Half-Baked Ideas and a Mega-Mailbag With Kevin Wildes and Joe House

It's the Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by The Ringer podcast network. Wanted to mention we have two rewatchables episodes coming this week on Monday. We're doing the Italian job from 2003 and then on Thursday, the 48th anniversary of about last night, one of the most secretly important day of these movies ever made with Rob Loan to be more so stay on your toes for that two episodes. I'm going to have one more episode this week. I'm not sure what the date but probably Wednesday. Stay tuned for that. We have an action packed one this one. Kevin Wildes is here. We're going to talk about Little Red Sucks at the top. I really have picked ideas because he's had a whole batch percolating for a while. I had a whole bunch of mail-back questions that I had to go through with Joe House on NBA and NFL and WNBA. All kinds of things. And then last but not least, we taped the rewatchables last week and Amanda Dobbins and Rob Mahoney and I, we finished and Amanda wanted to go on a rant about being a Philadelphia sports wife. So I'm putting that at the end. Amanda Dobbins is Philadelphia sports wife rant. So there you go. There's just a lot to offer everybody in this podcast. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then my friend Kevin Wildes. This episode is brought to you by NBA 2K27. We just had one of the craziest off seasons we've had in the NBA, which is perfect for 2K because every 2K season could be one of the craziest off seasons. The whole league shifted in real life. It could shift to an NBA 2K27. The best place to compete with these new look rosters and also try to figure out who's on what roster. You can see how new teams and new dynamic duo's match up. You can play Philly. Feel what it's like to have all there. New guys with the old guys and you can also take a struggling franchise to the NBA finals if you want because it'll never happen in real life for a couple of the struggling franchises. You know what I'm talking about. Anyway, NBA 2K lets you experience every transaction and storyline. Right from your home. Pick up your copy of NBA 2K27 right now. All right, we are recording on a Sunday afternoon right after a tough Red Sox loss. Some right after a tough time for Kevin Wildes who just went to see the new Spider-Man movie of this son and felt like he was too old. What happened? You know what I just like a straight forward villain. I just like I'm the villain. I've got powers and I'm going to try to thwart the city or whatever. You have to try to stop me. When we're starting to like, I'm in your mind. Again, I'm projecting here to other movies that I've seen with my son. I'm always bouncing around in other dimensions. I'm like, what dimension are we in now? I'm just I feel like I'm getting too old for cinema. I just need straight down the middle. You know what I watch with my wife the other day? Urban cowboy. Oh, hi, I'm John Travolta. I'm in love with you. We broke up and now we're back together. But fastball right down the middle. That's what I mean. We're not in like, we're never in another dimension. That's why I've been enjoying Homeland. Homeland was just guy came back from Afghanistan. They might have turned them. They might not have. Yep. And we just got to figure it out. I'm with you on the multiverse. I don't get it at all. I don't understand it. I don't like these movies. People get mad at me that unlike these movies. But like, even when you go back to the first Iron Man with Downey, pretty straight forward. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So we're in all these other characters. We're going backward and forward. Anyway, good luck. I'm glad. I'm glad people are going to the movies. Ultimately, it's great. I'm glad your son's going. I'm glad the red socks have revived the summer. They lost a series to the to the A's who are terrible. But not, but I we weren't going to go undefeated now. And I feel like both of these games were you were in the ninth and you're like, oh, we got a shot here. Didn't work out. But I feel like it's, it's, they're weaning us off the high of, I think they would have wrote it down 27 and five in their last 32. It was better than that. It was 31 and five in their last 36. They were, they were 27 and a 30 at one point, which like nine teams have done. My wife, I've been getting along great with my wife. It's been really strong summer for us. Usually that happens after basketball. And she kind of likes when baseball is on. I've been watching but basically the red socks from the moment the NBA draft ended all the way through. And this weekend kind of pushed it a little bit because it was two day games. And it was like, what do we do? And it's nice out. And I'm like, well, I got to watch the A's. Red socks are coming on. And it's like, oh, really? Aren't they playing the A's? Aren't the A's bad? I was like, I know, but we're winning streak. And then to actually had like three losses in this series. I feel like I can get it back. It's, it's like a bad at bat. I feel like I can get it back with the next that bat. But right now I just walked back to the dog out. And it was, it was bad. How's your summer bed, by the way? This is the worst month ever for sports this course. Look, you know what? It's, this month is traditionally not great. The World Cup really saved us because we had a month plus of just excellent sports. So not only was the World Cup great in a vacuum, it also pushed all of the sort of just, what do you think conversations to August? So I'm still fresh on what do you think? Like, hey, the bills, what do you think? If you do it a few times, you're okay. If you do it 10 times, right? You start to drag. But I still got a lot of, we're doing just a lot of what do you think right now? Hey, Panthers, what do you think? Yeah, we knew seven minutes on the Panthers. World Cup was a godsend. LeBron decided to take an extra three weeks. It was great. Thanks to him. Thanks to Rich Paul. Thanks to everybody. Savvy move involved on that. The Jalen Brown trade was good content. I'm with you. Like last week was the first football thing I really did on my podcast was I had to do the QBs, which usually I do like a week earlier, but now getting into it, I had thoughts on the bills, the new stadium and the uniforms, that was fun this weekend. Somehow they have obstructed views in the new stadium, which I think you know that possible. Yeah, it's a big thing this weekend. They built a stadium with obstructed views. There's some obstructed views. Not everybody's covered. And then they brought out these uniforms that looked like they were out of this. The XFL in the 80s or 90s, whatever the XFL was. I remember. I had I've got a stadium based half-baked idea to about obstructed views. Oh, I can't wait. We're going to do a whole bunch of. I think has there been a polarizing sports content take football guy yet? I feel like Joe Burrow is kind of on the undecc circle with some Joe Burrow conversations ready to be had. There's there's some good zags against him where he has made the playoffs in four years. So in three healthy seasons. You wrote that what you were on. Oh, you were on with Meena. Yeah. And you were talking about Drake. And I watched it. And then I got fired up on your behalf. Thanks. Joe Burrow. You were like, Drake's won 17 games. Oh, excuse me. Drake won 17 games last year. Joe Burrow was won 19 games in the last three years. Yeah. At some point, winning football has to count for something. I know like Jalen Hertz can win the Super Bowl. People are like, yeah, I don't know if he can win the Super Bowl. Okay. Well, he won it. Yeah. Yeah. Sam, I know Sam Donald's putting up good numbers and won the Super Bowl. Is he as good as Joe Burrow? Like, I know I probably won't go there. But Joe Burrow has to win games. And I like Joe Burrow. And he's fun to root for. But you can't win. You can't go five in three every year and be like, if it wasn't for my defense, like, not really dude. And you can't play in your offensive line because Drake May had no offensive line last year. It's been interesting. You're a pass fan, we should mention it's been interesting watching people pick apart the last past season and some of it's just fine and some of it's not. But like when they talk about the easy schedule, which it was easy, but there was a couple of teams they played kind of in the wrong part of the season to play those teams, you know, like they played Miami pretty early. They played, they played Tampa before Tampa kind of had their swoon and they started the Tampa swoon. We started the Tampa swoon. We played him off the buy. We played Lamar when he was like he remember he played half the game. We played the Browns. We're a great defense. The Browns were gave a lot of quarterbacks, a lot of trouble. We had no problem. There's one other big game that we had that I was. Well, they played Atlanta right before Atlanta did a swoon too. Or they played. We could have lost that when Atlanta was was pretty good. So yeah, I just can't defend the easy schedule anymore. I'm like, you know what? Then you should be you should be driving a brand new Mercedes then if you if you saw how the the Patriots were going to win 14 games, you should about it. Right. So over on the right there for you, it was seven and a half or eight and a half depending on when you had it during the season. And and they overachieved by like six months. And AFC is in a weird spot. I don't think the bells are very good. Baltimore's got a new coach, Chargers Who Knows, Denver Who Knows, Casey's Got My Homes coming back off the torn ACL on a bunch of upheaval. It's been fun to try to figure out NFC have more, more steady opinions. But not being said. Yeah. Opening night must win. It's a must win week one must win. It is a must win. I don't have must wins at the NFL. It's November to summer. I have Merle. Okay. That is that is a month. If we get shellacked. Yeah. It's for my own ego. I mean, not for like how the logistics of the season and how it plays out. But it's going to it's a must win for me. Yeah. I can't walk back into the studio after it backed it back embarrassing losses. It's a must win game. They definitely have more talent than they did last year. They're in the year two of the coaching staff that they have continuity matters. And if you're going to ding them, it's it's that the schedule's harder and the variable thing. I have no idea if there's any fallout from the soap opera of the last six months. I would guess no. No, the players care. But who knows. But listen, it's half baked ideas time. We haven't done this in a while. I got some great ones from readers too. But this is this is your show. I don't know if you want to give us like a cleanup hitter coming out of it. Do you want to want to get like a lead off hitter? Do you want to do? I'm going to go an update to the credit card cafe that I need to get your some clarification on. What's here? I dropped Russell off at camp in New Hampshire, driving back. I stay overnight in the Burke shares. It's like, okay, I'm buying myself. I go across the street to the bar, get a hamburger, the table behind me kind of rowdy group of guys. All of a sudden I hear they're doing credit card roulette. I'm there. I'm like kind of like feeling good and like in the woods. It's like kind of nice. I'm like, I'm feeling lucky. Do you think it would have been a violation for me to be like, Hey, fellas, I want in. What do you get out of it? That I want my meal. Oh, like complete strangers. Let's double this up. Yeah. It's like, I think it was a table of six guys. Or do you think like, no, this is our bonding moment. We don't really aren't accepting just strangers at the bar. Honestly, yeah, the more the merrier. This sounds like the beginning of an action movie that I would have seen ten times, where a good nature guy on his own for the night in the mountains thought he'd make some friends play a little credit card. And now people are getting shot. People are on the run. He's wrongly accused. I think you should stay up playing you are vehicle months and I didn't do it. I felt like I missed out on a bonding opportunity with these guys. Well, we have another update speaking of stuff from previous half-baked ideas. A reader named Bill from Massachusetts said he ate at the new red robin where they had the burger towers. We had talked about food towers and red robin apparently is doing different towers for like onion rings, sliders. So the towers keep an eye on this. How tall was the tower? Do you know, it seemed like it was five burgers. And it just looked better than bringing them out on a platter, I think. I mean, I'm just much more excited burgers. Yeah, I'm much more excited to see, but it was a tower. It wasn't like a big pole through the burgers. They were all like, I've got to see it. Here's I've got to see it. Yeah. All right, first half-baked idea, are you ready? Yeah. You know, male loneliness is an epidemic. It really is. So we can get just guys in general, you just get stuck on your phone, you're just, you know, you doom scrolling, they call it. So I switched this up. It's called zoom scrolling. Okay, it's part of a application within zoom. You know, when you're in your car, you've been, you haven't put your seatbelt on and then your car knows after a certain amount of time, it will start beeping at you. Hey, you're putting, this is unhealthy for you. You need to buckle your seatbelt. Well, as you know, from driving with me, I never buckle it. And I just wait the minute until it stops doing the noise. Well, you don't buckle your seatbelt ever. And not really. That's a terrible. I know. I'm not proud of it. I'm not proud of it. I just don't like see. I know. Listen, I know. I'll get skewered. I'm a bad example. Sometimes I'll put them on. If I'm going like, you know, 95 in the highway, I might throw it on there. But I mean, that's a whole other podcast. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. Most people think that that's a positive, healthy reminder. Yeah. So here's zoom scrolling. If there's a certain part, if you're, you know, just mindlessly flipping through your scrolling through your phone, at a certain point, your phone activates. And one of your closest friend or just someone in your contact, their zoom will activate. So they come to save you. You just have to talk to, you just have to talk to them. It's like running into them in the street. So it's like the Instagram restrictions, where if you're on for 15 minutes, Instagram will shut down. Yeah. This is the opposite. This is positive. It's sending you a friend. Yeah. We're trying to introduce your friends because your, your buddies are out there scrolling too. So all of a sudden, you're scrolling, scrolling. Oh my goodness. But I want to buy that, you know, Mustang. And then you keep on going through. Then I'll send, oh, hey, oh, man, it's my buddy, Jesse. I haven't talked to him in a while. And he's, he's like, Oh, hey, what's going on? You talk to each other for 30 seconds. And you keep going. So you're getting rid of sort of doom scrolling and also fighting the epidemic that is male loneliness. That's pretty good. May, it makes it more social. There's, there's a prize at the end. Exactly. Would you, would your friends be able to turn their settings off so they wouldn't be activated to come to you? No, no, it is, it's government mandated. Something that the FCC is involved to fight male loneliness because it's an epidemic. See, I was wondering, I thought, I like this idea. I was wondering because they have these things where it's just you've been online too long. You've reached your limit. Get off, like brick your phone or whatever. Yeah. But now that they also AI is getting better and better. And I wonder if AI could get to the point where somebody could just talk to you, like almost like your social media therapist, but it would be AI and they could be like, Bill, you've been looking at Bruins hockey fights from 1970s for 45 minutes now. And you've already watched this terror rally fight three times over the last six months. I just wanted to rethink this. These games happened almost 50 years ago. Maybe move on. There's nothing more to watch. Yeah, there's a lot of you've seen all the Bruins fights. You've seen every LC chord fight that could have ever happened. You've watched out the Stan Jonathan fights. You've seen John went sink in different bras. You don't need to go here anymore. You want to hear my, where is my stupid? I have a, I have an AI one that we'll, we'll, we'll bake into it. I don't have a name for it. Okay. Let's hear it. So we were playing, we turned our chat GPT into a game show host. I didn't know he could do is we're like, Hey, go into game show host mode. And we're just like, we'll like name every hockey team. So you get the list of the hockey teams. We all go around the car. We're like the Bruins, the Rangers, the Red Wings, then eventually you get stuck. And they're like, Oh, yeah, four more. And we're trying to get it. And the first person doesn't get it. You're out. And you can talk to it and it will, it'll be like a little game show host. So we're going around and Billy just gives up. He's, he's stuck. So he just says the carnivores and chat GPT of course says correct. Next three to go. You're like, no, there's no team called the carnivores. And chat GPT says, Oh, you're right. My mistake. I, I thought there was or you're, you know, and it's got this weird I've got the settings on in a way manner. So here's the issue. VAR automated balls and strikes. And of course the tennis lines. These things are super accurate. Yeah. But you still want to boo them. We've lost the John McEnroe vibe in tennis. Who's he going to yell at? The ball was out. The robot said it. Right. You do, you know, you're out. You can't really argue. It was a ball. What I supposed to do. Have some element of just total mistakes within within chat GPT. Yes, within the like, Oh, balls of strike. Oh, he checked it. You caught us out. It's out. It's definitely a ball. But it's still a strike. What? And then you can just get light up. Oh, this is this tennis ball. It's on the line. And then it pops up out. The what's going on? Everybody can boo. They can be more emotion to it. So it's not so stale. I like it. Introducing into element of you like ABS, right? Yeah. I yes. But I also like, I think it's I think it's been great. The headwind today where the guy missed it by three inches. It would have been strike three and Durban. Yeah. No. Yeah. That almost you know, almost three inches. Fucking get this guy's eyes checked. You get really mad when the makes makes a mistake. But I if I don't like taking away like, has it reduced arguing? it's good point. It has more emotion. Like I haven't seen a manager come out and kick dirt on the home on home plate all the year. Well, that's why we have the WNBA now. Everybody is just arguing about everything. Every game. Just to reduce costs. It's pretty much more. It's a bravo show now. It's great. Goodness. All right. You have one. You've been teasing one. I have an unbelievable one from a reader. I have a couple good reader ones, but I really have a great one from my wife, and I don't know when you want me to unleash it. So just before you do that, I want to be ready. Like one of the best ones ever from my wife somehow. This I just want to be honest with you. We've been doing this pod for like 15 years. Yeah. I've never texted you, hey, I've got a great half baked idea. And you've never texted me, I've got a great idea. This is the first time ever. The very nature of the idea, if it is any good, then it's just an idea. It has to be fundamentally bad. So I feel like you violated the terms of the age rules. Right. Okay. That's fair. So this, I hope that it's perfectly mediocre, which is the real sweet spot of half baked ideas. But I do want to hear it. You've been teasing it. I'll give it to you now. And I really do think it's a perfect half baked idea because I don't think it can happen, but I loved it. So we went, we went to Hawaii. And we were there for a week. And my wife loves dogs, right? We've always had two or three dogs basically since 2009. So like about day three, she said, you know what would be great. I'm like, what? She said, if if you're away in a place like Hawaii and you could just adopt a dog for like two days, like a hotel dog, it basically they have like, there's a service and they know people are coming in and it's just like, I'd like a golden retriever for two days to join me on my vacation. And they'll bring, oh, we'll bring, we'll give you Millie. And then Millie comes in and she's a six-year-old golden and it's a female. We walk her and she sits in the room with us and then she gets her dog fix. We take her into the ocean. Yeah, she's loving it. And we're paying them and then we return Millie near the end of the trip like we would return the car. Like, thanks for Millie was great. We would absolutely run this back with her next time we're here. And Millie and Millie's having a blast too. She said everybody wins. We're the person who has the dogs that are getting paid. Everybody wins. Maybe some rescue dogs. Maybe you end up taking the dog home. Maybe it's a cup of coffee to see if maybe we take the dog back. Maybe it's like, you know, we love Millie. How much would we just want to sign her up for the Simmons family for the rest of mankind? I mean, is this too good of an idea? I've been at a hotel where they have a hotel dog. It's just sleeping in the lobby and it's very much like, hey, can we play with this dog? Yeah, but it kind of hangs out in the lobby. Can I take it for a walk? This is like how you go. I don't know if you've ever used Turo. You go in Turo and it's like, oh, I want, it's basically like your own. It's like a rental car, but it's like you can pick, pick like it's a slightly higher level of cars. I really want like Ford Explorer. And it would be the same thing here. I'd be like, oh, I'm on the dog site. I really always have just wanted a great day. Just two days with a great day. Oh, let's go to the site and be like, oh, when we're in, you know, when we're in Hawaii, we'll get a great day. I don't know if it's right for us, but I really want a Saint Bernard. Right. Or we'll try it right. Saint Bernard. Maybe we'll get a great day for two Saint Bernard for two and finish with the with the six year old golden. I don't know. Yeah, just keep bringing them back. There's something here, though. I think that's great. You know, where they get you though, the tennis ball rental. Sure. The tennis ball. It's like $20. How much is the cheap? Millie, only like specific tennis balls. They're 60. I can't. How much is the chuck it? Yep. No, Millie, you get Millie $19 a day, but the chuck it is $80. What's a great one? All right, you go. You're going to love this one. I can't. So I like a fan duel as we all do. Not a huge fan of losing money. Also, not a huge fan of winning money. So if I win $20, I'll be like, oh, cool. But if I lose $20, I'll be pretty furious. We should mention you're not really a gambler. No, Kevin Watt's that like really fun to go to Vegas, which is definitely not definitely not a great time. But I want, but I want, but I want, I want to sort of exercise my predictive powers. I want to be part of the conversation, etc, etc. And growing up, my parents subscribed to Yankee magazine. Like a New England magazine. Do you remember this magazine? That was the first thing that ever published me. Yankee magazine, New England grad school. I wrote this piece and the professor really liked it. And I ended up got into Yankee magazine. So I think now it's a full full size magazine, but it used to be a mini magazine like farmers all the next size. And in the back was this throwback where I did some research. I think they did this in the late 1800s called Yankee Swap. And this is where Yankee Swap came from. We were saying, hey, you know, I'd like a John Deere lawn mower. And I've got a canoe. Anybody interested in you would call you if you want this lawn mower. I'm looking for the lawn mower. You're interested in a canoe. So you can trade stuff. Yeah. But you're not buying stuff. You just trading stuff that you got. So it's a little bit sort of like poly market. I want to be able to bet. But I just want to bet some of the stuff that I have versus some of the stuff that someone else has. So you bet like 1984 Sports Illustrated. You'd be like, I bet all of this. I've got 10 of them. I'm, but I'm looking for a blender. Then anybody want to put something up against me on that the bills lose the first game against the Texans. First like, yeah, I'm from Texas. I've got a big smoker. I'm like, oh, man, if that smoker is worth a lot, I've got a, you know, I've got a lacrosse net that my son's on. You're like, great deal. Yeah. If we punch it in on this eBay-type app thing. And then that's the bet. And next thing, you know, if I win, I've all of a sudden this guy sends me this big smoker. Yeah, that's got to be baked in somehow. So eBay would have to like use some sort of system to judge a general value for everything that people put on. Well, no, there's an emotional value too. Right. Yeah. I just want to see I'm taking Texans over bills. I can see I see who's on the other side of it and everything that they're offering. And then hey, are you guys interested in this lacrosse net that I'm getting rid of until someone says yes. So I can say I have the envelope that the Celtics got the number five pick and the O7 lottery. That's cool. I'm willing to bet this, but I need, I need some big stakes from the other side. Let's go. What do you got? And then somebody's like, I have a Paul Newman jersey from Slapshot. I'm like, let's fucking go right now. There you go. That's a little more head. Yes. That's like high stakes. I'm doing more Yankee swap style. We're like, you're like trying to clean your garage out. All right, we got a second leaf. We're like 25 pound weights. Anybody interested in them. They're covered with rust. Like I'm looking for a weed whack. Or after you got married, like somebody gave you an ice cream Sunday maker. You just never open still in the box. I've got a popcorn maker that shoots the popcorn all over the counter. I'll be honest with you. Just what do you want? Just any sort of Patriots coaster. That's pretty good. So it's basically eBay and Fandall merging. Yes. And becoming like a property swap cross with bet. I think that's pretty good. That's like a three-fourths of a baked idea. That was a good idea. Yeah, it's like Yankee magazine Fandall. That's gross stuff. You have another one. I've got, I've got this one. I have some great reader ones. Okay. Including Matt from Edmonton said he's a longtime listener and enjoy of Hackbait. That is. Oh, thanks, Matt. He wants to create a historical workplace comedy TV show that focuses on the janitorial staff at the Manhattan project, and it's called Mop and Heimer. No puns. No puns have picked. That is okay. No, that felt like a pun punny. That was. Yeah. Okay. Tommy Lee and Ellie. We're just dismissed. This one's great. This might be better than a half-baked. Okay. He's talking about express checkout or hotel. You just check out your card settles everything. You don't think about it. He said the worst part of any dinner out is in the wait for the table. It's the exit tax that awkward 10 to 15 minutes in a meal. You're flagging down the waiter waiting. Totally agree. Meals over. Great dinner vibes fade. You just want to get out. Half-baked idea. You go to the restaurant. You check in. The bill auto closes on checkout. Receipt hits your email. You tip on the phone for the parking lot, do pre-tip, whatever hotel's I'm doing this forever. Why don't restaurants do it? That's actually better than a half-baked idea. That's a, well, I went out to dinner. We had a show dinner. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm ready to go. I was ready to go. I was done with the dessert. We were like, I'm going to go. I'm. I'm. You've been on the chair for two hours. I'm just in - I can't see, I'm not watching Spider-Man here, fellas. I'm ready to leave. The conversation has now started to plateau. - Nick writes, arguing with somebody about my homes. It's like it's time to go. I'm ready to move. I love that idea. - Yeah, it's pretty good. - I love that idea. - Somebody should try that. Okay, you go. - You're gonna love this idea. - Kids at camp, no phones, no digital appliances. Writing letters. We're writing letters to them. They're writing letters back to us. It's really nice. - Kids letters are usually disappointing. - Well, I'll be honest with you. They don't put a lot into it. - I don't know if they're, I don't know what they're saying. - I don't know what they're saying. - Not a lot of effort. But they're, they're trying, you know, it's not bad, but it's not necessarily what you would expect. - Especially the boys, the boys are just, you know, my boys are away at camp. Mom's like having a stroke every day about it. And then the, oh, it's a letter came in from Ben. Hey, mom, hope you're good. Love Ben. - There was a snake in the cabin, that was the highlight. Okay, someone did, someone mentioned this concept to me on social media, but I couldn't find that they're the Instagram message. So I apologize to this person, but I wanna give them credit. Okay. Because you're about to be an empty nester. - Yeah. - And again, even though I don't like puns, this was just a coincidence. And when Ben got into college, should you do the whole click the, click the video when it pops up, you're accepted everything's now on the computer, right? - No, it was an email, he didn't have that. - An email? - Yeah. - It's even Lamer. - Yeah. - Okay. This goes the other way. Okay. You go out to the mailbox. Oh my God. It is a five foot by five foot box and it's making noise. Ben, oh my gosh, I think this is what I think it is. You bring it inside, you open it up, holy cow. It is a huge bird cage filled with pigeons, homing pigeons, Ben got into college and this is how you're sending them letters. The pigeons are from the college. This is where they were raised. Oh my goodness. So now you have to raise these pigeons for a little while until he goes off to school. - Yeah. - And then whenever you're ready, whenever he's settled, like all right, money, let's go. You grab a pigeon that you've been taking care of, you put there, get it, nice. - Yeah. - Attach this letter to its leg and then it flies off because kids love records. Although they are very digital savvy, the analog is starting to have a real comeback and there's nothing more analog than a homing pigeon. Now they can only go one way. That's the issue. I learned about this. - How far can they go? - Oh my gosh. - And go to South America. - Oh yeah. - Okay. - They navigate the earth magnetism. They're unbelievable. - Homing pigeons. - Homing pigeons are bad. - Homing pigeons. - Homing pigeons. - Let us say honing. - Homing. - Well, they hone in on, they hone in on where they're from. - And this is a little bit of like empty. It's called empty nesters. - Yeah. - That you're an empty nester, but you have these pigeons. And then when you're out of pigeons, you've sent your seven letters. That's a sign. Oh, we've got to go see Ben. Boom, you fly back out there. And when you're there, you go to the bookstore. Oh, I'll take a dozen pigeons. - What happens to the pigeon after it delivers the message? It's just because it's related to the rest of its life. - Well, it's, no, you have to go back to the bookstore now. You order 12 pigeons. - Yeah. - And then you take them back to LA and then you're ready to. - Can I fit in the overhead compartment or not? - No, you have to, they travel separately. - Next to the plane. - With the dogs. - Well, I don't know why they're empty nesters. - Kevin in Minnesota says no one wants to take the keys from their aging unsafe parents. - Great call. - Now you don't have to. They take the car and for an oil change. You've pre-rangered the mechanic to make the car self-driving. They outfit it with autonomous driving tech response to their actions, but not really. Now your parent thinks you're driving, but they're like a child at an arcade machine with no quarters in it. The world's safer. Your dad drives in '90s, and he wants to call Greymo. - He's pretty good. Greymo. - So, oh my god, give him an arcade. - Just press buttons. - She wins. - For two hours, she completely changed to the car. We're gonna take a break, we'll come back with more half-pick. This episode is brought to you by Mazda. There's driving, and then there's driving with peace of mind. Not just when you drive with me, you drive with peace of mind. I'm one of the great drivers. But knowing you're behind the wheel of consumer reports is safest new car brand. That's Mazda, that's gonna give you peace of mind. The Mazda CX-50 hybrid comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features. So, confidence isn't an upgrade, it's a given. Mazda, move and be moved. Visit MazdaUSA.com and discover how confidence comes standard. Consumer reports does not endorse products or services. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more. - Half-pick that is is back. By the way, Colin from Portland, Oregon, once thinks MLB should do metal bats Sundays. - Great take. - Just Sundays, it would change the strategy. Picture, they put their worst pictures in there 'cause everybody's sitting in further. It would probably end when there's a lunch one day. - I don't know if I need every Sunday, but just like the deal to dreams day. So Netflix pays for metal bats Sunday. - Yup. - And it's just the game everybody gets to use the metal bat. - Who says no? - I'm watching. - I'm watching, I'm watching. - Okay. - And it's a carve-out, oh, regular old game. Oh, what are we watching? Cardinals Rangers? No, it's a metal bat game, holy cow. Great take, great take. - What else you got? - There's a story about my buddy who ran a KB Toy Store. Have I ever told you this story? - No, I still love KB Toy Stars. They had all the cards that they used to buy growing up. They used to have the three packs. - Oh, the rack pack. - Rack packs? - Yeah. - All right, so my buddy Dan used to manage a KB Toy Store. And he came back to the dorms one day, and he said, "I got a great idea." So what is it, Dan? He said, "I know the ins and outs of KB Toy Stores "better than anyone." - I said, "Okay." - He said, "I know the margins, I know it all." - I said, "Okay." - This is good. - He says, "There is an open storefront "across from my KB toys." - I said, "Yeah?" - So here's my toy store, dollar less than KB toys. - Oh, almost like a Mocha Joe type thing. - Right. - I said, "Dan, that is going to work." I just loved it. Just dollar less than KB toys. So a combination of that and my fits furniture concept, where just it's furniture that fits in your house. We're just a one idea business. Had to call my bank the other day, didn't go well. Didn't even speak to a human. What's your bank called? Only humans. Only humans is the idea. Get this, it's incredible. Only humans, no robots, boom, right away. Bang, you're talking, "Hey, what's up?" Immediately. - First call. - Hey, what's going on? - What's up Bill? How are you? - Hey, how's it going? You're gonna love this even more. But no one's calling it chat, right? The first line of the first level of person that you talk to is what I'm calling M-T-I-B-S level employee. You're called for something? This person, the first thing they say to you, "Man, that is bullshit." Immediately. You're like, "Yes, thank you. Thank you, Brian. I can't believe we're doing that." That is bullshit, man. But yes, it is. That's what I'm saying. That's a double charge. He's like, "Yeah, let me get you to somebody." So the first level of defense, they're not, that guy's just on your side. He's immediate, "Yes." They have no state. I have no idea what's going on in the bank. He's not suspicious. He's not trying to pull something over on him. They have no trade. They've never been to the bank. They have no banking background at all. They are just immediately on your side. And that's our loyalty component. And then at the next level of only humans bank, then you'll get to someone that can actually help you. But you're already in a good mood [BLANK_AUDIO] heard you out. It's a great idea. I mean, it could run in concert with my idea of no babies on this plane airlines. Everybody's 10 years and older. That's great. That's it. It's just, there's just no babies on this one. We have a baby specific plane. We have a 10 years. It's like an amusement park ride. You have to be over this certain height to get on the roller coaster. You have to be 10 years and up to get on the plane. It's great to. PAB, he sent his initials as an acronym. He really liked your half-baked idea about youth sports training to be an intramural champion. What you did in the last one. But he thought you should take it a step further. It's an entire youth sports league built around just the best possible experience for the parents. All parents who know that their kids not going to college scholarship. He said, "Ternament locations always coincide with great peaches. Great peaches casinos are sporting events. You can attend as a fan. The hours are set up so you can go out drinking with the other parents at night. No bad weather. Bar attenders at all events and you get credit for spending the weekend at your kids volleyball tournament. Take it from there. It's half-baked." Can I add one thing that I think is very important? Yeah. The kids don't try out the parents do. So the hockey team, it's tryouts tonight. The kids are playing hockey, but the coaches are upstairs at the bar watching people interact. Man, I don't think Jimmy's going to make it past the first tryouts. He was right before we got here. It's like you're very nervous and some people are in full suits. They really want to make the team. Something I think you're going to make it. The reason this is a half-baked idea is I think people would have ringers. They'd have ringer kids in the league so their kids could dominate. The wins and losses are not the point. For the parents, while games, you still have to get competitive on the sidelines. It's just the expectations are lower. Or maybe you don't. I don't know. Petitive at all. So Russell played at one point, Russell played on somehow four baseball teams in one calendar year. And one of the teams, the games were literally across the street from our house and we would walk there. Yeah. And it wasn't the highest quality baseball in the world. It's your favorite league. He's never been in. Yeah. And he loved it. Yeah. The kids want to just have fun. I know that's a crazy concept. He absolutely loved it. I think that's a great idea. I like the parents trying out part. If you get on a team with parents that you're not really rocking with, it's rough. It's part of the bar. Hey. Yeah. No, Bill is a nice guy. No, he's a guy. It is like a baseball clubhouse. You can have one bad apple parent, but if you have two, the wheels come off or the NBA isn't even better example. You don't have the one head case. But if you have the two headcases that can start becoming buddies, not great wheels come off. Speed round. Yeah. Speed round. Tell me if you want to stop on any of these. Number one, kids want medium-sized ice creams. Adults want a small scoop. Kitty size should be two scoops and the adult size should be one. World cup grabbing shirts and jerseys. Wait, hold on. So you're saying the kids scoop. When I say a kid scoop now, it's actually twice as much ice cream and the adult single scoop is less than the kid scoop. Yeah, why wouldn't they do it that way? Guy go up there. Billy says, I'll I'll watch two birthday party bonanzas in this other scoop of Oreo madness. And I'm like, can I have a lug kitty scoop of mid-chip ladies. It's ridiculous. Do you have any vegan flavors? Kitty scoop. I'll have the adult scoop. The adult scoop is small and manageable. The kitty scoop is that's good. Once I wanted to speed round. World cup grabbing shirts jerseys. Everyone should wear skin tight spandex like a scuba diver. You would never be held and you're faster. Number three, a stadium specifically designed to put the crowd into an ordinary mood. Number four, 35 pound remote. Number five, loser plane. Again, loser plane is just when I don't have this one. This is not probably half big. That's why it's running anchor leg on the speed round. When teams have to fly back and like, oh, it's going to be a rough. That's going to be a rough plane ride. I don't know if I want to be on the plane, but some sort of misery loves company, just a miserable, a miserable plane. Wait, let me go back to Ornery Stadiums. Yes. We want to hear the story behind the Ornery Stadium because I was thinking like in kidnap movies, like in ransom, when they play the person in the dark room, they're playing like really terrible electronic rock music. Yeah. Like pulsating music so they can't hear the conversations. Yes. Are you you're thinking that like to you'd put the fans kind of uncomfortable with with the environment? Well, what are you thinking? The genesis of this is we went to the Texans Patriots game in the rain. And I didn't realize when we were pulling up, people were in full ski outfits, which I don't own ahead to toe ski outfit. I just had regular warm clothes. Are there were the plastic thing that goes over your whole everything? Yeah. So I just had regular heavy clothing on. We get to the stadium and the seats are soaking wet. All right. Well, we're not sitting. I would have liked to sit if it was a sunny day. If I was at so five, if it was Patriots Texans, I would have sat down at least once. Yeah. Can't sit down. It's my seat is ruined. Yeah. So I don't know if it's if it's wet seats, smaller seats. Again, I don't know if the technology is there. Occasionally some spikes come up and maybe spike you a little bit. It sounds like they're trying off this with the new Buffalo Bill Stadium. Yeah. Abstracted seats, small scoreboard. But I don't buy, this is the central premise. Yeah. The more comfortable the seat, the less energy you have, that's sort of the point, right? If you're in a nice huge recliner, you're not going to be fired up. Right. And if you're sitting on the ground and, you know, WW1 in a trench, you're going to be ready for action. So I don't want a more comfortable stadium. I want to be slightly uncomfortable. Maybe that's like old Fenway in me. But I want to be the stadium. The whole thing can be designed. I don't want to be annoyed, but I want to be ordinary. It's a very fine line. I don't quite know how it is. Maybe it's like the clips they play in the jumbo tron and they're just a stuff that people don't really like. Like a season season eight of entourage. Like I hate the season. Oh, man. It's had the drug problem. Yeah. This season sucked. Yeah. He wanted another one. Yeah. Well, let me get this one. Oh, this is a good one. I was going to give you a quick one from Adam. Tattoo QR codes. Great. People have tattoos. You don't know the meaning behind them. There's a little QR code next to them. If you're interested, you just put your camera on it. It's like, here's the story about tattoo. There's a lot of good people with tattoos as well. When Bill Murray gives you that card, you had an interaction with Bill Murray or whatever Steve Martin does it. So they don't have to keep on explaining. I'm I'm off for more QR codes. Anyway, really, not in restaurants. No, no, I like QR codes in general. I like when they pop up on ads. But not men. I just outside of menus. I don't want to do it on a menu. I don't mind the menu. Oh my gosh. You sit down and there's a QR code sitting like attached to your counter. I would say menus are probably top five most disgusting germ filled thing that you could probably touch. Number one, being the screens on an airport on the on the seat in front of you, those screens. I'm convinced they don't have they're not wiping those down every fight. Well, I have number one, the smiley face or frown face on the bathroom exits. Like hole, which I do like that, but I'm not touching that. It's a little bit gross. Game that tune. Game that tune. So when we watch sports, we watch it through a few different lenses. We watch it through an entertainment lens, a sense of history, historical lens, a community lens friends family. My kids are watching games through a pure participatory lens. They play flag football. We're watching football. So everything that they're looking at, they are inserting themselves into the game to the point where when we're watching the game, dad, how tall is he? How tall is Will Campbell? I think he's six. How much what's his 40 time? Do you think I could beat him in a race? No, I don't think you could beat Will Campbell in a race. Do you think if I could beat him in a race with a five second hit, like no guys, but then they start to hurt their feelings, we're showing them videos of Larry Allen. Look how fast Larry Allen is, guys, you can't do this. Then I'm starting to beat them down though. Hey, do you think the entire flag football team could do? can be in a fight. I probably not. He's going to it's going to be bad. Like how about tooth like enough guys enough? That being said, yeah. I saw another video. Two pro beach volleyball players versus 20 wreck wreck league volleyball players. I was super into it. So it's game that tune. I like that. We'll start with three on three basketball. Yeah. And the how you could normally see this idea is, Oh, I get it. Three pros versus 10 Joe's pros versus Joe's. Let's see how it works out. But here's the game that tune element of it. Remember, name that tune. I can name it in 10 notes. I can name it in eight notes. So on one side, suppose you had Steph, um, Steph Clay, Dremon. Okay. Because everything's historical. On the other side, we've got JR Smith, uh, Kevin Lawvin, Richard Jefferson. Now they are competing to see how big of a challenge they are willing to accept. So they start off today. All right. We can beat three wreck league basketball players, two junior high school players and five of fifth graders. I mean, this was the best thing about name that tune, watching people up it. Yes. Oh my god. Don't do that. At, you know what? Add add two more high school seniors. Holy cow. We're gonna go five on three. Oh my god. I'm going at an 80 year old, like an 80 year old. What's the, it starts to get weird. Eventually like, all right, you do it. And then the other team becomes the coach because a lot of times it's just a strategy issue. So if Steph and Dremon and Clay accept it. Okay. Kevin Lawvin, Richard Jefferson, become the coaches of the team. Do it for basketball, volleyball. I've seen it work for. I saw it. There was a Japanese game show is three soccer players versus I think a hundred maybe third graders. Yeah. I saw this. They, they, they needed, they had no shape. There was 10 goalies, but they needed some real coaching there too. So game that tune. So we can actually see like, all right. I don't know if you guys could be, could be, but now it's could be even another UFC guy and they can, you have seen it probably I'll leave that to the side. Maybe non-contact sports. That's pretty good. Game with you. If, if Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were playing horse for $10 million eight o'clock on ABC on Tuesday night, would you watch? Yes. I would too. One on one sports I'm into. I think like things with old people that we used to love doing something that hopefully won't get them hurt. Like I, I would just be fascinated like Larry Bird, a three point contest. How, how many could he make now? Like he's, he's, I think he's Bob Kuzi. Well, Bob Kuzi made all those shots and blue chips from members. That was great. Do you, are we in danger of swaling the legacy that, that's why it's a half picked. This half picked is from James and Nashville. I think you're going to be horrified by this. She was. That's a bad way to start. He said there's a dumb company. It's like cameo that let celebrities connect with the public where they send you the messages. I thought cameo was a nice company to try to, I'm just, I'm giving you what James is telling you. Okay. But he says, well, why don't we take a step further? What if you could pay money to get a little bit of a celebrity's blood transfused in you? For example, he actually mentions Larry bird. You find it Larry bird's blood type. If it's a match, you could have him donate some drops to put in your body. And then you could tell people you have NBA championship blood in your face. Jesus. God. I don't even know if that's a quarterback idea. I don't know about that one. Yeah. I don't know about that. I mean, I just came off a spider man. That's what happened. Oh, is it? Well, me, he's a spider. Oh, and that was the, that was the concert. It's a little bit of labor. It's what is too weird. That's why it doesn't pass the, it's, it's, it's too weird. That's too weird. This one wasn't weird though. Adam and Chicago said we did speech karaoke. We talked about that on a previous update that it exists. In Chicago, there's a place called Chicago movie. And you can go there and you can give speeches from different movies. Chicago had, Chicago is the best. Chicago had something else. Huge old baseball with no gloves or something. That was the from about last night. That's the 16 inch soft balls with the no gloves. Yeah, I didn't, I wasn't aware of this. Chicago was the answer to all. Chicago's great. Adam said he went there a couple years ago and he did the rushing, dragging scene from Whiplash. So does someone else have, does someone else need to play the drummer? I don't know. That's, that's just the information he gave. He just wants, he just kept on doing this. Not my tempo. That would be fun. I would love the movie. Okay. Pretty good idea. I think I'm out of half baked ideas, Bill. What? All right. I got one more from Craig in Las Vegas. He said he works in an office with several other professionals. And the family photos each of us have displayed in our offices are woefully out of date. He wants a service that comes to your office on an annual basis. They have access to all your social and they just update your photos once a year. Like you, you have a picture of your two boys, but it's from when they were like in fourth grade and second grade. Oh, the service comes in as like wilds. Those, those photos are four, your kids are older now. Like you need to do photos and they just cut, they just kind of come in one day, 25 bucks. Just come in and change the photos. Do you've already signed up? You can't do anything about it. But do I need a current photo of my children every year? They go on your social media, they grab them. They have access to your private, your Facebook, your wife's Facebook. Well, whenever I had the idea of funeral photos, yeah, a photographer that would come on your, I was looking at the old bits the other day. And they're putting in these pictures of these old people. And they don't want all of them. Oh, 85 year old Maude passed away. They took a picture of the other day. That's not what Maude wants to look like. So I think, I think it should be like age 30 or 35 when it's just, it's like it's the standard photo. 25, 30, 25 is too young though. You could just look like, no, but we just know it's every time there's ever a obituary photo, the person's always 30 in it. It's just, we all make a rule. I just don't want to, if I died and you came to my funeral and I had a 25 like, that doesn't look like that. I don't know. 35. You know, I think I had the photo in your, in your contact, you had a mustache. I just saved it. You had a, I just thought it was the funniest one. The other people should probably pick them. Do you save your friends, the contact photo? Do you put pictures of them? So when they call you, there's a picture of them. I do that too. But then I guess it's the program has changed where you can suggest a photo and it pops up. I'm not into that. I like it. I choose. Yeah. I have good photos that you want to view. No of my friends when they call it's photos that I've selected. So when I see them, my phone is like, oh, I'm laughing at them basically. There it is. He's having a blast. My guys are always having a blast. Do you have, do you on your, I'm not going to ask you this. It's too much personal information for me. Phone address book habits of whether it's people in your everyday life. You just have their names. But if you don't talk to them that much, but you want them in your phone, I put a Z next to their name. A Z? Yeah. So they're on the bottom. A brutal. So I don't, but then I don't go through the phone book, though. I just tighten people. It's easier to go through. Yeah. You're treating it like a digital roll of that. Yeah. There's like levels in my phone. So you've got triple A, somebody's triple A. No, it's all, it's all double Z's for everybody other than like 75 people. Two tears. Yeah. No one moves up to A. Sometimes people move up. They do. A little more than being a ZZ. Now they're just, now they're moving the full name of my phone now. Pretty good. Wow. You've always been wild. So my fine. Yeah. In a W. I'm way back there. I'm basically one step above the Z's. Even it's it's very limited group as you go through in the bottom. All right. Football's in a month. Gonna be great. I just can't wait. Patriots facing a must win and early a fan duel eBay. It's Texans overbills. If anybody wants to bet me any specific thing that they have, pitch me what you're willing to trade me and I will go through my garage and basement to see if there's anything that I think lines up to equal value and we can get a bet on the board. Are you going to film a new commercial for first things first to share where they do the edits where it's like you guys are in different poses and then you're happy. Yeah, the Anchorman and stuff. I like that. Yeah. I was going to have a production company called head turns and then you're going to be able to see the head turns and the head turns. finger points. And it's just we would specialize in yeah, and then reverse it. Well, you know, the best ever at that was 902. No, that was my favorite thing. It was to open in credits just because they would do the it works, it works. I am zeroing like had clearly practiced it for months before he was ready to do by season six. Anyway, all right, look much. Wow, it's great to see you. I'll see you before the end of the year for for near holiday, half-baked. Love it. If not before then. Good to see you. All right. Go Patriots. Thanks, buddy. So this mailbag episode is brought to you by chat GPT, the official AI sponsor of the Bill Simmons podcast. I actually used chat GPT work for I think it's the third or fourth question that's coming up here with Joe House. You'll see in a second, but it was very helpful. It's a it's a strange question and I needed the help. So let's get to the mailbag and you'll see what I mean. All right, Joe House is here. We're going to do some mailbag stuff. House and the Ringer gambling crew. We have changed the name of Ringer gambling. It is now Ringer wise guys. And on Monday, it's a soft relaunch, but we're going to be available on Twitch as well on the Ringer. We are reviving our Ringer account. So you can find Ringer wise guys on the on the old feed on Spotify and everywhere else on pods on Twitch and on YouTube. And we're doing division previews. You did your AFC East one on Friday. Raheem passed on two of the teams, which I thought was incredible. He had numbers. His model obviously is telling him some numbers and he's sharing what the model says, but he didn't have a strong conviction. So he didn't want to like jump in with Evie. Take a lean. I have yelled at everybody. We're going to make actual picks on Ringer wise guys. Do you feel good about the name chain? We were we were Ringer gambling show for a long time. Ringer wise guys is strong. That's what it gets. We've been that for a little while as well. We're going to do a we're doing Ringer 107 again with a tweak of four picks during the week and then last second picks on Sunday. We'll be excited. We'll be fine. Mailbag stuff. So I had a bunch of these. Thanks to everybody who sends them in. I was enjoying them. I haven't sent any of them to house. Mike wants to know he was talking about the Adley Rutchman trade. And we gave up five prospects for oh my god. We gave up our second fourth and fifth prospects for and it just seems like a lot. And he was saying how he was 10 years old at the game when Jeff Bagwell got traded for Larry Anderson, which is a famous terrible Red Sucks trade. He says it's taken me 36 years to realize something. MLB trades for prospects for the equipment to NBA trades for draft picks. Trading Rutchman for three of our getting him for three of the top five prospects is like trading a first and two second rounders in the NBA draft for quasi All Star, right? So I was thinking about this. I think he's right. And I will spend a big get the get the real guy over the prospects. But then when you actually see the list and the numbers, it's more intimidating than these amorphous first second round picks. But I think he's right. Like what the Red Sucks did basically was they traded an unprotected first, a heavily protected first and some seconds for a 28 year old catcher who's really good. And that made me feel better. There are good examples out there of teams, you know, doing that kind of asset collection, getting the prospects. And then once you have that that basket of prospects, if the team surprises you at any point, then you have something, then you have real leverage and real currency to do something. And that's kind of the position. Now Washington, it's like Charlotte with a bunch of firsts and seconds in the NBA right now. Or if they want to make a move, they have cap space. All these things to do. Yeah, that's right. Do you agree with this? I think football is much harder to football. They have like that whole chart in the very determined, like the chart said this and kicked 32 is worth this and they tried to drag 74. That's all like draft value. This is like these are human beings. The prospects in baseball are real guys. It's different from in the NBA where now we have, you know, a protected first and three seconds. Well, who are the guys? No, I think I do. Right. Or like one of the best athletes got for Jalen was like, well, the Cooper's might be Cooper's. It could be the sixers. It's protect is like I can't keep track of any of this. Burj from Mississippi. He says in the year of our Lord, 2026, what do Steve Kerr dream on green and the mortal step curry have to play for? What did dignity? What slow moral rot has taken the greatest dynasty since Kobe's Lakers and dragged it into this valley of mediocrity? I asked this not as a worse hater, but as a student of decline, a man who has studied the fall vampires and finds this one every bit as instructive as rooms. It's considerably less dignified. So I thought that really put you on there. I admire the inspired verbiage. It did make me think though. And I know we've already talked about this and Currie, and Currie's he's retiring as a warrior like it's a wrap and sadly the words know this. But we haven't had a lot of these where it was like something real happened for an extended bunch of years of the team that won titles. And then there comes an end to it, right. And so we saw with the magic Lakers and bird Celtics. So the MJ Bulls, which was abrupt. Magic's Lakers had figured out how to kind of keep it going. They got flat in DeVatch and Perkins and then Magic came down with this diagnosis and that was kind of ended it. Celtics just got old and never replenished it. Jordan's Bulls, that was like we're rebuilding and rebooting like we don't want you guys anymore. They made this decision easy. And then Shaq and Kobe with the Lakers, that was a Shaq Kobe. It's one of us has to go type of situation. They had to reboot with that. They were able to get the Gassal miracle and get a couple more years out of it. This one's pretty unique. This one's almost almost like the 92 Celtics like that range with Bird Parish McHale, except they had Reggie Lewis and Brian Shaw and D Brown and they had this youth infusion and they kind of they have a two timeline thing. Whereas the Warriors don't. And I just wonder, yeah, how does this go? Everybody signed up for two more years basically. So what happens? None of us think this is barely a playoff team. There's still a trade to be had out there with the Jimmy Butler situation. And if we're going to be appropriate about it, they did try. Jimmy Butler got hurt. They were a pretty goddamn good team when Jimmy Butler could play. And they kind of were directionally going, you know, arrow pointing up to an additional asset at a trade deadline. If Jimmy Butler hadn't gotten hurt, like they were looking like they could be a kind of interesting playoff team. Yeah. Yeah. But but the Butler injury changed everything. And you can't immediately pivot. It's the, you know, the salaries are complicated. The salary cap is complicated. And so we are wondering what the hell's going on because we didn't see them make what seemed to be a genuine effort at Jalen Brown. Okay. Well, they thought they did. They didn't want Jalen Brown. Right. It seemed like they did want them. Brown. They don't want Jalen Brown at that price. They would love to have LeBron at the for four million bucks, ratement and bucks or whatever it was. And then use that as a way to bring in another player that could actually help them compete. But they're kind of stuck now for a little while. So the question is, are you stuck forever or are you stuck until December, January, and is there actual plan? We're going to use the Butler expiring, especially as it gets closer to February. We're going to canvas the league and see what two to three unhappy teams are there. Situations that went sideways. And we have a better chance to make a good trade then. We can hang around for a couple of months. Because listen, these guys, like I think cares about his standing in the community and going to games and not being yelled at. He's got his kids involved or at least one of them with the team. I just don't see them rolling over and going 37 and 45 now for the rest of the career. So that I feel like there's going to be a move. So I think we're aligned. I agree. I think they didn't like the moves now. Right. But my guess is December, January, February, if they're around over 500, they go out and so we agree with this. Okay. So it's not as dark as the fall of Rome. I guess a bigger point. Crumbling empires and dynasties. Kyle from New Jersey, you broke out the t-shirt the last time of the of James Brown on call last week day. Yeah. He asked, would you say we've gotten to the point where you have you've had the most famous call and ask we have all time? My sister got one recently. I still thought of you over her. I guess that's the bar. I'm not sure if they're any other famous colonoscopies. Kyle, you're dead wrong. I actually went to chat GPT to figure out if there were other ones because I always thought of the Katie Kirk one. That was the famous one. That is the famous one. It's so funny. You mentioned that there's a more famous one. So more famous chat GPT came up with five Ronald Reagan in 1985 because they found blood and stool and they found a cancerous section of his colon and he made a recovery and that was I was like, apparently the first real screening. Okay. after husband tragically died. Kimo had one in 2018. - Yep, I remember Kimo. - Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mc, filmed a whole thing in '22 and Terry Cruz filmed his in '23 and sent it out to all his social media. So there are five, that one marked there. I don't think I'm gonna top 20. - Those are public health, you know, though the whole thing is about the public health. You didn't intentionally, schedule years with a public health message attached to it, but it turned out to be a famous day. - See, I think you did more for Cole and ask me is than me because you've talked about them on multiple podcasts about how great they were and how great the nap was. And you liked, you didn't mind drinking the gross thing. You have to drink twice and I felt the same way. - Yeah. - Jeff from Richmond wants to know, Harbaugh and McCarthy want a title of Michigan, but is it possible, JJ knew the defenses, play calls in advance. And that's why he's looked basically so terrible. And if I'll quarterback, that this was a limit all along. - And conspiracy bill did entertain this one. - Well, remember when he came into the league, there was some eyebrow raising around where he was selected. It wasn't like, you know, there was that natural question, system guy, guy in the perfect situation, situation guy, coached up properly. You know, the play calling was very solid or is there, you know, that's gonna jump over that stuff. - Intangibles. I got a bunch of questions about the basketball fan, which is coming up next week. Our friend, Doc Rivers is gonna make it in as a coach. - That's a dog. - The question I get the most is like, who should be in the Hall of Fame and put isn't? And you could go a bunch of directions with that. - Seriously? Everybody's in the hall of fame. - Well, that's the thing. - Who isn't in the hall of fame. The natural reaction is, oh, everybody's made it at this point that they've actually, this is one of the reasons I wrote my book a while ago, the Hall of Fame is a messed up thing. There's seven guys who should be in the Hall of Fame and Art, and I'm gonna read them to you in order and we could talk about them really quickly. Paul Silas, who was on three title teams in 74, 76 Celtics, 79 Sionics and then played in another finals as well. He was basically 10 points, 13 rebounds a game for the playoffs from 70 to 76. Point 1400 games was the best defensive forward of that decade other than the busher. Was the glue guy, most respected locker room guy for that whole decade to the point that when the Celtics didn't keep him Dave Counts was so mad, he retired for two months. And I think with some of the people we've led in, I would have him in, especially because he coached too, and was just such like a beloved guy. That was one that struck me. When we were growing up, he was an awesome, I would say like a little bit of dream on Greenish as like, not an all-star, but like important. So that's one. Bill Lambeer. Center on two champs and a finals runner up. Five straight Eastern Conference Finals, basically double doubles for all of that. For 10 years was 14 or 11 with 50% field goals. One is in the mix for rebounding titles, only missed four games in 10 years, and was the most annoying opponent of the last 45 years, hands down. Everybody hated this guy, but he was memorable. I hate making the case for him, but. Zero all-star game appearances, right? Zero all NBA teams. Rip, but Michael Cooper just made it. That's where it's like, if Michael Cooper's in like, we have to start thinking about Bill Lambeer. The thing with Lambeer, the three point, the three-pointer was there the first decade, but like, basically the three-pointer came in in 80. But I think if you transported him from 81 to now. Yeah. He's a really dangerous like 2026 player. He's a classic Mr. Zera guy. Did you hate Bill Lambeer? 'Cause I think he's the most despised South of the component of my lifetime. I hated him because I hated the pistons for what they did to Jordan. Yeah, MJ was my guy in that era, and I was just enraptured by every time MJ was on the floor and those playoff games. Yeah, some of them are trying to hurt him. Against the pistons, exactly right, yes. Tom Chambers, who when I did my book, 2009 was 96, my pyramid. It was just really good. He made two second team on B.A.'s. He was 27 and 8 for two straight years and 8 and 9 and 8. Two Western conference finals was a part of the 93 finals team. I wrote down the best forwards from basically second half of the 80s through 91. And I think he's in the top 10. Bird, Malone, Barkley, Mullen, Wilkins, Worthy, McCale, Pip, and Chambers, Rodman. I have as to it. Now you can nitpick with two of those guys. I had him, my book, he was the starting power forward on the white guys who played like black guys team. And then there's a whole, what if thing with Chambers and Worthy and the Quippers and Lakers in '82, if he's just on the Lakers, his whole run, could he have just been, he wasn't that a Fender James Worthy was, but would he have been a Worthy like offensive player because we saw it on the '87 All-Star game when he's easy and he was awesome. It's easier to project him in, not only because of the All-Star and the All-N-B-A, but the prolific scoring. Like I can see it. I can see, I know where the shot looks like. That helps. I don't know what, I can't remember what Paul Silas' shot looks like. Right, that's what happened. He just played in the deadest of dead era, so I was dead. Chambers is the first two guys that mentioned. I think there's a case. Chambers should be in. I agree. These next five guys are should be in guys because even when I did my book, I had them in the top 100. Gus Williams, we talked about in our previous pot. I don't need to do that one again. Gus Williams is outrageous that he's done it. I agree with this. Kevin Johnson is not in and there might be reasons for this off the floor, but resume wise, belongs, I don't need to go through it. When I had him, did my book, he was 93. These last two are fully outrageous to me. Sean Camp, not in. Oh, wow. Yeah. Three second teams, second best guy in the 96 on X, who really kind of threw some punches back at the 96 bolts who were better than the greatest team of all time. Three-year peak. This is outrageous. Basically a 2010 guy in the playoff series, 21 and 10, 57% field goal. Al Plade, who came alleged on in the playoff series, beat Carl Malone in the playoff series and thrived against Dennis Rodman in the playoff series. And then was one of the most memorable dunkers of all time and the list of dunk is in the pantheon, not to mention the sonic. It's yet another slide against Seattle fans that he's done it, in my opinion. Well, and he tried to build a legacy by having as many kids as possible, which can't go overlooked. I should mention that. The camp legacy. Yeah. I don't need to go to the Hall of Fame right now and pick five guys that I know for sure. Sean fucking campus. So like, I don't want to name names. Let's not, it's not nice or appropriate. But Mitch Richmond is in the goddamn NBA Hall of Fame and Sean Camp is it? Right. That's incorrect. That's a mistake. That's a, that's a miscalculation. Yeah, we, I had no platform whatsoever during the 96 finals. But I do remember talking to you on the phone about it a couple of times and we were like, we couldn't believe how good Sean Camp was. It was like, where is this going? And Brandon, he blew it and you know, which would be the case for Derek Rose to get into, which is, you know, he's one of those, what if guys? Camp had all kinds of personal issues, but I think he should be in. And then the last one I can't believe is not in his Robert Horry. The greatest world player of all time. He's not in, played for seven championships. How long has he been eligible? Oh, wow. He was on the 94, 95 Rockets, 001, 02 Lakers and the 0507 Spurs and was huge parts of those six teams. 244 play half games. He was on 1055 win teams. He was on eight teams of the 700 plus 1 percentage. He was the first guy with 100 steals, blocks them threes in the, in the same season. And he had famous game winners and then swung the 05 finals for real. He had 20, that gave me a 21 of the last 35 points. Five threes and it's one of the great finals games ever played where he swung a title from one team to the other. And I wrote a piece at the time talking about if I called you and I said, the Robert Horry games on, you would say which one. He's not true. He's not in the half end. I am not going to go back. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll ask. We like chat. GBT, that's our inner face. What's the ballot situation? Like has he been on and then gotten to a certain level and not playing a couple of years? And there's no rhyme or reason. You don't know how close somebody got. There's no voting like a baseball. OK, that's what I'm getting at. He should be in. Because it's crazy. I mean, I'm wondering, was he close at different times since he's been eligible? Do you think Derek Rose should be in? That's a really hard one. I would lean towards no, but he did win the MVP. No. Yeah, we won the MVP though. I mean, I admire the talent he showed up. He did take the league over that year. It seemed like the ceiling was super high. It just got cut short by injury. Football question from J.K. Collins. He was listening to my QB rankings podcast. And I'm going to ask you a question. was talking about why they rank players based on how much they moved the Vegas line if they're out. It's basically a Vegas war rating. Or on our podcast, the Fandall war rating is net the ultimate measure of a player's word to a team. So Ben Fox had this on Twitter recently talked to 11 odds makers. Who do you think the number one quarterback who moves the line is this year heading into the year? Wow, this year, this is going to be hard because I mean, it was like my homes was just the obvious most obvious. 2026 number one quarterback moving line. Josh Allen. You are correct. 7.23 points if he's out of the game. Perfect sense. Number two, Patrick Mahomes. Okay. 6.32. Not, I mean, no surprise. Number three, Matthew Stafford, 6.16. Number four, Drake May, 5.93. And then number five was Lamar Jackson, 5.89. Okay. Yet another more evidence that Drake May is a top four quarterback. He was top three or four last year. And I think he's going to be top four again this year. Okay. Jake and the Bay wants to know this is a little harsh, but I'm going to read it. I didn't read it. Can you remember another player of consequence in the modern era with less franchise specific fan love than Kevin Durant? Is anyone even close? His recent self-induced spat with Golden State and Clay is just another brick in the wall. And I could tell you this much as a Golden State fan, we don't want him and we don't claim his legacy. Joe Laker might but Golden State fans certainly don't especially be able to mess with Clay who we adore beyond reproach. They might as well just leave Durant's Jersey blank when he goes to the hall of fame someday. And then Jared P sent a separate thing about how stupid it is when people have to announce what jersey they're going to be in the plaque, but ask like what would Kevin Durant wear if he gets in the hall of fame, which he will, because he's going to get in the hall of fame. And I think the answer is I think he's going to do song. I think he would do Sonics. Oh, wow. That's incredible. That's the move. Why? Yeah, and he's like, I love Seattle. I would have loved to have played there, but to honor the Sonics, I'm going to be a thing. It is, it doesn't, I went through my top 30. It's pretty hard. Shacks probably the closest. And I think Shack, the Laker fans love Shack. They just love to be more. Sure. But it's weird to have a career that you had like Durant had where there's animosity with every fan base that you played for. Well, it's okay. See, I mean, he, he, he did play a significant role in that franchise elevating itself into, you know, what you think that'll forgive him in the end. Yes. Yes. He won his MVP with over the whole city. They're still salty with him when he goes there. I don't know. That, that's, that's good fandom, I think. I feel like he can still save this as we head to the last part of his career. How? I don't know. I don't have an answer. I thought you were going to give me something about him going back to the city or the Seattle expansion team. Okay. He goes back there and finishes it as like a start and finish. And that move. Brooklyn probably has, Brooklyn's probably the coolest with him just because he did try to win there and then, you know, it was the Peter down. Well, that's, that's from Brooklyn fan base. Oh, God, speaking of Joe Lake of, um, ran share from the Bay City grew up in the Bayer. Remember, reading my column, how to annoy a fan base in 60 steps about the Warriors after Joe Lake of Gut Boot. Um, when I talked about all the shitty things that happened in Warriors fans, three years later, they win the title. Um, and he said that was the, that column was the first time I felt the point of Warriors fans were recognized, but then I'll change and Steph saved the franchise and turned into a dynasty. The 2015 title is the most euphoric sports moment I remember. And he asked a question because we talked about this last pod when you were on talked about the concept of a bag of Chandler. And he says, what wasn't Steph Curry our bag of Chandler? So I do have a bag of Chandler terminology. If you missed the last podcast, it's about a team or franchise or city has a one and forever. And somebody comes in and flips it, gives them the confidence. And that's the first person I think of them point to Steph was there for six years before they won. If you're drafted by a team, can you ask me the bag of Chandler would be my question? I think the answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes, because it's a little different when it's like a Messier coming in like your higher gun bag of Chandler. No, I agree. No, Steph changed. Steph was was native to that situation and he grew up. He matured and then he blossomed. I mean, so so bag of Chandler's bag of Chandler doesn't matter whether you're on the team all the time or not. No, no, he became a very different player. He was a radically different player. I do want to chime in. I do have a good pal who sent me a follow-up to the bag of Chandler concept and observed just out loud. We don't do college football very much you and I because we didn't really grow up with it. We're going to we have a college football team. We also have Holy Cross, but both are on the upswing. College football is a great repository of baggage handlers. And he sent me a list, but the only two that I remember off the top of my head, Vince Young in Texas, what he delivered to that and and and Cam Newton in Auburn. That's a good one. Yeah, that's an incredible one, isn't it? Yeah, that's a great one. Doug Flutey and I was going to say Doug Flutey and BC, but he never actually won there. A bunch of people. Maybe like Reggie Bush. Oh, the USC, P Carroll. Reggie Bush and Liner together. P Carroll. A bunch of people sent this out. I'll give the credit to Kyle Wagner from Nebraska that we missed the Wayne Gretzky of baggage handlers, the man, the myth legend, Theo Epstein, who did built the Red Sox and then went to the Cubs and built them. He doubled baggage handled. That's incredible. So the baggage handlers should be called the Theo. Okay, I'm fine with it. The architect of two, especially the two, the two hardest ones, most four-learn franchises in the sport. The Red Sox fans, we were actually dumb enough to think we're going to win every year. The Cubs fans had like completely given up. They were like the widow who just assumed the husband was never coming home from the war. We were like, we were dumb enough to think each year was going to be the year. There's nobody I give them. Yeah, I'm trying to go red now. Not red hour back. Jerry West, I think he's the bag actually. Ben from Central Mass said Aaron, Aaron Donald's looming comeback. Philip Rivers, weird comeback last year, had me thinking the weirdest late career comebacks of all time. He said, Bob, who's in the Royal Satchel page on the A's at age 58, magic on the 96 Lakers, Callins on the 83 bucks, and of course, Philip Rivers. But he picks Bob Coosie who had him played in seven years and inexplicably came back on the Royals, which the numbers are terrible. And then he threw a game in one of the worst or best comebacks ever when the next beat the Royals. But Coosie just became a player coach randomly for seven games and it's terrible. And he's like completely washed up. It's weird. I don't think the Aaron Donald comeback's going to be like that at all. I think he's I'm factoring in and like our projections and stuff for the NFC like that. He's going to be 95% awesome, right? Oh, I agree. Absolutely. Well, what's the case for him not being awesome? Just that he hasn't played in three years. I wouldn't say the right side of his body is going to be nice and fresh. That's a net positive. Yeah, it's football. There's nothing harder than that's on the body than football. You had a bad weirdo comeback. The Joe Gibbs coming back was bad. Yeah, that poor dance nighter was trying to, you know, take in a swing with that and it didn't, yeah, it worked or not poorly. Just like everything else, everything else that dance nighter did. Yeah, because it was partly because of Vermeal. Because Vermeal went to the Rams and it worked. Remember, and it was like, oh, well, and then all of a sudden Gibbs was back coach in your team again. Well, Snyder was flailing. I mean, he needed a reason for the team to be relevant. He needed to try anything to reconnect the team to the fan base here. I don't think that one worked. Rich and Toronto thinks this one will be seconded by Craig Coralback. Definitely, Joe has. Instead of dancing around the idea of an actor's appearance and the rewatchables, he thinks we should lean into it with a new category called the Miele Kunis and forgetting Sarah Marshall appearance Apex Mountain award for is the most, is this the most attractive person has ever been in a movie? And it could go female or male because we did talk about this during witness with Harrison Ford. I really like this idea. I'm mad at you. I'm mad at you. That's the next one. We're doing a Italian job in the rewatchables tomorrow. Let's just say there will be a Charlize conversation. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Really good to just know from Rich. And then one more set from 707 on the rewatchables. On the hitch, I was talking about, we were talking about how Denzel never made a rom-com. Okay. It's true. He's never made one. He has an idea that he thinks I would like the movie The movie starts with a current 71-year-old dance out at the Memorial District. service first to cease wife. Sitting in a chair at Melancholy and a young family member approaches him and asks how he met Grandma and then the movie goes back in time using Denzel becomes young Denzel thanks to CGI and how he felt met and fell in love with his wife and we go romcom. Denzel will never do this but I thought that was a pretty strong idea. I agree you know the crazy thing is you could talk that whole thing into a chat GPT and get a whole script with all the characters. I think they just happen for the actors and actresses. Yeah. Andy from NYC had a question for conspiracy bill asking if I was watching this mad ish be a situation with his united sure stock which has been been going down fluctuating yeah fluctuating and not doing well and was asking what are the possibilities of a sale if you can't make the debt payments are you watching this um that's not happening. I think if he needed cash for the team you would just sell 25% right you would you would sell a stake you would evaluate you value the team at 5 million and get money from somebody this is a good one for you from Jeff from Texas. He thinks the new Vegas team name should be called the odds so we could say stuff like what will it take to beat the odds the odds are against us the Vegas odds are plus 200 to be OKC and then he said I'm just about 100% positive house will support this. He is correct. He is 100. That is a great name. And it also you can imagine the cool logos. I love the four letter names. They fit perfectly. And you can you can do front back oh I'm I'm so all over this that's phenomenal. Willie for the odds. I like the odds the Vegas odds. I don't know what the other runners in the clubhouse work for that whether they go Vegas or Las Vegas. I don't know. I've been happy with some of the team names. Well I mean they had this right now Vegas all the only one that's relevant to Vegas really is the aces because the nights aren't aren't anything and the raiders are the raiders right so it would be good to tie it to the to the locale. Willie from Rockaway Beach wants to know in the Odyssey Odysseus' thing was was stringing the bow and shooting through the aces that was like his move I don't know if you saw the Odyssey yet I don't know how many could do it. He wants to know what my Odysseus tax is wonders like trade machine dump up culture sports analogies. He had a bunch of a bunch of things. I don't have anything to rival the the string in the bow and then shooting it through the thing but I feel like you do. I think your Odysseus task is your ability to eat for another half hour at a normal dinner after everybody else is finished eating like that is your version of stringing the bow. I will accept that your there is your second and third everyone else is playing 18 and you're playing like 54 and you're just going at your pace and then then you're looking around and you're like oh they you can eat those french fries what's going on at the stake and you're just kind of cleaning up and I think that's that's better than any Odysseus thing I have. Here's the secret not I mean of course you have to have the appetite and the interest and the curiosity but when I get to go out to eat with friends and family I'm eating the whole table. I get what everybody ordered because I know you win at some point and there's nothing that I can't taste it's it's a it's a really wonderful thing that I've probably stumbled into it's not like a deliberate strategy but over the years I've just grown accustomed to eating if the food arrives at the table I'm going to eat some of it either at the beginning of the meal at the end of the meal there's going to be you know the other issue is when the restaurant puts in parameters like this is for two or three people oh it's like a personal insult that's an outrage to me yeah this day you need two or three to finish a stake and you're like okay come on that's that's ridiculous um Kobe from Oakland who now lives in Vancouver was very upset about Katie's comments on the 17 warriors and he said he was watching highlights from them and couldn't help but notice the insane love of steps gravity in the court which has been talked about forever but he said there's so many highlights of deramping the ball up court going direct to the basket for an open dunk because two guys had their backs turned trying to tie off staff and forgetting that he had the ball um people just feared the empty this is why it's impossible to talk about curry historically compared to other guards because nobody has ever swung defenses like this um and he wants to know is any other player in NBA history had a gravity even close to that so to me it centers oh it's interesting it's like when Shaq was really feeling it and had position the whole team would sink down the whole defense would sink down him just everybody else was open but I don't remember a guard having what's that fast except for Michael fucking Jordan I mean Michael Jordan all all ten eyes on the floor I mean all of the whatever everybody not 20 eyes 18 eyes there's nine other players they're all looking at Michael Jordan when he had the ball yeah that's so you're saying the good you're saying the goat of basketball also had the best gravity well I mean he's in the conversation yes yes he tilted you know the the the the pistons had to engineer a specific style of you know thuggery right I've never seen anything in person like what would happen at defenses with curry well because watching them just soon they trying to figure out where he was right yeah yes this is I do I do I do want to say just as a final thought we were cheated by not having Michael motivated to develop a three-pointer we know he could do us the city had none of the guys in the 20th century that's right it was used as a dagger and not as I know I'm saying we were cheated the six that he had against Portland right I mean well speaking of Jordan um shahan from london was talking he thinks the best that in soccer the best individual player season ever just based on individual stats was achieved by messy in the 11-12 season where he put 60 games and scored 73 goals then 32 assists did not win the league but made it to uh with second semis of the champions won spanish cup spanish super cup and wants to know what is the basketball version of a season like that where somebody's stats are so ridiculous but you had enough team success to to make it relevant um I had three seasons so I'm gonna give you one was the 96 MJ when the bulls went 87 and 13 he won MVP finals MVP 36 and 6 the numbers weren't insane compared to the typical Jordan seasons the problem curry in 16 if they had won the title I think would be in the conversation for this but they lost game seven but he had 30 game he made five threes a game I don't know if anyone else had even made four um he was like 50 45 90 everything they won 25 games in a row yeah and had all of the check marks and then they blew the game in the last five minutes so sadly the answer is will chamberland oh 1967 average 24 points 24 rebounds and eight assists during the regular season the team went 68 and 13 which was the record for best record at that point in the playoffs he was 22 29 and 9 22 29 and 9 and beepo russle and they went 11 and four so they went 79 and 17 and he basically averaged 24 and 26 every game granade of his sixties but I think that's the answer JJ redics not impressed that's not a press truck drivers we had less numbers and truck drivers what's the answer um to yannis's 21 season because I feel like he was definitely he didn't score enough is that the deal is that why he's not yeah that that it's got to be the stats have to be yeah almost like what just what jokin was doing in one of his years but if the nuggets had also been incredible I guess okay okay and I don't shack that was okay but yeah it's tough like the wheelstats are like wow we'll never see this again right Nathan from abton was constant uh thank me for the ill-cheeper discussions about the blazers but said we did not mention the Stanley Cup and he writes this motherfucker wanted the name of his wife and five kids on the cup so six people who were involved with the actual running of the team that got to the pinnacle the NHL didn't get their name on the most famous truck feed sports awesome that was unbelievable did you follow that whole story well I don't understand the cup why they agreed oh is it his choice of the name yeah he's like here's what we're put on the cup that's outrageous unbelievable it's so bad um how do they have the room they don't they have like that one they have like this one thing and they can put as many names as possible and then that's it. James is a Celtics fan and wants to know who was the, who had the washed goat season in NBA history and suggested trailblazers mellow, Celtic Shaq, Ewing and the Sonic's, or is it the obvious wizards MJ choice? The answer to this is MJ and the wizards was the wash goat. 'Cause he couldn't jump. He, I think he played 82 games, at least one of those seasons, was going against all these young dudes that had been played in a while and was not MJ anymore. He was a shell of himself, but he wasn't. Couldn't get him to the playoffs. Did have a 50 burger though. Did remind everybody. He would, you know, once every three weeks, he would drop something. So maybe he was too good for that. Well, they didn't make the playoffs, just Michael Jordan. Made like a game winner in the All-Star game. The other one I was thinking was Kareem near the end when he could bet he was like 42, but somehow in the 88 finals, they're still going to him in the biggest moments and he's got nothing left. So the answer's probably, Jordan. Conspiracy Bill is being summoned again. Christian and Ohio, he says, when we hear about double agents and teams that may relocate Nico Harris and Dallas, all these conspiracy rumors. Why hasn't Joe Doomars and New Orleans come out of that? Come up on this. He's out of the league. He's working for the league. He makes a bunch of dumb moves last year and then no moves this summer for a pelicans team going nowhere. Seems like prime double agent material. Thank you, Conspiracy Bill. Just wanted to get that out there. I don't think it's a conspiracy with that. I think the pelicans are just incompetent. I don't know how they weren't going after anybody. Isn't that indirectly a kind of like inaction is action? Not doing anything. It makes it a lot easier. It might not even be their plan, but it's a plan. It may not be what they're intending to do, but it certainly does make that that franchise feel very relocatable to me. There's some over-unders on Fando, which I know you know for NBA. I know people are pumped that it's August 9th when we're doing NBA content and everybody was looking for that. But there's some of the win totals were out and there were four teams that are basically like 44 and a half. And these four teams are the Lakers, Miami, Indiana, Orlando, and actually Toronto, assuming with Quasas, there's five teams. If you had to go over any of those five teams, who would you pick? Indiana, Miami, Orlando, the Lakers and Toronto. It's the Pacers, and I already have them at 43 and a half. So I'm thrilled to hear that the market moved in my direction. The combination of healthy haliburton, same dancing in his wedding, he looked great. It's back healthy haliburton and Zubat's is going to be an eye opener. It's going to be a revelation. And that team is talented. They have, you know, all of those guys know their roles. We're we're going to see it, but I think a little bit more than that. I think it's going to be more than a little. It's going to be work. I think it's going to be something. The East is stacked because that was like Charlotte was 39 and a half for their win totals. I was like, I think Charlotte's going to be pretty good. Conspiracy Bill question from Ben from Detroit. He wants to have the trade trade at schoolable to the Dodgers, so they could win the World Series again. And a drum up support for a salary cap for medium level low level teams. They're basically trying to stack the deck because that will help the salary cap argument. I don't think that's what it was. I genuinely feel like that school bullseye made it seem like we're going to the Dodgers than the anyway. So he kind of put the stink on himself with the other teams. And teams didn't want to give up prospects to somebody for two months and then they leave, right? That was my interpretation. All of that's credible, especially if you think that this is the last time you're going to get a whatever $100 million. However many hundreds of millions of dollars for a picture, right? This is it. I just would you pay that much for a starting picture? I guess you don't, if you don't care about money, you would. I mean, we trust like we did crochet and he's already hurt nearly 800 million for one soda. And one soda was hurt too. I understand that that's different to put a picture in the outfield or a hitter. But Jack wants to know. Do you think it hurt LeBron that he didn't end his tenure with the Lakers and sign with the Nix? Because the next one, the title. And that was like the best thing. He's this Nix fan base starving for a title, which he saw in real time as they won. They had it one and he goes there as a missing piece and then as part of that. And where does that rank among LeBron regrets for his career, which I think is a really fun topic. He suggested the failed Paul George Kyrie swap 2017, the Westbrook debacle, Zubat's for Mike Muscala. He said forcing Brian to play basketball instead of being a five star NFL caliber safety. Would have been a good safety. He left out a couple of good ones. I think the number one, if I'm LeBron and I'm like 78, and I'm just thinking back at everything, I think the thing that would make me the Matt S would be the O9 Orlando Cleveland series. And it wouldn't be a regret as much as remember Orlando just turned into an awesome team and guys. We did a, we did a, we did a rewatchables on one of the games, I think, from that with a, because I did a Dwight Howard book of basketball. But I think you look back at that now and it's just fucking Batchek crazy. That's serious. He was awesome. That's what Lewis was good for a year. They made every shot that they looked at. Are you beat me to it? Those two guys, they were the really the linchpin to it. And then Dwight Howard was pretty awesome. And LeBron was awesome in that play. I think he was like 35 and 11 and 9. And he'd like did everything he could. And Orlando was just on a heater. Howard played the best he'd ever played. And it was just the second best player on that Cleveland team. I mean, that was that's why he left Cleveland. No, we're, I think we, I don't know if Jamison was there yet. I'll look this up as we're talking. But I, you know, if you remember going back, that was we were supposed to get the LeBron versus Kobe finals, right? The Celtics got hurt. The stars had aligned and it was going to be like the greatest, you know, star on star series we'd had in a while. All right, I'm looking this up. I have the series ended in six. The second leading score on the calves was Mo Williams. Okay, that's why. Followed by Delante West and Zajunis Augustus. I knew, okay, good. I learned he was I messed up, but Augustus, I remember on that team. In this series, Richard Lewis shot 48% from three. I was, I was there made 18. He made 15. He made 18 a game. Terkelu was at 39. Mikhail Pietrus was at 51% from three. Oh, no, so 47% from three. Rayfer Austin 38%. The team shot 41% from three. They were 62 for 152 and just, just split the series. But I, that would be the one out of all the ones he's had. And I was like, fuck, man, we shouldn't have made the finals that year. When I, like, nothing, none of those Orlando guys ever matched that again. Within a year and a half, your dumb team was training for Richard Lewis. And he was good. Terkelu got a big contract for somebody. For PDs, yeah. Tough one. I would say that was a big one. The other one, I would say a bad team, though. They would have got swept by the Lakers too. The other one is whether if you're LeBron looking back at everything, would you have just gone to the next in 2010? 2010. Instead of Miami, bring Dwayne Wade there and go to New York, because that was on the table, I think. Who was the general manager at the time, though? No. Who was the GM at the time? Well, that was the problem. It was Donnie Walsh on the wheelchair, the game stolen, and no, no, no, no. Me Riley really deserves the, he gets credit. He also deserves the credit. He's stepped to that. Come here. It will be awesome. The Paul George trade is a good one, because I think the Paul George trade, because they were getting rid of Kyrie anyway. And I think it would have, I think if they were somehow getting Paul George and somebody else good. And they definitely would have been a better team. I don't know if it would have mattered against the 18 warriors. By the way, I got this from a few Pacer fans, because I talked about LeBron's that awesome old Deepo versus LeBron. We did the redraftables. That's serious. And a bunch of people mentioned, I said how LeBron had that great black and old Deepo and gave five minutes at the three. And it's like a famous goal tend apparently, that all the Pacer fans are still pissed off about. And the game report I said after it was it was a goal tend. And then Ray Blazer fan wanted to point out on all the Blazers conspiracy stuff that the Blazers say it was in a state sale With all proceeds going to charity Yeah, so they had to actually maximize value. They couldn't like pick the owners It was basically highest better wins. So he was saying Adam Silver didn't have a lot of Didn't have a lot of elbow room with this because of the way the sale was done Which I think it's true They start to approve it. Yes. Yes. The the league controls who Comes in and and the the estate has to live by the league's rules, right? The the estate doesn't get to to choose At the you know over the will of the league Zach brought up something that I'm gonna apologize for I we did the winners and losers of the LeBron signing with Philly and I said DJ Edgecom because he's gonna be pushed to the side and whatever He said look you're the guy who's talked up the virtues of playing for USA basketball being around winners how it changes guys Young talented guy like VJ you learn the habits and mentality of one of the games greatest ever players Doesn't this set the stage for a culture change. I don't think it's a stretched calm one of the biggest winners You agree with that. I sure do. Yeah, I think I really I think it applies across the board This is going to be at least by intention and will and attitude the best version of Joel and B That we will have seen he really tried super effing hard on team USA Yeah, I think of his team USA performance as one of the things that goes on his resume He was healthy. It came at the expense of two two more years of terrible knee and injury ailments and and you know that we'll forever Be able to make fun of the sixers for giving him an extension immediately coming off of that the Olympics performance But that that is like proof of concept and I think that the brawn the whole thing It just adds a layer of we use that we're gonna overuse this the word gravity But it it makes it it's a serious situation now. We're not just showing up and effing around This is a show and the guys all want to show out. I think it's really going to be Interesting 11-01 they have the fourth best title ads now Just got to wait regular season They're now minus 120 for 50 plus games I think there there's a way that they they're probably in the low fifties Yeah, even even if you told me 40 and beat games and 55 LeBron games just because the other three guys will be able to get Maxie Edgecomb and JB could get them there Rich for I was saving this one for you rich from Melbourne Australia The Australians always have good emails. We love the Australian crazy people there It's really like Boston on the other side of the world. How have we never been to Australia? We have to go that we really do just have great experiences. You would do a Simmons podcast from Australia Your enthusiasm for Caleb Wilson got me thinking who are this year's jizz room all stars I'm thinking it would be Dylan Harper concenital Jalen Brown Caleb Wilson and Wembee but Caleb Wilson's the captain I don't think Jalen Brown would be now the jizz room all stars. I agree. No, that's the only one that I don't know the small forward is for the jizz room all stars It's your guy. Maybe it's your guy. Yeah sure could be the bounce. Yeah, your guy AJ could be AJ. Yeah, he's a jizz room first team What if he starts doing stuff he might show us something first team jizz room He's not going to be afraid to show us what we want to see. I know that much. You know, it's the jizz room all stars or all pros in the NFL are already started in the form I don't know if you've seen any Denzel Boston training camp footage for the Browns. Oh no Oh, yeah, it's Caleb Wilson-esque. Okay. Yeah, he looks like Torello. It's basically That's one of the ball. There in price on the Seahawks. I think he's the price. I already bet price rookie of the year Just so we'll get that out of it. Smart bet. Yeah, I didn't understand the rookie of the year. I was at all. We we've been texting about this because I jumped on Boston When he was 45 to one But that but the quarterback situations are going to be weird. I don't think Mendoza. I don't see in there a quarterback The guy in the cardinals love as as they have two other veterans that are there So Yeah, I like Boston. I still think his odds are great um Need you for this one because I got a I didn't mean as pot and we Somehow we're talking about the NBA comp for Lamar Jackson And I was saying it's it's I didn't think there was a comp, but there's something beat in there because you don't know whether he's gonna play or not And just a bunch of people were like how how is the answer not James Harden? Oh, wow where it's like you got MVPs you have a ton of regular season success and then playoffs now It's pretty good The problem is hard and played hard and was yeah durable and durable all the time in Lamar. I think so it's almost like 75% Harden 25% and bead maybe The bead durability Both of those by the way that says a lot about the regard with which we hold Lamar, which is I think appropriate To MVPs. I know he really broke our hearts gambling-wise a couple times. I mean really like Well, it's just the thing is not even really him that lost a Buffalo two years ago Not Lamar Jackson's fault Um A lot of people have asked if this is the end of the process They'll grow. That's what happens. I keep getting an email about that they eat different variations of that email The process starts in 2013 with the NBA draft And now we're heading to the 2627 season 14 years later the process is already at a bar mitzvah The process is already gone through puberty And is this winter lose this the end of the process? Do you feel like the process has to end when and bead leaves? What is the official end of the process? I I like this and I'm subscribing to it and I know that I can do a better job I'm going to do right now, but I think the bronze arrival means that it's over the the process Philly has become so um You know they've they've built themselves into something that's so attractive that the you know One of the top three players in history Shows that team right go to that team to play games with that team So I I think that that is a kind of success, right like what are the high since since the Since winning in 83 There aren't a lot of high watermarks for the Sixers they've had a lot of fun players and the high watermark was probably average and beating The second best team of this century by himself in a finals game In one game And maybe in bead win in the MVP. I think it's fine declaring the process over Did LeBron choose the Sixers or did he just not have a better option? Why can't the answer be both okay Speaking of the Sixers he clearly For the money that he agreed to play for he could have done that for any team the entire NBA right Every team has eight million dollars available Benson from Canada says Kauai hit in the game winning shot again in the 2019 playoffs Against the Sixers leading to the Raptors win the title LeBron is beaten Toronto like a drum for two decades There's a fun LeBron versus Kauai where they went together in the two finals 2013 and 14 Kauai wins the finals MVP good So you have Toronto fear of LeBron LeBron fans kind of afraid of Kauai a little bit plus six or fans memory of getting their guts torn out by Kauai Potentially them playing being rivals I didn't think about the rivalry part with LeBron going to the east and how fun this is going to be as much as I probably should have Celtics his biggest long time rival right yeah nicks um Right he's going to live in New York City, but they just won the title Worldwide westerner there as old agents. He got all that you have Toronto and then you have Cleveland Creeped in Miami both and you have Miami Yeah, five teams that he has like actual real history with that when he goes there with the Sixers it's going to be like a thing Yeah, we'll see how good he is like at some point this has to start fading a little bit But it did start to get me excited um Yeah, that's really it. That's all I got. That's all I have for right. I have one more that I'll read for uh But that's just to keep that just to keep the Elchipo heat going just from John and Austin, Texas He thinks um Elchipo is like mr. Blind and reservoir dogs Michael Madsen's character in the movie um Where He chips out on the coaching search doesn't let two way players travel lays up the employees breaks up the broadcast team And now is the city of Portland tied to a chair in a warehouse with stuck in the middle with you playing while he dances around the straight razor, which is the threat of the blazers moving away. And Adam Silver is Mr. Orange in this scenario that he has to get there before these slices of the blazers are often dumps, gasoline on them. I'm only reading this to say, "But this, yep, these are my listeners." But also, this is a credible email from somebody comparing El Chico, Tom Dundin, to one of the scariest characters of any movie in the 1990s who actually tormented and mutilated a character in the movie that they had to cut away from. - Yes. - That's where we've gotten with this Portland situation. - A vile depraved torture scene. - Yes. - That's what the Portland fans are living through. - The NBA is fantastic. How are you feeling about the Washington Commander season? - Oh, I would have felt better 24 hours ago before Larry McTunsell tore his tricep. - That's like a full of that injury, right? - Oh, it's just, I mean, the only thing that I cared about coming into this season is can we just show up with the 11 intended guys on both sides of the ball, more healthy than that? We know that injuries are gonna happen. The injuries do happen, that's, it's part of football. But God damn it, can we just get to the first game of the season without one of these Linchpin guys? Now Washington has been, you know, sort of collecting offensive line talent and they're gonna try, this looks like Brandon Coleman's gonna be the guy, but they just extended Tunchel, 'cause Tunchel was effing awesome last year and Tunchel and David Blow and JD5 are all on the same page. And man, I'm just kicking the nuts. Even with Tunchel though, I do think that this is gonna be a tough season for Washington. - Yeah, you did the dig signing a couple of days before that. - Welcome home. Happy to have digs. - Digs in the, digs in the DMV, buckle up. - Yeah. - Well, he went to high school here and went to the University of Maryland. He's from this area. - So your regular season wins right now. - Six and a half is minus 140 on Fando and seven and a half is plus 115 for the Overse. - Yeah, I think they're gonna win eight games. I think they're good enough to win. The defense especially has been completely renovated, recalibrated. It's a brand new 11 nearly and it's a brand new defensive coordinator. We got the apprentice from Minnesota, Dorante and he's also a DMV guy. So I do, I think the defense is going to surprise people. It might be the most interesting defense that Washington's had in a decade. - I'll definitely be surprised. 'Cause I don't think they're gonna be good. One of the only things you had is like, well, the offensive line's gonna be even better this year and Daniel's gonna keep him healthy and see how it goes. And now that's all true about that. I was just reading the brain and Thor in a couple of days ago. He does those offensive lineman rankings. Put all of them out. Tonsa was, I think his second left tackle. - Super high up there, yep. - Yeah, that was a good trade. - Deservedly so. - How much homework have you done? - I'm doing it, you know, by division. So right now I am knee deep in the AFC North. - Did you notice the Bundo on the AFCs pod? The Bundo kind of kicked the tires on a soft, maybe Miami's not that bad. - He felt like his egg. - I thought it felt like his egg. - Yeah, also it did kind of make me go, huh? - So there's gonna be last year we did not have the shitty team that came out of nowhere like with the really bad odds to make the playoffs that actually did. The usually there's like a plus 400 or worse. And last year didn't happen. - Yeah, no. - Which means we're, we're doing this. - Carolina to win that division was at nine to one, at one point in the season and Dream did play that. So they might, they're probably the one that they were the closest. They won the division. So I'm really excited at football back. I can't wait. - Yeah, finally. - Like honestly, this is the same way. - Well, this has been a good, you know, the World Cup followed by the Red Sox. I've had a really fun sports summer. But I'm getting ready. Getting ready to talk football, wager and football to do it. All right, House. - Good times. - And we have FedEx coming when the playoffs start, we're talking about professional golf. People, it's still on. Something to watch through the balance of August. - It's that they wager. - In Memphis, they'll be in Christopher Vernon's backyard next week, the first round of the FedEx Cup playoffs underway, the top 70 players in on the on tour. And then they cut it down from 70. I think to 50 at the next event, which is in St. Louis. But yeah, all the best golfers will be playing golf down in Memphis a week from now. - Has anyone complained about the hotel yet in Memphis or not? That's just NBA. - The tour guys don't, I haven't heard a lot of complaints out of tour. - By the way, I forgot to mention WMBA before we go. - Oh my, oh no. - I've been watching it. No, I've been watching, I've been enjoying it. - Yeah. - And I've even tweeted this about how nobody needs a commissioner more than the WMBA right now. The WMBA, which is for some reason turned into the Twitter for you page as a leak. And meanwhile, has all of these amazing stories going on. The leak's fucking deep. Even like the teams that aren't good, like Seattle and Chicago, like you watch them, you're like that. They have some good players. You know, it's-- - Yeah, you know who's good, Washington. - Right, the not good teams are actually like not bad to watch. And then they have, you know, the Olivia Miles keeping Minnesota straight the whole time. And now Collier is back. They're even odds to win the title, but Asia's the best player in the league still. She shut down Caitlyn the other night. Indiana's really fun to watch, Derek. Like the leagues like legitimately fun to watch. And yet all anyone talks about his dumb shit. - And then everyone who participates in this. - Nonsense. - Anyone who participates in the shitty discourse about the league, like I think that speaks more about them than the league, but what the league really needs is a commissioner. And I don't, I would personally bet anything that we will not have this commissioner next year. I will, if that was on Fando, I would be loading up. - You have to lay an enormous amount of juice. - I'm thinking about throwing my hat in the ring. (laughing) This league need somebody who thinks outside the box or it needs a therapist for everybody. - It might need to be, the league might need to get Renee Brown as the commissioner, just a therapist, a heal-relatious. - Just not you, anybody but you. - Fine, fine, I'll sit up. Not me, but I've never seen a league that needs just an adult to help them. - An adult, oh God. - Basic fucking situations. - Yes, basic, the most basic situation. - People like this league, not to mention, they're on seven different channels, which was the same case for the NBA, but in this case, like, I never know where the games are. - The NBA, it's like, oh, I know this is an Amazon night. They've done such a terrible job of marketing, 'cause they had to grab money. God forbid, they didn't take every fucking dollar they could have. And you go to these games, it's like, I'd love to watch, I'd love to watch this fever game tonight. I don't know where to find it. And now I'm doing roulette for 10 minutes, looking for the channel. - Well, I know where Ion is in my cable package now. - Ion. - Yeah, Ion. - Ion, yeah. So the leagues like Cresting too, I think a pretty good spot before football, but now they're all gonna go away for like 10 days to do world champions, world championships. Team that somehow Olivia Miles is in on, even though she's one of the most important people that's coming to league. I get it, they had practices, and there's reasons for that. But I've never seen a league more determined to not push fun stars and fun storylines and fun people. Like, this Olivia Miles, how many times do you watch her? - Only a little bit, 'cause I haven't called on them in some of the games. - Honestly, you would love her. - Okay. - And she should be, like, if this was the NBA, this would be all anyone talked about. Like, have you seen Olivia Miles? She's on tonight. Oh my God. Oh, I saw the commercial. And in WNBA, it's like, she's like an annoyance that she's just a good storyline. Like, push your fucking players. - Yeah. - And then instead, it's all this discourse stuff, and they're just stepping in bear traps, left and right because they have no adults in charge of the league. And, you know, I don't know where Adam Silver is either, but look, you're scared even talking about it. This is part of the league. - I'm not gonna say it. I'm not gonna say where. - Everyone's like terrified to even have conversations about it. - The only thing that I will say, the lowest hanging fruit is getting, I don't understand enough. Why can't they get good refs in the WNBA? - That is. - That is, like, more than anything else, that to me. - I watch the entire fever, the Chicago Sky Fever game. - Yes, yes. - And Kaitlyn was stumbling into the ref, and the ref just gave her a tech that I get. She's gonna have to miss the game against New York on Tuesday. It's like, what? (laughs) The game's out of ESPN. You got to reverse this. So they reverse it, but. - She clearly tripped. Now, the question is, did she say something? Like, come on, you know, to the ref, like out of frustration about how she ran into the, did Kaitlyn say something? - No, she said nothing in the reverse state. - This is ridiculous. Of course, they reversed it. was a nonsense tech. - Can you imagine late '90s David Stern presiding over this league? - Oh, well, it feels like there were some hits and some misses, but I think he would have been a little more involved. - I agree. - I mean, this commissioner they have now has no relationship with any of the stars. She seems like she's like a business woman. - Yeah, and she is, and by the way, she did the thing. She got them a collective bargaining agreement with the increased revenue that the league has enjoyed since Caitlin Clark arrived. - Yeah. - And on top of that, they have the CBA in place and they have TV deals that are dramatically increased from what they had before. - Yeah, because they're on seven channels. - They're getting eyeballs. The people are interested in the WNBA. People are talking about it. - Here's how stupid they are. Their finals are gonna be on two different channels, depending on the game. How stupid and desperate for money do you have to be? - It's also during an FL season, right? - Yeah, that part too. But I mean, look, if they got Indiana versus Minnesota or Indiana versus Vegas as the finals, that's just legitimately entertaining. And I don't care if you don't like women's basketball that much, I personally have grown to actually enjoy watching it. I like the style of it, but if those were the finals, that's gonna be fucking awesome. And I'm sure they'll bury it, it'll be like, "Hey, is there a huge NFL game that we can put this finals directly against, try to limit the audience 'cause we don't wanna make any new fans at all?" - Well, they do know that Tuesday night is a dead night. Friday night is a dead night. I mean, historically, Friday night, that people are going to high school football games. - Right, you could basically make the finals just be Tuesdays and Fridays to make sure they won't. They'll be like, "Oh no, it's counter-programming." - Okay. - It's too bad though, because the league, they by far have the best collection of players that I think they've had. - I agree with you. - And I don't know anybody who thinks they're well-run. So they have to fix this, and I hope they do. That's the end of my rent house. - You see, you got out of this. - We stayed out of it. We stayed out of it. I didn't make you uncomfortable. - I don't want. - Thanks for being on house. I'll see you on Twitch and on YouTube. - Yeah. - Spotify and every other podcast platform for the "Ringer Wise" guys show, starting tomorrow with DeBundo and Raheem and so. - It's gonna be great. It is set weight. Nothing but winners. - So that was today's mailbag. It was brought to you by ChatGPT Work, helping you work even harder. Well, it works on your projects. You could so call the place, so you're always in control. You could put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects, or even a couple of mailbag answers. Try ChatGPT Work today, available to plus and pro plans. I'm gonna throw it right now to Amanda Dobbins, Rob Mahoney and myself as promised. - We just taped the rewatchables. Jaylen Brown press conference was today for the sixers. And Amanda mentioned she's very upset about this 'cause she's married to a sixer. So why are you upset about this? - I'm a long-suffering Philly sports wife, among my many other. - You're the Kathleen Quinlan of sports wife. Is there any other kind? - Yeah. - And I, at the end of last season, and after the frankly humiliating playoff run against the next, asked my husband and his close friends who do include Chris Ryan. So I understand what I'm proposing here, but I suggested that we just renounce the sixers that we just take a break. Because I have watched this happen every year. They never have it. They just, they get there a little bit in April and you think, oh, maybe there's the juice or maybe they've got somebody else. They rope you in and then they absolutely do not deliver. I have to tell you that the darkest moments of my family life are on a Tuesday in February at 4.45 pm. When NBC sports Philadelphia is on league pass. - Yeah. - And they're playing like the hornets. Do the jazz, no, the jazz are good, right? - Yeah, well, they're gonna be like hornets, wizards. - Do the Orlando magic still exist? - Magic, yeah. - Okay. And no one cares. Everybody is just shuffling back and forth trying to get this through this dark Tuesday in February. And we still have to spend our time watching this and investing this and reacting to this. And I just don't think it's a great way to spend your life. So I suggested this. I was pretty strongly rebuffed. Then the Jalen Brown thing happens with your absolutely incredible content. No one can do it like you. And I love you and I support you. - Thank you. - And then I am in my bedroom doing a workout with free weights next to my bed, which is supposed to be my time. That is just for me. When the door is closed, you don't come in until I'm done with the free weights. And the door opens on a Friday morning, my husband with a shitting grin on his face, pops in to say I just wanna let you know that LeBron James is a 76er and walks back out again. And now I gotta deal with all this shit for another season. Is it gonna go well? No, the man is commuting from New York, which any sane person would do, by the way, because have you seen Philadelphia in February? And I love everyone I know in Philadelphia. Like we know that this isn't gonna work. I don't know what's going on with Jo Ellen Beade. Is he still a 76er? - Yeah, technically. - Like a third of the time. I don't know who Jalen Brown is, except for that he was treated during your medical treatments, which we're very proud of you for getting. And it just, it does not seem like it's gonna work. It seems like everyone's getting their hopes up again. And I would like to do something else with my time besides League Pass, thank you. - Well, I have some consolation news for you. The Eagle season starts in three weeks. - I don't even wanna talk about it. - And the Philly's playoffs are coming. - Yeah, and they're gonna make it to October and then forget how to hit, like they do every year. - Oh wow, this is incredible stuff. - You know what it's like living with a Philadelphia sports fan? You don't, you live close to that? - Well, but you want a Super Bowl, and then you want another Super Bowl. - Can I tell you something about that Super Bowl? That was also my son's third birthday. And so we had his third birthday party in the morning. And then the entire Philadelphia family was there watching the Super Bowl together and ignoring the grandson on his birthday. - That's three is a good birthday, too. That's great. - Yeah, I mean, he was happy. I think it was also Sequan Barkley's birthday. So he knew that and like got into it. Which he's happy, what's the problem? - Well, the happiness never lasts. This is also Sean is already letting go of the Nick's glow and is starting to bitch about them, that's again. And I just, like, I can't live like this. I just, I need them to control their emotions, you know? It's tough living around all of you. - Sean has such a glow for like a month with the Nick's and the Return of Movies. - Yeah. - It's gone. - It's just gone. - So much trouble for the Philly stuff because I can see whatever I want. Well, I can't, I hear from Zach, but he doesn't mind when I represent his movie takes or our family life or things about our marriage. But any time I weigh in on his Philadelphia fandom, like the people who threw snowballs at Santa come out, you know? - I just need you to understand. If you did get him to disavow a Sixers fandom and they did somehow win, I think that you're cooked at that. - I know, that it was coming back from that. - Like if he was grounds for divorce and listen to his credit, I guess he just immediately rejected it. He wasn't gonna do it, but it's just not how I wanna spend January through April. It's not a good use of our time. - You're stuck with your teams. You're stuck with your children and your teams. You can't divorce, but you can't divorce your team, in my opinion. - I think you can get rid of the kids. If you really wanted to, there are people you can call. - If I was off to an uncle, I get it. But you pick your team and that's it. The only thing is that they move. - All right. - So that's like, my dad was a Dodgers fan growing up 'cause he grew up in Brooklyn, but then they moved. - Okay. - And then he went to college and Massachusetts and became a boss at the time. - Okay. - Or if you live in Seattle and you were Sonic's fan and they moved, what are you gonna do? But that, see, you didn't even, you glossed over the LeBron piece of this. LeBron's in your life now. - He's always been in my life. - No, but now you have to be like a LeBron defender. - Your children will have LeBron jersey. - I don't have to do anything. - You have to, no, I'm gonna give you the playbook for being like, do you know how many records LeBron has? - I didn't know I needed to spam text you LeBron highlights, but now we do. You know, like the good thing. - Do you know how amazing this guy is? - No ideas, playing point guard for us this year. Are you, have you talked to yourself into the Sixers yet or no? - Of course, I've talked to myself and do it. It's gonna be fun. - No, this is gonna be a thing. - It's gonna be exciting. - It's the most fun, it'll be the most fun storyline the whole year. - Okay, but that's different than it being fun to watch. - I think they'll have moments when they'll be really fun to watch. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It's just, they'll tangle eyes people and then it'll be like, uh-oh, and be, where is it? It's not playing tonight. LeBron, LeBron's taking two weeks off. Just think of the glow that a good Sixers team could bring to that random Tuesday in February. - Wow, I think this is gonna be great for Zach. - I'll never trust it. It could be great for Zach. It, I think it is great for Zach. - I mean, what this really is, this is the end. This is the finish line of the process, which started in 2013. - Sure, I remember the process. We need to trust it. - And then throwing away seasons and building around and bead and now we've now culminated with this somewhat super team. - Also, what if he brings my son? into this. It's going to happen. You know, their Eagles fans a bit, they know about the Phillies. I like that they play baseball. It's tough. Mostly the kids gravitate to players. Okay. If they were in Philly, no chance, they're Philly fans, but they live here. Still no, can go any direction. Okay. They might decide one day, like, there is Garland, all of a sudden you're buying like a there is Garland, Jersey. I think parents have a responsibility to educate their kids about Tyrese Maxi. And so like, you're just going to have to bring him into your own. Yeah. So that's a great one. Maxi's great. You know what? We do have some, like a portrait of Tyrese Maxi, framed and hanging in my son's room that was a gift from my sister. It's a good start. When I tell you I am living in Crazy Town, I am not kidding. We have a special name for the Philly Fanatic, Green Friend. I just, you know, you know what? This is all really about the three craziest cities for sports teams. They're all cold weather cities, Boston, New York, and Philly. Just fucking crazy because there's four or five months a year when the weather is just the worst it could be. And then in the summer, it's a hundred degrees for six straight weeks and everybody loses their months. Only the cold adult mind could have created Gritty. You know, it really takes some divine inspiration. Do we have a stuff Gritty? Yes. Do we have a Gritty Christmas ornament? Yes. Do you know what our tree topper is? The Philly Fanatic. That's actually cool. I like that one. It was custom made. But like, this is, this is what I deal with. And can the Sixers deliver on that? And you want to give it all away. See, Robin, I know how this is going to play out because we love the week and follow it religiously. In the second and third round, you have to play every other day, basically. And that's when that piece is sustainable for 42-year-old LeBron and Joe LNB. But between year and year, or 42-year-old me. Yeah, yeah. That's where we'll fall apart. All right, thanks for checking in with us. Of course. Thanks so much. I'm sorry, Zach. I'd love you. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Wilds and House. Thanks to Dobbins and Mahoney for their cameo. Thanks to Kahau and Eduardo as well. Don't forget two rewatchables episodes this week on Monday and Thursday, the Italian job and about last night. And I will have another episode for you midweek. So stay tuned for that. See you then. Must be 21+ in President Selec states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas star Casino or 18+ in President D.C. Kentucky or Wyoming. Game prom call 1-800-Gamber or 1-800- My Reset. Call 888-797-777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghuffline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 sport and Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text Hope and Y in New York for Louisiana call 877-770-7867.