like really have a hard time figuring this out and then for whatever is in the bubble he figured out kind of how to do that i don't see westbrook ever doing that i still feel like westbrook thinks the three of us are going to be kicking ass i guess the carmelo being so such a good fit for them so far almost makes it worse for westbrook because carmelo as long as he's going to shoot 50 from three great fit i mean the moment that flips right and how much you know the question there is i can't imagine he's going to keep shooting 50 three i hope he does he's one of the nicest guys in the nba i always root for carl anthony but if he doesn't um as long as he's hit forty five forty you know i mean he can drop off quite a bit and still be okay for them yeah we've seen the old guys we remember

9:23 the knicks and the 12 and 13. they had some old guys that would look great for about 50 games jason kidd and it's like the longer the season goes you're starting to play with uh play with fire and i would say that once lebron comes back and once they they stop the nonsense and play anthony davis at the five i mean just give it up people that's what you need to do that's your best lineup you know that you have all the data to tell you that regardless of what he wants to do that's what has to happen you put him at the five you get lebron back you get you know horton tucker back who i really like and um can't wait to see uh then maybe you know then there's not so much pressure on russell westbrook there's not this urge and even if he wants to do it you know lebron is going to have the ball in his hands a ton right so russell westbrook since 2016 his last year with kd he's only won one playoff series

10:19 he is one in six in his last seven playoff series and the one that they won was that one with chris paul and chris paul of the ball in the last play right right right right ended up couldn't but you didn't get past houston but you know what that's in part because he's chasing it he's chasing the new home he's chasing the new place and you you stay a year and and you don't even have time to get acclimated then you move on again and it's that never works i just wonder can he be a winning player if he's wonder if he's in your top three like if he was on the celtics instead of dennis schroeder would that help the celtics i don't feel like it would oh god no that might be his next stop like with the way both teams are going um no that would not help the celtics i mean because jason tatum already has the ball a lot and yes westbrook could be taken away from him and as much as we've been critical

11:14 of jason tatum i'd still would rather have jason with the ball in his hands right so well you know westbrook just has to accept where he is at his career and as i said earlier yeah good luck it's really hard and that's why when players walk away and i mean i can't who's the who's the most recent player that walked away probably you know probably had a year or two left and said no i'm done i can't even think of it wait it never happened probably wade i think wade was though like he could come off a bench for somebody's last year but like like if bill belichick was in charge of all these guys he would say to them you know just like you said to brewski like okay we can cut you or you can just retire and we'll tell everybody that's how it went right because once you start on that decline man it's it's really hard to watch i don't think they have outs which is another reason i didn't like to trade

12:06 when it happened because once you do this there's no plan b there's nowhere for him to go no there's no team that's taking him you're basically looking at john wall and rusper going back to houston and trying to orchestrate a buyout and now i have to deal with john wall would i that's that's not that's why i loved right that's why i love the buddy healed kate you know it was basically buddy healed for kcp and harold and that oh no kuzman kuzma yeah so they got to keep kcp was like 16 million and then they had the buddy healed contract and then they were kind of still in the mix in case things didn't work out right and i think with this one this has to work out and this will be a real test for lebron who is one of the smartest basketball players we've ever had how does he make this work out is westbrook going to be happy if the solution is hey man you just can't have the ball like that but the stuff's got to run

12:59 through us right and lebron you know he's a really good leader too i guess we're doing a little bit of a lebron love fest here today but i know you know he is quite a quite a good leader too um with exceptions and i will always take exception to the year he was hurt and brought the wine to the bench that to me i'll never get over that but you know he he has a way of getting to these guys and you know we've chronicled enough um championship wins for him whether it's with the heat or cleveland where you hear the stories of leading up to the playoffs and the the text or the phone call or the the one time he puts his arm around you and i think the greatest leaders do that they're not effusive in their praise all the time they pick their spots so when they do it it means something and that's something lebron has been pretty good at so my guess is and i don't know this um that you know there he's having some dial dialogue

13:49 with russell westbrook and telling him it's gonna come man it's gonna come yeah and don't listen to all those idiots we know what you're gonna do we know what you're like in march and april and that's all we care about we don't care about any of this time now we don't care all we care about is april may june and we know you'll be there for us so it's weird that he doesn't really know how to play with davis and you watch the plays yesterday where it's like westbrook brings the ball up and he for people listening they in they a game they probably should have lost they ended up beating charlotte and ot and i think part of it was charlotte just went cold it though charlotte played really well in that game they went cold at the worst time but it was weird to me he brings it up and you could see he's almost it's like watching a little kid like i don't want to screw this up and he's passing up opportunities to go to

14:34 the basket and carefully throwing passes to davis on the high post not really using davis it's like they're playing together it's not like they're running pick and roll and he's figured out any sort of semblance of chemistry with them they have no chemistry and it's kind of like all right anthony go ahead create something for us and davis you know he fouled out plumley that he was able to win the game for them but i've been surprised by that i thought they would figure out some chemistry and it's like who has anthony davis had chemistry with other than lebron and ron yeah lebron and rondo right those are the two guys that he's actually clicked with rondo had that great the alley oops he used to throw them in new orleans and stuff like that we're not saying any of that davis doesn't seem i don't know if this is just the face that he has but he's an odd superstar right right he's got the weight of the world on his

15:23 shoulders at all time and it's like why is this more fun for you you know right like this seems like you should be enjoying this very interesting guy too and you know if you remember before they won a lot of criticism coming his way too because he had games where you'd look at the box score and you'd like you can't even get two rebounds dude like what's the deal you know so he has those lapses and again the greatest of the great they don't they don't have those lapses and that's why there's only one two maybe let's say there's three of them in the league right now that are like that maybe i think in golden state i think he might be one of them yeah i think there's a top four right now that stands out and by the way i don't know if lebron is on it i think he can play his way back into it but yeah he can he can durant durant's been unbelievable durant giannis curry and joakids are the four best players in the

16:11 league and that's that and yep i don't know if lebron has one more throwback season in him where he can play and make that a fivesome but those four guys night tonight are they don't have nights off and if curry's missing it's just because he's missing but you know he's going to come back the next day and do what he did last night well you know it's funny i was um because he had that 50 10 game it was just ridiculous and seven rebounds and by the way i was the first thing i looked at was the minutes he only played 30 only 35 minutes but that's pretty good but you know i said oh i wonder what his true shooting percentage is i wonder what it is so far i bet it's really great you know what it's okay i mean it's good but so um rudy gobert has the highest you know the big guys always have the highest true shooting percentage but the guy who's second is seth curry that's great right he's crushing it he

16:58 is he's like 71.2 percent through shooting percentage i was just really surprised i guess i haven't paid a close enough attention uh to what he's been doing because we're so mesmerized by steph but you know giannis is the other one if you look at giannis and what he's doing in there i know they're not you know winning but lopez has been out middleton's but drew is that yeah and you know i think the secret big story for me so far in the nba that i don't hear anybody talking about is oh remember the bubble we do it the right way we protect all our players covet is destroying the early part of this nba season we could do an all-star team of guys that have covey now with with uh joel embiid as our starting center with you know tobias harris middleton i mean the list goes on and on and i mean i think it's really affected these teams and no it's almost like we've just become a fact of life now

17:47 yeah we're going to miss guys yeah cleveland the browns today all of a sudden it's like they're not going to have chubb and hunt oh they're not going to have their two running backs all right well you kind of keep going and you're just using that trouble was looking like all world for god's sakes you know so it's just to me that's kind of one of the secret little stories it's almost like i don't understand it in some ways and i guess it's because well the players are vaccinated so that is a big difference between the bubble when there was there wasn't a vaccination yeah but it is kind of interesting to me how everybody's just downplaying that you know it was the biggest story in the world and now it's just like oh well i don't really get that i mean other than kyrie which is the constant story but i think the big thing with that there was uh more of a sense of doom in the early stages of this but now the vaccine at

18:36 least it's like oh like i heard embiid got coveted i'm i wasn't thinking like oh my god i hope he's okay you know now it's like all right he'll be back in two weeks and then you your mind goes to right but he's struggling they say well that's the thing your mind goes to will he be like one of those guys where like jaylen brown is he still used an inhaler like he's still messed up from kovid nine right later so you wonder like what's gonna be the effects and there's gonna be stuff that we learned what eight or nine years from now right about the effects of this i'm glad you brought up kyrie though we're gonna take a break and i'm gonna throw a theory at you that i think you're gonna enjoy all right so kyrie you mentioned coved you mentioned this weird season with kyrie ben simmons there's a lot of weirdness oh i know sky's going down it's it's and the fouls which we'll talk about later the kaibri thing kyrie's going to

19:28 be on the all-star ballot and what's weird to me is the nba had a moment here where they could have they could have gotten ahead of this they could have said you know what this year we're only going to have 60 people on the all-star belt we're cut we're cutting it we're not making it this isn't like not everyone's on here now we're really cutting cutting the lineup down we know who the best 50 60 players are we're gonna pick them and that would have been like a roundabout way of not having kyrie in the bout kyrie being on the ballot he's gonna get voted in the games in cleveland and it's gonna completely overshadow all-star weekend i'm telling you they have a moment here to get out of this this is going to ruin all-star weekend not that that ultimately matters but a couple of things so when it comes i'm not a conspiracy theorist in general but when it comes to voting for the office rig are you doing a rig in the ballots a

20:20 hundred percent the all-star game has been rigged forever forever i can't tell you how many arenas i've been in with former pr guys most of them are gone now retired or passed or whatever who are like oh i go what's in the boxes oh yeah all-star ballots i'm like oh you're hiring like an intern to check the boxes i go hell yeah so i'm just telling you and this will probably cause a commotion but i think you know i i've never bought into the all-star ballet as being anywhere near fair or accurate okay let's say that now a couple of things number one you're right about one thing the fans have fifty percent of the vote there'll be a whole there'll be an anti-vaxxer groups that will completely mobilize themselves stay up all night twenty four seconds gonna be politicized flood in the market for kyrie and and i think there are a lot of people in china that like kyrie shu so there might be a lot of voters from

21:12 china that are willing to do that as well but here's the thing bill so let's say the 50 fan vote gets him you know in good shape 25 of the vote is in media he will get exactly zero votes zero and then 25 percent are the are the players he'll get exactly maybe two like one from andrew wiggins and maybe you know aaron rodgers will steal someone else's ballot you know right shayleen woodley is going to vote for him okay all right yeah so it's not going to happen you're you stop worrying it's protected it's protected the way there will be there'll be lots of stories about it do you think we see kyrie this year because i do okay so what what walk me through how that plays out where kyrie certainly shows up again i think something will happen whereas and it might not be till february you know where vaccination rates continue to increase somehow we get new data new information about the virus to temper it it's its

22:20 effects and eventually new york rescinds its mandate that's oh and that's how he plays yeah i don't think i see one thing i you know i've been around kyrie i wouldn't say i know him well but i will say this when he thinks he's right he thinks he's right and the one thing i can tell you for sure and so can every other coach or gm or even teammate no one's telling him what to do that's just not gonna happen and the more you try to tell him the less he's gonna listen so i do believe there'll be a resolution to this kind of an organic one i guess is what i'm guessing and then the question becomes how much time does he need you know he as you know he's had injuries the last few years so playing a season let's just say for february so how many games would that be how many games would that leave him with 30 40 like 30 32. that might actually suit him best honestly if he plays 32 games goes into the

23:22 postseason and then i think they still can win the championship i would argue that suits a lot of people best yeah of course it does adande was on here a few weeks ago i was really jealous of this take about how the bubble how great that was for lebron that he basically only had to play 10 weeks and he's always going to be in the best shape in the league of anybody that's right and he comes in 10 weeks basketball and that's adande was saying that's as potent as he's going to look in the playoffs at this point in his career his career now it's like with the regular season miles you put on leading to the playoffs you're going to be dinged up that time he wasn't and that's why he was so good in the bubble i thought that was a really smart point yeah he's right and it's it's interesting to me because you know right before this season started lebron did the whole i'm playing 82 games unless they tell you know unless

24:09 something happens i don't want to sit out i don't want to sit out back-to-back everybody hates that right all the players hate that chris paul hated it when they did it with him and nobody wants that and now that he's had two kind of nagging injuries and we're only in november i wonder if he's changed his mind okay okay maybe he's changed his mind you know maybe he's gonna look at it now and say all right so maybe he'll use the bubble maybe he listens to donde and bill simmons on the bs podcast who knows he definitely does it and maybe he'll say i don't know there's some there's you know because i just know if lebron is anywhere near full strength he can drag these guys along he can i never count him out i just don't i'm not counting him out either which is why i was very careful to say there's a top four i don't think lebron's in it anymore but i also wouldn't be surprised if he ripped off

25:01 39 to 9 for the entire month of march so let's say he's not in it night after night anymore but that's what that's how i think you belong yeah we're talking he belongs but i'm saying that elite group it's like every night there's no nights off but here's the thing if he sees giannis out there you don't think he's gonna bring it that night if he sees durant in those guys you don't think he's gonna bring it that night well did you see did you see the cleveland game because this told me like oh okay so now this is he still has it when he needs it because 100 percent cleveland comes in he's hearing a lot of stuff about evan mobley right and in the fourth quarter of that game he's like come here young one yeah let me show you let me show you let me introduce you to the high screen with anthony davis let's see if you're ready for this and he wasn't but it was a great experience for moby who is my favorite rookie i um yeah he's a

25:49 fan he's fantastic i am over the moon you saw kg in the mid 90s i talked about this last week but i wanted your take like i feel like he's your three kg right now well so kg was an interesting guy though in his rookie or i don't know if you remember in his early months of his rookie year he didn't play a lot oh he was like a babe in the woods yeah he really was he was thin he was and you know what he was too which is so funny when you think about his persona now he was just respectful he was too respectful in many ways like he's just like all right i i gotta i wait my turn i'm gonna do what i need to do and uh i don't see that with mobile i don't mean that mobley's disrespectful i'm just mobile he's like here i am let's go you know he's really fun he's clearly been the best rookie defensively it's ludicrous i think you didn't you write the first kg piece about like hey oh this is basically no i

26:39 think you did because i remember i was researching for something and there was a piece for me it was like year two yeah i was like hey yes this kevin garnett thing is happening like this is a real thing be ready for this yeah yesterday so i don't i think you did all right yeah the moby thing though and this is why i thought he should go first i'm wrong a lot this was not wrong the stuff that he does at that position is more rare than finding a guard and i'm sure cade cunningham's could be really good but guards are the easiest things to find in the league there's 20 guys who might you know who could make an all-star team who have the ball at the time at guard i can't find anybody who can switch on the guards and run the floor like mobley and already has the touch and the passing that he has i think that's going to be at least a playing team the run the run and the run in transition that's you

27:31 know you might be watching that you might be watching cleveland and then he gets the ball you know they have the ball in transition and then you're all sudden you're sitting up because you're going to wait and see what decisions he makes and my god he makes really good decisions already that team is interesting you know they're an interesting team and sexton's out now i think right because which is weirdly good for them because yeah it's kind of better when rubio has the ball yeah the numbers with rubio and garland on the floor today are really good and i'm not saying rubio is going to have 37 off the bench i mean that was that was incredible but you know we were talking before about being in shape being ready you know the olympic games for him are is the nba championship in many ways and he he dominated during the olympics so not super shocking that that carries over a little bit for him yeah

28:16 there's a couple team yeah sex thing is like dear and fox to me where i get it i enjoy watching him i see the stats but i'm not positive that can be your point guard if i'm actually trying to win multiple playoff series you know and that's like i would have traded fox for simmons if i was sacramento like before the simmons tailspin maybe that's not a good idea now yeah but yeah in the moment it's like simmons is just has a higher ceiling than fox now i don't know because it's been so weird it's even hard to guess what his ceiling is anymore well you know the the one trade that i always kind of chuckle at is kyrie for simmons you know because can you trust either one of them because if you can they're both so talented i mean simmons the lost in the narrative and i get why everybody's so down on simmons it's impossible not to be at this point he hasn't done anything right but people are forgetting he is a

29:08 dominant defensive player i voted for him for defensive player of the year last year i thought he should have won i did i think i did as well and so people are forgetting that because it's not as sexy i guess you know he's not forgetting it is daryl murray that's why i know yeah derek is not going to do anything until he's right i mean but those that the celtics um simmons stuff like are you real right now that was unbelievable i was like laughing when i saw that you know it was you know it's got residuals here i'm in new hampshire now i'm not in boston anymore but they're still talking about and i'm like how on earth can anyone take this seriously honestly i mean you got to be kidding me if you read it carefully he wasn't saying that jaylen brown for simmons was being discussed shams wrote this right he was saying um they've talked they they kicked the tires see if he was available and

30:01 basically philly said jaylen brown would have to be involved in any deal but the way it was written was ambiguous and it looked like they were talking deal and jaylen brown might be on the table right which was just bad editing honestly right and in fairness to shams he said there's no traction so right but yeah but you know how they he knows how social media works and you know hey so to wait you get aggregated it's yeah you know like that that one you have to write really carefully and it has to be edited really carefully otherwise what happens is what happened where the whole day it's like jaylen brown for ben simmons the celtics are never doing that in a million years they are never trading jalen brown for ben simmons and it's like oh well what if they throw in tyreese maxie no no they're still not no no no no it's never happening stop so so my big question is do you think um if ben simmons still

30:51 isn't playing for the sixers he'll come to the sloan analytics conference in march that's oh my god what a bold move that would be wouldn't that be great he just crashes it you could do a panel on a decent defensive transition or something i just oh my god i mean who who blinks first like who plays first ben simmons or kyrie irving who plays first kyrie i think for the reasons you laid out but doesn't ben simmons have to play at some point shams had something in that piece about how he's been engaged with teammates and stuff i've heard the opposite i've heard he's not talking to anybody and there's like a lot of animosity about this whole situation so what have you heard well so it depends which teammate okay so joel embiid will never talk to him again as if if possible you know he's done with him because let's face it these two are in this together but a guy like danny green is a veteran he's been around forever he

31:46 cares about everybody he's probably talking to he's he's talking to ben simmons i bet or if he sees ben simmons trying to engage with him because it's not the same investment for danny green that it is for joel and b it's different right it's different what do you think how do you think doc handles this i mean doc's as old school growth as it gets right this is like everything he hates yeah but he but he's also a guy that is like i don't know he's a problem solver yeah like he had terrible problems with rondo they're fine now they're great they're on a group text with big baby and paul pierce and kg and all those guys they have a really funny group text that i actually got a little glimpse to thanks to perk but but they um you know in the moment doc it doesn't mind saying hey why are you being such an [ __ ] like i want to understand because i'm trying to help you here so like tell me again why are you being an

32:37 [ __ ] just tell me so i can find middle ground with you and help you you know doc can talk like that players respond to doc he's been around so long and uh you know just a real beacon of social justice for them that goes a long way with those players all those things you know what happens in new orleans how long how long before somebody's the fall guy which i would assume would be david griffin the gm i thought they were going to let david go last year didn't you yeah i mean nothing nothing has been right and certainly the stuff jj reddick said was not particularly helpful for david griffin square i'm surprised that hasn't happened already it's a shame isn't it that whole thing is such a shame and the biggest squandered assets you know where you you basically just starting out with drew holiday and zion and brandon ingram and a bunch of picks and lonzo and now you look where they are now and

33:27 they're just in a worse place like it's undeniable and and they don't seem like they can corral zion into staying in shape yeah and that's a big that's a big thing although you know it's funny i was watching the celtics game when don just hit the game winner again i mean just an incredible shot and i was watching him throughout the game i'm like man he is too big they were you know they they got themselves back in the game by running them up and down yeah and i'm like man he can't continue to play this and then the guy sticks to whatever it was 29 footer in their face and i'm like maybe he can you know everybody like like chaco has said to me shaq always looked bigger i mean he's the biggest man on earth he is anyone that stood next to him can tell you that but even when he was in really excellent shape he never looked it he never had the chiseled muscles and i said why so does that bother you he goes yeah it's those

34:16 damn salad eaters you know those guys that look like they eat salads all day and like one of my best friends doesn't work out at all she's not an athlete at all she's ripped i'm like how is this happening right now i can lift weights all day in my new gym by the way which has some great memorabilia in it maybe next time i'll give you a tour yes i just finished it today in my new house okay congrats thank you but i never look ripped it doesn't matter so so maybe maybe that's the case with donchi i do think he's overweight so he's got the larry bird body maybe oh i think a little worse a little worse of course larry just needed rick robert to be traded we've already covered this question right he would stop drinking beer for the playoffs exactly once rick robbie left he you know he cut down on his drinking by about 70 i mean i i was laughing who was i telling this one of the ex players one of the players

35:08 this player now but one of the younger guys that after games that you know all the teams would have beer in the locker room right and if you're on the road i can remember being on the road with the celtics once and um you know there were beers and there were leftovers and like i can't remember like bird putting them in a like a pillow sack and taking them on the bus with them you know those were the old days we used to have beer in the press room maybe that's what luca's doing i i'm with you i'm disappointed he's not in better shape i because i thought he was that's all the makings of the obvious mvp jump season and he did still it might happen anyway he certainly has like the second best odds but he's but you know he handles the ball a lot but he turns the ball over a lot too i mean he's a little more careless with the ball than i'd like him to be for a guy and i know he's a big guy and all that

35:54 but you know he's a point forward a point center a point whatever you want to call him point dump truck but he's he should be more careful with the ball too but he's so fun to watch so jokic is somebody that i do feel like is slightly better shape than he used to be and you can see it and he moves and it's helped him you know that might have been the olympics too again you know the olympic games how about the morris jokic i know i was gonna ask you about that the brothers are on twitter now i love it that his two brothers who i've met who are every big bit as big as him by the way they're all just big strong dudes what's fascinating about it is it's probably the finals of i hope these two brothers never get crossed with each other in a bar in the nba right morris brothers legendary and the other brothers i wouldn't want to mess with them and now it's now it's this is turned into pro wrestling it's like serious beef and

36:44 marcus you know threw down the gun like i'll see you bro and he will a marquis yeah yeah no no but marcus no no marcus went in and said to jokic yeah i'll see you i'll see you i'll be waiting for you yeah those guys the morris brothers they don't mess around i don't mess with them i'm telling you yeah i did a story with them they are so close i don't i'm not sure i've ever seen any brothers they're twins obviously that close like they would go to each other's playoff games yeah but they finished each other's sentence they had the same like when i was talking to him i think it was one of the years we were doing a draft special espn and um they were both in the green room we were in new jersey and uh or new york i can't remember but i said something to them and it was surpri whatever i said must have surprised them and they both raised their eyebrows like the in the exact same way oh my god uncanny so you you

37:33 don't think marcus morris like he's gonna just tell us his team hey sorry guys blood first man and like in the first five minutes he's gonna do something to jokic and you can mark it down and the league can threaten him and warn him i'm just telling you i know that guy and i know how he feels about his brother and he is going to even that score i'll tell you this that was a cheap shot by mark keith morris i agree it was it actually reminded me a little everyone forgets the reason that our test melee started yeah was because at the end of a game that didn't matter anymore our tests really really cheap shot fouled ben wallace and wallace was that's what ben wallace like lost his mind he's like are you kidding me and the yogic thing there's a good angle behind the basket that i put on where it's like yeah it was it was shoulder into the ribs so you could have cracked it but if you look at the legs

38:26 he actually like his knee goes into the side of yokich's knee that easily could have been like a sprained mcl or something i was sad that was a bad play it was a bad play but jokic's play was worse he it was it was it was it was a cheap shot that followed a cheap shot yeah you can't shove someone behind like that his neck snack i didn't like that at all yeah and and yo it's cool but if he had punched him would it i mean if he had punched him would have been any different he still he was trying to hurt him at that point which i think he was bad yeah yeah yeah he was i wasn't great that was a bad one that by nba standards that was one of the worst ones we've had in a while cause i'm with you i think morris could have gotten legitimately hurt yeah agreed but on the other hand he does that thing to jokage and he struts away and turns his back on him because this is that miami heat team like

39:13 they're really trying to establish themselves as the bullies right right and you see like this is the identity they want so he does that he's trying to prove a point because he knows they're playing him again but you know what's funny about that like so yeah that's jimmy butler bam out of bio can do that but not really he's a really pretty sweet kid you know he's a big strong physical kid like poor duncan robinson you know he's like into this come on man leave me alone i just started at williams college all right you know well that means you see tyler hero coming toward jokic kind of like what happened what was that yeah i did see that he didn't want any part of that yeah but he had the little snarl like he's got a little bit of that in him but i you know the heat's interesting to me i think we said early on when we did the last part we did that we thought they'd have some traction and and they do but again you

39:58 worry about minutes for lowry time for lowry but he's so tough i love lowry the problem with larry at the age he's at is he's just gonna have the games like last night where's like four points yep you know and that's they have to figure out how do they ride that out because morris i joked on twitter he was their 11th man he's actually probably their sixth man they're not as deep as i think you know people would think because they had to trade a couple guys left and right to get people but that i'm sure that's a bio team that'll be there'll be two more guys on that team in february oh my god just all all anybody ever wanted the minute the miami heat became an expansion team were the was for them to be sort of good kind of like the phoenix suns just being sort of good so i can go live there that's right exactly that's a good segue we're gonna take a break let's talk server quick all right so the starver story baxter

40:53 home spent what eight months on it and about a week before it comes out somebody leaks on twitter hey this story's coming out which i thought that was i know you didn't like that that's kind of like what morris did to jokic right seriously story comes out it seems like this there will be probably another story my guess is usually when a big story like that comes out there's usually the follow-up story that will have a couple more people who are now um emboldened ready to talk right but you've worked on stories like that like how when you're in the process of that especially when talking to that many people right at some point the team finds out they're going to be aware of it somebody's going to you know rat you out that you're working on it and you also you want to go into that with an open mind right you don't want to have the story written that server accused baxter which i don't think he

41:45 did i've i had the premise before i actually interviewed anybody um how do you handle a story like that what was like the biggest version of what you worked on that was anything close to that well we did you know a reggie lewis investigation when reggie died and that was the worst story i've ever worked on um and there was a bunch of us working on it together i mean steve feyner was incredible uh who's two-time pulitzer prize winner by the way who i think still works for espn although it's hard to tell he doesn't um enterprise stuff he's just an amazing reporter and and we had to go around and talk to these players who loved reggie i mean everybody knows i loved reggie i covered the kid literally i literally grew up with reggie lewis in the nba i mean i was covering northeastern when he was there but i literally that at the end of his four years i got you know full-time promoted to the nba i was doing little

42:37 nba here and there but when they drafted him like i went with him like i knew him for you know and so now i have to go around and ask these players that adored him and know that i adored him about his drug use you know and those were difficult conversations that i didn't really want to have but you know that was part of the job and the reason it was important and people used to like some of the people that i interviewed for that story said me why does this matter why is it even important you know and i said well because gilbert mudge this attorney is getting sued by donna lewis reggie's wife to the doctor not the doctor the doctor he was the doctor who said that he had a benign fainting condition which at the time i can remember when he said that at the press conference i'm looking at dave gavin god rest his soul and saying you cannot be buying this but it's it's what they had to do at that

43:27 time to keep reggie and donna part of their you know whatever but i'm getting off the rails here on this story but the point of it was that these were difficult conversations and the reason it mattered was because i look i didn't like gilbert mudge i thought he was smug the day had that press conference i'm like this guy is grandstand but the fact of the matter is he claimed that in private reggie lewis told him that he used cocaine he he swore that in the in the trial so this is not your side it was that was his sworn testimony in the uh you know proceedings and that's why it matters whether we like gilbert mudge whether we thought he was smug whether we thought he was right or was wrong he he has the right to due process so if in fact reggie lewis told him that privately and players and other people on the team knew he had done drugs that's why it mattered because the truth always matters right

44:17 yeah so that story was very very difficult i was living in boston when that happened and it was the worst other than the least also story the most polarizing newspaper story i think that yeah and it was no fun to do it um when he was his number was retired some of the family members tried to get my credential revoked and this is someone i mean i cared deeply for reggie lewis personally and professionally because we went through so much together there was some harold globe stuff some back and forth too that there was but that's because with no with all due respect to the herald they i mean we spent so much time on that story months and we we were talking to doctors and team members and coaches and people in his past and people all through the league i mean everybody had an opinion about that and we had to wade through it all we had to make sense of it and you know some of the interviews i did for

45:09 that story i will go to my grave with the names of the people that told me yeah i did drugs with reggie lewis and i'll go to my grave with those names and you know he had an incident at northeastern as you recall and uh you know he tested positive he had he had a failed drug test at northeastern that's a fact yeah so i and i i don't want to i feel like i'm deep searching regulus's name all over again and that's not my intent not my intent he was a fantastic player and you know what if he did drugs and i don't know how to what level he wasn't alone he wasn't the first of the last it doesn't change the fact he was a great kid who did amazing community things and was a fantastic basketball player all of those things can be true and that was the part that i think is hard for people to understand so when you well he passed out in a playoff game that i went to and that you were there too and oh my

46:00 god yeah um and was saying you were on the floor it was it was horrible like you could have died so yeah i get what you're saying yeah so those kind of stories for me you have to be really really careful and i know baxter well he's an excellent reporter and he is very very careful and i thought it was important for this story to have somebody's name attached not all sourced and he got that he got that with earl watson and some of the others uh corliss williamson and some others and that's important because those stories you have to have that or you might or you have no credibility even if it's true you've got to have somebody coming out and putting their name behind it so what happens to the sons do you because as we learn from the sterling thing unless there's audio or video right right people can get out of this stuff well i mean the league's going to investigate it'll be interesting to see

46:50 how adam silver handles this um he had a lot of courage when it came to donald stirring um courage that was a lot easier and there was also a boycott that he had to deal with and right but but you know as much as and you know i love david stern i know you did too and look he was tough on me he was tough on everybody tough on me but he was you know he looked the other way on donald sterling there's no question about it so will adam silver now look the other way on robert sarah because we've all been hearing these rumors and these innuendoes about robert sarver for years for years we've known about this so now knowing it and actually reporting it are two different things people say well if you knew it why didn't you write it it's not that simple it takes months and months and months and again i go back to the idea you have to have concrete evidence you have to talk to people on the record

47:37 who can describe to you what they saw what they witnessed because there isn't a video it's like ray rice i always go back to that what if if someone said ray rice you know knocked his wife out and then dragged her onto an elevator and everyone'd be like ah man she probably they were in a fight they were probably both drunk but then you see it and it's just you you can't go back so is there video of robert starver somewhere or audio of robert sauer somewhere that can corroborate all this because i don't doubt baxter homes for a second i just don't um that'll be interesting to see if it surfaces i mean there was i don't know if you remember this but um henry abbott who i worked with at espn had a true hoop story regarding a service that robert sarver attended where he said some incredibly off-color things about his friend who had passed away and they were pretty bad and uh so i wonder if that will

48:30 resurface because that there was audio for that well i was thinking the hawks owner um who got bounced out because he had allegedly made these inappropriate comments right on a i think it was a draft conference call but then it was a question of whether they edited the actual audio to make them look worse and it was the minority owners basically this is a big cat fight with all the owners they end up selling the team right i wonder with the phoenix thing i always one of the questions for me is always what has to happen for something to push a story like this over the top because as you said there's lots of rumors lots of conversation you have situations like earl watson who i think a lot of people like he had a bad experience a lot of people had bad experiences right the sons and the guys of blowhard we all have a server story i told mine on my podcast last week but still i wonder like somebody's

49:26 winning from this and whether it's like a minority owner or somebody who thinks they have a chance to buy the team if he has to sell um what that part comes in because i do think this is a really valuable team and if he sold it he get a lot of money for it which is complicated the same way as complicated with sterling but at the same time like this this would be a really big deal if the sun sold because i think that's one of like the eight or nine best markets we have i don't see that happening unless something new emerges because we need like an actual i agree yeah we don't we don't have the smoking gun per say now adam silver can't just gloss this over he can't say well i've investigated and there's nothing here he can say yes robert sarver acted inappropriately at times said inappropriate not acted said inappropriate things at times which sarva admits in the article there are a couple of situations

50:15 involved in the n word which is so sensitive and so i mean action will be taken a fine suspension i don't really know what the when this stuff happens the ones i always feel bad for are the players do you realize chris paul again is in the middle of this oh my god i mean like he was in the middle of it with with sterling now he's in the middle of it again with sarver and the and the dudes like had this amazing career resurgence and he's the leader of this franchise who's playing really well and he's this you know this wise leader and all this other stuff and and now this it's like i feel bad for the the sons fans too cause it's it's like a secretly tortured fan base and they finally had light at the end of the tunnel they made the finals they have a really good nucleus then they low ball eating so now who knows how that plays out and then you have the server scandal and now it's like wow

51:05 where the suns the suns have had kind of sneaky had multiple scandals over the years they were like heavily involved with the drug scandals yes that was really bad yeah no question yeah so i mean i think something else has to happen with that and um and again that's not to diminish the reporting baxter did at all because like i said i think he did a really great job getting people on the record talking about um some pretty serious allegations that should be taken very seriously and i think it's up to the media to hold adam silver to that holding to the standard of hey this is one of your nba owners i've said this a million times not a million that's a lot i've said it a bunch of times i speak in hyperbole have you ever noticed that myself uh but anyway you if i had more time right if i could go back to my younger self and when i was doing all these stories i would have spent a lot of time investigating every

51:57 single nba owner because every single nba owner has something along the way that's worth looking into and uh some really sharp young reporter out there should do it i'm too old i'm kind of semi-retired so someone else is gonna have to do it sounds like a movie where you're you're in your new house in new england i'm planting trees i'll never climb bill you think you're retired but then you get sucked back into one last big story yeah meryl streep plays jackie mcmullen oh or how about that really dark movie with jack nicholson um the girl in the red oh oh what was it called i asked him about it he this little girl would wear a red dress and the serial killer was killing little girls in the red dress he was a retired cop oh i know that book yeah he i think he directed that yeah what's the name i know i'm gonna be talking about it's like the the crossing guard or something like that i can't remember but i asked

52:53 him about it at uh before a laker game one night because you know i got to meet him and i was saying hello to him and uh he's like that's the movie you're gonna bring up because i was like i love the shine i go i said i had a i had a bad ankle i'd spray my ankle really badly in high school i was home from school and i watched that and i was like mesmerized and it was the darkest movie and he said oh that was the worst the the guy that wrote the book we had to we had to keep the ending like he wouldn't let us change the ending and he said that that movie did really badly and i can't believe you i got him all pissed off he's like i can't believe you brought up that movie what the heck why can't i remember the name of it oh kyle's going to get it kyle get it for me man it was um before we go yeah i got to talk about the the rule changes because we didn't talk about that how much i've i'm really enjoying this

53:43 season i'm not the only person saying this no i love the physicality i love that they got rid of a lot of the garbage fouls i have no sympathy whatsoever for these people like train harder sorry the pledge there you go sorry get that on my head okay sorry i have no no sympathy for some of these guys who were basically gimmicking the system and now it's not working the same way for them anymore and we see this in every sport like in football the belichick patriots right right super physical with the colts receivers they switched the world you got audible you got to figure out and to me it's it's done a couple of things i love how much more physical it is it really reminds me of other areas but also like somebody like durant who i'm just continually amazed with like just watching that dude put up 38 points getting his shot he's one of those guys it doesn't even matter what the rules are you could

54:35 change the rules tomorrow he's like cool i'm still getting 35. what are the rules today are the other guys have six players right cool i'll score 32. whereas some of these other guys were so dependent on some of this contact stuff i'm actually surprised that i didn't realize it was such an important reason for their success well you know what's funny to me about this the nba is so smart so they made those rule changes and you know let's be honest it's harden and trey young they are the two that's been have been affected the most by it's you know clearly but they've been really smart in not letting anybody go to the line a lot so they've so then it's like oh no no we weren't targeting these two players free throws shootings down all across the league nobody's shooting a bunch of free throws and that was just really really smart because you can't you can't say it that way there's a flow to the game that

55:27 did not exist the last few years and was so frustrating for people like us we're still when i would always talk about it because it's that plus the the challenges they've been able to cut down and still not perfect but it's a little it's a little better but now that there's a flow to some of these things and things play out better and you just feel like you watching overtime it doesn't take 25 minutes right i'm really psyched there's some stuff they need they still need to figure out the queer pass stuff and the the the stuff prevent the fast break and all that crap i hate the clear path by the way chris paul is another one we should have mentioned he he boy did he max out get chris paul's another one yeah right yeah he was another one so but i think it's really helped it's made the game more authentic and i think one of the great things there's so many good players especially this season you see it in the

56:13 olympics where the rules are different the olympics and it's like yeah you do this and the the the refs just automatically decide i didn't like that technical foul and the guy's like wait what but then they adjust and they realize what what you can and can't do and i think we've seen that already in this season i think the quality of play granted we've lost some guys in covid and we've we've had some injuries and things like that but i think the quality of play is really good i also think there's more talent than we've had in a long time like probably since the early 90s well you look even at teams like houston and cleveland and detroit and it's like kelly olynyk's on detroit like that guy's a good player he's been in the playoff series you know every team has like six seven guys that i kind of like christian wood i mean christian wood it's too bad he's not on a really good team people would really like

57:00 christian wood yeah he's another guy and the rookies i think have been good like jalen green i don't know what he's going to be coming he has no idea what he's doing on defense like sorry but he's there he's got the basics he's got the he's like edwards last year oh yeah you have a first step oh you're super athletic you you'll be fine yeah he'll be okay and kate cunningham i mean i feel badly for him because he started late anyway he wasn't ready to play because he couldn't because of injury and stuff but then just everybody's watching you know he had that bad start what was he i forget how many threes he missed to start these right it was tough and so now everybody's looking at that but he's gonna be fine he'll be okay too i agree though i worry about suggs not not because i don't know if he's good or not but nicole anthony thing was unexpected like not only is he playing really well but he's very alpha

57:47 doggy and i think he took that jaylen no that part sounds unexpected but the fact that he took a leap combined with this is a guy who's been the best part of his team since he was 12. and now you have sucks here and it's like here the car keys jalen suggs and cole anthony's going nope i'm actually going to take the car keys and that's his team i i think kim and bridges should be the two most improved guys i'm not buying the john moran thing as much because he was so good last year right he was but i got to see cole anthony over the course of a year because he's another guy that i'm not doing this is a great shooter you know is he a great shooter i'm not convinced i love his moxie he gets it from his dad and i love the competitiveness he is really competitive and he's really you know what he was really mad about he was not all nba rookie team he didn't make the second i voted for him on my second team

58:33 but he did not make it and he blasted the world over that like he took that he was really he could not understand it he's another one of those guys that we were just talking about positive self-talk i'm the best man how could you leave me off this team you know i'm one of the best so those guys you always want on your team but you have to put it you know it's kind of like you know our pal mark is smart right mark is smart he can shoot threes now i'm not saying he's ray allen but he can shoot them from time to time the key is don't take nine of them in a game that's all take four and make some that's good just don't take nine i think he broke me with the doncic play yeah that might have been it so unexpected i can't bounce back from it first like calling out calling out jalen and yeah j and tatum during a game when he had zero assists was aggressive um and then you you look at that doncic play which is one of the

59:27 dumbest plays i've seen yeah basketball game in a while yeah it's like you're the leader of this team like that and then you see udoka today he now says yeah we're not gonna have a captain all these other we have al and jason and marcus and jalen they lead by example in different ways like you're not gonna have a captain well i don't think uh that's weird i don't think brad ever had one either it turns out you're saying you don't need a captain because all these players lead in different ways it's like you know what you're saying none of these guys know how to lead what are you talking about what you what you're saying is you don't have one so need anything just for the sake of it yeah right that's what you're saying it's like yeah right so we have different guys it's like all right well you don't have a leader that's why we don't have a captain that's right maybe it's a challenge maybe it's a

1:00:09 challenge to them hey you want to be captain show me you deserve it i don't know do they still go for stuff like that i don't know what's up let's end on this kyle turn the camera on is jaylen brown on the celtics in three months yes okay great i'm relieved to hear that tell you tell your dad he's worrying un he's wearing needlessly for now the only way jaylen brown isn't on the celtics if he asks out which i don't think is gonna happen are you feeling better sure it's not going to happen i'm pretty sure why would you do that okay is marcus smart still on the celtics in three months better question not sure not sure me neither yeah that's a better question interesting although well see brad stevens the coach would always want marcus smart but maybe brad stevens the gm is realizing this is a little more complicated the thing about marcus is he does have the most value to the teams that have

1:01:11 really great players because ah i think they they think they're not watching 82 games of him right right which is why i still feel like there's a chance if the philly ben simmons thing craters and they're just trying to grab a package then maybe marcus is i will say that i mean every time i'm like uh marcus i remember you know the charlotte game that they remember they beat charlotte over time also do you remember the play the end of the game gordon hayward's going to like gordon hayward played with him are you dumb i mean i don't mean gordon hayward isn't dumb but i'm looking at going i'm going i'm the whole before it even happened i'm saying to my husband you know better you know better and he he tries to get it and you know marcus smart's going to jump that passing and get the ball and i'm telling you he does that so often and every time he does it i'm just it's like you can't believe somebody fell for it i

1:02:01 can't but i also can't believe it makes my night like it's so hard to do and he does it over and over and over and it's it's pure effort and timing and so that's why marcus smart's hard for me to turn my back on sorry the celtics are i'm with you because i'm i'm sure all the luca thing was tough that really yeah that was so important that really uh it was unexpected i i would say they are a top five watch out for this team when we get to mid-december when guys can start to be okay yeah maybe i just you've been more bullish on them from me from the beginning i just not sure i know them you're right yeah i homered it out i was really good with my over unders this year the celtics thing i just basically it's like what did you say i think you said 48 over under you said over right is that what you said no it's 44 and a half oh okay and you said they're gonna go 45 and 37 they have two guys who are

1:02:53 going to average 53 points a game like we're getting 45 wins they're averaging 53 to 54 points a game and it doesn't matter it's a disaster and it is horford's been really good he's been really good really they're still worried i worry about his minutes i mean he did kind of have a bulky knee right so i worry about his minutes he's been fantastic he really has been he's been i just don't like it i mean schroeder's been fun but schroeder schroeder gets shoots a little too much too i just want schroeder to go the basket just go to the basket and be mean you know you don't need to shoot threes just go to the basket i'll tell you the schroeder smart combo is not great for my dad 74 his popping heart pills and those two guys out there at the same time with richardson it's like they're trying to torture my dad okay i'm just going to tell you i'm about to one-up you on dads because my dad is 96. okay

1:03:45 god fred i hope you're feeling better my dad had a bad fall on the exact day i retired he's he god bless him he's on his way back and he and my mom who's british they watch the celtics every single game it's unbelievable to me and my dad does not like marcus smart never has from the beginning and my mom is fighting they're fighting at dinner over marcus smart i'm like i never my dad grew up born and raised in queens bill he's been a knicks fan his whole life and now my british mother and my new york city native dad are fighting over the boss i don't even know what's happened to them i don't even understand it jesus it's so funny when people get old and they have the it's really a basketball thing where they have the one guy who drives them crazy oh yeah i remember when i was sitting during the early bird years we used to sit next to this old guy and he hated rick roby because roby had bad

1:04:36 hands right he would get a pass and the ball would bounce out for obvious stance out of bounds oh ruby and he was just like screaming it was just ruby drum crazy and i smart has become like that for a lot of celtic fans they don't see the good anymore because there's so many frustrating things he does too and he is he is going to be a guy that if he gets traded he's going to go the new team and everybody's going to absolutely love him oh yeah he'll kill it he'll crush it you know for me at times as much as i loved him personally and he had some great qualities it was kelly olynyk i'm like could you box out just right one time just once you're seven feet tall just one time you know you put your arms up is schmidt is out rebounding you like come on man so at times kelly was that guy for me all right say hi to your dad good to see you well we'll see you in a couple of weeks all right all right one of my favorite people to

1:05:33 work with at espn was my friend kevin wilds we did a lot of good stuff together including 10 glorious episodes of the grant land basketball hour which left the legacy of i think the greatest set in the history of sports television you can go look at it on youtube we did a whole bunch of other stuff he also used to come on my podcast even though he was behind the scenes person allegedly and do half-baked ideas that you might remember from the old bs report and then there was a twist wilds becomes an on-air personality he's now on first things first getting up every morning on fs1 and he's in the take business and i intentionally didn't watch the show for like nine months because i knew you'd have to get your feet wet but now you're like you're like a tape guy now you're doing tanks you're you're banter you're getting up every day you're doing stuff well first of all i i thank you for waking up at 4 30 in the morning no i

1:06:27 didn't even every day to watch me but you know you watch it live you're a linear tv guy i appreciate it 4 30 in the morning bill's firing off notes what do you think about this about ben simmons wilds hey what do you think about mac jones uh ankle twist yeah thank you bill for being up at uh 4 45 firing off takes do you like being in the in the take business like the right like we've had some juicy ones this week we had rogers with that rogers is still going that's a week we have was did yokage excessively overreact to mark keith morris's clearly terrible cheap shot was it too cheap of a retaliatory cheap shot and then we had the mag mack jones ankle twist and should anyone go with odell it's just the stuff writes itself it's fantastic yeah i like being i like being part of a team how about that bill honest to god that's my favorite thing i like being part of like a new team it's a new show a new show for me so i got to

1:07:22 meet a whole bunch of new people and work with new people so that was my favorite part that's not the strongest take in the world but that's how i actually feel when did you feel comfortable as as a guy on a show that the cameras are pointing at you have energy and i remember for countdown i didn't feel 100 comfortable until probably i would say two-thirds of the way through the first season yeah so i would say the worst advice and this goes out to all of your listeners too who are going out on dates or going out on job interviews or just meeting someone for drinks hey be yourself be yourself is horrible don't be yourself yourself hate to break it to you everybody yourself is horribly boring and uninteresting yourself is terrible yourself is measured thoughtful yeah yeah yourself is hor yourself is very very boring you have to be a you have to just be the shinier version of yourself you have to be the best

1:08:21 version of yourself the caffeinated version of yourself just yourself with a little bit more i don't know a little more opinionated like i got to this point like i didn't want to give predictions for a little while i was like well no one can tell the future and nick makes fun of me now about it that i was like ah you know i don't want to be that guy and then i realized i went out to dinner and i was like i was like hey what do you recommend uh you know steak or the chicken and the waiter is like ah you know they're both really good i'm like this dude have a take buddy and i'm like oh that's me that's me so now i'm just like the steak the steak is one of the best steaks i've ever tried in my life we we've sourced it from oregon all i've been doing is eating organic grass the farmer goes in and gives it a massage and then we feed it alkaline water ah then we slaughter it right there we fly

1:09:11 it right to the restaurant it's a great steak go with the steak that's what you got to do this is a steak take for you i got takes on steaks new shirts steak tanks well you were behind the scenes on sportsnation and this was a whole coward thing right whatever the biggest and i learned from this too and i always think about it went into a pod like when something happens what's your angle it can't just be the same angle everyone else has but it also can't be a stupid angle but come up with something that has some real thought that's got a little twist on it it's something that people used to do i think more when they wrote i know i always tried to do it when i was writing columns and now the column writing has become a lot more basic because it's so much as driven by the headline where it's like roger should be ashamed and then the the column just basically backs up the headline the the take piece

1:10:01 of it of just not having a rogers take but having a take that nobody else has that's fun and interesting i think is the art yeah so we have we're i'm lucky for a few reasons one we go first so it's not only the show's called first things first right so we we get to go first so a lot of times that doesn't um that doesn't poison the well of what your take is going to be because a lot of times by the by five o'clock six o'clock the media is actually responding to old takes like you see a lot of shows just become media criticism like you'll see the joker thing you talked about it's like criticism of joker fair it's like okay well that's not the take that you can have at 7 30 in the morning that's a take you can have it's five yeah yours is fresh you basically turned on this turned on the skillet and you're making omelettes ready to go yeah literally yeah and then the other thing is between nick and brassard and jenna like

1:10:58 i get to play a lighter i get to play like a light roll i'm like yeah i know nick does a lot of nick and brassard are so good and so thoughtful and so um would say you can do some zags yes i can just be like you know what you know what you should do here uh yes i can give out a half-baked idea i don't know if it's taunting but uh you should have juju smith schuster should they they should only do uh they should have a special tick tock section of the field so instead of taunting you can go over there like i can say anything like oh that's a thoughtful that's a thoughtful thing from wilds after you hear from nick and broussard so i'm in a lucky spot well um i you always had great takes when we hung out oh that's good it's so funny it was it was miyu jacoby and some others but you and you and jacoby specifically were behind the scenes guys who became personalities eventually but you'd come on my pod and

1:11:53 we would do slices you know you you'd throw one pitch but now you get to use all the pitches i'm with you on fantasy always says it's like you can't be you on a pod or on a tv show you can't be you specifically not like what you were talking about where yeah just being yourself doesn't work you have to like stickify it a little bit energize it up but it can't be too much either there's like it's got to be like 15 extra i think that's fair you know what i mean yeah it's 15 but a lot of times people like oh what's what's uh what's bill simmons like what's bill simmons i'm like ah you kind of know bill simmons like don't you think that is like the further yeah the closer you can be to your actual self the more successful you can be like there's it's always odd when it's like oh did you hear that uh yeah so maybe it's like eight percent yeah you know what i look i gotta take it's five percent it's not eight percent

1:12:46 a lot of people out here saying 15 those people are fools it's 5.5 well let's do some take stuff because you think the celtics should trade for ben simmons and i think it's absolutely idiotic and i wouldn't go near the guy okay so nick said this on the show this morning because i was fired up i said kevin mchale's not walking through that door with kevin garnett gift wrapped for you you got to do something yeah so nick nick says the celtics haven't have won one championship since the reagan administration said what is that true it's like he got one championship since reagan left off god that's a long time ago doesn't it so when you look at it in that perspective it's been this rebuild for decades he got one championship that feels like it weighs more than other people's championships but we got just as many championships as the bucks and the idea that this team is all of a sudden going to gel and turn into a

1:13:41 championship contender is not going to happen if it was gonna happen it would have happened so the idea that you can get a three-time all-star uh all-nba guy almost defensive player of the year on the celtics who by the way doesn't need the ball like we're talking about ah nobody will pass it to me ben simmons is already saying like that's fine with me go with me fellas i'll pass it to you even more i'm shocked there was such a pushback from the celtics faithful that wants to just shred water in the sea of mediocrity waiting for someone to save them so i'm surprised you didn't like it personally it's a really strong guy literally his name simmons and if i told you hey the guy simmons from lsu imagine if he was on the celtics i feel like you would love it and now you're like no daryl's trying to fleece us plus he has the same name as my son so that that part would be even a little crazier more disorienting i think he has

1:14:40 a competitive disorder now can can you fix that yeah my band doesn't my band is [ __ ] competitive yeah ben simmons philly ben simmons i haven't liked the competitiveness and i do feel like the more the older i get the more i do this for a living the more i think about sports and what succeeds and doesn't succeed it always seems to come down to at some point everybody is roughly the same talent you know and you have your outliers like you have giannis who's a physical freak you have lebron who's one of the great athletes we've had and he's also like a basketball genius and there's going to be outliers but for the most part all of these guys were really successful at some level and then the next level and then they hit this level where everybody's as good as them for better or worse talent-wise and then it comes down to like how are you wired wait how do you shake off failure how hard do you work do you try

1:15:35 to get better every year and things like that and i just don't see it from him yeah so the thing that struck me and i thought it was a huge deal no one else thought it was a big deal is that he bailed on the olympics yeah i don't think he has a skill problem or talent problem or like he's not going to learn to shoot great in one summer he had a big stage problem so it's like all right i just kind of played horribly on the big stage i wish there was another opportunity but i guess i'll have to wait till next year like oh hold on i can play in a loving environment with patty mills and joe ingles and they had said all the right things and matisse played and it would have been this great sort of like very nurturing environment even they're like whether he decides or not ben is still our friend and we still love him i was like this is perfect he's like nah i'm going to work on my game and then a few months later we got some

1:16:28 like soaking wet sweatpants and jumpers on a half court and half the court was like a putting green so that that well he did this with lsu too remember he bailed on the lsu team that as that season went along that was weird i thought meanwhile for the olympics devin booker just lost the finals and and he rides the plane yeah all right he writes playing with the box he's like oh it looks like we're going over fellas he just played he had every reason in the world not to play but the dude loves basketball and he wanted to go play so you're making that case for me no i know you're agreeing with me i'm just saying i also think jalen needs a needs his own team i don't want jalen to jalen is not you know i hate the robin batman thing but i want him to be he's the batman guy it's like let him be batman on another team so i want janelle to succeed i just don't i don't my question is how can they get ben simmons while keeping

1:17:25 tatum and brown now i'm interested yeah but at some point at some point if you're philly you have embiid who who knows what his physical shot hey every does he can he play three weeks in a row has anybody had more stop and starts during the course of a career than him and if you're philly and you like the people you have around him at some point can i talk you into a marcus smart aaron knee smith and some picks package for him and is that the best they could do i i don't think they're trading him for anybody that's not a top 35 guy but i also don't know how long this goes like are they just going to have a staring contest for three years but don't you think daryl has drawn a line in the sand here that he i do i think he has a few systems he's like what's going to go on for four years like no it's not like it's just it's not going to go on for four years like oh ben needs to get out and play

1:18:18 like ben can't play in philly that's just not going he's not he cannot go back to philly nobody wants him so could kyrie be where this ends that's what that's what you know this is my third nick wright reference but he said that very very early but i don't think tyr i don't know if kyrie wants to kerry said he's going to retire he wants to play in brooklyn i was you know they want to hear the my strangest guy retake i thought i'll leave the vaccine stuff aside i was like you know what kyrie grew up a nets fan and once they started wearing the throwback uh the throwback nets jerseys like the keith van horn jerseys yeah oh kyrie's gotta hate that that's gotta that's gotta really i know he wants to put on the old school jason kidd richard jefferson next jersey like jersey yeah i wonder if that just moves if that just moves the needle no pun intended just one degree like would be nice to wear those old nets

1:19:16 jerseys jesus i don't know how the sim instinct plays out and it's one of the rare sports stories where i don't even like if they had bets you know i as you know i'd like to gamble from that i've heard if they were like bets with odds i wouldn't even have an instinct on what to bet i have no idea how it plays out i think a lot of it is going to have to do with a team ending up in an unhappy situation where they need to make a move talking themselves into it i still feel like that darren fox name makes the most sense to me yeah i guess so he said he would go to the west coast but no one has ever been happy there no one has ever been happy there what do you do with the rogers yeah peja that's about it what do you do with the roger story as it develops like because that's like now a week-long story but there's only so many so many ways to go with it and it's like day six and it's like all right

1:20:10 it's time for another rogers segment that's where i would be in trouble doing a daily show i don't i would i would start to get mad at some point i don't even remember when i was doing countdown just being mad about having to talk about the lakers every time i'm out of takes this team's not looking at the title they suck no i don't have anything else to say what do you want from me no we're very we're if we're not into it we don't have to talk about it there's not that's good i i also feel like everyone already has there's not i'm not a lot i can add to the roger story every single person who saw that or is or has a take on it already so you're not gonna move anybody off of their position you're not going to like i i've never read anything like oh interesting point it just becomes an argument about the topic i just don't i think it's like a fool's gold of an interest topic for sports talk how about that i think

1:21:02 way more people are interested in the actual packers i have a take you're gonna be jealous of it this is the first sports story i can remember where we didn't hear from the athlete after he screwed up for a couple days and then when we did it was to people magazine what that was that what he just went on mcafee today i think but this was people max people was that a real thing i could never tell it's like someone close it was it was one of those a source close to the nfl star come on so he this this now is like how a celebrity would handle this not like athletes don't handle it this way like if something happens in the nba lebron's like where do we go people magazine so but it's going this whole thing and this is part of the problem with rogers right like he he now thinks he's a celebrity like he's like tom cruise or channing tatum or somebody and that this is framing his interactions now where he's

1:21:56 like he thinks he has a chance to be the jeopardy host and he thinks he can just completely submarine his football team and cause huge distractions and that's okay even though he's the quarterback and the quarterback's supposed to be the leader and it just feels like he's now a celebrity and not a football player as much even though he's still one of the best football players people magazine is weird to me but i i don't know if aaron rodgers is a as big a celebrity as you think he is like if does my mom maybe he's not is my mom a hundred percent sure who like i'm talking about celebrity i'm talking about like the rock like let's put the rock is like a celebrity leonardo dicaprio's celebrity normal people who don't follow football like well i always just call this the mom test i feel like he's a celebrity from the state farm commercials no maybe because i was that was the chris paul that was the best thing chris

1:22:48 paul ever did if he doesn't have the state farm commercials he's just the guy who was like better than darren williams who by the way is fighting frank gore did you see that story i'm so into it i think frankfurt is gonna get destroyed i really do i think he's gonna get his ass kicked you stop i did i did some scouting already i think frank gore is gonna get this why about that i'm gonna talk to a couple people darren boxing van nathan said darren williams has been boxing since he was like a kid frank and he's also bigger than frank gore i like aaron williams that's darren williams first two rounds knockout that's a take you forget that big nfl players are still might not be as big as what is considered like a small nba point guard dan williams was really physical like i i remember the two guards and i remember asking a few people this like who are the people you just don't like playing against like it's just like

1:23:47 the next day you're just not happy your body hurts and it was always daryl williams baron davis baron davis like just physical he's bouncing into you and the next day you're feeling it but darren williams was even worse than that he was like six three two twenty okay but it doesn't work it's not gets to box frank gore i just i heard you so you let gore we should bet on that i don't like any i don't like any i don't like i don't like celebrity boxing and i listen to your your shoot i'm gonna get exposed here jake paul or logan paul jake paul jake paul jake paul i listen to jake paul pod and i i thought it was i thought it was interesting that how he sort of figured it out but i'm still not he has not opened up yet for a celebrity boxing well your kids also aren't old enough which is the real problem well that's yeah that's what you said what's the name of your oldest kid i mean at the age of your oldest kid oh

1:24:40 oh nine yeah so four years from now guess who's telling you to get the jake paul frank gore extravaganza on pay-per-view russell dad we gotta get we gotta get adrian peterson it's adrian peterson versus a kid from tick tock like no ross we're not get the crypto we got to give me uh you know 1 900th of a bitcoin like no i'm not going to it's funny you named him russell and now it's the name of various polarizing superstar athletes how do you figure russell westbrook incredibly polarizing russell wilson starting like go back he's gonna get there if he starts asking for a trade there's gonna be that little hey wait are we sure he's worth four first round picks there'll be a little backlash on him that's all i got so no the the only the only thing that's polarizing about russell westbrook in our home is that russ that's russ's favorite player i also like indoctrinated him you're like we'll follow this guy this guy plays hard it's

1:25:37 just super fun to root for so we went to a thunder game at msg so we had a bunch of thunder stuff then he went to the rockets and we're like all right thunder stuff's gone we got the rockets bed spread whoops now the rocket's badge fred got but you don't throw oh yeah i'm like well i like the rockets they're in last place got to go to make the bed i got stupid rockets and then they got they're like i guess we're washington wizards fans now got a bunch of wizard stuff looking like joe house that's gone so now we're gonna get laker stuff in the house but we've gone through a lot of iterations maybe maybe he might he might not be on the team in february but i don't want to hold up it'd be funny if your son was like why do you love westbrook so much is it because he's also named russell and he's like no i love low field goal percentage and bad decisions so my two favorite things is a little

1:26:22 kid i love a 27.3 percentage three-point shooter uh who also uh makes terrible decisions in the last few minutes that's my jam and just for the record that is what children love just like you see them playing basketball like i'm gonna chuck this up i don't care what it is right russell westbrook's better understand if you think of him like a nine-year-old child playing basketball i'll throw this this looks good to me i got i gotta look at it if i pass it i'm not gonna be able to shoot it i only get credit for scoring you're never like hey great good good job getting open russ ah chuck that thing and then they make bad calls we're gonna take a break we're gonna come back and it's the return of half-baked ideas has been on here in a while it's my fault i just don't reach out to you enough you're always like i didn't know what was going on with your time clock and getting up early you got a family to juggle the whole thing

1:27:11 you're i work 24 hours a day you couldn't you and my phone only works one way it's very difficult we're gonna take a break come back with half big all right it's time half-baked ideas so wild started doing this on my old podcast probably like 09 range i don't remember and the concept is these are not fully baked ideas there's it's a piece of an idea there's something really good in it it doesn't quite work and yet you can't stop thinking about it it's a half-baked idea yeah give us your first one okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna give you the intro here are the half-baked ideas on the agenda hopefully we might be able to get through them maybe we have to wait till the next episode all right we've got uh uh bed bull dame day larry o'brien's the bar a gym that looks like a store marathon coffee the living room of highlights gucci flag for referees annoy ahoy set sail to where we annoy your troubles

1:28:09 away an invention called a telephone wilb wild indoor leaf blowers but we start with chuck it cheese hmm so i got a dog two dogs gotta chuck it i love the chicken who doesn't i actually i don't know if you know this but once upon a time i was the pedro martinez of the chuckit with my first dog daisy on the sidewalks of l.a and i just felt like i was like greg maddox with that thing and and have you ever been like oh you know what i'm done with my chuck it if anything you want more chuck it time yeah so this is chuck it meets topgolf chuck it cheese the tagline is this good for man's best friends and your other friends too and i also wrote a little a radio ad kyle you can put music behind this tired of the same old night out at the bar well come on down to chuck e cheese it's like top golf but with chuckets literally there's just a bunch of chuckets everywhere pick one up and chuck it we don't care and that that's

1:29:13 it and then it's we just throw chocolates everywhere wha what are we throwing why is it cheese is there you saying it's because it's a playoff chucky's cheese it's chuck and cheese am i actually throwing cheese at somebody no gosh darn it you're not throwing cheese but you're certainly you're certainly welcome to bring your own cheese and throw it that's just we're just piggybacking off the uh chuck e cheese branding well who am i competing who am i competing well chucky's cheese is going to sue so i don't like that idea they're not going to why can't you just call it chuckits it's like jesus chuckets yeah but how am i competing so you say it's like topgolf so we've got a few things so okay the the way we're gonna go through this is you ever hear about like engineers like uh i think outside the box like they when they you like build a college or you build an apartment complex like oh we didn't we didn't put sidewalks in we

1:30:06 just put the grass down and we let the flow of traffic we saw where people walked and that's where we put the sidewalks like holy cow that's smart so we're first step of chocolate cheese is we're just going to have a big open area invite people and see what they do and then that will be our business plan we're not going to pigeonhole you in it's not a one-size-fits-all thing here is what i'm thinking though okay maybe there's tons of dogs there maybe there's absolutely no dogs maybe this is just time for you and your friends to throw it maybe it's uh the skills competition just like topgolf where there's targets that you have to hit with your chuckie now uh maybe it's more like paintball i can see that happening too a little squid games type vibe where it's like oh man it's like dodgeball with the chuckets and all of a sudden like you're with your teammates and they've got all chocolates

1:30:56 and you've got chuckets the chocolates are dipped in paint and you're getting pegged with the chocolate that's a little more extreme probably i think it's going to end up just being like topgolf where there's beers uh there's there's targets and you're throwing the chuckets at your buddies maybe there's a few labradors running around maybe there's not i i think i have the key wrinkle okay go the dogs are already there these are the best dogs they're house dogs that are the best chuck of dogs basically in the in the city so you're going and you're like can i have can i have amber the golden retriever and they're like well we have amber's booked until you can have her 4 to 5 30.

1:31:35 you go and you throw and you go amber and it's almost like horse racing you're competing against other people you've got to use their dogs yeah yeah so i i don't know if those do the jumping dogs in the water what i don't know what yeah i think there's i think there's a swimming pool piece i think you have to check the thing there's there's like a narrow part you got to do maybe it's like an obstacle course there's something here this is a good habit idea because it might be like frisbee golf maybe like maybe we're walking around and throwing our chocolates at it's it's a uh we're throwing chocolates at like targets and we're having fun we we've got a a golf cart we're in did i ever tell you what my first dog the dudes who i ended up writing about on espn that somehow became the most red thing i ever a free espn when she died just just warning everyone don't read that one don't read that yes it's really sad right from

1:32:28 kleenex 2004 after i left jimmy's show and i was writing for page two it was really all i was doing um and i used to take her on the sidewalk of outside where we lived then i would throw her the tennis balls and she would bring it back i taught her how to drop a 10 she would go i would throw her she would go down the sidewalk full speed and she would bring it back full speed as she was bringing back i taught her how to drop the tennis ball and i would throw the other tennis ball the other way and she would just go back and forth for like 40 minutes and dry and the neighbors were like amazed they thought this was like the craziest thing they'd ever seen no video no video exists check it i'll i'm all in okay next one fantastic okay now this is reader submitted i don't know if i've ever done a reader submitted interesting wow i i sometimes i i weighed in the compliments looking for a little self-esteem boost

1:33:23 ooh who thinks wilds is clever oh that person does and this person wrote something i said that's a half-baked idea now the reason i usually don't do the reader submitted stuff is either they're so stupid that they don't reach the level of half-baked idea or they're so good i'm like buddy that ain't a half-baked idea my friend that's a business plan save that trash for shark tank i need stuff that is at the intersection of plausible and ridiculous we had a couple we had a couple of those in the grantland days where people would be like wait a second you should that's actually a real idea you guys yeah that's really cool no that defeats the purpose ow now those are thumbs up and for that reason i'm out okay this one is it's from a reader or a a handle or a listener called stego wow stego wow has a charismatic stegosaurus as their icon i don't know who they are maybe it's a stegosaurus one of the best sega wells out there

1:34:25 a place called champions i have since renamed it larry o'brien's helping them out here at that first first of all i love that larry o'brien's great name for larry yeah that's that's great already keep going you and your crew this is this is quoted from stego wow you and your crew get car service to a locker room where you will be greeted with bottles upon bottles of champagne goggles and a killer sound system party like you won the championship all cleaning is taken care of by as many bottles as you like from various price points great for celebrating intramural championships your home team winning the cup maybe they're canadian i'm not sure i don't know where cups are involved now you can celebrate like a champion without actually being one a little bit of a downer there which i have a spin-off idea stego wow also then commented in the comments because people are like wow this is a big idea my

1:35:22 friend they said there's also a fake coach pop i don't know it's if it's all just an old man would come over to your table and say you deserve this i renamed it larry o'brien's so now i then i added on to it i try to augment this idea so when we get you got larry o'brien's here on the left i also get the neighboring establishment and this place is called silver metal now this is just a wilds exclusive silver metal looks just like it looks just like larry o'brien but it's totally depressing and you can hear the fun and you go to silver medal if you're having a bad day you just you don't want to turn up at larry o'brien's you have to wallow in your own man and jim gray is there on special nights to ask you what went wrong it's part bar chip gray is available and you lead there and dedicate yourself to becoming a better person like never again i'm going to work so darn hard i'll never end up see i would

1:36:29 call that place why can't you call that place carl malone's oh malone's let's go let's go smoking cigars i have a slight wrinkle to lario brands so my son won the flag football title on friday which i've now mentioned on two straight podcasts it would have been so cool if they won and everybody's so psyched and then you have nowhere to go and it was like it was late late friday and we're like we'll do like a banquet thing next week just throw the kids in the car go right to larry o'brien so they can pour sparkling apple cider on each other for a half hour children's room rent it out yeah children's version just pour they can do the goggles we take pictures they're all like jumping up and down the goggles is great and i think you can go in maybe that's called little larry's little area brains little larrys little little larrys i also have i'm gonna throw jacoby in here too i got a lot of sidebars for this one yeah i

1:37:30 don't know if this is a separate one or just jacoby's just wandering around i got jacoby in a referee's outfit it's called two shots in the ball jacoby our friend jacoby who you know from jalen and jacobi he's the jacobian on the show he's always the king of uh i don't don't really want to do a shot jacoby and he'll bring over several shots he's sort of the the minister of fun so jacoby's in the referees he's not sort of the minister of the fun he's the minister of fun and he's interested and he's bought i've single-handedly witnessed him buying more shots than any other person in my life and you never want them but it's it's always a good idea because he just always wants to turn it up a notch come on buddy come on buddy just have this this one just one come on buddy hey you see them all lined up on we're all doing one bob's doing over here come on this is called two shots and two shots in the ball chicago

1:38:20 he's in a referee's outfit and if he he goes around to larry o'brien's if you're not having enough fun he whistles you he brings over two shots and he gets to decide who takes them he's dressed like he's dressed like a foot locker yes yes i don't know why he also has a ball he's like two shots in the ball like all right we got to go maybe it's like a big punch ball shaped like a basketball so he's through jacoby in there so he's basically a professional minister of fun yeah he doesn't like what's going on in the corner table the date's not going well enough he just comes over two fireball shots he tees you up two shots in the ball and he goes like he gets to i think larry o'brien's is almost a fully baked idea that's i mean look i got a shout out you know when dinosaurs have had a long time to let that marinade and they came out a big winner so shout out to sega wow these ones now are starting to get into real half-baked

1:39:14 territory okay those were solid ones these are the real head scratchers these are the ones yeah man what's this what is this guy up to here and these are a little bit shorter these are a little more you know rapid fire yeah this is a stupid idea marathon coffee this is this is going to have to be a change in the way that we consume caffeine yeah so all right you can make coffee at home no not fast enough i want to pick it up you got to go to starbucks you wait in line don't want to wait in line also not fast enough i got to do the mobile order i want it to be there immediately guess what not fast enough marathon just happened in new york city and la you know what's super convenient about doing a marathon a long distance race got all the water right there you don't need to ask me if i want water just have a bunch of waters lined up so in busy intersections streets in new york city those there's

1:40:10 just tables with coffee maybe you have some sort of fast pass you're flashing like oh so you have the fastpass on your car you drive by you stop quickly they see the fastpass they scan it and they're giving you a coffee there's just bunch there's just coffee sitting everywhere in the country we've just we're like uh those stupid scooters that are all over cities now we no one gave us permission to have a table full of coffee here but we're here we're on the sidewalk and no one's mad at us there you go it's called marathon coffee i really like that idea by the way i think scooters might have been like a 2012 half-baked idea we'll have scooters everywhere put put a credit card in there and then just take it to where you go just leave it on somebody's lawn i think you might have done that one the fact that what's the business plan you just then just leave it on someone's lawn like yeah we just leave it on

1:41:02 someone's lawn it's fine yeah they're all over la right now any worse next one i like marathon coffee marathon coffee is fantastic i do feel like there's some sweet spot with mobile ordering that could go could go larger like the some of the food delivery services have experimented where they have the pre the premium it's like faster if you want like get in 10 minutes faster it's three dollars more i'm like sure no no none of that no back to lines i'm a lions guy lions are back in okay i just what do we wait we're like where are you going we all we do some trying to get on like a rant here have spent the last 30 years on this planet trying to make things faster and more efficient where's all the time yeah who's swimming in time like everything is faster everything is more efficient and there's no more time no one's like yeah i was doing nothing all day it was great it was like oh we're so

1:42:02 busy now oh we're so busy like well i don't know we got remote controls now people need more time for social media it's just enough we just gotta that was like borderline i thought your eyebrows were going to grow as you were doing that it's true which i i look yeah i'm okay people don't know who andy rooney is yeah do you know what andy rooney takes saying it's an andy rooney i'm making fun of you by sounding old with the reference that nobody under 40 will get that sounds like a take from old stuffy stuffy mctavish he used to be on the whole radio yeah i remember him in the seventies then he was on gilgamesh island all right all right next one okay this is called annoy ahoy okay set sail to where we annoy your troubles away okay so uh my personal stress is kind of very similar to like my gene buying experience like i might have a pair of jeans on but as soon as i buy a new pair of jeans the old ones are just

1:43:11 gone it's the same thing with personal stress you might be worried about something boom right here all of a sudden if something else happens your ultra is like whoa what was i even worried about that's gone so this happened with me we got a little water in my basement a month ago and uh not great i missed the show it was like a bit of a disaster i got like two feet of water yeah i got pulled then i got a cut out all the drywall i got to pull out the insulation everything's ruined but my dad came down it was actually like oh the lord works in a serious way we had like a a nice bonding session and that was our focus for three days to clean the basement dry the basement get the drywall out get the insulation out and whatever i had problems i had some sort of stresses and they were all gone due to an act of god in this flood we're very lucky that nothing bad happened so i was like huh i wonder if i can make that a little

1:44:08 more planned so rather than all these people that are trying to de-stress you and take a spa day oh come out here put some cucumbers on your eyeballs no i'm going the other way with it you subscribe to annoy ahoy and i'm sure you got some problems right so everyone think about whatever you're listening to this podcast whatever problem you have in your life right now we had an argument with a family member well guess what let me patch it up pretty quickly because now you guys own three ferrets that's right annoyed boy just let loose three ferrets in your house and you're like honey what were we arguing why don't you take it out like that no time for that the ferrets are everywhere we've got 13 ferrets in the house we got to get these gosh darn ferrets out of here and it bonds the family it bonds the group it's good you know the fair so a stressful a stressful incident that ends up becoming a bonding

1:45:07 experience for the people you care about and there's different degrees we don't throw you into ferrets right away that's that's the orange level we start you off with just like tons of crumbs almost like one of those like rookie pranks in the nba like you feel like fill up your car full of popcorn like what the heck it's kind of funny but also you got like buttery popcorn oh bad news we gave you the worst haircut of your life it's just like it's it's one of those like nfl rookie haircuts you have to figure it out don't try to de-stress your life re-stress your life holy cow wilds that one's that might be too good that might not be half baked that might be fully that sounded like like a read i would be doing for the next break don't de-stress your life re-stress your life i thought you were going scheduled terrible things to do with family members so like ultimately you wouldn't call your dad and say hey

1:46:03 do you want to um i want to fix the drywall in my basement he'd be like are you insane i don't want to do that but then he ended up doing that and you guys had a great time so like i have to go through my closet and throw out a bunch of shirts and get rid of t-shirts and things like that i don't really want to do that i don't do that but maybe i call my mom and say hey do you want to spend six hours together and we could throw out some of my old t-shirts and that would be a bonding experience now my mom would have like four glasses of wine during that and probably have a lot of sarcastic comments as we're doing it i don't know why you bought this t-shirt yeah maybe maybe this sort of worked for me all right next one we have i think we have time for one more unless you want to do two quickies where's the good one you wanna do the good one well i i've got a good i've got it you wanna ender all right let's want to end

1:46:53 with your best one here save the other ones for the next time i'm going to make you come back on we'll do this tomorrow the gucci flag i'll save because we're in the weeds of nfl refereeing that's college refereeing actually it's a flag that you throw when something awesome happens you get positive 15 yards okay this is wild what kind of positive thing the gucci flag the gucci flag yes you got it so like justin fields makes an incredible play where he scrambles out of a sack and all right this one sits okay so you got the challenge flag right you got your yellow flag this is the gucci flag it's a beautiful it's a beautiful flag oh it costs a thousand dollars so the goods this is what happened this happened in the oklahoma nebraska game this is better for video but i'll try to explain it the best i can it was fourth and eighteen and the cornhuskers trying to throw a touchdown so they just throw it up they're trying

1:47:43 to get the first time trying it so they throw it up and the dude makes a one-handed odell-esque interception and everyone goes crazy but by the letter of the law and by any strategy he should have just batted it down yeah because he actually just lost yardage lost play we see it you see it every once in a while and the coach said this i might have been the first coach in history to challenge a play we got an interception on i was hoping it would have gone down so that is just a fundamental flaw in college football officiating yeah we want to see great things we want to see great things we don't want it to be a strategy to bat the ball down because it would cost you fuel position so for that specific play the ref can reach back and it is a beautiful gucci flag made by gucci maybe it's made by louis vuitton we get virgil involved it'd be great he throws out like oh the gucci flags out and you get

1:48:39 15 yards at least to the line of scrimmage where the interception uh was thrown or where the ball was snapped and if we want to extend it with just like sick plays like oh you know what i appreciate you trying to hurdle that guy you only got two yards boom gucci flag 15 more yards for trying to be awesome do you buy the gucci flag i like that i think maybe it could be five or fifteen well it depends how awesome the play is the 15 makes it really special five i'd be throwing the gucci flag all the time like yeah you only get like you only get like two gucci flags again i like the gucci fight there you go those are your half-baked ideas for wait i thought you had one more big one i thought that was the end i got a great one all right one more last one okay this is called w-i-l-b wild indoor leaf blowers so when you go to when you go to a hotel why do you like going to a hotel oh is it because like travel's unlocking a

1:49:33 window to your soul is it because you got new shampoo it's like oh money oh a mini bar maybe i'll become a rum guy maybe i'll be like a distinguished pirate no it's just because none of your crap is there and it's when you clean your house you're just re you're just moving your crap to different places you got to go in so kevin's indoor leaf blowers wild's indoor leaf floors w-i-l-b we send you a notice like hey we're coming through if you love it bolt it down because we're coming in here with industrial strength leaf blowers and we're going to tornado your house the magazines have books that you're supposed to read halfway through your kids art projects oh old sunglasses that stuff is getting blown to high heaven we are we are leaf blowing your house all your crap into a corner we're coming in we're taking it all out so it's like a hoarders hoarders with destruction basically but it's not even [ __ ] it's

1:50:28 just like everyone is a hoarder and they don't realize it you've already got look around your house you got stuff you don't need why do i need this i don't need it need three pens in your home all of it's going with kevin's indoor leaf blowers okay w-i-l-b those are your half-baked ideas my friend wait i as tradition i have to give you a quick one back i'm ready for this ease venmo right of course yeah so subsidiary event modes ref venmo okay so when you have kids when you have kids they these umpires and referees ref these games and it's the worst job in the world i don't know what they're making but it's not nearly enough and it's people you know yelling at some lineman on the sideline or the home plate ump home plate up and in the valley in california it's 103 degrees he's working a double header he's making like 50 bucks a game and he's got some jackass behind him just ben ref venmo

1:51:28 i really appreciated the game you you called after the game you can only do it after the game i really appreciate it i'm tipping you the same way i would tip a bartender or a waiter or a bunch of other people here's a 10 tip you guys did a great job here thank you this is this is ripe with corruption so that's why it's a fake idea well you could you could still do that you could just give them cash i also think we should be able to tip people who cut the meat at delis why why can't i tip those people great job cutting that roast beef it was nice and thin deli deli cutter venmo i think venmo should spin off i should be able to keep whoever i want no one likes venmo all right come up with a new app people it's called cash alexander hamilton you can't give a ref cash it's got to be right the ref's got he's got his jersey and he's got his venmo address at the end it's refenmo and he just like i really like the game that guy

1:52:27 called i'm gonna send him 20 hours with games over he only is accepting it after the game not before but he the guy's going to coach going to ref more than one game and you're good maybe you're putting maybe you're playing a little seed for later referendo i do think everyone would just like cash but that's also like hey come on ref you're not cash feels cd like yesterday the steelers fans after the steelers bears game they could have they could have ref venmo tony karenti thanks thanks for the 13 calls that went our way here's 15 bucks that's too much corruption no no ref ben mo all right loud speech will you come out more often i'm ready to go all right this is great kyle did you think this went well yeah absolutely oh they he'd kind of pause for a second all right kyle let's do it again that's right no it's only because i'm not gonna it's only because i'm not gonna put the music that kevin wants that's the only

1:53:23 reason all of a sudden you're producing him he's got a process oh you know i like i like old-timey radio my old andy rooney all right kevin wilde it's great to see you can see kevin on first things first and hopefully i will see you soon thanks to our producer kyle creighton don't forget about every single album the podcast is up don't forget about a new rewatchables ransom don't forget about the prestige tv podcast i'm on there twice this week and i will see you on this feed on thursday with million dollar picks and a whole lot more

1:54:11 with him

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Westbrook’s Slide, the Phoenix Fallout, Celtics Rumors, and Half-Baked Ideas With Jackie MacMullan"?

In order: 0:00 Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis, Dwyane Wade, Fanduel Sportsbook; 10:00 Joel Embiid, Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis, Ben Simmons; 20:00 Anthony Davis, Chris Paul, Evan Mobley, Jalen Brown; 30:00 Ben Simmons, Jalen Brown, Ben Wallace, Duncan Robinson; 40:00 Reggie Lewis, Adam Silver, Gilbert Mudge, Robert Sarver; 50:00 Chris Paul, Adam Silver, Jackie McMullen, Jalen Green; 1:00:00 Marcus Smart, Ben Simmons, Jalen Brown, Kevin Wilds; 1:10:00 Ben Simmons, Joe Ingles, Joel Embiid, Marcus Smart; 1:20:00 Frank Gore, Darren Williams, Chuck E. Cheese, Russell Westbrook; 1:30:00 Larry O'Brien.

What is mentioned in this The Bill Simmons Podcast episode?

45 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Ben Simmons, Larry O'Brien, Russell Westbrook, Reggie Lewis, Chris Paul, Jalen Brown. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Westbrook’s Slide, the Phoenix Fallout, Celtics Rumors, and Half-Baked Ideas With Jackie MacMullan"?

The episode runs 1 h 54 min; the transcript is about 23,499 words in 131 timestamped sections.

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