Harden’s Moment, an NFL Schedule Glut, Owning the Jazz, and a Boston Sports Check-In—With Bryan Curtis, Bill’s Dad, and Ryan Smith

The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandall. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did Tropic Thunder. We're doing comedies all month on Netflix. You go to Netflix. They have a million comedies. We've done a bunch of them on the rewatchables already, including Fletch, Aloncane Poly, Ghostbusters, 48 hours. The list goes on and on and we've also done this month, we did Tropic Thunder. We did Ghostbusters. We did that last month. We did, there's something about Mary and this Monday we're doing Borat, which is an absolutely hilarious movie. I've watched it once. I have to watch it again before we record the episode, but just laughing my ass off. This movie, it's 20 years old, it's still really funny and it's going to be Monday's rewatchable. It's going to be a lot of fun to watch and it's going to be a lot of fun to watch. It's going to be fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch. It's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandall, it's been a wild playoff run, not over yet. Fandall wants to bring you closer to the court to make all of that action come to life for you, the basketball fan. Fandall, the best place to bet the team's players plays during NBA post season, build the same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout or try live betting and jump into the action right after tip off, whatever you want. That's the hope of one of live betting. Download the Fandall sports book app right now and play your game. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC contact your Wyoming game, probably called one 100 game bar call 88878777 or visit ccpg.org/chat Connecticut. All right, we have a game six double head around Friday night really intriguing game six is always intriguing, but I think these two for different reasons can't wait to watch. I've already broke the news to my wife that that's what's going to be happening for us on a Friday night. Cavs minus three and a half at home to finish off the trade. Minnesota getting four and a half points trying to stay alive against San Antonio and. Look, Minnesota looks like they're in trouble for different reasons than Cleveland looks like they have the upper hand against the trade Minnesota just looks like a town issue, especially with the Edwards not a hundred percent. Cleveland to trade this series has become more of a math problem where it just feels like Detroit's max is around 105 points and Cleveland could just get over that they're going to win the trade in the playoffs. 14th and threes they've only made 10 threes a game 49% on Tuesday 13th they have the fourth highest amount of turnovers are almost at 16 a game and they're just running out of guys that they can put out there and crunch time that they can trust. So I think they're in the most trouble of these four teams, but I have five guys I'm watching on Friday night for different reasons in the two series. First one is Julius Randall who was a huge reason I thought that the timbrels one game one and then has been a lightning rod ever since 13 and 13 for 39 and the three losses. And has just look really really awful at times trying to challenge when be trying to challenge what the spurs are doing to him and it's like Randall has these moments where you like I thought after game one I was like he's the key to the series I'm not sure if the spurs have guys to guard him and then by the time you finish game five we're like can they play Randall what I mean this is the story of his career he's made multiple NBA teams were always questioning how good he is and I guess this is just who is. From a basketball standpoint he's made next year he makes 33 million the year after makes 36 million so he's the most obvious trade candidate and he's a guy that when things start going against him you can kind of see it he wears his emotions he wears the nobody believes in me kind of mask on his face and can get really frustrated. And on top of all this town's has been great in the playoffs for the next so you have this trade that was I thought one of the more fun trades we had this decade and the next are clearly not winning the trade and Randall defencento sadly is hurt after the year but Randall. The swing guy for Minnesota might not even matter he might be awesome a game six and it might not matter with San Antonio but I'm watching him if he's bad I don't see a world where Minnesota can win when Edwards isn't a hundred percent. On the flip side. I'm going to lump these two together as my second guy for sell and champagne on San Antonio they made five three's a game during the season and shot thirty eight percent combined and. I thought pretty reliable I always felt like their three is going in in the series they're 21 for 63. 33% basically I mentioned this because when be in fox and Harper had been a disaster from three in the series there are 27% or worse when be I think is a better three point shooter that Harper what came in the league wasn't supposed to be a three point shooter and Fox has kind of bounced around where there's you watch certain games and you think maybe he can make them other times you never think they're going in. I mentioned all this because they lost game for there was six for 26 from three and if you're looking at like. How does San Antonio blow game six and how does this go back to San Antonio game seven to me forget the Minnesota piece forget how if Edwards is 90% healthy 95% healthy forget how great when be is forget how awesome don't Harper has been as these place on on. You can beat San Antonio simply if they miss threes and I don't 100% trust their three point shooting so. I'm specifically watching the sell and champagne because if they're making threes in the first half and when he's doing when this stuff in the harbor like San Antonio that'll be it it'll probably like an 18 point win but if the threes are starting to bounce around and they can't get an or rhythm. That's what I want if I'm a Minnesota fan so you can say this about almost any NBA team would like off the threes don't go in it's tough to beat them. San Antonio specifically. I don't totally trust their three point shooting and I think this is the Achilles heel of the team the more I watch them. And if it goes south in a game six and you go to a game seven and I'm still nervous about your three point shooting in Minnesota comes in as the fuck you alpha dog just trying to bully them and and you know really test them and all the sudden each guys looking nervous taking those threes that's the recipe for San Antonio blow in the series I do not think that will happen I would not bet on it. But it's a team that sometimes they'll be up 14 and all of a sudden they start looking a little creaky because the three start bounce around so we will see all right. Cleveland Detroit. I assume San Antonio is going to be Minnesota and I would probably not bet on game six. I think Detroit's done I think they they have slowly broken as the series has gone along and even even game game five which you know by they play Paul read the entire fourth quarter and the entire overtime I think because my next guy my last Jalen Darren has gone south to the point that they just decided he couldn't be out there. He was a 2011 guy during the season six five percent. He's a ten and eight guy in the playoffs 50 percent. There's some stuff teams are doing him in the playoffs that they like we've talked about they're just not guarding Thompson anymore. They're preventing during from rolling but his confidence really seems gone around the basket like these little flip shots that he used to make I. Again I'll say for the 19 time I voted for him second team on VA and he I don't know. what happened. Um, I have a theory that I'll mention in a second. He also doesn't seem as explosive. There's a chance he might be hiding an injury, even watching the way he's running stuff who knows. But, um, but compounded with Stewart is just been basically unplayable in this series. Jenkins 21% from three. Now, he's playing crunch time and has it been making threes at all. Holland can't shoot. Levert is a classic trick or treat guy. They can't find five guys to close games with. Robinson missed the game because he had back issues. I assume he's going to play game six. So they have to go K Thompson Robinson to bias and Durin or or B ball Paul as as long as they could possibly go. That Durin lineup is plus 10 in the playoffs. Every non-Kade lineup is the disaster. And it's like the old Doc River's theory of is that playoff series goes along. The number of guys you can trust in this series starts dwindling. And you started at eight. And suddenly you're at seven. Then you're at six. And Detroit just might be at four. Um, did Durin. Here's my theory. He's a restricted fridge at the summer. And I think, especially after the season he had, you assumed he would be getting a max or close to it. Like maybe something 40 million year. Maybe something close to it. Jared Jackson contract. But he doesn't have it yet. And now he's not playing well in teams of scheme dim differently. And to me, this almost feels like, uh, like he's unraveling a little bit. I, this happened for different reasons to Antoine Walker. And the Celtics played the nets two years in a row in O2 and O3. And Kenny Martin just for whatever reason had Antoine solved. He just had Antoine couldn't do anything against him. And I really think it changed Antoine's career. That is his free throw shooting with sideways. But he just was never the same. And with Durin, I would assume that's not going to happen. He's 22 years old. But I always get really nervous when somebody goes full section A private pile on a playoff series, which is what's happening? Like him, him not playing in the fourth quarter of O.T. is just, I just couldn't believe it. And the guy that we're watching does not resemble the guy for the regular season. So is he going to bounce back in game six in Cleveland? Um, is this just going to get worse? I think you have to watch. We'll know in the first like six, seven minutes with him. The next guy, Max Truce, who single handly swung game five, a notorious trick or treat guy. He'll do this twice a series where he'll look awesome. I did like the way he was defending Kate. If he's not the trick or treat guy for them, then it has to be Merrill, I think, but I think it needs to be one of those two. They need like that little influx. Shooters, another one shooter. Every year, nobody wants shooter. And then in a playoff series, you completely trust them. At some point, we'll figure it out with him. Truce, when he's going, I really like how Cleveland looks and he fell into play. I've never liked him because he was on Miami and the Celtics would always play him. And he always like felt like he was killing the Celtics. Even though you go back and look at the game logs, he don't have like two good games in series, which is what he does. A reader named Ovi Jacob mentioned that Truce is slowly morphing into the Macho Man Randy Savage. And ever since I got that email, every time I watch Truce, it feels like he's reinvigorated to me. He really does kind of look like the Macho Man. I think you start talking to him and be like, oh, yeah. But when you watch him in game sex, just think of the Macho Man. It makes the Max Truce experience so much more fun. We'll see if he swings game six. Last guy has to be James Hardin. Has to be. looked washed in game one and game two. Looked wash for the first, I would say 43 to 44 minutes of game three to the point that I didn't think he should be playing. And then huge game three ending. He was really good in game four, 11 assists, 24 points. And then he was their best guy in game five. He him and Moby. Moby was really, really good. I thought too. I thought Moby was really good. The last two games actually. But Hardin had 30. And you know, it's weird. On the one hand, he has 58 turnovers in the playoffs, 22 in this series. And there's moments when he just looks old and the Truce made him look old. And Asara Thompson looks like he's athletically at, you know, a different planet than 36 year old James Hardin at this point. By the way, I did not think that was a foul on Asara Thompson. That's a no call. You can't decide a game on that. Sorry. But Hardin, he's played 185 playoff games, which has to be. I didn't look this up. It has to be like top five or top six ever. He hasn't made the conference finals in eight years. He made it in 11 and 12 with OKC. He made it in 15 with Houston in that crazy series where the Quipper should have beaten them in game six. And Hardin was on the bench as the Rockets came back. So he like barely gets credit for that one for me. 11 and 12. He was six man and OKC in 2018 was the one where he carried a team to the conference finals and then ended up losing a golden state in the famous three point rock fight that Houston just couldn't make anything after Chris Paul got hurt. And hasn't made it since. So we've been talking about his playoff legacy or lack there of Zach Lowe famously called him guard Carl Malone, which I don't even know who that was more insulting for. But we've already litigated this. We've already the jury came out, came back in with a verdict. His 2020s have been kind of secretly terrible and we'll get lost in the shuffle when we go through his career and you know how how great it was in a lot of ways, but the playoff stuff was bad. But last year died against Denver game seven. It just really, really, really awful. And you can see it right away. 24 died in the last two Dallas games. 23 really died when he was on Philly in the last two Boston games. 22. My Amy series did not end well for him. 21. The last two with the Brooklyn series against Milwaukee when he was hurt. Hold that thought. That's probably my favorite James Hard to play our performance until what we've been seeing with Cleveland. But in the 2020s, 22, six and eight stats are fine, but we were there. We know what happens and you just can't trust them. Diary to this. How amazing would it be if 36 year old James Harden went on like a heater right now? If it basically starts with the end of game three and it runs through and he's just awesome for the rest of this Detroit series and then goes into a Nick series and becomes this. Either way, he's been in the Western conferences entire career except to that brief Brooklyn stand in that brief Philly stand somehow never avoided, never ended up playing the next. So at least I don't think he did. I don't remember James Harden playing next. So James Harden in MSG revamping his whole playoff legacy thing. Pretty fun. Or it could be pretty painful. I don't know. I was thinking about his greatest playoff moment. So you can think of the worst playoff moments and we could do that for an hour. And I was trying to think what were the best ones? And honestly, nothing jumped to mind. And my mind drifted to 2021 when he was hurt on that next team. And his greatest playoff moment was probably the what's at what called the greatest theoretical playoff team ever when him and Kyrie and Durant were all healthy. But then I really liked how he played in that walkie series after he was hurt. I thought he was like heroic in game seven. Basically playing on one leg, doing everything he could to just try to set stuff up for them because he kind of had to play. And as crazy as that sounds, I think that was my favorite James Harden moment. All the other ones were kind of negative. He's in a situation right now with Mitchell where he can kind of drift back and forth and be impactful but not impactful and do a little see something with Mitchell, which they figured out for the most part. It's okay. But I like how this is lined up for them because they need Thompson to defend Mitchell. They can't play one of their other defensive swings because then they just don't the shirt has no scoring at that point. I mean, you could argue maybe they just go all defense and throw away the scoring because they can't shoot it anyway. But if Thompson's shadowing Mitchell and he's around them, then you're going to have to let Harden do what he's going to do against pick a swingman on Detroit. So it's set up for him here. And then against the next next round, they might be able to just try to hunt Brunson as much as they possibly can and or pull towns out. Hard to won't be doing all this popping stuff. This is kind of set up for James Harden to be like, you thought I was dead? I'm not. You thought you thought I was guard Carl Malone? Watch this. Do I think this will happen? I don't. I do not. But it's in play. It's better than he was on the Clippers where he had no chance to do anything. I have Harden career-wise. I have been the mid forties of my pyramid. I have them actually one spot higher than George Gervin. And I have them two spots behind Sam Jones and Wald Frazier, who were two of the best clutch players in the history of the league, and especially his guards. And the irony of those two being on a list and then it dropping and then going to Gervin, who, you know, I wrote about this in my book, but had a chance. He was up 3-1. I mean, it's crazy. Gervin didn't make the finals, but the bullet series for Gervin was his version of the James Harden. It didn't do quite enough when it mattered. And then Harden has a million of them. But who knows, maybe it's a better late than ever a clutch situation for James Harden. Would I bet on this? I would not. We have no idea what to expect from James Harden. My prediction, I think Cleveland finishes that. I think that I feel the same way that I felt about the Toronto Atlanta series. I think Detroit's going one direction and Cleveland has solved them in a lot of different ways. And the only way they don't win I ran a quiz if James Harden completely sucks. I think they're gonna finish off the game six. I don't really know what's gonna happen in Spurs, Minnesota. I would almost go with Spurs, win by double figures or a Minnesota, obsess them and wins. Watch the three-point shooting. These games are gonna be great. And I can't wait to know both. Watch both of them and then on Sunday talk to Zach a little about what happened and where we're going in round three. We're gonna take a break. We are going to come back with my friend, Frank Hertz. The build summons podcast is brought to you by Fandall. Fandall giving you better payouts on same game parlays. All NBA playoffs long. We're almost halfway through the NBA playoffs. We still have more ways to build and more value. Every time you play, stack your picks for every game, every minute, every round, whatever you want. From spreads to play player points to threes and more, build it on to one same game parlay and go for bigger payouts. If you're betting same game parlays, the NBA postseason bet them on Fandall and more options, better payouts, all NBA playoffs long. Head to fandall.com/bs to get started. Fandall official partner of the NBA. Play your game. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC. Contact your Wyoming restrictions. Pi C terms at sportsbook.fandall.com. Game problem call 1-800-Gamber call 888-787-777 or visit ccpg.org/chat Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by a holiday in by IHG if I'm ever traveling for work, which I try not to travel too often, but I do travel for work. And where I stay is super, super important. I like an easy check in process. I like to be able to hang up all my stuff really quickly. I like a TV with a remote control that can do some stuff. I'm pretty easy for the most part, but I like to feel like it's just a nice place. This sounds like you check out Holiday Inn. Has a whole new energy, especially for business travelers. You'll see it everywhere. From refresh rooms to re-imagined social spaces and dining done right with new drinks and dishes. And for business, there are flexible spaces that work for the way you work. It's a new day. It's a new stay. Book now at holidayin.com. All right, the on-budsman of my life is here. Brian Curtis taping this before the NFL schedule release. I'm sorry to pull you away from the anticipation of just staring in front of your computer, just waiting to see who the cowboys were playing in week 10. I never understood this day. I never, I could have said them for blowing it out. There's stuff I want to talk about that I've not through a schedule day, but do you get scheduled day? What is this? It's terrible. It really is terrible. The one they had this week where we're leaking week two Thursday night football. Yeah, why? Not week one. Not Thanksgiving, not Christmas week two. It's like, am I supposed to just schedule my life right now around week two Thursday night? Well, you already know who your favorite team is playing road and home before whatever. So I guess it's just for travel purposes, but leaking out all the international games and what their plan was for Thursday Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, all that stuff. Kind of defeats the purpose of schedule day. That's not why we're here, though. I feel like there's a moment happening right now with professional sports and money and scheduling and trying to figure out how to justify all these giant media deals. And you can feel it happening in real time with college football, with the NBA and with the NFL specifically. And the NFL now, they're going to have nine international games this year. They're pretty transparently discussing how the 18 week schedule was coming. You're seeing the owners just kind of leaked that out. The season this year, we're starting week one. It starts late this year. We're starting September 9th on a Wednesday. First week we go Wednesday Thursday Sunday Monday. The playoffs don't start until January 16th and the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day. So they've just declared war on everybody's lives. And we love the NFL and we're addicted to it like it's a drug and we can't fight back. But is there a tipping point where there's just going to be too much? You know, remember that quote from the executive who said we've reached peak TV 10 years ago? - Right. - And it wasn't just about the quality of TV it was about how much. This feels like peak sports TV. Except I don't know that we're quite there yet. Because as you mentioned, what's still out there? 18th NFL game. Expansion maybe in every league. Certainly the NBA, but maybe also hockey, baseball. Bigger TV deals, more sports scheduled on days we never used to have sports. I just feel like there's more out there somehow even though it feels like almost too much right now. You can feel it and I've talked about this before with the UFC and WWE have been really smart about strategically picking these weekends that were kind of dead weekends last weekend which seemed like it was going to be a little bit of a slower weekend because basketball had finally slowed down, hockey had finally slowed down. It was a little more manageable. It was the week after the Kentucky Derby and that's always a crazy first Saturday Sunday. And yet last weekend had a pretty good UFC card. My son thought it was the best UFC card of the year. There was a WWE event that was being promoted all the time. This week has PGA tournament. It just feels like everybody's gotten better at both stretching out their schedules but then also targeting dead weekends and then just kind of flooding us. And it's the first time I ever really remember feeling like I have trouble staying with everything. There's just too much, I haven't really watched a lot of the NHL playoffs this year and I usually love the NHL playoffs. I just haven't been able to watch that much. - I wanted to ask you about that 'cause ever since I've known you, you'll text me on like a Tuesday night and it's like, you watching this Pelicans game. The announcer did something crazy tonight. - Right. - Wait, what? That's on. - Yeah. - So I always feel like you're the highest consumption person I know. - Yeah. - If you feel like you've reached your limit. - Well, especially 'cause of the TV and movie stuff that's out there too. And then like Survivor 50 is really good this year. That's another 90 minutes that has now been thrown into my week. But the combo of like the basketball with how the college football seemed to just get longer and longer and how January is now just absolutely loaded. And we kind of finally get a breath in February. I'm complaining about free sports. Although I guess they're not free 'cause we're paying for the streamers. But it feels like there's less breaths in the schedule. Whereas like, even like when we started Grantland in 2011 and there was the NBA lockout and we were panicked. We were like, what the fuck are we gonna talk about every week? What are we gonna do? I remember when I was a kid when they had the baseball lockout in '81 and then the other one in '94. And it just was like traumatic. It was such a monkey wrench in the day-to-day life and there wasn't stuff to replace it. Now there's a million things to replace anything with. And I wonder if that's part of this is all the leagues in the sports field pressure to constantly be in front of us? Does that make sense? - It does. I mean Thanksgiving Eve is the funny one for me that when you and I were growing up, what was Thanksgiving Eve, the Survivor Series? - That's a Thanksgiving Eve tradition. And that's not a sports night I'd really spent much time thinking about it all. - Yeah. The NFL schedule leak that just came out Packers Rams. Thanksgiving Eve. And that's a funny one, right? 'Cause we know when the NFL came for Christmas Day, they wanted to stop on the NBA. When they started programming those Saturdays and December with really good games, they wanted to stop on the college football playoff. Who are they stomping on on Thanksgiving Eve? - It's just attention, the attention economy. - Go see your point though. They just wanna be in front of us on another night and get the money they can get because you open up a new window and somebody's gonna pay for it. - So everything crests with the NFL with this Thanksgiving thing, which you just brought up, this Wednesday night game that they'd never had. Three Thursday, Black Friday, Sunday and Monday. There's gonna be five days out of six where we have NFL including three on Thursday. So part of me wonders is the NFL just trying to break up families and trying to get every better divorced. I think that has to be asked. - Yes. - If some more single male sports fans, maybe better for the NFL, I don't know what they're thinking there. But the Wednesday night thing blew my mind 'cause that's a pretty, you know, that's like when you're in college, you come back and you go out with your high school friends, right? When that's a day, usually people travel. Like even we've struggled with even trying to program that from a podcast standpoint, 'cause you can see the audience goes down for those five days 'cause everybody's traveling. Everyone's with family. People might watch football. That's it. And the NFL's like we're doubling down. We feel like we can actually own this entire stretch. Family and us, those are your two options. And Wednesday night is just aggressive. And part of it's Netflix. Netflix, it's great for them, right? They're like, they want these signature one-off events versus like having the week to week stuff. So they have the Wednesday night opening game in Australia. They have the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. That makes sense from an Netflix standpoint. I don't get it from an NFL standpoint except for money and attention. Money and attention. which you can see because all these games on Thanksgiving are bangers, packers rams, bears lions, eagles, cowboys, chiefs, bills, and then the Black Friday game is Bronco Steelers. So you're not just trying to dominate a holiday when you have a captive audience, you're trying to post a huge number, which really started last year. Remember they put Cowboys Chiefs on Thanksgiving? And what people forget is that game had more viewers than either of the conference championship games last year. - Unbelievable. - Those are the highest rated non-super bowl game of the season, 57 million people watch that game. So with the end, it's almost just like your shock and awe, trying to get fireworks, you know, you could put a crappy game on there, and it would do very well because thanksgiving people at home, they want to watch football. The info's not trying to do that anymore. They're just trying to completely dominate. - Also really hard to figure out what's an awesome game. I talked to Gabe Spitzer and Netflix about this 'cause he knew they obviously have at least some saying requests for what they could put in for the Christmas game, right? And the only thing you can have some sort of sense of is who's playing who? So it's like, if we really like the Patriots and we really like the Chargers, could we make that a request and be like Patriots in LA against the Chargers, can that be our Christmas game? But how do you know? Like we have said, like, would the Giants be a team you'd actually want to request for Christmas 'cause they have a fourth-poise schedule, they have a new code start, they might be really good. Maybe they're this year's Patriots. Or would you say, well, the Patriots are in the Super Bowl last year, let's get them. And then they have the year from hell and they're six and 11 by the time the game happens. So yeah, I look at these things and it's like, these games all look great. But the only one that's actually probably really reliable is the Eagles Cowboys 'cause I know those two teams hate each other. Is Mahomes even gonna be in that Chief Spills game? How's this ACL stuff gonna go? Are the bills gonna be good? What are they gonna look like next year? I just, you don't know. So on paper, it looks great. But I understand the philosophy of the Packers Rams, Bears Lions, these are all like the signature teams in the league. We've 12 out of 32. They're not putting the Panthers, right? They're not rolling the dice with like the Raiders. Yeah, and you're also putting something that's a rivalry no matter what. Yeah, so you got the Cowboys Falcons, right? Cowboys Jaguars because that's like, you know, at the very least it's gonna be Division Grudge match. All right, so let's say we're in the room where two of the owners and we're worth a lot of money. The league has all these media deals in place. They've figured out this roundabout way of using the Paramount thing and the chance to be able to renew, to basically redo a bunch of their stuff at the end of the decade. Combined with the NFL Networks selling to ESPN. So now they've just kind of moved some games around and made them worth more. It's like, yeah, we have these three double headers, Monday Night Football ESPN games. We're just gonna grab those three and we're gonna sell them the highest bidder. Netflix or YouTube, you guys tell us. We're gonna sell the opening night game. NBC, sorry, you don't have that anymore. Do you have a problem with that? What does NBC gonna say? Hey, that's unfair. What they're really doing is weakening the Sunday Fox and CBS games. One hundred percent. They're getting destroyed from the one o'clock and the four o'clock or in our case in the West Coast at 10 o'clock in the one 15, whatever they are. I think those games are gonna probably suck this year, right? I agree. And this is what happens with peak sports TV as you do hit the wall. There just aren't that many good games. Now, fantasy and gambling can make a bad game into a watchful game for some people, but they just aren't that many at the end of the day, which is where you get to 18th game, where you get to expansion, right? Then the wheels start to go in motion. But you're right, man, if you're an NFL owner right now, just think about this, how far we've come from 1993 when Rupert Murdoch came in with crazy money, $400 million a year, $400 million a year. I remember talking to Jerry Jones one time and he was like, when they brought that offer in, he was sitting next to Pat Bull on the owner of the Broncos, and he goes, we, Brian, we were just kicking the shit out of ourselves under the table. Just kicking each other with $400 million is amazing. You mentioned now how many broken femurs there would be for all the money going around, 'cause there's like, there's like three Ruperts right now, you know, you have so much crazy money because the streamers one in, they want more NFL, and the networks know that if they lose the NFL, they're toast, they're going on. And then you have, you have streamers versus networks with two different agendas that are perfect for the NFL, right? If you're a network, you want the continuity of every Sunday I have a game, every Sunday night I have a game, Mondays I have a game versus Netflix, YouTube, Amazon. They're like, we just want like impact. Amazon's a little better at the continuity stuff. Netflix didn't want to have a weekly game. They wanted to, you know, their schedule the way it works is they want to populate their main screen with like, here's the biggest thing this week. So they only needed like three or four YouTube. YouTube's the one I can't really figure out what they want, 'cause they already have the Sunday ticket. And just having these one-off games, like does you, I don't even, does YouTube even, this almost seems like a vanity thing for YouTube. Like we're YouTube, watch this, we have NFL, but it's not like they need it. I think Netflix needs it a little bit. The streaming strategy is fascinating and also because they can always change their minds. - Yeah. - The network's like, as you say, we need Sunday football. We need these two time slots, or if you're NBC, we need the night game, we need that every week. That's like part of, that's, that's we have to have to keep this network alive. But if you're a streamer, you can be like, you know what, we're not interested in full seasons. Oh wait, renegotiations coming up, a couple years from now, we are interested in full seasons, it turns out. Because football's so popular. - Yeah, I would argue for prime, having the Thursday night football has been really good for them. - Yes. - And they figured out their strategy with all their sports stuff is I think a little different than anyone because a lot of it's ad driven. They, I think eventually they're gonna have a lot of product stuff down there that you're gonna see over the next five, six years, they're gonna figure out a way to integrate. When you're on prime, oh, I like that ad. You click a button and all of a sudden I'm buying a pan or I'm buying Dave Chang's cooking something with some Momofuku sauce. I'm like, oh, that sauce looks good and all of a sudden I'm ordering it. So they have like their own set of agendas. Netflix has the, we're in front, we're the leaders, we just need to keep populating our stuff with one-off stuff, whether it's the Kevin Hart roast one week or stranger things or anything. - Elderly Mike Tyson. - Right, or the press box with Brian Curtis, like whatever it needs to be. - We're so weight on the call-up on that one. The way it might be. I think they're waiting to say how many football games they're getting. (laughing) YouTube, I don't understand their strategy. I don't, I can't really elaborate because I think sometimes and you saw this with the Amazon, with the masters. To me, that's a pure vanity move. They don't really need the first round or the first two rounds of the masters, right? But you get it and now like all the higher up level suits are like, going to a guest stop, we have the masters and now you basically, you're in this like secret society for you to just get to go in, play the core so you get to warm around. I don't really understand YouTube. So what is YouTube? What do you think is motivating them? - Well, I'm kind of with you. I don't know if they know what their strategy with sports is yet, but there's this great luxury at this point in history to not know. If you're Fox, you can't lose the NFL because then it's the mass singer and season 800 of The Simpsons and that's it, right? You're toast. - Yeah. - But if you're a streamer, you can play around with stuff. You know, what if we have Old Mike Tyson come out and fight? What if we have Mayweather Pacquiao? What if we have the guy climb the building? - Yeah, exactly. Like, you can play around and just sort of see what works. You know, you still have to hit numbers and all that kind of stuff. But like, I don't know. And to me, it's like building a sports division is a big step up, right? Dabbling in sports, saying, hey, let's go get Iron Eagle and let's go get Greg Olson and let's, you know, put together a little fantasy announcer booth and, you know, get one of the networks to produce the game for us. That's Dabbling, right? That's the level. If you say we want a sports division where we have people hired working for us all the time, week after week of NFL program, that's a lot. It's a lot of money and it also takes a lot of talent and know how. And when you and I have seen this, you know, week after week watching the NFL, not every network is as good at that as others. So then you bring yourself under this microscope, are we doing this right? Do our games suck? Do our replays suck? Do our announcer suck? It's easier to dabble. Yeah, and they're listening to all the media critics and podcasts like this. And that's where they're getting feedback from, basically. 'Cause they know not to trust social media and things like that. So it's, first of all, you cannot listen to anything or you can be like, did we do that? Like, when Amazon, when they had the outage during the, what was it? The last minute of, what was it? The playing game or was the playing game right? It was Charlotte and Amazon just disappeared for 20 seconds and everyone nuts. Like, that's a catastrophic moment for people running sports in Amazon. That's your worst case scenario. 100%. But for the most part, I don't know. These, it's pretty hard for an announcer to ruin a game. It's pretty hard for a production to ruin a game if you care about who's playing and, you know, they can only do so much. Like NBC is throwing away the pregame. and half-time shows for every sport they've covered for the last 20 years, nobody really cares, right? The basketball show, no, I don't know what they're doing, but nobody cares, it doesn't matter. With the football piece, so if they add another week and it's clear they want to go now, I thought it was really notable that they pushed the Super Bowl all the way to February 14th. The Super Bowl always, without fail, has been the first Sunday in February and it's either February 1st through February 7th without fail. Single digits, no longer. Single digit number four. Now we're at 14 and I almost feel like it's a fewer to see this is how it's going to work for us when we go to 18 weeks. What kind of number do we get if we push it back? And I don't know where this part ends either because think about this from the beginning. And they're also insisting on doing the preseason. So you're talking August all the way through February now, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that's 7 months. So 7 months season, that seems crazy to me, right? It does. It does, but if you were going to grow, wouldn't you grow into February? Right. Like staggered? I don't know. There's something about the way the schedule was set up where college started, people were kind of back from summer break and all that stuff. Kids went off, school started for little kids. Kids are in college and then the NFL would start. And now it seems like they're kind of conceding that territory to college football and the college football is the other one that like Indiana's first game last year was August 19th. Their last game was January 19th, it's a five month schedule not counting all the practices. So you're showing up in Indiana and mid June and you're going all the way through the middle of January. That's insane. Week zero is like one of the concepts that makes me laugh about peak sports TV, which we got to in college football. We have week one, but before week one, we have week zero. Right. We're games. Right. It's like, but zero is not a week. They're not good games. So it doesn't count as a week, but it's week zero. But it's something to watch. Yeah. But February to me, that's always been the dead zone of sports. And it's a famous quote where somebody asked the sports writer, why did you quit? Is it February? Because there's anything to write about. So if you're the NFL, what if we stretch that another week? And we just keep going and bet that you're not going to want to watch regular season NBA as much as you're going to want to watch us. Right. February was always first for the sports community. It was vacations. There was always conferences in February and early March. It was always kind of the time everybody reset and then March madness would hit. Now March madness is going to get longer. Like what are they? What are they? Didn't they add like another 14 teams or something and they're about to? They did. They did. Because, you know, like literally odd teams wouldn't enough to pick a champion. This is one of the things I wanted to talk about. These different leagues are doing stuff that everybody is like, please don't do this. Like not only the fans, but the people that play and coach the sports are like, yeah, don't do this. And whoever is in charge is always like, nah, actually we're going to do it. Thanks for the input. Like the NBA, I think pretty consistently across the board, everybody is saying the season is too long. Tyler had a great piece for us today about all the leg injuries and it's not that him and I had been talking about the scenes for months about is there a way to actually capture, did something change because you could see in the basketball reference minutes from 12, 13 years ago, like the league leaders and minutes versus the league leaders now. People are 500 minutes less, it doesn't make sense, but it does make sense when you watch how it's played all the leg injuries and where are we going with all this stuff? The bet that's being made is that they will take the money and they will watch us roll our eyes and they'll say, you're going to watch anyway. I know you're going to watch and let's, you and I could do a self audit about this, right? Did we need a seventh team from every conference for the NFL playoffs? Absolutely, we didn't. Those teams have sucked by and large year after year. Did you not watch those games involving the semifinals? That was one where I was like, you got me. I kind of like this. Yeah, I was, I wasn't against that idea. If they added two more teams, I think that's now a mistake. NBA play in game. I think you're pro, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I'm pro. You're pro. I've enjoyed it. They bet that they can have teams that would often have a losing record or be right around 500 and they put them in the postseason and the Bill Simmons will watch and you watched. NBA cup by watch. Am I a bad parameter though because I'm going to watch anything. Yeah, but I'm just what I think is like, what would the backlash look like? What if, you know, what would the NFL have to do to, to, to actually put a number on the scoreboard where they're like, whoa, people really hated that. This is a good question because somebody asked me this, what's the number for each sport that would make people go? What the fuck are you guys doing, right? Which, so the NFL said we're, we're going to have a 20 game schedule next year. People would be like, what you, no, no, no, no, no, we're tapping out. You can't do that. And I think for the NBA, just staying even is about as far as they can push it. Like, if they went up to 90 games, I think, honestly, people would revolt. Sure. I think that would be awful. College football. I don't know what the number is. Indiana played 16 games last year. Yeah. I think about that, that's, that's more than the 1972, as many as the 1972 dolphins played. Oh my god. And somebody was at the University of Texas, you know, win an 11 game college football world. Yeah. It feels like a ton, but I've watched every week of it. Right. It's amazing. And it's, it's fun. Everybody's like, oh, this sucks. It's a new world. Yeah. I haven't reached that point yet. So you're good. You're good from late August all the way through January for college football. I mean, I'll tell you what, you know me, like, I'll watch any football game starting Thursday. I'll watch all day Saturday and I watch all day Sunday Sunday ticket. By Monday now, I'm dragging a lot. Yeah. I'm just like, Joe and Troy come on. I'm like, I'm not, not watching this, but I feel like I'm dragged. You're worn out. That's what that first week in a day NBA playoffs is like, by like the eighth game, you're like, woof. Need that. I love this. I'm in, but I'm dry. I'm, this is, I'm tired. Yeah. And I'll tell you what it is. All these people talk about how confusing the world is now with the streaming services and how hard it is to watch things. They're not wrong, but they also lack the historical perspective of you and I where it's like, it is also in certain ways easier to watch everything now. Yeah. There are more college football games at the click of a button than there ever were when I was a kid. Right. Even when I was in college. Texas used to have a paper view game when I was in college, like, here's one of our crappy games. You should on paper view, if you didn't come to the stadium, like, it is now. There are so much. It's easy to watch stuff. Now, is it a pain they asked to go from streamer to streamer and back and forth to television yet? It is. It totally is. I understand that. But there's tons of stuff on. There's tons of stuff on without really trying to watch anything. Yeah. My life has spanned this entire kind of run we've had because I'm old enough to remember game six of the 1981 finals taped the late in Boston. This is the Celtics winning the title was not on live and I was I was in fifth or sixth grade and had to go to bed then wake up for the game. My dad woke me up at 1130 so we could watch the game to see what happened. The other choice would have been to just listen to it on the radio. But when you think about, like, all the NBA games that were lost over the years, they were NFL. I've talked about this before but it sucks so much to be an NFL fan. If you were in a city, they if you were like a Jets fan and you're living in New York City and they would do the thing where they look to begin with, but they would show Jets giants. You would only have two games. So be one and one and you know thing can compete with the home team and that was it. You didn't get to watch any other teams. So you're really tied to the little game breaks, the halftime stuff, the highlights, the ticker on the bottom. That was kind of all we had. So I look at the stuff now where we're arguing about, it's really hard to find where every single game is on, like that's a decent problem to have. I think what's weird to me is like the Lakers play off game the other night, in LA was not on normal TV. And that's where this goes back to the question of how much money is enough to actually make it less likely people are going to like your sport because there's just LA is a huge city. It's got people of all kinds of backgrounds and there's people that just aren't going to pay for peacock in LA, right? That probably love the Lakers that either had to go to somebody's house or had peacock or just had to find out what happened afterwards and that's why I think you lose the narrative a little bit at the very least like the games in the local cities. I feel like should be on normal TV. That reminds me of old school NFL when there'd be a Cowboys game when I was a kid that wasn't sold out by Friday. Oh, that's right. And you start to hear the sports radio thing and it's like, oh, should we get tickets? I forgot about that. We're not going to watch the game. We're not going to watch the home blackout. The home blackout, which is now nobody even understands that concept. Back in the day, there'd be this thing. Remember that into the week? Well, you had to explain this because there's probably people listening who don't even know you're talking about. You had to sell out the game or it wasn't on on local television. So if you lived in Cincinnati and the Bengals were 10,000 tickets shy, they would have to decide whether they wanted to buy the 10,000 tickets themselves so their fans could see the game. They would give them a chair. sometimes that was that remember that being a thing, but you'd start to hear this murmur late in the week. It's a time to go buy tickets right because otherwise we're not going to be able to see the game again. It's just like a totally different euro of sports. But was that the was that the get the Laker game that was a $90 get in price. There was the cheapest Laker ticket of the season. Was that game four versus OKC? Do you see that does like that? Yeah, that's happening now with World Cup. The tickets are starting to drop big time. Remember, they priced it at all these crazy heights. And now it feels like the get in prices is going to keep going down. World Cup is another thing. I mean, you could argue this is the craziest sports content year we've had. With football getting longer. Adding, adding World Cup. When does winter Olympics start? We did it. We did it. That's right, Bill. I got bad news. That shows you how much I watch February six through 22nd. You might remember some hockey. Yeah, I did watch some women's hockey and the men's hockey. That's, but honestly, that's how much sports I've watched. I don't all this stuff is starting to blend together. Dude, I'm with you. I just feel like, I mean, I'm like, Mike, Mike, I feel like Mike, Toreco, we're just like rush to go off to call another huge event. It's like it happened 10 years ago. It does. It is so much stuff. It's three months ago. It's so much stuff. Yeah, that again, like I think if you went to young Bill and young Brian, it'd be like, this is a dream. Because do you remember those nights where you'd be like, there's nothing on. I killed a watch sport. I'm starting to really have trouble, like as I just proved with the Winter Olympics, the stuff is just going in one air and out the other when you're watching it. And unless that's something I really have to focus on, which is basically for this podcast that I fell in basketball, I'm just finding like, like the baseball playoffs last year, which I watched a ton of. And now if you quiz me on what happened in the 25 playoffs, I'd be like, well, Dodgers played the Blue Jays. I remember that game seven. Who did the Blue Jays beat in the previous round? It starts to get iffy. I'm like, I don't know. I watched it. I never used to be like that. Mariners? Mariners? Blue Jays Mariners? I think Mariners. That's a loss. It was the Mariners. If we between the two of us, we can reconstruct the last six months of sports. We don't have to help each other. Well, it's like, I had Letterman on last week. And one of the things I asked him was about like, with the 6,000 shows, do you, you know, you did 6,000 shows across the board? Do they all start to blend in together after what I was like, yeah, I don't, you know, remember little pieces, but you don't remember it like the, like when Jimmy Kimmel goes on his show for the first time in Letterman show, he remembers every moment of it. And I wonder with sports, the influx of it, if that's just going to be what happens with our memories, where there's so much content. There's so much go out that three months after the Winter Olympics, I could remember if we had the Winter Olympics yet. And part of it's the media. It just everything goes fast. I was looking at, for some reason, I went to ESPN.com, so I'll page, I'm not totally sure why the other day, but I went to the homepage. What was that experience? Like, it was, it was different kind of, kind of like going to the old apartment building you, you know, lived in when you were a young, young adult archives for their writers anymore. You never write your like, you just have to hope they wrote something. It was like going to the old apartment, the apartment had been turned, it tore down. Yeah, that's what it was like. But I can't remember the, it was one of these, the one of these sports stories that leaked out of your your brain in mind, but some huge sports story that I had before, and it just wasn't, it was barely on the homepage. And I don't even blame me as PN. It's just the world moves very fast now. You know, there's not the SI cover that comes out on Thursday and you're like, okay, yeah, that was a week, that was what happened this week, right? Our brains are just ugly. It's like, oh, there's something, there's a WWE thing tonight. What's that? What's going on? Ronda Rousey and it's fight tonight. Okay. And you just sort of ping-ponged to the next thing. It couldn't have been this much slower 45 years ago. I think it was. I honestly, you know what? I don't think the, I think if you and I were like a living agit page, it wasn't that slow because there's just a lot, there was a lot going on, but we just couldn't watch it. We didn't have access to it. Not on a, not on a Tuesday night. Well, I wonder if part of this, so social media basically starts for what it looks like now, probably like 18 years ago, 2008, 2009, Rich. Sure. Before we were in the bookmark economy, if I wanted to find out about anything, I had my whole slew of bookmarks. I had websites I went to. I had writers I liked. I had a couple message boards for my favorite team like the old school message boards. That was really it. And I would start my morning and I would just go through all the bookmarks. Now I just probably go to Twitter or I go to a couple of the Boston sports Reddit pages and that's kind of what I do, but I'm like, I wish I wish I could actually go back to the old bookmark thing, but you'd be bookmarking things that wouldn't even be able to know how to serve you the content correctly. And the ringer is kind of anomaly in that respect. You can go to our website still and see all the stuff we have. There's not a lot of places that are easy to do that now. Apple news is one that I always go to now every day and I always look to see because I I subscribe to that and get all the different websites and they they do a pretty good job of curating what's going on. And that's like the closest I have to a bookmark experience now. I agree. Because if you're anywhere else, people and again, we've we've benefited from this being in the sports business, but like everybody jumps on small things now. Yeah. So it feels like nothing. It feels like everything is big. You know, people are like, you know, I mean, just imagine like when we were when we were young, Mel Kuiper seemed like a lunatic because he cared that much about the NFL draft. And now he's in normy. Because there's every Twitter account you follow cares about the draft and is already caring about next year's draft, even though it just ended. And so just everything seems big. You know, it just everything seems important. And then I think at the end of the day, nothing seems important or as important. Or everything seems big, but it's not like the jay like for the Boston fans right now, the Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, trying to interpret all these little weird videos. I don't must like if we had this in 1982, this is all I would have done is a little kid is trying to figure out wait, Mikhail doesn't maybe like bird and just gone during myself crazy. Now you can, you know, Jalen's done multiple Twitch streams. He just did some other interview. Tatum now just did an interview. Then the people around them, then you have team act being able to dine on a weekend of pretending he hadn't talked to Jalen Brown when he obviously did and all that's kind of meaningless. Like we're going to go through it now with Janus over the next couple of weeks as people decide if he's going to get traded. And that's another thing is like people trying to sift through the bullshit of the quote unquote information reporters. Is this actual information or is this there an agenda behind this information? How do I, you know, in real time, you're trying to decipher it like a police detective. What are the next few weeks of Lebron going to look like speaking of which? We already started this week with the the the weird McMendaman story about he was upset that J.J. Reddick got a game ball and he did it. So he walked out of the locker room and was like, what is this? You're 41. They already told you the third best guy in the team. It's like one last time, right? Like when they have the movies, you know, the action movie with all the elderly action stars, this just feels like we got what we got one more in us. Well, this is what I've been pushing for with the Warriors for weeks. And I actually think has a real chance to happen. Is Lebron going to the Warriors with Curry, with Dremon, they trade Butler's contract and a pick for Anthony Davis, and they just do the old guy team and just go and sell out in every NBA city. And if you're Lebron, you've two choices. You either, I see now we're doing a Lebron segment. You can't fucking resist. It's like heroin. But if you're Lebron, you either take the minimum and try to win a title, or you do the expendables in Golden State, and you just have this two year, you know, you're everywhere, you're sell out everywhere. You're the biggest story wherever you go. And in a weird way, you've stolen some spotlight from O.K.C. and San Antonio, who are the teams that are going to win the titles the next couple of years. But you have something different. You're basically like in the Hulk Hogan after he gave up the title to the Ultimate Warrior, but he was still the biggest sell out that they had, but he didn't need the title or like what Andre the Giant was like. I think that's what sit in there for Lebron. I think that's his only move left. But this goes back to the attention economy. If they do that, there would just be stories that come out of that all the time, which is one of the reasons you would do it. You think Lebron's interested in the attention economy? I do. I do. I do think he is. Do you think Draymond Green's jokes would go over better with Lebron than they did with Charles Barkley? What do you think of that? I know you talked about it, but tell my audience. I just watched that moment. I'm like, Straymond Green, are we sure that first of all, we're sure that he's good. Maybe we're past that as an announcer. But second of all, to be a good announcer, I think you just have to have that ability to let people make fun of you a little bit. Do you have the ability to eat it? Charles Barkley has a great ability to eat it. Steven A, let's say in this, when the next lose to the Thunder and the finals here in a couple weeks, Steven A is going to come on there and hang his head on the show. Yeah. Yeah. Foro. I can't believe it. I was so excited and he's going to let himself be vulnerable. Can Draymond do that on television? There's that, and then there's also, as. we've talked about many times, when you do those shows, it's professional wrestling and you have to sell the other person's moves. - One hundred percent. - And I don't know if he's a moveseller. - You have to let the other guy get their stuff in. - Yeah, like there's a, there's a respectfulness that you have to have in that situation if you're him. Even though I thought Barclay definitely seemed to be provoking him a little bit, which I didn't think got enough. You know, he's basically just saying to his face, you guys are done, it's over. You know, and it probably odds our dream on green is gonna handle that that well, but then he handles it the wrong way and comes back in him with something that was they really factually accurate. And it was just awkward. You know, it's exactly what you don't want when you're on those shows. Like you watch the Amazon show, which I think is the closest we have to a good show right now. There's a mutual respect with all those guys. They're not gonna hang each other out to dry. But in general, the inside the NBA piece is interesting because it's the first time they've really had backlash and I don't know how much of it is fair and how much of it isn't fair, but they've also been in everybody's life for such a long time that it's kind of, this is an inevitable way that this could probably end. But that whole thing has felt off the whole year. I love that show, but the ESPN fit some of the time that they have, the fact that they don't have the same time they had after the games, which is what I really thought that show was at the most important. And to me, like Shaq is the biggest issue with the show, like it just doesn't see, it seems like he's there because it's fun to be on the show, but it doesn't seem like he follows basketball at high enough level anymore. Like he doesn't know who people like Baylor Shireman are. Like you're on a studio show covering a sport, you know? You have to, there has to be some sort of a modicum of following the game. So it just feels, it's like watching, a little like watching the Warriors ironically where it feels like they're having trouble trying to reinvent themselves. It's an interesting experiment. If can you take something that's so awesome in one place that is a Turner network and just transport it to the other place? Would it be the same? And the answer is no, kind of the same. Same in a lot of ways, you know? When they were doing their Obeds the other night that had, you know, that felt like inside the NBA. Yeah, they were talking about Ted Turner, that felt like inside the NBA. But then there are moments really. Something just feels different. They have a chance to flip the narrative again these next couple of rounds, I think. I think, you know, the basketball is better. There's more of a spotlight on them. It'll be easier for somebody like Shaq 'cause there's only four teams left. You can just watch the game and forget about the players. Yeah, you know who Shaq, go just out Xander is. But yeah, look at this is what happens. One other thing I had for the schedule stuff before we go. So the NBA season 82 games, six playing games, four playoff rounds, conceivably a playing team could play 114 games in a year. Cleveland and Detroit, we'll see what happens tomorrow night but are on pace for 28 playoff games. So combined with the 82, that's put you at 110. I can't remember what the record is, but I think though, I want to say like the O, maybe the O5 Spurs, somebody in the mid 2000s put like 108, 109 games, something crazy. There's no world in where the basketball, they'll scale back to schedule, I don't think. They're not giving money back. It's actually more likely they're gonna add teams. Yes, and create more inventory. Hockey's definitely adding more teams. Yes. The WMBA to everybody's core is adding more teams. More teams, which people are just super fired by. And then baseball might be adding more teams. Which was dead five minutes ago, and then now it's back. Yeah, I'm just, here's the thing, is whenever there's a playoff expansion, I always get a little nervous 'cause you can never take it back. Right. You know, we're talking about this with college football now, right, are they gonna go to 16, are they gonna 24, whatever, you know, what's gonna happen there? And the thing is, I'm always like, I would be happy to experiment for a year and see how we feel about this, but the thing is, you can't do that. It will never come back, 'cause you'll get money, and then you'll say, well, who wants to give money back? I don't think they ever unwound, they really haven't. The only thing they've ever unwound was the 2-3-2, the MBA finals going back to the 2-2-1-1. But that wasn't taking away games. It wasn't taking away games. And it just, it feels every, you know, wasn't that long ago, the college football was two teams. That was it, right, it was the, you had the balls, but it was the BCS, match one and two, and that was it. And then you, bigger and bigger and you can never go back. And that's the thing, in a just world, you'd be like, okay, we did too much. Let's just scale it back a little bit, but we know that would never happen. - It's weird when everybody in the league seems to think the MBA should cut 10 games. And yet, there's no way they will. - And the players are cutting 10 games. It's just, they still play 'em, you know? - Right, shut it out. - Well, the irony is, when they get MBA Europe going, I'm talking about that later in the podcast with Ryan Smith, briefly, 'cause the Utah Jazz Zone, or it was coming on later. There's probably a world where, if they can get, so I'm talking 25 years from now. If MBA Europe can get to the place it needs to get to, where we just have an actual world championship, where they have the schedule is kind of aligning, and then it's like a best of three with the champion of the MBA and the champion of the, or they play it in October of the next year, or however they do it, I just feel like, if you gave Adam Silver, if you got him drunk and gave him some truth, Serum, I would think it'd be like, this is what I'm really thinking, the actual world championship. 'Cause the leagues in a crazy spot where most of the best young players are from, not here, which Perkins has been talking about on TVs, making it seem like we've lost our cars to Japan. We're losing, we're losing basketball. It's like, people are fine. Basketball is still good. I don't really care where the guys are from, but it is a little weird. So we'll get a world championship and then guess what? We'll have more games. And then I'll be like, should the world championship be three or five games? It should be seven. What about nine? I don't know. What month can we put it in? You know? So it sounds like to recap, you're not delighted by the NFL ads, but you'll also watch all the games every week. I think that's where we stand. I've stand. Call it football, you're okay with more football. Yeah, I mean, it did feel like a grind. I remember when Joel and I went to the national championship a couple of years ago for the ringer. And it was on a Monday. Remember, and it would have been like a huge, I think it was a divisional round of the NFL the day before. And I was like Monday, we get to the stadium in Atlanta. We were looking at each other like, whoa, there's a lot. That was a national championship. NBA, you'd go lower. Lower. And then baseball, which is headed for a strike. I wonder where they're going to end up. It feels like the season could easily be shorter. That's one where, especially with the pitcher injuries and how hard it is, just to keep everyone healthy. It feels like 144 would be perfect. But then you know, we're going to weigh all the records. Yeah, and they lock, we all lock it in the playoffs. Like, here we go. Yeah, you could, you, in baseball, it feels like you could actually make the baseball playoffs maybe even a little longer. Well, let's see. Yeah, and again, I don't want to go there because once we do that, we'll never go back to the current, we're the current stage, you know? The only one that I kind of like is the PGA where to the spring. Yeah, just the PGA being like, you know what? We're doing some of this wrong. We got to have more West Coast stuff. We got to have more stuff in prime time. Let's like rethink some of our ideas. But the PGA is not going, we have more majors now. We're now having six. Like the PGA that have been the four majors, I think has been really, I think like, they have four anchors in their schedule that the casual fans like myself can just jump in and be like, oh, PGA's this weekend. Here we go. All right, Brian Curtis. How's it going with Joe Anderson? Love the guy. How's it going with shoe maker? You know, I love the guy. I want both of those guys. It's all Texans on the press box. So I've been working with you and shoe maker now for 15 years. You believe that? It's a long time. We're sending like our work relationship to the ninth grade in high school. That's how long we've all been together. In a couple of weeks, it'll be 10 years at the ringer. Yeah, I can't believe that. 10 years together on this website. Unbelievable. Great to see you. Thanks for popping on. Thanks, Bill. And now it's time for today's with the assist segment presented by State Farm. basketball, unpredictable moments, big swings, clutch plays, last second finishes. You just never know around, around. But the one constant is having teammates you can rely on. And throughout NBA history, we've seen some unforgettable duos. Everybody can almost feel it through the decades. You got Kobe and Shaq in the 2000s. You have MJ and Pippin in the 90s. You have Bird, Macayle, and Magic and Karim in the 80s. You go on through Counts and Have a Check in the 70s. The great duos. Are we going to have one now in San Antonio? I think it's going to be Wembee and Harper are going to be when 50 years from when we're talking about the great duos from the late 2020s or early 2030s. Maybe it's those guys. I would say the best duos in the 2020s, you'd either go brown and Tatum or you would go yoke at your Murray. I think for two players that it just seemed like they brought the best out of each other. Yoke and Jim Murray in 2023, probably my favorite duo combo, where we felt like they might win title after title, after watching them in the playoffs that year. Well, just like in basketball, life can throw unexpected moments your way. And guess what? That's where state farm comes in. They've got easy to use digital tools, like the state farm app and neighborhood state farm agents, as well, when you want to talk to a real person. Like a good neighbor state farm is there with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. All right, people have been asking for them ever since the Celtics got eliminated. People thought you were too mad to come on. Then people thought maybe you're never coming on again. They didn't know where your head was at. The Patriots are falling apart. The Celtics fell apart. The Red Sox season is over and my dad is here. How are you feeling? Well, as you just described, I'd also include the Bruins, not only losing, but not getting the Toronto traffic. So I was trying to decide when you said I had to come on today, which sports team had I was going to wear? Yeah. Bruins, Celtics, Patriots or Red Sox. And I decided, I don't like any of them right now. So I'm wearing my Ruby's dad hat. Your dog Ruby is our special needs puppy. She's had some trouble and you're one. Who gave you that hat? Just that curiosity. Michelle who walks Ruby and Winnie here. Okay. All right, so Bruins, you sit down for the lottery. They have to go back from five to six to make beliefs. It's just one instant go up every year. Every year, somebody jumps ahead. So what happens? They might believe jump up, get the first pick and now they're going to go. Oh my gosh. And you and I were on a thread with our nephew, Brian, and so that that was just a coup d'état on top of everything that's been happening to our sports teams. And now we have this whatever's going on. Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum is Jalen Brown still on our team? Jalen Brown still on the team. He was on the Jennifer Hudson show this week. I thought about stuff and sent some Twitch. He's out there. You know, I wish instead of going on the Jennifer Hudson show, he was back in the gym, dribbling and shooting free throws. The rest thing is body. So you went to game seven. I went to, I went to the four home games. We won game one, look really good. And then I saw three terrible losses and including game seven, yeah. So what do you want to happen? Do you, would you, you're just talking as my dad, the, the boss, the fan, self-expand. What do you, what do you want to happen? Do you want them to keep Tatum and Brown together or do you want to move Brown when his value is high? Yeah, it's a hard, hard question. But if the package was perfect for Jalen Brown, I would move them in a heartbeat. I don't know what that perfect package is. I'm just kind of tired of watching them. And, and us, you know, 10 years. 10 years of watching his offensive game, you, you, you, you're good. Well, something, I think, I don't know if refer the Philadelphia got it into the referees' ears, but I watched the tape of a couple of the games. Almost every time he goes in to make a shot, he pushes off. Yeah. And they don't usually call it in the regular season, but it's apparent that he can't get his space unless he pushes. Whereas you see somebody, these other guys and other teams and, you know, they get to their space quickly and shoot quickly, but I'm worried he's turning 30. He's got his athleticism is what has made him the star he is. He's been having difficulty now getting his jump shot off without pushing. He can't make three throws. He's a black hole in terms of the ball going into him and not moving. Yeah. He can't dribble. I don't understand after 10 years where he can't dribble. But well, I'm higher on him than you because I know you are. You always been higher on him. Well, I always valued the durability. I always thought he played hard and gave a shit. And I think the more we step back from the season, I think it was pretty weird that Tatum just showed up with six weeks left and they had to figure out how to incorporate that. In real time, it was fun to watch, but it doesn't seem like they ever, they had these two styles and they talked about it. Jaylin talked about it after game seven when he said, I felt like we were playing more like us in game seven. Well, why do you think that? Because Tatum was a plane because you guys were pushing the ball up because you had the ball more. But I do think fundamentally you and I, you know, obviously the listeners aren't privy to our phone calls. We always talk about stylistically. Tatum likes to bring the ball up, take us time, figure out what he's going to do. Whereas I think Jaylin likes to move faster with the guards. And it's the first time I feel like maybe they just want two separate things on a basketball team. Well, it's an interesting point because I'd say for the first two-thirds of Jaylin of Taisam coming back, he deferred to Brown. And Brown was still the alpha dog in the offense. Tatum was more, a lot of time in the corner, the way he was as a rookie. Yeah. And then when they got into the playoffs, they kind of switched and Missoula shortened the bench. And to be honest, I know you and I have talked about, I don't want to see the Brown or Tatum bringing the ball up. I want to see a guard bringing the ball up. I don't want to see Tatum dribbling until there's nine seconds left and he does ISO. And then I want to see Brown bringing it up and losing the ball over and over. I want to see white or Pritchard bringing the ball up. And play Brown or and or Tatum at the high post or move them around. We stop moving when those two guys bring the ball up. I say that one Twitter clip, somebody did a great job of pointing out what Philly was trying to do with Jaylin, where it was just basically like, fine, go one-on-one, knock yourself out, you'll make half of these. But we're not letting the three-point shooters do anything. And they stayed home with everybody. And it was a lot of Jaylin going against good defenders, trying to like bang against them and get his spot. And that'll be the same thing with Tatum. It wasn't just that though. It really struck me after watching the Nick Philly series. I think Philly was really, really happy to see Tatum or Brown bring the ball up because when they went ISO, MB just stood there. He wasn't moving around. He didn't have to move around. He wasn't wasting energy. We weren't tiring him out. In the fourth quarter, he was wide awake. And you watch the Nick's and it was a completely different way of attacking and being. They moved him all around. Yeah, they wanted him in pick and pops all the time where he had to like come out. And Tatum and Brown bring him the ball up. How many times did we have seven or eight seconds left and suddenly somebody had to take a shot? And then be it again, never moved. So it was funny, they were doing that to us with Kada, the pick and pop stuff, especially with Voucevich. Just trying to get him where he'd have to jump out a second, too late out of three pointer. And then the Celtics were never doing that to MB, which was just bizarre. Which, you know, boy, here we go. Did you put Joe back in second row? I'm not going there. But if Tatum and Brown consistently are bringing the ball up so that MB can just stand there and be lazy and rested, that's a coaching decision. That's a coaching strategy. If I'm the coach of the Celtics, I have Missoula. I have my guards bringing the ball up. And I have the ball moving all around this. And I have MB tired by the fourth quarter. Well, this goes to what I said last week about. It felt like they treated that Philly series as kind of a tester for what they were going to do around two and around three. Let's see. What do we have with Vousavitch? What do we have when Tatum brings the ball up? We have if our bench shorter. And they never took Philly seriously enough until it's too late. You and I were both struck by Stevens's press conference, which was riveting. And he seemed both pissed off that they lost to Philly. I think he knew that Philly wasn't that good. But also pointing out like he didn't even think we were that good. He made a point of pointing out the three and eleven against the best teams in the league. He brought up Shire and then Hugo, which Hugo, which I thought was notable. And how important Hugo is going to be for them next year. Meanwhile, Hugo got buried after the trade deadline. So I don't know. I felt like they weren't 100% aligned watching the press conference. Great. I mean, you and I talked about it afterwards. That one of the great things about the regular season and how they overachieved, which was great because none of us expected 56 wins. Yeah. They used 10 or 11 people. They didn't tire out Brown and Tatum. They had wings coming off the bench over and over and running. You know, one thing about, you know, I'm not a real fan of walls. But boy, he runs his tail off. Yeah. Hugo runs his tail off. Sherman runs his tail off. What happens when they're not, when they're sitting on the bench? Isolation again. We saw it. except for the championship here every year, for the past four years, isolation, but you bring those guys off the bench, they're moving all over, and they're getting off into rebounds. - Right, and they're questioning, like you saw with the next day with Maxi for four games, just chasing them around, using bridges on them. We had all the guys to do that, but we had the guys to do that. - Hey, it was a real, really bad coaching series. And I thought, I've said this, I thought Missoula was great there in the regular season. I just wanted a big picture. What did they learn from it? The trade that they made to get under the luxury tax, getting rid of assignments, really didn't change the team. Because one of the things that made that team the thing you and I liked was they always had two guards out there. - Right. - And it was two of the three at all times, and one of them was usually hot. And if two of them were hot, they were beating anybody, but usually you can get one of them going, Pritchard's trick or treat, wait, the shooting was, you know, I just thought they put a lot of miles on them. I wonder, like, about thinking about things that would have done differently, would they have put less miles on white and brown and not really cared what seed they got? 'Cause I thought that was one of the lessons of the season, is it doesn't really matter what seed you are. You matters how healthy your guys are in April. - Right, two thoughts on that. I can recall during the regular season, three or four games that we won because Simon's got hot. - Yeah. - Nobody else was hot. He came in, he got hot, and he would play the whole fourth quarter. And you know, that trade made a huge difference obviously in terms of our depth at, not just shooting guard, but a guard who could make a shot. You know, when our shots aren't falling, and we don't have those subs in there grabbing offensive rebounds, we're just a static team, we're not moving. - Well, do you feel like the window is, these NBA teams have these four-year windows. This is a team that just lost in round one, you know? And it's this team that made the 22 finals, the 24 finals. We thought they were gonna make the finals last year, and they had the crazy Nick Scuap, Tayden gets hurt. And now you look at teams like OKC and San Antonio, and they just seem so much better set up, you know? - Unless there's an awesome trade. - Right, you know, and they do have some, they have a trade exception, they have the mid-level. The other thing that struck me though, and you've just brought it up about seating. In retrospect, I would have preferred to have been the fourth seed. I think we matched up really well with Detroit. - Yeah. - I think we matched up really well with Orlando and eight, you know? And the fifth seed as well. And we put a lot of miles on Brown to get to the second seed, and he just looked real tired to me in the playoffs, playing all those minutes. - Can I throw a trade at you that I've been thinking about? - Does this involve anybody from Milwaukee? - No. - Oh, OK. - I'm starting to get nervous about the honest stuff. - Yeah. - I keep thinking of that segment I did on my podcast a month or so ago about older big men and what the track record is for year 14 and on. And with Tatum and Brown, you always feel like with those two guys, you can build around them, figure out some sort of strategy. And Jaylen turns 30 next year. Tatum's younger than he is. And that's like a five-year window. Yannis, it might be two. - No, it's a good point. - And so now we're condensing this window where you're also going against OKC in San Antonio who have all these young queers and they have all the contract staggered and the ability to add all these pieces. It's like, you know, you have these lightning in a bottle seasons. And I think we had one in 24 when we were able to get poor Zingas and Drew and everything kind of aligned. And they spent a lot of money for that season. They, you know, the opponents fell in the right way. I think that's happened in the next season. - Where? - Well, you just said the opponents fell the right way. - Yeah, which didn't happen. You know, we faced a Philly team that if we played them three weeks ago, we would have swept them. - We faced a Philly team that had one good week in them and we just happened to hit them that one week and then they died immediately. - So I just, I wonder like, is this the time to take a swing? And I keep thinking about New Orleans and whether there's a way to get back Zion and Trey Murphy with Jalen and some picks and whatever else needs to go in there. And basically end up with Trey Murphy making half as much as Jalen and then taking this enormous flyer on Zion and trying to figure out, can you put Zion in a winning organization with a different fan situation and what's there? And if nothing's there, you bail on it and now you're paying Trey Murphy half as much as Jalen. - I wonder if Steven's just thinking about stuff like that. - Well, we both like Murphy. - Well, all the smart teams like him. - Yeah, Williamson is so injury prone. It's hard to know what he's almost like. - He's almost like the contract to make it work 'cause Jalen's gonna make like 58 million. But I wonder, like it's Brad is so outside the box with how he thinks about stuff. That I wonder if he's thinking, yeah, on his two year window where I'm probably not winning the title anyway, or can I try to reconfigure this so I can have, you know, I gotta pay Pritchard. That's the other thing is they have to pay Pritchard seven million this upcoming year and seven million after a free agent. He's a guy that's worth 20 plus. And do I need a center? It would be the other thing I'd be thinking of. Like if I'm trading Jalen, do I need a bigger guy? Like do I have to, should I think about subonus? Do I think about subonus and trying to get more Sacramento Kings first round picks that are always worth saying though that he hasn't finished the season in a couple of years. Yeah, well they shut him down this year. I'm just trying to think how many centers are out there that could make an impact. Do they feel like they need a center? Voodsevitch thing obviously failed. It's, my guess is, well you, again, going back to the press conference, he's even certainly intimated that there'd be changes. Yeah, he wanted more, he wanted more stuff at the rim. He wanted a more conventional team. It felt like he was clearly tired of the style that they played. After that press conference, I did look at different teams and different big men. Doesn't necessarily have to be a center, but a big man. I mean, Utah has a couple of people as an example. There are teams that if Jalen was in the trade, I think you could get a big man and a wing back. And I'm just not sure if Stevens is ready to trade Brownie, he flattered him in the press conference in a couple of days later in the newspaper. And maybe that's the kiss of death, but now. But that's, I've always wanted to keep these guys together. This is everything that's happened the last few months is starting to make me wonder, like, does Jalen just want his own team? Yeah. And does-- Well, I talked about this a week ago. It just feels like the body language seems to be heading that way, in my opinion. Yeah, you wonder. I mean, we sit so close to the bench, I always watch Tatum and Brown together. And it was weird with Tatum coming back. It was so little time left in the season. But it was even weird here. You know, we went to that game seven. Molly was able to go and we went to a bar first, and we were sitting there and having a drink. And there's two Philadelphia fans sitting next to us. They have Philly gear on. And the guy says to the other guy, it's so great that Tatum's not playing. And I said, what did you say? He said, Tatum's not playing today. I was flabbergasted. Game seven-- I just never expected he wouldn't give it a shot, I guess. I didn't know he wasn't playing. But it's understandable considering he had a calf injury to the other calf that they pretended was in the injury, but it was a calf injury. But did I have any confidence when I heard that? No. Not too much confidence, no. I mean, the reality is, I was there for game five. We're up three games to one. You win game five at home like you're supposed to. Like the other teams did. We're up three games to get up. Right. Tatum doesn't get hurt in a game six. There is no game six. Would we have beaten the next? I don't know. It would have been a fun series. The thing I will never understand is why they put all those minutes on Tatum that has never been explained properly. I don't get it. I don't understand it. I don't understand the quotes he had after about-- but his right leg still isn't 100% the size of the left leg. And just stuff where it's like, what? You've told-- You said you were recovered. You weren't recovered. And if that was the case, then why wasn't he on a minute's limit? Why is Wembee on a minute's limit? But he's not-- there's been a bunch of guys in the league who, like, Lamella Ball the whole year was under 30 minutes because they were trying to keep him healthy. Why were we putting minutes on him like that? I agree. If I was Chisholm, that would be the-- I would have a meeting and be like, the fuck? Why did we-- Why did that guy play 43 minutes in game five? What are we doing? Well, it seemed like there was such an impetus to get the second seed instead of the third seed. when he retrospects. We lost three games at home anyway, so did it matter? No, we were a better road team at times during the year. - Whatever, something, there will be some major trade. I don't think you'll love watching Yannis, just for the record if that's the trade. - Well, not really your type of guy. - No, I'm not saying that's the greatest trade that's out there, but I certainly think they were going to explore what can they get back from for Jalen Brown. I don't see Tatum being the trade object. Red Sacks, we don't need to talk about that it's disgusting what's happened. - It's not just that, it's frustrating, disgusting, unreal, that the Fenway Group that has billions of dollars has become the cheapest franchise in the league with the highest prices to go to a game. - Yeah. - It makes no sense, and you know, I'm not going to again this year. I'm revolting in your son's rich, and you're still not going. I mean, think about that. - Well, look at third base. We have a guy hitting 162 who's five feet tall. I mean, it's just an abomination what the Fenway Group has done to the image of the Red Sucks. They got there four championships, and then they said that's enough. - Yeah, they were like, well, you suckers are now just going to pay for tickets for the rest of your life. - Yeah, and you can come in the eighth inning and sing sweet Caroline and buy your pink hats and blue hats and we're going to make more money. - It's a shame. - It gets risky when you start playing that game of chicken with your fan base. - I think it does, yeah. - Especially in this era, you know, you're people who are just like, well, if they don't care about the team, I'm not going to care either. - We've seen the Red, that happened in the early 80s a little bit and it happened a little bit in the 90s too, where you could feel people are like, all right, is this how you're treating us? Then we'll go over here, you know, and there's three other teams and a bunch of other stuff to do. - Well, you can go online now and get great seats anytime you want. - Right. - That's a really shameful position that they've put the fan base in. - And they also don't have the signature guy. - There's been years where they haven't, but they were, I think, putting all the eggs in the Roman Anthony basket and that is not. - Not gone well. - Which is, you know, is he fragile and injury prone? I don't know, but once again, he's hurt. - All right, we've talked enough about the Red Sox. The Patriots are the other one. I know that's been the big topic. Well, the head coach has been the big dinner topic in New England now for five weeks. - It's not just that. We've talked about this for 20 years. Every time things seem pretty good with the Patriot franchise, something happens. Whether it's deflate gate or spy gate or, you know, some scandal or the owner of the team in a spa, twice getting caught. It's just one thing after another. And this is just the latest. This is a really bad story up here. It's not gonna go away. It seems to have legs, you know, as a week goes by and then there's a new photo or a new story. And I feel badly. I really liked the love the job the coach did last year. I thought he had the locker room, really all going the same direction. The camaraderie was great. We overachieved. We didn't have a bat. We had a somewhat easy schedule, but we overachieved. And now here we are again, and nobody's talking about the players. - Right. The articles are about the coach. - Yeah. - Yeah, we would all must've been better off losing in Denver. It turns out Drake's hurt. The variable thing doesn't happen. And then all the dialogue is about can they get back? Can they get there to the Super Bowl instead? I mean, they're gonna trade for AJ Brown on June 1st. It seems like almost a form out at this point, which would be the thing everyone talked about. I've tried not to talk about the variable thing that much 'cause it's such a bummer of a story. And every side has kids. And it just, I don't know, makes me, it's a little unseemly. But I wonder how you become the way he coached the team, where he's like the patriarch of this Patriots family. And everything is about family and team and being there for people and hugging each guys that come off the field. And now, will that seem disingenuous as he's doing it this year? - That's, I think that's a really way, good way of phrasing the most important question that people up here are asking. What's it gonna be like? Is it gonna be in the hallway hugging everybody again? Are the players gonna look at him a little bit differently? - Or maybe they'll like them more. - Coach is getting after it. It's a sad story. You're talking to families and I don't know the details. I just know what I read. I just wish I wasn't reading any of it. I'm just looking forward to the season. Waiting for the schedule to come out today. That's not what's in the paper. - So you care about the schedule, Brian Curtis, and I just did a whole segment about this that we think the schedule release day is ridiculous, but you like it. - I haven't seen the schedule yet. - No, but do you like it though? You like looking at it and being like, "Oh, we're playing." - Yeah, yeah, like you just love it. - That looks wonderful and that's gonna be a tough game. Where's the buy? Yeah, I like all that stuff. - We talked about the reason that I brought Curtis on was we talked about this content, what we have now and how the football is adding these extra games and there's gonna be a Wednesday night game before Thanksgiving and all this stuff, right? - You've been watching sports the entire time I've known you, which is my whole life, whenever it's on. Do you feel like there's a difference now with the amount of sports that's on or is it just harder to find? - It's a little bit of an overload. So you feel the overload a little bit. Have you watched as much hockey playoffs as you usually watch? - No, well, that's not unusual. Once the Bruins got knocked out, I don't watch as much. - Yeah, but you would watch like, you would watch to root against Montreal and you would kick random players. - I've watched a couple Montreal games. I watched the Colorado game yesterday. But my heart's not in it. I liked the Bruins team. I thought they over-achieved. I liked the new coach. We're a couple players short. We don't have a first-line center data. But I liked that we did as well as we did and I have optimism for that team. They seem to have their act together. - Wow, Bruins, number one in your rankings. - Well, it's kind of weird, isn't it? - I'm gonna be back with the Pats. We still have Drake May. He's gonna be healthy this season. Their team's gonna be good. - Oh, I'm not down on them. - I'm gonna be fired up by July. - I am too. I'm gonna be fired up for the, I just wish the focus was on the draft picks, the movement of first year to second year players, progress, stuff like that. It's just not there right yet. Maybe it will be. - You don't think he's gonna step down, do you? I don't know. Would I be 100% shocked? - No. - I wouldn't either, but to me, like a leave of absence seems more realistic. Like he comes back when real training camp starts or something, but you know, in the NFL, that's pretty massive for your coach to just not be around for two months. I don't know how they're gonna handle it. And the owner is 88 years old, 86 years old, whatever he is. - Right. - So. - Yeah. I hope he doesn't step down. I wouldn't be surprised if he does step down. I don't, none of us know the whole story. I hope it isn't the story that the paper keeps printing, but I don't know. - I love how you're so forgiving of Braille Bonn. Yet you demoted Joe to the second row again. - No, I didn't. - After the Philly Series. - You did, you demoted Joe. - I have texts where you said he's back in the second row. I've had it. - Well, that's private text between you and me. - You were done. You were so mad after the series. You wouldn't come out as mad. But I couldn't even get you to come on today. You were still mad. - And I'm not defending Braille by the way. I know. I don't know the details, but it doesn't look good. And I'm not putting Joe in the second row, but I think he has a testing year coming up that will determine whether he's here next summer. - Wow. - Yeah. - No one. - What TV shows are you watching? - The three Chicago TV show. I watched the movie, you recommended. - Oh, crime 101? - Yeah. - Yeah. - I still don't understand how they got, they got the copy at the time. - Wait, that's part of the spoiler. (laughing) - Oh, sorry. - Oh, you can't spoil the movie. - Okay. - So you like crime 101 more than Ripper? Do you like Ripper more than crime 101? - I like Ripper more. - All right. - I didn't quite understand either one of them at the end, but I have to watch it the second time. You know, I agree with you on the lead actor in crime 101. He was a little too. - Has Prism's worth. - Yeah, I just didn't think he was good enough. That was my biggest issue with the movie. and I'd like to meet others. Like I thought he was great in rush. - Wait. - I don't know what he was going for. - Yeah, I don't know what his plan was in one on one. I didn't get it. Was he like intentionally was hard to figure out and I didn't think it worked. - I thought he just came across a little week week in personality, week in demeanor. - It would have been a great like early 2000s Russell Crowe during his proof of life error role. - That was like what I needed from that. I needed like just somebody at peak of their powers, little enigmatic, trying to figure out what they're thinking. - That's a good, he would have been good before he gained 200 pounds, but he wasn't good. - Did you see Project Hill Mary? - No. - What channel's that on? - It was a movie, it was Brian Gosling. - Yeah, it was the biggest movie of the year. - No? - No. - I'm waiting for it to come on cable. It's on Amazon right now. - Oh, it is. - Yeah, it's on all those. You have to pay for it, but. - Well, I just put it to your account. - I just put it to my bill. - What other TV shows you watching? You love the Madison. - I like FBI, I like the Madison. - What about the Yellowstone Spinoffs? You're an on that one. - Well, yeah, I mean, I like the, U.S. Marshals, you like that one. - U.S. Marshals, I like that one. The other ones, I think, start smart night. - You love the Madison though. - Yeah, I like the Madison. I like the acting in the Madison. You and I talked about it. Last time, I couldn't stand the two daughters of the two records, but two of your favorite actors, though. Kurt Russell, on the show five, yeah. And then I understand there's a season two already coming. - Right. - And a season three, I think, go ready. - You're not watching you for, yeah. - No. It's not my, as you don't watch that one. - As you say, when I wanna do something, you're not the demographic. - That one, I definitely don't think you'd like that. There was no new CBS shows this year. Boston Blue, you're okay. - No, nothing. - You jumped out? - I watch it, but it's poorly written. And I like. - Donnie. - I liked him in blue bloods because he had an edge to him. He's too nice a guy in the new one. But you never did the pit. That was the shocking one to me. - 100% you would have liked the pit. I don't get it. - How did you miss that one? - I did two episodes and then got caught up in life and haven't been able to get back to it. So maybe this summer. - All right. - Well, keep us posted. - All right, I thought you did okay. You weren't as angry about the Celtics as I thought. - Well, it's a good thing we didn't do this two weeks ago. - A week and a half ago. - All right, yeah. - All right, dad, enjoy all the sports this weekend. Do you have a PGA pick? - Chef Lee? - Chef Lee? - Chef Lee? - Chef Lee? - No. - Oh, Chef Lee? - Zander, Chef Lee? - Yeah. - Zander, we call him Zander. - Oh, Zander, Alexander. - Zander. - There you go. - It looks like for me, Chef Lee has been in a slump. - Okay. - His iron's on, doing so well, but. - All right, I'll enjoy it. I'll text you over the weekend. - All right, come back. - We're going to come back. - Take a break, come back with a Utah Jazz owner. Ryan Smith. - All right, we were taping this late Wednesday afternoon. So if anything happens, our next 24 hours don't play on us. Ryan Smith is here, he is the owner of the Utah Jazz who finally had some luck in the lottery. What'd you do? What kind of tricks were you doing the week leading up? Were you wearing the same shirt every day? What superstitions do you have? - Well, so I would have been incredibly superstitious. And so what I decided to do was not go to Chicago. I mean, I've been there. I've been in that lottery room twice in the back room or once in the back room. Once kind on the side. And then obviously last year with my wife on stage, actually with all the kids sitting there and man, that walk of shame. That walk of shame hurts. It stings for a really long time. And I was like, look, I'm old for three going to Chicago. I'm going to stay home. And like I sat at home, watching with my family. Did our usual Sunday church stuff went, went and sat there and like, I'm one for one doing that. So that's a lot better. Church, that might have been the key. Maybe that's the way you have to do now. If you're ever back. - Yeah, for sure. - For sure. - I had, I said I'm in a podcast. Oh God, no you go. - We had a record attendance at church in Utah on Sunday. (laughs) - Well, they moved it to Sunday too, the lottery. Usually it's Tuesday night. - Yes, for sure. - I said on my podcast the other day, I thought they need to go back with the lottery. I don't like the representatives. I want the people in the room who have the most stake. Either give me all the owners or give me the GM. It's like the people, 'cause the most famous moments ever where Dave DeBoucher went in the Patrick Ewing lottery and like just like almost losing his mind or Jerry West when he didn't get LeBron James that year in 2003. I want to see the weight of the lottery and the people who actually care the most. So we've gotten away from that. - Or you're just twisted where you're looking at people for most of their life, most of their life that kind of been able to put their thumb on the scale for things or be successful. And they have no control over this. - Yes, that's exactly what I want. All right, so walk me through the emotions. So you're supposed to be, what number, you were four, right? - Yeah, we were one that we won the coin flip with go Sacramento, not televised. - Yeah, non televised, but we were four. And so, you know, you kinda hope in this draft. I mean, I think everyone was kinda had this could you stay top four? I mean, that was the discussion leading up or how would you do that? And then, you know, that our kind of floor is eight. And that's kind of where you're thinking. And, you know, I was mentally tell myself, I'm perfectly fine at seven. It's great players all the way through. And, you know, it was almost unbelievable for us. Like, I mean, first of all, when the envelope, here's what's crazy. Like, one of our camera guys came down and gave me the envelope. I just got this today, actually. - Wow. - And so, when that was pulled out, first of all, when Sacramento was pulled out, like my 13 year old lost his mind and just went down 'cause he saw purple. - Right. - And then, the jazz, you know, and then we got in the top four. And then, you know, obviously Chicago Memphis. And then, it was, you've never, you've never moved up, right? This is the first time ever. - Never, never, never, never. So the fake, a lot of me system, I don't care who you are, is kind of sitting there. You're just like shaking your head a lot. And it's a crazy feeling. And I think, I think that, you know, I'm sure Sacramento has some of that feeling right now. I'm sure, you know, Brooklyn for sure. There's no way not to. There just really isn't. And if I'm a consumer of sports and entertainment or television or drama, like, that's a pretty cool event. You know, because it's, you know, the pain. I mean, I had people show me videos of restaurants here in Utah, like erupting the restaurant, the entire restaurant. And it's pretty cool. - So we had the opposite. I remember the worst Celtics one. Well, there are two bad ones. We had the '97 and 2007. So his Duncan was the prize one year. And then it was Durant Oroden, it was either them. Let's get one of the top two. And the Celtics got fifth that year. And it was the opposite of those videos where the people in the bar was like, oh, it was like, you know, it was like a traumatic event. You were just looking at the recipe. Like, what did I just waste the last year for? Now you're out of the woods. Like you actually have the kind of team you want. You've had, you've been in some lotteries. You traded for Jared Jackson. You have marketing. Still, you never got rid of him. Now you have a top two pick. You're based Bailey. Like this is, this was a three year odyssey to get to this point, basically. - Yeah, especially you're taking over as a new owner, a new ownership group where we come in. It's probably not how you want to design, you know, your tenure when you start. But this is a little bit where you just trust the team you brought in. And you say, hey, where are we at? And what are your goals, honestly? Like our goals are win a championship in Utah. It's never happened as well. And I just don't think we're going to tip toe into that, right? I think that it's going to require a running start a little bit of help where it's going to require, you know, a different level of building than probably maybe what it takes to make the playoffs. And even those groups that, you know, have done that in the past, just given our market, given our luck, given where things are. It's like, you know, you've got to start. And that starts with with our front office and our coaching and like how we're going to go through this. And we've been close. I mean, I took over that Donovan and Rudy team, you know, we're, we're trained man destroyed us in the, in the corner there. And yeah, and then it's staples at the time. And man, that was a helpless feeling because it was kind of ours to have. And then, you know, kind of had to make some decisions after that. And so, you know, here we are. Like I like where we're going. I like the assets that we have going forward. We have all of our picks plus plus and a lot of young talent. And, um, and I honestly, I think every team is going to have to do this. You know, I think, I think, I think this is a lot of my point around the lottery reform and everything else is like, the way we're going to have a certain number of teams that are going through the rebuild process and the rebuild experience. And all. have different sizes of markets and you know I think is a league which I love we'll ask ourselves really hard questions around what do we want that rebuild experience to be. Yeah along should it take I've heard you use that word before it's interesting because the other word is tanking but it's really a rebuild because you you're trying to get to a much higher place than you're in you you guys became the linchpin for this in February which was really the first time all the tanking slash rebuild dialogue happened and I was part of it I definitely did one of the first podcasts being like we we've got to fix this like this is the earliest this is ever gone but from your vantage point like if I own the jazz I don't know how you would do another strategy especially when you're looking at San Antonio who gets two one and four in three straight years now you watch them in the playoffs and all those guys are awesome and they're 20 and 21 and 22 the foundation of this 10-year contender so if you see that like how do you not try to emulate that in some way I don't know well I think first of all I don't think there's an ownership group that wants to go through this right I think that's first of all no one in the league wants to do this especially like you look at our situation when we're we're taking over right I mean you want to do the opposite like you want to go fast you want to flex up you want to show you know your fan base that like you got some juice and like naturally yeah and so when you come in and you're like okay let me tell you what we're gonna do we I know we got the all-star game coming here um this year and we've been waiting on that what we're gonna do is try our two all-stars probably not a popular spot to be right um but you you've got to have conviction you got to have alignment and then you know you always start off with a retool right we're just gonna retool yeah and then it gets to a point what you're seeing with a lot of teams are like no no no no if we're gonna lay up in a weird way like don't lay up in the water you know the water's 200 yards and we're gonna get on in three like like we've got to we've got to figure out how to how to get out of this position and right or wrong and I think you saw this with San Antonio the decisions become pretty easy the in the in the top part of the track yeah right you know you're you're you're you're betting between some pretty amazing options there you know being in those draft rooms and kind of being on the other side it gets a lot more challenging or you know it's it's challenging all the way across but you know drafting eight nine every year is a little harder well I look at the situation you had when you took over that and how much you want to say about it but you had mentioned go bear you had the foundation of a team that was really consistently good but had not done as well maybe as people are hoping in the playoffs right and then I don't know if it had run its course but it felt like it was hitting a little bit of a wall and then you have a franchise guy who the rumors started immediately he wants to go back to New York he wants to go here he wants to go there and this is the conundrum of the league right you go through this process you get a franchise guy but then you also for agency you might not be able to keep the guy do you think there should be more mechanisms in place that favor the team when you've had somebody for you know five years seven years nine years with the like could there be luxury tax stuff like benefits you could get for just having stability you know I mean look this was all pretty new to me right I mean my first day we we were kind of in the middle of the COVID and we had like two days to like signed on and wrote it your 30 days it was that short window if you remember I remember having two days before Monday before we got to kind of go into it with Rudy and I remember going up to his hotel room and being like hey bro like what do you care about you know and actually I was like my first meeting ever it was just him and I talking because we knew each other before and you know there was there was a process and going and sitting down with Don and and going through all that and you know I think you almost from what I'm learning about these championship runs it's a little it's a little bit like you almost don't know what you need and tell you get on the track and you know it's like this I got to have a little more than the other team so it's a little bit of a moving target so you know running its course of a team you'll see that this year whatever will happen the narrative will be around a couple teams to get bounced out they just don't have enough and and they've got to bring more than the next group the hard part is when you're already set down and you're you're over the cap you know like we were we were into the tax we've given up a lot of picks for Conley and so it's like how deep do you want to cut into your future when you've been bouncing the first round like three times right you know and I think when Danny when Danny originally came in he and I had a lot of real honest conversations about that and um ultimately he's like hey look I've done this before this is what we're doing and Mike this is how we're we're gonna think through this and you know he had been coming from a place where he'd been knocking on that door with a really good team of Boston for some time that he had kind of put together and then obviously the year he leaves like they end up going back read adding one more piece almost you don't know what you got and it's just one more piece then that didn't work and then one more piece and you know having those assets to be able to do that is really important the year you left earlier the year you stole him I mean let's be honest you kept stealing Celtic's people you stole you stole all ages you stole Will Hardy you said yeah just go and just go back to the well with Boston just keep taking our people. Brad doesn't answer my call yeah Brad we tell Brad Brad your phone number is blocked on Brad's phone yeah but but I think the other thing is also it one of the things I do love I'll just be honest and it's not to get on the okay sea terrain but one of the things I do love is just I mean with Joe Kitchen in SGA is just how they haven't let the narrative come like they've been pretty forward thinking on both of those individuals about no I like this market I want to be here you know you you know there's a lot of drama there's a lot of narrative that comes out well you're in a smaller market you're in this for that like it's loud enough for these players you know we see this in hockey you know the so a lot of these players play the worst one they're in the biggest markets you know and I love the fact how they're embracing that market there's nothing you can't do from okay see there's nothing you can't do from Utah there's nothing you can't do from Denver there's nothing you can't do from these places and I think that you know we've always had players who have their best years in Utah always growing up like you look a hornet sack you look at boozer you look at D will they'll all tell you after the fact like I had my best years in Utah right why is that you know because they could come get locked in they could they could actually you know do it in in you know it's interesting because we're such a global media market where instead of one or two voices there's everyone's got a voice like you know and so it's it's a little bit like we're playing in the United States and we're playing in Europe there's a difference there right well you're you're unique in two ways one well a lot of ways but you came in you didn't have new owner syndrome because I always feel like when the new owner comes in they feel like they have to this crazy splashy move and you know show for the moon and try to improve the team and that's usually when they get in the trouble you did the opposite you had to basically start a rebuild but then the other thing you're you are Utah like you're from there you you you belong to that whole area you're really invested in building up not sports but just the culture of the mentality of what people how people see Salt Lake how people see the city and the state which more normally when people come in like Chisholm Chisholm bought the Celtics was a huge Celtic fan but also it wasn't living there the last 20 years now it's back you you were Utah guy you even had chances to maybe get some other teams and you were fixated on no it has to be this team yes so so when we went through this process like it it was I would I mean there's no secret I was looking Minnesota I you know it sold my company to SAP you know I've come from tech you know I spent my whole career in tech didn't do one thing else and everyone's like well what company gonna start next and I was like you guys I want to do hoops play hoops every morning I love going out to Boston and just hanging with the angels and like watching hoops with them and I'd go down to summer league and play golf with DA and like you know I just sit next to them in the suite watching players and I was like this is so fascinating like I'm such a junkie and and it was the only thing that intrigued me and so when the opportunity came you know everyone would say hey what are you gonna do what's next then it's like no you know and I call Adam and said hey look like I'm really interested in this and you know for whatever reason opportunity came to me on Minnesota and you know you know the owner there Glenn was like super nice but was he gonna sell was he not gonna sell it's kind of a little bit of a seem like the situation was a little runaway bride like how's it's gonna go and so we had worked down to it and we were getting really down almost to the doc level like we were we were drawn up docs and you know my wife was just like what about our season tickets for the jazz and I was like well no no no no well like Minneapolis it's only two hours away like we'll figure this out and I think she knew how I kind of go all in on stuff and she's not gonna see me as much and she was just like I just love what the boys like we're jazz fans like, this isn't gonna work. And then like, you know, you know, when your partner's like not feeling something, right? Like, like, I'm in day two and she's kind of not speaking. I'm like, all right, this isn't right. So I called Adam and I remember I was on the golf course, I pulled over in the trees in the cart and I was like, hey, look, man, I can't, I can't do this. And then I went back to the family and on the jazz forever and just said, hey, there's ever a chance, I turned down something else. Even if I could buy a little bit, like, if not, I'll just be the best sponsor you've ever had. Like, I'll do anything. And, you know, they called back like six months later and we're like, hey, you're still interested in that? And I was like, yeah, in a piece, yeah, awesome. I was like, well, if we're gonna do a piece, we're gonna do the whole thing. I was like, what? And they're like, well, we need an offer. And I was like, I don't know what that looks like. And then ended up pulling up the Forbes valuation on my phone and I'm doing a deal. And then I was like, oh, gosh, for real. The Forbes valuation, this is pretty inaccurate. Well, I don't know what you go off. It wasn't like today. Yeah, sure. Four years ago it was very different, right? And then, you know, we remember calling Adam. And I said, well, we probably should talk to Adam and Adam, we're all on the phone together. He said, hey, we're transitioning the team in Utah and this and that. I didn't call me back. It was like, we're having another conversation. It was a little bit like, hey, look, if you're lucky in life, you're gonna work in the NBA, working sports. If you're really, really, really lucky, you can be a governor. Yeah, it's like no one gets the team. They grew up sneaking into the arena and then they grew up cheering for it. Like, this is unheard of. And like, so it's not lost on me, but that's also a lot more weight. Like, I know what it's like to be a jazz fan. Like, like, I had a funny one today. We were in the dry, I just got back to Chicago. We were in the, the combine interview and, you know, interviewing all the players and I'm sitting there and, you know, at Austin and set all this up, it was phenomenal. I did a great job. And, but can't boozers in there. And I'm, you know, I asked one question because I didn't say much all the time. I was kind of auditing the class, but Carlos is also one of our scouts and a little bit like, you know, Carlos could only take as the Western Conference Finals. Like, what do you think you can do? Right? And that's the fandom coming out. Like, I know, I know the pain of not getting over the hump for Utah and so long. And being like, when I took over and, you know, one of the second or third and most winning is franchise in the last 30 years without getting over the hump. It's kind of crazy. And so, you know, I think the lottery moment for every jazz fans, every jazz fan was like, boy, it's like, whatever, it's just nice to get a little luck. It's nice to feel. It's nice to have the light shine a little bit, you know, and I think there is a little bit, I mean, there's no way to not look at it the last couple of years and say, hey, there's a lucky part of our game a little bit, right? And, you know, it's, but if I look back at my career, like I was extremely lucky, you know, in, you know, in tech and when you were born in the timing and when I graduated, you know, college and where I went to work and what I almost went to go do, but didn't, right? And so it looks a part of all of it. I didn't even think of the part that the lottery was in Chicago. The biggest nemesis of the Utah Jazz, the two finals in a row. And somehow somehow Chicago gave finally gave it back a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's good. There's a lot of healing probably still a lot of healing left still still today. And then the other weird thing about this lottery is there's a top four. And I actually really like the next couple guys too, but I think there's pretty clearly a top four. And you guys have these indirect ties with two of the four, right? Where you have Booz or who played for the Jazz for years, with the best years of his career and is now involved with your team. And then AJ, who went to got pulled out, went to prep school there, went to BYU. I know you guys are a little bit involved with the, you know, success of BYU. So you've probably gotten to know him a little bit, right? Yeah, I mean, I go to BYU, use like a mile from my house. So like it's, it's kind of, it's my alma mater. It's where I went to school. It's where I play hoops three or four times a week. That's like part of why I live where I live. It's a little bit like, you know, if you're going to live in a rally or whatever, you're right next to campus. Like I like the college town feel. And, you know, I also grew up here. It's weird. Like my parents, I was born in Eugene, Oregon. It's crazy, Danny and I were born in the same hospital, right? In Eugene and my dad was, you know, there was four or five kids and he said, I'm going to, I'm going to go from, you know, University of Oregon in the late 70s to BYU. You probably couldn't get to more polar opposite spots and moved us here. And, you know, he grew up in Washington State. My mother's from Palo Alto, California. And, you know, it kind of settled here. And, you know, I started a business here. I met my wife here. Like, I have a lot that I've been given because of this state and everything else. And, for me, it's not that, you know, I just went to school there. Like, I grew up running those halls because my dad was a professor of BYU. And, like, everyone thinks it's like, oh, you're just in charge of, or you just like to be with hoops and sports. And, no, it's like, like, it would be really weird because I started Qualtrics really. Um, you know, from an academic room with my father, like, had BYU. It'd be really weird if I wasn't all in on there and all in on Utah. It's a little bit of, like, that every time I go there reminds me, I feel like where I came from, you know, and so, so it's cool that, you know, a potential top, top pick or wherever it ends up is like, is coming through here. And, I'm sure all the dookies feel the same way about cam. And, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of how it's gone. I mean, I get the amount of text I get from everyone from Duke, like, and you know, there's a lot of them, like, the decision's easy. Like, whatever it is, they're coming, like, so, and you got the BYU contingent. It's, it's like, there's a lot of drama around this and a lot of insight and narrative. And, um, it's going to be an interesting 40 couple days here. Well, the Utah thing, I think has evolved really this century, but from where we used to think, like, I'm living in Boston, I know nothing. I'm just like, uh, Mormons, BYU, Utah, snow, Sundance. That's like, all you know. And it really feels like that shifted over the last, I would say, 15 years. Now you have a hockey team and, um, there's just feels more energy around Sundance. Um, I think almost like peak. Now it's moving. Is it moot? Where's the movement to Colorado? Yeah. Eventually, but you know, I'm sure you'll replace that with something. But in general, um, real energy around the city. And then you also have this weird stuff, like you have the, the stupid secret labs of Mormon show. There's real hot stuff show. It's right, right out of central gas. Right. So there's all these different things going on with Utah. That just didn't exist 30 years ago. What's, what's fair and unfair about the Utah thing? So, so if you think about Utah, like most people aren't from here, like I'll just say that. Like, um, you know, you know, my dad's from Washington. You know, if I look at, you know, my, my mom's from California, um, my wife's from Las Vegas. Um, there's not a better place for family life. There's just that. Like, I, I'm fortunate. I got siblings all over. Like, there's just something about Utah. I also think it's like, look, most states can only own one or two things, authentically. Like, what do you actually own or are positioned as that, that no one else has? Right. And, you know, is we, is we went through our Jersey designs and we've gone through this. I've been asking myself and looked over the last couple of years, like Silicon slopes, the tech community, and the innovation in Utah. More probably the number to innovative hub. And everyone's going to be like, no, it's Austin or, no, it's, it was a time in 2018. I think we had as many startups or, or, you know, IPOs as New York City, right? Like, you start looking at that and it's like, why? And, you know, people can say to Utah and sell out too early when they get businesses. But if you look at what's come out of here from this next phase of influencers and how the world works. And, you know, everyone has a different tie to folks. The amount of people that come in and, you know, ski here and visit here. I just saw pictures of the Conor McDavid down at Southern Utah and the Omelette. Like, yeah, like, like, I saw that, like, but it's crazy who comes through here. Yeah. And it's like, most time people vacation here, but, you know, I don't think we've done a very good job over the last 30 years. Like, branding or something. Yeah, because you feel like a small market, but you're not. Yeah. Oh, there's like, I said this on day one with the MBAs. There's nothing that we haven't common with a small market. You go to our airport. You can jump on a plane and go to Paris, go direct to Hong Kong or, or Seoul, Korea. You can go to London, like, that's not a small market. You don't have to do connections, right? You've got a tech ecosystem that is insane. So if you come out here and get a job in tech, and it doesn't work out, you can get five other jobs in tech. Right. - Right, what we get branded for is because, you know, we don't have the urban living that most people associate with a big market. And that's because when you come to Utah, you actually kind of want to spread out. But we're the fastest growing youngest demographic in the country. So what people also don't know is within Salt Lake City, within 90 miles, you've got 250,000 college kids that most come out here, want to stay here. And so you always want to bet on youth. If you take Stanford and Caltech out of Silicon Valley, you kind of don't have Silicon Valley, right? What makes Boston special and kind of rejuvenating all the time is that education system, right? And so I'm super long on cities and growth where there's always youth coming in and then what they do. The key is, and I feel like it's unique that my wife and I and our group were in a position to kind of take a little bit of the announcement or the baton of city building and community building. So right before I came here and just announced a new health partnership for both of our teams, we're building this, we bought a mall, so 110 acre mall, right in South Salt Lake. And we just put our Utah Mammoth hockey teams two years old, the practice facility there. We've got a corporate offices there and then we're just announced a new practice facility that'll be done in September of next year for hoops all together with our own separate worlds. So we just announced within our mountain a 60,000 square foot health care facility that services both, that's like super innovative and this is part of our responsibility now with these teams and we're actually doing the same thing downtown, we're creating this arena district right in front. We've got a live nation venue, got a major hotel going in, that's five start. We're looking at this to be like, okay, what's everyone's experience when they do want to go to urban living? 'Cause I know the experiences when they come out is awesome. You know, it's absolutely awesome. I mean, you got guys like Jordan Clarkson was here. He loved living down South and kind of having a house right now, like in then you're 20 minutes from, 25 minutes from seven ski resorts. We got the Olympics coming back. I mean, you know, so it's where I choose to raise my kids. It's fun, but you know, there's a couple of things we can authentically own and it's like, come have the best years of your career and come have the healthiest mentally here. 'Cause wellness is real. And go ahead. - How many people own an NBA and an NHL team in the same city? - Within the same ownership group together? - Just them, right? - No, yeah, you've got-- - Oh, and the Dolan, and then New York and New York. - You got Dolan and you've got Toronto, which is kind of corporate owned or however that is. - Yeah. - And then you've got Leontus and what's going on in Washington. - Right. - And we're all set up different, you know? - But you are a maniac competitor. So now after you've these two winter sports, so you have an NHL and an NBA happening simultaneously. Like what happens to you at night? - So I prefer to have it. Like if you're gonna give me the heat, like let's just do what all it wants, right? - Yeah. - Every other night, I've told my kids, like, you know, dad works the night shift. Like, it's what we do a little. And so like we, I don't think anyone in organization was acclimated the first year of like, we all knew hockey was coming. - Yeah. - But I don't think we knew hockey was coming. - What's the crossover with the organization? 'Cause some people will have, you know, basically somebody who's in control of everything, people will split it up both ways. How did you decide to attack it? - So I think we went looked around at all the different models. And we're like, okay, none of this is for us. I believe when it comes to organizational structure, you build around people and you, you, you know, it's just gotta feel right? - Yeah. - You know, I feel like a little bit, I kind of, you know, operating in tech, like no one's evaluated or I would say, innovated around organizational structure as much as tech has. Like, you know, some people have one direct report. Some people have 20, the Spana control, no titles, titles, open floor. Like, however, you're just controlling, you can't control how people think these days. It's much more around the environment. And so it took us to that back and said, okay, how do we want this environment to work? And clearly, I didn't know a whole lot about hockey. So we were fortunate that we had great GM and Bill Armstrong, the K-Bulber, and then Chris Armstrong. It was actually a great friend. Tony Fiena was actually golf agent working, working at agency, but it was a hockey guy. - Yeah. - And representing a lot of hockey guys. And, you know, it was a big part of the idea. So, so those two kind of work together on the hockey side. And Chris is a president, Bill is a GM. And, you know, they run that and report up to me. And then on the hoop side, which we can get into, you know, I've got Austin now as our president of all basketball. And then-- - You stole him too. That was another one. - Yeah. - It was another Boston theft. That was your third one. - And I can't leave you. - How many do you get? - You've three now. - Yeah, can I tell that story? - Yeah. - I think it's important. So, when Danny came over, you know, he didn't really want to be the president of basketball 'cause he'd already done that in a long time. And, you know, I was more like, Hey, what do you want to do? It's me, D.A. Like, he was actually super helpful in getting a team. And then it just worked out. - Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. Going backwards though, your friends with him a long time. You've been playing off of that forever. Even when he stepped down from the Celtics, my shit detector was blinking hard. I was like, first of all, I don't think he's giving it up. Second of all, that's his buddy that just got the chance. I'm suspicious. But there was like a six month process, and we're together, we're actually the hero, we're a Tiger Woods golf tournament, we're there with Tony, Fee now. And he's not working for anybody at the time. And he won't tell me he's gonna come help me. 'Cause I don't think, I didn't think his wife and Michelle and they're found, he was gonna move to Utah. - And he didn't have some health issues. - He'd had a hard attack, I don't think, yeah. - For sure, and he didn't want to go from being the president of basketball to being the president of basketball over here. He wasn't doing that. He wanted to kind of shift gears a little bit. But in one week, I watched him in December, like watched like six different games a night. I'm like, dude, you just watched like 30 basketball games from college to everything. And you don't even have a job, like who's paying you to do that? He's got the iPad, the laptop, and the TV up. And I'm like, who? You just do this for fun now? I was like, you might as well get paid for it. Like, come over and help. And then that started a process and, you know, he really wanted, it came out of what he wanted to do. He wanted to help scout. He wanted to help with coaching and help manage the players and didn't really want to deal with much more than that. So, he helped me. We came over, we started this process, we got into it. And, you know, I just love working with Danny, but, you know, I was driving last year with my wife. And me and Danny were going somewhere. And she said, hey, what happens if something happens to you and Danny? And I was like, well, that's kind of weird. Like, well, what do I do? What do I do at the team? I was like, well, let me tell you what you do. You call Austin H and you tell him to come out, you're gonna run it, 'cause Austin's an absolute star. Yeah. And I'd never had that conversation with Danny, ever. He would never push anything. He's like, he just, then never happened. And then she was like, well, does Austin know that? Because I just saw he was interviewing for this president job or something online. Like, are you, don't you think he should tell him? Yeah. And I was like, it's actually a good idea. So I call Austin that day. It was right after the transaction. He said, hey, Austin, like, I, I don't know if you know this, but let me just explain the conversation I had with my wife. This is how I feel. You're my designated survivor. I need to tell you this is, this is how I feel. We've never had this conversation or anything like this, but this is how I feel. And so you need to know that. And if you're interviewing, 'cause I heard a couple of the rumblings that someone was gonna grab him. And I knew that if they sat down with him, it was gonna be very closely. We're gonna do it. 'Cause you love that he's got the age background, but he's also his own guy. Like, I said, you need to know that you come knock on my door. Well, he called me back and he's like, Hey, if I'm gonna go, I wanna go now. And I was like, what? Okay. And by five o'clock that day, I had hired Austin as our president of basketball ops. But you didn't tell Danny yet? No, I didn't tell Danny it had to work this way yeah, I was like there's no way I could talk to him no way too weird and to it's just it's just like he would he would like hammer me that are you doing this because of me or this like he's just that way like he's he's the hard math teacher yeah that's just the way he it's competitive as he is himself he's he's that competitive with his kids to go out a little bit and and do this I mean Austin coached in the G League and yeah but Austin I knew Austin from BYU he was a real I wouldn't say he was unathletic but he was a really smart point guard like I knew his basketball makeup I had watched his career go and I was like there's something different but he's also you know he's also got that you know Boston organization you know he's very disciplined very open I don't know what to say it is almost you know East Coast educated type vibe like yeah with the age background which is like a pretty cool combo and and so then I was like oh no I've got to call Danny and so I can't get a hold to Dan so I'm like someone told him oh like he was mad at you you thought he was like I can't you know I thought he was because I normally get a hold of him but it was like a three-hour period where I couldn't get a hold of him so I finally get a hold of him I was like DA like we've known each other for like 15 years like we built incredible trust together and I think it's either going to be really good after this call or you're going to be really mad at me I just hired Austin as a president basketball option you got to go figure out how to work for him and it was it was quiet for a second but there was no one more happy yeah then DA and it's just been awesome and so Austin's in charge he's running the whole thing but you know part of this is like for me watching him and others and Austin go to work and you know knowing where to point DA you know I'm sitting in that I'm sitting in that draft interview room and I'm looking over and there's there's will with championships in the pop pedigree today Austin's got a ring every Bradley's in there he's got a ring and I see DA with three rings and pretty much built the fourth like I'm like all right this is this is a championship I like I'm not going to know more than these people and I you know and I just need to you know make a couple of hard decisions a year or be a tiebreaker here well the other thing with Danny is he's basically he's such an anomaly with the draft first of all you never know I just know from all the Celtic stuff nobody knows what he thinks until like the last week that's why if there's any stories that come about Utah likes this guy Utah likes that guy it's like I promise they're not true no Danny's that he's not working I'll just say that I just wrote back with him on the entire plane trying to debrief just trying to figure out what he thinks he won't tell him yeah I've been through this three times he does not want to influence Danny Danny's a true seeker he really is he doesn't lie I'm sure he loves you like you call him and you're like Danny what do you think he tells the truth like in a weird way you know or he won't say anything like Ariel he'll look he's not gonna lead something weird but like Danny's point of view is going to be something that and I believe him on this I believe that he did not know you know he was drafting one in that you know in that famous Jason Tatum or he goes back to three and then Jalen going back to three I honestly believe he did not know who he was going to go take until right up to it and the reason why is because I kind of got to read the day before the draft with Keonte and then got a different read 10 minutes before the draft and so what I'm really excited for is that Austin can turn to his left and have that that as well and Austin's Austin's an incredible incredible talent about you later like you know sitting next to that guy your entire life like you learn you learn that side of it plus you know it but he thinks for himself and so that's what that's what you want and then you know with Will being able to have these guys talk to Will and Will's a unique coach just awesome and you know young and I'm excited to see what he can do the whole lottery reform thing were you are you involved in any committees yet have you jumped on anything were you involved in the reform I'm on the I'm on the mini committee I'm on the planning committee and I I'm on the show suggestus committee as well and you know I think they've they've actually done a really good job of regardless of the committee here of just like they had a bunch of GM calls they basically set up the hotline you call us with your ideas and you know our group is talk to the league and other people in the league you know four or five times just to say hey and and the answer is always like yeah happy schedule called I'd love to listen well if you thought about this you thought about that so you know in some ways it's a little bit like us naming the mammoth like we're putting it out to the the fan boat which brings a lot of input in but it's within a tighter group and that's hard to decipher but I think the league is looking at it all and saying hey we're all partners in this we want to get it right let's make sure we understand every view I'm empathetic to the rebuilding but I think everyone's going to have to almost take a step back and say hey what's best for the product it's not going to be perfect and by the way right or wrong like luck's going to play a piece of this and then what happens when you get the teams of humans and the agents and all of that involved like it's all it's all great until you get the people involved right and like you see that with every CBA like there's unintended consequences and this happens and you know um you know certain things trigger but um the I don't know the only thing I really care about is that I don't think team should like what happened to Spurs I think they have to figure out three top four picks in a row like little wrinkles like that so you can't just basically I know the odds are going to be stacked a little differently anyway but um it just feels like having that much luck three years in a row they can kind of litigate a little bit yeah and so I think we'll come way more I mean there's stuff that's being reported on the side there's stuff that's being reported on the other side of how to do this but no I think there's something like is it is it I'll just speak for myself like I'd be okay now that we're the second pick like okay great you can't come in the top five next year right there's a lot of problems yeah all right the next thing is like hey if you just unrestrict the picks that are restricted one through eight or one through seven that also solves a lot of problems I agree okay and so I think I think that that's fair and it's like okay then draft well but when when you're a team I'm also super empathetic to the teams that can't get out because we are such a star driven league and hockey um it's a little different you're grabbing guys you're developing them you're putting them down in the minors the the reward for one ball or one spot in this sport is so high right well they're in hockey there's so much volatility even with the stars like you see like Taylor Hall right now in Carolina where all the like the Bruins had him he was good like these guys can do this we're an embassical you have these fixed guys that year after year you don't have the same volatility or the young guys it's very rare for a young guy in hockey to come in and make such immediate impact like there's like a celebration yeah once every eight years and then you know you look this year and you got VJ playing in the playoff you've got I mean that's it's pretty impressive Dylan Harper yeah Dylan Harper like it's it's pretty impressive do you feel like you're part of a new because I remember we've had these generations with NBA owners and in the mid 2000s that all of a sudden you had Cuban comes in with gross back on the Celtics and they're like these younger guys that came in and they were you know younger they were more from the tech side they were not trying to blow the league up a little bit but maybe push the league in a different direction now it feels like we're heading that way again with some of the guys from your generation like you know like the Charlotte owners and yeah for atchisms coming in with the Celtics like they it feels like something generationally is shifting and I don't know what 100 percent it's really clear I mean you've you've seen the the asset class of sports become something that's super desirable you're seeing also you know the groups of people coming in shift from family owned to more like you know kind of towers that have been stacked together like the language yeah yeah ownership groups that come in and you know I also think the days of no one's like let's just be honest like in no other world would you acquire a business for the size of the price of what you know Portland did and turn it over to somebody that would never happen anywhere in business right you never be like okay I'm I'm paying this for this luxury brand okay yeah someone out that like I'll come see it next December, that's unheard of. And so now with, you know, I don't know what's cause or effect, but like as you look at the risk people are taking to get in here, I think long gone are the days where the principal or the main principal is not heavily involved. But we're not gonna see a day where a board's running at a family office is just running it on the side. Those days are gone. They're gone in football, they're gone in everything else, just because of what it is. And actually, if someone's stretching this far to acquire one of these, they also really understand the community aspect of it as well. - Yeah. - Because they care about that as well. And so I think that we're just in a new world and you've seen it, like in our world, that's Patrick Tuman, it's Ishmael, it's obviously, you know, Gabe and everyone up in Charlotte with Rick. And you know, I think the wrestlers are someone new and coming in and like, you look at the involvement not only just with their, or what Dungeons and Carolina, now in a random and what they're building out. Like, it's a decision to say, hey, I'm actually can probably do what I want, this is what I want to go do. And like, I want to be involved. Now, that's a tough balance as well. Because I know enough, I'm, look, I'm a hooper, I play all the time, like I watch basketball, I'm a junkie, I watch every game. But like in this draft, for example, I'm going to say this, like, our families shouldn't want me drafting this person. Like when you've got the team with Austin and Danny and group, like, you should feel a lot more comfortable than with me. Right. Now, I want to all pine and like, have a thing, but like, how, how involved you get is like, you got to be a little careful. Because you need to be involved enough to give the team air cover, right? Because everything's not going to go well. And you need to understand the body of work that people are putting in, but at the same time, that's what gives them air cover to be able to have a long 10 year. I often find that when people are too far out of it, or they don't live in market, they become really reactive with coaches and GMs and stuff like that. When you're in it every day, you know that, all right, I know you're doing all the right things, we just need a break, right? And I learned this in culture, it's just leading out. You know, when we opened up in Europe, like, I was in every single detail in Europe and like, going through, and I remember my board coming to me going, you know what, let's pull the plug on Europe, it's going to, so it's not working. I'm like, hold on, hold on, hold on. It's here, it's here. And then four quarters later, the thing pops. Or when we started shifting our model and it's like, hey, you know, this isn't working, it's super expensive. No, no, no, hold on. Everything's always taken longer than I thought. - And if you weren't as heavily involved, you, you might have been overrun by the board. - Yeah, so it's, you got to have polar opposite emotions to be able to manage it. You got to be able to manage it. I got to be over involved, but also let the team work. - But like, when they come to you with the Jeren Jackson trade, ultimately, you're stamping that one way or the, like if you didn't want to do that, the trade's not happening. - Yeah, for sure. If I don't want to do it, it's not happening. - Yeah, 'cause you're taking on a big salary, you're giving up draft picks, like, you're not going to be like, okay, I hate this, but I trust you guys. At some point, you have to be a little on board. - No, and they want to read me in, but in our organization, the way we're lined up, they want to call me and talk about it. - Yeah. - But they also know that if Will Danny and Austin or Will Austin and Danny are lying, I'm gonna have a hard time saying, honestly, I'm gonna have a hard time really saying, like, no, we shouldn't do that. And 'cause I know that they've wrestled this thing down and thought through everything. 'Cause they attack it differently. No one's getting a fired for the way they're thinking about this. And they know they can speak their mind. They know they can speak their mind with each other. And then when we do something, I'm gonna be able to be like, all right guys, put your hand in the middle. We're riding a dime with this thing. I'm cool. The one thing I hate is just this revisionist history, and in sports, it's all the time. We should have done this. We should have done it. No, you were in the decision room. Like if we're doing this, no one's gonna say that. No one's gonna say we should have, or I didn't say that. Like if you wanna say it, speak up right now. But 'cause the second we pulled the trigger, it was your idea as much as it was anyone else's. - Is it Don Taylor Rohn? - Jesus, we don't just have one mountain, it's like two mountains next to each other that we have to climb here. - Yeah, I think, I don't think it's ever, you know, I definitely don't think it's more daunting than going up against 23 and 19 or, you know, 1997. - Right. - Right. - Right. I think that, you know, they're both in a pretty good spot. They are mountains to climb. I would argue that, you know, there's people out there that say, well, we're right behind it with where we sit and everything that's going on. - I think with the lottery, I think you're probably third with assets right now in the West. So I agree with that. - But I don't think any, like, it just shows how competitive this is and like, what's you're shooting for, like, you know, it is, it is what it is and, you know, I know, you know, in the D-Wades and our ownership group and like, and just talking to him and like, knowing that history of what it's like and what you had to do and really asking about the grind, like, it's pretty crazy to be able to turn to Danny and D-Wade and be like, walk me through like what you thought in, you know, March of this year when you guys won. And it was like, this was stressful. We didn't think this. This is who we were up against. We thought there was no way. They had smoked us that. Then you get into the, the moment, then what happened, you know, it's like this change and or this change or this how it is and, you know, that's, that's kind of where it's at. - Those are two similar teams, right? The '06 heat that Wade won the title with and then the '08 Celtics that Danny won the title with, where in two years, there was the move and then there was the move after the move. And then all of a sudden they're in the mix and it's like, whoa, we're here. Let's go. Like that. The '08 Celtics. - And then it changed in nine months. - Yeah. And then even, you know, the battle within the series. - Yeah. There's that too. I'll be interested to say that. You handle that. - We haven't even seen that side of you yet, but you're like a conference final losing your mind on the, on the sidelines. - Wade, I had another question for you about expansion, which it seems like I got floated out there. Adam has the two cities he seems to want to have, be interested to see if they could get the money for those two teams, but then everybody has to vote on it. And you go from 30 to 32 teams, which is adding two teams to the league that you now have to beat. You're losing media share. Do we have the right amount of teams, like where do you stand on this, or are you even allowed to talk about it? - I mean, and there's nothing I would say that I probably wouldn't say publicly, or privately, or whatever it is. I kind of, I'm a guy. I kind of have one story. This is it. - Yeah. - And so, you know, I think you need to zoom out, because, look, part of me is like Vegas is extremely close. Right? It's extremely close to us. - Yeah, very close. I mean, you might have seen the Jersey exchange we did with the Vegas Knights. Everyone's like, oh, you were just throwing the Knights in the playoffs where you put out that you'll exchange the Jersey, Vegas Knights Jersey to a Mammoth Jersey, and people are lined up around the block. It's like, no, no, no, no. The world doesn't understand that, like, you know, Southern Utah is 90 minutes from Vegas. Like, when we opened up with a Mammoth, like, the Knights were the hockey team. - Yeah. - And so, on the selfish side, it's a little bit like, hey, that impacts our market a little more than probably most. And, you know, as you look in the West, you've already got some hills to climb, you know, two great markets, which I think they are that are being floated. Like, I want to have to get to our ultimate goal. We don't want to make it harder. And so, I think there's a lot of people that could easily see or take that view of it, or take, hey, how much money are you going to get, or that's the view. But if you look at everything that Adam's doing holistically, and if you look at where sports is, why I'm so bullish on the NBA, we're probably the only league that can have the reach and the impact globally that this sport provides. So, you look at that NBA logo, my sister lost from Africa. She's from Zambia, marrying my brother. And right or wrong, what people think about MBA Africa brands go over to Africa. And it's really hard. It's really hard to translate over time. They end up into something different. But, you know, just being in draft interviews and seeing these kids have come over. Like that MBA logo means something over there and it is the logo of basketball. And you go, you're looking at Europe. We focus on the teams or this or that. But if you fast forward 20 years and you say, okay, MBA, you're up. You know, there's a league with a chance to actually have a view of all of sports with that MBA logo. It's pretty amazing. And if Seattle and Vegas are part of that bigger picture, like I'll do it. Like I'm a partner. Like I think that's a great or we'll have that discussion. But I look at it more holistically is not a seller of the MBA. It's more of like holy cow. Like we have a sport with a ball that has a great mobile viewing experience. Like one of the best. I can watch MBA games from my phone and I love it. Like our reach is insane. And by the way, people can have a team, people can pick it up. Like that's how I look at it globally and say, Hey, how many users are we going to always hear those stats that, Oh, Manchester City or Man U as 1.2 million fans. Like if you look at the MBA in that way, I'm grateful that we're making the investment now for Europe. Someone already made the investment in the W. Someone already made the investment in Africa. Because we truly have a world who wants that product. And I think that's how I look at it. And that's a weird way that's not a, so I think I don't look at it, just those two teams. I look at it. It's a global MBA brand like where it can go. And you can see being a part of Vegas. And you know, it works. Yeah, because like financially, you'd be getting like, let's say it's 15 billion for both teams. You're getting a $500 million check to give up a small percentage of your media rights. Yeah, I don't, I don't really. But that's not how you look at it. It's like, I get it. Yeah, like it's holistic. And you know, there's not many sports that could be doing with the MBA. Yeah, we can see the NFL. They just announced their schedule. They have nine international games. They're really very wary of this. They're super aggressive. Yeah, super aggressive. They're like, hey, I want Christmas day. I want this. I want that. Like, like all these league, I mean, we're all like you look at what's going on. And I think that we truly, I think Adam's vision's a lot bigger. And I think they're doing a really good job with it. Last question, to walk me into that room of 30 really rich, successful people, it's the board of governors. And you guys have to talk about stuff and argue about stuff. And you're just at this big giant table in some room. And you're all, and you're all successful people who have used to getting your own way the entire time. And now you have to hash shit out. What is that room like? What was it like the first time you went in there? Um, I mean, it's hard. It's a daunting task. I mean, you know, if I take a step back and if I'm the league, it's like, okay, how do you have a room of 30 people who all have opinions who are all going through something that are all trying to kill each other that have to come in together and like, what do I do? Do I just, and there's a couple camps that look differently? I'm fortunate to be a part of a different couple of different leagues. And having like, do you just say, Hey, here's a memo. Here's what we're discussing. Or do we actually care and open it up for debate and let everyone speak their piece and then try to make the most humane decision knowing that it's almost impossible. Yeah. And you have people with different, you have the small market teams, you have the, I don't want to pay the luxury tax teams. You have the, I have a lot of money. I want to win the title. I don't care what that cost team. You have the people that generate a bunch of revenue. They don't want to share it with everybody. So there's agendas everywhere. Nothing's like one little quadrant. Yeah. There's like vectors on like, every issue is like seven blockpacks. Yeah. Right. There's never anything that's like one quadrant. And so it's really, it's really hard. So on that front, like, I think going into these things, it's, it's in anything. If that was your board or anything else, I, it's not, you know, probably the most productive way to have a meeting. But how else are you going to do it? You kind of have to do it. There's no way else to do it. And I think what our current set of is, I don't think there's anyone in that room that doesn't feel like they can go and give input and they're at least listen to. And that's, that's pretty hard to do. Right. And so I would argue that, you know, whether it's Tom Dunton or whether it's, you know, even Jim Dolan or someone out, like, I feel like, you know, whether it's Mickey or like, they're able to, to do it in the capacity and the ability to add them to, to hear and maybe even feel that I see you is, it's a gift. And so I think that, you know, and look, I've been on someone that out there's beyond it. I've been on the opposite side. Maybe even my point of view at the time, a couple of different ways. I've been fine. I've been known that, like, in, like, I'm cool with how, I'm really cool with how we're, we're going and I'm even more bullish than ever on the NBA. And, and I'm excited to be doing this for a really, really long time. What's your fine, what's your fine total right now? You're down 500. I'm down more than that. But are you in seven figures yet? No, no, I'm not, I'm not human or, or dream on level. All right. Try to keep that number below seven figures. No, it's, it's part of it. I mean, there's a process and I get it in, you know, it's just, it's just the tax. Um, congrats on everything. I think it's better to watch from far now. I mean, you're, you're from there and all of a sudden you own these two teams and they become even better assets and staples of the community than they used to be. And you have this whole thing going now. Hopefully you'll get some luck in the lottery. But that's the thing you never know. Do you give these four guys at the top? And it's like, pick seven might be the best guy in this draft. I see them. It is, it is such a, you know, and the funny thing is is like, like, I remember Will the first day a couple of years ago, he's like, okay, great. Everyone come, I don't care where you're drafted. I don't want school. You want to. I don't care anything like your life starts today. Right. Like, like once the season starts, knowing, knowing cares internally, like, where you were drafted, how it was, like, you, you got veterans that have come in the, in the second round and you know, you look at the Rudy Go Bears, you look at the joke, it's like, it really has to do with like, who, who we're going to invest in and taking a 10 year view on this. And I just feel really fortunate with the group that has chosen to do this with us, you know, starting with Austin and then Will and, um, and DA obviously, like, what a blessing to have that doing around, you know, you know, I remember being at the 22 finals and they invited Danny to sit courtside with the Celtics owners for one of the games and Will Hardy was really just involved. Or maybe it was 23. It was 23 or 23. When did you hire Will Hardy? Was it 23? Yeah, I think it was 23. Maybe it was the 23 playoffs, but I could see Danny looking at Will Hardy and watching how Bob D was and I said to my dad, oh no. Danny's studying Will Hardy. This is bad because we knew Will hurt everybody loved Will Hardy, but I was like, so not surprised when you hired Will Hardy. Well, people would ask him to be like, he's like, I don't know. I like what that, I like what Boston, but what was the youngest coach in the league at the time? He was great. We hired him and he's been. I'm glad he's finally got to go for wins now. He's an awesome partner. You know, it's funny. Like Danny Austin and I all golf with Will, you know, we're all golfers and you know, it's fun. We can all just go play and then the time the end of the round is, we have nothing else to talk about. So I've been so good. Yeah, and like a lot of times are managing me. I think it's like, hey, look, okay, whose job is it to go manage Ryan a little bit and, you know, it's been good. We're super fortunate. All right. I'm happy for you. Congratulations. Congratulations on everything. Thank you for all the time. Look forward to seeing you. I want to come to Salt Lake for a game at some point. So you should let me know. I'll let you know hang out with the angels. All right. Good to see you. Thank you. Let's go. All right. Take care. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Brian Curtis and Ryan Smith and my dad and Gahown and Wardo. Again, we don't know the schedule for Sunday yet. So check out on social media. We're definitely going live on Netflix at some point. We'll be after game seven. We'll be after two game sevens. Will it be after just one game one? We don't know. We'll find out tomorrow night. And you have a whole weekend watch for app because that's going to be the next rewatchables on Monday. Enjoy the weekend. I will see you on Sunday or Sunday night. ♪ I'm sick ♪ ♪ I don't have feelings with me ♪ ♪ On the way side ♪ ♪ On the first side of the year ♪ - Must be 21 plus in president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas star Casino, or 18 plus in president DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. 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