Caleb Wilson Fever, 2020 NBA Redraftables, and the ‘Odyssey’ MVP Rankings With Joe House, J. Kyle Mann, and Jason Concepcion

The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by PayPal. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did Hitch. The Will Smith movie. It is a 21-year-old, one of the last really, really killer rom-coms. So we had fun breaking that down. Next week on Monday, we're going to be doing a live rewatchables on Netflix. On Monday, sometime in the afternoon. And I'm not going to tell you what the movie is yet. I'll tell you over the weekend what we're doing, but there's a really, really good chance you've seen it. So we're going to be going live on Netflix, rewatchables, Monday afternoon, Pacific time. So stay tuned for that. I have no red socks on this episode because they've won 15 straight as a tape in this intro. It's afternoon, Wednesday, they had a double header today, they won one. This is one of the craziest red socks experiences in the history of the franchise. The team is dead. The day I had my colonoscopy, the day Jalen Brown got traded, the Red Sox lost that day. They're 37 and 48. It was my least favorite red socks season. We've probably ever had in my lifetime. There was not a single thing to like. Guys getting hurt. Romany, I think it was supposed to be the next 10 Williams. He's out. Crochet got hurt. Trevor's story, I think was the most expensive of the team, he's hurt. And things just flipped over the last three weeks and it's been incredible to watch. I think I'm going to I'll do something in the last segment on Sunday about it with my dad or my friend Hanchor somebody, but it's been so much fun to watch. And my favorite guy, Wilson Contreras, comes in and is carrying him so he's the new guy, comes in in April. And has this intensity in him and it doesn't fit in with the rest of the team, they have a bunch like the teams of mass who can't hit lefties and Roman Anthony and Marcelo Meyer, like they're supposed to be the young guys that come up and they're doing nothing. And he has this intensity and he's around and it almost seemed like he was on the wrong team for two months. And then they sweep the Yankees, there's the stuff that happens with the nationals where he gets kicked out of two games in a row. And something flipped and he's at the center of all of it and he's my favorite Red Sock player probably since probably since they traded Mookie because he's just a maniac. And he's supposed to say the boss, the fans love him. He's like somebody hits a big home run, he's out of the dugout, he's the first guy, he's doing these like he's just I really feel like he's transformed the team watching him. So anyway, that's been great and I'm glad the Red Socks are good because there's no sports coming on. And that's why for this podcast, you know it's July 22nd, we're doing a redraft of the 2020 NBA draft with Kyle Mann and Joe House after we talk a little summer league. I haven't done a redraft in a while, but we're going to do that. And then Jason Katsepsi came on, I have a big thing about the Odyssey. I'm going to unleash my MVP ballot for the Odyssey because I've now seen it twice. So if you haven't seen it yet, no problem if you want to listen to the redraft and then pop out. And if you have seen the Odyssey, I would highly encourage you to listen to that part with me and Jason. So that is the podcast we're going to take a break, Pearl Jam and then Joe House and Kyle Mann. We're going to do a redraft, haven't done a redraft from forever, I'll explain what we're doing in a second. Quickly want to hit summer league because Kyle Mann ingested a bunch of it. Joe House had, I would say a successful wizard's AJ DeBonza, I literally lost no fans, no mojo, nothing, right? I mean, wildly successful for the wizard. It's not only did AJ come out and cause my text threats to stop being populated with Darren Peterson clips, everybody could step right off as soon as AJ showed up, but on top of that, both Ray Johnson and Will Riley showed out like that was to me as an important revelation as anything because that's really, those are the elemental pieces of the trajectory for this upcoming wizard season. It's going to be hilarious 10 years from now when people are listening to this just for the 2020 redraft and they're like, House is excited for Will Riley, where is he, is he trying to know, it's funny with that top four, wherever you sit on the top four, you kind of got a win, Kyle, like if you were a boozer guy, big win. He did everything that he normally does. They made the finals. He was consistent and really good. Peterson had moments where it was like, oh, this was high school Kobe version Peterson. DeBonza. He had some moments where we went, oh, and then he had some, oh, moments, but overall it was good. Yeah, he had a six for 18. He wasn't perfect. But he definitely, you know, and I thought it was interesting where he talked about finally I'm on the ball and there was like some veiled fuck you, bill self stuff that, you know, it seemed like he was a little more in happier in the college season, but then the big revelation, which was not a revelation to any of us. I was on the record as saying, I thought Caleb Wilson was the most undervalued guy at the draft, even at four. I think there was a real case to just trade back and he might be the best player anyway, which I don't ever normally feel the way with the draft. And he comes in and he hits threes house. I got to say we're a little older than Kyle. He looked very T-Mac-ish to me. That was the one that jumped out to me. I was like, I love this. This is like watching T-Mac again. Like he's a little tall. It's like six, ten, but same kind of skinny inside, outside, but then is adding this explosive of Sean Kemp's side too, and if I was a bull's fan, I would have no sperm left in my body. It would just be ejaculate in every room in my house. I would lose my mind. You need a jizz room for her, what that man did. I did. It's a complete, it's like what we had to call an escape, it was when they gave me this stuff to clean your, clean your phone out. That's what Caleb Wilson was for cleaning the first sperm. Oh my God. How many minutes in are we, yeah, fillers, it's summer season, we're in the summer season, we're getting drunk. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. Sure enough. Did you see? Yeah. Well, here's my question for JKM because the thing that jumped off the screen and he validated it through the sustained outstanding performance, I'm so glad you broke the fuck label right away because I want a curse. This motherfucker, his shooting stroke is so beautiful, it's so beautiful. And this was not something that we saw, at least, you know, us normies, JKM out of his North Carolina performance, right? If he had that stroke, he had to have had that stroke the whole time he was at North Carolina because he wasn't there for very long, but holy cow, he can shoot. And it's absolutely effortless. He has the best stroke. He has a better looking stroke to me, the Peterson, and I mean, I'll go ahead and fight somebody on that. Peterson's being nice. Peterson. I like to fight you house. Peterson's just like this. It's going 25 feet, but yeah, but that was the thing with me where that man was shooting from. Did you see where Caleb was shooting from? But people were digging Wilson with the shooting stuff. And I remember saying this to you a couple times during the pre-draft process, like, guys a great athlete is competitive, he's going to figure it out. It's not like he's going to have this broken jumper for his whole career. What we didn't expect was he would figure it out in July. I hesitate to go like overboard and say, like, oh my God, he's just learned. He just learned with there's a before and an after kind of thing. I think he worked on it in that window between, you know, he broke his hand. He had some time off that, you know, I know he really wanted to play. I would say this. I was more excited about like the defensive stuff that he did where he was just swallowing up people. I mean, his drives and things are a little chaotic. He showed me glimpses. I'm cautious. Not even cautiously. I'm very optimistic. I would say I hesitate to like really read into the shooting stuff because he took some wild ones. They went in. Credit to that is shot. Does look good. The free to percentage is solid. There's always been workable stuff to make you have confidence. I don't think anybody was ever, then maybe some people out there who were just like, it's never going to happen. But when you would watch him do his little rip through fake stuff in the mid-range to get to his like turnaround stuff, it always looked good. So it was just kind of an opportunity thing here. I think it wouldn't surprise me if we come out a little bumpy, you know, because this was just such a crazy first. But I mean, I came out of this event being like, yeah, this dude is absolutely in the taxonomy of the kick. I wouldn't, I don't know if I go, T-Mac because I don't know that he's quite as like T-Mex handle. T-Mex handle was so polished. You know, remember T-Mac year two Raptors go back and watch T-Mac back then. That's true. I don't know how close to anything that he became. Let me, because you were there, how son I weren't. What was like the it factor with him, just being in the room with him, seeing his effect like how he carried himself on the court during free throws, during timeouts, um, people with their eyes on the gym on him. What, what was, give us the verdict on that. I mean, he wanted the moment clearly. And I think that's true of all the top guys, all the top dudes were to the point where they were chasing it a little bit and it got a little ugly as a result of that. But I don't really regret it. They were wanting to put on a show. And that's what Summer Leaks for, you know, and Kim Boosert didn't really do that because he just doesn't do that. You know, you remember last year, you know, Cooper, even Cooper is competitive and psychotic as he is. He got caught up in the bright lights and tried to put on a show. But Caleb just has a smiley confidence about him. And he's just very sure of the work that he's put in. Even, even if it's chaotic this year in terms of like the percentages and the outcome and stuff like that, it'd be really hard to bet against him not having just a continued upward trajectory. I was going to say he's kind of in that taxonomy of like a KG type body and maybe input the Sean Kemp in there too. If you just watch him, I clip this out on Twitter. If you just watch where he starts and where he finishes without much momentum, without bending his knees at all, Wilson can get to ceilings that other people can't get to and he does it faster. Like he doesn't really need much of a load up or a runway to do it. He's just such an impressive athlete, man like breathtaking. House, Fandall, Rookie of the Year, it's right now. I'm not allowed to bet. Who do you think is the favorite? Booser. That is correct. Plus 290. Who do you think is second? Caleb Peterson, plus 310. Okay. And then Caleb and AJ tied at 4 to 1. Huh. But I don't remember a rookie of the year where we had four choices kind of clustered together as the top four. And I honestly don't know what the best bet is. But I would say from even what we saw in Summer League and what we saw the teams doing this summer, the Wizards are going to be a little bit more of a complete team. I don't know if AJ is going to have the usage rate and they they seem I don't know whether Davis is saying all the right things because they're actually going to trade him and he's playing the game right now or whatever. But all those guys were there. They made a big show of like, Hey, we think we're going to be pretty good this year. So you have that. Booser is going to be on a Memphis team that I think he's going to be exactly what we thought 19 and 10, 20 and 10 somewhere in there. Peterson, who knows? And then Caleb is the one to me that I just feel like he's going to have the ball a lot and they're going to put everything on him in your one. I don't know. And I don't know why they wouldn't. And I think he wants it. And it's not like something there's a ton of stuff on the bulls anyway, where it's like, Oh, that guy's going to take stuff for this guy. I just think I was a bulls fan. I'd be out of my mind. They've been waiting for this since Derek Rose got hurt basically. So who would you take out of those for just out of curiosity Kyle? For rookie of the year. Yeah, right now. I think they're going to be high highs of like scoring output from Peterson. It's going to be pretty predictable. I think it's probably why they have Cam Boozion number one. I just think Cam's going to be very productive and very steady and really contribute to winning. I think he's going to make that Grizzly's team make a lot of sense in a more direct, you know, DeBonce is not going to have the opportunity to do this directly and like be the centerpiece guy. I on the ringer NBA show, I compared it to the way that Tatum came in. Granted, not one to one. It's just you got some older players ahead and like he's going to come in and be this very talented dude, but not just like overtly given the keys immediately in the way that in the way that Boozor will. So I understand have a Boozor number one and I'd probably pick him for that reason. Yeah, Tatum was over a lot of times just in the corner like a stretch for three and D type guy and they would have to kind of nudge him to be more involved. And you know, I remember Verenne and Kalm about it during the playoffs like, yeah, like let's get this guy. The car key is a little bit like there's more here. We actually need the offense. I think AJ will probably want it. And then the other big winner, you know, Brown did what we would have expected. I still think the question for him was never talent but durability. We'll see in December, January. But Burys was the one that I think surprised some people. Not us. We were we were calm for it, but you know, he had the ball more and guess what? Like that's how he played his whole career except for last year. House, if you're the Clippers, are you grit your teeth at all? Right now that you didn't take the obvious two guard that was sit in there and you got seduced by this wagler and now you're playing him and Garland together when you just had this very obvious two guard you could have put in. It's hard to say because the Clippers are on a project timeline now, right? Aren't they officially like they're and Adam servers ramming in our bump holes project. What project is it? They are not poised to be successful this season or next season or any season that I can think of in the next five seasons. So the investment in and I mean, wagler so young, he still has a little bit of the baby deer look to him. The way he's coming up buries is literally the only shining hope for for an equally horrible box team that is also going to be excruciating over the next five years. And Tyler Hira sure a little chip on the shoulder and a little tiny weld under his eye after you hear about that. You're really about that. I just want to make the case for Caleb Wilson, the win rookie of the year. And I'm going to bet it the little bit now and then we'll see how everything shakes out. I do agree with both of you guys in terms of AJ not getting enough opportunity usage. The Wiz are too far along. I wonder about Peterson getting enough opportunities. I think the jazz will try a lot of shots in that team. Yeah. And that's a pretty polished team like we we all are pretty bullish on their playoff prospects. I don't think they're just going to turn the ball over to Peterson. Caleb, this is the thing with the rookie of the year. It is a narrative award like it's counting stats and narrative. So if Caleb has shows us a couple a handful of spectacular games. He has some 40 point scoring output. You're like, boozer's going to be 19 and 10 and Caleb layers on top of that a handful of these games where these blocks come from absolutely out of nowhere. And if he averages like two blocks of game or something like that, which feels kind of reasonable to me, you made the right point. The balls have absolutely nothing to showcase other than this dude. And it's Thiago Splitter at the helm who will understand the mission, I think. And just ushered in a guy that we're about to talk about on this podcast. He knows how to take a guy, you know, the ascending and give it turn the whole thing over to that ascending guy. Then he obviously I certainly enjoyed Thiago Splitter's time. Thiago at the helm of this bull's team with with Caleb and what they want to do in terms of engendering some enthusiasm. I'm just just him at that four to one range feels like a tiny bit of value to me. You left out the single best case for Caleb Wilson. But he's going to add all these guys. He's going to be the social media guy. He's going to have 50 plays during this season. That my son will know happen, right? Well, that's why I meant spectacular. But this is a whole different element to a point who owns the rookie of the year. It's like, can my son Ben Simmons, the only working Ben Simmons right now? Can my son Ben Simmons know you did something because he's not going to be watching bull's games on league pass. But if you do something that's going to be on TikTok or Instagram, he's going to see it. And I think Caleb, it's not just like he might have a game where he might hit 10 threes. He might have the dunk in traffic. He might have the spin boot move double clutch, Sean Kemp-Dunk. He might have some crazy pin block on the backboard. But kill on all that stuff. Listen, my rule as always is never overreact to summer league. And we're trying not to. But I do think Caleb hitting threes was the one big picture like, oh, wow. Like this is holy shit. There's nobody in the league like this guy. House really quickly. Washington Wizards. 35 plus wins. Minus 110. I mean, that makes exactly perfect sense, right? There are 35 win team. I have on record. I think they're going to come in last in the southeast division and win between 35 and 39 teams and contend for the play in contend for the plan. That's what I think 40. 40 wins plus 240. Nah. No. If you keep Davis all year and he plays like 68 games. So that's the bet. That's the bet. If Davis plays 65 to 68 games, I think you're a 40 win team. I don't want to get on one of those things. Defensively, man. I've said this throughout. I think you could be pretty interesting. If you can have if you can have Deboncissar and Davis at your three, four, five, that is a rangey disruptive defensive group. I mean, you think about all the other teams in the east. I mean, Miami, obviously, with the addition of Yannis, I'm just trying to rattle through and think of the teams that can compare or compete with that pretty, pretty promising, pretty, pretty good. Boston with Paul George. We forgot to say Gidey with Caleb Wilson. That is going to be a very fun toy to throw because one thing Gidey and I was just saying one thing Gidey can do is throw logs and I think that's going to be that alone is going to be a social media phenomenon on those two together for sure. The other one that jumped out was the axle, which was no surprise because he's almost 24 years old. But I think if you're a Warriors fan, you know you're at least getting somebody who's going to be playing in 25 to 20 minutes a game that you didn't have last year. And we'll see what happens with LeBron. But, you know, Butler comes back February, March range. Still not enough, but, you know, can, can Steph Curry at least get to the playoffs and be relatively interesting? Yaxel is going to help, but they, I still think they need a problem. Did you, uh, did you like the Yaxel Boos or rivalry? I feel like this is a budding thing that people aren't talking about. Yeah. They're personalities are just so polar opposite, you know, Yaxel just can't not say whatever he's thinking and Boosers just quietly intensely staring at you. You can tell they don't, I don't, I don't know for sure. I just, I don't suspect they like each other competitively. I'm just keeping an eye on that one. And they matched up twice in the, in the summer league. Well, the only thing, the only real big picture thing left is wherever LeBron goes. Um, and it's just, you know, I went on game over yesterday with Richard Maxx because I was in the office and I was there and I'm going on for 45 minutes. Um, the, the really red flag thing about this LeBron thing, which I don't really feel like is going to swing the title odds in any direction, at least for me, but it is notable that James Harden has ensigned and Dremont has ensigned. So you have two teams that are definitely going, uh, you know, Golden State doing nothing is also doesn't mean nothing. It means they must feel like they're in this. So we'll see what happens with that. I still, I still hope it's gold state, but, um, I still have a feeling it's going to be Cleveland all along. I do have a house before we do the red drafts. I had, I had a great email for you. This is from Harry who, who did, uh, he page conspiracy bill, who's always available. Do you remember for that? No, but he's, he's, he's, he's just, every time there's an email conspiracy bill, conspiracy bill, jossus. He mentioned, uh, Prestee, O K C roster crunch. They have to get rid of, they got rid of Isaiah, Joe, they got rid of Baron Wiggins, right? And then, uh, we knew they were going to probably get rid of Luthor, which they did. They got three second runners for him. Harry says, I 100% believe St. Prestee sought out, not one, but two hawk steels to beef them up this season and knock their first round pick owned by San Antonio down a few spots. Very good, pretty good conspiracy bill. Like he stamped that one immediately. I liked it. Absolutely. I endorse it because it's not like he got a lot for Luthor, right? He's got a couple, a couple of seconds. I'm sure there were a few teams that would offer that, but I wonder, so you think Prestee is that the obvious? Sure. Anything they understand who their, their nemesis is, of course. That doesn't even sound like conspiracy to me. That just sounds like strategy. I agree. Take care of his right. I want to go on record on LeBron. I think he's going to Philadelphia. Just want to say get it out there. Oh, wow. I would bet anything against that. I just want to be on record. Okay. What do you want to bet? Let's bet something good. We'll bet dinner that has food. Yes, done. And then there's another conspiracy bill, email Stuart from Perth, Australia said, does conspiracy bill think DuMars was sent to the Pelicans by the NBA where he worked to make the Pelicans so bad that they would have to relocate to Seattle? I was watching the movie Major League and couldn't help but think they took notes watching on how to get a team relocated. What team goes 26 and 56 and literally does nothing in the off season? It's very solid point. It went 26 to 56 and did nothing other than they earned a two year deal. Andre Jordan to an amazing contract. Yeah. That's not true. Yeah. It's a bad on development. That's what it is. That is literally now that it's them going to Seattle makes no sense whatsoever because Seattle is going to get one of the expansion teams. But what markets are ripe for an NBA team? Seattle and Vegas obviously lead. But where should the Pelicans go? They shouldn't go somewhere. Honestly, Kansas cities, I think a bigger factor than people. Interesting. They just hosted World Cup. That city's built for like big events now and they used to have basketball before. I think Kyle's neck of the woods is another one. I think Nashville, even though it's too close to Memphis, is possible. I wouldn't rule out St. Louis. I think there's a lot of cities. We never would have said Oklahoma City in the mid 2000s. If you have hungry, local, rich people and you have some sort of arena, you could make a play for a basketball team. A conspiracy book. Another one. Mike and New Orleans wanted to know if the Blazer's owner did conspiracy bill think the league wants to get back in Seattle gave this guy the team. He was going to force his way out and barge them to Seattle. I actually don't believe that one because I don't think the Seattle fans want Portland's team. I think they would rather have their own expansion team and start over and they know what it's like to have your team rip from you. And I don't think they want Portland's team. And I also don't think that's why he's doing this. I just think he's super cheap and this is what he did with hurricanes. He has a specific method of he cut costs all over the place. And he's basically like, you guys should help me by an arena. Or I might move. So how much do you want the Blazers here? I don't agree with what he's doing. It's absolutely the most cutthroat thing you can do. But I don't think there's some master plan. I just think the guys cutthroat across the board and that's why he's handling it. Well, speaking of cutthroat, we're going to take a break. We're going to do our first redraft on the BS podcast. I think since the 2018 we did a 2022 range. So 2023 we did it three years ago. You didn't do one since then. No, there hasn't. We did. We did want an honor at chart. So we're going to bring up in this one. We're about to do. But when we come back the 2020 NBA redraft next. All right. So as you know, I remember nothing from 2020 or 2021. I have no memory at all. Apparently I did 14 NBA redraft podcasts. You guys were on a bunch of them. We did 14 on my podcast and on the Book of Basketball podcast. We're a lot of them aren't. It was super fun and never did them again. And during this summer because there's absolutely nothing going out for this couple. We're going to do a couple redrafts. And I text to you guys when we talked about possibilities and the one we landed on is the single weirdest draft in the history of the league. Other than maybe 1986. What's weirder? 1986 or 2020 house? 2020 is super weird. 1986 had like not only the tragedy of the Linbias, but half the guys in that draft became drug guys are, you know, it was like the most jinxed, weird draft ever. But we didn't know that it was just happening. 2020 we knew right away. So 2020 COVID draft takes place on November 18, 2020. Let's start there. I forgot about that. Yeah. That's right. Six weeks after the NBA finals in the bubble, which was even weirder. The season started five weeks later. They had no March madness to study because there was no March madness. They had no draft combine because they couldn't have draft combine. They had for the most part, Zoom interviews. They had prospects only going one on zero workouts basically with mass on a lot of the times. These guys, they went from getting ready for March madness to there's no more college basketball to I'm just going to work out by myself in a gym for four to five months basically. They kind of ramp up the process near the end and they're basically house. They're just fucking grasping at straws. It's the only draft where we can honestly say NBA teams were just like us. They're just watching YouTube and just kind of piecing things together and guessing. You can't overstate how weird it was. I'm glad, you know, it's not fair to compare this to 1986. The whole world was upended. And every single element of, you know, an evaluation of talent for a professional sports league is kind of asinine in a way except it's the business. It's the industry. There's no other way to do it. They did it. They did it. And I'm thrilled that they did it. I actually kind of loved the way that that season played out because we had so much basketball in our lives. There was no dead moment. You know, there was no, let's say I'll take a breather. It went from wow, it was really fun to have the bubble. That was gave us something to look at and compare notes on and talk about. Yeah. Right into this super weird draft. And then right into a season that began was like Christmas ish right after Christmas. Yeah. I think there was a real physical toll on some of the players that lasted long in the playoffs and then had to start the season. That was the only downside for the fans. It was great because we had nothing going on. It's like, oh, thank you. I've had things to watch again. Well, I remember the burnout among people covering it. I remember when they came back, you know, granted the physical tolls a whole different thing. But I just remember when they came back at Christmas and then at the end of that season, I guess extending it to summer league and pre-ABC, I just remember the fried look and people's eyes from the from the toll of that because we were trying to stay busy during that gap where the season ended. I remember we were doing all kinds of stuff like the redrafts and I did a bunch of historical stuff. Granted, we remember the the win in our sales with the last dance and all that stuff, man, I think one of the things with the last dance that people forget is how bad we needed that shit, man. I mean, like people were just so desperate for anything and that alone kept us busy. That big Jordan sort of sweeping win that came in for a while there. Yeah, we're still and I we're doing live podcasts after the two episodes of the last dance like they were sporting events because we had literally nothing else going. So the actual draft when you look back at who the best players and we're going to do the redraft and people can hear it in real time. But I think it's the most off teams have been for who actually turned out to be the good players versus where they were drafted. Like for instance, so in the actual draft, Edwards was one. Lamella was three. Tyrese Maxi was 21. Desmond Bain was 30, right? So Wiseman went two and Wiseman is the guy I think to think about when you think about this draft because they're basically going off three Memphis games. And nothing else. And now you're going back to high school tape. And now you're just looking at raw tools and it's one of those things where if we had had March Madness, I just think so much of this is different. Like what if Halbert goes on a run, you know, in the tournament and makes like the final four, the final eight? What if Wiseman gets knocked out in the first round? What if Lamella was terrible? Oh no, Lamella was a New Zealand. Yeah, so that Lamella is even out on that. Yeah. What if what if Edwards like gets knocked out in the first? Like I do think March Madness swings this stuff one way or the other, but in this case it didn't. And and but Wiseman is the one Kyle that I think we had the toughest time trying to figure out. I went back and our old friend Charx who did all the draft grades after. And the words take Wiseman second and Charx writes, this is simultaneously the safest pick and biggest gamble at the top of the draft quality big matter, easy to find in the modern MBA. Wiseman has to be elite to be worth going this high. So where did you stand when they took Wiseman? Did you feel like he had a chance to be elite? I remember having a similar sort of trepidation that Charx did granted because we were talking about the draft constantly around that time. I had watched Wiseman a whole lot in high school coming up to that weird Memphis season. The other thing too is just the fact that it was the warriors making that pick that was the thing that made me the most suspicious because the things that are the most worried because the things that Wiseman needed to work on. This the warriors kind of conversation about them extending this window like house I was watching your face as Bill was talking about the warriors potentially being in the playoffs and he had a like no fucking way look on his face. But I mean, at that point we were like, hey, I think there's still some more soap in that rag and there was like they went and won a title despite this not working out. But the things that he needed to work on subsequently, Kominga, the following year, I think it was 21. I was looking at those dudes and just thinking man, offensively raw, absolutely not ready for the speed of the way the warriors want to play that worried me. And then you can buy it. It was a lot of fog. If you you're projecting the tape, the college development that we didn't really get to see even at the time it was risky. I think I thought that it was I thought that he could become a good player. I did not expect him to fall off a cliff the way that he did and you know, not even in the league now. So house, my biggest win from this draft was absolutely loved Halliburton and thought he should have gone way higher than he did and went nuts about that the whole draft. So that was a huge w for me. My biggest loss was I like the last pick for the warriors. I was a great pick. Like passing center unbelievable specimen. The guy a year ago would have been hands down the number I'm picking the draft. And this is amazing that they got a franchise center. And it just didn't work out for a variety of reasons. But I I think the biggest one is I don't I just don't think they had enough tape and you start drafting the premise of a player versus what the actual player is. You know, would you think of it when that happened? At that point, the warriors had engendered so much, you know, confidence and trust in a kind of approach to both, you know, player development, player acquisition that I didn't know anything about wise men, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. But there is a through line all the way up to right now this very moment. And my wild skepticism about the warriors making the playoffs this upcoming season between missing on that pick. And today the end of Steph's career that we've been experiencing lost seasons missed playoffs after they won the title. They did eek out one more title. So God bless them in 2022 with with what they were able to put together. But I feel I feel like we you know, we're missing out on something because of the toll on Steph and you know, the way that Steph's career is going to end. If that pick had been somebody solid, somebody credible, what would that have meant for the warriors franchise? And ultimately for Steph, who's really the only guy I care about. Bill, did you see the thing that I wrote in that draft guy? Did this specific thing that I said about Halliburton was like, the league should be doing everything they can to not let this kid end up with gold state specifically said that because that was he would have been perfect for their style of play. He was who I wanted them to take, but they could not trade back and they weren't going to take them into. But I think they knew at anybody in this top 12, that's the guy that if he's on our team would fit perfectly with us and could play on the ball off the ball. But I don't nobody wanted to, you know, they tried to trade back. Nobody was trying to trade up because nobody could figure out the top seven or eight in this draft, especially like it Patrick claims there at a Coro. Nobody could unlock Lamello at all. The warriors thought about Lamello at two and I've talked about this before in the pod, but they had a zoom interview with him that was so bad like they felt like he, you know, was tanking the interview not to go there. And he probably might have, that might have been what happened. I don't think he wanted to play for them. So they were kind of stuck. They weren't going to take Patrick Williams or a Coro. They were going to take a Congu. They were going to take killing Hayes. So if you can't trade back, I don't know what you do. So they took the swing with wise men and they're still paying for it. Can you, like, think about what an abandonment of philosophy. I've said this so many times. You get Steph under these circumstances where this guy is misevaluated in terms of where the league is going, level to level. And they get so lucky that the con takes, you know, Johnny Flynn and Ricky Rubio ahead and just with its backward facing thinking and then you get this opportunity to take this guy Tyree's Haliburton and you say to yourself, well, choose to high. I just feel like anytime you have that type of conversation with yourself about a play where you're like, well, that's, that's too high to take that guy. If you like that person, just take them, like, figure out a way to get them. Even if it's like, go back a couple spots, like, it just, it's such like a shocking, remarkable abandonment of philosophy that they would strike gold with Steph and then failed to see what happened there and then not take Tyree's Haliburton. Well, there was so clearly the God, like, going to be a good player. No, there's one thing that teams didn't like about him. I remember specifically one team in the top 10 telling me this, teams were worried he wouldn't be able to get his release off on his shot in the pros. And they're like in the college fine and the pros at that hitch, he just takes too long known for all it's not going to happen. And, you know, I remember saying this at the time, it goes in, like, what the fuck do you guys want? Like the shot goes in. It's not like this is a long baseball swing that you get to the majors and you're not going to be able to catch up at 98. Like his shot was weird, but it always went in and the advanced stats were unbelievable for him. You know, I remember Herala Bob talked about this. He was like doing everything possible to try to get Dallas to try to trade up, especially, you know, the biggest legacy of this draft is Haliburton Falls and keeps falling and then ends up going to ironically Sacramento, a team that could never do anything right in the draft. So he goes 12. So to recap the top 15 for people, Edwards goes to Minnesota. Why has been golden state number two? Lamella ball to Charlotte. Then we have the Patrick Williams, Isaac Acoro, Shit Sham sandwich combo, four, five Chicago Cleveland, who then I'm getting traded for each other a couple of years later. And both teams still unhappy after that. Acongo with six. Killian Hayes at seven. Shout out to our friend, K.O.C. But this was poor kids. He said so many wins. He still carries the Killian Hayes, like a scarlet letter. This was his worst one, but he's also had a lot of good ones. Obi-toppin eight to the next. And that really should have been a Haliburton team. Like first of all, Detroit taking Killian Hayes over Tyree's Haliburton is fireball and everyone did get fired. Obi-toppin versus Haliburton, when the next they didn't have Brunson yet. Like, oh man. They needed playmaking if I remember correctly at that point. He's not perfect for them. He did the in fairness, top and felt like the surest thing at the moment. What did you write about top and JKM? I was wearing the God at that point, but he was just crazy. He was a little older. He played four years at Dayton, I remember. He was just this elite athlete that we thought could turn into a big-time defender. I mean, there's more stuff to unpack in relation to Haliburton, specifically. I think that's interesting as we like, re-rank these guys, but no. Kevin and Charks were doing the riding at that point on the guys. Got it. Got it. I think Charks had, oh, that I'm calling it up. Charks had a great draft guide. He basically, all the A's he handed out were the right A's except for killing his. That was a bad one. Yeah, I remember he said something about top and like he's the oldest and most ready pro player, but can't guard anybody. Like he's athletic. There's clearly a way for him to succeed in the NBA. But just remember he will not be able to guard anybody in the court and that's how it bore out. So top I went to the next. At number nine, your whizards house, Danny Abhia, Todd Pickett retrospect. One of the best of the decade for sure. It's too bad to get him away four years later. It was a franchise in transition. At number 10, the worst and most egregious mistake in this draft. An incredible what if a fireable offense, Phoenix takes Jalen Smith instead of taking Tyree's however, when they already had Chris Paul and they had Devon Booker and they go on to make the finals anyway in 2021. And Haliburne could have been the third guard in that team and I'm guessing he swings the finals if he's on the I feel like that's worth one of those six games. If you just go from Jalen Smith who you're getting nothing for to Tyree's Haliburne as a rookie coming off the bench and being able to it's it was terrible and it happened. I can't believe they did it. So take him 10 and then Devon the cell is 11, which I was okay with just because I felt like he dropped to I would take Haliburne there too and then finally Sacramento 12 and then after that the draft gets weird. Kira Lewis to New Orleans, Aaron Neesmith, the Boston of 14, Cole Anthony at 15 to Orlando, Stewart at 16 to Portland and then we can end on number 17, Poku who became an incredible source of comedy all the way around. But there's more stuff coming. Let's do the redraft. Which one of you guys wants the number one pick? JKM can have it. Alright, so we'll go we'll go snake fashion. JKM goes one house goes to I'll take three and four and then we'll snake it back and we'll see who can come up with the best team. So who is your number one pick in the 2020 redraft comment? This was an interesting back and forth because I put these guys in tears. There are two guys in my top tier. It's Anthony Edwards is ultimately who I'm going to pick, although I will say this is very, very close for me and the only thing that tipped it and its way is the fact that I'm not sure that Haliburne is going to be I don't know what he's going to be after this injury. As I was sitting down and kind of looking at their paths as players like developmentally, they're really interesting sides of an offensive coin where Haliburne came into the league as this like super, super advanced passer processor who we were like, if he can score the ball, we just weren't sure about it. We were like, well, you know, we know he has all these gifts, but if he's going to be a superstar and I don't feel like he even answered that question until like a few years into his NBA career. There was still doubt about it. It was, you know, once he got to the pastures, he was like, okay, this guy is a system in and of himself. And I don't think you can say that necessarily about aunt, you know, I don't know that aunt's impact on a team like chemistry wise and the way he plays. I don't think he elevates and adds value to other places the same way that Haliburne does. That said, aunt is one of the best, you know, he's, I think in this class, he's the leader in May three. He's, when he wants to, he can be an on ball terror. He's one of the most athletic creative scores in the league. He's ultra competitive. It's very, very close, but just tilting towards aunt health wise is what I'll ultimately do here. Even though it's a pretty tough choice, but those two guys to me are in the top tier. I had that as well. Aunt two conference finals, 26 a game in the playoffs, two second team on BAs on the 24 Olympic team. House, not 25 years old left yet has scored over 10,000 points, 10,000, 8.54. That's a list of seven guys who scored 10,000 points before they turned 25. The other guys in that list are LeBron James, Luca, T Mac, Kevin Durant, Kobe, and Carmelo. Nice list. Pretty good list. Yeah. So he's on his way. He's averaging 25, 4 and 5 for his career. Charcs wrote that he's an elite athlete with a better feel for the game than advertised. All the physical tools necessary to become an all-star caliber wing. And I actually think he's probably a notch above that. He's been twice now. He's been a franchise guy in a final four team, which I think is notable. So did you have him first? Oh, what kind of question is that? Yes. He's faced the league shit. I mean, I was waffling. No, I didn't understand the analysis. I really knew. Let's set some parameters here because this will factor into, I have my selection for two overall. But are we basing this on at the time, what the team needed, the trajectory of the player? Are we basing this on kind of now? We have a lot of information about these players and we know what these players have in front of them. We're in a time machine. We're going back to November 18, 2020, but we know everything that's happened the last six years. So what do you do? It's still Edwards. It's not even close to me, to me, and the reason for that is because he is on another level to me in terms of the force of will. I mean, Halliburton was a revelation in last year's playoffs, absolutely positively. He finally got to the stage. He finally ascended to where he could show what he brought to the table, all of those intangibles, all of those shots at the end of game. But Edwards, he accelerated Minnesota because of who he was when he arrived with that dog in him, with the incredible charisma of leader at his young age, taking the team. Now, I mean, there's a lot of leadership qualities in Halliburton as well. But if you're trying to build, you want a cornerstone for a franchise, Edwards to me a lot easier call than Halliburton. If Halliburton does get hurt in game seven in Indiana, beat OKC, and he just plays last season and he's fine. You see the number one pick in this? It's an awesome conversation. It is an incredible conversation. I think he'd have to be at that point, but we'll never know. It's a great way to go. Well, you're going to take them a second, I'm guessing. I am, but I just want to make a case for Maxi, which I'll take Maxi third and we'll get talk about it. Yeah. Halliburton, number two, Best Guy in a Finals team are ready. 38 playoff games and 24 and 25, 18, 5 and 8, some incredible cultural aerobics. And then one of the saddest moments in the history of the league when he gets hurt in game seven. We talked about all the, what ifs with him in the draft goal and stated to Detroit seven, Nix eight, Phoenix 10. There's another what if we're feeling could have traded Ben Simmons for him. Instead of how it turned out where Halliburton goes with the Sacramento and Indiana straight up, Philly could have been in on that and ended up with, you know, Sabona's going into Indiana or whatever it turned out, or they could have just done this straight up and sent Ben Simmons to Sacramento and you could have had Maxi, who's going to be the third guy in this draft with, with Halliburton. Billy also could have had Shay and Michele Bridges if I'm not mistaken. They've got some pretty tough. Yeah. They have a lot of it. I mean, they would take it. They literally drafted Michele Bridges. They did draft him. They took him. He did. He put it on. Sharks wrote that he's the perfect, this is Hallburn. He's the perfect analytical selection. An Uber efficient score who never takes bad shots. It turns the ball over and who also racks up defensive stats. Let me explain. Can I make another case for, oh, go ahead, I've cut off the charts. No, that's it. My bad, my bad. No, we're done. If you look at the way, when I was going back and looking at these guys and how we think about them now and you look at Neesmith, Graded, I don't know if it's necessarily S-True but Neesmith as it is about Obey Topin, Halliburton affects other players value in a way that is similar to like a Steve Nash or it's a quality that very few guys have. And I think he, any situation that he comes into, I don't think he's as hard to build around because his 0.5ness just shines, it shines a light. He shares the light and it doesn't have to be shining brightly on him all the time. So even though Ant scores more, I think that their offensive end point is the same because I think that Halliburton makes everybody better because he's able to make reads and play this like 0.5 style where he gets off the ball fast. And he produces as much offense as Ant does, I think in the end, I think the stats back that up. I think it's a lot closer than you guys do, really. I have Maxie at 3, he went 21st in this draft, which is incredible. Last three years, 27 points of game, 6 assists, 45, 36, 88 percentages. So in this draft, Minnesota passed on 17 and taken them and traded back. They could add Edwards and Maxie in the same draft, which is out of control. KC had the 17th pick and took Poku over him. They could have had Maxie with SGA. Brooklyn at 19 could have taken him and put him with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant. That would have been weird. And then the crazy one to me house, Miami had 20 coming off the 2020 finals. And I think I can't remember if they lost Droga, true, sorry to whatever. But they just could have taken him and added them to that 2020 finals team. did not do that. And he ended up being being the 21st pick. Charks left it, called him a combo guard who could play on and off the ball. Great combination of team fit and best player available. And he said the only reason he's not a lottery pick is that he's six foot three and won't be a primary ball handler in the NBA. Well, it turned out he's a primary ball handler of the NBA, he fixed that one. So why did you almost take him second house? - Because he feels to me like he's just scratching the surface of who he can be. That's why. I feel like these guys, when we're trying to parse the top of this, are there still levels to what they're capable of? And Maxi, to me, is the easiest to say yes. There's still a whole other. He just played the most minutes of his entire career was an absolute warrior through all of that. - Yeah. - Single-handedly drug a team that had no business whatsoever, winning 45 games. But the combination of the incredible good luck the Sixers had, those dogs with VJ Edgecom, and there you say Jaylen Brown. Well, that wasn't good luck. That's your GM's, the Stevens. That's his player talent evaluation. But I would say what Maxi showed us that there is a whole nother element to his game. And I mean, I think this is part of why I just love this upcoming Philadelphia season. Him with like the innings that he and Jaylen Brown and VJ Edgecom are going to be able to eat together. Creeps so much room for Joel and Beade to be whoever he's going to be in whatever capacity he needs to be. And it's also why I think it makes the most sense for LeBron. LeBron could land there, play 45, 50 games. However many nights, Friday nights or Saturday nights are on prime and NBC, Sunday night NBC. Oh, it's a LeBron game, it's filling their house. I understand, but I'm just making the case out of all the situations. It's the one that made the same case. I made the same case house. I think the basketball fits fun and Philly with LeBron. He got all these guys buzzing around him that he can feed with VJ and with Maxi. And those guys tilt towards scoring in with Jaylen. I think it kind of makes a lot of sense to me. But you think it won't happen, Bill. If he's gone basketball fit, you go to Minnesota, I think. That's a team where he could actually like they can actually win the title if he went there. He's not going there. He's not playing with a mellow ball. I know. He doesn't do clowns. He'd be choking him like home or choking bar half the season, just like Lamello's neck. There's two reasons I think it would be fun if he went to Miami. One is that I think that's a terrible fit of all those guys together. And two, they're annoying fans. They're even more annoying media. We'll be going nuts that they think they're going to win the title. And it's going to be really fun to watch that crash and burn. So we're going to wear media a little shot. This is my favorite. What a hitter. It's not annoying media. What do you talk to them about? It's the most annoying media. They know it. This is the hitter. This is my favorite version. Same no way. Same. They know it. That's the only that's the only way they get attention. I'm a hitter. I love it. I have the number four pick as well. Denny Abdea will be my pick at number four. He went ninth overall. He's an all-star last year. 24/7 and seven used to be in the Wizards. To house his credit, he always said Denny Abdea was good. He was always a fan. Never understood why he didn't have the ball more and why they didn't use him. Kind of unleashed him and then when he went to Portland, he was like, I bet he's going to be really good there. So, house, take a bow. Thank you. I appreciate that. Denny, let Denny take the bow. He's become the best version of himself. It'll be super interesting this upcoming season for them, especially with this crazy ass owner. Will he get that same usage? It was really important. We saw it in those playoff games for him to be the on-ball, the creative playmaker. How does that coexist with John Marant? I thought they should have traded for Jalen. I don't know why they didn't, but if the choices were what they did versus maybe moving some of the resources differently and getting Jalen and trying to, I just think Jalen and Denny would have been kind of a bitch to play against these two physical downhill four weeks that night after night, I think would have been an attack. So, I had, there were two other guys I thought about there, but I thought with the way Denny with the arrow pointing up with him, and he had the best season out of anybody left in this redraft. So how's UF5? Who do you have? I'll take Lamello here. I think that's fair. I mean, I gotta say he was not next on my board, but go ahead. Well, did the offensive engine proposition, and we get to see it, we're going to, now is it true? I saw these reports, is Lamello ball living with Anthony Edwards right now? Is that accurate? Oh, no, that's the best thing I've ever heard. This is, there's some news out there suggesting, even if it's not true, put it out there, as Lamello gets himself, you know, sort of oriented around his new thing, those guys are spending some time together. If that's true, and there's not a camera involved, then, then, you know, what are we even doing out here? I hope that there's a driver involved, as well that it could be Anthony Edwards or his own driver, House Lamello ball, put 52 plus games twice out of six years, zero playoff wins. Yes. Six years, 303 games, 93, 92 minutes. Sure. By the way, we should have mentioned this earlier. Way more fun of Golden State just says, fuck it and take some second, right? We know you want to be here, but that's fine. We'll figure it out. We're going to put you in. We're going to basically make you what Jordan Pool became as this kind of heat check I have to bench instant offense. Let's see if we can fit you into our system and it just would have been a fun experiment. I don't even know if it would have worked. Who knows? Well, they had to have had an opinion, you know, they, they, they clearly consulted, you know, the, the vets in the room. Do we think that we can take a, a spin with a, with a teenager and it's not just a teenager, but like, do you think they can solve for anyone? Do you think they can solve for anyone? I don't think they did. No, I don't. For me, the Lamello thing was more, he played in New Zealand. His family was weird. Okay. The family part was still very in play. Yeah. It's easy to forget. That was still a big point. It was like, is this guy an N1 player or real player like there were some real stuff six years ago? Do we need this circus? Yes. We don't need this circus. Yeah. And this can be a professional. Yeah. Which by the way, we're still not 100% positive. But, um, so House, you're, you're in on Lamello here. Would you take them higher? Would you take them for? No. No, no, no, no. He's not. Then he obvi, uh, for where he seems to be headed, I would like to invest in him more than Lamello. Sharks had some interesting thoughts on him. Six seven point guard with an elite passing ability who will be a triple double threat from day one. The question is whether he will ever be a threat to make threes instead of just take them. Bell will like, a ball will like would be an inefficient offensive player for the first few years of his career, but he will make everyone around him better. Well, true. I mean, last year when he played, which was only 28 minutes of game, but he did, you know, all the offensive stats, the I test, like I thought he had a really good season for him for them last year, but they were very careful about how they used him and Minnesota is not going to be able to be as careful, you know, that's going to be the 28 minutes of game is out. You're up to 35 now and we need 70 and we are going to need two, three or four rounds from you in the playoffs. I have no idea if he can do it. I wonder if Charlotte in the playing game just saw something they just opened the patient and saw cancer in terms of their, their, their chances to be like a, because the rim pressure is the thing because I had written, you know, a dove on a lot of these guys and I was, I wrote down that Lamello, you know, Chuck's mentioned the shooting and I think he's proven himself over time where, let's see, nine players this past year attempted 300 or more threes off the dribble. And only Jamal Murray had a higher percentage than Lamello and that sort of stuff. So the wildness was good, but just getting to the rim, I rewatch some of the Orlando game and it's just like, you can't have that guy as like your, your primary option and maybe Charlotte thinks that they're not going to lose a ton with their passing and stuff with Miller and Conn. But he was 46.4% from two and inside the arc, he was like 50, like at the restricted area, he was like 51%. It's really bad. So you're not getting free throws. He just can't be your primary option. So I kind of wonder if he's closer to Jamal Murray, honestly, in terms of like what we should expect from him, like star status wise. Listen, there's so many fascinating things about this season that is now one, two, three months away. Lamello playing on Minnesota with real expectations is in that, I mean, that, you have Jalen Brown in Philly. You're going to have wherever LeBron ends up. You're going to have like the new era Luca and Lakers and Kessler and the, and the snowtime Lakers, the Celtics will pot. There's this league. I don't know how over and over again if they didn't even mention the snow globe. The rookies. All the rookies. Yeah. They plan a mochi time, bro. I mean, right now mid July, I'm ready. Yeah. Can't wait. You know what, I'm really ready for the football. I can't wait to put some bets down Kyle. Man has has two picks in a row, Kyle. Man. This is a house. Have you thought it all about how you guys let go of Ovidia, this big physical wing who gets downhill and you just basically reset with the, like DeBonza is just sort of the spiritual reset of what you all would have had. So you're kind of, you turn out pretty well for you. I'm sure you're aware of that. Yeah. You tank. So you could basically get any idea again, as a, well, that, that's the basketball gods shining there. They're good light down on this franchise for that. sound decision making because the franchise wasn't ready for this version of Denny, it wouldn't not have made any sense. He would not have risen to these heights. He was being held back by the, you know, the direction that the franchise was going. And I give the, um, the front office credit for recognizing he was on a different timeline than the franchise was on. They need to be building up with these guys that are all between the age of 19 and 21. We have six or seven of them now. And they're all in the same contract. That's why, you know, we'll, we'll make fun of Tray Young's contract for the balance of the season. But Tray Young's contract. I know I have any Davis Davis extension that Washington will probably pay for. It doesn't really matter because they have everybody else's on a rookie contract. They have to reach a certain floor salary floor has required by the CBA. The funniest moment of the season is going to be the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth game in the season. Tray Young's going to have like 39 points and hit a big three and do this with the Wizards jersey. House is going to be like, we're back, baby. I already have this jersey. I mean, you know, and we're going to be studying the still frames and in the background. Yeah, AJ's just going to have his hands on his shoulders looking off into the distance. I'm going to be, I'm going to be magnifying us. Oh, and that the blazer should bring Maureen off the bench. I just wanted to throw that in my next two. I have Jayden McDaniels. He was fifth on my board. That's fine. He was fifth on mine as well. Come in. Very fair. This is we get into it. My second tier, I wouldn't say was playoff level primaries. That was Maxine Nadia. Now we're into elite specialists. Yeah, McDaniels, he became a much better catch and shoot player from three this past year. He's one of the most dynamic. He's really, really good off the ball chasing defensively, like navigating screens and things like that. Very slinky and spindly and explosive. But he's also very good on the ball. His matchup difficulty consistently through the roof. And he's also just one of the meanest fuckers in basketball. If you just watch his face, I sometimes just want to pat him on the back and be like, Jayden, dude, it's cool, man. It's all right. Like he's he's just such a monocle to competitor. I love the dude. He's one of he's one of my favorite players in the league. We should be able to vote on that when we do awards at the end of the year. There should be a meanest fucker first team. Well, he, he revealed that in the first year. Joker's got a dark side. She's like, are you okay? Yeah. McDaniels definitely is is a mean motherfucker. That's per series pulled it out of him in a way. Like it was personal for him against Denver as well. The thing that I wonder and I will wonder this entire upcoming season is why Minnesota didn't just run it back. And I do get the idea of moving on from random off season. Yeah. Like getting rid of Randall is kind of fine. You can kind of run it back without Randall, although speaking of inning eaters, he has been pretty durable. He has played and given them, you know, minutes over the court, but it's a very weird decision for them to go in the direction that that they've gone, especially in the face of of of a Wembee West. That that's the I hated it. I still hate it. I'm always going to hate it. I thought they ever reacted to some injuries and some bad luck and under reacted to the fact that they had been two conference finals in a row and had a pretty young team for the most part. McDaniels, a couple of things with him. He sharks wrote this. The biggest surprise that might be that the thunder traded McDaniels instead of keeping them for himself, for themselves. He could have been on OKC. He's like the quintessential prestige guy. The Lakers ended up with the 28th pick and traded it with Danny Green for Dennis Schroeder. And then OKC flipped the pick after that. So the Lakers also could end. Now it took them a couple years to get going. And then the other piece, and I certainly made fun of it at the time when when Minnesota gave up all that stuff for Rudy Go Bear and then put out they were they were adamant about keeping Jade McDaniels. It's like, Oh, cool. Congrats. You just gave up a hundred first round picks. Turned out to be the right move. I'll take the L. Who'd you have for the other pick comment? I was going to note an inefficiency. I think that was going on among like Washington, which is where he played wings. They played zone a lot, weirdly for those few years. And they happen have two of the best like perimeter defensive prospects and Matisse Thibal and Jade McDaniels. So I think that was maybe a reason why he fell. Who knows? I really liked them in the draft. My next guy is Devon Vassel. Actually, yeah, I'm going two way guys who can shoot the shit out of the ball. Had a pretty interesting arc where when they were tanking and rebuilding, his primacy has gone down as this team has gotten better. But I actually think it's the sweet spot for him where that stuff was all invaluable for him. But I'd like him a lot. I mean, he's a shot maker. I'm going to be central to what they're doing going forward on a championship level team. I think we've seen that now. Shark said he was the best 3 and D prospect in this year's draft and has more shot creating more shot created talent than he showed in college. I was really surprised the next didn't take him. I thought they were going to end up with him. All right. So we have so far. We have Edwards, Halliburton, Maxi, Avedia, Lamello, Jaden McDaniels, and Devon Vassel as our top 7. In Desmond Bain, he's like, I have to have another chip on my shoulder. I went 30 in this draft. You guys are going to, you're going to disrespect me again. Are you taking him here? House. I am not. You're not. So disrespectful. Who are you taking? I'm taking the Kong Wu. I really feel like that guy's got, you know, there's a ceiling yet to be explored. I had him lower on my board. I get it. I get it. I get it. Yeah. So I mean, I'm taking him at 8. The problem I have with Bain is just watched a lot of him in a playoff series and on a team where just felt like that impact should have been more. You know, the on Orlando, plenty of things going on with Orlando. Yeah. Yes. He it should have been a wonderful fit. There is a reason that the forecast for Orlando was upper tier of the Eastern Conference and 50 plus wins. And I didn't see it every night from him. I went to watch Washington play Orlando and he played significant minutes in that game. Was it a you forgot he was out there performance? The Wizard beat Orlando the night that I went. In fact, it was right on the precipice of the Wizards trading, trading CJ McCollum because it was the Wizards fifth win in seven games. Starting to get too good. Wait a minute. Hold up. So last five years, he was 21, 5 and 5, 39% from three. And that was his calling card in the draft was he's going to be a good three-point shooter. He turned that to be a way better player. I mean, you think about it. The Grizzlies take him 30. They get five years out of them in some playoff series. Then they flip him for four first round pick. So that's like, if you're like a, I don't know, a stockbroker or a hedge fund person and you're buying low on something and then selling high, that's like the ultimate value you ever could have gotten for somebody. But I think he's a little better than house. I can't I can't say he's been on the perfect team the last couple of years. Like we've still never really seen him with a normal type of point card. Speaking of, well, I'm going to take him here at at 10. And then I, oh no, is it 10? Yeah. Nine. Nine at nine. And then I'm going to take Peyton Pritchard at 10. 26. 26. 26. Pick in the draft. A little bit controversial. It was like a Danny and Cheatcheck pick. They had the Celtics had 14 and 26 in this draft coming off a 2020 making the conference. I think they made the conference finals. And it felt like this was going to be a really important draft for their depth. Pritchard took them a couple of years. I always liked him more than it seemed like the coaches liked him. And it was always unclear why he wasn't getting the car keys a little bit more. And I think the team liked him because they gave him a contract even before he had kind of become who he became. And then he just became, you know, one of the best bench guards in the league. Last year moved into a whole different level where he was 17 a game and is really one of the best get into the lane guard scores we have in the league, which is just weird. He's a little hit or miss. There's a question whether there's like another. Is there a second leap for him? I'll allow Jalen Brunson leaving Dallas. I don't think so. But there's really good stats with him. Jarks was a big fan. Jarks said, uh, should instantly be an excellent backup point guard has the confidence and skill to knock down shots and big playoff games. So nice job by him. But anyway, so I had been in Pritchard and now it's starting to get a little dicey house. Yeah. And I, I, I recognize my role in this podcast today as, as a little bit of an outlier with with some of my processing. There's no wrong picks in a redraft. I'm valuing Stan Stronghouse. Yeah. Size here. Well, I mean, I didn't really make, I loved a con where I took him because I think that his flexibility, what he adds to a team in terms of front court depth. And he shot, you know, he averaged two, three is a game and he shot 38% from three. So that that's floor spacing, especially for that Atlanta team. Uh, and they really, really need that you take a big stew right here. Is that what you're talking about? I'm taking beef stew. That's exactly right. I sure am. You know me better than anybody. You're fucking a right. I had him either him or one other guy that I'm sure Kyle's going to take, but beef stew and 16th in this draft was an excellent bench big guy. And then really from the fight last year on. just got weird with him in Detroit. There's an athletic article talking about, he got into it with the coach during the playoff series, and he only played 11 minutes of game, I think in their playoff series. So something funky happened, and then they basically dumped him. - They gave him away. - They'd probably be like a shorter article to like write like who he hasn't gotten into it with, right? It'd be better 'cause he's gotten into it with everybody from what I understand. - I mean, honestly, San Antonio should've got, it's exactly who's San Antonio needed. They needed a fuck you guy in their team, and he's a fuck you and a half guy. So Memphis is gonna have him, he's gonna fit in perfectly with them, and that couldn't have worked out better. I didn't mind to pick, how's, who do you have next, Kyle? - I have Aaron Smith next. - Yeah, I did. - Good player, good player. - Play, drafted by Boston, is that right? - Yeah, but Boston. - Yeah, he just couldn't. - Too many dudes, right? - I had a couple jokes about tweets and podcasts. I always liked them, and I felt like they completely marginalized them. It's a good example of like bad team wrong fit where you'd go to the games and he would just kind of run up and down and stand in the corner and do nothing. They didn't trust them to do anything. He never knew who he was gonna play or not as minutes were getting yanked around. He just had no confidence. And he goes to Indiana and becomes this awesome 3D guy. And, you know, people think the Halliburton game was the Halliburton game, but it was really the knee-smith game. That, you know, Halliburton made the famous shot in the game, but it was knee-smith making like four he checked threes and proved themselves as somebody who could play in the finals at a high level, guard the best players in the other team. - That's the key. - Yeah, he's a real team. - That's why he does really deserves to be here. Well, this next pick will be interesting. We had starting to drop off Kyle. Who do you have? - Let's see, this is my, these are my starters, my playoff starters, and my next one is, and I'm a little waffly on this one, but Emanuel quickly was my next pick. - I had him as well. - 55. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Funny because, you know, quickly when he was traded from the Knicks was still like a send it. And, you know, everybody was like, "Okay, well, this guy's on a rocket just going upwards." And then has a couple seasons in a row where he misses a lot of time and then he comes back and play. It just has a really quiet season this past year. So I don't know if the star bet is still there with him. I don't know if the star confidence is still there as much as it was with him. They gave him a gigantic crazy contract. But he's a starter player. He's a good shooter. I don't know that I'm going to run my offense through him like maybe people hope that they would, but probably already said too much about him. He'll quickly, honestly. - Well, no, there's one other thing. He got a stupid contract. So he's in the worst contract strapped every year. And then you start to hang that around your collar. They have this dumb contract. But he's still a playoff guy who can come up the bench and, you know, he just should make 30 million a year. They missed him. I mean, he couldn't play in that playoff series this year. That's the lingering taste, which makes him, you know, at least for me when I was looking through. It was like, can I? But when you look at his resume for the most part, he's played a lot of basketball. He missed like, you know, two thirds of whatever that season was two years ago. But otherwise, you know, he's in between 65 and low 70s in terms of the number of games played. Yeah, I, he's a net positive for me. I had dinner with Doc last night when he was talking about how he always like to have one guy, one guard come off the bench, like the Eddie House, the Williams type. That was just like, no shot is a bad shot. I'm just, I'm just firing it up. And he was like, I was love those guys. I would never tell them it was a bad shot. I would just kind of take them out if they didn't have it. But I would always tell them, go, go, go. I think quickly if Toronto's good, quickly could be one of those guys, right? He comes in, he doesn't have it, he doesn't have it. If he does have it, you can ride it for six, seven minutes. I think, hey, there was a moment there when we felt like maybe he was more than that, but I don't know if he is. But it's probably a two in a one's body, you know, he likes his score. And that's kind of, that's his destiny, I think. I'm taking a Obey top in here. And he's really the last guy that I think we know for sure could play in a top seven of a really good playoff team. Because we saw that in Indiana two years ago. He was really valuable for them. I like him, and especially seeing him in person was not afraid of the moment guy, which I think, you know, for he's an underside, I don't even know. He's a four, is he five, who fucking knows? He can't really guard anyone, but he plays really hard. And I think he feeds off the crowd. And I just thought he was a really good bench guy for them. So how's would he, do I have another pick? Oh, yeah, I do, I have two. Well, this gets really hard. What, did house get his turn? Like does he get his tune a row? No, I don't get to in a row because where I am at the snake. Yeah, that's right. I get to in a row, and I'm kind of screwed now. Well, there's only a couple picks left. I have a, this is my last pick. Ah, man. I can't believe I'm at it. The two guys that are really good. Why am I agonizing over this? I'll take Cedique Bay here. Oh, wow. That's fair, yeah. I have two guys. I don't, I don't hold it against them that he got hurt. Okay, I like his game. I thought, you know, he's buried on that terrible poke and steam last year. And I thought he actually played well for them. I thought he did. I thought a playoff team could have not only traded for him, but he could have really helped them. And it just wasn't meant to be, I guess. But I love, I've always liked them. I think he's a tough wing. I think he's got a little fuck you in him and it's not his fault he got hurt. So that's my next pick. I like it. He could still help somebody. I will take, I'll take Isaiah Joe. 'Cause I feel like that's a guy. Here's the skill that he possesses. This was the fourth consecutive season that he shot north of 40% from three. That's an important skill in the NBA. You know what? I wish I had taken him. That was a good pick. I wondered if you might. Yeah. No, that's a good one. Well, the thing is, we just don't know, right? Right. We'll go on Detroit this year. Exactly. Can he play 25 to 27 minutes a game? Can he shoot 42%? Can he actually be somebody they look for in the last two minutes of a game? We have no answers for him, 'cause we've never really seen him in big moments. Who's your last pick here, Kyle? If I know Isaiah Joe, he's gonna make three. He's been one of the better volumes shooters in the league. Like, he's been great. The skill. Yeah. This is, I mean, there's only like two guys left that I would take. But for me, it's between Sam Merrill and Paul Reed. I'll lean. I'll lean Sam Merrill here. Just 'cause we've seen him play in the playoffs. It really, really falls off though here. We get to the guys who like are on the roster optimistic and on the roster pessimistic. Those are the next 50 years. So, but Merrill is a guy. I'm just like, he runs a pick and roll. He can make shots. He's dynamic. He's smart. Play's hard. Yeah. I had him here too. He was 60 in this draft house. All right. So guys that didn't get taken. Cole Anthony, which this sort of been shocking two years ago that he didn't get drafted. He's out of the league. He's basically out of the league. Didn't make it. He was the 15th pick. Playoff Paul was the other one. Paul Reed. Yeah. Paul Paul. You can call him playoff. Playoff. Number 50 pick. But we've at least seen him playing in playoff series and being somewhat relevant. And then here's what we have for the not drafted. Why has been at number two? Patrick Williams at number four is a 90 million dollar contract right now, not drafted. I never understood the Patrick Williams thing. Even as it was happening in 2020 with the draft. I was like, he's a physical wing, but he can't shoot. But if he ever learns how to score. Like, it's one thing when it's like a Caleb Wilson. Is he going to house his stroke going to be five years from now? But when it's like, this guy can't score. But if he could score, it's like that usually never works out. Same thing for Isaac Acoro, who I thought was going to be better as like a defensive shutdown guy. I did too. He's just not killing Hayes at seven. Jay won Smith at 10. I think if we had gone 20 picks, maybe it gets taken. He's turned into at least a backup big. Kyra Lewis at 15. There was a moment when it seemed like he was going to be the fastest guy in the league and a great change of pace guide just never happened for him. He went into the Pelicans volcano. Poke at 17. Who I think could have gotten a championship ring in 25 for his incredible tanking exploits. When they turn the entire offense over to him for 30 games. One of the funniest tanky moments of all time. Josh Green at 18. Precious Acuah at 20. Who is he still playing? He's virgin and having moments. But never totally. Zignaji at 22. Xavier Tillman at 35. I think if we did this three years ago, it would have gotten drafted. But his knees went on him unfortunately. How many players in the league are a senior? He's Xavier Tillman's senior. And he seemed like he was 40 years old when he came into the league. I'm trying to think how many seniors there are in the league. And then the last one we could have drafted was Nick Richards at 42. I think the draft was 25 picks. He's somebody who we've seen play on different teams and get minutes. Poor Naji Marshall. Undrafted in this draft and undrafted in the NBA draft in 2020. All right. So, if we had to grade this draft overall, like a B plus. We have three franchise guys in this draft. Edwards, Halburton, Lamello, who were all franchise guys, I mean, I'm sorry, Edwards, Maxi, and Halburton, franchise guys on teams that could make a final four with those guys as their best guys. So to me, that's a hugely successful draft. And then you throw in a bunch of the role players. This is for, as weird as the COVID draft was, I think it's a B-plus. - Yeah, I mean, like I said, I have Edwards and Halburton a tier above, Maxi and Abdea, but it's just sort of like, these are continuing level franchise players who, you know, worthy of max contracts. And I think in any draft, if you can get that, it's just the depth. It's not great. It's really funny to think about. - Backed up. - Backed up what we were, what we were thinking we were going into that draft, it's a funny time machine that, this is the only COVID time machine that I'm willing to go into willingly. - How's what's your grade for this draft? - Yeah, I think it's a solid B, because when I look at how many all NBA recommendations are we going to get out of this draft, then I think it's like a dozen ultimately. I think we'll get to, by the time these guys are done, you add up those top sort of four guys. I think we'll get to around 12 all NBA teams out of Maxi and Halburton. And, I mean, so we only have about five or six now, right? - Yeah, we have five all stars. We have three guys who've been in all NBA team. We have one guy who lead a team to the finals, and we have three NBA champs. Can you name the three? - Wiseman got a ring for Gold State, didn't he? - James Wiseman. - Peyton Pritchard. - Peyton Pritchard. - Yeah. - The other guy got drafted for us. Isaiah Joe. - Oh, yeah, great. - Yeah, that's right. Yeah, with the thunder, yeah. We also only had 10 guys who played 10k minutes so far in this draft. 10k minutes and six years, not a lot, right? - Feels right though. - 1500 a year, but we've only had 10. All right, so the final redraft, Edwards one, Halburton, Maxi, Abdea, Lamello Ball, hard top five. McDaniels, Devon Vassel, Acongo, Bane, Pritchard, rounding at the top 10. And then we did Stuart, Neesmith, quickly Toppen, Bay, Isaiah Joe, and Sam Merrill. I don't even think that's the right amount of, somehow that's 17 players. We probably skipped a guy at some point, but that was our redraft. And then the closest to getting drafted, probably Paul Reed. He was our bubble guy. - Yeah, you guys both liked him. - I was gonna make a case. - I feel like Kyle Man is not giving up on a Coro yet. - What, based on what? - I think you're still holding that hope for him as a defense of the shot. - I was, didn't we get valuable playoff minutes from Najimarshall? - I feel like Najimarshall has been overlooked here. - Was he in this trail? - I was a little flabbergasted by that accusation bit. - I don't know, I saw a glimmer of hope with the one that Coro's name got brought up. - Oh, that was just the sun reflecting off my glasses. - Where was Najimarshall in this draft? Did I miss this? - Undrafted. - Oh, he's an undraft. So the undraft over him and the shantate. Najimarshall could have been picked. - I actually think he was arrow pointing up at some of these guys so much. - Yeah. - For Kundo Compaso? - No love. Joe House. - Yeah. - Enjoy the golf. - Thank you. - Kyle Man, enjoy the time off before the playoffs get really kickin' here. It was a pleasure to re-draft. I have a feeling obviously in the two of you again for another re-draft this summer, 'cause I really enjoy this. Thank you, fellas. We're gonna take a break. Come back with Jason Goodsepp, see you on. - Jason Goodsepp's shown his hair from one of the most important moments of the year on the Bill Simmons podcast. - Well. - I am gonna unleash my MVP ballot for the Odyssey. - Okay. - I haven't prepped you at all. I didn't send it to you. And we're going from 100 to one. Now I'm gonna skip some spots. (laughing) - Okay. - Okay. - Yeah, we're going backwards. How many times have you seen this movie? Once or twice? - I've only seen it once from going a second time with my wife this week coming up. I saw it yesterday at 10 a.m., showing at the Grove with CR himself, Chris Ryan, and my son, Ben, who was completely blown away and tried to get tickets for her last night and was like, "Dad, they're no tickets." And I'm like, "Yeah, there's not gonna be tickets for a while at night." Yeah, we're not gonna find those. But before we get into the MVP ballot, so you're obviously, you did binge mode for us with Mallory. - Yes. - You're a Game of Thrones official notto. Do these worlds overlap at all for you? Like do you feel like there's some sort of DNA strands together? - In the sense that this is based on history, these are epic poems from a period of Western history, the dawn of history, but that within that, it's also from an age of legends. It's your unclear what actually happened and what is fantastical. Yes, I think about them in the same way, which is something I've been telling people. I think about this movie is, when I was a kid, you'd turn on Basic Cable, and it would be like the dark crystal or labyrinth, or any number of movies that this movie reminded me of. This is a movie where, if I was 13 years old, and I turned on TV and it was two hours into the movie, I'm like, well, I'm here for the rest of the 55 minutes. - Well, this is gonna be one of the all-time rewatchables. I'm sure we'll do it at some point this year. I gotta wait 'til it's on streaming or cable, so I can really study it and take a bunch of notes and stuff. But I love that. We're gonna do a lot of spoilers for this, so if you haven't seen it yet, no offense, you can leave. Come back after you've watched it. But one of the things I love about it, other than it's just so ambitious, and they use technology perfectly, and it's almost impeccably cast with a couple of exceptions we're gonna do, but the, I have, there's one, I'm gonna, yeah, there's somebody that fares very poorly on the MVP ballot, and his name rhymes with bomb-ballant. - Oh, go. - Oh! - Yeah. - I told you, buckle up. - Interesting. But I think what I really love and what's great from a rewatchable standpoint, it's got four like set pieces where it's like, all right, okay, buckle up, 10 minutes, get ready. And you know, when we see Cyclops for the first time, and the movie's like kind of moving along, we're bringing in all these different characters. I'm just kind of going along and it's like, oh, let's get some food. Hey, there's a sheep. Let's follow him up the hill. And you just have no idea what's about to happen. And from that point on, the movie just goes nuts. - Goes absolutely nuts, yes. I loved it. I can't wait to, I cannot wait to see where we go with this MVP, 100 person MVP. - Yeah, I'm gonna skip some spots. - Okay. - Coming in at number one, so just react off me after I give you a shot. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it. - After at 100, finishing last, bitchy internet people. - Yes. - They're 100 on the MVP ballot, complaining that only 41 theaters can show I max. Sorry, the casting was too woke, that's been a big thing. No one wasn't faithful to Homer. Just shut the fuck up. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - We can't complain about everything. Let's, when somebody spends this amount of time and money and makes a great movie like this, we can't also bitch about it and find reasons that it sucks. - Faithful to Homer is hilarious, because first of all, Homer is not a guy. Homer is a collection of unknown amounts of anonymous poets. There was no actual Homer guy. - Yeah. - And two, you know, the things that people choose to be mad about, the wokeness of it, it's like, you know, what's not, what's barely in the Odyssey, the horse. The horse is like mentioned in a line, and you certainly don't see what goes on inside of it. So it's just very interesting to me the stuff that people choose to be upset about and then the people, even with the trailer who are like, that's not what Aga Memnon tell me. It would have looked like it's gonna get out of here. Please stop it. - Yeah, it's, listen, there's a lot of people out there who need a nice 24 ounce glass of settle down juice. They know who they are. - Yeah, yeah. - We're dropping down to number 58 in the MVP ballot. Benny Safty is Aga Memnon. - Oh, wow, okay. Here's why. Didn't even know it was him the first time I watched it. No idea. He could have been anybody. And then it was like Benny Safty is in. I was like, he was, so now I'm watching it. And I guess you can kind of see him at two different points, but really you just needed like a tall and posing guy. I would have gone with Con Canipal. (laughing) Like just go and submit six sets. - Of course you would have gone with Con Canipal. Here's the thing about the Benny Safty casting. You know, it was like, it's a mythic depiction. You know, Aga Memnon's like a foot and a half taller than everybody. He's almost as tall as the giants that they end up running from. And it's, to me, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna unveil this theory at the right moment in this podcast. - I can't wait. - To me, Nolan has done something incredibly creative and thoughtful with all of his cat, with most of his casting choices. And I would include Safty because he's like, the most normal guy of the major characters in this cast. And they shoot him like Darth Vader, this mythic figure. But then when he speaks, it's just like a guy. So it's like this collision of, of myth and feet of clay that I think is really interesting. I thought it was really, I thought it was really fast. But I agree, you don't even know it's him. - Would you've gone with Walker Kessler? Would you've just gone seven footer? - Talk about a guy that we also haven't seen very much up in recent years. - James Weissman. (laughing) - Weissman, talk about another guy that we also haven't seen. - Darko Militant. (laughing) - Yeah, just go with any seven footer who's not an NBA team anymore 'cause you're going for like a big giant tall guy, right? I don't know why he didn't bend his head anyway. I didn't know his name, all right. Number 47, Tom Holland is Temeculous. - Okay, okay. - I'll just start here, Jason. - Sure, go ahead. - To me, this is a 2002 range heat ledger role where it's like, this is somebody I could see someday becoming this badass Gladiator. But right now, he's like a pup still trying to figure out the world. Tom Holland, way too short to be like the next guy who runs the whole thing, to be like this warrior. It's just not cool enough. I never bought the American accent the whole time. I didn't feel like he was related to Matt Damon and he's trying and they're trying to make it work. But I just find it hard to believe that this is Temeculous. - Here's, I'll unveil my theory here. So I think Nolan, I think Nolan is playing with our Sean Fennesy mentions on the pod you guys that talked about the Odyssey in from last week. I think Nolan is in a fascinating way playing with our perceptions of these people and the characters they have played. For instance, Tom Holland, who is almost eternally now associated with Peter Parker, Spider-Man, who is a teenager forever. Here plays a character who their entire struggle is, why won't anybody see me as a man? As a full grown man, as a person who could be king. He's trying to grow out of that image that we have placed him in because of his association with Peter Parker and that's my Tom Holland example for why Nolan picked Tom Holland. And personally, I think it worked. I think that kind of nod in a wink to the way we perceive Holland in this role. It worked for me. It worked for me. - Interesting, people are really split on it. That's why I knew putting him 47. I thought there was one scene, Renee and Halfaway, just blew him off the screen. It was just, 'cause she's great in this movie, obviously we'll get to her much later. But I had some questions with the age too, 'cause the Odyssey is gone for, it seemed like 20 years, right? The dog is like barely holding on at the end, but then we have flashbacks of he sees his little kid there who's like four, seems like four or five in the flashbacks. So that puts Tomeco set like 24, 25 range. - Yes, that would be my goal. - But he's treated in the movie like he's 16. I just don't, I just didn't, this was the one thing that really didn't work for me. - Well, you know, it's like ancient Greek culture. He can't grow a beard. I think they just don't see you as a man until you like, until you can grow a full-fledged beard. - Okay. At number 43, Poseidon, not a great dad. (laughing) Meg was your dad, leaves his Cyclops son just in a cave. Son has to finally get stabbed and attacked and has to call out for him. And he's like, all right, fine, I'll do some stuff for you. - It's a good point. I would add that every single Greek god, who's a male Greek god from Greek myths, is a bad dad. All they do is go out, sire children like with regular human women after meeting them in disguise and being like, I'm just like a really handsome guy. I'm not juice at all, by the way. And then just abandoning them and never raising them. So this is like the culture of the Pantheon of the Greek gods. This is just what they do. - They're like, he's at a dinner party and they're like, what's up with Cyclops? He's like, you know, he's doing all right. He's, you know, the cave's going around. He's at the 12 sheep. - He's got a career. - Yeah. - He's got a job. He's making his own ways sheep critter on an island. He's doing really, really well. - Works quite out. - Really hard at it. - Obviously one eye is tough, but okay. Number 40, bear with me, 'cause we're not allowed to be critical of this person on. I'm not going to be out, but all of his explanation. Number 40 is in Daya. It's in Daya. The goddess of wisdom, warfare and handicraft in this movie is Athena, which is also, people don't know this, Malley Ribbon's title at the ring. (laughing) Malley's the goddess of wisdom, warfare and handicraft. - Yes. - Listen. Sometimes you can have too much star power in a movie. I'm not sure we need her for who she's playing in this movie. And I get it. No one's just like, I'm, he probably grew up on 70s movies and we're just getting stars all over the place. But she's basically here. It feels like she filmed her scenes in two days. She's making the roof face from euphoria in four different scenes and then calling it a day. It's like, you have Zendaya here. She's one of the most famous actresses in the world. Like she barely gets the ball. They don't run any plays for her. - I liked it because you're meant to wonder what it could mean that she's here. She barely speaks throughout the movie. She has a couple things, you know? At one point Odysseus is like, why can't you just like, why can't the gods speak plainly and just like say normal stuff? - Right. - And she's like, listen, this is, I don't know what to tell you. The gods work in mysterious ways. We're doing the best we can. And so for me, it was like you, you want to be star struck by that face. It's a lot like the Charlize casting where it's like, I just want to be dazzled by this character. And I think that was appropriate. And with the end, listen, we're spoiling it, right? - We're spoiling everything. - Yeah, with the way, with the reveal of who Zendaya is in the movie, which is a woman who was killed during the sack of Troy adding to Odysseus's guilt. That reveal after all this time wondering, like, what, you know, what is Athena want? Like, is she gonna be more plain spoken about it? It really hits for me. And secondarily, a lot of the, like the talk in this movie between the characters is, hey, remember, the gods can just show up in disguise, like as a, as a beggar or as a normal person. So I think Odysseus at the end is meant to have wondered all these years, did, oh man, did we accidentally, did we kill Athena in disguise? Did we insult her? Like, did I insult her with this Trojan horse? - So you're saying we need somebody, we need more star power because there's a mystery of how important she was. - Yeah, and that's not bad. 'Cause I was gonna suggest Sophie Cunningham here, where she's just, she's just doing the point. - Just as the point, just as the point. I mean, that's a, that's a great idea. And by the way, to me, Cunningham means, yeah, like Pat Riley needs to trademark the point quickly. - No question. Number 38, James Reemar, another one I didn't realize it was him the first time I saw the movie and then was looking for him the second time. He's in the dead people scene. It's after the Elliott page comes back and says all the stuff. And then we see Reemar's in the bottom. I just want to give you his IMDB here. - Please, please, please. - When he's in the movie for 90 seconds, which is why he's not higher. He's Ajax in the Warriors. - Incredible. - He's Gaines in four to eight hours. One of the great villains in Action Movie History. He's Dexter's dad in Dexter. He's sex in the city. The best sex Samantha ever had. He's in Oppenheimer once upon a time in Hollywood, Pineapple Express and What Lies Beneath. He's in Miami Vice in an episode and he's in cruising. James Reemar. - Incredible. - All time. - All time. - All time IMDB, anyway, concudest him. Okay, down to number 33. I have the giant Lastergonians. So these are the big giant mutant robots that kill most of Odysseus's crew. - Yes. - No backstory. I don't know what they're so upset about. I don't know where they came from. If I'm gonna cut anything in this movie, this might have been where I cut. I'm gonna just add a boat cap size instead. I don't know. - Here's why I loved it. - Okay. - Because it turns out that Nolan shot that with no special effects. They did the force perspective trick from the Lord of the Rings, where they replaced Damon and Cast with like five foot tall stunt people. And then they cast like seven foot to Serbian centers as the Lastergonians. And then shot like from a low angle up. So that's all legit. There's no CGI in that. - Okay, you talk me into it. I just didn't understand what was going on in that scene, but that's, you're kind of holding on for dear life or half of this movie anyway. - Yeah. Number 32, I mentioned in the LA page character Sinon. - Sinon. - Tough job. - Tough fun. - Get high too. - Tough coaching here by Odysseus, you know. It's like, hey, we're all gonna be in the horse. You're gonna be out there. It's gonna be fine though. Nothing's gonna happen, but he knows. It's tough fun. - I mean, to be fair to Odysseus, when he found out that's seen on. volunteered for this was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why did you do that? Like, away, I didn't want it to be you, why did you have to do that? But there again, I think is this example of Nolan's really interesting casting. Here's a character that like is cut loose and sacrificed by their entire community and society lied to and then left to die in order for this mission to like actually work. And so I thought that was like, yeah, it was that really hit me that it was like, yeah. Well, bad. I mean, who knows? Seedon could have been much higher in the ballot, but you know who you didn't want him, want him higher? Who? Odysseus just left about to die. I was brutal, brutal by Odysseus and then don't listen to it from inside the horse. Number 30, the spoiler alert people. We can't spoil the Odyssey. We all read the book. We all know what happens. There's nothing to spoil. It already happened. It's not like, hey, I guess I wonder how this plays out. Number 27. All right. Now we're starting to get into some real candidates here. Number 27. Okay. Mia goth as the, the handmade, the untrusting, uh, yes, in half the way as turns out she's got something going with Pattinson. Um, I wanted a little more from her. I got to be honest. She was, she felt like the most game of Thrones character in this movie other than maybe Pattinson. And definitely was the only one who seemed like she was a little bit horny. This is not a horny movie. Not at all. There's that one moment where you realize that, uh, that she is with Pattinson's character when, you know, he's just come to do a sloppy kiss and they're just like, oh my god, yeah. And that's about as horny as it gets. Well, you know, like, there's, there's the entire preamble of Odysseus with, you know, Calypso on the beach that feels like, like there's been anything like it's been like it's been like it's the hoardiness was 20 minutes ago. And now we're past that and we're just like rehydrating and basking in the glow. I'm glad you brought that up. There's an hour rated version of this movie. There's definitely a Calypso scene. There's probably a scene with Odysseus and Penelope in the first 20 minutes. There's 100% of Miyagoth and Pattinson scene. And then there's probably some sort of feast slash orgy if we went Game of Thrones style. There's probably a little finger running a brothel right outside of, uh, yeah, there's something like that. There's a one AM on showtime or cinematics in 1996 cut of this. It comes after like, you know, the hitcher or whatever, like the red shoe diaries or something. Bob Gucci. I only produced it. Yeah. Right. Was shot in the Netherlands. Absolutely. There is a cut of this movie that is possible. Yeah. I think Miyagoth was probably like, this is, I was, I was ready for more. I guess, I guess nothing's happened. All right. At number 25, the dog, Argos, uh, RIP. So I, first time I saw this was with, uh, your former binge mode partner, Mallory Rubin. And the moment we saw the dog, she, and she was just terrified and, um, and then the dog dies at the end. I thought Mallory was going to be reduced to a puddle. Odysseus comes back, just touches the dog, the dog's like, you're back. Oh, this is a drop step from the show. Mallory was, it was also maybe going to drop dead. Um, I might think the note I wrote down here is I, you know, Murph is now six. My dog. Yeah. This is how I want Murph to go. Age 20. I'm away for a while. He holds on to it. Come back. I touch. Then he dies. And just, this is, this is what a relationship. How did she do when they were kicking the dogs like in the, in the dinner scene? I, you know, Mallory. How do you think she did? Yeah. She, she threw up the both. She did one of those, like, like, guarding her eyes. Uh, I will say the reason Argos is in hire is, uh, I wonder what I'm going to do. I have one more flashback scene. This dog was such a great hunting dog. Let's see it. Yeah. We saw, like, first, second. I kind of wanted to see him cook a little bit. I don't know. Maybe Nolan. Not a dog guy. Um, all right. Number 24. Cory Hawkins. He's polybus. Um, he's, he's pat and since kind of sidekick, honestly, possible, Deanne Waiters candidate. I thought he really jumped out. I thought he was really good. Huge reaction. I don't know about you. Huge reaction in my theater when he buys it. Hmm. The audience absolutely loved it to have that kind of impact in what is he have, like, three lines and he's probably on screen for, like, two and a half minutes. Yeah. To have that kind of impact in two and a half minutes, I got to respect it. Crowd loved seeing him die. He kind of came in, like, he's out of the bad boy pistons. He's just got a crazy at least just trying, trying to get a tech just trying to start shoot with people. Um, right. He's like any member of, uh, of the Argentito World Cup squad was in the final, like, he's already got a yellow card. And there's a car. If you like to kick that number 22, the Peter Nguongo playing twins, playing hot twins, one of scars on her face. The other doesn't. The other shanks. I got them done. Um, I don't see need a little more with this. This was kind of the untraveled side of her getting the, the evil sister. Getting the revenge at the end, but there's in the books. There's the whole backstory for why she did that and just kind of comes and goes. And I, I don't know. I felt like I could have gone another 10 minutes with it. I, uh, this is for me is the kind of your mileage may vary thing. I think what Nolan was trying to do here is say through this character, whose face launched the original Trojan war. Right. Is to say, like, oh, Helen has thoughts about this too, um, because she keeps wanting to say something. Like she tried to use, she pulls Tom Holland aside at one point and like, gives him some very important information and then at the, at the fees is like keeps trying to interject, but, uh, the middle a is just like won't let her speak. And to me, that was like a metastatement about. War and about this entire conflict within this. But I agree with it. You, you have a lapita and you just kind of want more. I thought that was a perfectly cast because she's one of the most beautiful actresses we have. And that's like in your head, Helen, a Troy has to be, yes, like, oh, yeah, I get it. Uh, number 20, mentor, yeah, original mentor named everything else after him. Unbelievable. I never, I never realized they were, I, I forgotten because I read these books in the high school, but they, the original mentor, which is kind of, oh, yeah, that's a good one. Here's my, uh, here's my Nolan Casting theory applied to John Leggwizamo mentor. Um, I have, by the way, I have, I have Leggwizamo coming later if you want to say this. Oh, okay. Don't say that. I just had the concept of mentor as number 20. Okay. Yes. Yeah. We're going to hit Leggwizamo in a second. Number 19. The big lesson of the Odyssey, 'cause my number 19 MVP, winning isn't everything. You know what? Trojan Horace, great idea. You offered somebody a gift, you turned it and you ended up winning the war because you, you shanked them with this gift, but Odysseus says the movie goes on. He realizes, was it worth it? It's the nicest thing you can do for another human being is give them a gift. We did that and then we betrayed them with it. And I know if I would do that again. I thought he was the proper amount of doubt and skepticism about whether that was the good vote. I think that's absolutely right. I think that, you know, one of the things that we know about Odysseus is how, not only how clever he is, which everybody says throughout the movie, but also that he is fair. Like, he thrums that bow with that classic Christopher Nolan bass drop sound moment. And, you know, and I'll be asked some why he does that and he's like, well, I want to give, I think it's only fair and honorable to give the animal I'm hunting like fair warning that I'm coming. But he doesn't do that with Troy. He plays it underhanded. He never gives them the warning that this is, that actually the hunt is still on. And that's a big reason why he's so guilty. He feels like he insulted Athena. Well, parallels to Bill Bela check and spygate, maybe a little bit, like how far do you want to go to win? And sometimes you can never grant him much. Yeah. So repercussions coming in at number 18, Matt Damon's beard authentic real beard. It's weird because he can't, I don't know if they were trimming the upper lip part, but the beard itself, I'm just going to ask you because it's one of the most important questions the movie better or worse beard than Tom Hanks and Castaway, also a natural beard. They're different kinds of beards. Odysseus' beard was more, both are wild, but it was more manicured. And it seemed more air quotes Greek, whereas Tom Hanks just had that crazy thing. He had the survivor beard, basically. He had the survivor beard. I'm going to give it a push, I'm going to give it a push with the edge to Damon because of the dedication of how long it's, you know, it's like a year of your life to do this. It's very impressive to me. You know, it makes you realize when we've had fake beards and movies. Yes, how bad the fake birds are like there's one point when he gets wet in the beard That kind of like stiff and so I was like, oh, that's a fucking real beard. I knew he grew the real beard But there's moments where this is why he's spending a year growing beard. Can I ask you Bill? Yeah So I was listening to your DiCaprio or Damon conversation and Can we just say right now that the Boston connection had nothing to do with it? If there wasn't any it didn't factor in it at all Maybe a little maybe a tight bet. Okay with because I I'm not saying I disagree with the with where you landed with it I think it's an interesting conversation, but I wanted to acknowledge at least a little bit, you know DiCaprio Laker fan Well, that is true. Hey, it's funny. I got so many emails from the listeners Saying like do you realize you've been a lifelong Jordan over LeBron fan? And then you did Leo versus Damon and you picked LeBron over Jordan basically you pick career or resume more movies More minutes more games more everything Versus the heights of Leo which was the exact opposite of your strategy with Jordan. I'm like, you know what? Checkmate you got me. I don't have a counter in that one Number 17 Hamish Patel is that how you say his name? Hamish Patel Hamish Patel Officially a Nolan guy congrats to him like no one's making a movie. He's in I really liked him in this. I thought that Is this a mutiny? It doesn't have to be what like he had a couple really good moments I thought the way he was like watching Odysseus and you can see him losing faith, but I just thought it was kind of not the most exciting part But I thought he kind of crushed it. I liked him. I loved it as well. He just brings up more You know with a guy like Odysseus who's like the mastermind the brilliant guy you need That character who's like okay, I'm gonna take all these brilliant plans of yours and somehow make it happen and he You felt that chemistry through their interaction. Totally. Yeah. Yeah Number 16 This is ghost of the crossbow and arrow trick Okay So this movie has to hinge on this stupid both thing that he does in the beginning that everybody's like oh Wow he did it again and everybody's like oh my god. This is fucking amazing And they have to plant that seed for later Yeah, and it's like in all time comes back It's like oh She's gonna have them do it. She's gonna have she knows the suitors won't be able to do this and she's kind of secretly hoping that beggar is Odysseus I just thought Phenomenal and by the way, I have to watch this as a two-hour ESPN event I'm just bending the bow and then I want to see people bend the bow how many people can do it And then you have to shoot through the axis. I'm in for two hours Through the axis incredibly underrated totally just big gloss over I mean just big Completely glossed over like obviously no one has done stringing the bow except for Odysseus. Yeah, but once you climb that mountain There's arguably an even higher mountain after that. It's just impossible. I love that they brought it back I loved it. Um, okay. Now we're in the top 15. This is the really good stuff here. Okay. Number 15. I put this in partly for you Drunken menacing bordering on violent feasts Really, this was the most game of thrones DNA here where we just have A bunch of people eating together and people drinking bad wine and just getting bombed and they don't know how to interact What are they talking about that none of them have any hobbies? They can't be like hey, what do you think about the playoffs tonight? There the only goal is just to get drunk and maybe get in the fight with somebody and it was just fun to be back It made me brought me back to thrones What an incredible collection of bad hang individuals that have been hanging out Yeah, not for a week not for a month three years, but for like years They've been here eating Penelope out of house at home bullying her son kicking dogs Spitting in the face of beckers and just trying to hook up with her for years terrible. That is a Maybe just poison everybody kind of moment for her at some point just at some point. It's like hey. I got some special steak tonight Number 14 Samantha Morton as Cersei. Oh my god. So another also like thrown Cersei versus Cersei I'm like that can't be a coincidence, right? I mean, I think that there's significant thematic connections for sure. Yeah What performance was creepier for you? Samantha Morton as The creepy lady who lives on a hill and can turn everybody into pigs and knows a lot of shit and just has kind of a dark energy about her Or who she played in my norther report The pods one of the the bald pods and the underwater one of the freakiest characters of all time This is clearly about a juicier role I think this is the spooky role just because like the eating scene when they're feasting on the food and you're just like this can't be good Whatever's about to happen. It's gonna be bad and the way they again with the practical effects She's like reaching into their cheeks stretching their mouths turning them into pigs. It is so unsettling and Magnetic but also like really just gross on a on a base level that I mean, I was I was blown away by this this this is a creepier role just because Is she eating the people like she's so she's feeding people to people in the form of animals to eventually And also very underrated part of this is she has her sister as a crow just in a cage forever Yes, so she's a cannibal witch and also not a great sister I so saw this the first time in the second time three hour movie. I'm gonna trick it in giant water at some point I gotta go to the bathroom time did for when she turned everybody to pigs. I'm like I don't want to watch this again Yeah, this um I had another question for you turning people into pigs. Yeah Top 10 worst superpower Like if you had to pick like oh cool. I get a superpower. What am I getting? Well, I wonder if people in the pigs and then you eat them. That's your superpower. Well with regards to your mentor Paul the first mentor. Is this the first men or pigs? Oh, I like it maybe yeah, I mean yeah cuz she's like she's calling her shot too. She's like They're pigs. They're getting what they're deserve right. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I mean we're really just like in the origin stories of so many tropes It is true. Number 13 Zeus. I Wrote down. He's a little like Adam Silver. He has a bunch of laws. We mostly don't know what they are and the punishment is either not nearly enough or way worse than it should be That's exactly right. No notes. I have no notes. That's perfect. Adam is exactly correct. Yes Did we violate the laws with the aspiration scandal? I You will find out Is this king that I have put in place the cheapest king The worst king ever. Yes. Oh the Portland King the king of Portland. The king of Portland. I didn't realize he was so cheap Even though he did exactly the same thing in Carolina. Huh he might be the king of Las Vegas very soon. We have no idea All right, now we're really getting there. Number 12 John Burntall argument five spots higher. He's the king of Sparta in this movie So I intentionally I mentioned this last week I intentionally avoided all spoilers everything I literally didn't know he was in the movie I gasped when I saw him. I got so excited Could he have played Odysseus if we were doing like slightly cheaper budget We can't afford Matt Damon. We need to go second-level actors. Could you but John Burntall is Odysseus because I would have I he could have done it, but here's why I think Nolan did it the way he did I've got a this is part of my Nolan theory With regards to Burntall as a occasional little more than occasional listener to his podcast. Yeah, he is always He's a very Pro veterans issues figure He's always talking about the sacrifice of vets. He's always platforming You know ex delta force guys ex Seal team six guys on his podcast and talking about the things that Warfighters go through and here I think Nolan very specifically playing with that cast him as like The character who's like Trojan war was awesome, man Like oh, it's that you your dad was in the Trojan war. Come here sit next to me. I want to talk to you. Yeah Let me tell you about the horse. Let me tell you from inside the horse and tell you what that was about and he's the guy who's the most Concerned with what happened to the Trojan war veterans as they left the war and what they're up to now And I think this is could he have been Odysseus? Yes, but I think Nolan wanted him specifically for this kind of part It's an awesome point Number 11 I have Homer Who as you mentioned isn't a complete person. No, it's not um Great stuff nonetheless and the legend of Homer continues great job by him great job by him them How everybody over somewhere you have no idea. But yeah, you know Homer They'll be reading it forever. It was enjoyable in high school Just really laid it down great time back. All right number 10 this got really tough Okay Number 10, the Trojan Horse. Just in all time, I know ultimately evil and Odysseus had a lot of regrets about it, but just fundamentally probably the greatest war idea of all time. With that, the fact that we're talking about it 5,000 years later proves the point and that it's become the word Trojan Horse has become the byword for something that contains a hidden poison, some sort of ambush within it. I think you're exactly right. And let's be honest, Bill, if we were there, like Minalaeus or any of these other characters, yeah, we'd never stop talking about the horse ever. All right. That's it. I wouldn't have to do anything else. I would just be telling Trojan Horse stories to everybody I bet. Yeah, I was, I let me tell you, every single podcast, the comments would be like, guess what, Bill managed to tie it back to the horse. He did it again. He did it again. He's, it's the horse. What's, guess what? He's in the horse and the water level's rising. You'll never guess. It's the horse. I think Kevin Wilde's half-baked ideas. It's the Trojan Horse is the greatest half-baked idea ever where they were like, all right, here's my idea. I only have half of it. We just build the horse. Right. And we all climb into it and somehow they pull it up, and then when we're inside, we'll come out of the horse and they're like, okay, they try to work with it and somehow it works. So the movie lays out a really key point about the Trojan, because it's been romanticized over the years. It's like, yeah, they were in a horse. That really has, yeah. Bad times in the horse. I mean, not fun. A bad is bad as it gets where they're just pissing and shitting on themselves. There's water in the horse. People are drowning in the horse. They're suffocated in there. They also have no idea how long they're going to be in there. I'm going to say one of the worst things of all time. It might not work at all. You just, they might leave it there. It's like, you don't know. It's a Hail Mary Pass, for sure. You're getting stabbed in the horse. Then there's the guy who's like, I've got to also wipe the blood off the blade before it pulls out. Or this whole thing is going to be ruined. One of the all time worst times in the horse, which is why again, Bill, you would not stop talking about the horse. It's right. It's the Warriors figuring out how to get KD in 2016, multiplied by like 200. One of the great things ever. The smell by day four had to be all time worse. You think anybody is like, yo, I know we're not supposed to open that little opening that we get at it. But what if we did? Yeah, I think we just open it anyway. I think Odysseus very strategically put himself by that little opening, because I think he was sneaking breasts. Yeah, no question. All right, number nine. Robert Pattinson as Antonis. This is the Billy Zane part. We have these big movies and it's like, oh, you're the Billy Zane part in this. And in Titanic, Billy Zane is over the top. And just one of the most ridiculous characters in the history of movie. But it's great. This is a really good performance. And here's the thing, Jason Cepcian. This is an actual fact from Robert Pattinson. He based his performance on James Woods and Casino. That's actually a great hit. He said this in an interview. Wow. I watched Casino and I decided what if he was Antonis and I just was Lester Diamond? And that's what it was. And it's like holy shit. So I found that up to in the first and second movies. At times I watched, I watched it the second time him as Lester. And I was like, this is fucking out of control. There's a there's a moment in this performance. Obviously, like he's so almost cartoonishly evil throughout. But then they get to the final, you know, the test with the bow and the 10 axes. And it everybody's failing, failing, failing. It comes around to Antonis and he's like, he does this fascinating thing where he gives this feature as like, hold on. None of us could ever imagine that we could replace Odysseus. Odysseus is a giant. Right. Odysseus won the Trojan War. I would never deem to take his place. We can only hope to be selected by you, Penelope. So I'm not going to try. I'm not going to even try to do it. I don't want to disgrace the bow. I won't disgrace the bow with that kind of performance. And I was like, man, that is on the one hand so slimy. And also that would have worked on me. I would have been like, you know what? Maybe he's not such a bad guy. Maybe I had, did I, did I have them wrong? Maybe I had them wrong. I think he should get nominated for this. If I was going to do supporting actor in leg was almost the next person we're going to mention. But it may be both. I don't know what the categories will look like. But you know, the academy in just in general, the over the top villain part like this never gets actual award recognition. I thought he was awesome. And Patrick is better at life now for since my kids were young. And, you know, the fucking Twilight movies were coming out. This is like almost a 20 year career now for him. He's just a really good actor. I think this is the best he's been in a movie. He's really good in this. He's always, especially, you know, post Twilight. It seems like he's reveled in taking these really interesting roles. And I don't think Bill, there is a better actor currently working at that specific kind of sniveling, two faced villain. Yeah. Like, obviously like a cartoon, like mustache twirling villain. But also like has the wherewithal to understand like, my villainy is revolting to people. So I need to put a mask on it. And then the, you know, the is there a better actor at these really dynamic physical moments where like the fight is unfolding. And he's hiding behind a pillar like get him. Yeah, get the shield. Get him with the shields. It's like there's no one he better at this stuff. He's great. He's really good in good time. I mean, he's been in a bunch of good stuff. But, uh, but I love that he keeps, he's all over the map. Like, I don't know what to expect from him anymore with movie parts that he plays. And in this one, you know, 10 years ago, you would have said he would have been the Tom Holland part. Right. It's like, that's a kind of, but he's zagged. And now it's, I just think he's doing a really good job. All right. Number eight, like Wasamo. Another one, didn't know he was going to be in the movie. Saw him and I was like, Oh, like Wasamo. That's cool. He got in a scene. And it's like, no, he's actually a big part of this movie. And it's probably getting nominated for an Oscar. I thought he fucking crushed it. Thought he was so good in this movie. And I do think he's going to get nominated, right? I think that would be my bet for this category for him. Completely agree. My favorite role of his since Tibolt in Romeo and Juliet. The '90s Romeo and Juliet. And is one of those roles where you're like, damn, like Wasamo, I forgot. Like he can really do it. He can really act. And with my Nolan casting theory, I don't think it's a, I don't think it's a, I think it's very specifically chosen that Leg Wasamo is now in a second movie where the death of a dog is the huge turning point in the movie. And just like in John Wick. And just like in John Wick, he is that character in John Wick who's like, listen, you don't know what you've done. When John Wick gets here, you guys are fucked. He's the same character in this. It's like, listen, when Mike, when Odysseus gets back, that's really interesting. He's going to wipe the floor with you guys. Yes. I did not miss the John Wick parallels in this movie, but I missed the Leg Wasamo collection. That's a really good connection. I thought he was tremendous. Congrats. These are minutes completely agree. Number seven, arguably could have been one. Charlie's. Yeah, oh my god. Another one I had no idea was in the movie. She's Calypso. It's a role that probably should not have worked. Seven years of great sex and Lotus Flowers. And he's like, my heart's somewhere else I'm going to leave. I would have stayed. I don't know how she got the part to work. Like it does, but she's really great in this. And it's like the perfect kind of heat check. She comes off the bench, hits a couple of threes, grabs some boards, dunks over somebody, and then she's out. I don't know that she's looked better in a movie than this movie. I don't know if she's either. Yeah, every movie. And with regards to Nolan Theory, she's been the face of Dior for 20 years. This kind of like Agilis and Moral Beauty. So from that perspective, the casting makes sense. She's been very public on numerous podcasts, talking about how she's single by choice. That it's a source of strength for her. Yeah. That she would, in fact, never date in the entertainment industry, because she's been through that. It's too. She loves one night's dance. One night's dancing. She was great for her. That's right. And here she is in this movie. An Ageless Beauty who ends up alone at the end. And kind of by choice. She says to him, Okay, I've kept you here long enough, like if you want to leave, you can leave. And so I think once again, Nolan is playing with our idea of who this person is. And using that creatively in the casting. And she was absolutely incredible. This was the best casting in the movie for me. And I don't know what other actress would have been a better. Sometimes we'll have somebody in this. And it's like, nah, not quite. But this one is like, wow. And then I had this in my nose, Jason. This is four decades now of heat check performances from her. Going back to reindeer games and devil's ass. advocate. Like we're talking, her basketball reference page now is like, God damn, this is 32 years now in this. Fast and the furious. I mean, it just goes on and on. Like the amount of things that she has done. It's pretty incredible. Like, and to your point, career launched, you know, in a, in a, basically a Tarantino ripoff movie, like that's how long she's been at this thing. Yeah, incredible, incredible performance by her. Great casting in the concept of Calypso. Like there's seven different movies that could have spun off from this movie and just been like, all right, let's go there for an hour and a half. They're just a concept of Calypso just on this island waiting for people to wash up. Pretty great. Number six, I don't want to get too film dorky, but the editor Jennifer lame, the, the person to the score Ludwig Gornson. Yeah. I'm not sure who killed it more. So I have them as 6a and 6b here. The editing and Chris and Sean talked about that when they did the pod last week about in the later known movies where he does this kind of flashback edit thing that just kind of seamlessly goes into where we are now. But I got to say the score in a couple of these scenes and the sound of Cyclops calling for Poseidon. Yeah. The Trojan horse, the music of that scene when they're breaking out. And it's like, and it's just like building up. This is just an A plus special teams movie. I would bet a lot that Gornson wins the Oscar for this. I would hope so. I also think just like Sean and Chris said, what I loved about this movie, one of the things is that Nolan put in all of like his classic Nolanisms, but in the most creative versions of those things that I've seen yet, there is the big, you know, inception level bass drop, the ball sound is all through up, but like more creatively with the bow. There's the little, little metal tokens that are given to other characters, parents and children, sad wives, circular storytelling, all of that stuff is here. But at the highest level that I've ever seen from him. Number five in half the way who's absolutely tremendous. Yeah. And I think needed this big picture just for her. Yeah. I think this, this is a little capper. This was like making that last first on the team. I don't know if she gets nominated for Best Actress or Best Supporting. I think it's best. Yeah. Right. It's probably best actress. She's in enough of the movie that she could probably go for it. I thought she was awesome. I bet a long time season ticket holder. Same. It's interesting. If you said the first four movies, let's say she stopped acting tomorrow on 50 years from now passes away. Maybe 80 years from now. What are the first four movies mentioned in her obituary? What are the four that pop to mind? Oh, we counting this. Yeah. Are we counting this? I think this would have to be one of the four. I think the Odyssey. I think the Princess Diaries is the breakout. That as well. I think Lame is. And I think the devil wears Prada. So I had those four. You also you on the cutting room floor broke back interstellar dark night rises and Rachel getting married, which I think she got nominated for. I loved racing. But I think you have the right four. Yeah. We're going to do this later on. Yeah, but those are the big four for her. And she kind of needed this one. She's also by mad calculations has never been in a best picture winner. Brokeback should have won but didn't. I think you're right. I don't say this, too. There was a period. You remember the Hathaway hate. This must have been five 12 years ago. I made me mad. I didn't like it. So the hate, which I never understood, was that she loved what she was doing. Like that was it. Yeah, she wasn't authentic. She was like, oh, it wasn't authentic. How much she liked acting? And it's like, maybe she just likes acting. Yeah, maybe she just like loves what she does. Like get out of here. I'd never understood that. I've always been a long time fan as well. I thought this movie used all the best pieces of her. Yeah. And she had a couple really great like, woof, like Marrow Street level scenes. There's that speech she gives telemicus after he tells her like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe she'd marry the guys. I don't know where she just like blows up at him about like, I've been the queen of this place for 10 years that nobody treats me as the queen. And she's like, you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to shut the doors, kill everybody. I was like, whoa, incredible. So from Hathaway number four, we're now in the top four of the MVP ballot. So you didn't think this was going to work and you're having a good time. Absolutely work. I used to do this with the NBA when I had my column. I would do a 400 person MVP ballot, but really only have like 28 people in it. Number four, Cyclops. This is one of the holy shit. It was so fun going the second time with my son. And the movie is great. And it's going along. But I'm like, I can't fucking wait for the Cyclops scene. And to just the when it end, he just looked at me and it was like, he just watched a waymo of flying the air with a family of six and just fly around our house for it. It was just awesome. And also important to note, I just don't think it works before we have all the technology we have now. I don't think the scene works in 2012. I just think it would have felt fake. I would have loved to see, you know, as as we talked about, I think Nolan's done a lot of practical stuff. I would love to know how he did that. But I was like blown away not just by the feel of the scale of the giant, but the creativity of like his face, the way the eye is kind of sideways. And then at the end, you're like, fuck, man, they really screwed that to Cyclops. I feel bad for the guy. Right. Terrible. Like what? That was awful. What happened to him? He used us at home, tending a sheep. Yeah. He didn't ask for you guys to show up. Terrible. It also has this great. I mean, everything about that whole section is unbelievable. But that's that great thing. They also have to figure out how to get the fuck out of there. Yeah. And they're going to kill him. They're like, wait, if we kill him, we're just going to die in this cave. We can't do that. So how do we? And they, you know, then all of a sudden it turns into like an NFL strategy. How do we attack Cyclops? Deep. I mean, classic Odysseus. Once again, like the man with the plan, everybody's like, well, you got us in here, Odysseus. How do we get out? Oh, I got it. We we all act like sheep. And then he figured it out, but then makes the fatal mistake of these shoots. I mean, that was just pride. That was his pride talking. He got mad. Cyclops took a couple away. Played by Bill Irwin, by the way, who weirdly played Anne Hathaway's dad in Rachel Getty Mary. And and one of our one of our famed clowns in entertainment, like has that that kind of physical presence of of of classic clowning, vaudevilleian clowning. So when I saw this the first time, I didn't know, I didn't make the Bill Irwin connection. I didn't know they used an actual actor to play him. And then not only did they, but he was, you know, they really went all in on. Anyway, all right, three left. Number three, the 70, 70 millimeter slash iMacs experience of this movie, which is just been, honestly, as say movies in some ways, with making it an experience where you feel like you have to go. This is what they try to do with 3D, 15 years ago, and it didn't work. And now it's at the point where it's now working. And I know it's not everywhere yet, but and I still feel like if you see this on a normal, awesome movie theater, it's still an awesome movie. Yeah. But the experience of seeing it the way no one wants you to see it, there's nothing like it. It's, it's so overpowering to see it, and that's 70 millimeter iMacs. It's, words cannot describe the power of it. It is like that, you know, the cinema meme come to life. The score says he picture where he's got his arms out, like that's, that's what it is. You see somebody's, you know, and half the way giving a fire monologue with her face 40 feet tall. You're just like, man, this is the movies. This is what it's okay. Combined with the sound, which has also gotten really better in these movie theaters too. And there's some great sound in this movie, but just just an experience. And it's so funny, like when you think back to that 3D era, where they're like, this is how we're going to have to keep people in theaters. And we're going to have them put these fucking glasses on that give you a headache, but it's going to feel different than being at home. And it's like, right? No, you could actually just have the screen be way better. And you know, spend more money on the cameras. The thing that I hated about the 3D, the, the attempt to make 3D happen, like the attempt to make Fetch happen was it was so forced. There was always a forced moment where like some bad guy gets his arm cut off and then the arm has to float right towards the screen towards you. There's always had to be that. And it was like, Oh, great. Here's the, here's the scene that the 3D manufacturers made them put in to show how the 3D work. You don't need that with IMAX. You just need the power of the movies. I remember saying Friday the 13th 3D. in the early 80s at a movie theater. And what you just mentioned was a specific scene. Jason has like a bow and arrow on fire and shoots the arrow and it comes right toward the camera and it was like the big 3D moment. Guess what? Didn't need the glasses for that. I, you know, they talk about a movie tickets get more expensive than all this stuff. I would double down on this. I would have like the IMAX, the 730 showings. I would make them five, six times as much in the big cities for the first couple of weeks. Like, I, I would like to see these movies make more money because then they'll make more of these movies. So if they have to rig the first couple of weeks with the tickets and drive it up and drive interest, like I'm all forward if you're gonna make more, more of the Odyssey, you know? - I love this idea. Let's rig the box office. - Let's do it. - Let's, let's be out for it. - Listen, in LA, like last night, if they had charged for those four, for those four rows in the middle of, they had just said, yeah, these are 150 bucks tonight. That would happen. Like, my daughter wanted to do the Red Sox game tonight 'cause by the way, they won 15 straight and the tickets are through the roof. Like, you can't find 'em 'cause everybody wants to go. It's like, why don't we have that mentality with movies? I would, I would just have specific rows where they could make more money because if they make more money, they'll make more movies like this. I don't think it's rocket science. - You have to pay for those tickets, like pay for 'em wherever. - I was thinking about how fortunate we are to live in LA where there's multiple IMAX theaters, my brother in law lives in London. There's only one in the whole country. - Right, right. Yeah, Kyle Mann, who was on here before you, was saying he would have to drive somewhere just to see it on like a B+ movie screen, right? In Boston, it was like two. - It was a luxury, yeah. - In Boston, there's two. Like if you live and if you're like vacationing and Wyoming right now or something, you're not getting the great experience. But I'm sure we'll have more. The fact that, yeah, they're consistently coming out with these now, like Spider-Man's coming in two weeks. That's gonna be an IMAX movie. And so there's gonna be a regular cycle of these, which makes me think they thought more. All right, last two. Who do you think was two and who do you think was one between Damon and Nolan? - I think Damon is two, I think Nolan is one. That was what I had him about. So I talked about Damon and Leo for 35 minutes with CR and Sunday, I don't need to keep talking about Damon. But we wanna hear your Matt Damon thoughts. - Well, here's my Nolan theory. This is the culmination of everything that Damon has been doing over the course of his career. Broke out as a young actor, as a boy genius, right? In Goodwill Hunting. He replaced the grizzled old genius, everybody talking about like how brilliant he is as a guy. In this movie, plays like a noted trickster, a liar, kind of a con man pulling from his Tom Ripley performance. He's also Jason Bourne, the amnesiac trying to get home somewhere and trying to remember who he is. - With fight scene. - And he's also, with fight scene, and he's also the Martian, the man who is stranded, living by his wits, who is trying to figure out a way off, in this case, the island, but in that case, Mars, is everything that he's been doing up to now in one movie. - And a little wee bought a zoo, with the dog. - A little bit, a little bit. - With the sprinkling of wee bought a zoo. - His love for animals. We're at that one in his well. Maybe a little bit of Invictus. - Sure. - With a fighting in front of large groups of people. All right, Damon was just as good the second time. I'm proud of Matt Damon. All right, Nolan, who, I mean, this is, this is the, I think this is the best movie he's ever done. Other people are argue with it, but I just feel like, degree of difficulty. Everybody who worked on this movie was like, I can't even tell you how hard that was. I can't believe how grueling that was. I'm glad I did it. I'll never do anything like that ever again. He just went for it, which I love. But he's hit this point in his career where he's made enough movies now, right? I think everybody has a different top four for him. Like mine would be the Odyssey, Dark Knight, Momento. And I think Dark Knight rises would be my fourth. - Okay. - But you probably have a different four. And I think Sean and Chris would probably have a different four and name anybody. Or back would have a different four because he's had enough of these now. - Yeah, I would go, for me, it's the Odyssey, Dunkirk, Dark Knight, Batman Begins. But you know, there's a lot of other, you know, I think all the other ones are valid. It's just incredible. I think this is like, if you had bought Spielberg stock like after ET, this is like the heat check that he's on. This is his ET moment. - You know, Dark Knight's '08. - Yes. - And this is '26, so you're talking, and I thought Dark Knight is in the running for best movies of the first 25 years. - I completely agree. - It's at least in the conversation. And at some point it becomes subjective and not objective. But it's in the running. This will be in the mix for the next 25 years. But to have two of those 18 years apart, that's awesome, not a long list. I mean, that's, you're going into the Scorsese Spielberg area of, did you put to kick ass, awesome, memorable, all-timers, but 20 years apart basically? Not easy. - I mean, you know, with the Dark Knight, as a, as a comics guy, that changed the way the Joker was depicted in the comics. They were like, and that's never really happened before, you know, obviously Jack Nicholson, iconic Joker that didn't, they didn't change the way the Joker looked in the comics after Heath Ledger's performance. They're like, actually, that's incredible. Let's, let's do him like that in the comic books. - One of the things I've heard people are talking about, this is the movie industry has changed. Now the directors are the IP. Now the, this is a theme now of like, instead of the comic book and the suits and the capes, the directors are now going to be the ones. And it's like, that's always been the case, man. I went to see Jackie Brown in New York City in 1997 because Tarantino had a new movie coming out. Like that's never changed. We just have Morgan directors now. We're in a nice little run, a talent. - The trailer, I believe the trailer for Jackie Brown was, like one of the first frames was the new film from Quentin Tarantino. It's always been like that. The latest from Steven Spielberg. You know, it's Steven Spielberg's jaws. - The closure day just now. It was, this is a Spielberg movie. I think the difference with Nolan is he's making movies that are big scale for as many people as possible but also the best possible version of, you know, reaching the most people basically, which is the hardest thing to do. This is where Spielberg is the best ever. Spielberg was able to make big-ass movies for the most people possible that made a ton of money that were also really, really, really good. And it's the hardest level of this. - All right, that's my MVP bout. Did we leave anything else out? - No, I think that's it. That's comprehensive. We did a hundred, a hundred. - We did a hundred and give her take 50. - Yeah. - I didn't think it was possible. Much like Odysseus's journey home. I did not think it was possible and it was, we accomplished it. - All right, Jason Zeppsion. You're still basking in the glow of the next. I will not stop basking until the season starts. I'm absolutely basking. - I'll be able to see how they screw up the first game at the first home game. It's like, don't overthink it, James Dolan. Just throw some pitches down the middle. All the fans want to do is see the rings and the band like, don't overthink it. - You think he makes a speech? - Just be careful. - The parade, I thought, the parade, definitely, the mic was getting passed around. I just, you know, almost can't screw up the night when you raise the banner. It's almost an unassailable night. - It is disconcerting to see him moving around with this much confidence and freedom. - Where do you want LeBrona to go? Where do you want LeBrona to go, by the way? - You know what? And I said this previously and I mean it. I think Cleveland makes the most sense. And also, I want him to go there because it will be incredibly satisfying when the Knicks beat Cleveland. - The Cleveland Cavaliers once again, but this time with LeBron James. - With the ball movement as LeBrona and Hardin are just like, what's happening? - Yeah. - The ball keeps going over there. No, no, it's there. - I mean, I think at this point, they should just like do like the Pope smoke for when it actually happens. 'Cause we're just like waiting. Just let us know. Now, he's milking the summer now. All right, thanks for doing that with me, Jason. I had a good time. Good to see you. - Thanks for having me. - All right. All right, thanks so much to House and Kyle and Concept C-Own and G-How and Eduardo and everybody at Spotify. If you missed it, I went on the game over podcast with Rich and Max, by the way. It was really fun. I was just in the office when they were about to do it. So I ended up crashing it. I think it would be Amina Kimes's podcast. I think that's running this week as well. And I'm probably not going to talk about. the ESPN stuff, but press box, with the press box podcast, with Brian Curtis and David Chewmaker did a really good job talking about that. So I'm gonna be back on this podcast on Sunday, and then live rewatch Vols on Monday. So enjoy the rest of the week. See you this week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Must be 21 plus in president's select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18 plus in president D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game Prom, call 1-800-Gamber, or 1-800-MyReset. Call 888-787-777 or visit ccpg.org/chat and communicate. Or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here, visit gamblinghoplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 877-8-Hope-NY, or text Hope-NY in New York for Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.