NBA Day One Reactions, Plus Blake Griffin and Peter Berg (Two Interviews!)

This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24-7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchable as a Monday night. We did It Follows, which I think is one of the best horror movies of the last 15 years. That's our third horror movie of the month. You know what that means. We're going to have to do a fourth one next week, next Monday, and we're going to be doing it live on Netflix at 5 p.m. ET. I'll tell you the movie on Thursday, but we've done It Follows, we've done Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and we've done Friday the 13th. Three episodes. Signature horror movies for my favorite month, October, because not only was it the month Michael Myers kept coming back again, and it's a horror movie month, and I love Halloween in general, but we also have football, we have the World Series, we have college football, and we have the NBA coming back, which I'm going to be talking about at the very top of this podcast. Three NBA games, and all of them were interesting for different reasons. So I'm going to open a six-pack of thoughts on that. And then I have two interviews. Yeah. Usually, it's a rarity for me to do one interview, but there were two people that we got to do in person that I really like talking to. Blake Griffin. We talked about the NBA season that's coming up. We did that today. We talked about youth sports. We talked about his new Amazon show, all kinds of things. And then Peter Berg, my old buddy, who I think the first time he was on this podcast, I was, it might've been pre-Grantland at ESPN. He's been on a few times. He has a new movie coming out called The Mosquito Bowl, which is excellent. And we talked about that. We talked about a variety of topics. So a double interview pod, but for you, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back right after Pearl Jam and I'm going to talk about basketball. This is the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. Make every NFL week more rewarding with FanDuel Rewards Club. You heard me. Just bet like you normally would. Earn points in eligible settled bets, win or lose. Keep collecting points, level up and unlock bigger rewards. So keep an eye on your Rewards Club progress and see what you can unlock. This is your most rewarding season ever. And it's with FanDuel. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC or Wyoming. Get in problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right, recording this part of the podcast right after OKC San Antonio, the third opening night game of a season that I think is the most anticipated one that we've had maybe since LeBron's first Miami season, 2010-11, that season, where a lot of young stars, a lot of subplots, just all kinds of things in motion. I'm going to open a six pack for all the basketball I watched today. It's brought to you by Michelob Ultra. It's a special part of today's episode. We're going to unpack six major things that I saw today brought to you by Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of the NBA and a personal favorite beer of mine. Okay, first thing in the six pack. So I had OKC winning the title. I mentioned that last week or the week before, and I was debating about OKC versus Indiana or OKC versus. New York in the finals. And I'm going to take OKC over Indiana. It's going to be my final pick just because I like the 30-1 odds. And it'll be more fun to be like, the rematch, I called it. Okay. Nothing that I saw tonight changed my mind about that finals pick. And if anything, I felt strengthened mentally. I feel good about my OKC pick because you could tell they didn't have a year from hell last year, but not everything went right. And they really just didn't get much of Jalen Lee and Williams the way they thought they would get. And SGA had this weird thing with the Spurs that came out of nowhere. Wemby felt pretty confident against them last year. They lose a game seven at home. And this was a team tonight that just seemed like they had this game circled and this matchup circled all summer. You could see SGA in his gym, in the bowels of Canada, wherever the hell he was over the summer, just pretending he was going against Castle and all these guys. And Wemby probably had some guy holding a broomstick that he had to shoot over. But. But SGA was great tonight. I mean, that was about as well as he's played against San Antonio. And the big thing was they lost Dort, they lost Wiggins, they lost Isaiah Joe, which, you know, were not major pieces of their 25 title run except for Dort. But, you know, you always want to know that you can replenish it. And none of they replenished it. Like, Justin Barrier texted about, or tweeted about the OKC pipeline, what a triumph just watching this game was, where you have McCain, who they trade for mid-season last year, who now, feels like he's more valuable to them than A.J. Mitchell, who was awesome last year. And then Mara was the big thing that he comes in, they draft him 12th. I had my doubts, but I thought it was the right range for him to go just because of his size. And that, you know, you'd want to take him 8th. But 12th is right around, like, you know, glorified role player, basically. And they take him because they need him for this. And watching him go against Wemby, he only played 10 minutes, but it was 10 loud minutes. And it really felt like, you know, it felt important. It's weird. I try never to overreact during game one of an 82-game season. We're going to talk about some other stuff later, but this Mara thing felt important because it reminded me of in the 80s with Andre the Giant and the WWE would try to bring these people that, you know, villains that could fight him that would be realistic for, you know, that you would think Andre the Giant was in danger. And they were never the size of Andre the Giant, but they'd kill Rakan at one point. But then they brought in Big John Stud, and I remember when they brought in Big John Stud thinking, oh man, this is actually like semi-realistic. He might be able to battle the Giant here. And Mara came in and, you know, he's not going to shut down Wemby. I'm sure Wemby will have great games against him at various points over the next five to 10 years. Maybe Mara won't stay healthy. Who knows what's going to happen. But it was the first time you saw somebody in OKC who was able to go toe-to-toe, height-to-height with him and, and make Wemby at least think about what he was doing. So, he looked great in the preseason. He's clearly going to play. I thought the fact that he played in this game and played meaningful minutes was the second most meaningful thing about this game for OKC. The first thing was just Jalen Williams, who they didn't really have last year being back to where he was. So, I just think they have a better team than San Antonio, but I think it's like this much better. And injuries could change it. Who knows how, how it's going to shake out, with the minutes on OKC. Cason Wallace just signed, but everything I saw tonight reinforced what I thought going into the season, that OKC is the team to beat. And San Antonio caught them last year and I don't think they're going to catch them again. So, that's where I stand in mid-October, game one. We have 70, 81 games to go, plus 10 weeks to the playoffs. But right now, I feel pretty good about OKC. The other thing, second part of the six-pack, no love lost, we don't get to say this that often with sports where it actually means something. And it means something that, I don't know if you saw, I think a thing of spittle just flew out of my mouth. No love lost between these teams. This is not, these aren't teams that are going to be going to the movies during off days. These aren't teams that are going to be doing five-step handshakes with each other. I think there's genuine dislike on both sides. In general, I don't think Wemby really wants to be friends with anybody on the other team, but you could feel it. There was one classic NBA non-altercation altercation in this game where somehow all three Williams in the game got technicals on OKC. But no love lost. And in general, I think that's going to be a theme for this season. I think there's, I think the days of everybody being too buddy-buddy seem like they're done. It really feels like this year we're going to have some rivalries. You could feel it in the Detroit-Boston game. You could feel it with whoever the Knicks are playing. LeBron has a lot of people that, a lot of teams that are going to want to go against him for, for different reasons. We covered that in a podcast earlier. Minnesota is going to be talking shit the whole season. Houston seems to annoy everybody. You go on and on, but I think this is going to be a theme of this season. I think it's going to be a testier season than usual. Won't be like the 1977 season when we had so many fights that everything crested when Kareem broke his hand and then Kermit Washington sadly threw the most famous punch in NBA history, but it won't be like that. We're not going to have, it's not going to be like hockey. By the way, what's happening with hockey this year? See, it feels like there's more fights and, and just people getting popped than I can remember. Or maybe that's just my social media algorithm. I don't, the hockey fighting, fighting scares me. It's like they're too good at hockey fighting now. I don't know if you've watched this, but they're really like, they're beating it. They kind of know how to have leverage and they're really like swinging haymakers. And I miss the old days when they just fought like four-year-old kids. Anyway, OKC and San Antonio really dislike each other. And, I had to mention that in the six-pack pack, not quite worthy of the six pack, but I did notice Billy Donovan on the San Antonio bench. You know, I can't say that was like the greatest Mitch Johnson game tonight, but I do wonder if they started out a little slower than usual. I'm not sure I would have let Billy Donovan on my bench from Mitch Johnson be like, no, no, no, I'm good. I'm good with having a famous coach kind of lurking. If anything goes wrong here. Okay. Next thing for the six pack, the, the 2026, 27 Philadelphia 76ers who won tonight, they won in New York, which was a given considering they had a long ring ceremony. You're not going to be this, but Ben Stiller was filming stuff with his camera. Yeah. Um, you're not gonna be this, but fat Joe and Tracy Morgan and Spike Lee were there. Yeah. Um, you knew they were going to lose. I didn't bet it. I should have bet it. I kind of wanted to see what we're getting from the sixers thing, but here's my big takeaway. From this game. I felt this way before the season. I went, I went slightly under on the sixers for their over under total, because I didn't know how these guys were going to mesh. I had a lot of concerns. We have some health stuff. We got to see all of them play together at night. Just a really fun team to watch. I had a good time. There's a lot of subplots and plots and things happening during a six years game. Who's going to have the ball for specific stretches and be, it is just a rollercoaster at this point. He looks unstoppable. He looks like his career is about to be over the next play. He's all over the place. I didn't think he was particularly, um, good or impactful today. And yet he was impactful. He made a couple of big defensive plays near the end. The Knicks are inexplicably trapping the, uh, maxi high screen and they're turning into a four and three with them beat at the top of the key. And he's just killing them. He's either passing the edge calm or he could shoot. And, um, so that whole experience was all over the map, but kind of in a fun way. LeBron just in a different uniform, trying to figure out where he fits in. And, you know, sometimes he'll put his head down and he'll get like the fast break layup or have a nice pass and he'll do LeBron stuff. Other times he was just standing in the corner. And I think he seemed okay with it. Cause I think all he cares about is April, May and June. At this point, you had the Jalen Brown piece where he's, you know, the guy on a 56 win team last year. And this, this year there in the first quarter, he's just in the corner a bunch. And it was like, Oh man. And then, very smartly, they figured out how to let everybody kind of drive the golf cart, right? This is like an 18 hole four hour match where they have a five sum and only two guys can drive the carts and everybody kind of takes turns who gets to, you know, drive for a hole. And you really felt that with the way they ran their offense. It was like, Oh, here's a, here's a four minute Jalen Brown stretch here. Oh, here, this is going to be the maxi stretch. The big thing I liked about Philly, which I think you could have predicted, but it was interesting to watch where and B came out and then they played this fast lineup near the end of the second quarter with was LeBron and Brown and three guards basically. And they started really flying up and down the floor. And I think they're going to be able to do that with certain lineups. And I think LeBron at this point in his career actually really likes playing that way. Sometimes Jalen has always been pretty good at it. And then maxi is one of the best guys in the league at it. Edgecombe obviously wants to do that. Simons who I really liked when he was on the Celtics last year. And I, you know, they, they, they dumped them for tax reasons. I don't know where the other contenders were for him because I think he's a legitimate third guard, but, um, I thought he was good too. Um, coming off the bench and, you know, maxi one of the seven, eight, nine, 10 best players in the league at this point. So, you know, this was a good night for the Sixers. I think they're gonna be fun. I think they're gonna be really up and down. I think there's, there's going to be nights when you could feel it. There was some defensive lapses, I think, and bead on defense. Sometimes just isn't going to move. I think they're going to get really hurt on rebounding, especially when they do those smaller lineups and we'll see how often everyone is happy. Like LeBron had 13 points tonight. And if LeBron is his stat line is going to be 13, eight and seven every game, it's probably the best for them, but I don't know if he's going to want that. So there's some stuff to sort out. And this is why you can't get excited about game one. With that said really fun team to watch. And I can't wait to watch them again. And I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. There's a bad world series. They had to promote it. Um, one of us would call the other now we have texts, but we used to actually just actually call each other and do the joke about what the Fox commercial would be for it. So he texted me today, raise brewers, cabin arrow, Mizorowski. It's the world series on Fox. I actually am excited for this world series, but Tampa Bay, Milwaukee, um, good luck Fox raise plus one 48 FYI. I'm picking the race. Anyway, uh, the Knicks got the ranks. We'll see. I went under on them for the season because after you climb the mountain like that, it's going to be up and down the next year. We'll see what the health is going to be. Um, no Mitchell Robinson drumming came in, look great in the first half, look terrible in the second half. That's going to be the drum and experience. They're a little bit deeper. And I just think they have a big bullseye on their, on their heads. Night after night, you saw tonight with Philly, that was a huge game for Philly for a variety of reasons. Next time, the next play, it's going to be a huge game for the next team. And that's just how it's going to go. I think that's, I still think they're going to be in the high forties and I don't think they're going to have home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs would be my pick, but they're fine. I actually thought they're going to win the game today. Brunson missed that little eight footer with like three minutes left. I think it would have cut it to two. And that was kind of the moment where like, ah, yeah, they're not going to win tonight, but they're fine. I'm not worried about them at all. Um, fifth thing on the six pack, the 3.00 PM, Eastern time, first game, Detroit, first Boston. So I had Blake Griffin is coming up next. And we were recording at one 30 Pacific time, which I agreed to last week. It's like, sure. Yeah. It's before basketball. That'd be great. And I forgot that the Celtics were going to be playing. So I watched the first half of the Celtic game. They look magnificent. Paul George got to the point. My dad is sending me Paul George. I always liked them texts. Celtics look fantastic. And then Blake shows up. We do the podcast. You're about to listen to after the break and watch, hopefully watch, maybe watch and listen to finish the podcast. And, and, uh, my producer tells me the Celtics lost by eight. I can't say I was shocked, but I was definitely bummed because it was one of those things where, uh, it just would have been the perfect way to start the season. They trade Jalen Brown, Paul George looked awesome. And Paul George is actually awesome. The whole game. I mean, he had, um, he had almost 30 points, you know, near the end of the third quarter, what did he finish with like 37, 40? I don't remember. But, um, but Detroit came back, Duncan Robinson, Javante green hit a bunch of threes in Detroit who got nothing from John Collins, who was terrible in that game. And it was one of their big moves, but some of the other guys stepped up Cade and Duren look great together. And, uh, and they really cracked down on defense and it was kind of an alarming Jason Tatum game. And this is why you can't overreact after game one, but Jason Tatum was terrible. Um, I, I, I actually liked a lot of the shots he took. He, they just weren't going in. And then I thought in the fourth quarter, he kind of panicked for him. They didn't panic, but you know what I mean? He, he started really pressing and did some weird stuff. He only went to the free throw line once. He was six for 23. He had 11 assists, but you know, you trade Jalen Brown, which I'm sure, I don't think he told the team to trade him, but I don't think he was from everybody's reaction since that trade. It seemed like it had kind of come to an end for him and him and Jalen, but this is different level of pressure now for him because there's not a proven next guy in this team that, you know, can show up in a game in Detroit for 25 to 30 points. This was Jalen last year. Jalen loved playing Detroit. Jalen was guarding Cade and was doing all these things and brought a physicality and, um, and a confidence, which, when that's gone, now you're, now you're leaning on Paul George, who again looked like 2019 Paul George said, I'm not sure how it's going to, how long it's going to last. And then guys that you, you know, finger crossed guys. I love Peyton Pritchard. Some, some nights he doesn't have it. I don't know what nights he's going to have it. Derek white, great player. Everybody would love to have him. I don't know if he's going to have a quarter to quarter, all the centers, the lob threats, the offensive rebounds, that stuff can come and go the three point shooting. You never know. And none of this works. If Tatum's going to play like he did today. And I don't think he will. He's not going to go six for 23 all season, but you know, I didn't need to go online after this game to know what the online discourse was like. I could look at my texts, all my friends who don't like the Celtics who were, were teasing me after about Tatum. Oh my God, this is so sad. You know, like sarcastic texts, Anthony, I'm talking to you specifically. I kept receipts as I told you, But yeah, this is Jalen is the security blanket That is now gone on the Jason Tatum superstar bed. And he's going to have to figure out, he can't have nights like he did today. Needs to get to the line. They need to get in the paint in general. The one thing, again, game one, can't overreact. The one thing that is a little bit alarming, you watch teams like OKC and even San Antonio, and they just have multiple guys crashing into the paint, slashing kick, creating shots. And it was hard for the Celtics to get in the paint in that game. Now they're playing Detroit, who has Thompson and Cade and Dern, like a really smart defensive team. And Thompson's fantastic. And Thompson was going against Tatum a bunch of the times here. But, you know, they really, Pritchard is their only guy who can reliably kind of create shots, get in the paint other than Tatum. So when he's not getting in the paint, now you're just shooting jumpers and threes, which stopped going in the second half, and that's how you blow a 22-point lead. So I'm not sure NBA leads even matter anymore until there's like three minutes left. This game was 72-50 with 20 minutes left. This game was 99-89, Celtics with eight minutes left. They lost by eight. Detroit had a 23-0 run at some point. I just, it would seem like if you're live betting, you just live bet anybody that goes down 15 or 20. But big picture, Tatum, different kind of spotlight this year. He's never had this before. And I was a little concerned. I didn't feel like he was getting by people like he normally does. And again, that might've been Detroit. So that's the one thing I'm watching. The other thing I didn't like was Missoula is just, I like Missoula, but he coached the game today like it was a hockey game. I think we had like 420 lineups in this game. And it was never, there was never a rhythm of a lineup that felt like it was out there for more than like four or five minutes. And I don't know. I just don't know that you win four straight playoff rounds that way. Okay. See, he's probably the closest to be able to get away from it. Like even today, McCain was the one that finished the Spurs game, but I still feel like you need to know who your five are. That's probably Philly's biggest advantage. Like whatever happens with the bench injuries, who's playing or not playing over the course of six months, ultimately they know those five guys are going to be together at the end of games, right? That's, that was the biggest strength of the Knicks last year. Um, whatever. They got for their bench was a bonus, but they knew who their five was at the end of games. And I think the Celtics, a, they don't know who the five is. They started Jordan Walsh today, who I think played one of the least out of any, any swing, but, um, they're, they need to figure out it's probably Pritchard and white and it's Tatum and it's a center and it's Paul George. But then maybe it's not a center and maybe it's Tatum as a small ball center and maybe Shireman needs to be out there and maybe Pritchard does. They need to be out there. These are decisions that you're just making game to game. And I think it's good for the regular season. And I still think this team will be in the mid fifties. Um, I, I, that was, I think my favorite bet, 50 plus bets for the wins for the Celtics. But when we get to the playoffs, they better figure out who the five is at the end of these games. Um, my money would be on Shireman having a bigger impact as the season went along. Hugo was terrible today. Hugo had the unbelievable preseason and I think he only. Played nine minutes today. It wasn't about the offense. Cade kind of abused him a couple of times. Like he went in specifically to guard Cade and couldn't do it. So, um, open opening the floodgates for everybody going, Oh, that's the guy you wouldn't give up in the honest trade. That's not the actual story of the honest trade. Just to remind everybody one more time, they made one offer for Giannis. They did not make a second offer. And that's what happened. It wasn't like we're not putting in Hugo, but here's our other offer. They made one offer and I don't think they really wanted to be honest. I hate that. I hate to break it to you, but that's how it played out. And I think they really wanted Paul George and you saw it tonight. Maybe they were right, but we'll see. Anyway, that's the six pack. I can't remember if that was six or five. Can't wait to watch basketball the rest of the week. I think I'm most excited to watch the Pacers and to see how I'll burn back with Zubats. They're playing in new Orleans. That's probably my favorite one, but, uh, the NBA is back. I'm pumped. The six pack was brought to you by Michelob Ultra. They're not just a superior light beer. Michelob Ultra also determined to bring fans closer to the game this year with a chance to win court. Side tickets, because nothing beats standing alongside your favorite players is to celebrate the wins. Enter now at Michelob ultra.com/courtside Michelob ultra courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary opening us residents. 21 plus begins on October 1st, 2026 ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official [email protected]/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna talk a ton of basketball stuff with Blake Griffin, who is great. And then, uh, we're gonna take a break from Matt. And Peter Berg, so Blake and Pete coming up next, the bill Simmons podcast brought to you by FanDuel. It's going to be the most rewarding NBA season we've ever had. Thanks to FanDuel. Thanks to the NBA, because we're headed for an awesome season. Uh, do you like centers making 35 footers with zero seconds left in the shot clock? I do like half court shots for a halftime. Sure. Let it fly, man. That's what we're doing for this NBA season. Look out for FanDuel rewards club, exclusive offer. We've got a ton of games coming up. We've got a ton of surprises, surprises, much more the Wednesday night games. I like the Pacers in new Orleans. I like them to just lay the smack down, get it going. I like the Pacers in general. I actually, even them with OKC as a finals bet, I think it's like 30 to one, um, probably my favorite long shot finals, but anyway, every week, check the FanDuel app to see what's waiting for you. And it could be something like the Pacers make this the most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Download the app. To get started. DC or Wyoming restriction supply. See terms at sportsbook.fando.com. Game problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by seven up. All right. They've summoned conspiracy bill. He's here. Ever noticed lemon is everywhere from lemon recipes to lemon Senate cleaning supplies. When it comes to lemon, lime sodas, why is lemon always first? There's a reason. A shadow. We organization called the, uh, Lemonade. It's been padding the stats, keeping big lemon in the lead for, for decades. We should be doing a, wait a second podcast about this, but the sip is about to be flipped seven up. It's fighting back. It's swapping lemon lime for their new lime lemon soda. You heard me now. Lime comes first seven up flip the sip. Blake Griffin is here. TV host, former NBA player. I, the first time we did something grant land, I'm going to say 2012, we did some stuff for, no, you came, you came in LA and we filmed some videos, including, I showed you my dunk video from when I was in high school and you roasted it. I remember that. And that was it. And we've known each other ever since all-star might've been, I don't even remember. We, we also did something all-star I thought I can't remember what it was. Then we did something last year. We did a, we did a failed. Yeah. Attempt to, I tortured Hollywood, baby. Yeah. What'd you tell him? Well, we did, it was like a greatest games idea and it was me, you and Zach. Who was the game great for? Well, that's what I guess, I guess we still had to hash stuff out. So we, we showed you the Clippers game when you guys blew the big lead against Houston, when James Harden got benched and then somehow you lost the 20 plus point lead and you hadn't watched the game since. And part of it was like, we're into this game, like a pseudo documentary, but also. So like your reactions as we're watching real time and you started out with your body language, like now, by the end, you were like this, it's like your girlfriend broke up with you in high school. Uh, you were traumatized though. Yeah. You hadn't watched that. You don't watch your own stuff. I'd watch film, but never sat and like watch the complete, like meltdown since the day after probably, you know, and then you see clips every now and then on social media that you just can't help, but see, but tough. Would you get those every once in a while? I always get those with the. Boston team. So I'm like, ah. Yeah. If you're my whole algorithm is just sports. So it's like, you're bound to see, you know, it's, uh, it's a, it's a nice reminder of your, of your past failures. I want to talk Clipper stuff. We have to mention the step back with Blake Griffin. Yes. Premieres today on Amazon. New episodes dropping weekly, YouTube and prime video. YouTube and prime. How many weekly is weekly? We're doing 14 weeks. God damn. That's like a real run. Yeah. It'll take us through like mid January and then, um, you know, see, start working on season two. And then NBN prime tipping off second season, Friday, 6 30 PM ET Nick Celtics rocket spurs. You start using your hands when you're on the, yeah, I'm a big, like do this. That's a great point, Steve. Thank you. I, you know, one hand to him. Yeah. And you said you had a pivot. Cause I, I, I usually don't sit on the end. So I've learned to like, you know, make sure I include middle seats. Tough. Udonna sits here when it's four of us. Udonna sits here. Me, Steve, Dirk, Taylor Rooks. Down there. So it's like a lot this way. And I have to always try to remember to include UD. It's things you don't think about. Well, it's like the dinner table where you're in the middle of like a 10 person table. Yeah. And you, and you, it's like the curb episode. Yeah. The worst is when it's two conversations going this way and you're just kind of sitting there. You're like, just trying to find eye contact with somebody. I thought the show was good though. I'd like, and obviously having done some of those shows, Taylor was the key because she's an actual point guard. She's incredible. She was setting everybody up. You guys were comfortable. She just wanted everybody else to win. watching good really good hosts like herself work so they make it look really easy but then you also are watching being on the desk and watching her get us in and out of stuff read the prompter come to us like you're like oh these this is like a this is a very particular talent and they are so good at it it's basically point guard yeah it's like running an offense trying to figure out when you have to that's what we refer to her as our point guard she's she gets us in and out of everything yeah and the chemistry was good but you also you had dirk and nash have known each other forever yeah they're just they're just hanging out do you ever feel like because you did this on uh on the step back i saw the episode i saw which was excellent was the sports journalism and you're talking about take culture but you're on these shows and you want to have takes but you're also a player and you have to you're gonna have at some point you're gonna have to be harsh a little bit on people but then there's that line of how far do i go i mean i had to do a lot i did last year we had a friday night we weren't even covering the game um but john morant was in memphis miserable i remember and was kind of looked like he checked out and i the beginning when i was like i don't know if i want to do this like having to talk about guys i realized there's a there's a way to do it right like if a guy goes three for 17 they i don't need to come on and be like this guy's or like no one wanted to have a shooting day than that guy yeah so it's not it's not about it's not about harping on somebody who played bad it's about pointing out things that maybe he could do better and and there's a i think there's a way to do it and we sort of found that a little bit last year yeah um but i'm not that's not to say we're not we're definitely not shying away from being critical um but when it calls for it yeah because espn fell into the habit before they got inside the nba they would go to halftime yeah and the guys would just pick which guy needed to step up yeah like blake griffin needs to step up two for eight yeah what are you doing blake griffin come on you got come on come on yeah catch and go step up shoot it that was like the entire show just don't be able to step up it seems like you had higher aspirations yeah i did i did the the bar was the bar was kind of low not for the tnt guys those guys probably the greatest show in sports not only sports but comedy too yeah um but they are they're in a different stratosphere but i think in terms of like sports analysis live in-game half pre-game halftime post bar was i wouldn't i don't want to say it was low but i think a lot of people have come up to it to us and been like man it's so great that you guys talk basketball and it's like that should be the most obvious thing that you talk about like why are why are you not breaking stuff down more the pre-game's tough i've done those shows pre-game's tough because it's like i think so-and-so is going to have a good game but you're talking out of your ass also no idea what's going to happen who's watching like most people aren't really watching at this point no yeah i think in different decades probably more yeah i guess east coast too it also being shooting here and and in los angeles starting pre-game at 3 30 in the afternoon it feels like who's watching but at least it's like 6 30 yeah in the east coast the post game is better for you guys though because then you can play off what happened yeah and that was always the pcs being never understood like that it's actually that's going to be the best content because we just watch the game now we have opinions yeah now we can interpret what half time is goes by like oh my god it's like you you know you might have 30 seconds maybe to get your five people too so it's yeah the danger with those half times is it turns into you finish talking yeah now it's udonis and nobody's listening to anybody and there's just like i'm waiting for blake to finish because then i gotta say my thing yeah and that's just kind of the show but i didn't feel like you guys were totally doing that we try not to i mean it's it's also the the show evolved we were i mean derrick steve and i had never done a studio thing before udonis had done a little bit with espn obviously taylor's taylor but so we were literally figuring out how to make this show as we were making it yeah um and and it got so much like the first the very first uh show we ever did you know they're like we're up there at the desk 30 minutes before and they're like 30 minutes to air and everybody's like oh like writing stuff down like so not speaking to each other at all except for maybe little things then you cut to like the last last show of the you know in the playoffs me and ud are like talking like five seconds i'm like hold on like right you know that's when you know you're in a good spot yeah so much more relaxed so this this year i'm excited to like go in with that mindset of like all right we know kind of what we're doing now yeah you know what to expect the over preparing is the big mistake people make yeah i would when i was doing countdown i would have like 24 points for idea 20 minutes show and i have like i'm like i'm gonna say that and then you realize halfway through you're like i just have three points yeah and just really sell those three points hard and win the rest of it if you know like if you are prepared you don't have to really have any points and it's almost better because you just like you can just free free flow like thought off of somebody yeah but like pre-game sometimes a little bit more structured right you gotta like you have producers have to be like we're doing this we're gonna roll video here can you talk about asar thompson for a second yeah and you kind of have to have your space and all that and which i understand but man the best conversations are honestly the best conversations are green room sitting there with dirk steve ud those are like legends who played for had unbelievable careers i'm just sitting in there you know you're just like sitting in there listening to them talk they're like this is this is i mean i talk a little bit too but we had the first year i did it was with magic and magic in the green room was the greatest of all time was he like sitting watching game we would sit and he was he would watch everything wow and he was really and we'd have the atvs what year was this this was the 12 13 season this was the year after the lockout he was still doing it yeah wow i don't really remember that yeah so he would uh he was just awesome in the green room and yeah yeah careful but it was like man so we were always talking about how do we get green room magic and we we got closer yeah to green room magic as it went along but he would there was always lines he wasn't crossing how was his like analysis of the game that far removed like i know he's a brilliant basketball mind but was he was you know because you can kind of tell talking to certain guys like they their their philosophy is a little bit more skews a little bit more old school was he was he able to see like the pushing of the envelope the other way with like running gun it was it was interesting because the year we did that that was when the league was really starting to shift that was like steph's first year yeah and the the big thing was the rudy gay trade that year they traded rudy gay for like taishan prince who was pretty old and you know it was like one of those three quarters for a dollar trade but memphis got better yeah and we were arguing about we had a great argument on the show about it and the magic wilbon side was like rudy gay that's who you go to at the end of games you can't trade a guy like that and i was on more of like the analytics they're better than it doesn't play and it just felt like this moment where the analytics were coming the three-point shooting was coming like a different style something was happening that was different than what met when magic played do you think we've swung too far i do yeah i do i agree um but i i also i'm not like a get rid of analytic i think i think there's there is a perfect middle ground and some teams have found it but you don't find it the knicks who won the title like when they needed two-point shots they got jalen brunson 10 10 footers and okay what was is is jalen brunson an analytics like let's go get him that's our guy is that an analytics move or is that somebody truly knowing best because he is he is both he is what he did in the playoffs though when on dallas so there was yeah an actual track record of him at the highest level being able to get like applying the analytics but anyone who thought 28 a game and being the finals mvp and i mean i think nobody nobody it's insane if somebody says they saw this coming they're they're lying i loved it when they got him yeah but i also didn't think he could be the number one guy in a on a title team yeah i thought because he did it in the playoffs i was like well we've seen it it's not like they're crossing their fingers what he does with his with his like his skill set and his what he gets out of like his not the i mean shorter that that was the big thing like it how can how can a shorter point guard do what he gets out of his skill set and his his ability is incredibly impressive well one thing i was thinking with him and just with hoops in general is this eight nine month season and how much harder basketball is to play now and these kind of outlier guys like brunson just never got tired right it's almost like when you watch messy in soccer yeah these guys that are lower the ground whereas like you chris i always felt like but by the time we got to like round three both of you guys you could feel the grind of the season yeah as the playoffs went along for some reason i don't feel it with him in the same way and i don't i don't know what it is he's just the way he's built to the ground how he is used to contact he doesn't seem to get tired i'll tell you what rattling off however many straight helps and also sweeping second round sweeping right they only played like 19 playoff games yeah and then it's a testament to how good they were but it's also that also really helps you know when you're going into the finals well when we did that game that when we did that pilot show yeah and you were saying you were noticing how tired you were by halftime and you're like see and you were like rewind that like that's i'm just tired there like i like i have no legs from this point on in the game i know i don't yeah i can watch it but for brunson it doesn't really no and he i mean he's he's he's a workhorse i mean he's got the ball in his hands so much but he's it's great who was the hardest guy did you when you played this is such like a lame podcast question but who is because i always feel like when when people are trying to guard brunson they're so confounded by yeah and it's herky jerky shit and it's big guys small guys who is the guy in your era that was like that zach randolph was so hard to go like guys that i actually guarded zach randolph was you knew he was going left but he was also so strong he also had the little rock and he had the little jumper but then he'd just get left and then you'd you'd cut you'd be with him like he wasn't blowing by you really and then he just little bump you know over the top lamarcus was really really hard to guard off you guys didn't like each other yeah we went there was a lot of we went at it i mean the the memphis clippers teams were that was the other thing too it felt like every single first year of the playoffs we went seven rounds or seven games against memphis lost to san antonio second round or second year and that was the lockout season so you you guys that was right yeah that was like an insane amount of basketball um and then and then we went seven games with golden state and then went to oklahoma city had that collapse and then we went uh seven games with san antonio played houston so it was like almost but we were just i mean we would just nothing was didn't have my yeah but that's the playoffs what did you think the best team was we talked about this the last time that we had the 14 team or the 15 team that the year we lost to um that that year we lost to houston i thought was our best shot yeah we like that was the member cp got hurt game seven came back hit the floater over to duncan then we lost we he and you almost died on the follow-up i went to that game you literally almost broke your neck on that and i also wouldn't have gotten the tips there was no time left but like you know i don't i actually don't know what you were doing you were five feet in the air well so cp was i was rolling cp was going down he shot that floater so i was going for like did somebody undercut you it was i think it was danny green not really undercut he just came down yeah um i think it was danny green yeah because that would have been classic clippers if chris made the greatest shot of his career but i think it was danny green yeah i think it was danny green yeah but you like broke your collarbone on the same play it's like here are the clippers here we go yeah i think that was our best and then cp had to sit out two games or yeah with his hamstring or groin and we went to houston stole first game lost a second cp came back and we were rolling and well we talked we talked about the it's just really one of the stupidest results of a game the things that had to happen for you guys not to advance with brewer josh smith getting hot guys go ice ice ice cold all-time ice cold and it's just happened and it wasn't even like we were just jacking threes when ice cold it was like nothing was working it was among the weirdest sporting events i've ever attended because the crowd felt like it was coming the entire fourth quarter because that's the fan base now that same fan base now they have no first round picks for the next five years basically five years starting in what 29 or 20 29 33 this year and they don't have their picks these next two yeah but so why you live here still watching from afar what were what were you what were you thinking watching the clippers just completely get this made it here um like you know i've said this publicly a couple times now like i feel very bad for the fans because it's just like it's really it's hard to use the word not fair but like you know something that's out of their control i also feel bad for the guys who are just getting to that team you know the guys who got traded for kawaii you know like a brandon ingram i know he's he's banged up but like he's 29 right and like you know those like that's a very pivotal time of like you're either on a team that can get to that next level or you're not and like you're a year a year or two years wasted like can alter the course of your uh career so um you know you feel you feel bad for that i mean it's not like they're going to a team where like they have no post they can't play in the postseason like they can still be good tyloo's a good great coach like those you think he's going to be there i don't know i don't know i mean if i was him i mean if you're him i guess you'd you know maybe you want to go do something because after if you've won the title you can't be like i gotta go chase the title because you haven't won the title right but he has won the title and he's got a good setup and he gets live in la and like bombers like i mean you know if you're even if you're like clipper fan like really trying right like doing too much but trying did you make up with him or no excuse me i haven't i haven't spoke to him i haven't spoke to him since that was tough for the people listening who don't remember or watching i guess we're watching in the same states but you signed a pretty giant extension then they traded you six months later yeah but that's not the getting traded is not the thing that like i guess getting traded does kind of hurt if you expect to be there but it's not you understand that you the thing that you hope is that there's like a mutual respect in how it's handled right i think that's what so even even after they're like new contract huge commitment you're a clipper and then they trade six months later i'm like what the fuck we just we're talking about this we're just at lunch yeah i mean you know if you decide to go in a different direction like i think the thing that i i said you know to lawrence frank in his office because i had heard like some rumbling because i was going in for a workout and i'd heard some rumblings so i go up and i try to try to have a conversation with him and his assistant walks up or i walk up and his assistant's there and he looks up like he'd seen a ghost he's like oh and that's when you knew yeah and so like the writing was on the wall and i come in you know i was like what's going on you know well a player of your caliber and i'm like no i don't i don't i don't i don't just i just want to know and it the woge tweet so like you're not the first to know like that was the thing that hurt and lawrence and i've talked since then um and and so when you hear rumblings who you're in rumblings from are you so i have one of my best friends uh is an agent and like you know people are talking whispers are happening yeah yeah but there was no like there was no um internet or social media rumblings i gotta say i'm usually fairly wired in with stupid rumors like that that one took me by a surprise nobody knew i mean my agent didn't know yeah you know that really came it was like what happened yeah and also i mean the clippers are such a weird franchise they move to they basically move to san diego 1978 i don't think they have a retired number yet pretty sure they don't no no they don't and so there was a when you and chris were playing together i would say like 2014 range whatever like the third year where it felt like you had a chance it just i would have been like i'll bet anything these two guys get retired and that might have to be the kind of stuff they have to do over the next five years like hey it's blake griffin night it's just like remember remember lob city guys yeah anybody deandre jordan he's right here they may have to retire like 12 of them have you ever seen that clip i think maybe it was the last game in the old boston garden where all the legends are on the floor i was there yeah they did the they did the bounce passes yeah yeah i imagine that but like it's just me and cp and chris and chris and deandre and it's like i can't dunk anymore it's guys from the 80s and 90s who tore their acls when they're in the clippers when you got all the candy right when you got drafted i wrote a piece about the curse of the clippers i remember and uh i was like don't take this lightly and then you got hurt like four months later and people were mad at me they were like why'd you do that yeah it's like i'm pretty sure i don't have the ability to hurt i thought i thought you were this was going to be an apology for right well i did feel bad i literally didn't feel bad that wasn't it unfortunately but that was laying out at that point 33 years of clippers history yeah i remember it was like like the idea was like do pull a manning don't let them draft you like don't don't let the honestly you could have potentially didn't you okay see would have been fun for you you're from there but i think it turned out more fun to probably for you to live in la and have other opportunities i don't even i don't even like think about like those memphis was two yeah memphis was two oklahoma city was three yeah hashim the beat that was a tough one one yeah nice guy and curry was in that draft curry curry was in minnesota passed on him twice yeah it's one of my favorite minnesota passed on twice for johnny johnny johnny flynn and ricky rubio and then the next hill was in that draft yeah the next thought they might get steph curry and then the words like no no we're actually gonna take them yeah yeah we like this guy yeah yeah one of the weirdest drafts yeah wow i always think about too like steph steph's like remember his ankle issues early on yeah and him and then the next thought they might get steph curry and then the next i remember i remember he signed his deal and it wasn't like the max deal he signed his deal i remember we were playing i think it was a preseason game yeah it was something something low i remember playing in a preseason game and i like i i was like hey congrats man and i you could tell he was kind of like i don't think he was like super happy about not getting like you know right what he probably should have but like that then led to not saying that's the only reason but like then they're able to go out and sign you know they get they get equal dollar that you know they can go they can go get these pieces so it's it's funny how it was like an nfl when they have the guy in the rookie quarterback contract yeah and it allows them to do all these other things but the reason they did it was because of steph's ankles which is why it's so tough to compare the different eras because like i've talked about this before if steph's playing in the 1960s his career is probably five years because they never figure the ankle thing out and in 2009 through 13 they could actually figure it out but you gotta do this you're starting these muscles wear these sneakers wear the giant sneakers wear the giant sneakers wear the giant sneakers wear the giant - Seriously? - Yeah. - Like you have one injury, back then your career was over i think about that all the time too it drives me nuts just to think that like guys back then couldn't play today or guys now would go dominate we it there's it's like it's evolution yeah like why why why is everything in the world like evolved but not sports like if we played back then we wouldn't have access to all the things that we have yeah we wouldn't be playing the same style we wouldn't be working or we wouldn't be working on our game from a young age the same way the game is different so we would have been different those guys back then they would have had all this stuff that we have now i don't the it's just i mean it's a fun argument you've seen the sneakers right yeah yeah they're like playing in chuck taylor's my favorite are the sneakers the riding riding on planes where they weren't even first class they're in like coach i think about the treatment like the the trainers they didn't have trainer it was like red our back was the Celtics trainer he's like tape it up he's like smoking a cigar like putting cigars all over there this will help kid yeah but they had no assistant coaches now you watch these games and there's like 13 assistant coaches it was when i did i did my book and it came out in 09 it was so hard to figure out how to compare the eras but at least we didn't have the three-point shooting thing and now i feel like from 2010 on i just feel like it's a different sport at this point yeah if you put like one of these teams back in 1965 people would be like what's happening yeah yeah this isn't the way the game was meant to be played right we don't do that here they just get banned from the nba well and they didn't break it's like what kind of wizardry this is witchcraft and it needs to be gone some of the guys had like the one-handed shots even the set shots yeah like yeah it's uh well that's what's funny watching russell where he comes in and it would be like putting you back in 1956 just blocking everything or like watching will like the clips of will oh my god so wilt's one of those that i actually think he might have been able to dominate every single decade because when you just as he was yeah yeah like don't get don't even give him like the the like the new you know everything we know now like he really might have him out he might have been like one of the four greatest athletes of all time when you actually watch the footage the stories of him like the high jump and like him like running like sprint like yeah the thing that his his athletic feats it's like him and boat it's like those type of stories like bo jackson where he was like he did what right and like you don't know i don't know are they i i choose to believe they're true because some of the video seems yeah realistic for sure first of all he had like these long long legs it's like up to here he was strong as hell and he had these long arms and could do all this like stuff with the you know he's amazing poor russell was like six foot eight and a half trying to yeah trying to battle him but he also but was one also one of the great athletes who was the best you've ever been on a court with man like guys like russ and d rose were like in their primes man it was like having to like switch out on a pick and like not even switch like switch switch like contain switch yeah and how shifty they were um i'm probably i mean obviously lebron too just like his that was one guy though that like as good as he was and as talented as he was like i'm not saying you were able to play physical with him yeah so i'm not saying i was going to get the better of him but at least you could like you could bump and hit and like try to slow him down and he didn't get as many calls um but like the d those guards to me that were so quick and so explosive and you kind of couldn't touch them as much yeah um that was like a nightmare to guard i remember when those guys really started taking off which was probably like your first full season when you actually did it yeah i remember when those guys really started taking off which was probably like your first full season when you actually did it i remember when those guys really started taking off which was probably like your first full season when you actually did it d rose was like he was like when he was d rose was like he was like when he was d rose was like he was like when he was ascending and russ was sending seeing ascending and russ was sending seeing ascending and russ was sending seeing those guys in person yeah and you would those guys in person yeah and you would those guys in person yeah and you would actually like worry for them yeah actually like worry for them yeah actually like worry for them yeah oh my gosh they're putting so much oh my gosh they're putting so much oh my gosh they're putting so much so much torque on their lower legs and so much torque on their lower legs and so much torque on their lower legs and they're going 170 miles an hour into they're going 170 miles an hour into they're going 170 miles an hour into traffic d rose would like be going this traffic d rose would like be going this traffic d rose would like be going this way and stop and go this way way and stop and go this way way and stop and go this way with the ball in the blink of an eye but with the ball in the blink of an eye but with the ball in the blink of an eye but also like if you saw like slow-mo clips also like if you saw like slow-mo clips also like if you saw like slow-mo clips he's like he's like he's like right just and he's like this far off right just and he's like this far off right just and he's like this far off the ground like his shoulder it seems the ground like his shoulder it seems the ground like his shoulder it seems like it's like scraping the ground didn't like it's like scraping the ground didn't like it's like scraping the ground didn't make sense watching him yeah those make sense watching him yeah those Those guys, that was like a crazy class of athletes. I mean, think about that era of like basketball. You had like LeBron. LeBron is apex. This was like end of Cleveland. So Miami still had Kobe playing like extremely well. Like you had the old, you had the young. Duncan's still there. Plus you have the KD, that generation's coming up. It's pretty great. James was like coming out of, coming out like in Oklahoma City, you know, six man. Yeah. And then going to Houston, like Steph and the Warriors were doing their thing. It was like a, that was a wild. The lockout really fucked stuff up too, I think. Yeah. I think the amount of games, if you go back and you look at the schedule, how they crammed all those games. 66 from like December, from Christmas to. Guys got hurt. And I think, I do think there was probably some collateral damage. I mean. Yeah. When did you start having, you had the one knee injury your rookie year, but when did you. I had the one knee injury my rookie year. And then. But you were healthy after that. I played 82 my. Yeah. And then I think I, oh, then I played 66. So all game, the lockout year. And then I still played a good amount. And then I had my first like real thing. I, I, uh, my elbow, I had to get my elbow drained. It got infected. Right. So that was like, that was, it was a real bummer. Cause like that wasn't an injury. Yeah. I had to have surgery on my elbow to clear out this infection. I missed six weeks. And then after that I had a knee, you know, knee and then toe and, you know. Just kept going. Yeah. Never stopped. I remember watching you when you were young. And it was so much fun in those early years with, cause the Clippers, I had those tickets forever and they were terrible, terrible. Yeah. Like one good year. And then you show up and the lab city thing, it was like, you couldn't go get food. Yeah. You just didn't ever. And you just want to dunk on everybody. Like you were, you were going around, like you were, you were like a fucking, like, who can I get? Who's, you know, that was the mindset. But I would watch you in the pregames and you would be like dunking in the pregames. And I remember thinking like, man, you only have so many jumps. Somebody needs to talk to Blake. Be like, save some of these. Where was the article about that? I should have just, I should have just walked out and be like, yo, Blake, you have 62,000 jumps. You wrote the article about not going to, being, being aware of the Clippers. Yeah. Don't, you should have told me not to jump so much. The other thing that was crazy was the draft diary I did of the 09 diary. They ran a fact for you when you got drafted, like that your dream was to, to, I think it was host Saturday Night Live. Oh yeah. And I was like, I'll put the odds on that at 300. 1,000 to one. Now you have a late night show. Yeah. I mean, I underestimated you. Yeah. Well, yeah. I think it was also like, you know, it's, it's, I think back then too, it was like a little bit harder for guys to show their personality. You know what I mean? It was like, you had to do like an ESPN feature. And even then when you're young, you're just like, so I was just so like in a shell, you know, it was like, we didn't have social media yet. No. You're basically doing a sports illustrated feature. Yeah. A nine minute sports center segment. And you're also like always taught to like be like, take the game. Take the game seriously. It's not, not that you're taught not to show your personality, but you're just like, you're so focused on like trying to be great that you're not like, I don't know. I wasn't, I wasn't nearly as relaxed, you know. I felt like Kobe was the first guy who really started looking at how to shape things. Cause it was like near the, after he won the last two titles, that was when he started. That was one of the people when he started reaching out to different media people and trying to talk to people. And I, I just felt like he was aware of, oh, I can actually talk to people. I can talk to people. And then after he retired, he did the Kobe detail thing. Yeah. But something shipped in 2010s. Now I think we have too much access to all these guys. Yeah. I wish we had a guy who just wasn't on Instagram and just was mysterious. I guess Shay's probably the closest. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a feel for him at all. I mean, no, no. Wimby's the, the, the most mysterious. You think? Right. Cause I don't, I mean, does he, he doesn't like. I think he's embraced being a villain now. He's anti. He has. I mean, he's our, the mayor, the anti-American villain. We need it. He just wants to destroy us in the Olympics. I mean, he will do like interviews and stuff, but like he, I don't know. I don't, do you see him on social media? I mean, you see clips of him, but you don't see himself. So the stuff he does is like, he plays chess in central park. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's like. You know, like, so I'm like, all right, there's definitely more here. You're right though. I don't, I don't know that much about Wimby. No. Um, there's other guys I probably know too much of. Yeah. I mean, in, in Boston, you saw it with Deuce. Like Deuce became a character in the team. He was just the son of a player. Dude, Deuce was almost on the court more than me. Seriously. I mean. I'm invested in Deuce now. I want to see where his career goes. I'm sitting there like, man, I'm, God, I'd kill for his playing time. Well, they, you were a beloved Celtic. I know it was a tail end, but I think they would have kept you for years and years and years if you wanted it. I thought about it. I thought about going back, but I was like, it was, it was time. What was your year? Was it the finals year? 22, 23. No. Oh, there's that seven game Miami loss. Jesus. I thought, I legitimately thought. I thought we were going to win that game. And when JT went down, there was still a two, three minute period where Miami, I don't think he, they really realized how, how hurt he was. Cause he stayed, you know, he stayed in and then it like, you, you saw it flip for them. They're like, oh, they're out there. They're without, you know, one of their guys, like one of their. I went to that game too. It was right in front of the Celtic bench. It was clearly bad. Yeah. And you could see, I felt the same way. You could feel the Miami confidence building. It's the first quarter run. It was like, oh, he's fucked up. Yeah. And that was it. The crack. Cause the crowd was like ready to rip the roof off in that game. Yeah. And if JT hadn't have been like healthy going into that game. to that next if we had won that game going into the finals against denver that would have been denver was firing so i don't know how that would have fared either but yeah i don't know i'm so scared of joker i mean i'm like i don't know how that would have gone i just feel like i never would expect to win a series against him and he's always seemed really comfortable against the celts but it all worked out they won the next year although you could have been involved yeah i know al al porford is just such a great defender for a guy like that there's not a ton you can do to to make him uncomfortable but in terms of like defenders like if you're not talking like just put crazy length on him yeah like al horford is probably one of the guys you'd be like oh that's who that's who you'd want to like just just bother him try to slow him down you know i'm asking this not for a clip that would be aggregated but because i'm genuinely curious i felt the whole time through when they won the title that tatum and brown were really good together yeah i'm sure you felt the same way playing with them yeah when i got there you know you hear the whole like jt and jb i got there and it's just like oh they're they're fine they're just they're just two different people right which most people don't understand you could be on a team with somebody that you're not there was never going away with them after this season there was never a thing in any moment of a game or locker room practice traveling where i was like oh that's not good right you know there's just like they are two i don't want to say opposites but they're two very different personalities yeah you know um do you think that stuff about it's one of my conspiracy theories the conference finals mvp and the finals mvp i still feel like if they split those i think they're still on the same team i swear to god i really genuinely believe that i think they're on the same team don't you think i think winning both of those fuck the whole thing up i mean well and then as you as you did on your show like once take culture gets a hold of stuff and it's constant yeah i think sometimes it becomes hard yeah it becomes very hard once the narrative gets once it gets put out there then that like narrative grows and grows and grows but i also think the thing that hurt i mean last year i mean jb having such a great year and them having like regular season success you know but i also like and they won already yeah and it's also it's a this is a second apron issue true like it's not i don't this is what i don't i also think jp was probably tired of hearing his name and trade rumors every summer for the past but also that's not really sometimes it's out of people's control um but i don't know i don't know if i'm i don't know if i'm on board with the i i i see what you mean if those eastern conference finals and finals mvp are split it's fine but i think it added it put it poured fuel on that fire for sure they played together nine years which is a long time yeah i remember i mean i remember being on tv when you were playing with chris talking about clipper stuff i'm like i don't know i don't think that team gets along and then all the clippers be like fuck you why are you saying that yeah what's your what's your evidence i was like i don't know my evidence is i i know people around the league and i go to the games and something feels a whiff off and i think now that all the years have passed that it gets safe to say maybe it wasn't perfect no it wasn't no it wasn't perfect by any means but i also think i i've said this a lot like our clippers teams were closer than we got we ever got credit for i think year after year of like heartbreak and first couple years we lost we just lost you know yeah we the memphis santona stuff but then you know the the oklahoma city collapsed then the houston collapsed then the next year i got hurt against portland and we lost and the next year i'm sorry me and cp both got hurt against portland we lost the next year i got hurt against utah and we lost you know like year after year after year it like starts to like starts to wear on you as a group because we we had kind of the same nucleus for the most part baggage you get team baggage and then it's hard to come back from yeah because the i mean i i think the spurs would have won in 2014 but i also thought you guys are really good that year and the the sterling stuff made that whole playoffs just weird and i think you're just adding this crazy additional stress to a playoffs that are always stressful anyway and i don't know is that the reason the okc collapse happened i don't know yeah but i don't think it helped that year was like that year would have been i mean that we had to go through so warriors then oklahoma city then we would have to go through san antonio then you would have seen miami in the finals yeah miami i think would have been okay because they were running on fumes at that point twain was like two straight championships yeah um but i think san antonio would have been hard that team was on a mission that that's that's why i also feel like that year was so good for us because going into that san antonio series i'll never forget the last game of the season we had we weren't playing the final night and we had dinner all as a team together we're watching games and san antonio loses i think to like memphis yeah yeah and they dropped from we were the three seed yeah they dropped to like they dropped to six yeah and we're just like what you know because that was san antonio's obviously still very very good this wasn't san antonio on the way and we're just like oh my gosh and that that so you just knew it's a heavyweight fight yes i mean it's one of the best round ones ever we were so locked in we're like you know you'd have a turnover something would happen and we were just like get back on d you know what i mean like they score all right we got to go back at them like we we were just so locked in because you that the san antonio spurs brought that out of us and it brought it out of out of teams like you know you have to play as perfect a basketball as you can and the things that you can control and that was like your reactions to things or like your resolve your resiliency yeah uh and and that's why i felt like when we beat them it was like oh like we locked in and we like we found another gear and then it all went away greatest win in probably clippers history just beating that team in a series i think it's got to be number one i also revere duncan i mean you went against him you boast your career who's just on one leg and he's one of his legs just stopped working in 2009 and just didn't matter yeah he just put the giant brace on and was just like yeah i'll just keep and he also it's not like he was just out he was like blocking he was still playing defense at a high level he made first him on ba one of those years yeah yeah he was he was that i should have put him in like really hard to go against but i also didn't have to guard him a ton um but he was and he was like you said he was on one leg and he was still really really good that's my biggest thing that triggers me with uh all-time discussions when he just gets this he gets discounted now not to me but i agree i he you you get it he because people go on his basketball reference like ah he's 20 and 10 for the second half of his career it's like okay cool when if he needed to score 30 he would have scored 30 he totally understood five championships do you know that he never i don't think he ever won less than like 54 games or something there was some yeah i remember seeing a stat there's something like a 730 win percentage yeah and it's not like everyone's we played with those hall of famers all right in 2003 like manu and parker were puppies 2000 so 99 they won 2003 yeah yeah 2003 2005 03 was insane yeah he didn't really have another all-star on the team but anyway i'll defend him he was he's he's the best power forward of all time basketball is back and thank god this year you can play on fando everywhere that's right everywhere this season fando is rewarding you wherever you are based so we're going to talk about a few hot spots and make some predictions prediction number one the team i am most excited to watch in the state of california is going to be wow i hate that this is true but it's the los angeles lakers so i'm excited to see what kind of luca mvp season that they they launch and uh they're going to be a lot more fun to watch week to week game to game i think than either the clippers or the kings or the warriors or basically anyone in california so by default it's the lakers uh team i'm most interested in watching in texas it's got to be san antonio but i think houston is going to be the one that i have my eye on to exceed everybody's expectations and then which florida team will have a better season orlando or miami this was really tough they're over wars right around uh right around the same number i think i'm more interested to watch orlando because i actually like the coach that they got this year and i like their players so i think i would rather watch them than miami also who wants to watch the half-filled heat arena no thanks anyway we have an amazing season ahead and if you are in one of california texas or florida make sure you check out fan duel and you can get in the action this episode is brought to you by seven up okay this one's a for conspiracy bill let's bring them in ever notice lemon is everywhere from lemon recipes to lemon scented cleaning supplies and when it comes to lemon lime sodas why is lemon always first there's a reason a shadowy organization called the lemonade has been padding the stats keeping big lemon in the lead for decades but let me tell you something the sip is about to be flipped seven up is fighting back swapping lemon lime for their new lime lemon soda now lime comes first seven up flip the line and we'll be right back after this the sip ulcerative colitis and crohn's disease symptoms don't pause for the moments that matter that's why understanding your treatment options matters discover what's possible with trimpia Tramphaia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections, or lower ability to fight them in liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Talk to your doctor and explore what's possible, or call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more about Tramphaia and visit TramphaiaRadio.com. You know, at DeMora's Pizza in Malibu, which I think is still there. DeMora's? DeMora's, it's a pizza on PCH. It used to have. Down by like Point Dume? It's like closer to Cross Creek. They used to have this picture of Sterling, the white party Sterling, and you were in the picture. And I always thought it would be. I always thought it would be. I don't know about stealing it for you, because I'd like to. Just be like, let me get this up the wall. It was on there for the 2010. People have taken pictures. You're in a wetsuit and Sterling's there. But yeah, you've seen some weird stuff in LA. And you made friends with a bunch of different celebrities and comedians. Like, I don't know, you kind of bounced around different worlds. Yeah. LA was like such a weird. Also, it was the Clippers, too. So it was like, you weren't getting like. You weren't getting like the Lakers celebrities. Right. You know, we had our Clippers celebrities. Billy Crystal. Yeah, Billy. Jim Goldstein, who's a celebrity for all themes. Jim, man. That guy was so dedicated. The creator, Will and Grace. Yeah. Wow. David. Frankie Muniz, but he lived in Phoenix or Scottsdale, somewhere in Arizona. It was tough. It wasn't a teaming group. Meeting him was cool. Yeah. It was cool. But yeah, then you got in the whole comedy scene. Yeah. And you got to know all those people. And at some point, I was like, something is going to happen with him after his career. I just thought it would be a podcast. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, obviously, I like podcasts. I consume podcasts. But I also felt like there's like something. I don't know. I've always been a huge late night fan. Like I said, Saturday Night Live being like the thing, you know. Sketch. Any comedy. But like that, there's something about that style that I just like always loved. So when athletes would get asked to host. You would just get pissed. No, no. Like fucking Jalen Brunson. Why him? Not necessarily. I don't get pissed. I just want him to do well so that it doesn't like become a thing. It's interesting because athletes are trained to not. You have a natural ability to calm yourself down. No, you can calm down your nervous system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Playing in front of 20,000. Then you go on that and you walk out and you have cue cards and you've got to deliver a monologue. Like I would imagine it's completely different pressure. The first time I did stand up, I remember people being like, "Well, you know, even comedians are like, "You play in front of 20,000 people." I'm like, "This is terrifying." First of all, you're out there. This is a sport you've done your whole life. You're out there with teammates. Other people are on the court. There's so much to look at. You go up there, even in a. It was maybe a 120-person theater the first time I ever did it. Terrified. I don't know how they do it. I've talked to a bunch of them about it. I just don't get it. It's like they need it. Yeah. It's like a fuel for them. Energy and then chaos of it. The adrenaline you get when you get off stage is. There's nothing I've done that's been comparable to hitting a game winner. Really? Going up and crushing on stage and then getting off, there's nothing. I've never been able to feel that same adrenaline rush that you get from hitting a huge shot at the end of a big game. So your show that you decide to do, you want to do topics. Right. Little modeled after the John Oliver show, but each show's about something. You can tape them ahead of time. Yeah. I mean, eventually I'd love to get to where it's a little bit closer shoot to air dates, or if it was more weekly, it would still be. The whole idea of why it's called The Step Back is because it's not reactionary to what just happened last night and we're going to talk about it. Yeah. There's so many shows that do that. There's so many podcasts that do that and do it really well. I wanted to take some of these things that sometimes we don't think about as much that are affecting sports. And not even all sports. I think we have an episode on subsidized stadiums and that's affecting taxpayers. Right. That is a situation that has never, not once, ever really worked out for taxpayers. Now, it works out if you're a huge fan of the team and you get to see games more often, but as far as the cost of living and expenses for everybody, it's a real thing. I did a thing about that when I had my HBO show, The Promo. And I did it to make billionaires pay for their own fucking stadiums. Yeah. And it got cut out. And I was like, "What's going on here?" I was like, "I'm just trying to. I just don't want billionaires to. " Just trying to make a bunch of billionaires mad? Just trying to. I mean, come on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those topics, having done a show like where you have to come up with, "All right, what's our big thing?" It's funny how there's less topics than you think, like those big picture ones that are really fun to dive into. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like, I think that's the thing. I think that's the thing. Yeah. Like the way you did that sports journalism one, I thought was really cool because it was coming from. It was way different if it's coming from me because I'm part of the whole world, right? Right. But for you, it's like you're an athlete, former athlete, but you're able to be. You just bring a different credibility. So when you're making fun of Stephen A, I thought it was way more fun. If I'm doing it now, we're just having a rap beef and we're going back and forth. But when you were imitating him and Tyrus Halbert, I was fucking dying. Yeah. It's. I don't know. You know he's going to come at you now. Oh, yeah. I know. I can't wait. Blake Griffin. I can't. I can't. My brother. You're going to be doing this? You didn't want to do this. Yeah. I don't know what made you think. I have been around for a long, long time and you're not getting rid of me. You're going to be gone and I'm still going to be here. Yeah. He's definitely. I know, but that's the. The move for him, he should zag the other way and be like, "That was really funny. I enjoyed what Blake did." I know. If he did that, I'd be like, "Damn it." God damn it. Why did he have to do that? Shoot. Yeah, you would skip, but you were doing a whole thing about the embrace debate thing, which we've always, from Grant Lynn and then The Ringer, trying to figure out how to talk about all this stuff, how to come up with angles, but also try to be fair, I think is always the test. That's. Okay. That's the real thing. There's nothing wrong with these. I watch them, debate shows. It's great. The problem is when you. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is when you just start saying things and one, they're not true, or two, you're just saying them. You don't even believe what you're saying. Send them for the reaction. Yeah. And it's like the thing, if you're like, "Sure." Your producer could come in here and say, "Hey, we want you to talk about this." And me and you could figure out a side. Yeah. We could do it. It's not hard at all. And that's, to me. But what if we're on the same side? Then it's like, "Well, you have to take the shitty side." Yeah. But that's the problem. Yeah. It's like, if we are on the same side, one of us will take the other side. That's how those shows work. Yeah. You know? And to me, that's like. I don't want to say. I'm not trying to act like this is a massive problem and it needs to be corrected. It's fine. Those can still exist. But so, we also need to keep a space for real sports journalism. Yeah. Because it is. It's important. Nash is one of the most. I've known Nash for a long time. Nash is one of the most measured. He's definitely not a take guy. He's. No, no, no. He's kind of calculating all of the different pieces of a topic at the same time and is really smart with it. I think especially like some of those stuff he had to deal with on those Suns teams, which is when I got to know him. Well, also. You know, different personalities, different styles of play. Well, also coaching the Brooklyn Nets. Well, and then you have that. He's been really diplomatic about that since. Yeah. I mean, he's not the type to like, you know, go scorched earth and like throw people under the bus. He's just scapegoated. Yeah. I mean. For a weird personality situation. That is a. That was like. You go. That is a. Such a hard team to coach. Think about that roster. Myself included. Like, that was. Were you on. You were on the 22 Celtics or the 22 Nets? You were on the 22 Nets. 21, 22 Nets. 22, 23 Celtics. Right, right. We. So that was when the Celts swept. Tatum just took it to KD at a time. The last year, yeah. Yeah. That was. Tatum was like. I remember watching that series was. The first two games, he's guarding KD. Yeah. He's scoring at a. I don't know what he averaged, but he was high 20s. We're running our whole offense through him. And guarding high level. Like playing hard, playing every position, switching, taking it, you know, sitting down on Kyrie, like Kyrie's dribble. Like he was doing. I was like, oh my gosh. He is unbelievable. Yeah. That's why I laugh on Tatum takes shit for anything. It's like, as a two-way player. First of all, you make four shots. You make four straight first team on base. That means something. But as a two-way player, I don't think people realize. Since he's coming to the league. And he rebounds. Yeah. He's 10 plus rebounds a game. Has anybody been more scrutinized, and also won a championship, more scrutinized since he's been in the league? Guys get. I mean, do you guys get a lot of scrutiny? Honestly, I don't think so. It's crazy. I mean, he's been so successful. And like, not just. Well, the Olympic thing didn't help. Yeah. Yeah. That was. I mean, not winning the two awards, and then the Olympic thing, and that just put the spotlight. In the same summer. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That. I don't know. It's a weird one, because it's hard to just say this, but I really do think like that game seven Miami, I was watching them the whole warmup. So my dad and I were there and we were like, my God, he's got like a look on his face. Like I've never seen him like this. A hundred percent. He came out and he was like guns, but, and got hurt within a minute. But I, that game could have been like the game for him. He caught in the corner and ripped baseline, which was like the, uh, sorry. He, he, he turned baseline and it was like, it was that it was like, yes, he's not settling. He is like, I saw the same thing that you saw. JB was the same way. Our team was the same way. Like after we rattled off three straight, the D road, I mean, sorry, the D white tip in, uh, at the game six in Miami, it was like, I, I didn't, I wasn't like, oh, we are 1000% winning this, but I was very confident going into game seven. So just one of the weirdest series of all time, just to have one team win three and then the other team in the next three is just so unusual for any of this stuff. So what else do you want to do with the step back? Uh, like I, like I said, I want to get close. I want to get closer to like being able to like have episodes going and be able to like interviews and stuff. Not real. I mean, we might bring, if it, if it works, if it, if it adds to what we're doing, but it's not a, we're not, we're not basing episodes around, Hey, we got to have a person come in this week and we have to have them talk. I love doing like the sketch at the end. Yeah. But you could do this until the cows come home. Yeah. I, I, I just, I don't know. I like for right now, what the show is right now. And we truly were, we're making the show. We were figuring out how to make this show. And there's our, just being, you know, an athlete, you, you are just taught to like self-evaluate immediately. And like now seeing all the clips and like, even after every day we'd film, like, I was just like, okay, I can do this better. I got to do this. Like, and, and so I'm, I'm super excited for season two. Cause I'm like, I, we can make this better. You're good at reading the teleprompter. Dude, that, well, that, that. Teleprompter is intimidating. I was on my iPad at home, like just loading random things. And then my iPad and I would put it like right there and just read, you know, like take your time. I did. Yeah, I did. I started out really slow. And then, and my, the big thing too, I would speed up too much when we were, when we were taught. So you remember to pause, you gotta remember to breathe. Like I would just like start going and just read all those words. And then like we had to, in, in editing, we had to like, we had to mute out some of my like, like, cause I would like, I would get going and I would have to take a big, you um so yeah i don't know that show for me is like it was so much fun to to do and like it will evolve i like that you tried it that i don't feel like people try shit enough no just in general yeah i think i'm glad you took a swing yeah i think the the easy easier thing as far as like work yeah it's not easy doing a podcast but as far as like i mean it was like wrote scripts and then we're editing and i'm doing teleprompter work like i i feel like fulfilled from doing that you know like putting everything into this one thing and if people like it great if not i i it is one of those projects that i'm like super proud of what's your hottest take for the 2026-27 nba season i don't want to step on your friday amazon prime but do you have like a team you like either way less or way more than everybody else or a player or a situation i don't know everybody's i i i'm so interested to see so many teams and how they work out the indiana pacers that's my favorite team are like super team dude like zubach and tyree's coming back now it does depend a lot on like how tyree's feel especially early on um but man like siakam nice like they they they still have like some really good players and i think rick carlisle was 43 and a half i i couldn't i didn't understand it i thought to me they were like a possible one seed yeah but that it also all depends that that 43 and a half really depends on how they get out of the gate right it's tyree's like is he back back is he is it going to be a good game i think it's going to be a good game i think it's going to be a good game i think he's back yeah it does but like also like 17 months for him since the injury 16 months preseason can be like so like it can really be fool's gold sometimes not in terms of like he looks good but like that going from like playing every other day yeah like i don't know their schedule i haven't looked at their schedule but like the travel and this and that he's gonna be good but like is he gonna be six months consistently good to be a 50 win team you know what i mean because like he's he he's he's gonna be what makes that team go do you see are you on the i see problems with the philly situation or i see upside because i'm on more on the problem side i honestly i i think i see more upside i think i i'm i'm i just those other guys have to really figure out how to play with those guys i don't think it's necessarily as much of this thing where it's like well jb's one needs the ball in his hand tyrese lebron they will hopefully figure that out and if as long as they're like hey like whatever it takes to win a championship and the jb have having won a championship lebron having several and being his career being what it is like it does sort of point to like all right like let's just let's get it done now you know knowing some of these players you might people might argue the opposite of that but like if if lebron's going there minimum it's like that that truly is your best chance to win a championship out of the teams he was looking at like you'd think that like guys are gonna want to try to lock in now it's like or we had nowhere else to go yeah well yeah yeah but like i mean he might not have you know like that is other options fell by the wayside and he's not gonna go to like san antonio oklahoma city he's not gonna go to the should have gone to san antonio that was what i was advocated in this summer and they signed tobias harris and it's like we're wanting to get lebron james that that media circus would be well that's probably why san antonio you want to do it it's like well we have the wimby circus and now we have the lebron circus yeah i i said this already in my pod two weeks ago i really worry about situations and i don't really care i'm a celtic fan like i wouldn't be more excited if they didn't do that great but um i when situations where people are at weird points of their career for the situation you know that's when i that's when i wonder because like vj comes in his second year yeah and he's gonna have to sacrifice on this team right and then you have tyrese who's like about to become maybe one of the seven to ten best players in the league but now he has to pull back maybe you have jalen on his own team you have lebron is lebron and you have him bead who's this huge wild card when he i haven't seen him sacrifice anything when he plays he's gonna shoot yeah so i just wonder how that all fits together i yeah i it's completely valid and there's the that's the reason people are questioning it i also didn't to play like the other side of it it's like well indeed hasn't gotten to the conference finals and it's like at the end of the day like especially the older you get like you want to get that monkey off your back you don't want that to be the thing and it's like so why wouldn't he be willing to like you know well what else is in there from a i guess that would be a bigger question means could he like reinvent his game not shoot as much and be just to be like oh i'm gonna defense i'm gonna be a defense rebounding guy like i don't we've never seen him do that you wouldn't want him to be just a d right he you'd still want to be utilized he's so skilled and he's unstoppable massive right huge so i i don't know the all those somebody's giving up shots i'm just interested to see for sure who it is i i just like i don't know maybe it's just like the optimum like the optimistic like part of me that like would i'd prefer them to like it'd be great to see them be good i would rather they were entertaining to watch than one of those like what the rams are like right now we're like oh man this is depressing yeah yeah for sure for sure i don't like this you don't want that yeah especially like i mean it's lebron's like you know figuring out what he's doing next like you know you don't want like you don't want the last year to be depressed if it is who knows he might play five more years i would say i don't think this will be his last year no but like you know so if this goes bad then what happens did you think about oh we have time did you think about like just hanging on for two three more years being like the greatest vet ever getting in there every once in a while are you just like i know i know i'm done no i gave i gave like real thought to it because i know they wanted you to come back yeah i had a chance to go back and i just like i don't know man i like the one for one my kids being here being you know being away from my kids and like they're just we're getting to the ages of two of like those like you start missing games and like you're like it's tough no matter what age but and then on top of that it's just like man dude i had nine surgeries in my career you know i mean like it felt like i was i would go i would get to practice like two hours early and do all my stuff to be it to practice and then i would go home and like eat take a quick break and then i would be doing stuff for you know to like get ready for the next day the next game or whatever it was it was like truly like it was a grind and i loved it i loved my time there but it was just like i felt like it was it was it was my time yeah because sometimes i think about that watch and then be like watching you because i was lucky enough to go to a bunch of quipper games so i saw you when you could jump through the gym i saw you when you could your head could hit the gym you couldn't jump through the gym anymore and then you started the mid-2000s your game started to change you got the three-point shot you still had the athleticism not the same but you could summon it you had spurts and then you could kind of see your body was starting to break down yeah like when you watch it's like oh he's starting to really try to after that year in detroit man i was just like the first detroit year was the last year where you looked like mostly you you were like 25 and 10 and six like you had a great year yeah but then it could it felt like oh there's a physical toll now from all this stuff yeah and i wonder we're close to that mb point and i don't know if it's gonna be this year next year but i feel like we're really close yeah that's what i mean he's just so he's so big and he's so skilled that like if he's willing to i mean i think he can he can i just wonder is he gonna have the spring anymore is he gonna be grounded if he's grounded because even the often does he need the like spring spring maybe he doesn't he needs his body he needs that defense yeah and he needs it for the for the rebounding where the guys are jumping twice and he's jumping once yeah but then again man i mean it's certain bigs that he's playing against yes but he dude he is he is massive like seeing him in person for the first time i was like oh oh he's huge because at kansas yeah it didn't look quite the same and then he didn't play for his first two years yeah and then when he was like his rookie year and then a and then a and then a and then a second year you're like my god this dude is and i did the draft his draft for espn he was clearly had to be the number one pick and then he got hurt like a month before and it fucked it up yeah but i even went to a workout i was like oh my god this guy's gonna i don't even know what this is but it just like he was snake bit from the get-go but we'll see how many yeah how much he has left that's huge i mean like there's there that's what i can't remember a year where it's like kind of this wide open but also like there's so so many question marks about so many different teams we have 11 teams in the east i think they could make the playoffs like for real yeah and then you have the okc versus san antonio thing where are you on charlotte i was in and i didn't like the injuries to start the year because it felt like although apparently khan and kobe white and those guys so i started practicing again but i feel like somebody in the east is going to go two and nine to start the year like oh my god we're two and nine yeah and then you like almost can't climb out of it because you're gonna need 46 wins i'm higher on them the most though because the three-point shooting are you high on them or no i i am i i also i like i just like everything they kind of have going like they've really like made it clear that they're they're getting a certain type of guy yes and they are setting like a foundation but it is it's just with the east being the way it is this year you're just like i that's the thought it's like man if they start out slow like that's the difference in being could be miami too like if yannis misses 16 games yeah and they go 2 and 14 in this 16 all of a sudden you're looking up i try to do this thing at the beginning of the season where it's like okay let's let's take health out of it which like because we just don't know and we know it's going to be there like we know there's going to be health problems but like let's take health out of it like i like that miami team like a couple questions well clay so i i went over on them and i thought they were playoff team clay was bad in the preseason and two teams have given up on it and that made me nervous yeah i i also think it got because they need him because they need they need a shooting yeah they don't they don't really have a lot of shooting so they actually kind of need him to be good and i don't know what he has left yeah he's going to be put in a lot of actions defensively too and i think when you when you've gone through that many surgeries and injuries that he's had like yeah i can't speak for him obviously i haven't had but i from personal experience it's so like up and down with how you feel and it's not like oh i feel terrible i can't play just wait till the end of the season your 50s just in general just getting out of bed i don't think i can play today i can't i can't record this episode today um that's where it's like for you know and he's an unbelievable shooter but like you know when you when you don't when you can still play but you just don't feel great yeah like that's when like i think that's like the volatility of like you know shooting percentages yeah if i had one do-over i was under on detroit and i had miami higher than them and i think i would flip that two weeks later because the the big thing and we're tape we're ironically recording during a celtics distance game by the way can we can we can we get a wonder i wonder who actually i'm gonna look at my it was a what they lost celtics lost lost by eight no yeah they were up 14 yeah we walked in here yeah wow what okay all right i gotta go i drive home no play um but yeah i was i i so it turns out my instincts were correct i have quipper fan comes in they're lost um i'll get to go home and watch that on i saw man are you hot you so you took the under on detroit i just thought i thought just the rest of the conference was better yeah the rest of the rest of the conference when everybody was tanking it was a number or being the one seed but i just think i first of all kate is unbelievable they're tough they're good home team yeah jb had the defense thing i wonder i wonder what the exit of of isaiah stewart does to their mindset because he just he's like yeah he's like he would he was like the not the mascot but he was like the he was the guy that just got everybody going so i just wonder if like that changes anything not that they're going to be like soft now but like i don't know that's a that's an identity guy and he he bought they had numbers before for any sort of altercation yeah yeah yeah there's just less people in the group now although the video that came out of him and eubanks in the tunnel i was kind of like oh yeah that was lost a little bit of the uh lost a little bit of the war throw a harder punch to somebody else i mean first game he's got to just go just just knock somebody out he's got to get that back 20 game suspension just just eat it and just get your cred back let's go from there who'd you have okc san antonio in the last no just for this year oh this year if you had to pick one oh that's like because that's the toughest debate of all this stuff i've been like i'm on it i'm on okc this year i've been saying oklahoma city i i i want to i wonder if we have the same reason uh where was it was it was your reason well first of all i think if jalen william if j-dub can just be healthy they didn't have their second best guy last year he was just in and out and in and out and just like inconsistent because of that because of those injuries if he was like half of what he was the year before i think they beat oklahoma city i mean i'm sorry i think they beat san antonio in the west carolinas finals um then to me san antonio dylan harper if dylan harper goes to like the that next level but that goes into the situation discussion before which one he's ready to oh right yeah yeah and it's is the team ready for what he's ready for you know yeah like that i compared it to the kobe in the late 90s not that he's gonna be kobe right yeah but kobe had this moment in the lakers where it was like whoa we really have something here and then by the third year they're like all right we have to trade at jones this is we got this guy now has to he's our second best guy i mean dude if you're going if this year and he's he makes this jump and he's finishing every game it's like you you got to give him the the reins as far as like ball handler finisher i'm sure you've heard with that i'm sure you've heard the same stuff i've heard about the knicks were kind of relieved that he wasn't unleashed in the finals last year like they're like i was dodged the bullet screaming that at the end of games give dylan harper the ball couldn't stay in front of him dude and he he also makes good plays yeah you know what i mean he's strong enough he gets to the rim like he reminds like his his like there's like a little bit of cade similarities and like there's just the strength as far as like with the basketball and him being able to move but his shiftiness is his i mean he shot the ball pretty well uh he's got some 10 feet from the basket stuff for a guard that's really unusual yeah especially how he uses the baseline and pd it's just the way he sees the geometry of the court he knows yeah he knows basketball really well and he's also he is like very fearless that was like when so i hadn't really watched chris paul that much when he got to the clippers i'd seen him on league pass the one good pelican season but then watching him in person and there was just stuff with him where things he saw yeah and how he would always get to that one spot yeah and the other team knew it was like what you said about zebo before he's like i'm just gonna eventually i'm gonna end up here and i'm gonna get a 12 footer and the other team knew it and you just get it and you could like how the fuck is he that's what dylan harper has some of that too it's like how yeah how is he yo-yoing these guys like this but he is to be doing that in your first year is like is i don't know it's impressive i mean the ceiling is high i mean he played unbelievable but like that's the san antonio if san antonio if he's if he's that next level yeah i like houston this year too houston and denver were my other two but a little less bullish on minnesota because i don't trust him i just don't i don't trust him to play 2400 minutes i just don't think it's gonna happen if you just give him like hey okay this is your playground yeah you play with inside this but inside this you get to do what you want to do then like i think that that that i don't know finch has a better idea but like that is like kind of the way you have to let him play because you can't put him in this and i don't see them trying to do that to him but like you can't put him in this you can't make him something he's not i think they're going the other way they're going to be like let's you and ant just falls the wall let's go take some bad shots season yeah not yourself out All right, have fun. Let's do five minutes on sports parenting. before we go oh yeah so yeah how old are your kids son's 13 daughter's 10 all right so you've been in it for a couple years yeah what and what sports are they playing son's playing football tackle football nice and he's playing basketball and he's actually kind of like gotten into volleyball recently sand he was doing some sand stuff this summer and he's he's just a he just picks stuff up multiple sports yeah yeah i i am i am not i am so against early sports specialization i think it's killing youth sports i have a lot of regrets with with other things in youth sports my daughter was basically soccer only from other school stuff and i i would but but i just wish i made her play basketball i know but i wish i i should i wish i had made her play too to me i should have said this if you are going to do one sport then as a parent i think you have to be very conscious of like hey we're taking time off we're we're you don't i'm sorry you don't have to you don't have to play multiple sports i think it does help but if you are going to play one is it's not going to be a year-round thing from the time you're eight years old till you know that's what's happening with basketball it's happening with every sport basketball is though these tournaments you're just playing for two straight days every sport the thing that has gotten better in basketball at least on the eybl circuit which was au you know when i was playing but like we would go to tournaments i remember going we'd fly to like memphis for like a tournament and we would play like maybe two games and we would play like two games and we would play like two games and we would play like two games friday afternoon friday night yeah and then you'd wake up and you'd play four games on saturday and if you kept advancing you'd maybe play four on sunday so you'd come home and you played 10 games and now with the eybl setup like i think like the max is like four games per weekend 10 games you know yeah i wonder why people are having knee and achilles issues yeah i wish i wish i had known that um and it's just crazy plus like who's running this stuff it's all you know that that's the other issue but yeah exactly on the flip side of that too is like now you feel like you have to play year one you have to play year two you have to play year three you have to play year or maybe you're playing less games but now you feel like you have to train more you have to get with this trainer you have to do this i think it's i think it's killing and we're also pricing kids out of sports that's 100 happened in soccer yeah basketball is a little easier because you just need a ball and you go to a park but soccer you need a field you need equipment i think baseball your sneakers are growing baseball hockey i mean tennis and golf are already they've been yeah like all these other sports i mean families are spending i mean i have an episode on this so like not to step up yeah but like families are spending 1200 on their kids primary sport yeah like that's especially today like that's not something that people can with sustain multiple kids year and year over year over year unless you have you have the luxury of just being able to afford it my daughter's team during covid we would drive to arizona because we weren't allowed to play here really drive to arizona she's a senior in college now so she was high school yeah so we would uh stay in hotels yeah couldn't play here but everybody was doing it yeah this isn't this is even more insane than how insane everything else was now we're driving seven hours to play games there's a whole thing around uh it's called placations so like because you know they're putting on these big tournaments where the everybody travels to them and like the hotels are benefiting restaurants you know it's bringing a whole and so the placation idea is like you know you find these find these places that are willing to you know have a certain amount of hotels and have the venue and you pay for parking at the venue and if you can't go you can also stream your kids game but you got to pay to stream your kids game yeah and like there's it's just now that we've figured out you know you can make it for youth sports is a 40 billion dollar industry and climbing you know it's bad because the rich guys are coming in now and buying stakes and stuff and companies yeah whenever private equity gets involved it's not for the top of the heart private equity owns you sports no it's like you'd seen soccer tournaments here you'd they you know one of the locations was oceanside or still is right lego lands right there too so now it's like all right now bring the whole family you go to lego land you go to the game and you know it's pretty expensive weekend for people yeah and she was doing clubs since how old eight yeah yeah so i'm in the home stretch yeah the volleyball things that one we were talking about before we started like that one you would think oh i'm a good athlete i'll just hop on but it's actually not like that at all you really need to be doing it probably i would say by age 10 yeah i mean my daughter's 10 she played last year was her first year of club volleyball and it's i mean honestly dude it's amazing how good they are she's she's she's a good little player and but her teammates too she's playing up and her teammates i mean and you so it's like a club so where you see like the older girls like the maybe 13 13 you team yeah and you're like oh my gosh like they are playing real volleyball and they're they're jumping like 200 times a day yeah that's yeah you have to be in pretty sick shape yeah and it's honestly women's college volleyball is so much fun to watch on tv i haven't been i haven't been a game since i was at oklahoma but like there's that's a that's a sport that translates really well to tv the two sports that you have to pick up early or you're in trouble are soccer and hockey because soccer there's a geometry with the field and how teams move and give and go stuff that there's some of that in basketball too but in soccer like you really need it's just you couldn't just waltz in as like a 16 year old and be like all right i'm playing soccer now yeah and then the other one's hockey if you're not skating by age four you might as well age four age five the soccer thing is really interesting too because it's like i played when i was young but then having been away from it for so long and then i you know i'll watch the world cup but i don't watch a ton of soccer and it takes me a while towards the end to the end of the world cup you're like now you're on you understand why guys are moving certain places but the beginning i'm like why why is it why does it look like that like why you're not seeing the angles and stuff it's a good point i didn't really like think about it i didn't get into it till late 2000s and that was when i got to know nash a little bit too and he's a huge soccer guy and would talk about how similar soccer and basketball was and tell me to look for different different players and there was a guy that on the team that he liked luca madrid that actually it was like the nash of soccer and it was so funny that that was like nash's guy because it was very similar to really you know but but the same thing like the spacing and after you watch enough of it you kind of get it now i feel like i get it i don't get it like i get basketball but i get it you know but it takes you just really defensively in soccer is where i'm like it's like the the angles that guys play it looks so off but then they're there yeah they like get to it and it's but it just also i don't really watch in person too maybe that changes it i don't know did you have hesitation with football for your son no i wouldn't say real hesitation he he um he started playing this is his third season of tackle and you know there's a lot of precautions now especially like all of july they're practicing just helmets yeah you know they're working on like technique tackling technique and also they're also not to the age yet where like their guys are like there's kids that are super fast but they're and big but like they're not they're not like they haven't filled out where they're hitting really really hard now this year actually there have there there's been some like some bigger hits and guys are oh no yeah not necessarily like it's more so like i would i think like running backs more so receivers less my son's a receiver um but there are some stuff there's some kids on my son's team this year that are massive and they move what do you like during these games i just i sit pretty silently i actually record a lot for like my parents and stuff but and then i also sign up because then i can just be away from everybody else i can just be on the sideline oh interesting have my hat on and just like i sit i'm just it's nice so i prefer to be changing during the game volleyball is a really good spectator sport so it was my when i was like a high school newspaper reporter it was my favorite sport to cover so it was like it was just super understandable everything was fast it was like quick attention were you watching did you guys have men's and women's yeah yeah okay yeah men's like there was no men's volleyball you know when i was a kid i was women's was obviously more more fun for a variety of reasons but basically the points were longer yeah you know and you could really you know not all the kids look all different shapes and sizes but it was good it was fun to watch yeah i've enjoyed i've enjoyed my daughter's um volleyball experience it's been it's been fun except the tournaments are a little you walk into these gyms and it's like 24 courts and it's just screaming and whistles going there's a whistle that starts every play right you're saying whistles the whole time it's chaos i did a podcast about the best and worst sports for parents for youth sports and the worst ones are that it's basically what you have for volleyball but it's gymnastics or swimming oh yeah yeah because those you don't know when your kid's gonna go you're there for eight hours yeah there's one meet at there's one thing at seven and there's another one at 3 30. do you consider like dance being one of those i don't but i would i would accept the case my daughter did like dance when she was like younger and she she hasn't thank god but like i mean if she wanted to great but dude you go to these and they don't just go like okay the young girls go now and then like you know they exit no you go there's they do one and there's like a every other age group then the young girls go again every other age group so you can't come and leave you have to stay for the whole thing you're there for like three and a half hours just like oh my gosh how about the fact that at least we have phones though yeah if you think about like 2002 i'm just sitting there nothing but your writing stuff down in a notebook yeah that's true it's true it's probably better that's probably why we were more creative back then yeah all right Griffin, say hi to all your Amazon dudes. Good luck with the step back. Thank you. Good luck with everything. Sorry we didn't have you on the 24 Celtics. Yeah, it's all right. It would have been fun. Those guys, I sacrificed myself. You'll be fine. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. This episode is brought to you by Viore. When it comes to clothes that score high in both comfort and style, Viore is my MVP. Sunday Performance Joggers, oh yeah. They have the perfect, I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the MetaPant, that's my number one, I need to look like I tried option. Get 20% off your first purchase at viore.com slash Simmons and discover the versatility of Viore clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras, and watch Tip-Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at MichelobUltra.com slash courtside. Michelob Ultra courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. See official rules at MichelobUltra.com slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. My friend Pete Burgess here. It's been years since we potted because you haven't directed in six years. Well, I've directed some miniseries. This is my first film in a minute. Did American Primeval and did something called Painkiller, which feel like movies because it's six hours of constant filming and it's a lot of work. But this is the first film I made in a bit, so. Do you like that, the six hour, or do you like the movie thing? I like both, but after American Primeval, you know, I was thinking about my son, who's now starting to be a filmmaker, and his friends, who all want to be filmmakers, and I was kind of thinking about movies, and I really wanted to make a movie. I wanted to put it in the theaters, and I think it's a good time for movies right now. There's a lot of really good stuff out, and I just was like, I've enjoyed this stuff. I enjoyed American Primeval. I'm really proud of it, but I was super proud to make Mosquito Ball and get back into the movie business. So, R, if we go back in our history, we go way back to the 2000s. You've been on this pod. At Grantland, we did pods. You did pods when I was at the old ringer office. Well, you kept Friday Night Lights on the air, I think. You always say that. I hope it's 1% true. Well, you did. You were certainly one of them. Friday Night Lights was challenged, certainly challenged with ratings. We were challenged to find an audience, and there were a couple of people I credit with just being in our corner, having our back. You were just so open with your enthusiasm and support. So, I remember for ESPN Magazine, I think right as they were deciding, but you told me something interesting. We've talked about this before, but you were talking about the people who are in decision-making powers. They don't really see that many people during the day. I always remember this. This is one of the best things I've ever, anyone's ever said on a pod with me, that they go from, like, they leave their place in New York City or wherever. Maybe they run into the doorman. They run to the guy who drives them. Their assistant, somebody in the elevator. If you do something that will be mentioned during one of those interactions, it really sticks with them for some reason. Yeah, we were talking about Zucker from NBC. Right. And it was in his hands. And he was a big shot who worked at 30 Rock back at the time. And I know that what happened is he was in his Fifth Avenue apartment in the elevator, and the key to getting Friday Night Lights picked up was when he got out of the elevator, was he walked through the lobby before he got in his car. It's like two minutes. Yeah. You have two minutes and you need the doorman or someone that lives in the building to walk by him and say, "I love that show, Friday Night Lights." And those little moments, I felt, could make all the difference. And they're underreported. Every time we've done a pod, we've talked about the legacy of Friday Night Lights, but now it's 20 years. The cast, it just continues to get crazier and crazier what's happened with some of the people that have been on there. MBJ just won an Oscar. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I just saw Jesse Plemons. Jesse Plemons is one of the most respected under-45 actors in the world right now. They're all doing well, and we just did, I don't know if you've seen the new NFL opening for the Netflix football games, but I did one with Kyle, and we brought explosions in the sky back. And I haven't, I've been kind of shy to be involved with anything that involves the phrase clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. Yeah. But Gabe, who I like a lot, and Netflix kind of called me. He's like, "Would you think about doing it?" And I called Kyle and we did it, and the response was really great. So there's little Friday Night Lights coming before each Netflix football game. Well, you know what else happened? The binge era, these last days, COVID, and people like my daughter, who's 21 now, where they just, you start watching it and you're just plowing through it, which was the problem when it was on in '06. There was no binge. Yeah, you couldn't- If you missed it, you couldn't jump back into it. Yeah. And I told you the story about, I got the Japanese DVDs on eBay, and I watched season one with Japanese subtitles. It's amazing. 'Cause they did, there was no other way to watch it. I mean, I remember that one of the first moments that really indicated to me that Friday Night Lights was gonna have some bizarre legs was when I went to Hong Kong. This was 12 years ago. Yeah. I went to Hong Kong. I was doing some work in Hong Kong and checked into the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. It's one of those hotels where you don't check in there, they meet you and they bring you up to your room. It's a little fancy and they check you in in your room. They give you a little hot, hot little towel. Hot towel, some weird juice, tea, very like royal treatment. And it was this young 20-something girl, Chinese, and a young guy, similar age, Chinese, and they brought me up to my room. We walked in the room, and it was all done up with balloon footballs and football cake and pictures of the cast from Friday Night Lights. I'm like, "What's going on?" And they said, "We love Friday Night Lights." I said, "You're in Hong Kong?" And they said, "Yes." I said, "But you're Chinese." "Yes, we are, and we love Friday Night Lights." And that kind of blew my mind. That's so weird when that happens. Right now in Italy, "Beverly Hills 90210" is one of the biggest shows. Really? They just run 90210 shows 30 years old. And people in Italy are like, "This is amazing. "It's a top-rated show." You just never know with the other countries. You never know how anything is gonna be viewed and how it's gonna last. And for Friday Night Lights to have stuck around as long as it has, for people asking us to bring it back, for new generations, I mean, honestly, it's a huge miss. It should be back. I don't know what you're doing. You think it should come back? I do. Because I think you could do the modern version of it. I think you could reinvent it. There's all these different models in place now. I thought what Cobra Kai did was really interesting with the old "Karate Kid" movies, and they basically put everybody in now. I don't know if you do that with Coach Taylor and his wife, or you have, like, the kids or what, but it's such a good brand. I think it's grown. I think that brand's grown over the last 20 years. Sure. It's a great brand. It's a great brand. It's a great brand. It's a great brand. Yeah. No, it has for sure. So we have a plan. And if we did do it. Oh, this is good. See, I'm nudging you now. Yeah, you're nudging. We have a plan. I mean, we're not stupid. We have a plan. I think if we did it, it would be a new cast. It would be a new story. It has to be. It would be relevant to the day that, you know, it was 20 years ago. And, obviously, you know, it's not going to be the same. It's not going to be the same. It's going to be the same. Yeah. High school football has changed quite a bit. NIL has made things change. NIL makes it really interesting. Yeah. The internet makes it sort of relevant in a different way. So. Yeah, but Friday Night Lights, basically, I think that was the first TV episode that ever hit what was going on with the internet, the slam page episode with Minka Kelly's character. Your memory is insane. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was the first TV episode that was incredible. But I just. I remember that being like. Thinking my daughter was like one years old or something when that happened. I remember seeing that being like, "Oh, man. Is this where we're going?" And by the way, it's way worse than it ever could have been even predicted in that episode. I think, you know, one of the things that some people don't know is that really the catalyst for me doing the TV series Friday Night Lights was an injury that I witnessed on a football field in Texas. Right. This young football player from San Antonio, Massachusetts. Yeah. In Madison. David Edwards was paralyzed at a playoff game against Austin-Westlake High School. And you were there. I was at that game. And it happened right in front of me. And I got to know David and his family. And my family got to be friends with their family. And this injury brought together two very different cultures in San Antonio and Austin. And it was this incredibly powerful experience. And we all got to know David. And he lived, I think, five years out of school. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, it was an incredible experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that experience, which was what led to writing The Jason Street Injury, was so fueling me when I wrote that pilot. And that, you know, there would be people who would have been in the industry be no friday night lights tv show if they're if david edwards hadn't you know come into my life well you also had the movie which we did on rewatch was i think two years ago which i think has really gained steam as as one of the better 20 the last 25 years i think one of the best sports movies appreciate that and then you had your cousin wrote the book so you were kind of destined to do all three versions for sure to do the movie but the tv show was was like there was just no way after i got to know david edwards and saw that and went through that horror and that tragedy and saw what that did to the community there was no way i i just that's what fueled me to write it so i guess what i'm saying is if we do it again obviously i don't want anyone to get hurt and that would be horrific but there has to be kind of for all of us involved a real reason to do it and and that kind of kind of exists inside the soul we did an episode it's not out yet but we we did an episode of the rewatchables for the first weekend in november um for all the right moves with tom cruise which we felt he was in the zeitgeist because the digger uh i've always loved this movie but it's 91 minutes you just go into pennsylvania and it's this whole world which was the same kind of thing that worked for friday night lights where it's like i don't know anything about texas i don't know anything about high school football there and you just brought us in there and it's weird that it's been 20 years now and no other show has been able to pull it off and it's weird that that tom cruise who did i believe a pretty extraordinary dance scene in a locker room he did played a little cornerback is the man and has the career that he has today i remember that i love the movie yeah um loved how tom cruise committed i said digger last week and i loved it you loved it yeah i don't understand why there's a big turn with people are shitting on it so much and yeah it's just he's gonna get nominated for an oscar possibly win one he's incredibly good in the film and i i thought the film was really good and i'm not quite clear on why people are you know you know what acting to it sometimes it's it's like in football game when they call it the spot like when you like a team it's like it's the spot they got killed last week sometimes movies are the same way yeah right like hancock which i think bane was just talking about it and he was like i don't know why people are not reacting to it in the office i think a movie that's gained steam over the last 20 years but when it came out was considered disappointing yeah but now you look back and it's a really interesting movie you know i think it is yeah and i think it was so far ahead of its time in terms of being like a subversive uh superhero and will smith is this alcoholic mess of a man who just destroys the cities stopping a drunk driver um and yeah i mean the challenge with hancock is that the first i don't know 90 minutes was this just raucous drunk superhero and it was really fun yeah and then there was a turn that tried to kind of hit a very tricky emotional sweet spot and um i'm really proud of that film we tried to hit it um you know well the timing of it's funny because the next year is iron man and dark knight and you do this at the tail end of this other era of superhero movies where it really wasn't going that well like we had a lot of people who were like oh i'm gonna have more busts than hits and it was like we we didn't have the cgi right we didn't have the right actors in these things i always felt like hancock was making fun of some of that stuff dude will smith just sent me a script for a sequel to hancock hancock too yeah and i don't know whether it's ever going to happen or not but it is so good and so funny and plays directly into who will is and everything that's happened with will and then you know oh that it's like meta well a little bit you know it's about a guy who's beloved who's struggled and maybe had a few rough moments and who is trying to move on with his life but it's isn't that all of us i guess not on the stage not quite as high profile but yes that's definitely all of us but it's just it's really funny and insane so i did read it and i i thought it would it it would be an amazing film well i remember you and i knew each other at that point and you loved will smith for sure you were like will smith's the fucking best don't don't don't let anyone tell you differently this guy's the greatest so when when you're watching you know he's he has some bumps and you're watching from afar what are you thinking i mean you know that was that was a rough rough rough moment um i think denzel washington had a line that he said to well that night which is when you're right at the edge of heaven that's when the the devil comes calling as loud as possible and i think um you know it was a bad moment and and we should not be defined by our worst moments um i think he's an incredible talent he's a funny guy he's brought like a real life force to my world to our business and um i'm rooting for him who is the biggest star you've worked with where you're just like god damn that guy's a huge star that lady's a huge star yeah i mean i remember back when we're doing hancock we were in new york and will couldn't walk out of the hotel to the car just across the sidewalk without a small mob being formed um and he'd you know been that famous for a long time and those were in the days when you know fame hit differently um guys like cruise and will um were so wildly globally famous i mean yeah he could i was in china with him i was in korea with him i was all over europe and south america and the power of that celebrity was um i mean it exists today and i'm sure that you know if messi started walking around certain neighborhoods anywhere in the world um things would get rather hectic but you know what's different about it though social media because i feel like social media you have more of a constant connection to celebrities whereas like even if you're going to when hancock came out yeah it's oh seven you don't really have a connection with will smith unless he's in an interview or he's in your in your city right right right and then but now you feel like oh i can see him on instagram well then it was like the difference between a tv star and a film star because a tv star you just turn on your tv in your living room he's he's with you a film star you had to go to the theater you had to invest you had to drive and park and pay all that money and then you you had to come to them and back then there were film stars and there was no social media so you didn't get to see them that much so when people you know made direct eye contact with will they just passed out right you know i'm literally i saw people pass out and i just completely lose their shit and um well that's why i love so he was the biggest the youtube clips from the 70s and 80s of like major concerts wrestling wwe events or boxing and you see how crazy the crowds are and it was because it was like oh my god the doobie brothers are in houston i was just unbelievable i can't believe they're here it's crazy and i was at a raiders game two weeks ago in vegas and i was um uh in a box and james hepfield from metallica was sitting in the box and i was with two younger 20 something uh young men and i was just locked in on on james and um alice cooper played at halftime yeah and james was like playing the guitar along with like schools out and like singing and and i'm like i'm like you you i'm finally like you guys they they were not the you know and my son and his friend they didn't care i'm like you don't understand they're like well we don't and i pulled up the metallica live in moscow have you ever seen that footage i don't think metallica live in moscow one and a half million russians showed up oh my god and i've got to see the footage whenever i need to be hyped it's over a million people the red the army the the russian military is trying to do security but they're dancing there's military helicopters flying all over and uh james is just playing sandman like full out and i showed you know these kids the video and they were just speechless to think you know you know taylor swift full respect uh those concerts are electrifying but metallica live in moscow i was like oh my god it's like a live and i don't know 80 something yeah in moscow with over a million russians and the military just going insane and then to see him you know sitting there with his wife watching a football game having a hot dog like having a hot dog like air guitar into alice cooper but yeah those days i i mean those were days well you don't get credit you were probably the key moment for 30 for 30 season one you guys had me do the first one once you agreed it made it possible to get other directors because you became the person it was like throwing a party it was like well who's coming who do i know and it's like well pete berg's coming they're like pete berg's gonna be in this dude he came into my office and you're like we want you to do a documentary on sports okay anything you want anything i'm like what and you said i you know i know you love hockey i know you know gretzky what about the gretzky trade and you aim me at that i don't remember that i'll take credit and who else was in the room was it was me and connor connor yeah and i mean i think you gave me some ideas and that was one of them and then you know i went and we needed to get four directors to start yeah and we got you and we got barry levinson and then we were once we had you too is then my phone came in and it became easy i still get so many um you know thank yous for doing that and i remember i was filming gretzky on the driving range out at sherwood and we're just hitting balls and my plan was to take him on 18 holes and play 10 holes of golf with them and just talk about life and hockey and whatever and we started talking on the driving range and we started talking about the legacy of um edmonton and how good they were and who that you know how many i think five cups at edmonton and how good that team was with teken and messi and grant fuhrer and that that team was so good yari curry curry and then broken up and he gets traded and never wins another cup and i asked him um at the driving range i'm like well how many do you think you would have won he said 12 said if we had stayed together we would have won 12 cups and i said how often do you think about that i remember he was looking down and this big ass teardrop just came out of his eye and hit the dirt on the driving range and he looked up at me so i think about it every day wow and and i that's something i just think people don't talk about or think about about enough just how dominant that franchise would have been more than the bulls more than the patriots yeah they even won one after they traded them they had so much talent they won anyway but yeah at least four or five more yeah so you signed on for that one and it was a different era for documentaries too like i look back to those season one i really i love that those were an hour it was like 50 52 minutes max what you created with uh with 30 for 30 was was genius it was evergreen i wasn't fishing for compliments but it was i'm just saying it was a different era it was like you could tell a story in 52 minutes now i think if we did that it would have been like oh the rise and fall of the edmonton oilers it's six hours and we have two bidders and we have to get gretzky's going to be a producer and it's like back then you'd just be like hey we're going to tell this story wayne's in let's go yeah i mean i'm not it still was an extraordinary simple but a brilliant idea because and i don't know that you guys even knew you never know going into something obviously what its legacy is going to be and how it's going to last you couldn't have known that you had an idea it proved to be for me one of the great things about it was it gave people like me barry levinson um oh who did the you i love that one yeah uh people who just don't have a voice filmmakers who you know hollywood guys or whatever suddenly who love sports who have these sort of obsessions it was this incredible platform and there was nothing like it so people just rushed towards it and you guys curated it well and it was good there was a good time hbo had this uh recently this 40-minute documentary about when dennis miller was on monday night football for two years i forgot it's like a 45-minute documentary they interviewed seven people in it it just has a beginning middle and end and it really felt like a 30 for 30 and i was like i because i'm not doing sports documentaries anymore i think i think i've run my course with them but i would be interested again if it was more in those kind of things where you're just telling a start to finish story versus like it's got to be four hours we have to have all these different people in it i just and the people who you're interviewing have to be eps i just can't do it anymore that i look back at their late 2000s it's like man we really had it good back then i'm watching the eland uh doc right now oh yeah like four years ago and i'm like oh my god i'm hour doc and it's not it's not sports related but it thinking about what you just said like that's a doc i could see you doing or getting attached to it's not a sports doc but it's just a long uh really really intense look at a complicated human being what'd you think of the shanley doc that judd did uh i loved it i cried i told him i cried i mean from for me shanley was just a dear friend yeah and i knew him like your legitimate friend yeah like a legitimate friend he and i started a boxing gym together which blows people's minds and gary shanley used to love love love boxing and he would be in our gym talking to russian fighters or mexican fighters or ukrainian fighters who had no idea who he was and he would just be there talking and giving him that these fighters his opinions on what was working with their with their boxing what was talking about and they just knew him as g i just called him g and um unlikely boxing body head everything not somebody you would imagine singing in the ring no no he was he was a horrible boxer and i think we did we talked about the um the alec baldwin gary shanley interview series that he was doing did i tell you about this i don't if you did i forgot it shanley one gary shanley was such an out-of-the-box thinker and he wanted to do a talk show but he wanted it to be different so i think he did um jerry seinfeld where he just went and walked through central park and gary wouldn't talk he didn't talk he just allowed there to either be silence or force um seinfeld to talk yeah and and it was so just literally just being comfortable with three minutes of this just just like intimidating people to say stuff like say something i'm not going to provoke you and so he did that which wasn't that particular good by the way yeah i imagine but it was it was just kind of weird he did some other stuff at tom petty and then he did one with with alec baldwin where he invited alec baldwin to fight him and he was going to interview alec baldwin while they were fighting while they were boxing so alec baldwin who you can find this on youtube alec baldwin was not in great shape gets into the ring i think thinking that they were just going to like like you know throw a couple fake jabs fake punches and active and gary just started swinging at him and alec started swinging back and then they they i was there it looked for a minute like they were both having not about to but having heart attacks they both looked like they were having heart attacks and then gary started the interview so it was uh that was that was the most interesting the idea of like let's fight and talk either while we're fighting and bleeding or after we're done fighting and bleeding let's talk about comedy or let's talk about sports but let's fight while we're doing it you don't still box do you a little bit i still go in um i don't let anybody punch me in the face anymore um like a year ago i was like light sparring with someone in our gym and i got hit kind of in the back of the neck and i just felt everything go numb and like like electrical current shooting through my body i'm like that's it that's enough so i'll spar with the pros because they're not really allowed to hit me back and i trust them but like i wouldn't spar with you or like back in the day i sparred with um uh steve nash um uh with cam newton um with saquon barkley uh and like i would play with those guys and and like they they would i i knew how to box well enough and i'd keep them calm yeah so that like we were just playing but then um the but before i i saw i got hit and saw white flashes i sparred with cam newton who's six foot six yeah very large guy and he never boxed and i was trying to show him how to box and and i like lightly touched him like in the chin at which point he just saw like white and started swinging and he caught me hard and kind of knocked me back and then he caught me again and i knew it was serious because my son and all my friends were in there and they wanted me to box and i was like to see me sort of get like lit up yeah by cam but then i heard my son and his trainer julian scream you gotta stop and he just went like he did he just went like he had no it's like incredible yeah he lost control and i i could have like really died and um and uh and he was apologetic and he's like i don't know what happened i don't know what happened like he got hit and he was like 20 years younger than you too yes um and much bigger and so that was the beginning of the fight and and then when i got um caught a year ago at the gym and saw just like flashes of of electrical current and white i decided my my fighting days for the most part are over but i still love the workout who is the best boxer you've seen in the gym just navigating the gym and hitting somebody in a on like a tuesday afternoon there have been a canelo i think i think canelo yes but the most impressive to me was uh david benavidez oh yeah uh who knocked uh bivel down with the jab in our gym they were sparring and bivel got put down wow by benavidez and for those badass oh my god benavidez uh he's a top five you don't want to fight with this guy guys he's my favorite fighter out there right now and uh i mean that was it was just so cool to have the gym and see bivel and benavidez and lomanchenko and tyson fury uh and canelo and um terence crawford and all these guys just like suddenly in our gym working out or sparring or um crawford was there coaching Connor, Ben, trying to help him get around Ryan Garcia, which obviously did not go well. Yeah, that did not go well. Wait, tell the sewage story. You told this story, but I don't know if you said it on the pod. This is a great story. So I had, I had an idea like 16, 17 years ago and I was, my, my, my directing career was going well, but I kind of wanted a side hustle and, and people were, um, you know, asking for me to go in on a restaurant or a bar or something like that. And I'm like, well, yeah, I guess, but if I own a bar, I like what good is going to come out of that? Like it'll probably go bankrupt and I'll just drink myself senseless until it does. I'm like, I don't really want to do that. I love boxing. I talked to Gary Shandling. I'm like, what if we start a real boxing club, like a pro boxing club? Yeah. And he's like, okay, we sure. Why not? And we figured like, it would be fun. It would be, um, like probably lose money, but at least we'd like, have to do something healthy. We'd exercise a lot and we love boxing. So we started the gym and Gary was kind of not, was an inconsistent, a very loyal friend, but an inconsistent partner was sort of involved. So most of it went to me and opening a boxing gym is probably like, I would think maybe like next to opening a strip club is one of the stupidest things. It's kind of like buying a boat, opening a gentleman's club. You've got to manage these complex people and you've got rough climbing. It's like lawsuits every two seconds. So it's like a restaurant with violence. You're like a strip club with violence. Like think about that. Like that's kind of what it was. With more violence. Yeah. With more violence and threat of death. So it was a nonstop headache. And I was constantly dealing with, you know, we'd have Santa Monica cops in their training and the cops would come up to me and be like, those two guys got to get out of here now because we know who they are. And there's going to about to be an arrest. Like we had bomb threats. Sounds fun. We had lots of spice and it was starting to be a big headache. And I was starting to think about closing up. I didn't want to, but I was thinking about it. And I was in New Mexico making Lone Survivor and we're up on ski Santa Fe mountain and Wahlberg was there and Taylor Kitsch and Ben Foster. And we're doing this big gunfight with bombs. And like I was, I was in it right up on top of the mountain. And I got a call from my assistant in LA that all of our sewer, pipes in the gym had exploded and there was just raw sewage everywhere. And she was having some like disassociative breakdown screaming, I don't deserve this. I moved out to Los Angeles to be a star. I'm a princess. I'm a princess. Yeah. And she was going, she was losing her mind, literally cleaning up. It sounds disgusting. And, and I was empathetic and I like, we finished work and it was a Friday and I flew back to LA. And she, she was there. Um, God love her. Her name was Liz and she was a great assistant and she didn't deserve this. And, and together we cleaned it up and it took about a day and a half and it was like breaking bad, like stuff, right? Like, you know, full jumpsuits, face hazmat stuff. We cleaned it up. She left. I've got to leave to go to, to, um, back to New Mexico to keep making the film. Yeah. The gym actually looks good. We've cleaned it up. We've cleaned it up. Still smells a little funny, but not bad. And I'm sitting by myself in the gym and there's a big mirror in front of me and I'm looking around and I'm thinking we had a good run. And I see this like flash of red reflected in the mirror and someone's in the gym and I turn and it's Canelo Alvarez and he's just standing in my gym. And he's, this was, he's like 20 or 21 at this point. Just coming up. But like, clearly, like everyone said, this is the face of boxing and I knew who he was. He looked at me and he's like, I'm looking for Peter. And I'm like, I'm me. That's me. I'm Peter. He's like, Freddie Roach told me I could come train, do my, my camp here. He was getting ready to fight Austin Trout. Um, it's right around that time. And I, and I'm like, you, you want to do your, your camp here? I'm like, I love the smell of raw sewage. I love the odor in here. We're both kind of ignoring that. I'm just sort of, we're playing through, right? We're not acknowledging, cause the floors are clean. We've cleaned them, but I'm not sure whether he's detecting the aroma, but I don't think he is. He's like, Freddie Roach said I could train here. I'm looking for a place to do my camp. My name's Saul Alvarez. I said, I know you are. He said, yeah, this is the future of boxing at this point. And I'm like buzzing, right? But I'm trying to be cool. And he, and he said, can I see the gym? And I said, well, you're, you're, this is pretty much the gym. Like there's a bathroom over there, but this is the gym. He's like, okay, I like it. So can I do my camp here? Like we're making a deal right on the spot. I said, yes, we shake hands. He goes outside. There's three suburbans full of his crew. So his, uh, Eddie Reneos and Chepo, his trainers and all his sparring partners and his, you know, handlers are like 20 Mexicans come flying into the gym, turn on the music. Um, the gym, we don't, I don't close it. The gym holds on, takes off. And you know, we've been going now for 16 years. I remember you told me when you told me he was training there, I was like Canelo he's training. Like I couldn't believe it. I sparred one round with Canelo. Oh, that was a mistake. So I, it was my birthday. I'd flown in from New York. I knew he was doing a camp. I'd had a few drinks on the plane, my birthday coming to the gym. Everyone's in the gym. Uh, he's sparring. I look at him. I say I'm next. I'm not drunk, but I'm not sober. It's like one body punch. You're doubled over for a year. But I'm like, I gotta like, at least say that I did it. Right. That's what my distorted thought process. It's like the Ernest Hemingway in you. Yeah. Not like, is a good idea? No. Yeah. I'm going to do it. Like I've done plenty of stupid, dumb, stupider things, right? I've done stupider things. I went to Iraq for a month and embedded with the SEAL platoon. Yeah. I've done stupid things. So I go up, I get my stuff on, I come down and everyone's looking at me. He finished his three rounds with whoever it is. I'm these are world-class sparring guys. I'm somewhat drunk and I'm like done a quick wrap job and I'm not warmed up at all. I get, I get in the ring. I go three minutes, two minutes and 48 seconds. I haven't been able to hit him. He hasn't thrown a punch two minutes and 59 seconds of a three minute round. He throws one punch, a jab. And he hits me in a way that I've never been hit, but it kind of like, up right above the nose and it locks my head down and my whole neck cracks like chiropractic adjustment crack. But it was one punch probably thrown 40% and he kind of smiled at me. And I'm like, you didn't knock me down champ. And I got out of the ring, but it was, uh, it was something I can say I did. It cracked your neck? It was the most, it was the most incredible punch. It was literally like, it was the most incredible punch I've ever had. It was the most incredible punch I've ever had. And it was like a chiropractic adjustment. And he was so perfectly thrown. Cause you had probably been in a couple of scraps in your day, but not with anyone like Canelo. And, and I mean, he could have literally killed me and it's, you know, what I think people understand when they go to UFC or they go to, uh, you know, uh, a boxing match, they instinctively understand that these are athletes on another level. And, and like to be able to, to get into a ring with Canelo, um, and just try and hit him and just see how incredibly gracefully is it, how much muscle memory there is. And to realize that, you know, these are extraordinary athletes. What Ryan Garcia did, he used to come into the gym when he was much younger. What he just did to counter Ben is, you know, for anyone that's following the athleticism of boxing, um, like it goes without saying that these are extraordinary athletes. And I was like, you know, I'm joking about going around with Canelo. I didn't go around with Canelo. If he tried to, you know, if it was, it was just pure mercy on his part, but he knew that on my birthday, it would be fun for me to get in the ring with him and have a good story, but I didn't anticipate the jab that like literally cracked my neck in a great way. Like it felt great. It was like an incredible adjustment. And then he smiled and I said, thank you. And he's, he's, uh, been an incredible ambassador for the sport, which is, you know, still as fucked up a sport as you, you will find on the planet or better shape lately a little bit, but yes, it's, it's had more good fights. It's sinking less quickly and hopefully Dana can turn it around. And, uh, Eddie Hearn and Dana, cause I like, I do like Eddie Hearn and we work with Dana at our gym and Zufa. Um, I'm I don't know if you're following all the shit they're talking. I'm following literally everything, you know? So it's, I watched Wardley this week. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's great entertainment and having Oscar De La Hoya kind of, you know, clap backing. Yeah. Uh, which I think is like the greatest thing on social media is Oscars clap back Thursday, but he's a wild card. Oh God. You think when did you move to LA? So I moved to LA in 80, right during the Olympics in 84 was, was that - Who was your crew? ever asked this so my original did you have like an actor crew because you were in the class like no ahead of so my original crew the only one i knew out here was an italian named sam galetti who lived in um uh down who whose family ran the docks the fishing docks in san pedro and they lived up in the hills in san pedro and it's like sabaka in the wire i had met him at this when i was in college in minnesota we went to the same like entrepreneurial seminar that his family had sent him and he was like joe pesci from goodfellas it's like short thick italian and they ran terminal island so the first person he invited me to stay with him in la and i went down there and stayed with the galettis worked down on the fishing docks unloading rock cod fishing boats and they would loan me one of the family cadillacs they had a fleet of cadillacs and i would drive them up to hollywood and interview try and get pa jobs yeah and that's right how i got my first job but it was sam galetti was my first hang and then my best friend ari manuel moved out and ari and i lived in a little apartment you were best friends before he moved out we were i haven't read his book ari and i were um we went to college together and became very good friends uh in college and he graduated a year ahead of me and he went to new york to work i moved to la and started working in production trying to figure it out he then moved to la and we lived in a rough little apartment in hollywood where was it um it was fairfax fairfax area like near melrose and fairfax um some canters we near we used to go to canters all the time when we could afford it yeah um uh and there was a pizza shop right across the street from canters it's out now but we would go there um but we um i was working as a pa on films in the mail room at caa he would steal the bagels from you know mike ovitz's uh like conferences and the salmon and the bagels and i'd steal like m&ms and candy and whatever i could get from the craft service tables and that's how we lived for two years and we just stole food and um yeah that's probably your favorite two years they were the best times and we're like we we didn't have we would never get invited anywhere um my break came from i was been playing a softball game and i got hit in the mouth with the softball knocked my tooth out and busted my lip like 80 stitches so they sewed me up and i look like the elephant man i had this big fat swollen lip missing a tooth on painkillers and ari and i it was a saturday night we went to canners and he i tried to get soup down and he just kept making fun of me and it hurt so much to laugh i had to hold my mouth shut and after soup we did what we used to always do which was just drive we would just drive around because we were never invited anywhere we had no money so we'd drive around listen to music and like go home we're driving around we're going down laurel there's a huge party all the cars all the valets were like let's try and crash the party we crashed the party get in to party for uh the woman who produced one flew over the cuckoo's nest i can't remember her name but she won the oscar her party big hollywood party the security there we somehow get in there's a huge buffet we get all this food and we split up because we don't have food like we haven't seen this much food so i go his way he goes his way i'm sitting trying to eat my food but i can't get it in my mouth because i've got 80 stitches but i'm so hungry i'm trying to get the food in and all of a sudden i sense someone standing over me and i hear what what are you doing and i look up and woman and i'm like i'm sorry we'll leave she's like i know you don't have to leave i asked what do you what like what are you what is this all about i'm like oh my name's pete and i'm i i got 80 stitches and and my tooth is out and she said well my name is laurie laurie rodkin and i'm a manager i want i want you to come meet with me and just because she was watching we just saw me and she had an eye and laurie rodkin's really is responsible for brad pitt's career robert dadney jr's career virginia madison's career remember judd nelson of course you remember judd nelson's career she was at the time like if she saw you and she put like she blessed you you had a shot she saw something something about me with my 80 plus stitches trying to get like stolen like i think it was a pig in a blanket i was trying to get in there and without laurie uh and ari and that's it that was ari and i crashed the party and people like well how do you how do you like make it in a career i'm like well i got all my teeth knocked out 86 stitches had no money we crashed a party and laurie rodkin saw me trying to like stick a pig in a blanket in my mouth and that was my big break but ari and i it's so crazy that's like 80 of the stories for how something happened that was like life-altering it's always some stupid i ran into this person what was what would yours be or i mean honestly the reason i'm in la is because i wrote a column about the shack roast yeah and jimmy was in it jimmy kimmel yeah he was in the roast and i was writing about how funny he was and he he contacted me and i ended up moving out here to write for a show so if he doesn't read the piece am i out here i don't know probably and that's maybe at some point i don't but i don't know yeah but that that is that is what it is and it was like you put the effort in and you know i still think like it's just it's just about effort you know it's it's well once the door's open you gotta plow through it the thing that you and ari spending that much time together is pretty nuts i mean he's in the news now he just wrote a book he's obviously incredibly successful i know him a little bit too but um the fact that you were going to a party to try that we were nothing we had nothing and people you know people have whatever opinions they might want to have about ari because he's he's so you know he's he's risen so high yeah like truly no nothing given no nepotism yeah no contacts nobody rooting for you you know right even now for either one of us nobody rooted for us like you know my parents my my my father with love advised me that if i pursued my dream and tried to come to hollywood i would end up making gay porn that was his final good luck pete kind of and he was he that was there was love in that comment he was trying to scare me straight yeah but it was like thanks thanks dad like ari the same way you're gonna be in pizza delivery boys five no that's where that's where it's gonna end like he went don't go yeah he went to the dark side and it scared me and it's still like a voice in my head and like i can be on the set like a mosquito ball thinking of my dad's voice in the back of my head saying like you better be careful you better work right hard and i think but what i don't understand is you guys are both like legitimate alphas i don't understand how you got it's almost like when the like two dogs in the backyard who are just constantly fighting each other fight we used to fight like physically all the time um but you'd actually get an altercation and we're on his birthday in texas we're getting ready to go play golf and we played golf and we're at the hotel getting dressed there was like 10 guys we're gonna go have dinner and then we're in dallas i think it was dallas we're at some course where every hole is a different direction and we're at the hotel getting dressed and we're at the hotel getting dressed and we're at the hotel getting dressed and we're at the hotel getting dressed and we're famous hole recreated it's like something from turnberry some from spyglass um something from augusta and it was some gimmicky thing and ari wanted to go there for his birthday so we played that course during the day and then it was by night with some shitty hotel and me and ari were sharing a room we didn't we're doubling up in rooms and we're getting dressed and putting like getting ready to put our ties on we're going to go out nice and we're both sitting there and we're talking and we stop talking we look at each other and we just attack each other we just attack and we just start fighting and ari was a high school wrestler yeah and i he's a hard he's hard and he fights and i was like using like animal strength and we destroy the room and we finally stop this is his book clothes are ripped we've stopped fighting and we're staring at each other like what the fuck is wrong with us and we're staring at each other and we attack again we attack again and just utterly destroy the room rip each other or bleeding or snot we're covered in sweat and we just started laughing but i mean he did just write a whole book about how rage rate using rage to uh succeed but like i mean i think um we both played like we were uh you know in a not in the home court that we were not popular that nobody wanted us to win um and that friendship has been forged you know 40 years now and um it's hard and he's repped you the whole time no there were times like when he first started and he's um uh in wme oh no it wasn't wo's endeavor he's like listen man i don't know if this is gonna work stay here i'll tell you if it's gonna work and i'm like okay and you know i i was at a different point in my career i wasn't gonna be able to make or break that agency but very quickly he said come we're gonna do it So he's either repped me or advised me. And when I first moved to L.A. and I was living with those Italians, I started writing little short stories about me living with the Italians. And I only sent them to Ari. And they had a housekeeper at the house who didn't like me because it was like added laundry that you had to do at the Galletti Brothers. And so I wrote these like short stories about me and this cleaning lady just like having this like quiet war with each other. And she hated me and hated that she had to like— It's like War of the Roses, but with a cleaning lady. Yeah, kind of. And Ari, I was like working in New York at a law firm or at an agency, and I would send him these little scenes that I was writing. And he's like, you've got to write. You've got to write. So it's been in my corner forever. And that was it. And like ride or die is like an overused phrase, but like it's ride or die. I like them, but I like all straight shooters. And he's the ultimate—he's just shooting this way the entire time. He will not bullshit. You know, he will give you his opinion, which I kind of respect. Every movie, like when I do a film— Has he ever told you like that movie doesn't have it? It sucks. He's like, that sucks. That's awful. I'm not going to say the movie because I don't think any of the movies suck. I fall in love with all of them. Yeah. Some a little more than others. But yeah, Ari has told me that some of my work straight out. It sucks. And then— But if he tells you it's good, then that means it's—it carries a different weight, right? He's been a big supporter of my last film. And I know like everyone else, like maybe they're telling the truth. I know he is. Well, you told me something interesting when we talk about Mosquito Bull. You thought it was the best movie you've ever done. Now, I don't know if you feel that way after every movie. I felt—I felt deeply connected. When I say like— I think it's the best film. What I really say—I'm saying is like I felt tremendous inspiration when I was writing that film. You know, I went to Okinawa and toured the site of that battle, which is arguably the worst battle, certainly involving Americans in terms of loss of life and just the bloodshed that was the experience on that island. And I toured that island with current Marines. We have a huge Marine Corps presence in Okinawa. Yeah. Now, which most people don't even know about. I mean, tens of thousands of Marines and aircraft carriers and subs. And there's a huge military presence there now because of China. But they toured me that island. And I went inch for inch and saw where these Okinawans jumped off of cliffs with their babies, where Japanese soldiers blew themselves up with hand grenades in caves, where the Americans died, where their graves were marked. And that was powerful for me. My dad was a Marine. My dad served in Korea. Buzz Bissinger wrote the book. His dad served in Okinawa. Like something was brewing. And then I went to Parris Island in South Carolina where the Marines are trained, where the drill instructors do their thing and scream. Pat McAbee plays a drill instructor in the film. And I took him down there also. It's impossible to not go down there and be incredibly inspired. I was inspired by these young men and women now who are entering this world. And the drill instructors who train them and kind of the time I spent loading myself creatively with Okinawa and these drill instructors and, you know, thinking about the SEALs I know, thinking about what they go through when they're in, thinking about how hard it's been for them getting out. A good friend of mine, a SEAL who got out, Andrew Hunter, he was a SEAL. Andrew Honeyman killed himself several months ago. That, to me, was just representative of what we ask these young men and women to go through. And the quote in the beginning of the film is a quote by Hoover saying, you know, old men declare war, but it is the youth who must fight and die. And that was all kind of boiling inside of me when I made this film. And so when I say I think it's my best, I just, I've never, not since David Edwards was paralyzed and I wrote Friday Night Lights, was I kind of so locked in wanting to write something and wanting to bring a certain level of experience into a film. Plus World War II, you probably always wanted to do something with World War II. Well, people were, I was scared, you know, because we, there have been some really great World War II films, Saving Private Ryan was a very good movie and Spielberg did one hell of a job. And, you know, we have combat sequences. You have a long ass combat sequence that actually reminded me of Saving Private Ryan when I was watching it. Really? Well, it's long and it's intense. And like when it's over, you kind of want to go have a cigarette. It's one of those. I was, you know, people ask me, you know, why would you want to do another World War II film? Why would you want to do a beach invasion, right? When they've been done well and they clearly have. My response, it was the same response when I did American Primeval. And everyone's like, well, why do you want to do another Western? Like there's so many great Westerns. I'm like, there are, but I never did one. Right. And I want to try one, you know? And I think we found our own language with the combat in the film. And just the trying to capture the intensity of that visceral experience and what it, must have been like. I mean, think about your 21-year-old All-American college football player. You're Tony Butkovich, maybe the best running back in the country. You've been, you know, you want to go play for the Giants. He was a first-round pick. First-round pick. He wanted to play for the Giants. The Browns ended up drafting him. But you've just, you're living life and all cylinders are firing. You're an elite football player. You've got the coolest girlfriend, young kids. Your parents worship you. Your parents love you. And Pearl Harbor pops off and you're like, oh, I'm going to stop this. I'm going to join the Marine Corps. I'm just going to go take care of this war thing. It's like a game. I'm just going to go win this little game of war. And you get there and you're used to competing with certain rules of like etiquette, like, you know, a referee, a whistle, a clock. I beat you at the end and we shake hands. And you're fighting these Japanese kids who were kids, who were ordered by their emperor to never surrender. And so I've got a gun on you. And I'm like, Bill, give it up. I got you. You won't surrender. You'll charge me. You'll use your, if you're out of bullets, you'll try and bayonet me. If that doesn't work, you'll club me. If that doesn't work, you'll pick up a rock and you won't stop until you're killed. And if I can't kill you, you'll kill yourself. So these young kids, these college football players go over there and get introduced to this flavor of, of hell that I just felt like very, very fired up to tell that story. I watched it Friday night. My dad is in town who loves World War II, everything. But I didn't tell him what it was about. I just told him, man, my friend Pete made a movie. We had to watch it tonight. And, uh, and he had no idea what was happening. He followed the whole thing. He really liked it. Like he, uh, and he, he was weird at the end. He was like, it's kind of a feel good movie. And I was like, it was? And he was like. You know, he's seen so many of those, but he did feel, I don't know. He, he wasn't like, like, uh, depressed afterwards. Well, there's the football game in the middle of it is kind of why Bissinger wrote the book. Right. The idea that there were right, right before the battle of Okinawa, there were 40,000 Marines on this island, Guadalcanal, getting ready to go invade Okinawa. And they knew that the death tolls were going to be very, very high, which they were. General realized that there were 50 elite college football players. And so these guys got to have this moment, you know, of play and they got to play this football game. And that's why Bissinger wrote the book. And yeah, I don't want to spoil the movie, but it comes later than you think it does. And I'd kind of forgotten it was going to happen. I was just in the world war two part. Yeah. And then all of a sudden we were doing, we were having a football game, but it was really cool. Well, I think that if your dad felt, I mean, maybe it's the explosion. In the sky music, you know, those are my guys. It's just really well done. I mean, it's obvious that you weren't zipping through this one. No, I felt it. Yeah. I felt it. So thank your dad for me. Also, there's not a lot of war movies. We've gone on stages with war movies, but one where you're in like an extended battle and you start putting yourself in the positions, people like, oh my God, like I was complaining yesterday because the fucking coffee, the coffee filter wasn't working right. And then you just feel like an idiot. Like, can you imagine being in this? And the fact that people felt like they would just drop everything to go defend our country because it was like, well, what else are we going to do? Of course we're going to do this. And that brought in different feelings for me. Well, I'm glad to hear that. And I think, you know, that, that was one of my goals was, especially with the combat was to try, try and make it feel as immersive as possible so that, that you, you stopped feeling like, um, you know, you're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. I like, I always feel like I do my best work when i feel like i've made something where the audience is not going to be a spectator it's not a spectator sport it's a participatory sport and i don't want you anywhere near your phone i want to own you right i want to own your breathing when you're watching those sequences um well friday nights the movie was like that too like there was a couple game scenes when you're just like you lock in and yeah and um that that's again like when i say it's like i think it's one of my better films i do love all my films like i would love all my children some you might love a little bit more secretly but um this this felt like we were hitting that um immersive experiential vibe and if it means you stop for a minute and think wait a minute i think my life sucks right now oh i'm like having trouble with whatever no you're not on a beach at tarawa watching your friends throats get shot out as as you catch on fire and you've got to go find a gun because you lost your gun in the water pulling the tags off your friends yeah something so i i don't think that's a bad takeaway i think it's actually a really good takeaway and you think about if one's so inclined like what's going on right now in ukraine right here right now where you know i've heard numbers up to 45 000 a month dying if you russian in ukraine it's trench warfare it's young men being sent out to fight and it's happening like what you see in mosquito bowl is happening in this world right now so that was all kind of lurking in my brain when i made the film probably a better movie theater movie than a home experience i hope so ted ted sarandos it's funny because you make a film at netflix and uh you never know right like you don't know who's going to be working there the week your movie comes out you don't know no you don't know who's going to be working there shout out to bella who i think we both admire very much uh and wish all the very best not not that she needs it she'll get it but she'll be fine but she was awesome yeah i thought i thought she did a great job running everything for them she did and this is the nature of hollywood it is um these jobs you know someone says they're rented like all the time they're rented they're rented they're rented they're rented all of our jobs are rented you know i say like we are owed nothing and and you know things happen but um uh definitely a bummer and you know for us this week um as we're getting ready to come out we come out in two weeks and there's been you know some shake-ups at netflix but ted did say when he saw the film this film should be seen in theaters and he gave us a real meaningful release he brokered a truce with amc theaters because amc and netflix were in them like fuck you fuck you you're we're not going to show your movies or the yeah so we were able to broker a detente i think is the word and we're going to get the good theaters so we're not just like getting a uh like you know bs that'll run in some shitty theaters and that nobody wants to go to yeah um and i i appreciate ted for doing that um i do think that movies are in like an awesome spot right now i would say the best in like 12 years i would too and and like please come if you're going to see our film see it in a movie theater it's it's big and intense and i think i don't know do you agree deserves to be seen in a theater i i in much respect i wish i had seen in theater but we had the pod and i wanted i was glad i watched it with my dad and i have a good tv setup so it was it wasn't like lacking but it was different you can imagine like big and loud yeah i maxed out you want like the seat shaking and stuff yeah um and and i think i want movies to live i know you love movies i mean i i watch tons of television shows love it thankful for netflix all that but man come on like i want movies i want movie theaters um well people are going again yeah and and i think by the way if you're a creative person like how much how many you did the six hour tv show how much of your life was that making it yeah it's six six one hour episode so it's like a year right american primeval was like 140 day shoot on the mountain um and like making a six but i don't mind that i don't mind the work and it's really kind of cool to tell to have six hours to go really deep in character and yeah and bella gave us everything we wanted for american primeval you know when i really started to respect her was was on primeval and let me do what i wanted to do and i was super proud of that um but people watch it at home and they're on their phones and they're distracted and they might it's a problem and then they move to the next thing and they finish that it's the half watch era correct i do it too i'm as guilty as anyone same here and i want right now i'm watching crystal lake on peacock and if you quiz me on it i think i would get like a d minus because you're but i've watched every minute of it but i'm also like reading football and making picks but then like when something holds your attention doesn't it does it like what's the last thing besides mosquito ball where you just like throw the ipad and the phones away you're just like locked in and like like i'm watching the elon musk doc now yeah locked in for whatever reason um you know like you appreciate something that locks you in so much more now because it's so hard to lock in okay it's it's much harder you know well football is definitely yeah like this season it feels like does it not feel like we're like in some weird rarefied because we don't have any good teams we have a bunch of pretty good teams and so every week like the rams are two and fours we're taking this not a bad team though right but everyone's kind of okay with flaws which makes it a really fun football season because we have no actual favorites casey's five and i don't feel awesome about them i heard you talking about my nfc east and my giant and just how eight wins and six that's that i heard that stat wasn't like the worst some like the lowest wins since the merger did you say the no division has gone winless two straight weeks in a row yeah since 1970 that what's blowing my mind a bit too is like owning a boxing gym and seeing all these pro athletes and we have a lot and i see what they're doing as far as like um recovery and the stuff they're taking and the the saunas and the ice baths and the hyperbaric chambers yeah and supplements all legal as far as i know but that are you know meant to enhance and yoga and stretching techniques and all this stuff and to see the injuries in football this year i mean yeah i mean just basketball too and another achilles injury dude what is happening like like i really don't think it's doing any good i think it's all bullshit i think 90 of this recovery work that everyone's obsessed with um the only guy i've seen whose training really feels like it's on another level who worked with our actors on mosquito bowl is christian mccaffrey who came down and trained a bunch of our um uh actors because some of them had no idea they'd never played football they were british and so christian is that true no it's two brits in a suite who i i i'm like what was tony bukovich he was tony bukovich is ray nicholson he played football he was because i thought he was the i mean he was my favorite character i think he was supposed to be though yeah and he was he was the best athlete but um christian came down it was off season and he trained them and what christian does that's your fault for hiring british actors well jerk i know but they were the best actors they were the best actors so you're part of the problem but i feel like if i was a gm i would always just draft the best athlete right like just don't think about quarterback don't think about you know skill position go with the best athletes yeah i don't know whether that works or not but i was i was the best athlete friday night it's mbj uh oh the tv show or the movie tv show because the movie it was lucas black was a really good football player let me think for a second the the tv show probably michael jordan yeah yeah probably michael jordan which is very athletic um when i auditioned him the first time i auditioned him he went he started improvving that he was a linebacker and he just went off and he tackled me into a wall broke a lamp but just went off and didn't apologize it's like yeah that just happened he's just like blue 80 blue 80 yeah dog dog red and he just he's an old school jersey athlete yeah he's a good athlete um and just had that like convincing qb i mean the two the two stories of friday night lights like michael b back on it no shock right like yeah from the moment he auditioned and tackled me through a wall i knew this kid was going to go somewhere jesse plemmons like was basically an extra had like one line in the pilot was was in nothing role came in well you know when you're casting these shows you spend so much time on the the main roles and it's kind of a you know very exhausting process and you read so many actors and you put them through all these auditions You spend so much of your bandwidth that once you've made those decisions, The smaller roles, it's like, hmm, let me see. Okay, you look good. Your nose is working. You got all your teeth. Okay, you're hired. Like, you just want to get it over with. Jesse was that. Like, I mean, he had all his teeth. Complete fluke. He said, yes, sir. Proud to be here. Great, you're hired. Totally forgot about him until the first day he was on set and he was doing the scene with Saracen, with Zach Guilford. And it was really Zach's scene. He was just the, like, nerdy little friend. And I remember he said something like, hello, Mrs. Saracen. And to Matt's mother, it was his line. And then she said hello and gave him a dirty look. And he just sort of, like, snarled to himself. Like, he didn't like the fact that the mother was being mean to him. But I remember, like, whoa, what was that? Yeah. What was that? That little thing. You added it. He did it. Yeah. But it completely took. He just was like, hmm. Right. Hmm. At the mother, who was, like, dissing him. Like, he was, like, tried to give it back to her, but he was scared to. And he was respectful, but he was angry that this lady was disrespecting him. He made this little moment out of nothing. And I remember thinking, look a little closer at this guy. And then every day. Every day. It's Ari calling, wondering why you haven't called him back. Every day, we added a little bit more. A little bit more. And then, like, our super hot girl, like, our sex symbol, not Garrity, but Adrienne Palicki, it was Tyra, was like, you know, she was the hot girl in the school. And slowly, like, the writers start aiming Landry, Jesse Plemons, at Tyra, and they become a couple. And, you know, there was some dumb stuff that didn't work, like a murder, but we got off of that. Now it's funny. Now it's funny for the legacy of the show. Yeah. The whole. The whole murder section. And, like, when we did it, I'm just like, let's just pretend it never happened. Well, that was the, NBC wants us to get the ratings up. We need murder. Yeah, do a murder. Do a murder. Do more sex, do a murder. Love Triangle murder. That's right. Just going down the list of notes. And to their credit, they were like, just pretend like the murder. Because our strategy was, for those that don't know, the ratings were horrible, and we're going to cancel it. We also do 22 episodes. Now you're doing that show, you're doing eight. Yeah. So maybe 10. 10? Yeah, 10. But yeah, the murder, the murder was, that was not our finest hour. But the lesson that, like, Jesse Plemons came out of nowhere. Michael B., you knew, like, yeah, like, this guy had, like, Denzel vibes, and it was incredible. We knew each other at that point. I remember you telling me about casting that second group, and we were talking about how the White Shadows screwed this up, and it was a whole long convo about, like, this is how it goes. It was wrong. Yeah. And then you were like, this kid, Michael B., and he was from The Wire, and it was like, oh, my God, that kid? Yeah. He died in season one. I know him. Wallace. And so that was, that was the biggest shock. Like, Jesse, for sure. Like, you knew Minka was going to have a good run. Yeah. You knew Kitsch was going to have a good run. You knew Kyle and Connie were going to, you know, that would be easier. Well, you caught both of them where it was going to happen. It happened for them, and you just, it happened for you. I didn't want Kyle Chandler. You know that, right? I'm afraid I know this, though. Who did you want instead? I wanted Dwight Yoakam. Right. That's right. And I was like, Dwight Yoakam, he's the guy, and Dwight wanted to do it. And then his schedule, because he was touring, you know, as a musician, he needed all this time off. And I'm like, let's just give it to him. We'll give him the time off. And they were like, we can't do that, Pete. I'm like, but we can. They're like, we can't. You can't be in the show unless he stops touring, which he wasn't going to do. Too much money from touring. Yeah. And then someone was like, Kyle Chandler. I'm like, Kyle Chandler? And he was on that show, Early Edition, where he'd get the newspaper the day before. He was kind of the Brad Pitt class of, what's that, how old is he now? Like, late 50s? Yeah. Yeah. He was in Damon Affleck, kind of that vicinity, and he never had the show. No, I didn't see it. Like, from watching his show, I'm like, no. I'm like, nice guy, good actor, no. We met. They're like, just take a meeting with him. And he showed up, and he had just come back from a bachelor. He was at a bachelor party, and he looked like shit. He was hungover. That was it. Beard, messy, bags under the eyes. And he was so not what I thought he was going to be. And I'm like, this? Just do this, and we'll be good. All right. Well, the important things we leave with are, see the movie in the theater if you can. Yes, sir. But if you can't, it'll be great either way, because it's a really good movie. And then Friday Night Lights is coming back. Those are my two takeaways. If you say so. And don't get in a boxing ring again. Not with Canelo Alvarez. Just don't get hit anymore. No. We're too old. Don't get hit. If you want to work out with me in the gym, we'll get a good workout in, but I won't punch you, and you don't punch me. Who owns the, would that be NBC? Peacock owns it? Owns NBC? Friday Night Lights. Yeah, the rights are kind of all over the place right now, so yes. Well, fortunately for you, your cousin wrote the book that it's based on. It would be NBC and that crew. What are we doing? Just do it. All right. Can you put it in a different, can you put it in a different city? You mean, but probably keep it in Texas, or do you think we should move it to Florida or like- Florida, now we're talking. But there's so many states, like Pennsylvania. You could do Friday Night Lights in Pennsylvania. That's all the right moves. You could do it in Atlanta. I mean, you could literally do it anywhere. Florida has my attention. Kind of interesting, right? Yeah. Then you could bring some other stuff in there too. All right. You could bring a lot of stuff. Bring some things in there. People are great to see you. Proud of you, buddy. Proud of you. Thank you. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Pete and Blake and Gahal and Eduardo and Chris and Jack from the Spotify side. Don't forget, I have new rewatchables, It Follows, which went up, and we have a live rewatchables coming Monday, five o'clock ET, fourth horror movie of the month. If you want more basketball content, check out Zach Lowe's podcast, The Mismatched, Ringer NBA Show, Ringer Wise Guys, Zach's Substack that we just launched. All the great pieces on the ringer.com, and I'm going to be back with a big-ass football podcast. I already got a couple of great emails for House for Thursday, but I'll be back on Thursday with more stuff. See you then. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Ever notice lemon is everywhere from lemon recipes to lemon-scented cleaning supplies? And when it comes to lemon-lime sodas, why is lemon always first? There's a reason. A shadowy organization called the Alemonade has been padding the stats, keeping big lemon in the lead for decades. But let me tell you something. The sip is about to be flipped. 7Up is fighting back, swapping lemon-lime for their new lime-lemon soda. Now, lime comes first. 7Up, flip the sip. Thank you.