Chuck Klosterman on the NBA Finals, a Rival League, the Sonics, 'The Rehearsal,' Cooper Flagg, and the Fear of AI
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The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I have Chuck Klosterman coming on in a little bit. We have been doing podcasts together since, I think I had a podcast in 2007. Initially, I think the first time when I got to know Chuck, we did a back and forth email exchange. I'm going to say in 2004 when I was writing for Page Two. And we did some back and forths in print

And then as soon as the podcast form, as soon as I had my pod, which I think started May 2007, we started having long, long talks on the pod. So this one is no different. We're going to be talking about a lot of NBA stuff. We'll talk about Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal. Talking a lot about AI at the end. Gets a little grim at the end, actually. Yeah.

But I thought it was a worthy topic. But anyway, this goes all over the place for the next two hours. So that's coming up in a little bit. Wanted to mention the Rewatchables who put up Working Girl yesterday on the Rewatchables feed. You can watch this video podcast as well. I had a great time. It was 20 minutes longer than the actual movie, which we usually try to make the episode longer.

The same length as the movie. We couldn't pull it off this time. Same length or less usually is the rule. Not this time. We went for like two hours, 15 minutes. Me and Amanda Dobbins, Joanna Robinson. You can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch all of the stuff from this podcast and the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. And don't forget about FanDuel Sportsbook, by the way, because they have...

all customer profit boost coming for every game of the NBA finals that we're going to have left. I'm going to try to figure out, tweet out something for this week for, I think game three, trying to come up with something.

something good. It's probably something in the neighborhood of Indiana with the over and maybe a Siakam rebound thing. If there's a case for Indiana winning game three, I think it goes a specific way and that's probably the bet. So that's what I'm going to figure out. We're going to take a break. We're going to bring in Pearl Jam and then

Chuck Klosterman. This episode is presented by State Farm. It's no secret that great teams need great teammates. I've been saying this for years. And when it comes to insurance, State Farm is there to help you find the right coverage for your home, car, and more. Whether you need an in-person or digital assist, they're ready when life hits you with a full court press. Get a game plan.

that helps fit your life, talk to State Farm today. State Farm with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer availability and eligibility vary by state. ♪♪♪

All right, we're recording. It is 922 Pacific Time. The man, the man, Chuck Klosterman is here. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. Haven't talked to you in a while. Felt like the right time. A lot of stuff percolating in the air. How do you gauge the right time? What does the right time feel like to you? If I miss talking to you, if I feel like there's a lot of storylines for us to hit.

usually things have to feel weird in some sort of way. I think sports feels a little weird right now, which I guess we can start with that, with the NBA, a sport that you and I both really love and we've been following forever. And it has these ebbs and flows. And sometimes you have a series like OKC Indiana with San Antonio Cleveland in 07, San Antonio versus New Jersey in 03. There's these times when

The matchup doesn't have big cities, doesn't have stars people are used to yet. And everybody just freaks out and talks about, oh my God, like the ratings for game two, I think were the lowest since the bubble. They were the lowest for a Sunday night since 07. Game one was bad too. And then everybody overreacts. A, do you care about ratings at all? And B, where do you think about where we're heading with the NBA these next five years from a star standpoint? Well, I mean, I guess I...

Care is an interesting word. I follow it, certainly. I'm always interested to see because they always they use that as a way to sort of understand everything else. It's sort of like the ratings and if they go up, well, then we have to look at what's happening in these games and decide that this is the future. And if they go down, we think this is a failure. It's not super surprising that the numbers are lower. I would I would think that there's it. I mean, you get the sense that all of these pro sports outside of football are sort of moving forward.

into more sort of kind of niche identities. Like, I don't know if this is a terrible number considering the matchup, it really is only for people who really like basketball. So maybe the percentage that we're seeing is an accurate depiction of how interest, like what is the actual interest in professional basketball when played well by interesting teams who don't have a ton of guys who are famous? Like maybe this is-

actual number. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I was writing my page to calm in the mid two thousands, especially when it got pretty bleak there, there was like a Pistons Spurs Oh five finals. And people were worried about like the, the, our test melee happened. People were worried about like basketballs too. There weren't enough points. It didn't seem explosive enough.

And I remember it had this running joke about how I was one of the last 20 NBA fans. I was thinking with this finals that it reminds me like you're basically pushing with a casual fans, the people who only parachute in because, oh, I know who LeBron is or like it's a big market, whatever. And it reminds me of like when, when Pearl Jam released spin the black circle,

And it was a way to remind you of the mythology record this series. Okay. It pushes away the fans that didn't really care to begin with. And it's like, just come here. We want to appeal to the real fans. Cause I think okay. Sabres Indiana is an awesome basketball matchup. So do I. I mean, the vitality thing is interesting because that was a conscious decision by the band. It would be weird if the NBA was consciously like, this is an unconscious decision.

Okay, we've been doing this for what, what, fucking 25 years now we've been having these talks? What's the one thing that has never changed? The NBA is always in a crisis.

It always is. And there's never been a time it hasn't been. I think 1984 to 1987 is the only period in my mind, in my memory, when it was like, everything is great right now. There is no problem. There is no percolating future we got to worry about. Like, things are good. This has always been the case. I think I wrote that almost exact sentence in like a piece I did for ESPN in like 2005. The NBA, more than any other league, is always seeming to deal with this, you know, what if people don't like this?

Like that problem just doesn't seem to go away. Yeah. I'm trying to think. So you, what were the healthiest periods in the history of the NBA? I would say the middle eighties. That's, but you know, perhaps late sixties, early seventies, maybe. I think 91 and 93 Jordan's first three titles was a home run when you had the Knicks, who the Bulls.

They were adding... They were, of course, stupidly expanding and doing that stuff. They had so much talent. I think that was really good. But if that was the case, why didn't a few years after that, they were like, we got to move the three-point line, man. We got to do all... These games are... They're 88 to 76 in the playoffs. That was the big thing in the 90s, right? No one scores. It's just bully ball. Teams beating on each other. It was like there was Jordan and then like the Knicks and all these physical teams. The Heat were like that for a while. It...

Jordan goes away for two years. The ratings go down. Everyone's like, ah, no one really liked basketball. They really only liked Jordan. Jordan comes back. The ratings go up. Ah, you see? People don't really like basketball. They only like him. It's like it didn't matter what went on. It was always perceived as a problem. And

It seems to be unique to them because this is like, there's just never a time when people aren't talking about whatever. Like now it's like teams score too much. You know, that there's too much three-point shooting. And there is. Although it is preferable, I think, to games that are 81 to 70, I would say, you know. I think it is.

So from a basketball standpoint, the last time the league felt really healthy was that 08 to 2012 stretch when the Lakers were in the finals for three straight years. They played the Celtics twice, the Dirk Nowitzki 2011 season, and then the decision, which was, I think, the most important kind of fan interest event that probably happened in the 21st century, right? But at the same time as all this was happening, the

All these NBA teams were available. The franchise values were going down. We were headed toward this huge lockout and this big crisis that they were having economically. And the league felt like it was in peril, even as the basketball was good. I remember a lot of talk about like, there's a dress code now because we don't want, I mean, that was a little prior to 2008. But stuff like that is always going on.

Like, I suppose it's just like, you know, this is something else that we've kind of talked a lot about over the years. It's like, it is fascinating how the NBA is,

sort of sustains this level of popularity mostly through non-basketball media events. Like it's, it is very rare that the thing that most people are talking about is what's actually happening in these games. And that's just, it's always sort of been that way. I'm not sure exactly why it is. It might be the fact that because there's fewer players and we can really see them and we really do need to know their personalities. It,

it pulls away the sense that what they're doing professionally is the most important thing. And what's interesting about them matters just as much. I don't know. I, I, I just, I feel like sometimes I feel like we do these podcasts and I'm like, did I literally say this 15 years ago? I often feel that way. Yeah. But what's weird about this one is that I would think ultimately having OKC in Indiana develop as signature teams would be an awesome outcome for the NBA. Yeah.

And yet it's not perceived that way at all. Well, I mean, you're perceiving it. I mean, there's now this minority though. Well, you are in the, in the country. I wouldn't say you are in the media.

I feel like there's now kind of two channels of basketball discussion. And one has gotten kind of the side you're on is we got to watch every single game. Like I can't talk about this unless I get the NBA ticket and watch every single game. And I need to have opinion, you know, a pretty informed opinion on, you know, you know, the third best guy on the Pelicans or whatever. And then there's the other side, which is sort of like, well,

This is entertainment. This is kind of an entertaining league, kind of like what Derek Thompson would describe. It's like, I love the NBA, but I watch no games. You know, there's these two sort of silos of how this works now. And what's interesting is both sides of this media equation talk to each other and the conversations don't go well.

Because you have one guy on one side trying to describe like why the help side defense of, you know, Oklahoma City is so fascinating. And the other guy is like, well, how do we feel about Chet, though, as a person? It's like it just doesn't work. You know, it's like, but it kind of keeps going that way. So, yeah.

This episode is presented by State Farm. It's no secret that great teams need great teammates. I've been saying this for years. And when it comes to insurance, State Farm is there to help you find the right coverage for your home, car, and more. Whether you need an in-person or digital assist, they're ready when life hits you with a full court press. Get a game plan.

that helps fit your life, talk to State Farm today. State Farm with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer availability and eligibility vary by state. You know, I think people have struggled with OKC. Risol and I talked about this on Sunday because there's not really storylines yet for them. I think people struggle when there's

not that like typical big picture storyline to grab onto, which is like LeBron's doing this podcast with Nash right now. And it seems like every time he does it, something comes out of it that then moves into the cycle of how people talk about sports now. And I don't know if that's a cycle that represents how everyone talks about sports, but it's that weird ESPN show driven. So like recently LeBron had this thing about how

He's basically doing the thing where he's talking about his critics, but I don't know who the critics are who says... Someone in the city doesn't have a back. And this is infuriating to him. I don't know who the person is who said this. It's probably somebody with like

80 followers. Somehow he saw it. And that's what his, he took a great offense to that. And then Steve Nash kind of acted like, oh, I'm offended for you. Yeah, it was this amorphous criticism, but it wasn't attributed to anybody. And LeBron has 40,000 points, but people don't think he has a bag and that really offends him. And I'm thinking like,

LeBron has a lot of ways to score. I think we all have appreciated that for a long time. I mean, are there guys who have a bigger, larger bag? I mean, yes, Kyrie Irving has a larger bag than LeBron James of things he can do with a basketball, but it's very clear which guy is better. And it's like, somehow, it's like, it's always this thing back and forth where it's like, if somebody is great because they're physically imposing, they're insulted that...

don't view them as more of a skilled craftsman. But if someone does all skills and they're all talent, then it's like, this guy isn't even that good, really. This is fake somehow. It's like there's, I don't know who is the person who's like, I'm happy the way I'm perceived. Like what NBA player is happy, maybe Mike Conley? I don't know. This doesn't seem like anybody's happy with how other people view them. Maybe it's true for me and you. I don't know. Maybe no one is pleased with how they are seen. Yeah.

Well, it's like Kyrie's a good example. Kyrie, the respect everyone has for his skills in an offensive game is actually above what his actual quality and outcome is. I mean, if we're going to talk about this stupid term bag, he has the best one.

I think, you know, I mean, in terms of finishing by the rim, the ability to handle the ball, the ability to see the floor, the ability to pass. He's the best at that. I think I've ever seen him any player ever with my eyes. But he's not one of the 50 best players I've ever seen. You know, it's just that skills are an important means. At a basketball camp, he would kill it.

During the stations in the morning, Kyrie Irving would destroy everyone. But it's not the same as being, you know, I mean, I still, I do think I'm more, I defend him more than most people. Like, I think it was, I supported the Dallas trade when it happened. I think, you know, but it is, I mean, LeBron now, I mean, he's just, it is interesting to see how he has sort of evolved into

as a person, like, you know, and we've really seen it in a way that we don't really see with most guys because no one is that famous for that long, but we've really seen changes in him. Yeah. It's almost with celebrities, celebrities that have that, but not athletes where we're with somebody for 20, almost a quarter of a century at this point, you know, I mean, it's like, it's years ago now, but it's like, remember when LeBron used to constantly chew his nails and,

Remember that? He'd chew his nails constantly on the sidelines. And it was like, that's what like a little kid does in a way, you know? And that, I mean, I'm not, that's, I'm not criticizing for doing it. I'm just, but it's, it's really interesting. Like the things that we've seen him sort of shed and add over time, not as a basketball player, even just as a guy, you know?

Yeah, the things that he's added from an offensive standpoint, like he can really punish people in the low post now. And he has all these different things he does down there. And then I think his step back three...

which he's really been doing since the mid-2000s, but now it's one of his go-to shots. But I think what probably bothers him is that Durant... I can't believe we're talking about this. But people have this perception, Durant, myself included, I think Durant's the best scoring forward of all time. LeBron has been the most successful scoring forward of all time. But I think Durant just... The ease of which he just gets to 35 points for this... I think the last time he didn't average...

28 points a game was like 2009 or something um but we're talking about degrees right lebron there's a lot of brute force with him and a lot of like fast break like just flying down where he's just a better athlete than everybody else there was a period when he was with the heat when the thing that lebron could do is late in the game if the team needed a basket he could just go in the paint and dunk on someone he didn't do it the whole game right only do

as good as Durant is a more skilled, probably offensive player, definitely a more skilled offensive player than LeBron. He never had that. The brute force piece. Yeah. The thing where, I mean, he, you know, Durant can get a shot and get a great shot and go up over him, but he still has to make it.

You know, he's supposed to hit the shot. There's still a chance he's going to rim out. But when LeBron could just go to the basket and pretty much throw it, there was nothing. You could always concede that if Miami needed, or at one point Cleveland needed two points, they could just do that. So...

you know, who is the greater player? There's no question who's the greater player, but I, yet LeBron is still sort of offended that he's not seen as the greatest player in every context. He kind of wants to be perceived as the greatest player in every possible way it can be gauged. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's one of the greatest scorers ever, but there's probably two other people that got mentioned against him. And then he takes that as a,

You know, I just, I always love, I just want to know who said that he didn't have a bag. Cause that would just be a dumb, like whoever said that on a TV show or a radio show or a podcast, like that's somebody who doesn't watch basketball. So you're arguing against somebody who's an idiot.

No, it's somebody who watches basketball and needs to say something. I mean, that's, that's the weird thing. It's like these guys all got to come up with something to say all the time. And inevitably they're going to say idiotic things because the expectation is you have to say something all the time. Well, how do you put Shea Gilgis Alexander in a context as, you know, he's somebody that just gets the 32, 34, 38 points a game. There's a case that he's already at this point of his career where

As good of a score as Kobe Bryant ever was. But we're not, that's like a third rail. Nobody's allowed to go there yet because Kobe averaged 35 a game in a season. And he's perceived as this, you know, other than Jordan, the pinnacle of two guard scores. But I think what Shea is doing is on that level at this point. Well, it's possible to make that argument right now. Will that argument be able to be made in 10 years? Okay, we've got to watch it.

You know, like he might be peaking right now. This might be his, as you would say, his apex mountain. Maybe he's on his apex mountain right now. But we'll see as time passes, kind of, you know, it's. Well, that's what I was doing. I mean, like, well, here's like a thing that's kind of interesting. You know, I watch a lot of these playoff games with no volume.

Like I'm in the room with somebody else in my family, they're on the iPad and they're watching something narrative. So I just watch without sound. And I am continually amazed by how different the experience is to just watch a game as opposed to have someone attempt to describe it. Like all this idea of him being a foul merchant, right? Like when I'm watching this with no volume,

To me, it seems like he gets by guys. He's a great free throw shooter. So he kind of, the contact is legitimate. He's not like saying, he's not like pretending to get followed. You know, so he does this, you know, and it's when I'm watching without sound, it's like, well, this is a real effective thing.

But then when I watch it with sound on the first time it happens, even if they don't necessarily criticize him for it, they mentioned that other people have, and you start talking about this thing. It seems to color everything. I mean, like I, I, the, it does strike me that like a lot of the things that we talk about, about, you know, it's simply just us reacting to what the announcers or the analysts say.

It's not necessarily the reality of those statements. It's just that this was said, so we have to decide whether we agree with it or not. So when I watch him play, I like watching him play. I like watching Brunson play. I like all these guys who apparently now are sort of perceived as being an unwatchable sort of individual. They have an unwatchable style. I never feel that way. I'd rather see a guy...

you know, get by a dude, kind of stop, get followed, try to get an and one, then just guys running in the corner and just shooting threes over and over and over again. That to me is, that is the least interesting thing. Yeah. And that's why I really liked this series. Cause it's two teams that are doing, that are zagging against where the NBA was going. The only thing Shay does with, with fouls that I, that I do think he's guilty of is when he drives, especially when he drives to the right, he puts his left hand out as a, as a borderline, like stiff arm.

and kind of keeps it out there. And then sometimes he'll try to lock the guy's arm or he'll just, it makes it look like he's getting fouled, but really he's the one that's sticking his arm out and the refs just fall for it, which I don't blame him for, but that's it. I feel like they're officiating in the playoffs has been much better than during the regular season. I've been, I like the level of they're letting them play. Now, some guys, he being one,

does seem to get like regular season calls. Like they call fouls. He'll, he can draw a foul the way he would in January where a lot of other guys can't like the other guys, like they just got to live with it. But that's always been the case, right? Isn't this always been the assumption that, you know, stars get the calls and he was the MVP. So he's going to get those calls. Oh my God. I mean, you go back in history.

That's how it goes. The only person who seems like he gets away with more than everybody else, and I don't understand it, is Caruso. Like, for a fact, he is way more handsy and way more physical and just constantly, like, peppering...

It's almost like he's doing a Muay Thai class or something. He's just hitting guys and they just kind of let him do it. And they did it in Denver series. They did it in the last series. And he's doing it in this series too. And nobody else in the game gets away with it. I don't understand that. Okay. There were some elements of that with the whole Houston Rockets team. And there were elements of this with like the Houston Cougar college team this year. It's kind of like, do you have a friend...

who constantly gossips about everyone. Do you know anybody like that? Who's just constantly gossiping? Okay. That person is given more leeway to do that than

than other people you get used to it right you're like oh so so the other always talk shit about everybody but that's just who they are or if anybody else did it it would be like why is this you know so it's these teams like caruso now has built in this idea that this is how he plays and either you're going to call foul on him on six consecutive possessions he's going to be out of the game or you're going to let it happen i think that this is a it's to his credit in a way

But he has sort of socialized the refs to see him as a like a sort of like a he's at a physical disadvantage that he has to make up through grit. And they let him do. I mean, it was it's like the reverse of when they would just be like, well, for Shaq to get a foul, you have to hit him with a hammer.

Like, we just are going to accept that, like, you know, we're just going to assume that he's that big and that strong. There's going to be contact every time. So a lot of things that are follows have just gone. And that's what I think. I don't know.

Yeah. Shaq was like that. And Rob Gronkowski was the other one who was like that. They used to drive every Patriot fan nuts. He just got officiated differently because he was so big. It seemed unfair that he was going against like five, 10 cornerbacks and stuff. Well, I mean, this is kind of, I guess, more of an abstract question, but if you were, you know, like commissioner of the NBA or whatever, and you were talking to the officiating crews, you know,

would you say you got to make sure everyone's officiated the same way? Or do you have to sort of understand that some guys are going to be officiated differently? Because I think the natural inclination is to say the former. And yet it doesn't really work. Like you almost have to do the latter. Well, so game six at Nick's Pacers was interesting in that respect. I remember talking about it afterwards where Brunson and Halliburton were

where Boche is getting mauled and they were just kind of, the refs, I guess, just agreed before the game, we're just going to let this go. Halliburton was just dribbling up the court, like on pseudo fast breaks and people were just shoving him and pushing him and they just weren't calling it. But they weren't calling it on Brunson either. I'm good with it, Zad. I don't like the special treatment stuff. Yeah, I think these games are more interesting when there's more contact. So, yeah.

So we're in this stretch where OKC, a team that I feel like people can't get a handle on because the defense is so good. Defense is something that's never really resonated with people in the same way. Like the 2000 Ravens, you know, that it just doesn't work as well as offense because people understand offense better. So you have that, you have Indiana that doesn't, that their star is somebody that

is a guy who averages 18 points a game in the playoffs. And people are like, he's got to step up. It's like, this is who he is. He averages 18 points and 10 assists a game and leads the team and makes everybody better. He's not a, I got to step up guy. They're better when he's the second or third leading scorer. Yeah. When Cy Ackerman's the leading scorer, that's the best. You know, I feel, you know. Yeah. He's a facilitator. He's exactly like what Nash was like 20 years ago. Nash wanted to be at 20 points, 14 assists,

and make everybody better. And that's what he did. But people seem to miss that with him. But in general, like I like the styles. I think the games three and four in Indiana are going to be really good.

And yet the series, we're going to come out of it and people are like, that was a failure. The NBA is in trouble. What does OKC, oh my God, they're going to be better two years from now than they are now. This could be like a little mini dynasty that we have and none of us even know how we really feel about this team. It's almost like you need some sort of controversy, scandal,

bad blood behind the scenes, something for people to care beyond just the basketball stuff. That's what the Lakers did so brilliantly, right? Shaq would show up fat every season. Kobe would get mad at Shaq. Phil Jackson would do these veiled barbs at everybody. It always seemed like they were teetering on a collapse and they would pull it together for the playoffs. And people are like, this is amazing. This is exactly what I want. Whereas OKC is just like, we all like each other. We're just going to keep winning.

Yeah, but it does seem like there's a basketball thing to discuss, which is, I don't know, it's so odd now. You're watching a game and it's the second quarter and one team is up by 19 points.

But then you're in this weird situation where you're like, well, it's not so common for this team to, for anyone to come back from that deficit. Like you don't feel safe at all. Well, yeah. So I got to keep watching and then possibly like, I mean, in game two where it just never really changes, you know? Yeah. But then with four minutes left, Indy's down 20. No, Indy's down 20 with four minutes left. But I'm like, ah, they could still do this. Like, which is insane. I was early. What happened is I kind of, well,

lost kind of attention, but I was kind of following the score. And at one point it sort of tightened up a little bit, but it's just, it's a,

It's a weird thing. It's like, it's like, it's weird if the, if it's fun to have these great comes backs, but it's also strange if all leads are meaningless, you know, but because everyone shoots nothing but threes, if you shoot a little better than your opponent and they shoot a little under what they normally do, it becomes like a 25 point margin. And I don't know how that can be fixed. Well, the other thing that changed it, like the Celtics were the guiltiest of all this where.

They have a lead and then they change how they play because they slow it down and they're trying to protect it. And that seems like that screws up a lot of stuff too. It's interesting with this, because I was thinking about Scotty Sheffler too. The US Open is coming this week and he has like the best odds to win a major in a while. I think he's like under, he's like plus 270 or something because he's been that great. I think he's won 10 majors in the last year and a half, but people think he's boring.

And there's no like Scotty Scheffler. We would never have a Scotty Scheffler argument. I would never call you and be like, Hey, I just wanted to talk to Scotty Scheffler with you for 15 minutes. And you'd be like, what? You want to talk about Scotty Scheffler? What is there to say? Tim Duncan was like this in the kind of that 2003 to 05 range where it was like, yeah, Tim Duncan's really good. And we just immediately ran out of stuff to say. I wonder if

I wonder if SGA has moved in there, but Sheffield to me is the number one where he's like dominating golf now in a way that we have not seen since Tiger Woods, but people don't find him that interesting. So it's just kind of happening over here. Yeah. That was Pete Sampras. I felt for a while. That's a good one. Yeah. You know where, um, uh,

where the news just kind of becomes oh he won again and you know that there it isn't no one is excited that it happened it just kind of seems like almost that uh that was the inevitable outcome uh i mean basketball is the upside that there's more guys right so when you were saying that like duncan there were many people to talk about and many things to discuss about golf i suppose is different although there's more personalities in golf now that i can remember for a while but i don't really follow it either so

Yeah, it's almost like when Scottish chef or...

What happened in that thing when he got arrested for six hours? Easily the most exciting thing that's ever happened with him. Otherwise, he's just dusting dudes in these tournaments and people are like, holy shit. We gotta take a break and I want to talk about franchise moots. The NBA Finals in full swing. And our buddies at Vandal Sportsbook are here all the way with you. We have an all-customer profit boost for every single game of the series. That's right, you heard me. Use your profit boost bet

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All right, franchise relocations. I was thinking about this in the context of the Sonics, a topic that I brought up a million times that I wrote multiple columns about that I keep bringing up on this podcast. But I was starting to wonder about them in the context historically of most devastating franchise relocations ever because Seattle doesn't just lose professional basketball starting in 2008 going forward. They also lose Durant.

Russell Westbrook, who had just been drafted by them, but they're about to leave. Sam Presti, who I would say has probably been the smartest GM of the last 20 years. And then all this stuff that happens all the way through the... They don't win a title, but then they have this rebirth built around the Paul George trade a couple of times. And now they have this dynasty potentially sitting there. And you're in Seattle...

going, it was already horrific that we lost our team, that we lost the 1979 champs and this umbilical cord we had to basketball and people loved that team. But now we have to watch this other team basically become a rocket ship. And I was trying to think what's worse for a franchise? The only one I could think of that's like definitively worse is the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Going to LA. Like that one is like, that has to be number one. It still gets brought up all the time. It's the weirdest thing. It's sort of like people, you know, they, you know, we still call,

middle school kids playing baseball, playing Babe Ruth baseball. It's like 100 years later, we still use that term. And the Brooklyn Dodgers thing, that still comes up whenever any team moves. You know, when the Browns left Cleveland, it was a cataclysmic deal for Cleveland. But then they got the team back so quickly, and they retained the colors and all that stuff, and they did have to see the Ravens succeed. So here's what I have.

And I don't even know if this is a rankings, but these were the eight that really jumped out to me. Brooklyn losing the Dodgers is one. And I think

I think the Giants moving to San Francisco is another one. Cause you think of baseball back then in the, you know, in the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and the three New York teams were the hub of major league baseball, right? There were other teams, but it was like having those three there. That was it. They were the epicenter. And then by the time we got to the sixties, there was only one team left. They had to bring the Mets back in, but the Giants going to San Francisco, the Colts going to Indianapolis, especially how they left, uh,

Kind of out of nowhere. Left in the middle of the night. Yeah. But the... And, you know, and Baltimore had had, like, they hadn't been good for a while, but they had such a deep tradition, you know, that was still built into the town, you know, with Unitas and all that stuff. So that was a bad one, you know. That was a bad one, but they end up, they get the Ravens back. Right? So it gets a little tempered by that. Same thing for... There was a pretty big gap between that, though. There was a lot of... Yeah. And...

And speaking of that, the Browns going to Baltimore, same thing, which you could see coming, you could see coming, but they only don't have the Browns for four years. Devastating to lose them, but only for four. Sonics to OKC, they haven't had a basketball team since, and their basketball team that left ended up basically becoming Facebook stock or Amazon stock or whatever. It wasn't just that they left, they became multi-billionaires when they left.

I think a really underrated one is the Whalers going to Carolina because, and I would also throw in the Nordiques going to Denver and, and the, the Stars going to Dallas. Well, when I heard the North Stars were going to Dallas, like I'm not somebody who follows hockey, but I thought like, this is, I had sort of, when I was a kid, you know, adjacent to Minnesota, it seemed like oddly the two franchises that mattered the most were

were the twins

and the North Stars. Not, you know, like football is more popular than anything. So of course the Vikings maybe mattered the most, but the twins and the North Stars seem more reflective of the town. Like, like it was like a, cause hockey's huge in Minnesota and the twins were, so I was, but people handled it. Okay. It didn't, it didn't seem to be as devastating as I thought it was going to be. Yeah. Well, and they ended up getting one back. And then the only other one,

So Buffalo loses the Braves to the Clippers. They moved to San Diego. They never get another NBA team. Now, Buffalo's not a huge city, but I think if you lose your team and you never replace the team, that's probably the worst. The Colts going to Indianapolis was like somebody's wife just packing up and leaving in the middle of the night. That was the biggest gut punch probably, but they did get a team back.

I still feel like Brooklyn losing the Dodgers is the worst one just because people have talked about that for generations. Because in most of these situations, I get the sense that

If once we get to a generation who doesn't remember the team being there, then it's not that big of a deal anymore. Like you can't, you can't have this memory of this team that was never in town, but the Brooklyn Dodgers are the exception to that. They're like people who of course had, I mean, there's not many people around who were like watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play and still come up. Like, I feel like a guy, I feel like the New York mayor or something, a guy running for mayor recently made a reference to,

to the Brooklyn Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, you know, leaving town or whatever. That, that, that seems- Yeah, because part of their DNA was, their DNA was they hated the Yankees, right? The Yankees always beat them. So you couldn't then be like, okay, now I'll switch to the Yankees because that was their art travel. My dad grew up in Brooklyn and was a Dodgers fan as a kid. And he didn't have a baseball team

really for the next, I don't know, 12, 13 years until he was living in Boston and started rooting for the Red Sox when he was going to college and the 67 Red Sox kind of got him back in. But that was, I don't know, 12 years later. And he's just like, even the Mets came and they're like, fuck it. And some people stayed with the Dodgers. Like my friend Hershey, his dad, even though they left,

stayed with the Dodgers, which is like a really hard thing to do because you're just basically reading newspaper box scores and then occasionally they're on TV. Anyway, I feel like the Sonics has moved up the ladder. I think they've passed the Browns. I think they've passed the Colts.

I think you could even argue they've passed the Giants when the Giants moved to San Francisco because the Mets basically replaced the Giants in the National League. I think a lot of the New York Giants fans jumped there. I think it's the second worst now. To lose professional basketball for 18 years and then on top of it, have your team become this team that was incredibly fun to watch and had some of the best players in the league. It's a continued gun punch and not talked about.

Ever. Yeah, I like would things have played out the same if the team stays in Seattle? I guess that's a hard thing to know. Hold on there. That's so that's one of the great what ifs of this century. Remember, I wrote my book. I did my what ifs chapter. This is a completely different Kevin Durant conversation.

If they just stay in Seattle, they're going to have a lot of money, right? Because Seattle is, I think, very similar to Silicon Valley, like how the Warriors became the superpower. Even though the Warriors were a mess up until the early 2010s, then they had all this money that came in and they just built the superpower. They could have built it. I just don't think Durant ever leaves. I think he's Seattle for life. I think he's still there. I think he's like Kobe on the Lakers for Seattle. I really do. I don't think he ever leaves.

I mean, I guess it's possible. That just happens so rarely with anybody. And he does not. I mean, he's kind of a wandering spirit or whatever. He became a wandering spirit. He stayed in OKC for nine years or eight years. Right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think he eventually became a wandering spirit, but I don't know. I don't think he leaves because I think unless him and Westbrook grew up, that would have been the only way that that blows up, I think.

So is Durant a journeyman? And if so, if not, who's the greatest NBA journeyman of all time? Does he not classify as a journeyman? No, he's too good to be a journeyman. I think he's a nomad.

How many franchises you been with? Let's see, one, two, three, four franchises now. About to be five. About to be five. So you could play for five teams and not be a journeyman. Who is the greatest journeyman? But journeyman means you were just bounced around like you were James Posey. But I have a feeling like a lot of guys you're going to bring up are going to have played for less than five teams.

when we think of classic journeymen. What about Shaq? Is Shaq a journeyman then? Shaq played for Orlando, the Lakers, Phoenix, Cleveland, and the Celtics. It's weird, I guess. If you have a bunch of franchises right at the end,

It makes it seem less journey-ish. You know, it seems that the journey has to be along the way. I mean, there also is like a sort of pejorative meaning, like, you know, the journeyman all-star. Who have been journeyman all-stars? Moses Malone was played for a lot of different franchises and he was great in every one. Well, not at the end, but for the early ones, certainly. Moses is a good one. Moses, I think, played for like six or seven teams, if you include the ABA.

Yeah, but we would never classify him as a journeyman, I guess. You know? I wouldn't. Journeyman is, to me, means you were a role player. Always. Okay. I think I would use Nomad. Probably Robert Horry. Okay, so he played for how many franchises? Houston, Phoenix, Detroit, San Antonio, the Lakers. Is Danny Ainge a journeyman?

Cause he played for a lot of franchises and always at, you know, we was the fourth best or fifth best player in Boston. Then he was the best player in Sacramento for a little bit. Then he helped out the Blazers when he was there. Portland. Yeah. And that's four teams. That's a, that's a good one. I, Robert Hoare is probably the best version of it. I would say.

Cause it was, he had a thing about, he was on, I mean, all these guys go on podcasts now. He did a thing about how he should be in the hall of fame. And I was like, I agree with him. I think he's one of the best. He's probably the best big spot role player in the history of the league. Other than maybe a couple of guys who were on the 50, 60 Celtics. Um, I, when I did my pyramid for my book, I had him in the pyramid. There's no, but no career like him. So I think I agree. Yeah.

I mean, he actually, if I, if I heard he was going in, I mean, if you look at say his career in Mitch Richmond, Mitch Richmond's career, like who had a better career and Richmond's in the hall of fame and he's not, um, you know, well, that was not to criticize Mitch Richmond. He's kind of an easy example, but I mean, like he was, I'm not saying he wasn't a great player, but he doesn't seem like a hall of fame player to me. Yeah. One of the things I had when I did that thing in my pyramid was about, if you ask somebody, remember the Robert Horry game, they would say, which one?

that's when you know you've had a good career. Like, oh yeah, the Robert Hora game. It's like, you mean the one in 2002? You're talking about the one in the 05 finals? Like, you'd have to, when he knocked over Steve Nash? Like, which one would you do? But yeah, I think Durant

I think that's an unbelievable what if. I think we could be talking about him completely differently. He could have like four titles. He would be like indisputed one of the best six or seven guys. So you think if he stays with that franchise, they win four titles? I don't know. Why would that be? Yeah.

I mean, why? Why would that, you know, why would that have happened? He's won now two titles when he went to the Warriors. But why would if he stays? I think you could make an argument. They would have spent more money the first eight, nine years he was in OKC because they would have had more money because they were in a bigger market. And like, you don't have to trade Harden.

Right before he's due for some extension because you're not worried about it because whatever, you pay the luxury tax. Are they in a position to draft Westbrook? Are they in a position? They had Westbrook already. They had Durant, Westbrook. They had all this stuff. Westbrook was drafted by Seattle and then they moved. Okay. So his first year was in Oklahoma City. Okay. Well, yeah. Yeah. But when did,

I mean, I can't really say that never would have happened. I don't know why necessarily him staying in Seattle would have won them four championships. I think maybe they would have won one championship, maybe. You could argue they were super close from 2011 on. And if they had operated like, say, the Warriors and made some big money plays with a bigger cap, maybe that would have been the difference. That's a lot. You're asking a lot now. They got to totally operate their franchise differently.

But then if he doesn't go to Golden State, those are two available, potentially. I'm just saying it's a thought experiment. I think could he have won up to four titles? Possible. I don't know. The thing about the move, just in sort of the general sense, is that Seattle was, I guess, a city that I thought was one of the rare towns where basketball was the most important sport, it felt like.

I agree. There are some sports cities where baseball is the most important sport, a whole bunch where football is. But I felt like Seattle was one where it was basketball. So it is a bummer that they don't have an NBA team. I mean, it seems like there should be an NBA team. Because, you know, it's weird that Portland has one and Seattle doesn't. It's just strange. Well, they're going to have one soon.

That brings us to our next topic, which I gave you a heads up on about this international basketball league that might be happening. Because there's been, there's some information popping out. I haven't talked about it that much in my podcast. I'm still not positive it's going to happen.

But I think in the rich guy circles, a lot of them are talking about it because a lot of them have been asked to invest in it. Five billion they want. They feel they need five billion for it. I don't know the exact number. But I know I have an idea of the premise, which is they basically want it to be like F1.

And it's this international league. They play less games and they go to different spots all over the world. So they go to like Singapore, they go to, you know, Monaco, wherever the hell it is, almost operating like F1. And they go there and they're there for like, I don't know, 10 days. And they're playing multiple games in the same spot. And then they have all this other stuff that happens. Like there's like concerts and it's like an event. It's like almost like a takeover the same way F1 does it.

And you move from spot to spot and maybe it's like a 30, 35 game season. I don't know. And what they're telling people is that they have a couple of major stars that are going to be joining that are going to be jaw dropping. And I, it's pretty clear because Maverick Carter is running this that, or is like one of the people involved in pushing it, that he's dangling. LeBron is going to be one of the people that do it.

Could it be Kevin Durant? My guess is it's probably older famous superstars nearing the end of their career who are just going to do where they would get a bunch of money, probably equity in the league. And it's a financial play and you try to build something. I guess I have a few questions, one of which is,

will people watch this? And also, does it matter? Because like when you saw like the Kobe China stuff, that was the first time I was like, wow, people love this shit. Like you remember when Bob McAdoo went to Italy for like four extra years in the eighties and became like a God in Italy, like,

Maybe this is a smarter way to end your career, to make more money and you're global and you hit all these different countries and you blow up your brand that way because you've kind of taken everything you possibly can out of kind of the American NBA culture. I just don't know if the league works and what that would look like. And so I'm laying all this out to you. What's your instant reaction?

Well, it doesn't seem like it would work to me as an American product. So I'm saying I can't imagine it being it being very interesting to American audiences. And I think the idea of if like if it was like LeBron and Durant and those guys at their age, if they come out and they seem like shells of themselves, that would be very kind of disenchanting to people.

If they play well, it would be like, well, this league is a joke. These guys are 40 years old and they're dominating. I think that the American appetite for sports has kind of shifted over the last couple of decades. I think maybe in a small role, you maybe played a role in this in that the sense that like that, that the, that the, the consumer of sports now is mostly interested in the highest possible excellence above anything else.

That like the idea of, of college sports and high school sports, I feel like that is receding. And, and I think that if you try to start a league and the level of play seems like a, like a two tiers below what we're used to seeing that would fail, I feel like they would need to go after the kind of person who loves this NBA finals.

Like people who are interested in international basketball. It's a smaller audience, obviously. It's a, you know, but I do think that there is a kind of person who loves basketball, who watches the NBA and they're like, I don't like this though. And if, and when they, but when they see international players,

They seem to be excited and titillated and they love to see Joker and they love to see Luca and they love to see this style of play. They watch, you know, team USA or whatever. And they're like, I wish this was how the league was. I think that would be the person you need to go after. If you want to succeed in America, if the idea that it doesn't matter if it succeeds in America, if it's like this thing where it's like these guys want to expand their brand into Taiwan and stuff like that. And we just want to have these big events, I guess, but that's a different kind of success.

I mean, to me, a successful league would mean that it can exist on its own in America and to some degree rival the NBA. I don't think that's the goal. I think America, any success in America would almost be a bonus, was my guess. Like the worldwide stuff. So it's a little different than, you know, Liv, I think. Liv backs up your argument where...

It just hasn't resonated here because it's not all the best players. Nobody really understands it. It just hasn't worked, which I think is one of the reasons why it's moving. But I would argue for the golfers, it's probably really worked because they've made way more money than they ever expected to make playing golf. They would probably run it back and do it again. So from a basketball standpoint, if you're just talking like,

If you can make twice as much money, and I know these guys are making 50 million now, but if they could make 100 million or they make 75 million, plus they get equity in this new entity and they look like they're at the cutting edge. I just, the history of sports says that some of these guys will bite.

You know, like even think about like the ABA and the, you know, WFL back in the day when we were growing up. It's always amazing to me how many people jumped. The USFL was about as successful as you could imagine. That didn't work. But I mean, the thing, the situation you're describing, I mean, is both plausible. And I think we would both agree would be bad for the sport, right? Like this would not be good. I think it'd be bad for the NBA. Yeah.

To not have guys kind of aging gracefully. I think the sport, the sport that now I think there might be a woman's component to this too, this idea. That's where it gets really interesting because the WNBA, like the players really don't make the way that that league is so over leveraged with their finances that it's impossible to really pay the players. Right. So they make all their money off the court.

But if you could basically, if you got Caitlin Clark to be involved in something like this and you gave her some crazy amount of money and she's traveling the world and she's playing 30 games a year and has equity in the league, that becomes more interesting to me because I do think people would follow her. I don't think any NBA player in their prime would just pack up and go and leave. Like I can't see like,

maybe I should be careful because maybe one of these people would do it, but I can't imagine like Giannis being like, okay, I'm good. I won one title. Now I'm going to just go grab some cash. It really does seem like an end of the career thing as an idea. I can see it possibly with an international player. If they dislike the experience of living in America for whatever reason. I mean, I don't know why that would be the case. You would think their life, but if that was the case, maybe, um,

But like Wemby, like could could they get Wemby to be in this thing three years from now? This if this goes through, who knows? He's from France. I don't know. I don't know if he likes America. But he seems motivated to play against the best. You would think.

Well, well, that's what he expresses, right? I mean, sometimes these guys live, if he's like the fact that he's, he's putting the effort into express that. Whereas I don't always hear that from guys. Well, is it, is it a,

Is it possible that a young player could do that? I think so. I think that would be the possibility because, you know, these guys have such long careers now. Right. That they would be like, well, I'm going to come back and maybe play in the NBA later. I mean, this is like, this makes no sense in a way, but, you know, I think a lot about like load management and these problems and like these guys are just, you know, now we're in the playoffs and guys are getting hurt constantly. And I think part of it is because, you know,

It's so rare that they play hard this often. And I was thinking, why is this? And part of the reason is, is that there's so much incentive to have a long career now, to play 18 years, because you make so much money at the end, the numbers only get bigger. But I think a lot of these guys are kind of thinking at the end when they're not even toward the middle. They're like, I got to make sure that I have this long enough career to make the big money at the end. Sometimes I think this would be an issue.

If after your 12th season, your salary is capped, whatever you're making in your 12th year is your salary going on. So that he's gotten so that, that I don't, I think it's very strange now that used to like a 10 year career should be a long NBA career. And now that's sort of expected. Yeah.

Part of this is that these guys, they want to take every fourth day or day off trying to the end. And it seems to me that if the deal was after your, whatever you're making in your 12th year sort of becomes your standard, what you make per year going forward, even if the CBA changes, even if all these things changes, that's the number that there might be less of a, like it's, it would be hard to tell a guy it's like, well, you got to play hard now. And if his argument is like, well,

I also need to be able to play some in 10 years. I think it's, it doesn't seem strange how long these guys play now. This has become like, you know, Chris Paul, what was this? Was this his 20th year, 18th year? What year was he in this year? Well, they just, they take way better care of themselves. I think here's, here's the problem. The players are co-signing the schedule.

Like the schedule can't change unless the players are also willing to push to change it. And they're not willing to push to change it because it goes to 70 games, which is where it should go. Everyone would lose 12 home games. And then everybody would lose 12, you know, I guess one sixth of their paycheck, whatever, one seventh. Everyone would lose six home games. Right.

But you'd sacrifice basically one seventh or one sixth, whatever it works out of your paycheck. You'd make less money. The league would make less money. And that's the reason it's happening. Adam Silver actually said this in his press conference. He's like, we're happy at 82. We think it's fine. He's wrong. And it's...

And it's terrible for the league and he should want to fix it and he should make it a crusade to fix it and it should be important to him. And he doesn't care. But I don't think the players care either. And this is stuff they could have bargained for that they didn't. I'm not sure going to 70 games would change load management that much and the guys attempting. I don't think that would be enough. I think that they would still sort of perceive themselves as being guys who need to be ready for the playoffs. I still think they would, you know... I think it would...

I think it would unquestionably make the league better. Unquestionably. You would have, you'd basically be playing three games a week. And I think three games a week is doable and you could even make it. So you play like Tuesday, Friday, Sunday, or you play, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, whatever it is, have some sort of routine. I think it would, but all these leagues, like the NFL is going to go to 18 games. There isn't a single person on the planet who thinks that's a good idea.

But they're going to do it because the players have to do it because their careers are three years long, four years long for the most part. 80% of them, their careers are done by the time they're 27. So they're going to sign up for whatever. And they're just never going to cut back on games. That's just not going to happen. No, they'll probably, do you think they'll have 20 by the time we're in our 70s? Yes. They may have 22. Think how stupid that is.

The amount of money they're dealing with, the numbers are so large now. If you look at, say, with the NFL or whatever, it's not just revenue, but what it costs to run a team over time. It's going so up. There's really no way around it. There's no way to decrease revenue.

Like the league can only get bigger. They're not like, you know, when they say things are like too big to fail. Some of these leagues are just like too big to stop. Like they can only have to keep getting larger all the time. Well, especially when they're getting giant sale prices and the guys are paying a lot. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. During the season, every baseball team plays 162 games. It's a true test of endurance. It's not enough to have a hot month or two. You need sustained dominance throughout.

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slash Simmons, and you get 20% off your first purchase with Viori, V-U-O-R-I.com slash Simmons. Enjoy free shipping on all US orders over $75 plus free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. What is your highly specific Cooper flag prediction? So, you know, how good do you think he's going to be?

I think he's going to be incredible. He's going to be incredible. I think he's going to be, I think he has a chance to be somewhere in the Duncan KG vicinity would be his ceiling. I think he's going to have a career like Detlef Schramm.

That left shrimp. Okay. He's going to be a very good player. I think he's going to be a very good player for a lot of years. Um, you know, I was shrimp. I think was, uh, made all NBA once. I think he was a 13 on the ones, but a few, a few all-star games. What I don't know if he's, I don't see him as, uh, a dominating player. Like, I don't think he's going to, I don't think that I think that he will, uh,

be the, you know, the second best player on a good team or the third best player on a great team. So that's why I kind of think that's the player he's going to end up being. I mean, I like him as a player, but I don't, nothing I saw to me, not that I'm an expert or anything, but made me think like he is going to be, you know, unstoppable. I think he's just going to be very good.

I think KG, even though he doesn't have the same height KG has, I think that's the best comparison because of his competitiveness, which is what he's similar to KG. He's just a maniac. Like all the guy wants to do is win. And like he, every single practice, every drill, he's just like KG was, he just has to dominate everything. And those guys usually,

are our absolute beasts in the nba that's also tyler hansborough was like that they called it wasn't that he didn't have the skills right so i don't know i don't know if the competitiveness alone i mean that's a component that's got to be there i mean how like it's an interesting question how many who are great athletes in any sport great elite that you would say not very competitive though

I think there's been. Who is that? Okay, sure. Give me the ones that jump to your mind and you're out of your mind. I'm not going to because we live in an aggregation universe where that, like I say one name and then it gets thrown out there. You know the names. There's guys that,

either had were the crazy competitors that everybody talked about or the people that we're constantly disappointed by because it seemed like they're begrudgingly giving a shit or they were always injured or, you know, like there was just a specific difference. Give me, it doesn't have to be someone active now. I'm like, I'm trying to get what, what to you as an example of somebody who was who you consider elite, you know, in the top tier, but you would say not competitive though.

Not very. But I think all of these guys would be competitive to a certain degree because they get to the NBA, right? You have to have some sort of level of competitiveness to get to the absolute top level. So you're saying that flags competition is like, he's like, he goes to 11. He's more competitive than the people he plays against. I think that's the thing we're 100% positive of. But I also feel like he's an elite, elite, elite defender.

Um, he's already like an elite passer. He's just additive and everything he does, everything he does makes other guys better at all times. Right. So it's, it's a little similar to how, even though they're completely different, but like how burn is just additive. Everything he does is just helps other guys. I think he's like that too, but it's more in like the KG side. And that was what made KG so great. The KG was like defensive anchor. Didn't care if he scored, um, almost like scored begrudgingly.

There's a flag offensive piece where he can potentially be a little Tatum-y. You might be able to run him as your point forward. He's not as skilled of a scorer as Tatum was, but you might be able to run the offense through him at the top, but then have him be your best defensive player. And I think that would be the ceiling, like a little cagey little Tatum.

I'm not saying he's going to get there, but I think that's the ceiling. He's got physical, great physical attributes, really competitive. What makes him different than say, than Russell Westbrook?

a great physical specimen who's extremely competitive and works extremely hard. I think that was a big success for Russell Westbrook, right? The athleticism and the competitiveness. I think what's different with Flagg is... How elite do you classify Westbrook? You like to say when you're ranking guys, where do you rank him of players of the 21st century? Where do you rank him? I mean, he's probably one of the best 50 players ever. Okay. Right?

But if you were... Okay, I'm just curious. Yeah, probably 50-60. I feel like you talk bad about him much more than you talk positively about him. You see his flaws as more defining of him than his positive attributes. Well, I think the issue with Westbrook, if you're going to look at him and you're comparing him against the greatest players of all time, the guys I had the issue with are like the situation has to be perfect for them.

And there's like a lack of malleability. It's like, you know, when he put up his biggest stats in OKC, it was like he had the ball all the time. He did everything. And that was great for him. It wasn't necessarily awesome for the team. You just had a limited ceiling with that. And I always thought there was a push and pull with Durant in some ways. I always liked the guys that I feel I can fit into any basketball situation. Kobe was the most interesting out of all these guys because Kobe always wanted the situation to be the best for him.

But a lot of times that was the right situation for the team, you know? And that's, he was, you know, he was, he was so talented, most talented player on the floor almost at all times. I mean, even, even though he was with Shaq, of course he's got, you know, Shaq matters more for physical reasons, but like, he's still the most skilled player. Shaq's a really good example for this question you're asking me. Oh, I was wondering if you were going to mention it. Yes. Did he, was he not competitive enough to you?

So Shaq's one of the 15 best players ever. I thought he was awesome. If Shaq was wired like KG was, I'm not sure what happens to the NBA for that entire time. Now, he probably doesn't play as long. But if he was just like, I want to destroy everybody every game and this is all I care about, I do think that was another level he could have gone to. I remember writing that Shaq was like the guy who went to college and graduated with a 3.7 and had a great time, but probably could have gotten a 4.0 if he really wanted to.

KG was the guy who graduated with the 4-0. You know, KG maximized every single ounce of whatever his career could have been. And I think Cooper Fyke's going to be like that. And I think Duncan was like that too, by the way. Same thing. Like,

Duncan was basically playing on a bum leg for the second half of his career, but Duncan was another one. He was just steady. He was always there. He was completely additive. He made everybody better. He was an awesome teammate. He didn't care about his points. Like flag's not going to care what his box score is. That became understood over time though. I don't think, I mean, I think the initial thing with Duncan, just because of his demeanor was, is he engaged enough? Yeah.

is he interested enough? Like just from the past. And then yes, too passive, you know? Um, and then that completely switched and no one thinks that now, you know? Um, well, the Duncan part is Duncan is definitely a people forget because as the years pass, some guys live on in different ways and other guys, we just don't talk about as much, but like Duncan, like annihilated the, the 99 finals. He was clearly the best guy in the playoffs that year. Oh, three. He had some really good battles with the Lakers, uh,

I think so. We disagree. I think flag's going to be better than you. What did you think about the rehearsal? I think he's going to be good, but I don't, yeah, I don't think he's going to be, uh, I, I, I, I don't know if I, if I, if he will ever, I, I, I'm predicting right now, he will never win an MVP award. He'll never win. He will never be named league MVP. I think I would take the bet. Okay. Okay. Uh, you know, there was something on sports related. I wanted to ask you about though, which is kind of a weird thing, but I'm just curious. We're not talking about the rehearsal.

Well, we can talk about that. Sure. Well, you liked the rehearsal. Yeah, you wanted to talk about it. I was all excited to talk about the rehearsal. Yeah, okay. Let's do it. Why did you like it? Well, you know, the whole thing with Nathan Fielder has always been like, what part of this is real and what part of this is fake? Like more than anybody else, he kind of pushes this boundary between what we're actually seeing and what is orchestrated. And I would not have thought he could have leveled that up

But this last season of the rehearsal, I've never seen something where I am so unclear about what parts are real and what parts are fake. I have no sense of it. It could be 98% real. It could be 4% real. And, you know, so he's really funny. He finds ways to be funny in situations that you wouldn't normally see that. But there's also like,

an appreciation for the execution of what he's doing. It just, it seems like he's working differently than everybody else who does this, you know, and a lot differently. Not like he's taking something other people done and sort of, you know, twisted or morphed it. Like he's doing something that I don't, I don't even know what the analogy is. The thing about the rehearsal that's so interesting, maybe you've experienced this. Have you ever tried to describe it to someone who's never heard of it?

you will sound like a fucking crazy person trying to describe what you're watching. Somebody doesn't know what it is. It just sounds, you hear yourself saying things that make it seem like you're on LSD. Yeah. So for the people listening to this, who didn't see the rehearsal, let's do that. I'll do the exercise right now. The season starts out with Nathan Fielder being obsessed with pilot communication and

And a theory that plane crashes happen partly because the pilot and the co-pilot don't spend enough time trying to connect as partners the same way you would in like basketball or other things. And goes on this deep dive to try to prove his point, starts rehearsing pilot interactions, goes backwards, recreates the Sully plane crash.

And it's all leading toward, you think he's going to actually just have two of these pilots that he basically rehearses together so they have chemistry, fly some sort of crazy mission.

And then the twist is he's been taking pilot lessons the whole time and he's going to fly a 737 with this guy that he's handpicked throughout a couple episodes. And they're going to fly a 737 together. So the season finale is all of a sudden he's a licensed commercial jet pilot.

Did I describe that correctly? I mean, yes, everything you said is true, but even like, I don't even think that goes far enough. First of all, what I always tell people if they've never seen this is, I do feel you need to watch the first two episodes of the first season. You don't necessarily have to watch the whole season, but you definitely need to watch the first two episodes because he is basing everything off the premise that everything in life would be easier if you could rehearse every day-to-day moment of your life

through the highest possible simulation, which is like, when you say that to someone, they're like, well, what does that mean? I'd be like, well, are you going to have lunch today at a diner? Would it be easier if we built a diner that you could then go into and talk to an actor who will pretend to be the waiter? Like, it's like, well, how does that make sense? Well, in some strange way, it does because it's sort of, he's tapping into this idea of,

of what parts of life are real and what parts of life are unreal. And, you know, like when you get into an argument with anybody about anything, what's, you know, big picture stuff, what will they often say? Oh, that thing you're describing or the thing you're promoting, that thing you believe in, that's just a construct, right? They'll be like, that's a construct. That's not real.

And what his sort of theory of entertainment is, is that it's almost all a construct. Everything that we do is a construct. And the fact that it's constructed doesn't make it less authentic. So then he's a comedian who decides, is it possible that a comedian could have real change in the world in a good way, despite the fact that people can't take him seriously because he's always joking? That's how the season begins.

Then the season moves into this idea that he's obsessed with plane crashes, seemingly for real, particularly black box recordings. And has come to the conclusion that the real issue is that pilots and co-pilots do not have enough interpersonal interaction. Maybe it would be better if we made them do a play before every flight where they discuss their freedom of knowledge and their willingness to hear other things.

And he's flying a 737 for real, filled with actors, which he couldn't do if they were just people. But because he's paying them as actors, he can fly these people in the same way it's illegal to pay someone to have sex with you unless you film it and it becomes pornography. I feel like that idea is brought into it. There's also the aspect in this show at the very end where he's kind of like, well, I got to go back into this. There's also a point in the show where he deals with the possibility, the actuality

that he has autism and his belief that he does not. And that in fact, his artistic qualities are, I forgot that part, are human nature. That everyone thinks about this just like him. And then at the end, when he flies the plane, he's like, well, okay. So if you're autistic, they wouldn't let you fly this plane.

So because I managed to get into a situation where I can fly the plane, that proves I'm not autistic. I really think, and I haven't, maybe this has been written about a thousand places. I think this season was like an homage to catch 22, the book catch 22. Are you familiar with that? Yeah. It's sort of like in catch 22, the whole idea is that there are these fighter pilots and the,

the belief is that you can only be a fighter pilot if you're kind of insane. So to prove that you can't be a fighter pilot, uh,

You can't do it by becoming crazy because that validates your ability. It's like where the phrase Catch-22 comes from, right? And I think that that was tied into this. If you listen to the end of that last episode, he's basically saying the fact that he flew this plane full of actors when he wasn't qualified is proof that he was qualified. And that's a real complicated idea when you really think about it. Yeah, and then the last piece of that would be this is why we have

playing accidents every once in a while because we do not put any real thought into who gets to be a pilot and who gets not to be a pilot. It just comes down to how many hours you flew.

Well, and also it was amazing to realize you can become a 737 pilot without actually flying the plane. You can just put the hours in and you could somehow get there. And you have to take a test and be like, no, I'm not autistic and all the other things that he points out. But the other thing that's like, so he becomes a real pilot, right? And we see all this footage of him learning this. So when did he start this? Did he start this before? Yeah.

Yeah, he started... Before he did the first rehearsal? How many years has he been doing this? Apparently, at least two.

where he started taking lessons and stuff because that was in some of the writing about the series after it finished where they were talking about it. Apparently there was a Reddit thing where people realized that he was taking pilot lessons. And there was this theory that the last episode was going to be him flying because you can track all this stuff. So I think it had been like two years. There's also an interesting aspect that he does something that you don't normally see on television shows.

He starts talking about problems he had making a different TV show, The Curse, for a different network. Right. And how it was removed from streaming service because it was seen as being, I can't, anti-Semitic? It was an episode they removed because it was anti-Semitic, allegedly. So then he...

Well, but it was considered anti-Semitic because it was just like, I guess, it seemed to be opposite. So then he simulates him going to talk to a guy in Germany, which he imagines to be in the city. Oh, then the guy who was simulating the German that says like, this is now it is. Like there's, there are things that happen in every one of these episodes that I'm always like, I, I,

There's no comparison to this in anything I've seen before. And I don't know how I feel about it. He does seem to be a rare thing, which is a completely amoral Canadian. He doesn't seem to have... I guess it's... In...

In some ways, I guess I sort of relate to this. He'll be talking about ideas and you can sense that the question around that idea is you, should you even be doing this? Like, should you be having another aspect of this show? He creates a false singing competition, like a, like a, you know, like the voice or whatever, except the people judging the singers are all airline pilots and

Because he needs to teach the airline pilots how to give constructive criticism. Like, all these weird things. It's like, so he's manipulating all... Most of the people involved in this are kind of, I think, being willfully manipulated. Like, they gotta know something is going on and they want to be involved anyways. It is... There's just...

I mean, I seem like I'm just like maybe being too rhapsodic about this, but I really do think like if somebody said to me, it's like, boy, I want I want to see something that's really good and really interesting and not what I've seen before. Like, this is it.

I'm trying to think of what a TV show prior to this. And he only did The Curse. That was a narrative show that also did things I had not really seen in television before. I mean, his level of innovation and true creativity is just kind of off the scale. You know, it's like there's a lot of people who know the form of creativity. They do creative things because they know what people will anticipate and will see as creative. He is not like that.

Like the things he's doing, he's doing for the first time. Yeah.

Well, it makes me think of how people, and I was a kid, I remember Andy Kaufman, some of the stuff he would do and how people would talk about it. And it got to the point when he died, people were convinced that he faked his own death. And that was like his big grand thing. So I'm sure Nathan's been influenced by him a little bit, just how people perceived him. But the way he took this last season, I thought the first season of the rehearsal was amazing.

And it was just like, I've never seen anything like this. Last season went a whole other level beyond that. The first season clearly did get fucked up by the pandemic. I feel like that they had to do, like there were some things that would have happened in that season that just became impossible. Cause I feel like it was shot during the heart of that. Like when it was really hard to do anything. Yeah.

The Andy Kaufman thing, yes, I'm sure, in a way, but I happened to just watch a bunch of Andy Kaufman documentaries. There's one I saw just recently on Canopy or whatever. And the thing about him, though, that was like there was a degree of

in my opinion, of real kind of self-indulgence to what Andy Kaufman was doing in the sense that it really wasn't for anyone but himself, which as an artist, I, all people do, but I'm just, I'm not even saying this is a huge criticism. There was something where it was like the only person who could be amused by this is himself or someone watching it years later and realize that like, this is crazy that this happened with Nathan Fielder. It is a little different because I, uh,

I find his motives and his intentions more confusing. Like I don't, I can't necessarily say he's doing this just sort of to please himself. I do think there's a possibility that he actually does think that he can stop airline crashes. And he was like, but the only way I can do this is by using my platform as a comedian. So I have to first convince people that I,

you know, that a comedian should be taken. I don't even know. I like, I don't even know how to describe it. You left out one other piece too, is that he loves when anything gets uncomfortable. It's like his, his all time sweet spot. So on top of all this big picture stuff that he's doing and all these big themes he's hitting just fundamentally the best part of his show, it seems like for him,

is when it can get super awkward with somebody. Like when he's asking that pilot who, you know, obviously didn't have a lot of luck with the ladies and the guy's giving him information and you could just see like something shifts with him where he's, it just becomes the most interesting conversation he's ever had. Yeah, it's like what you're saying is true because it's like this. It's like a guy who's blind, right?

has an advantage in darkness, right? Yeah. A guy who's uncomfortable all the time has the advantage when everything else becomes uncomfortable. So the more, the stranger the situation, because his personality never changes. Like his, he remains the same

For the totality of everything he does, it doesn't matter if he's doing something boring. And there are stretches in the show that are boring. There will be a five or 10 minute stretch where it's like, I wonder if this is going to be a bad episode. And then a lot of times it'll come back at the end. So like discomfort is where he is most comfortable. Well, it'd be great if he was like, he would be the greatest NBA sideline reporter of all time. Yeah.

Let's go to Nathan Fielder. He's with Rick Carlisle and he just completely makes Rick Carlisle uncomfortable. I think I did the first podcast with him when I was at Grantland or one of the first ones and trying to interview him was like trying to, I don't know, ride a bull or something. He both knew it was a good thing to do the podcast. I think he liked me, but

The fault is he likes when it's uncomfortable, right? So it's a podcast and we're talking and he's a little uncomfortable anyway.

And it was just the weirder the podcast get, you could just see like the twinkle in his eye every time something would happen. I was like, oh, this is the, those are the most fun people to interview. Sort of. And it's also kind of an impossible interview in a sense, because why do people go on? Like, why do people listen to celebrities on podcasts? Why do people read New Yorker profiles of people or, you know, Rolling Stone profiles of people? They're like, who is this person for real? Okay. And he doesn't do that.

No, he's never going to do that. Right. So when he is on your podcast, that is the same as when he's on his show. I don't think that there is like a, I can't imagine a scenario. Like I think if, if,

If I interviewed him, I think it would be a disaster because my whole thing is always whenever I interviewed people, it's like, well, I want to try to get something from this person that they that will kind of show sort of a reality about them that you can't get through their art, that this is who they actually are. And this is what they do. And I have no idea how I would do that with him.

I have no idea what I would ask him or talk to him to convince him that what I'm trying to find out is what is behind the thing he's ostensibly doing, because what's behind the things he's ostensibly doing is ostensibly the same. I did a thing, you know, those four year consideration where they show the episode to a bunch of

Emmy people, they'll go, they'll run out of theater and they show it and then they interview the person after. So I did that with him a couple years ago for, I think it was the first season of the rehearsal. We showed the episode and all these people there and he just, he's just not going to

do that typically. Right. So his whole thing was to make him uncomfortable. We brought the guy out who was the, one of the stars from the first season. And that guy came out and it was just, he just wanted it to be as awkward as possible. And it was like, perfect. It was exactly what you would have thought would happen. I just think that's how he's wired. I thought Nathan for you, the comedy central show he did, I thought he really started to figure that show out, especially the last season.

and took a lot of those kind of breadcrumbs from that show and just moved them into this. Now it's like, I don't even know what I want them to do for the next season. I got to imagine HBO's thrilled. It's like the perfect HBO show. It's so fucking weird. It's so great. It's like such genius. You know what? You should interview.

interview the guy who greenlit this and ask him what the fuck did he tell you in your office to do this? I'm serious because the budget for this is insane. In this season when he goes out and has to buy a 737 and he's actually looking for a bargain 737 and going

going to these actual places. Like I can't imagine how this, if I can't describe it to someone who I'm trying to convince to watch it, how do you describe it to someone to pay for it? I just have no idea. What would be your, what would be your number one draft pick for the next rehearsal season for him to dive into?

well i mean this is a real lame answer but like i i want him to just do what he does i want him to just follow what he's doing like because there's no way there's no way i could have predicted this like there's something like there's no way i could have advised him to do this i just i think that what he he is after something he is after some idea i mean maybe i'm giving him too much credit i don't know i don't think you are i feel like he is after something that i mean

in some ways might spend my whole life. This question is like, what is real? Like what parts of existence are real? I mean, you wrote a book about this once.

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Go to square.com slash go slash Simmons to learn more. S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Simmons. Square, meet you there. There's something else I want to ask you about, though, that's not related to this, but I just, I feel like you'll have an interesting response. So,

so you know it was it was hot it's 90 degrees here in portland so it's portland said let school out okay we can't have school it's nine degrees so so after you got something got nothing to do my kids home or whatever um so uh we watch cool hand luke you know which i've watched probably 10 times in my life or 15 times my life one of my favorites you know okay so that movie's made in 1967 and uh

I've also been a couple songs that I've been listening to a lot lately is the song Jailbreak by Ace Jailbreak, which is 76 or 77. Escape from Alcatraz, I think it was like 1979-ish, maybe 1980 or whatever. So there was this period of time when there was a lot of art

about the idea of breaking out of jail right yeah um and there's still people who break out of jail there was like guys who broke out of jail recently in new orleans and one guy immediately makes a tiktok of himself out of jail or whatever i saw that i was reading about this guy in arkansas a former cop who broke out of jail he got caught like a day and a half later and what i was thinking about is so prior to the internet and prior to like network computing if you broke out of jail could you just

never get caught and go into society? And is that completely impossible now? If someone broke out of jail now, could they ever in any way be

sort of become just like a city because you know in the past if there was like if you got out of jail in georgia and you got to kansas or whatever well how would they unless you were like just a murder that the entire country was looking for if you were just like somebody who was arrested for cutting the heads off of you know uh uh meters or whatever it's like

There would be no, how would they even know you're there? How would they like, you know, you used to be able to get an apartment. You didn't even need ID. I think on my first apartment I got in 1994, I don't think I showed them my ID. I think I just wrote my number down. What you do now, if someone escapes from, if you escaped from prison, what would you do?

Incredible questions. And I followed the New Orleans thing very closely. It was my kind of story. There was betting odds about which guy, just based on the mug shots, which guy was going to make it the longest. And I think the consensus when people looked at the pictures, that guy actually did make it the longest. So I think the heyday for this would have been the 70s.

I think when Bundy broke out of the Colorado jail and was somehow able to make it cross country, that was the heyday for a lot of bad behavior. Um, cause we, we didn't have any cameras. He could just kind of move around and nobody could ever find you. I think the cameras would make it really hard now. And facial, it feels like there's cameras every year, facial recognition cameras, like the moment, like those New Orleans guys, they move out of there and you're either going, yeah, I guess the goal would be to go to Mexico or,

Right. You want to get out of America, right? I mean, yeah, it would be hard with like to get into Canada now would be pretty hard. But even if you, I mean, so you're, so if you like, let's, if you just escape and you go to a different city,

But your name is in the FBI database. You are an escaped prisoner. Your mugshot can be called up anywhere. If you get pulled over by a state trooper, I mean, it's very possible that he could be. So what? So you can't get pulled over anywhere. You're basically better off. I mean, do you want like the terrible answer? What's the terrible answer? You're probably better off finding somebody's house that has a super old person living by themselves.

and probably have to commit another crime. Take over that house and you have about two weeks there to really plan out

whatever you're talking about this person you eliminate has no kids. I mean, I guess you're in good shape because the kids don't talk, but if it's like, like if, if someone had taken over, my parents are dead now, but if somebody had taken over my mom's house, like that would have, that would have been deduced very quickly. So maybe of like three, four days, right. Before people are like, ah, I called dad and nobody answered. And now I'm starting to get worried. It's been four days.

So maybe you have four days. Let's say it works. Let's say you find the old person. My point is, I don't think you can be in the streets for the week. I think you have to find some sort of a roof where you can kind of plan what your next thing is. You probably need a car. Maybe you need to like switch the license plates. And I think you want to go toward a place that doesn't have a lot of people.

So maybe you want to go like middle America. You want to go like Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota. Like that should be your ultimate goal is once I get there, now I can, there's less people I can kind of move around. Maybe I find some new house that I could,

I could, you know, maybe I could scout a house and doesn't seem like a lot of action. Maybe, maybe it's somebody's winter house that they don't even use and just kind of bounce around. You're going to get caught eventually though is the point. That's the thing. You would say that it is virtually impossible for someone to escape from jail or prison and completely just disappear now. I think you get caught within a year. I don't think there's any way to not get caught unless you left the country and went

Once you go down, I think once you go to Mexico, that area, I think maybe a better chance, right? Wouldn't the move be? What would your move be? You didn't tell me. Well, I'm here killing old people and you're not even saying anything. I would think that the thing you would need to do is to find a sympathetic second person, either someone you could convince to start dating you

you know, and live to live with or. Oh, right. To be like your, your co-conspirator. Well, somebody who can be like, I can get you food. I can go and do these things for you, you know, but at some point you're going to have to try to integrate back into society. And I,

I wonder with now with network computing, if that kind of like, you know, people go off the grid, but let's you can escape. You know, you could you could escape from all that, I guess. And, you know, but then it's like, do you want to escape from prison to live in Ted Kaczynski's cabin?

You know, if you're getting out of prison, you know, it's what's like in that ACDC song. This thing is like, I'm not spending my life here. I'm not living alone. It's like he wants to find someone to be with. So your desire would be to get back to the world. But can the world no longer be, can you no longer reenter the world as a different person? Well, you're talking with people that probably have committed major crimes and aren't dealing with a full deck to begin with. But I think it's a good point about

needing somebody on the outside. So maybe if you escape, you have to know somebody's waiting on the other end that now be your accomplice. That's why Escape from Dannemora was such a good show. Because it was like, fundamentally, they had good ideas, right? They had the prison guard. They were going to go. They knew their route. They were going in a pretty unpopulated place and be able to go and try to get to Canada. And then it went haywire. But even then, they almost made it.

They were out there for days and days. Nobody could find them. So I think that when you go to those more remote places, you probably have a better chance as long as it's not cold. Like too cold. There's so much songs and films and TV shows from the 60s and 70s about breaking out of jail. I just gave a bunch of examples of it. Were there lots of escaped prisoners in America in the 40s and 50s? Like some guy breaks the... Gets off a chain gang. I'm a fugitive from a chain gang or whatever, but there's no...

Like, when I say that there's no paper trail, it's because paper would have been the only possible trail. A piece of paper saying that you got sent to jail. That's like, what else is there? Like, you know, they can't send your photograph or your mugshot or a wanted poster to every post office in the United States. And it's like, it seems like in the past, there would have been a real sort of incentive to try to break out of jail. It might work. It could work well. But I don't think it's possible now.

Well, how do you watch Shawshank now knowing all the current technology? Because Shawshank, think about like he escapes that prison, I think was in Maine in the movie. And he's got to go from Maine to Texas and then cross the border to get to Mexico. And in 2025, he's just getting caught within, I don't know, debt. First of all, he's not pulling off really any of the stuff he pulled. He's not going to 12 banks and taking out all the money. They just would have caught him almost immediately, right? This would have been a huge manhunt.

in 1968, whatever, maybe easier to do. I haven't seen that movie since it came out. What is he accused of? I can't remember. Well, he's falsely accused of murder. He's accused of murdering his wife, but he'd do it. Oh, really? Well, that's a real crime, I guess. They might be interested in that. Yeah.

Yeah, I just sort of remember him kind of working out kind of a pretty good life in prison. He was like helping guys, seemed popular, didn't work. Had to get out. They killed his favorite guy. He ended up in Mexico. Yeah, I don't think that you're not getting on the bus now. Like, I just think they would catch you. So you think in our lifetime, will somebody escape from prison and never be seen again?

I mean, I don't like from this moment forward. Well, I mean, I think that we, that, I mean, ever since everything happens now, something that could happen, I guess somehow, but it seems just impossible to me. Like, I don't know how it would be done in the United States. Maybe they would be able to track their Google usage. Like they'd have all kinds of tricks, but even if they can't catch you, it's like, you have to reenter the world.

And it's like, that's the hard thing. It's like you, like you, it would be very difficult to live a quiet life that doesn't require you to like show your ID for something, show your driver's license, your passport or something like, like you to get a, to even get like a,

I mean, I think there used to be, it would have been possible. Maybe you go somewhere and it's like, there's day laborers. They pay you in cash. You can get a job. Right. You know, I don't think there's anything like that now. Well, now they have real ID for flying. Like you, it's even harder to just fly compared to 30 years ago. You just hop on a plane. Well, somebody could have given you a ticket. It'd be like, yeah, here's my plane. Yeah. I had to go to the DMV and like wait four hours to get that or whatever. I don't know. It seems just like my normal ID, except there's a star on it now or something. But yeah.

We have to wrap up. Do you have any generalized AI fears before we go? Well, many, many AI fears. You know, I can't think of many other examples of something where almost everybody who understands it seems to believe it could have incredibly catastrophic outcomes. And yet we just keep going on it.

I mean, even like the atomic age and the nuclear age and stuff, it was like, we're doing this against our will. Like if Russia wasn't doing this, but like everybody, everybody seems to understand like a guy for the times, Ross Dothart, Dothart, Dothart, saying his name. He has this podcast. He, and he did a kind of interesting podcast with this guy who like used to work in AI and is now sort of like the ultimate, like doom and gloom dude. It was kind of interesting and not implausible except for one aspect to me.

Like he's working on a timeline that says like, this is going to happen in 2027 or 2028. Like a complete reinvention of society in the next, within two or three years. There's part of me. It's like, that can't be, there's no way that can, you know, but like, I, I don't know. I, I, I'm not, I'm worried about it. I mean, are you, what do you have concerns about this? Yeah, I'm worried about it. I think it's just,

it's almost going to be, you're going to have to develop two parts of your brain. One that is able to interpret that somebody has done something with AI and made a fake thing seem real. And then the other part that realizes what's real. I was thinking about this. My dad, the other day, he sent me this clip. It was a Tibbs press conference. Sometimes they'll do these press conferences and they'll change the wording. And somebody had mailed it to him and he saw it and he was like,

I can't believe Tibbs said all this stuff in the press conference. It's crazy. Like he thought it was real and it was just Tibbs saying crazy shit in a press conference and it like hooked my dad and he thought it was real. And I was like, that was AI. And he's like, ah,

I got to figure out like, like this is so hard. I'm going to be 78 in November. I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life figuring out what's real and what's not real. And I'm like, yeah, I think that's actually what's going to happen. Well, uh, okay. I think it's true, but I got to say,

what you're describing very low on the list of my things I'm worried about. Right. Right. This is the war. You're just like mountain hit. Okay. Did you see that show that I did? Okay. And, and like, I thought they did a pretty good job of creating a scenario of how someone in this position could kind of create this sort of, you know, global chaos or whatever. So, but yeah,

I don't think like the fact that they make up these interviews and all that stuff, and it's going to be hard for us to know as consumers, if this is a real thing or that's, that's bad, of course. But I, is it the bigger fear that it is going to basically eliminate the

every interesting job and the only jobs that will remain are the physical blue. Oh, you're going there. Yeah. I was thinking like, cause what the reason I use my dad example was cause that made me think in mountain heads, a good example of that too, that if you can tweak stuff and make people think something's real when it's not,

To me, that's terrifying because eventually we can start doing that with presidents saying things they didn't say and all that stuff. Yeah, when you're talking about what's going to happen to society... No, I mean, and this is what I'm saying, this timeline they're talking about, they're not talking about this is something that's going to happen in 20 years. They're talking about these things happening in two years. Because the thing that AI can do, and this is like, I don't know, it's so obvious, it's just kind of done. The thing that it can do is...

millions of simulations every second. So like, okay, so you can't grow lemon trees in North Dakota, right?

So you ask some of these AIs, like, you know, how can we grow lemon trees in a climate that's not hospitable, you know, it's inhospitable. And it will just work through every possibility until it finally concludes. Well, what about these seven things? So it's going to do that with everything, right? Any such, like there are a lot of situations where people go like, well, we won't be able to do this thing, like this thing we'll need, you know.

But it will just simulate ways that can be done until it comes up with one.

And I don't... Well, wouldn't you say there's going to be benefits? I'm just devil's advocating. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's going to be benefits with medicine and health and dieting and all these things that are probably going to help us. So the best case scenario is that it creates this sort of abundance utopia where AI does everything so well and so effectively and so quickly that we don't have to work. Absolutely.

And that you don't like, you know, and that we like it will it will revolutionize farming in a way that food will be so cheap. It doesn't matter if you don't have a job and it will it will be able to change. You know, it will be able to figure out ways to, you know, construct homes so cheaply that like, you know, that's the best case scenario. But no one seems to really think that the best case scenario is the most likely outcome.

What it seems more likely is that it's going to just completely separate society into a fraction of the populace who controls everything because they control the AI technology.

and everybody else will really have like no role at all. Like there'll be nothing like, like even there won't even really be a creative role because it's going to, I mean, it's pretty crazy. Like you can put like, I put some text that I had written into chat GPT. Just see what, like I said, like edit this and tell me what you think, you know? And like, one of the things that said is this is very much in the vein of Chuck Klosterman. Like it was pretty wild, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty crazy. Like, you know, I was like, wow. You know, it's like I didn't know how to feel about that, to be totally honest. I think that, like, unless we are wrong about this, but it doesn't seem like we it seemed like we under like like that, that this is going to be.

far more transformative than anyone wants. And yet we still keep pursuing it. There seems to be no attempt at all to slow the idea or to even question what's going to happen when these things start to manifest itself in the way that we speculate is very possible. So the last time this happened since we've been alive was the internet in the mid-90s.

When everyone was telling us that, no, I know it's not comparison, but when everyone was telling us in the moment, this is going to change everything. And we're like, is it? And they were like, no, no, watch. It's going to change everything. Really? And then it slowly changed everything. And the AI thing is basically super speeding that, but it's going to change every aspect of life. But remember even in 97, the concept of

paying for something online we were so terrified yes somebody's gonna steal all my stuff we didn't want to give it our credit cards like you're because somehow it seemed different than like giving someone your credit card number over the phone and they were right yeah it wasn't like the idea that it was sort of in this kind of interconnected system even the movies from that back then like the net and disclosure was like oh it's all all the stuff that's out there it's gonna it's

It's going to take our, take our identities and our lives. So I do wonder if there's some of that panic with this, but I also agree with you because I think about a lot with my kids. Like, you know, my kids, my kids are 20 and 17. And it's like, what are they, what is life going to be like for them in their early 30s?

Well, no, is it just going to be everything I hire? They're going to have jobs in the same way. I have no idea. So, you know, a few years ago, this book, Sapiens came out and I thought it was really great. Now I realize many people have huge issues with it for all these different reasons, but I thought it was really engaging and really interesting. And the author is this Israeli guy, I believe. And I saw an interview with him.

And he brought up something that I thought is a pretty kind of fascinating point. He said that this is maybe the first time, the period where now everyone always thinks that we're living in this totally unique period. And a lot of times it's proved to be false. But in this way, it might be. He's like, throughout any other period of time, if you had a kid who was five, you had some sense of things that they needed to know by the time they turned 25.

You know, if it's, if you're, if it's the 1500s, it was like, you get to learn how to ride a horse.

Like you have to learn how to like, so like, you know, make rice. You need to do all the, you know, for us, when we were young, it's like, we can only learn how to drive, right? You have to drive in 20 years. You're going to know how to read, need to know how to read all these things. This is the first time where we really have no idea what will be necessary or essential to people 20 years from now. It is very possible they will not need to know how to drive. It is increasingly possible they will not need to know how to read.

I mean, these like these fundamental things are completely now kind of up for grabs in a way that is kind of unique to the experience of what's happening with computers right now. I don't and that someone's going to be listening to this. They're going to be like, I know that's not true. What about this? You know, let's talk about the Industrial Revolution and all these things. And I understand that. But there is something bizarre about how unclear the immediate future now sees.

Like how, how, how, how no one knows what it's going to be like in a hundred years. But I have a sense that we don't know what America is going to be like in five years. And that's weird. I mean, that's a weird thing. Well, and the other thing is all the rich people that buy businesses or try to build businesses or expand businesses and invest in all of these different things and technologies, all of them are just in on AI right now. And that's it. And it's like this big battleground because it's,

Oh, those people seem to feel like this is going to determine the future of the next 20 years, period. This is what we have to worry about. We need a plan for this, which makes me nervous. Yeah. And I also, it's like, you know, because when we talk about these things, always the first idea is like, well, it's going to hurt poor people first. It's going to hurt, you know, sort of marginalized people first, you know, and that's usually how these things work.

But this is a little different in that I feel like it could completely reinvent the meaning of the economy, what the economy is, what money means. That there are people right now who are pretty wealthy and pretty secure who could find themselves much closer to the bottom 2% than the top 2% in a short amount of time.

That the that wealth is going to be kind of sandwiched in the degree to which the difference between having four million dollars and forty thousand dollars is much less different than it is currently.

because the meaning of money will change. And I mean, these are sort of like, and, and, you know, when you, you kind of look at like, kind of like metrics that we were used to sort of thinking about, like the, I'd even inflation that like every 20 years, things double in price. Or if you look back 20 years, what you could buy for $20, you now need $40 for it. I don't know if those things are going to continue. Like these things that we kind of, these kind of loose understandings we have of how money works. Uh,

Things seem to be escalating in a way that makes me, you know, it's kind of strange running this podcast in this kind of dark way, but I am worried about this and I don't know what can be done. Well, it does seem like the first time everything's on the table in a long time with culture and life and everything. Like you could tell me AI is going to figure out a way to make all of this food that will be just as

edible and healthy as anything else and it's going to be way cheaper and food will become much, much, much cheaper in all these different ways. I'd believe it. It's almost, that would almost be like a podcast. What would you not believe about what's going to happen in the next 15 years? I'd believe just about any outcome with AI.

Um, like, could we have, could we have CNN anchors that are just AI anchors? Maybe, I don't know. Even, even the best case scenario is weird. Like, let's say in the best case scenario, AI makes it so that essentially no one has to work. Robots do all the, all the manual physical things. AI makes all the decisions and creates everything. Like, what do we as humans do?

Like, what does life become if there is no physical work and no creative work? Like, it seems very, okay, you're kind of buddies with Ben Affleck. So I don't often say this, but like Ben Affleck said something that I thought was pretty smart, kind of. Like, I was surprised. Someone asked him about this and he was like, well, it's not going to affect

like the highest echelon of creative people. Like it won't affect actors, directors, but it'll affect everything below it. Like there's certain things that people will just, they will crave humanity in and they will not accept, you know, a digitized actor in a movie, you know, but every, all the jobs below it will be gone sort of. And he said like, well, you know, when in the movie industry, at one point we lost all this money when this, when DVDs disappeared.

because that was like a second release of the movie and you can kind of make the money back. And that's the reason there's no middle-class in filmmaking now is because we don't have that kind of that second boost. But he's like, what if it's in the future? It's like, say you watch, you watch all of Succession and then you have the option to pay say $200,

and AI will make you one version of Succession just for you. One episode of Succession where you can say what you want to have happen in it. You know, it will have all the actors. A career and adventure, Succession. You know, so that'll be like the bonus thing if you're fair, you know. That'd be kind of a cool thing. I wouldn't like the idea of all television being this way, but it would be neat if you could say like, what if this happened and this happened, you know, and that, you know, and to me, that's kind of a good case scenario. But my thing is this. I think that as people

time moves on, somebody like my kids or maybe even your kids will not see much difference between AI created content and actual content. Well, especially music. I think music will be the first way that goes.

There'll be some sort of Taylor Swift that's just all AI that becomes popular and people are like, I don't care if it's not real. I like it. Well, I mean, it's interesting to think about it like how we're like in podcasting, right? Like what if it was possible to take every podcast you've ever done? I think it's possible now. And then kind of create a new pod, like you would just kind of constantly create

these ideas from like old ideas, you know? I'm sure it's going to happen. Yeah. We're about to be replaced. Yeah. Well, it could be. And then I guess we're supposed to somehow kind of also that really kind of plays into this idea that like,

nothing new will be created. I mean, like I know every time I do any of these things, I am talking about like the slow cancellation of the future because I'm just obsessed with this idea. I think it's the most important idea that I've come across in the last 20 years. But like, it does seem to me that the likelihood of new ideas being kind of put into the cultural bloodstream is just going to disappear. And that we're just, and the content we have now pretty much is going to be the content in perpetuity.

just sort of repackaged. Well, the question is in 20 years with where we're going with AI, would Nathan Fielder's last rehearsal season even exist? Because nobody, AI could never think of that. Yes, that's true. So I guess some might say, well, that's proof that they'll never happen. That there's no way

What was the Gattaca tagline? There's no human spirit, I think. But there's certain things that we'll just never be able to do. Although then whenever you talk to anybody who knows about AI, they're like, I don't know. I don't know. Once we...

Because if you think about AI as a child, right? Think of it as a child, okay? When does a child become self-aware of itself? Like three or four or five, right? Yeah. But are they aware of themselves or are they being socialized to understand that they're a self and they're something? Is it possible that while AI computers will never become wholly self-aware...

They will adopt all the qualities we associate with self-awareness and it will essentially be indistinguishable. Like they will still, they will still be unable to actually cognitively come up with an idea that wasn't someone else's. But there's a lot of people like that too. There's a lot of people who can't come up with any idea they haven't heard from somebody else. Let's say, let's say two years from now,

AI figures out how to make another Nirvana album. It takes all the Nirvana songs possible. And the technology is so good. They could be like, this is actually the album. If Kurt doesn't die in 94, this is the album we think they would have made in 95. And they release an album and it's got songs and lyrics and actually feels like it could have been the Nirvana album. Would you listen to it?

Well, I would definitely listen to it. The question. What if you, what if you liked it? Okay. This is like a real kind of fucking bullshit answer, but like I would listen to it. The question is, what would I hear? And it would actually force me to confront something that maybe I can't confront.

which is that when I'm hearing popular music, am I really listening to the music or am I also injecting everything I know about the individual who made it and the history of music and what I like about music and what I am like and who I am as a person and what I think rock means, what all these things into the thing and then hearing it back. And if it comes from AI, will I be like, the only thing is the Sonics. So the museum and the,

There are certainly artists who I already enjoy in that way.

That, that I, that I have no relationship with the, I don't even know the person necessarily. If I listen to classical music, for example, if I hear some classical music that I like, there's a high likelihood. I don't even know who made it. Right. I know nothing about, don't know what can't not only do I not know what year it came out. I might not be able even to say like what century it is from. Right. So then I'm only, I'm only appreciating that just for the sound. Right. Does that work with a band like Nirvana? Probably not. Right.

Because pop music, rock music, hip hop, all of these things are not exclusively sonic experiences. They are an outgrowth of a culture that we associate with youth and that we associate with all these other things. So it might be impossible to...

Like maybe the highest compliment you'd be able to give in the example you describe is like, I can't believe how much this seems like Nirvana. I can't believe how close this is. So it almost be like a plant-based burger.

Yes. You're like, wow, this really tastes like a cheeseburger. But I also know it's not a cheeseburger. Although in that case, in that case, you could say like, well, this is great. Now I'm going to eat this. They've made this plant based cheeseburger that I can't tell the difference. It must be healthier than eating meat. It's going to eliminate our need for cattle. It's going to, you know, the amount of methane they're supposedly putting out, but also the idea that it's somehow cruel to slaughter them and all these things.

there's no, that doesn't happen with, like, we wouldn't get the new Nirvana. It's like, oh, this is great. It's like, now I don't got to worry about the singer killing himself. Like, that's not going to happen, you know? But the fact that Kurt Cobain killed himself has an impact on how Nirvana sounds.

And I know that sounds crazy, but it does for most people. And I guarantee you, if you play Nirvana to somebody who has no idea who Kurt Cobain is compared to someone who does, the appreciation of that music is going to be slightly shifted because it is impossible to not know the things that we know. I feel the same way about Milli Vanilli. You know, they had a couple of good songs, but now you can't unsee the fact that there was the lip syncing. I don't know where this goes.

It makes me super nervous. And now you've made me uneasy for the rest of the day and we have to go. Um, I did my job. Uh, you have two books coming out in 2026. We should know. Strange. Um, so, uh,

So yeah, I have two books coming out next year, which cause I haven't had them. It just, for a variety of reasons, there's a, I have a book coming out in January, which I'm going to send you. You'll be on before you'll be on before January. So it's a, it's a, it's a book about the meaning of football. It's just called football. It's like Walter camps, 1896 book football. Okay. And I think that you will agree that,

With 50% of it. Okay. I think 30% you will strongly disagree with. And 20% you will be like, this doesn't seem like it's about football, but that was coming out in January. I would have loved to have it come out before this football season starts, because there's always a chance that something's going to happen in football. That's going to change the meaning of this book, but I don't think so. And then I have another book coming out next fall, which is,

The reason I have two books coming out is because I had to have this come out in a different publisher because my, my publisher rejected this book. They were like, it's too weird. Uh, but I want it to come out. So it's going to come out. Yeah.

I can't wait. A pleasure as always. Great to see you, Chuck Holstman. You bet. Thanks. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo for producing. As always, you can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can watch this video podcast on Spotify. You can go check out the rewatchables. We did Working Girl, as I mentioned earlier. And by the way, programming note, I am going to be doing another podcast after game three of the NBA Finals.

on this podcast. Not going live, but we'll have it up as soon as possible right after the game, me and Zach Lowe. So stay tuned for that. I will see you late, late, late Wednesday. I want to see them on the way you start.

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