Indiana’s Incredible Finals Run, a Knicks Summer Strategy Session, and the 'Inside the NBA' ESPN Fit With Ryen Russillo and Van Lathan Jr.
02:03:37 Share

This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. One of the most useful things in my life lately has been my Apple Card. It's great for game nights, vacations, just life in general. And applying was so easy and quick. You can apply, see your credit limit offer, and then start using your card in minutes. Do it while you're watching a basketball game and you can start making purchases before halftime even rolls around. I also love how I can get up to 3% daily cash back on every single purchase. That's more money for game tickets.

I feel like I scored big time when I started using Apple Card. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

It's the Bill Simmons Podcast. We are part of the Ringer Podcast Network, where I'm doing some culture stuff over the next couple days. I'm gonna be on the Prestige TV Podcast because I may or may not have banged out the entire season of The Better Sister with Jessica Biel.

and Elizabeth Banks. And I don't know how prestigious it was, but it's worth discussing. So I think Joanna Robinson and I are going to do a podcast about it tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. You can hear they did the season finale, Your Friends and Neighbors on there as well. We're heading into a weird TV cycle right now. At least we have the bear coming up and think stranger things. But for the most part, the summer is a little rocky. So it was exciting that The Better Sister was at least watchable.

Going to talk about that and then rewatchable is Monday night. It's me and Kyle Brandt. It's our fourth Steven Seagal movie. Four too many or four too few? You decide. This is, I think, the most fun we've had talking about a Steven Seagal movie. We did Out for Justice.

Did anyone see Richie? We still don't know, but we're going to find out and break it down during that pod. And I had a lot of laughs. So that is coming Monday night. You can watch it as a video podcast on Spotify. You can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. You can watch all the clips and videos from this podcast.

on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. So I have Ryan Russillo coming up because it's Sunday. We're taping this early. It's Sunday morning. And then we're bringing in Van Lathan so we can do a three-man booth because it's the spring of the three-man booth. We might as well do a three-man. That is all coming up next. We're going to take a break. We're going to bring in Pearl Jim and then Russillo next.

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, Ryan Russillo is here Sunday morning, June 1st, 2025. I was getting a little sad in June, Russillo.

It means we're headed toward only so many basketball games left. The draft free agency football's a little bit away. A couple of good UFC events. Um, SummerSlam. You missed March. PGA, not that two PGA left British, British open that they now call the open. And then, uh, what's the other one that's left?

There's one more. U.S. Open. G.H.O.? No, U.S. Open. So there's some sports stuff left. But I always get sad because we're just running out of basketball. And we had one of the most fascinating playoff results I can remember. The Indiana Pacers making the finals 28-1 before the playoffs to make it. Pascal Siakam was 65-1 to be the finals MVP. This is one of the biggest aberration we've made the finals teams that we've had.

certainly since I've known you, but even going back even to when we were kids. And yet I feel like it's the right result. I feel like they were the best team. And I think they would have beaten Boston even with no Tatum injury. I think this would have been a bad matchup if you throw in Zombie Porzingis. I just think they would have beaten them. Anyway, your thoughts on the Pacers heading to the finals. Thought it'd be a close series between them and New York. Wasn't 100% sure. Picked the Pacers. And then as you saw it play out, there was just another gear that they get to that,

the Knicks aren't capable of. And certainly with Brunson's offensive ability and then if OG gets it going, you know, Bridges, I think everybody's a little too down on him knowing how important he was in that Boston series. So I know that there's like a Knicks obit that we're probably going to be doing a little bit later. And then when you watch the whole thing play out, it's like when the Pacers really get rolling, they felt like, I mean, this is not a fluke. They're the better basketball team of these two teams. And the fact that you can dig into some of this Knicks stuff with the starters, you

And you always had the cat or Brunson option to attack where when you get Halliburton going and once he starts seeing like what you want to do, like his familiarity with the opponent, and this will come into some of the finals preview stuff. Like once he starts getting to play the same team over and over again for that guy and how brilliant he is as a player, like you're just going to be at a disadvantage because of his size and his passing. And then, you know, once he starts adding the shot in there, I can't believe just

To be honest, I can't believe Siakam won Eastern Conference Finals MVP over Halliburton in this one. I was as surprised as Halliburton, who took a step forward, grabbed the trophy, and it wasn't his. I thought it was dead even, except for the part that he made one of the crazy shots in recent playoff history. And I thought that was going to swing it to him. Because of that game one, three plus. Because Siakam was awesome in game two, awesome in game four, and awesome in game six.

And so in three of the four, plus with the Turner foul trouble, they really needed him to defend Towns. So I see the case. I would have voted for Halbert.

Okay. And Siakam, who, you know, after game one, I was really down on. And I think with Siakam, my history is that at times it's harder for him to get it going on his own. On the other side of things where he's such a perfect fit for this Pacers team, when Siakam gets out on the break and you think you have the angle on him because

Because he's so big and he maps out his steps perfectly and there's this Euro thing and his strides are so long. He's really great at it. He's unbelievable. That little reverse layup he does off the Euro step, I think there's like three people in the league who have that move. And you can think like, oh, this guy doesn't dribble that much and it doesn't really matter and he's just perfect for what the Pacers want to do when they want to get out on the break. I just thought between Halliburton's game one heroics, which really was more Neesmith, his...

basically flawless game four. I mean, 32, 15, and 12, zero turnovers. And then finishing game six, the second half especially. When he decided to put this thing away last night, it was him.

And I think the voters like look at three point percentage, those that voted for Siakam and went, all right, you know, he, he, Siakam lit it up from three. I'll give it to him. And I just, there's too many times these finals and conference finals, MVP awards where I think it's too much stat counting on

on the votes and you're not really looking like who at this time through six games was the most valuable to the team. And it's, it's almost like a quarterback a bit with Halliburton. So I'm probably too biased for somebody who's just in control of all these possessions. The same way with Tatum and Jalen Brown in the Eastern conference finals. I was like, well, that's the thing. So I felt the same way. And I thought Siakam was incredible, especially some of the stuff he did defensively and the intensity and the

Just how much, how many miles he was covering, the speed he was playing at. It never seemed like he got tired. I thought he was incredible. I'm just, I'm on record. I felt this way last year with Tatum and Brown in the Eastern finals. Like the best part of the team should always win this award unless it is so clear that somebody else was so much more impactful than them. That's the only time I can see it. Like you can even go back over the course of history with some of the finals MVPs. I just don't agree with some of them.

You know, it's not like who is slightly better than somebody else on a team. At some point, you have to grandfather in the importance of the best guy on a team to what that team does game after game after game. And Halburn's the best guy on this team. It's his team. The pace they play, it belongs to him. It's almost like in the Super Bowl, we don't go...

Oh, yeah. Maybe the quarterback wasn't the most important today. Maybe it was the receiver. We always give it to the quarterback unless they were terrible or they don't have the stats. But in basketball, we don't do this. 212 yards receiving three touchdowns. You know, like there are certainly cases. And I think somebody has five sacks and the defense gives up three points. And you're like, all right, maybe that maybe that defensive end should have won it. But for the most part, we give it to the QB because they're the most important player.

Yeah, and I think you would get heat for saying somebody should be grandfathered in based on their status. I know that's not what you're saying. You're saying over the course of two weeks, Tatum being in control of every single possession should matter. And I'll never get over 2015 with Iguodala getting it over Curry. Curry's the only reason they're winning that series, and Cleveland's injuries. What?

But to have Steph get double teamed and then kind of figure out the double team and then everything kind of opens up around it. And they're like, yeah, but he would all had to defend LeBron. Parker in 07 was terrible where it's like, okay, he scored, they swept, he had a lot of points. Duncan's the best player in the league. He's the whole reason they're there.

He's the guy in the meetings. Cleveland's like, we got to figure out this Tim Duncan thing. And by the way, this one is not nearly as egregious. I was just surprised because after game one, you're right. Siakam and, you know, he's just, there are times with him where I'm like, is he initiating anything on his own? And it'll feel like there's really long gaps with the way he comes out in game two, because clearly he probably felt like he left a lot on the table in game one. And he starts getting right. Like when you're hitting step backs into OG, like,

Then I'm like, okay, here we go. You can see at the beginning of game two where he clearly went to bed, thought about it, was like, I got to come out and be a lot more aggressive. So I don't think this one's as egregious as those two things. I did think about it. Didn't you think about it with six minutes left when it felt like the Pacers might win? I did think to myself...

huh, this will be an interesting finals MVP vote because we only have nine people voting. It's not like they have 100. Yeah, you're right. So you have nine people. You only need five to vote for one side, and that's what happened with Siakam. He went five to four. Yeah, I didn't think he was going to win it. Can I give you a bigger picture thing on this? Yeah. I don't think we should give away the conference finals MVP. I don't like it. I just don't like it. I think it works against everything that, like that Pacers story,

The thing they did with their team, how selfless they were, how awesome that team was to watch for three rounds. And then you have to basically give somebody a trophy and designate, you were the most important, here's your trophy. I didn't like it last year with the Celtics either. I don't like it in general, and I don't really understand the point of this. If you were going to tell me the Eastern Conference playoffs MVP, that's a little more interesting, right? It's like, hey, for the first three rounds, this would be a better...

kind of capturing of who mattered the most for the first three rounds. But when you go to a series, then you end up with dumb shit like this, where Hal Burton is clearly the most important guy on the team. It'd be like in the mid two thousands. If, if it was like, yep, Nash, Nash wasn't the, uh, the Western conference finals MVP. It was actually Raja Bell. It was actually Sean Marion. It's like, no, it's Nash's team. He should win unless he was absolutely terrible. Anyway. Uh,

I'm just not a fan. Yeah. I mean, the NBA clearly made a push here for more awards and to name the greats of the past. And so that's fine. I don't. The Larry Bird Eastern Conference playoffs MVP. I can't get worked up about this. Me neither. How did Indy pull this off? Have a theory on top of how good they were and they beat a 64 win team and they beat Giannis.

So the Knicks were relatively new with these five guys, right? And just their style. And they're only playing seven guys. Everybody's playing big minutes. They want to play slower. If you look at some of the, especially look at game two of that Celtics series, that's just the kind of, it was like 91-90. That's what the Knicks, the lower the score is, the better it is for the Knicks. The slower the game goes, the better it is for the Knicks. And you have all the sample size of studying the Knicks and the Pacers were clearly like, we're going to run.

This team doesn't play enough guys. They don't want to play this pace. They don't get back on defense. They have two liabilities. We have to keep pushing the pace, keep pushing the pace. It was almost like in football when somebody's like, this team only has four guys in the D-line. The more plays we run, the more they keep them on the field, they're going to wear down as the game went along. And I felt like that's what happened over the course of the series. Game five, New York comes back.

And he's not really running. They're not playing with the same pace. Game six, they ramp up the defensive pressure. They're taking off after every break. They're just running, running, running, trying to put them on their heels. And the Knicks couldn't handle it. And we're going to talk about the Knicks later when the band comes on. But I do think that's a real flaw for them. And I look back to round two at the Celtics in those first two games. And it's just they played right into the Knicks' hands. We're going to walk it up and launch a bunch of threes. The Knicks are like, that's great.

Because once we get close to the end of the game, we're actually going to have a better chance to execute. And the Pacers were just like, we're going to do the opposite. Chaotic, go nuts. We're going to wear you guys out. And it worked. And I just thought it was really, really brilliant how they attacked it. I really, really appreciated it, respected it. The pace part of it is just so alarming when it starts getting away from you. And I don't know who made the comment, but I had noticed it before where

I went to replay something and then I'll fast forward like in the downtime where you know like, okay, it's out of bounds. I can jump ahead 10 seconds. I don't need all of this stuff. With the Pacers games, you can't do it. No. Because you'll miss like you'll hit fast forward on something where you think it's dead if I'm behind.

Right. Next thing I know, like two guys in the Pacers are getting back on defense after a make pointing at each other. And so early in the series is like, you can't assume like almost every other game that you're still going to be fast forwarding before the inbounds. Right. And the number of transition buckets, which shouldn't happen after makes like,

Of all the things you could be disappointed about with the Knicks, which generally on this season, I'm not disappointed with the Knicks at all. I thought this was a really good season for them, and we'll get to it later. They won 11 playoff games. Exactly.

The thing I think is really frustrating, and it's something that's happening at the NBA level that's weird. You remember how backcourts all of a sudden just overnight, it just felt like overnight nobody cared about these dangerous potential backcourt passes. I never remember seeing that for 40 years of watching the NBA, and then all of a sudden a couple years ago, it just decided guys were like, yeah, I don't care. Maybe he's backcourt, and then we'll see what happens. Something else that you know very early on in basketball

whether it's you're playing or watching it, is that on the shooter side,

If you're going up against a team that runs like the opposite deep player, not meaning deep to the basket, but deep back to the half court line. Like he has to be completely locked in makes or misses to combat the Pacers in this case, their guy leaking out and wanting to run every single time. It's almost like a safety who has to make sure nobody's going to get behind him.

Yeah, like never come up and help and run support. You have to. And so if the other guy is shooting, that's on you because it's really hard on the shooter being the furthest away to then...

try to get back into transition defense, but sometimes that's going to be on you. And so wherever that communication breakdown is like, hey, you have to be the person that gets back. You'd think you'd get more familiar when you're playing the Pacers every other night, and the Knicks never got more familiar. Like, that must have drove Tibbs in this, whenever, and it'll probably put them, so is the pain of watching the tape of all of this stuff. The number of times that kept happening. It's like, look, even if we're going to lose, let's stop letting them do that. They were throwing, like,

end zone corner fades on some of these things going like i assume toppen is going to win right like there were times the pacers guys were catching it and it wasn't even in stride it was just like throw it up there argyle win the ball and then let's see what happens they even do this to thomas bryant that he had a couple of those where he's just like stumbling toward the basket hoping to get fouled

Thomas Bryant, sneaky all-time teammate. That dude was happy last night. You know what's interesting? Turner said at one point, I've been playing against that guy since AAU. And I forgot he was kind of a good prospect. He's had an interesting bounced around career. And then basically, because Tony Bradley gets hurt, he ends up being one of the stars of...

Of game six. Yeah. They used all of the Knicks weaknesses against them. Townsend Robinson, you're going to play them together. You're a lot of rebounds, but you're going to be really slow getting back. Right. Brunson, if you're going to have a guy who's this ball dominant and you're not going to have a lot of assists in a game and everything's going to run through one guy, but we're going to make him fucking work 94 feet. We're just going to throw guys at him. But your guy Nemhard, who I felt like as the first half was going along,

It felt like he was going to become the key of the game because Nismith wasn't right. Nismith was hurt. You could see it. He wasn't the same guy. And they needed Nembhard for Brunson, but it didn't seem like he trusted his own shot. And the Knicks were just leaving him open. I think it was two for seven in the first half, but all the shots were wide open. And the Knicks were clearly like, hey, Nembhard, knock yourself out. Go ahead. Do you want to drive and get that little 15 footer? We're giving it to you. We're going to leave you up in the corner.

And he had to step up in the second half. I hate to do the ESPN halftime. You got them hurts, got to step up. But he had to step up offensively because they had to keep him out there. Not only did he step up, he took over the game against Brunson defensively in a way that for two years he wasn't able to do. It was like, it was almost like, like he unlocked something and he started frustrating Brunson when Brunson headbutted him and they didn't see it. You knew the game was over. So it was like, he got him, he broke him.

I bought a NemHart t-shirt last night after the game. Not surprised. I don't even care if it's cool or fashionable.

I actually am mad it took us this long to talk about him. I don't care. Look, he went 6-12. He ended up hitting a couple late shots. And it was ugly early. He couldn't hit anything. He was open. Couldn't hit anything for four games. Or three and a half games. Yeah, you could tell, too. Like, he was thinking about it. Like, all right, let me settle in here. The hitch before he took the wide open three? Yeah. But what he had to do against Brunson in the absence of Neesmith

And I always wonder, like, you're always sitting there thinking, like, what would you do against Brunson? Like, how do you handle this guy whose handle is so tight? He has this low center of gravity. He's like a bull. He's so strong. His footwork is perfect. Just when you think you have him. And then to add in his foul baiting stuff, which is, I'm not going to miss watching that. Because with Brunson, it's not free throws. Me neither. Yeah.

It's if you really look, I don't know why I do this to myself because I appreciate him so much. And I really enjoyed that Sixers Knicks series so much too. But I also enjoyed both fan bases screaming about the other team star in working the game the way they do. And so,

certainly if it had been a brunson sga matchup like i was a little worried of of like how that was going to be received but the problem with brunson is that brunson is doing it off of the ball he's doing it on inbounds he's doing it whenever a screen is set like he is trying to do it the entire fucking game so if you decide you want to hate watch that part of it like i worked myself up into a lather a couple games ago because i go like only just keep track like i have a brunson bullshick

tracker that I keep in my notes throughout the entire course of a game to just be like, yeah, no, it's on eBay. No ESPN has talked to me about it a bit after the heat index, because the heat didn't have a very good playoff. Maybe trying to sell it like, uh, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Like a private company that's acquired or something like that. But so when I'm thinking about how hard it is deal with Brunson, because then you're still waiting for him to get you and he's going to get the call.

And at one point I was like, maybe the best thing is just to be as physical as possible with them the entire time. And then you're like, well, that isn't really going to work. What Nembhardt did, his physicality, that inbounds play where Brunson pushed him first, Nembhardt pushed him back, the retaliator ends up, Tyler Ford hits him. We love Tyler Ford, but I'm like, Tyler, how could you do that after where Brunson kind of flops on the retaliation?

from Nembhardt here, but like whatever Nembhardt's approach was, it was more about his mentality of like when he hit the layup and then gave Brunson the ball back before all this happened, where it's like, I'm going to be here all fucking night. But I think Brunson had him psyched out for most of those two years. And then last night he was like, it was like the guy going after the guy who's been bullying him. I was watching it. Obviously I'm on a couple Celtics text threads.

talking about all the stuff the Celtics should have done in the last round. And it's like, all the stuff the Pacers... I thank you for leaving me off of those, by the way. You're welcome. You're welcome. I'm watching the Pacers do all this stuff. The Celtics had better personnel to do all the same stuff. And they just didn't do it.

Everything Indiana did to fuck with Brunson, the Celtics could have done. They had better players. Derek White couldn't have just done what Nembhard did yesterday and just been like, 94 feet, I'm following you. I'm in your mug. I'm in your mug. When you get over half court, I'm going to make you work. Because the key with Brunson is you got to mess with him before he gets into the 20 feet near the basket.

It's got to be the other 75 feet is where you have to get him. Make it hard for him to get the ball. Make it like later in the shot clock. And then just keep whipping guys at him. Keep making him try to get rid of the ball, basically, because the Knicks don't want to pass the ball. I was looking it up. There was, you know that stat head on basketball reference? Only like 15 teams have won at least 10 playoff games, scored 100 plus points, and had less than 21 assists a game.

Like they don't share the ball. This was the, the Knicks ended up, they were under 20 assists a game and they averaged almost 110 points a game. They don't share the ball. They're ball dominant. And it's like, whoever gets the ball over half court, that guy has it. And the Pacers had to make it harder before they went into all their shit, which is what they did. And I'm sure Missoula was watching this going nuts.

I can't even imagine the regret. The first two games specifically, I can't imagine the regret the Celtics had. They played it completely wrong. They had the wrong game plan, everything. And Indiana, opposite. What a win for Carlisle.

I mean, you think the 2011 finals is one of the great coaching, out thinking four straight teams for four straight rounds, like runs anyone's ever had built around one star and a pretty weird team. And they just out thought everybody. And then he just did it again.

So now he's like, now he moves up the ladder historically, I think, to make the finals with this team on top of the 2011 finals, on top of the 03 Pistons that almost made it, the 04 Pacers that almost made it, the Artest Melee fucks up his chance to, that team probably wins the title if that doesn't happen. Like this is now, I think one of the four best coaches of this century. I don't think that's hyperbole.

I don't think it is either because whenever you're talking to people that work on the NBA side of things, the number of years where it's say it's like a summer going into the fall conversation, like, Hey, what's going on? You know, whatever.

And like, especially when you talk about those Dallas teams, like, you know, how do you see the West or whatever? The number of times I would hear different staffs go like, well, they've got Carlisle. So that's good for like another, however many, like whatever you think their floor is, like move them up a couple of seeds. Because that's how good it is. He's like the Mike Tomlin almost, where he's like, wow, that's 10 wins because they have Tomlin. I swear, man, I just wish, and I don't know if he's the guy to do it, even though, have you ever met him?

Carlisle? Yeah, because he did some ESPN stuff for a split second. He's an interesting guy. Nice guy. Yeah, we had him around back in the Bristol days. And if he came in and you could make any kind of connection, he would give you kind of this wry smile and open up a little bit. But if you didn't really have anything to offer, he wasn't like...

it wasn't a guy that was going to walk in and just be like, what do you guys want to talk about? Like, let's go. And just different guys have different personalities, but that's the part of the game that I get frustrated with. Cause I'd love to know like what Carlisle's talking about with his assistants. Like, okay, this is, I mean, we can sit here and say, Hey, they wanted to attack this. They wanted to try to get cat confused with whether or not he was going to come up or whether it was going to be in drop. And then if he's out that we're going to go with Brunson here. Um,

So there's some simple things that I think most of us that watch this game a lot can identify. But I would just love to know, like when he's done, like this is what we would do. And these are the conversations that we would have. And these were the debates that we would have. And here's something we did that we knew didn't work. And then here's how we corrected all that stuff. I feel like there's still a massive disconnect with this sport that we all love, where I would like to understand that stuff at a greater level.

finishing there because as an aside how many years do you think you're going to reference the second round celtics next thing because this isn't this one is going to haunt you well let's see what happens with tatum because it all leads to you know um it's it's definitely top four the combo of those two games definitely top four worst celtics losses 2010 is your worst finals experience right game seven yeah that's that's the worst were you there i was

I was actually under the basket the Lakers had for the second half, watching Gasol just run a mock against a wiped out Rasheed Wallace. That was the worst. There's been some other bad ones. Watching the Celtics not be able to get a rebound in person, pretty close. Yeah. And Gasol especially, who they had kind of manhandled in 08, and then it was a little like Nembhard last night. The Carlisle thing, remember that Dallas team he had when they had Luka and Porzingis?

And it just didn't feel right. And they had it for a couple of years and they even, they, they, they had that Clippers series that they lost four, three the year after the COVID, but it was clear. It wasn't, it was like, has he lost the team? I remember even talking to you on the pod about it. Like, is Carlisle kind of run his course? Why can't he unlock this team? And now you see the team that he has now. And it's just clear. Like this is,

This is just such a better type of team for him to have. And maybe when you're coaching Luka and he has the ball all the time and you can't really have a lot of input in a Luka offense, right? It kind of is what it is. It's like having an input in a James Harden offense. At some point, somebody just, here's the car keys. They're just going to do what they want. Like, how is Rick Carlisle really going to help it? So it's interesting that not only does he, he pulls that Haliburton trade off,

And then the Siakam piece, which I think we were all like, okay, they didn't really give up that much. You got to do it. But turns out to be this incredibly impactful trade. And they really didn't give up that much. And they gave up. What'd they give up? They gave up, I don't know, my notes are somewhere, but it was like just a couple of meaningless firsts and a couple of contracts. And that gets their 2026 unprotected. Well, because he wasn't.

I remember when the trade happened, there was something that I wasn't good on where it was like, all right, so Siakam, this is actually kind of like a Knicks conversation because this time of year or even after the transactional stuff, it's like, okay, but does this good?

mean euro championship contenders like jesus like how many of those deals do you think are even available every year so like what's wrong with just getting better but he was going to be a free agent remember in the deal so it was a bit like you're going to give up these firsts and it really felt like one of them wasn't even going to be that big of a deal it was the 24 first that in a bad draft the 26 unprotected was the one who was like whoa okay that's yeah that's not nothing

Right. And it was the Bruce Brown deal because remember he had the contract, which again, that contract was so funny because he ended up making all of that money on all this stuff. So it was the Jacoby Walter pick.

And then it's a 26 first. So you're thinking, okay, fine. The players don't mean anything. And you structured the Brown contract this way in the first place. But you also now have to pay Siakam. And it's like, ooh, what's that worth? I didn't know if he was going to stay there. And then as soon as I said, look, if they keep him fine,

But if you're doing this and he's an expiring, like, what are you doing? Then as soon as I had said it, somebody texted me. It was like, he's doing an extension. It's already understood. Like it's, it's done. The part that I would criticize myself on with the Siakam thing. I love this self-evaluation. This is why you're one of the best. Well, cause I've seen him have playoff moments where I'm like, where is he? And then I think he becomes a little predictable at times.

And then I felt like all of that was reinforced where he was relying on game one. And then from that point on, the guy was a stud. So I give it to him. And I think I've even said at times, like debating like a couple of years, you're like, man, am I going to vote this guy third team all NBA and looking at it? And it's like, I probably don't give him enough credit for the stability level that he is at, knowing, you know, he's never going to flirt with some of these other guys that the guys were paying all this attention to. Anyway, the other part of the criticism was just that

well, all right, Siakam's pretty good. But then they were like, hey, we're the Pacers. Like, who's demanding to be traded here? Who are we saving our cap space for? So now we're playing Siakam 37 minutes a night with a guy who's had a track record, who's done some things in the playoffs, despite this weird stretch where he didn't seem like he could hit a three in the playoffs for like a bunch of years in a row. That was the rub against him. Yeah, I think the part that we all need to do a better job with is like,

you're assuming a lot that you're supposed to wait around for the better option than Siakam. Okay. And it was, I think it was a red flag that Toronto was trying to, didn't want to keep them. I think was the red flag. But the thing, the thing I remember us talking about when it happened was,

you know, we do like, we do these ringer 100 lists when you actually list all the players. And it's like, he's always, well, he's always in the 35 to 50 range, right? He's, he always plays 35 to 37 minutes a game. He's been in big spots. Like in the 2019 Raptors, it's 37 minutes a game on a team that won the title 19 and seven. It's been a second team on Bay and a 13 mom BA last two years in the playoffs for the Pacers. He was 21 and seven. Um,

And I think it was really smart. The question I had, and you really felt it because they started out 10 and 15, Rosillo. And it was like, is this guy the right fit for them? Because Halliburton wants to play fast and it doesn't seem like Siakam always wants to play fast. And it seemed to me, especially when Halliburton wasn't playing well the first two months,

It always seemed a little push and pull with the pace with them. And I think what's been great about Siakam is he's now like supercharged himself. And the pace he plays with now, I've never seen him play like that. I think that was one of the reasons he was so special in this conference finals was he was, you know, flying. It really did look like mid-2000s Sean Marion. That was what it reminded me of, like some of the stuff. I mean, I think he's a little bit of a better offensive player.

But I thought he was that impactful offensively. And his ability to guard basically every player on the Knicks, you know, you don't ideally want him on Brunson, but if he got on a switch with them, he could handle them. But he could also guard Towns. He could guard Bridges, Orian, and Obi. Like pick a Knick, he could guard them. So I thought, I don't know. I wasn't like upset that he won, but I just think in general, I don't love those things. So most unconventional finals teams we've ever had.

And I would define unconventional as your season wasn't very good or you don't have like a clear top 10, top 12 guy in the league. So we just go back 25 years. The 23 Heat team that beat the Seltz in seven was 44 and 38. But they had Butler just for whatever reason in that Buck series and for a little stretch there, just seemed like he was one of the best six guys in the world. So it made sense. But when you look back, maybe not as much. 2020 Heat.

Bubble year, 44-29. I just think all bets are off in the bubble. I thought of the 14 Spurs because they didn't, they had like Duncan at the tail end. Kawhi wasn't Kawhi yet. Parker at the tail end of his prime. They went 62-20 that year. They made the finals the year before. Parker was second team on Babe. No, he played 29 minutes a game. You know, it was a little unconventional, but I can't really give it to him. 0-7 Cavs, 50-32.

but they had young LeBron who, you know, that fit the prototype of like, you can make the finals with an awesome guy. Oh, four Pistons. They're 54 and 28, but that was probably the best defensive team of the century. I don't know how unconventional that was. And then the 99 Knicks is the only other ones lockout season. They went 27 and 23. Ewing gets hurt. They're the eight seed and they somehow get to the finals. Anyway, I would put the 25 Pacers up against almost anybody.

especially the odds would reflect it. You're 28 to one to win the conference and you win the conference. Um, even when we would talk about it in this pod and I, I think I was higher than them on than them knew, but I, and I also wouldn't have said, this is the team that's going to make it. I thought they were sleepery, but I thought the Clippers were sleepery too. And they got bounced in round one, you know? Um,

I think this is about as weird as it gets, Russillo, for the finals. This is as wildcard-y as we've gotten in either conference. Do you know the last time there was a 1-4 matchup in the finals? When? Your least favorite finals of all time. Which one? I have a lot of least favorite finals. We just talked about it. 2010. Lakers-Celtics. Seven games. Do you know how many times the four seed has won? It's not good. One time.

You know how many times a team that was plus 200 or more in the odds heading into the finals has won? I think it's twice. I think it was the 95 Rockets and the 04 Pistons were the two. Do you remember the four seed, the beta one seed? Who was it? Your Celtics.

in 69 yeah that's which is one of the weirder finals but you know there's just uh some similarity well there's actually no similarities because that's the boston team that has this legendary run and it's like okay they're done um but yeah i think there's there's still a lot of meat on the bone of like who the pacers are uh because as we sit here all impressed with them i am undaunted in that like this is normally not how it goes

Let's take a break. We're going to bring in Van Latham and talk about the Knicks. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. We all have our routines during the playoffs. I'm the same man who once wore the same T-shirt every single day during the 2003 baseball playoffs. I am the same person who will tell my wife to come into the room when I need a team to win because she's good luck during the NBA playoffs. These are things that happen. Well, Michelob Ultra, a great addition to any game time routine. It is a superior product.

It's really great. And they're getting fans closer to the game with exclusive prizes, including courtside seats to see your favorite team play signed memorabilia.

Lots more. Enter for your chance to win at mcglobaltra.com slash courtside. Mcglobaltra Superior Access Courtside 2024 to 2025 sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 or older. Ends on July 1st.

2025 multiple entry periods. Visit michaelobreltra.com slash superior access slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines and official rules. Message and data rates may apply. Void or prohibited. All right, Van Lathan is joining us. We're going to get wacky. Van, how are you feeling about the Pacers being in the NBA finals? We just talked about this for 35 minutes. I think it's good. Wow. Wow. Great start.

I mean, look, what do you guys want me to say? I think they're a fun team. Why do we put this guy? There you go. I mean, I don't, I'm really kind of, I think it's a much better story if the Knicks are in the finals. Okay, make the case. The Knicks just bring a lot with them to the finals. They bring a lot of different storylines, a team that has an incredible cultural identity in the NBA, right?

But when you look back in their history, just not a ton of winning.

So that means you have something that you normally don't get, which is a gigantic market with a storied franchise, but also a starving fan base. And probably the most fun fan base in the entire country in terms of their ability to be both funny, violent, ridiculous. You know, if you saw a Knicks fan with their dog died

like blue and orange or if you saw somebody walking down the street and they had an anaconda or like a python on their shoulders and it had like a Knicks cap on it, you'd be like, that's a Knicks fan.

And they're a fun fan base. Yeah, you're right, for that reason. And kind of a scrappy, interesting team. I like the Pacers. I'm a Tyrese Halliburton fan. They have an amazing fan base. They haven't been there in a while. But they're more of a fun basketball team. The Knicks were more of a fun cultural team to me.

And culture always beats basketball When you're talking about who you want to see compete So Vanza Starfucker is what he's telling us I'm telling you is that it would have been fun To have the mix in it He was like oh that's Chalamet I've seen some of his movies Can I Have the Can you just ISO for me here for like a minute Yeah you want to go Brunson style No no no It might be hard I'm going to take my time Okay we'll go stand in the corners Get out of my way

Daniel House. So the celebrity shots, I'll admit, like I'm watching a regular season Knicks game and they do celebrity row and you're like, okay, oh wow. Hey, Bernard King's there again. And then we finished with Spike Lee, who a lot of us are kind of like when he started trying to glom onto the St. John's thing. We're like, dude, are you serious? Like, come on, what are you doing? But then when the next thing you notice, it's like,

Hey, it's that guy again. And for whatever reason, like our guy, Miles Teller, he's right next to Chalamet and they don't even give him a graphic, which I imagine when you're at a certain level is like a pretty major actor in Hollywood when they give the graphic to the person like Chalamet, who I understand what level he's at, but you don't even get a graphic like that's the kind of thing where you're talking to your PR people.

And I like firing them. I would say I was next to Chalamet after a Lakers game once and I almost I was so close to just saying, hey, just so you know, your PR people keep turning down Bill Simmons and we know it's not getting to you. Here's Bill's number. Just go on the pod and talk some hoops. But I was like, I'm not going to do that because security might come running over. Yeah, don't do that.

I don't I don't care. I don't I don't need it. These celebrities that have to stand up fucking courtside like you don't have to stand up. There's nobody in front of you. It's like having a beach house and complaining about an obstructed view. Fair, fair point. There's this massive sideline courtside bullshit that goes along with this. Like, I felt bad for the like Mike Epps was like, I'm around.

Because the Pacers just didn't have any balance when they were going with Celebrity Row on some of these broadcasts. So, yes, I am guilty of wondering at times during a regular season broadcast, but knowing that the finals was going to be just... We were going to see a lot of it. And I don't know what Oklahoma City was going to do. Because You Just Can't Hang was still in this lineup. That's where you got to bring in Hader. Hader is like the only one they have. My other thing is, yeah, we get Chenoweth out there. I can make that happen. Eric Chenoweth. But...

The Knicks, the MSG crowd, whenever they would do celebrity row, very anti-jam bands. Trey was always right there on the baseline. Trey from Fish. You can't fucking give him a graphic. Derek Trucks is over there. So I noticed a lot of anti-jam band stuff. I noticed the same five or six people over and over again. And if it had been Knicks OKC, it was going to be really one-sided and kind of annoying. And it's like, we got it. The lady from Law & Order is there again.

I want you guys to notice something. When I talked about the Knicks and their fan base, I talked about the people.

I talked about the people with dogs and outside fighting. You're a man of the people. Harassing ESPN people. I talked about those people. Those are the people that I talked about. I couldn't care less about the celebrity role type of stuff. I don't like it. It's not my type of deal. But I think the Knicks fans are a cool fan base, up or down. And I just wanted to see them in the finals. But I like the Pacers.

Like the Pacers are a fun basketball team, run up and down the court, you know, three and a half seconds or less. It's fun. It's fun. I'm here for it. I'm ready for it. But I thought I really wanted to see the Knicks pull it off. I have no idea why I was rooting for the Knicks, but I was. I am pro Pacers fan base. And they've also, so they won three ABA titles in 70 and 72 and 73. Nothing since. Half century drought for them. And then OKC has never won. And if you give them,

Give them the Sonics title and say that was their last title. I have two middle fingers for you because that wasn't their title. Just like the five Minneapolis titles do not belong to the Los Angeles Lakers. That's fucking bullshit too. The Sonics existed. They won the title and it does not belong to OKC. Anyway, the Knicks. So the underreaction would be

We made the final four. We beat Boston. We had a really good season. We have really good players on good contracts. Why wouldn't we run this back? The East is going to be worse. Tatum's out for the year. Cleveland, God only knows what's going to happen with them. Indiana might be having this miracle run. Like we're really talented. We can fix this. The overreaction would be, we've got to make trades. We've got to fire our coach. Van, would you underreact or overreact? I would underreact, but they're going to overreact.

There's just too much for everything that they were able to accomplish. And they had, by any metric, a really successful season, right? There's too much uncertainty for them.

When you talk to people that are close to the Knicks or in and around the franchise. He's like having Shams hair now. Jesus. Well, hey, if you're connected to Tommy Alter. Oh my God. When you're connected to Tommy Alter, you're one step from almost every player in the NBA and probably the high school players as well. He knows them all. I think he's coming through LA with Kevin Herter, Vanner. You in on that lunch? I probably will be. Kevin Herter and then probably-

It'll be Herter, Tommy, and then name nondescript white star. Caitlin Clark's nephew. You don't know who that other person's going to be, but they're going to be somebody. It might be Bill Hader. It could be John Krasinski.

it's going to be like, Hey, you know, Krasinski is coming. He's meeting us at Babel. Haters come in. Don't talk about Barry with him. He doesn't want to talk about it. Don't bring Barry. I want to talk about David Lee Roth with him. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah. You got school tomorrow, but it seems like the people inside and close to them, they're unhappy with the brand of basketball that's being played or, uh,

uh, cat's ability to defend and to stay in drop during this whole time. They want something different. Like this doesn't seem to you. Did you see the, now they tell a story in the athletic that seemed to be in the athletic engine for four days in case they lost game five. It was a, uh,

I think that was the fastest I've ever seen a piece like that up. I don't think the game would have been over for 20 minutes. And there was a 4,000 word athletic story with all the issues the team had and then crammed into a couple paragraphs for like two sentences was after they lost to the Pacers last night. And it was clearly all written. And Towns and Thibodeau were the two kind of stars of the piece in Not a Good Way, Van.

Yeah. I mean, I would underreact. I think they have a great core. I think they got a little injured towards the end of the year. Obviously, nobody's hurt. But I think you had Cat with the knee. You had Mitchell Robinson also dealing with some things.

I don't know how much you can get out of this team. I mean, obviously they need to add, you know, depth, but I don't know how much you can get out of this team. You can't add depth and also pay $210 million for seven guys. I'm just talking about the problems that they have. So I'm saying to me, because they are where they are, you know, see if they can run it back and get another magical run and get over the top this time. Russillo, under or over? I feel like I added some tension here with Van. I think he's, he's,

I'm glad I went off. Van loves it. The more attention, the better for Van. This is where he thrives. You should have saw when I brought up Chewbacca during the Star Wars pod. That was when the pod really took off. You better watch out.

Kyle Brandt said Chewbacca does have an asshole. I'm sure he, of course he does. He has to take a shit. You better watch out. There are a lot of people out here in these Star Wars celebration streets that are waiting to see you on one of these walks randomly in LA to tell you what they thought. Chewbacca fans? Okay. Yeah. I'll keep an eye out. If I see a big furry person walking forward to me, I'll just start running. Priscilla, underreact or overreact? Underreact. Underreact.

Most wins since 2013, first Eastern Conference Finals since 2000. They were 0-10 against Cleveland, Boston, and OKC. It felt like it was pretty clear that they were a step below all of those teams, and they end up being really competitive with the Pacers. I know that there's a bit of an assumption today, too. It's like, hey, if they hold on to Game 1, then maybe it goes back to New York for Game 7. I think that's... I don't like to just take a win away from a team and then give it to the other one and then say the next five would go the exact same way because...

as I like to say is all the outcomes are connected. The reason OKC lays a massive egg in Minnesota in game three is because they've figured out those two, three quarters in games one and two. They're like, we're just going to be better than these guys and it's going to be fine. The same reason why the Pacers up three, one lose game five and see Occam's like, Hey, they played harder than us. Yeah. They were facing elimination. They were at home. You knew you had one at home in your back pocket. And then you probably had another chance, you know, if it were going to go to game seven. So,

There's definitely a way you could talk yourself into the Knicks maybe being ready for a game seven if that shot from Halliburton doesn't go down and send it to overtime. But this was a boring team.

That got a lot of coverage for a long time. They pieced it together in a really calculated way. They were smarter than everybody on Brunson. You know, he's a nice player. Nobody thought he was going to be. I'm not even sure they thought he was going to be this. There's no way. Nobody thought. Anyone who says they thought that is insane. Nobody in a million years thought he was going to be a guy who averaged 30 points a game in the NBA.

Rick, Rick, his dad is like, shit, I didn't know he was this nice. You know, I remember we did a pod segment that summer where we, cause remember they were talking about whether they overpaid or not. And it wasn't even the max. It was a hundred million. Wasn't it? Well, and we were like, we kind of liked it, but it was like, ah, who knows?

Yeah, because he also had that bad playoff series with the Mavs, but I don't really hold that against... This is something that, Bill, you've taught me, especially with some of these younger guys that have these really big profiles and a nice regular season and all the counting stuff that we all love. It's like your first taste of it out there, even if it's not a conference finals. You see guys that just aren't super comfortable. You have to go through that. I think Brunson even had a little of that, and now he's one of the most comfortable dudes ever in these huge moments. The cat thing is a risk, but

You know, it's funny because every bad Randall game and every good cat game, you're like, how could Minnesota give up this guy? And then you see the cat struggles at times. You're like, this is why Minnesota was like, we're good to move on from this. And the fact that he's going to be 60 million in the last year of this deal is still goes a bunch of years. The bridges. Can I give you the money quickly? It's massive. 49, 49 next year.

53, 57, 61. And unless the league officially legalizes him being able to drive to the basket and kneeing guys in the balls as hard as he can, which I think they made a lot of progress with yesterday because it happened twice. If they legalize that, I think he'll be unstoppable, but I'm pretty sure that's not a legal play, man.

It's just impossible to have a guy making that much money unless that guy is going to anchor your franchise and then win. Paying that much...

He's become a complimentary player, a very important complimentary player there, but he's a complimentary player. And you're not going to be able to win paying a complimentary player that much money, especially if your ace is not one of the top five guys in the entire league. And Rosillo was about to mention the Bridges contract, which is the other looming piece of this. 24.9 next year. Then he's a free agent, but they can take care of him this summer, blow out the deal, make it longer, bigger.

But now you're really locked into the team. Oh, God. Yeah, but you're probably sitting there going, when Brunson also took what seemed unfathomable at the time, a four-year deal for 156 instead of the five-year 270 deal, which is like peak Brady going, yeah, that's fine. I'll take way less than everybody else. Oh, we didn't bring in any receivers again? Why did I take a pay cut? They did that to him for like five straight years, too. Look, when this team got rolling and you saw the pick and pop

and picking stuff like all of the different combos of Brunson and Cat where you've got these two great shooters. Cat for big is fun. Even when it's ugly, it still works way more than I ever want to think that it's going to work when it starts. You're like, this is going to work. You're like, it kind of worked again. Their offense by month, let's go over it right now, October 3rd best in the NBA, November the best offense in the NBA, December 11th

Third best offense in the NBA. January, the sixth best offense. February, 13th best offense. March, the 21st best offense. April 18th, I think it was only like eight games. Pre-All-Star, the second best offense in the NBA after the All-Star break, the 11th best offense. So really this becomes a conversation of like, what's going on here with this group? How much flexibility do they have? The other problem is if you look at their starting five from January 1st until last night, that's a negative group.

negative 1.4 points per 100 possessions okay in the playoffs their starters out of the 16 playoff teams they were ninth in net rating I shouldn't say plus minus in net rating here of all starting groups you know number one is OKC at plus 8 points you see the shamit thing by the way the shamit and uh

Who's the other guy who had the best net rate? Right. They had the best plus minus on the team in the last round. Yeah. I mean, Reggie Miller had a few last night. He even wondered out loud on the broadcast. He's like, well, sham it. Take bridges minutes. You're like, no. And by the way, Tibbs, when he tried to figure this out, get back in, he closed with the five guys again. Right. So number one and number two and plus in net rating again for starters, OKC is plus eight. The Pacers are plus five and a half. And the Knicks were on the negative side of things with that starting group. So,

I think this is a huge win. Celebrate it, Knicks fans, who you've been, what they've done, building towards this, all the transactions. But there is a hard conversation about who they are and what Cat is or isn't. And that's the whole reason why a really smart front office in Minnesota, and I know some people argue it's more about the contract, but a really smart front office was fine moving him for Randall and DiVincenzo. Can I give you one other thing, Ben?

Sure. Because I agreed with everything Rizzo just said. And if you're evaluating this next team and you do glass half full and it's like, that was an awesome season. We were one of the four teams left in the playoffs. We got Mitchell Robinson back with 17 games left. And by the time we got to the third round, he was huge for us. Let's run this back and see what we have. On top of everything Rizzo just said,

So the Detroit series, they're down eight in the fourth quarter of game one, down 11 with six minutes left in game two, down 10 with nine minutes left in game five, and down 10 in the third quarter of game six. In the Celtics series, they trailed by 15 plus in the first five games. In this Pacers series, they were down double figures in four of the six games.

This is a team that routinely was behind trying to claw itself back with weird lineups and whatever. And I think at some point you are who you are with that stuff. If you're like, look at OKC. OKC, who's fucking awesome and is putting together one of the great seasons in the history of the league. Like they killed teams at home.

Right. Every time they played at home, basically, except for that first Denver game, they were destroying the other team. Right. And at some point, that's kind of are you are who you are. And I think the reverse with the Knicks is like, if you're five guys together, as good as they are on paper, don't play that well together. And then we get to the playoffs and you're always falling behind. At some point, that has to mean something. Right. Right.

I mean, yeah, but there's a certain point where anomaly becomes consistency, right? It becomes part of your DNA and part of who you are. Maybe they get comfortable when they're down a little bit. Maybe it's a part of who they are and the makeup of their team. I will say this, though. It was easy for them to come back against the Celtics. The Celtics don't have the heart of a champion. But when you...

When you won the title last year. Literally 12 months ago. A lot of injuries. A lot of stuff went their way. A lot of stuff went their way. Choose your own adventure of do you want this team's best player to not play? Do you want Porzingis to turn into a zombie? I don't know. But I will say something about the game one of this series. Rosillo hit on it and all the observations he made about

how any series goes, are obviously correct. I will say something about this game, though. I was watching it at Bill's house. I had stopped and started talking to Ben about Martin Luther King Jr. That's how over the game was.

We were just going 50s and 60s. Civil rights for an hour. I think the Knicks were listening to you talk to him. Yeah. Me and Ben were having a deep conversation about the civil rights movement and all of this stuff. Ben's asking all of the questions. I'm going to put a Koopie on this. He's doing it in history, so yeah. Don't... No, I'm just saying. He's interested, Bill. Yeah, because you asked him what he's studying and he was like, I'm doing history. Here's what we're working on now. And the Knicks were getting...

Whatever was going on in that game. Here's what really happened. Exactly. No, actually, what happened was Ben came down and he went, yo, Unc, how do we subvert the white power system? And I'm like, sit down, young man. Let me tell you about... Ben, I was just listening to Brand Newbian. First of all, people sleep on that. So look, that's how over the game was. And Bill, who was, you know, concentrating on basketball at some point goes, I don't know.

I don't know. I was in a conversation. It went from 19105 to 1912. Bill can't win right here. Either you're dismissing a complicated history amongst our people or you're not doing your job. I was like, guys, the Knicks are only up seven now. I don't know what's happening. And at a certain point when they lost that game, you know how individual players turn into pumpkins? It felt like the Knicks aura.

turned into a pumpkin right there. That was like three losses because it was so gut-wrenching.

that it's shifted the little team of destiny thing and the momentum from that being a Knicks thing to it being a Pacers thing. And I was like, whoa, wow, this is a game that in the last series they managed to win. They managed to pull off. And they didn't pull off, they didn't pull this game off here. They will probably lose this series is the way I looked at it after that game was over. And they were playing from way behind in

for the rest of the time. So that to me was the moment that it was a huge moment in that series. And if they do win that game, I feel like the momentum that they carried on from the Celtics series would have probably made them a much tougher out over the course of the next five or six games. So that's the biggest case for the underreact.

Because this happened two other times, like basically in the last 20 years. And I went to one of the games, which was 2018 finals game one, which is the greatest game I ever saw LeBron play or maybe anyone play. He was just beating the Warriors by himself. And that was the J.R. Smith game. And it goes in overtime and they lose. And I don't know if they were going to beat the Warriors in a seven game series, but they weren't going to beat them five out of seven times, right? Yeah.

And you could see LeBron, he was so mad in the last minute of overtime. He almost got in the fight with Curry. He was so mad because he knew it was like, we can't win the series now. We're never winning. We're never beating these teams four times when we gave one away. The other one we've talked about before was that 2008 Spurs-Suns, which was an awesome game. It was the year the Suns got Shaq.

And when Spurs win in overtime, or maybe it was double overtime. And you just felt like, I don't think the Suns can beat that team for four times after blowing that game. So with the Knicks, like if they win game one, maybe that does flip it. And I think that's what you'd have to talk yourself into. With that said, if you told me, is Tibbs coming back? Is Tibbs not coming back? You have to bet on this. I think I would bet on him not coming back.

And I think I would bet on them finding somebody else. And I don't know who that is, but I think it's like 45%, 55%. It's in that range. But I just feel like somebody is going to get blamed because the deeper issues are how far they're falling behind every game. And it was starting to get a little fluky with the comebacks. And that's how you have to look at a big picture. There's a Giannis piece. We still don't know with Giannis. I still think Milwaukee should keep him.

And until Yana says, trade me and I want to go there. And that might be Golden State. That might be the Knicks. That might be, who knows? He might be Houston. Sounds great. Or he might say, I don't want to go anywhere. But if Yana says, I want to go to the Knicks, there are trades you could figure out with that. So that's the only real blow up trade. Rassul is smiling. Because you're acting like you don't have four of these written down. Well, I do.

Let me throw this at you. All right. Let me throw this one at you. Towns for Durant. I think Durant has a year left, but you can extend them. The Salers actually work as a one-for-one. Towns, if you remember, has a whole friendship history with Booker. Like they've known each other since they were kids. They have the same agent. There was a

I remember we got pitched this at the Ringer in 2019. Towns and Booker and Russell all wanted to do a podcast together. And they all lived in different places. And we were like, there's no way. Now we would have the technology. D'Angelo Russell, your guy. Those three guys are all friends together and same age, see all that stuff. And I'm thinking if they don't have a ton of outs with Durant, and if you're the Suns, you don't have a lot of ways to get better. And Booker loves Towns, and I think they're still buddies.

Is that a way to get out of the Durant business? And then if you're the Knicks, you have this one year run with Durant. You can talk yourself into Mitchell Robinson, 30 minutes a game. You're out of the town's defense business. You've kind of sold high. You got out of Rando. You got out of towns with this big contract coming. Priscilla, is that something that would intrigue you if you were the Knicks?

Yeah, I think I'm more into it if I'm on the next side of this thing. And I think it is worth in this kind of like, I think we're all being pretty positive here about the Knicks because I don't really know how you get. I mean, you can be disappointed, but I don't know that you can be mad about.

anything that's happened this season. This has been a great season. Look how it played out with Cleveland falling apart and then the Knicks taking Boston out. And you get to take Boston out on top of everything else, you know? Literally out, like out maybe for the decade. Right. That'd be long, but we'll see. But I wanted to add in just the Mitchell Robinson part of it. I think I get why Embiid stepped on him last year.

Like maybe Embiid was smarter than everybody else and realizing like, Hey, when this dude is out there, he's a problem. Even though I probably focused on,

you know, I just don't like guys that are a zero threat on offense. And then I always thought it was odd with him where he'd be complaining on Instagram. Like every now and then van, he would have like a post where it's like, I'm not just here to rebound or something. Like, dude, there's a lot. Let me cook. Yeah. I don't like, like dudes that cannot, don't have a kitchen asking to cook at the NBA level. And I saw him what in the LA fitness run, he looked really good. I think my dad was playing in that game. So look,

I would be more into this thing. I think this is really interesting because you're like, all right, Mitchell's there. Durant, I think, is probably a better happy destination because I think I'd always be worried. He's like, all right, I'm getting Durant. What?

what's the expiration date on his happiness here? Because there seems to be a bit of a track record with that. Sure, he's a little bit older. The cat 61 million years from now, I think it's alarming, but it's also what will it look like in relation to what other salaries are going to be if this cap goes up 10% every single year. So that's another factor with that. If I'm Phoenix, I'm probably going to have to reset this around Booker if he's cool with going through that, which again, it seems like all indications that

You know, he's probably a little bit more bought in than you would think from the outside. But that might be something where you're delaying it all around him because you're bringing in a more expensive, younger, flawed player than what should probably be a quicker reset on Phoenix. Like Phoenix seems like they don't want to get this over with.

but it probably means Durant's moving out and then they're rebuilding around this whole thing. I don't know that I'd want to be in the cat business for four years. And look, as an aside, I'll just tell you. Can I make one case for the cat business though, quick? I can't stand watching him play a basketball game.

And that is unfair to him and his production. I mean, his plus minus regular season. He is the most frustrating guy. I can't fucking stand it. And I know it's better than I'm giving it credit for. So that's a me problem. I need to work on me. An objectively good basketball player. He's really good. He's got some major flaws. He has to be in the top 20 of any, if you're making a basketball list, he's one of the 20 best players in the league. And he's made conference finals. I've overhauled the egg.

Conference finals two years in a row on different teams. So it's not like you can't succeed with them. And that would be the case, Van. Be like, we get out of this Durant business. He's leaving in a year anyway. Instead of like getting this three for one, two for one, we're getting a top 20 guy back from him who our best player really likes. And we could maybe redo this any place center and he rebounds and he's 24 and 13 every game. And he's had real success.

I mean, look, I'm pretty much aligned with Rosillo. On the Phoenix part of it, I like it a lot less. On the New York part of it, it seems like it makes a lot of sense. It seems like it gives them flexibility in the future to build the type of team that they want to eventually, you know, get over the hump for the first time since like 1972 or whatever it is. I will say this, though, like the Tibbs part of it is interesting to me because for as much success as they've had,

His style of basketball and his overall being grates on people. It wears on people. He grinds out a fan base. And you normally don't see a fan base that has been in the doldrums and has had the success that the Knicks have had over the past year, this year, really want to move on from their coach. It's like...

he is the ultimate fair weather type of Knicks figure. It's like, we're winning games. Oh, Tibbs might be able to stick around. Look at what Tibbs is able to do. But Tibbs drives me crazy. Right. And so now, I think that if you ask most Knicks fans, they want a fresh coat of paint on...

their head coaching position. And that's despite all of the success. They don't believe that they can win the way Tibbs does the things that he does. Well, I mean, the case against Tibbs is the thing, and we've talked about it on a few pods even before these playoffs. Why is he doing the minutes this way? What's the point of this?

And then you get to the playoffs and he completely flips how he's doing the minutes. And all of a sudden it starts playing guys who hadn't played forever, who were actually pretty good off the bench.

And it's like, why not use the regular season to try more different, you know, more lineups, different combinations, get people out there. And then when you get to the playoffs, you're in a from position of strength. And instead it felt like he was throwing shit against the wall. And I think that would be the biggest criticism with them. It's like, yeah, of course this wasn't sustainable. You're trying to win a title with six guys too hard for four straight rounds. So I don't know. Um,

Seven guys. I mean, Miles was... But he kind of lost... It seemed like he lost confidence in Miles as it went along. So if Giannis did ask for a Knicks trade... Listen, I was on the trade machine. I put on my trade machine outfit, put on my goggles. Overalls. Fireproof. Painter's cap. Fireproof overalls, my painter's cap. It's really hard, and it has to be a three-teamer game.

And I think it's got to be Towns and OG together and Towns and Bridges together. And you need a third team. And I think the third team would have to be the Spurs. And the Spurs would be getting either OG or Bridges. I think the Bucks end up with Towns and Vassell and multiple first round picks from San Antonio.

And then the Knicks would get Giannis, but they would have to take a couple of contracts. They'd have to take Connaughton and they'd have to take Kuzma. And I don't think this will happen because if I'm Milwaukee, I just wouldn't do it. I'd rather keep Giannis, take him into February. And if we have to trade him then, I just feel like I have more leverage at that point. I wouldn't do it. I would not trade Giannis. I am on the record. The East is weak. I'd keep him.

He might be the best player in the whole conference. Keep him, figure it out. Indiana has shown you that maybe if you build the right team around a great player, you can move your timeline faster than you thought. So I would not trade him. Would you, what would, what would happen for you to have to trade him or so? What would you need? Just like to be overpowered with picks? What would it be? Before the combine, you and I, your statement there, I have absolute agreement with after the combine, I would just get it over with now. Cause I think at this point you can get a ton for him.

I think if it gets weirder, whether it's before the deadline or it's next summer, I don't know that the value is going to be the same. And we can talk about the time out of the contract and control, which is also a factor here, but

I'd say of all the topics that I discussed with people, more than half of it was what's going to happen with Giannis. And it was kind of all over the place with different theories and different meetings. And here's what the agent's saying. And here's what he's not saying and all this stuff. I'm like, this is just way too much noise about something that like if I'm Horst, I would just get in front of it and try to load up on all this because you're probably going to be trading them and it's going to be in a depressed market a year from now or next February.

So normally I totally align with you, Bill. If he's happy and wants to come back, that's all I need to know. You're absolutely right about the East. I mean, if Giannis ends up in the West after the lottery and my God, this East West thing, you know, this is, we're going to need a summit for this. If I'm Giannis, I don't want to go to the West. Yeah. I wouldn't want to go to the West either. You want to do the LeBron? LeBron was smart enough in the 2010s to realize like better conference. I should stay here.

To me, obviously if he wants out, are you saying that you wouldn't trade him even if he asked out? Are you saying that you'd hold on to him even if you said, I want to get out of here? Here's how the league works. If he does ask out,

He will tell them, these are the three teams I will go to. Right. And then you work with the deal with those. They're not going to trade him to somewhere he doesn't want to go. They're like, Hey, okay. Okay. See, just blew the finals. We've traded you to. Okay. See, like, I didn't want to go to. Okay. See, they're going to work with him. So if he says, I want to go to golden state,

They'll go down the road and really try to figure out the Golden State thing. And Golden State, literally everybody would be on the table for them. But if he gives them a list of Golden State, Houston, San Antonio, the Knicks, then you just basically pit all those four people against each other and try to figure it out. We saw this with Durant a couple years ago, where Brooklyn could have just traded Durant, but they actually, he's like, I really want to go to Phoenix. And they were like, cool.

Their owner's insane. He's going to give us 230 cents on the dollar. So this works out great. I don't know if that's going to be the case for 31-year-old Giannis. I think Golden State, because they have urgency, would overpay. And I think the Knicks would do everything possible to make it happen. Because if the Knicks could just end up with Giannis and Brunson and one of the swings, you just figure it out after that, right? You have to do that.

The title is the thing that makes it interesting with Giannis to me. He was able to stay there long enough and actually deliver a title for the team that drafted him, right? And so at this point, giving him the right trade does two things for them. Like...

But observing his wishes or meeting his wishes, that's two things. Number one, it loads you back up to maybe go get another player that you can get another title with. I mean, they had one in so long. I've been basketball relevant so long. They just owe him a lot. Like Giannis is the Bucks right now. That's number one. And then number two, you say goodbye to him in a way that's like not really contentious.

lets him go start over and try to do it with another franchise and you get what you want. Like, you don't drag this out and make this into a situation that, where he's unhappy or where people are looking at Milwaukee as a place where there's

you know, unhappiness in the organization. If he asked out, you brought us a title. We had great memories, the whole deal. Goodbye. Let's start over. And we have everything that we're going to get back from the trade to build and try to get back there again in four or five years. He's not asked out. Right.

So we'll see. All right, we're going to take a break and a lot more stuff to hit. This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. Whether he's been perfecting the patio all spring or is the groundskeeper of the yard, The Home Depot has fast free delivery on gifts to help him do more this Father's Day. Check out cordless power must-haves like the RYOBI 40-volt expanded string trimmer with battery and charger.

Whatever you want. Find the perfect gift for your dad in store and online at thehomedepot.com. How doers get more done, subject to availability. This episode is brought to you by Viori.

Look, I'm not a big let's hype up workout clothes guy, but Viore, I got to say, total game changer. Been wearing a lot. If you see me power walking around Los Angeles, probably going to see me wearing some Viore. Sunday performance joggers that they have, it's made with four-way performance stretch fabric. One of the most comfortable things you own. You will wear them everywhere. I promise. All you have to do is go to Viore.com.

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 U.S. orders over $75 plus free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. So Inside the NBA had its last

TNT show today. And it's been like a, almost a year plus funeral for this show on TNT dating back to last year's playoffs when it seemed like it was said goodbye, even though they had a year left. And then we did that whole thing and they did documentary and, and yet it's just moving to ESPN. It's not dying.

And so on the one hand, I felt sad as a lifelong basketball fan. TNT was such a huge part dating back to when, you know, 30 years ago, however long it was, like, you know, living in Massachusetts, watching that show, those games, seeing Barkley join in 2000, you have this whole history. The three guys together were the best. They add Shaq in, it goes terrible for a year, then it eventually becomes good.

And there was such an essential part of being basketball fans. Um, and it's still going to continue on ESPN. Right. Yeah. Just say what you want to say. I think ESPN is going to fuck the show up. I don't care if I get aggregated. I didn't understand. I think they're going to fuck the show up. I don't think they, they, unless they completely change how they do commercials, um,

The show is going to be different and people are going to be pissed and Barkley and those guys are going to be pissed and I think it's going to go badly. The only way it doesn't go badly is if they do the commercials and they give them the lengthy segments that you need to have that show work. They're going to have to change how they do it. They just paid so much for the NBA.

That if they don't do that and they do these same short, terrible segments that you're about to see in the finals where it's like a one and a half minute halftime and it's like a 20 minute pregame. If they do that, they're going to fuck the show up and everybody's going to be bad. So I'm going to start there, Rosillo. They did pay a lot.

for the NBA. So then to say now all of a sudden you're not going to have all that commercial inventory because we've talked about the halftime show ESPN with people that we really like that are on the show, maybe others that aren't necessarily our favorites, but I barely catch it. Like that's the 15 minute timer to get something done around the house for me. And if I do catch some of it, I mean, it's just a lot. It's like, oh, the best player on the team went two for 10. Somebody's got to step up. Yeah, he's going to get scolded.

Okay, here we go. It's a 30 second scolding. And then I don't know who okayed. Maybe it was because everybody was trying to be the TNT show, but the analysts talking to break. Nobody's good at it, folks. Nobody's good at it. It's just confusing. You're like, are we in commercial or are we doing Carl's Jr.? I don't understand what's going on. It started with PTI 25 years ago, and they're the only ones who are really good at it.

Okay. Thank you. That's it. Little history lesson. I actually think the people that are at the very top with ESPN know this. They haven't cared. Whoever's running ESPN has not cared for this entire century about this. This is something they knew was a problem, and they just didn't care. They just cashed the checks from the commercials. They did not care about the quality of any show they had.

All right. But if it's going to be on the model of like, we bring it in, but you get to do your thing, then don't you think that's the negotiation? Don't you think that's part of it to even get this? I think you could say that coming out of the gate. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, it's going to be the same. And then you get there. And I've literally witnessed this in situations I've been in. Once you're actually there, it's like, oh, yeah, that...

Yeah, the halftime's coming now. It'll be a minute and a half because we got this job. I don't think they're going to do that, man. I don't think they're going to do that. They've done it this whole century is my point. So they're going to have to completely shift what their business motto is to accommodate this show. And that's the only way it's going to work. Otherwise, we're all going to be mad. But this is like the situation when one of your homeboys starts dating a girl that you actually care about and have respect for. And you warn him, don't fuck this one up.

Like it's your cousin or somebody like that. I know how you are. I know how you treat all the other girls that have been around.

but don't fuck this one up. We're paying attention to you now. I think before they could do whatever they wanted to do with these various shows because nobody really cared how these shows were treated. You know, like nobody really cared whether or not you called these shows back, whether or not you took them to cut or TGI Fridays, what kind of hotels you guys were staying in. No one really cared how these shows were treated. Now,

You're dating a girl from our church. You're dating our sister. You're dating our cousin. You got to treat her right or else all eyes are going to be on her. When she starts complaining, we're going to be like, hey man, this isn't right. Okay? We care. So I don't think that they'll treat Charles Barkley like anything other than the prom queen. For the three of us, it would be more fun if they

mistreated him a little bit because he would be the all-time... I'm going to say my piece about this. I don't like how this is going. Here are my thoughts on multiple platforms. That happened to me once, Van, and the guy was married. I was like, you can eat all the dicks. This has been a weird thing, though, because...

There was all this stuff said, and you all know Barkley's my forever number one. There's never, never going to happen. The greatest guest of all time, too. Well, he's my favorite athlete. There will never be anybody that I'll care more about as an athlete than him. I think it'd be weird at this stage of my life. Like, nope, I'm moving this guy up. I mean, unless I had a kid, but even he'd have a hard time because it's like, I doubt you're going to be as good as Barkley. This is tough for Chris Paul to hear this, but go ahead.

Chris knows. So we talked about it. Yeah. He's fine. He's a competitive guy, but yeah, he's, but Barkley was like, I might sign. I might not sign. Like Barkley wasn't,

dumb about it but he was doing almost a book tour with his contract negotiations remember like the live thing was getting involved and like that stuff was happening and that's where some people with their agents they'll get it out there more and more and everybody just starts talking about it then it's like the scott boris thing you're like we only had to pay this guy 200 million bucks what a bargain

You don't realize it all worked. Ernie had said he'd never work anywhere ever other than TNT, and if the show wasn't on TNT, then he was done. I've been confused about this show so many fucking times where I thought last year, I was like, this is it? And then you have to look it up. Then there's another year left. There's another year, but the rights...

But now if it goes here and then it's like, no, we're just running it back. Three of them are like, we haven't signed deals yet. It's like, so you don't have the show? Barkley saying he'll never do it again anywhere else other than TNT. So I've made my peace with the fact that it's over. But no, it's not over. I actually didn't know that it was that they were moving to ESPN as a unit to maybe like two, three weeks ago.

I literally thought the show was over because they keep saying it all the time. And so I'm totally with you being on top of everything else. And look, I would laugh about it, but Barkley dumps on ESPN all the time. Kills them. They did it last night. Kills them. That's the interesting thing to me. He's been shitting on them.

so hard for like the last 10 years tough. So now for them to be over there, that's so fucking interesting to me. But it also speaks to like Jimmy Pataro running the thing going, hey, this is a great product.

this is better than anything we've had. This has been the gold standard. This is what every single new studio show when you sit in on these meetings and I would be in tests of these shows and be like, we want to be more like TNT. We want to be more like inside the NBA. It's like, all right, yeah, well, good luck. How about you let somebody be on these shows more than 12 months and then see what happens? And granted, like... Well, also, how about you give them time to actually...

Better relate with one another. They've done some of the pregame stuff they've made longer, but during the game stuff and then the postgame goes right to Van Pelt. So there is no postgame show. And that's why you have these shows because the game just happened. And then we want to hear from the best possible people talking about the game. And where they shifted it was they want SportsCenter. But the real secret sauce to ESPN is

They're trying to drive as much revenue to SportsCenter as possible. So the faster that they can have that SportsCenter follow the end of the game, that boosts the rating for that SportsCenter. And then they can get, that's 365 days a year. They can just get more money for it.

That's not going to work with inside the NBA. So I don't know. I guess that SportsCenter just goes away and they move inside the NBA in there was the only way that would work because that's what the fans are going to want. If they mess with any piece of this, everyone's going to be mad. And that's the part that I can't wait to watch. Like even like little insignificant stuff. If we feel like it's different anyway, people would be mad and that's it.

I don't know how it plays out. They have to do, legitimately, the exact same show. Replica. Underdog, everybody, the tweets, the golf, they have to do the exact same show. It seems like they're hiring the same crew, everybody's coming, and that was a big part for Barkley. Right. So they, if any part of it

I'm being serious too. If any part of it doesn't move, hashtag not my inside the NBA. It's going to start. I have a question. How does Stephen A figure into all of this stuff? They already took care of that with the deal. That deal is for like first take and he gets his own stuff and gets to do his own. I think they knew when they were doing the deal, you're not going to be on NBA next year in the same way.

But I'm asking, how does this impact his acting? Well, that we're going to have to wait and see. You think, what do you think? They're going to like put him on the show every once in a while, Van? I wonder how Stephen A., who is Stephen Naismith, who is the basketball authority at ESPN. I wonder how these guys come in who literally have been blamed and lauded

for dictating the course of NBA culture. At first, it was like, even when the league was not as fun to watch, these guys would make the league fun, right? Then it was these guys' criticism of the league is part of a larger problem with basketball culture. That's how much influence they have. But it didn't really matter to him then because they were on another network, right? But having those kind of guys who has consequential influence

to basketball culture in his same home field, home turf. I just wonder how that's going to go. I wonder if a month into this thing, we pop up and Stephen A. Smith is sitting up there with them just because he wants to do it. Well, you know, I mean, there's been so much talked and written about the show. There's almost nothing at this point. Everybody understands how consequential the show is. I think the most important thing about it, I was thinking back

The game five of the... And I remember writing about this at the time. Game five, Cavs-Celtics 2010. When the series was 2-2. And the Celtics just kind of killed the Cavs in game five. And LeBron was bad. And seemed kind of detached and didn't seem like, my life's on the line. I got to take care of it. Just something was off the whole game. You're watching it going... No, no, no. This was just... He just wasn't good. Oh, yeah. And it got to inside the NBA after...

And Barkley was so disappointed in how LeBron played. Like he just started talking about it and he's just like, I just don't understand. I'm just so disappointed that LeBron played like that. That's the kind of stuff that made the show so essential because those guys really care about basketball. There would be moments that happen in these playoff games or the end of a series or whatever. These big picture conversations. To me, you know, the show's funny as shit.

Um, it makes me laugh in a way that I don't think any studio show has, but it was the way they could capture the moment sometimes was so important. And that's the thing ESPN can't risk with that show. You have to have these guys after games weighing in, in a big picture on stuff that only really Barkley and Kenny, like that's, that's where the show really matters and they can't fuck with it. What if they replaced Kenny with Mina Kimes? With ESPN people? Okay. Yeah.

All right. Just thinking of crossover appeal, like off the Stephen A point.

Like, there's no way Stephen A's not sitting at that desk with those guys at some point. There's no way that's not happening. It'll be in the pregame, not the postgame. I'm sorry. He will be on there. He will be on there. It's the lock of the year. You can't even bet it. He's going to say, I'm going to go on that. And it's going to be really interesting. I'm not saying he's going to now be a part of the show all the time. But, like, the dude wants stuff. And it's worked out.

And he's not going to have that show exist without him stopping by for a cameo. Well, can we all agree that the more ESPN juice they sprinkle on the show, the madder

the general public will get. Yeah, but that'll be the part that's unfair. There'll be no juice. There's no remnants of any juice whatsoever. And like the second something, it doesn't even have to be different than people are going to get on ESPN skates. ESPN gets actually too much shit because it's on all of the time. And all of us were on pontificating 24-7. Like imagine if CBS or Fox, who's running NFL, also had 24-7 programming of people talking about the NFL.

Like ESPN's exposure, they're just... The amount of volume there is for it of all of us that were either on it then or the people that are on it now, it just leads... Like these other channels, like TNT is like, hey, Bones is up next. You haven't seen this one yet. Somebody's dead. That guy doesn't say shit about Tibbs in his minutes. Bones. Here comes a new charm. He's Dustin from Prince.

Charmed. Alyssa Milano's back. Yeah, listen, I think it's going to be discussed all the time next season. It's going to be weirdly one of the biggest subplots of the year. And I think people are going to be really protective of the show that they really like.

and how it's going to fit into this very strange ecosystem. ESPN's weirder than ever. It really is. It's the weirdest it's ever been from a talk standpoint. One of the last major brand-connected shows. When I say, I'm not talking about like,

YouTube shows or other things like that. I'm talking about brand-connected shows. The show is connected directly to a major sporting brand, a major sporting league that is completely un-PC. It doesn't even try. Completely un-PC. Not PC at all. Whatever comes out, if we're going to talk about it, they're going to have... They don't try at all. Whereas ESPN...

has tried very much to walk the line and be in the game of not offending people or even dialing back some of the political rhetoric of the past couple of years to not offend people. But when Barkley talks about San Antonio, he talks about the big old women in San Antonio. He's going back to the jokes. And so like all of that stuff, whether or not that melds with the culture at ESPN, which is a lot more buttoned up

I'm not sure there's much culture left anymore. Well, whatever. The absence of culture then. So they got to be able to do their exact same thing. And now, you know, if anybody has complaints, they're going to have them with Disney. Okay, but we're ignoring a piece of evidence here that tells us that they're going to leave these guys alone. The Bill and myself, ESPN experience, again, they're different experiences because of who we were with those companies at the time. But the people that we were dealing with,

What McAfee is allowed to do on that show is the antithesis of what all of the people wanted to be on the air when we work there. Okay. Yeah. So he has freedom of movement with the licensing part of it. So that should be the model. That should be. So basically if you license it, you turn it over. Here's the time slot after the game for an hour. We're not touching it.

I also think like Jimmy and Burke underneath Jimmy are smart guys. I do. I really, I know we take our bill and I enjoy sometimes going down memory lane and getting pissed about all this stuff, but like the place at the top feels much more streamlined now. And I just can't fathom guys that have really good track records and

would come in and then go, let's, I'm not, I'm not guaranteeing like it's, it's going to be word for word, note for note, all the same stuff. But I don't know why those, like, if you were telling me there were other people in the past that would still be in charge, other people, you're like, how the fuck is this guy in charge? How is this guy making this decision? Oh shit. This guy got replaced six months later. And now it's a new game of Thrones deal. And now this person, because they were in this person's wedding or something else happened here. You're like, this person's making decisions. You're like, what the fuck is going on here?

You're like, oh, you have to meet with this person. Who's that? Your new boss. You're like, what? I mean, so that doesn't feel like the structure anymore. That was a good summary. Was I wrong about any of that? That was a good summary. No, listen, they're outsourcing something in a way that we've only seen them do with McAfee. But McAfee's on in the middle of the day.

A little different. It's a little different than the spotlight you have before and after NBA games when you're paying 20 million plus for 20, however, 20 billion, whatever it was, man. All right. It's a TBD, I guess. It's a wait and see. Ben, what else do you care about? Should I lay out and have you guys do college football for 10 minutes?

I mean, you could. College football, because we're heading into the summer. And then all of a sudden, college football will be starting in like mid-August. And we'll be like, wait, what? The college football started? Give us the three things you're most excited about this year. Man, these young quarterbacks.

So you have a couple of guys that are like, you have some young guys that are like really on the precipice of stardom. DJ Lagway of Florida, Lenore Sellers of South Carolina. And then you have some guys in new spots. John Mateer at Oklahoma that are like really going to be interesting to watch to see how things go. Right. Arch Manning.

young quarterback who has a small sample size, but the entire college football world, I would say a large portion of the sports world

is going to be watching to see how Arch Manning plays. Obviously, you have K Club Nick at Clemson, Drew Allard at Penn State. What about Nussmeyer? Garrett Nussmeyer at LSU. LSU has a completely reformed roster. And so all of these guys that are in these different spots, first getting their chance. Also at Alabama. Is Alabama running out?

Oh, what's going on at Alabama? I haven't. Are they running out the five star that they had that was behind? Can't remember the kid's name now. I was watching Pacers Thunder from March this morning. So we were really doing that. Yeah. Ty Simpson. I have the assignments that if you want, but Pacers Thunder, was it a good game?

No, they smoked him. I don't know if you guys want this, but the Pacers were 35-28 on March 10th. Now, granted, we know that Nembhard missed time. Neesmith missed two months. As you mentioned at the beginning, they started 9-14, 10-15. They went 15-4. They had a loss at Milwaukee. The one point loss to the Lakers on the tip-in by LeBron. They had an off day before they lost by 21 at Oklahoma City.

So they went on this great, OKC didn't have Chet defensive assignments. Halliburton had Dort on him. Neesmith had Wallace on him.

Hartenstein played Turner, obviously. SGA played Neesmith and Jalen Williams played Pascal. So there you go. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Yeah, I'm kind of out of season with all this stuff, Van, but I'm bigger picture. I'm doing a big Tuesday college football thing. Bruce Feldman's coming on this every year, every year now. A sport I love disgusts me.

me far more than any other sport like this sport is it rotates you don't ever know what the sport's gonna be no it's just the new thing where we shouldn't have had 12 teams now we're gonna have 16 and the sec and the big 10 i don't understand how the big 10 all of a sudden after two national championships is like yeah we're awesome too now um because the depth of the conference is not the same as the sec but that's not really the point because i'm mad at both the sec and the big 10 for doing this all right so you

You ransacked everybody else's conferences. Now you're pissed about how deep your conferences are. And now you want four auto bids apiece. So it's 16. You guys get eight. And then I don't look, I haven't read through all the different proposals, but it's just sucks that the sport has no like David, they need a David Stern who would just go, yeah, actually we're not doing any of those things. And I don't mean to sound like a guy who's,

you know, at a neighborhood meeting here at an HOA thing, but for the greater good. And this sport is not about the greater good. And it's fucking gross that Stanford plays awake in an ACC game. I mean, you've heard all these rants from me before, but all the latest news cycle stuff with college football, it actually gets in the way of my excited, uh, excitement for Nussmeyer dialing it up, taking chances on third and slinger. Yeah. Third and 12. Fuck it. We'll probably be out here for fourth and seven. Um,

I'm going to be honest with you. I don't pay attention to it anymore. There you go. And the reason why I don't is because the core is this. I want to be able to enjoy LSU versus Mississippi State on a random Saturday. Anybody can enjoy LSU Alabama. Anybody can enjoy LSU Florida. Anybody can enjoy LSU Texas. I

I want to enjoy LSU State. I want to enjoy LSU out of conference, like lower FCS teams. I want to enjoy college football in its essence. And the more you pay attention to everything that's happening in and around the sport, you just can't because it's not the same. So you block it out and compartmentalize it, it sounds like. I block it out and compartmentalize it. I pay attention to programs,

players, recruiting, and coach movement. Because the business part of it is such a fucking bummer right now. Every once in a while, to Ryan's point, I'll think about the fact that the Pac-12 doesn't exist or that SC has to play Minnesota

in conference. And I'll be like, yo, what the fuck are we doing? Like beyond even a cultural standpoint from what college football is and used to be, that doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense to travel across the country and play somebody and then have Penn State come to the Coliseum and walk in quicksand for the first half of the game because the guys are traveling too far. It doesn't make any sense. Can I piggyback on that? Sure. Because having some parent people in my life who have kids who compete in college level,

And how these conferences have screwed up even beyond football. Like even if your kid's playing girls soccer, running cross country. And it's like, yeah, my kid goes to Berkeley. We have a meet at Penn State this weekend. It's like, how is this college sports? The whole point of the conference is where you're putting teams near each other

So that the kids didn't have to travel that far so that they could continue to do schoolwork and they could play sports, but it wouldn't dominate their entire life. We lost that narrative, what, 20, 25 years ago once the conferences started getting weird. Well, yeah, but nothing is insane. Yeah, I mean, I was watching Carter Bryant, the Arizona kid, for the draft last night, and it was the Arizona-Oregon game. And I was like, oh, yeah, good old, and I even stopped myself, like not a good old Pac-10, Pac-12 game. This is a Big 10, Big 12 game.

Yeah. This is fucking stupid. But this started with the Big East when the Big East started to get a little weird. And the ACC, that first time when they started jumping back and forth and were like, well, you could go back to the Big Eight. You could talk about, you know, the Big Eight part of it was a disruption, but at least all of it still made geographical sense. And the Big East, there was a couple of different things that happened. They screwed themselves. ESPN offered them a really like,

straightforward deal for their college football TV rights. And they pushed back and it was like, well, cool. You morons are like fifth on the priority list. It was one of the big forks in the roads of this century for sports. Right. And then they got competitive about, oh, you're not going to do this? Watch this. And they beef up ACC and the rest is history. It's just also, it's kind of like a

and I don't mean to get too into the weeds on it, but it's a larger conversation about like moving from a society where culture dictated football to

into a society where money dictates football, right? So when culture dictates football, you have different areas of the country that play football in different ways because of the caliber of player and the style of play that comes from there, right? You had Pac-12 pretty boy football. You had bruising down South SEC football

with speed and power. Kind of the same thing. Grinders playing in the cold weather up there in the Big Ten. And these teams would meet each other and there would really be a clash of those different places. But it was dictated by the kind of talent you could get from where you were and the kind of schemes and offensive and defensive identities. That's what I miss. And I've already done this too many times, but for Bill's audience, when you threw on a game, you knew everything.

what it was supposed to look like and that to me was fun you know i don't want to drive i was almost in nebraska the other day you know what it looked like fucking nebraska yeah i like that i turned around but i like tommy frazier i would add i would add these two wrinkles

Oh, they'll never make me the czar of sports. I've pushed for the job forever. My best chance was probably the Obama administration because he actually listened to the content. He didn't care. Thankfully for him, we have a college football playoff. And thank, thankfully for him. I don't think people should be, I think if you're at a school, you have to be there for at least two years should be, would be one rule I would make. So you can still have the transfers. You can still have that stuff, coaches or players.

It's two years. If you want to transfer, you can do it after two. You can keep your eligibility, but you still have to make a two-year commitment to whatever school. That would be the first thing. The second thing would be, can we fix the conferences somehow? I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. Like what you mentioned earlier about if there was a czar or whatever, that'd be the first thing they did. It's like, all right, guys, this is...

This is stupid. Let's press the reset button and just start this over. Maybe the teams on the West Coast should try to play as many of the West Coast teams as possible. That's a conversation with Fox and ESPN. That's really who you're having a conversation with. You're having a conversation with Fox and ESPN or Amazon or Apple or whomever else is making the money go through the roof to

to align the super conferences and make it worth their while to do it the way that they're doing it right now. That's not a conversation. So we're heading toward, we're just heading toward a 30 team college football league, basically, that maybe exists outside of NCAA. Maybe two that are 20 each. Or two giant conferences. And that's why they're already doing this stuff to be like, and we already get all these automatic bids and you just go,

like part of me understands the stronger conference, like some of these schedules, you look at them and go, and you've got to be kidding me. Florida. How do you get through this with three losses? And you could be considered a top 10 team in the country, but you know, all the conference, the conference stuff on the realignment part of it as Indiana fans hate me because I was like, you, you didn't play anybody. And you also have the 16 teams, the big 10, um,

I think they played one of the top seven and they of course were one of the top seven. And then you poo poo the Pacers for like a month and a half. Yeah. You really need to win them back. Maybe Hoosiers rewatch once again. Yeah. Some fever stuff maybe for you.

Well, I'm an Angel Reese guy. That's what I'm talking about. Ryan knows what's up. Made a lot of progress. There you go. That's what I'm talking about. We still working the game out. We still getting our left hand right. We going to make them layups. But you're a rebounder. Great rebounder. Great rebounder. Mitchell Robinson-esque. Did you guys see that Cooper flag was estimated to make $28 million in NIL last year?

I never did any of that stuff. That's right up there with the videos. I don't believe videos anymore. And I don't believe NIL. That's a lot. Or the contracts for podcasts. Oh, those are, I believe some of those things. You signed around $125 million deal. Okay. Um, this seems pointed. No, it's just, I don't just, people seem to report some number that an agent gave them. Like, all right, I'll put that in the newspaper. It sounds good. Um,

The $28 million for Flag seemed high, right? That's a lot of money. Why would he have stayed at $38 million? I think part of that is he wants to be an NBA player. But he could have leveraged. He could have done the Eli thing. I still think that would have been so much fun if he was like, eh,

I don't really love Dallas. These are the NIL conversations that I'm having. Number one, I'm hearing that there are actually high school kids that have committed to various schools that are being paid $10,000, $20,000 a month while they're in high school for them to keep their commitment.

That's bananas. That's bonkers. That's crazy. That is because, you know, now the commitments are worth even less than they used to be because the money talks even more than your relationship with your position coach or whatever. The Cooper flag thing, he was only there one year. And so him making $30 million from NIL, is this from his senior year on or one year at Duke? That seems like too much money.

I know he's got some commercials to go off, but it was the reported number. What was baked into the number? I didn't see the piece. So 28 seems like a lot. 28 seems high. I would have guessed like six. Did he have part of the TV rights in there? I don't know. I don't know where he's getting it from. Yeah, but you think like if that was kind of money floating around,

Caitlin, if she had stayed for one more Iowa year, I can't even imagine what she would have been wearing. Yeah. See now we're, now we're talking because what is she like at $87,000 or something? But the, and this is, this is the part of the WNBA conversation where I would stick up for their salary plight is that it's like, well, you make all this money off of the court. It's like, okay, but what the fuck? Like, so you're admitting like, Hey, we're not going to pay you anything an hour, but you're going to make a lot of tips. Um, right.

Well, they have less games and they're on the old contract and they have the new contract they're negotiating. But the league, like the ratings for the league are like stunning. And you could argue like Chalamet was there in the Knicks side and Caitlin Clark was there on the, on the Indiana side. It's like, I don't know, not,

Not far off from a star power standpoint. She's a massive star. I don't think that she's a bigger star than him. We can make the argument. I don't know. He's had some $250 million debuts. It's a good argument. So Dune debuts. So he has Dune and he has Willy Wonka.

You know, I'm in on Chalamet. I don't want people to think that I'm not in on Chalamet. I'm in on Chalamet. Definitely in, right? He's a huge star.

But I would say that like there is a little bit of wish casting that's going away, that's going on with like how big of a star Timothee Chalamet is right now. Dune gigantic, two gigantic movies. But also Dune is like this huge science fiction IP. Willy Wonka is this huge science fiction IP. So I don't know. Can I give you a counter? Can I give you a counter? He's hit the point that is the hardest point to get to where if he has a movie coming out,

there's just general awareness that he has a movie coming up. And the last person who hit that point was Leo. It was like, if Leo is making a movie, it's like, oh, Leo's making a movie. I'll probably go see that. I think Tarantino's like that as a director. I think Fincher has hit that point. I think Christopher Nolan has at that point. It's very hard. PTA, but at the same time, like his movies haven't,

made giant money the way some of these other ones have. That's the thing. Like, critically, yes. Those of us that are artists. Yeah. For the artists, for the screenwriters out there. Thanks. But I think Leo is the last one before Chalamet where it's like, if you see an ad for a new Chalamet movie, you're like, oh, new Chalamet movie. The question for me is, did MBJ get there after Sinners? Or maybe he needs one more after Sinners to get that. But I don't know if he's there yet or not. But I think Chalamet is.

I think Coogler is definitely there. I think Coogler is definitely there. Coogler is definitely there. I think Mike is right there as well. Sinners is one of the most successful movie projects, maybe the most successful movie project of this century to me.

Just because it's a completely original story. Yes. That is like incredibly ambitious, like incredibly ambitious. All black cast in the South, like not a four quadrant movie. Set in the 1930s. Horror.

like a horror set in the 1930s, all black cast, high budget, and it does what it does. It's really remarkable, to be honest with you, as a filmmaking experiment, what the movie was able to accomplish. Yeah, it's cemented Coogler. He can do whatever he wants. I told Van when we left the theater, we saw it the day before the movie came out, right? We saw it like that Thursday at four o'clock. Thursday, yeah, it was Thursday at four o'clock. I told Van $200 million at least.

Yeah. He's guaranteed. I'm very proud of it. It was one of my good predictions.

Right. I've had some bad ones, including OKC versus Boston for the finals. This is one of mine. I stuck with that one all year. Bill told me, we were walking out of the theater and Bill told me, he goes, listen, if the black community just shows up like they should for this movie, I'm telling you, the sky is the limit. Did not say that. He goes, because I can tell you that I felt it. I felt it deep in my soul. If the black community can just show up for this movie like they should.

The sky's the limit. We agreed it was going to make a ton of money. It's like Todd Chrisley getting out of jail. And then...

Is he out? He's one of the great civil rights leaders of our times. Did you see what he said, Bill? Wait. Todd Christie gets out of jail and he's in his first... And you know, there's a whole thing Trump pardoned him. So he doesn't want to do that. He wants to come back out and still be cool. He goes on a whole soliloquy about how bad Black men are treated in jail and how great he was treated while he was in prison. Todd! Todd!

please clip that show like Todd was showing up telling you man he goes I was allowed to watch TV I'm going to wrap up because it's been almost two hours unless you guys have anything else Ben we have seven minutes left in the pod if you have one more topic give it to us no that's it you're tapped out

I want to go to the gym. Let's be done. We're still allowed to go to the gym. We don't need to preview the OKC Indiana series. OKC is a minus 750 favorite, and we can do that on our next podcast. I'm going to preview it Tuesday. I'm going to watch the March game again. I like what you did. I like what you did. You're so happy about the Pacers, you didn't want to talk about the finals. Minus 750 is a massive line for the finals. And I don't... Going back to... You'd have to go back to Lakers-Nets, I think.

to see probably a more one-sided matchup. Maybe the second Lakers-Nets one, where it's just like, I can't even try to make a case here. I'm going to ask one question before we go. From a franchise standpoint, what kind of trouble would OKC be in if they lost the finals here? It seems like there's not a ton of pressure on them. Obviously, it's their first time getting there. They've built pretty progressively.

over the last couple of years to get here and have this happen. But they are such a well put together team, such a dominant team in so many different ways. And a lot of young players, a lot of flexibility right now with what they're paying people on the roster. But if they don't win now, if they don't win, you could argue that they need to win this finals to start the run that people think they're going to have. Yeah, I don't think they're that worried about it.

But I think what's at stake for them is almost like something bigger than the title. Like if they swept Indiana and they finished, they'd be 84 and 18, I think, Rosillo. And that just puts them in one of the all-time great seasons anyone's ever had. They would always have to be mentioned, which is slightly different stakes, right? I do think Indiana will try to muck it up against them, make it chaotic and

try to do what they did with the necks and just push the pace, play with as much pace as possible and just try to make it a track meet. But man, it's going to be hard for them. So the opposite of mucking it up? Well, mucking it up and just making it chaotic and weird the whole time. You're right. Mucking it up is the wrong word. Making it chaotic, whatever that verb is. I had an idea in my head of what mucking meant. So just chaotic-ing it up. Is that a verb?

Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I'm being a little unfair here. They just want to, they have to do this and make OKC try to play with them. And that's Indiana's superpower, at least so far. Play our pace. You're going to do what we want to do. Do this with us. And then they rope you into it. You're like, this is fun. I love doing this. And all of a sudden you're down game one.

But I don't think that's going to work. So to put it in perspective, minus 750, it was minus 375 against Minnesota. And I was like, man, that's pretty aggressive there. Because I thought Minnesota would be more competitive in that series. They were not. I didn't think they were going to win the series. This is, I'm looking at it right now. You would remember this better than I would, Bill. But were the Lakers minus 2,000 against the Sixers in 2001?

It was unbettable, but I don't remember what the exact... Yeah, I don't remember what the exact one, because then the Sixers won game one in OT, and it was like, oh, shit. Team. Team versus me. No, I think if you're looking at OKC bets, so them to sweep the series is plus 330, and them to win in five is plus 220. They're down to minus 700 on FanDuel now, but I think...

House is already on record as he's betting the sweep and he thinks Indiana will not win a game. That price is great. You can go against it in game three, all that stuff. I think Indiana could win a game though. OKC got killed by Minnesota in game three. Young teams, especially in the road, I think they bet they were a little different home versus road. I think Indiana could catch them in one of those games.

but we'll see. All right, Rosillo, say hi to everyone at the gym. Van, a pleasure as always. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well for producing this and we'll see you next time. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rosillo and Van. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. Don't forget, you can find all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel.

Prestige TV, The Better Sister. That's happening this week. I'm going to be on that one. And then Rewatchables, Out for Justice with Steven Seagal. And I will be back on this feed on Tuesday. See you then.

Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat.

in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York.