NBA One Guy (the East!), a Man City Punishment Primer, and Tom Cruise’s Bomb With J. Kyle Mann, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

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Those were the two latest pods. We have a bunch of basketball podcast stuff as well. We also have some written stuff that we've added with our relationship with Substack. Tom Palacero, we talked about the sweep. Brian Curtis launched his Substack finally this week. It is called Now They Tell Us. I thought the first installment was fantastic. He's going to be covering all types of sports media topics. So if you love the Press Box, please go check out Brian Curtis. And his new endeavor coming up on this podcast, Jay Kyle Mann and I are going to go through the East and talk about one guy from every team that we're particularly fascinated by. And then Chris Ryan and Van Lathan were here because we did the Friday 13th rewatchables together. And Chris wanted to give us a book report on what's happening with this Man City situation, which is the single most fascinating suspension situation probably in the history of professional sports leagues. So we talked about that. We talked about Tom Cruise and we talked about the Cable Star Hall of Fame were the three topics for that. So that's all coming up next. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Kyle Mann talking some hoops. 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. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat Connecticut. All right, J. Kyle Mann is here. He pops on this podcast a bunch during the NBA season. You can also hear him on the Ringer NBA show. And he does some video stuff for us too. And he loves rookies. He loves college guys. Which rookie? If I gave you A.J., Caleb, Boozer, and Peterson, now that we're within like less than three weeks to the season, which one are you the most excited to see? Combining where you felt before the draft, what happened in the draft, where they went to, and then all the buzz and all the stuff you're reading as we head into October 21st here. Gosh, it's just, there's a flavor. It's a real Baskin-Robbins situation where if you catch me in the right mood, I could just give you any of these guys. I'm excited for kind of different reasons. I mean, Caleb Wilson is going, like we've talked, you and I have a lot about this. I mean, he's going to probably win Twitter the most often, I think. There's going to be many of those like Blake Griffin-y rookie year type moments where we're just like, did you see what he just did? Peterson will get hot. You know, DeBont will have his moments. I think I'd probably still just go Boozer. I know that's the boring answer. And he may be perceived as boring. But I think if you even watched him in the preseason game last night against the Hawks, he's trimmed. He's trimmed his body down. He immediately was just doing winning Cam Boozer type of things. And so I'll stick with that one because I had him number one at the end of the college season. So you came to the LA office and you did a whole bunch of group chats with Mahoney and Verrier. And I actually was in the office and I just crashed your Memphis and New Orleans section. So the pot, I don't think it's gone up with. All of us love Memphis for being better than, you know, I think on Fandle, they're 29 and a half. And I think the biggest reason is just Boozer's seems like he's going to come in right away and be a 19 and 10 guy. I'm the most excited for Caleb just because of, I think for the first month, the league pass, I kind of know what Boozer is as much as I'm going to enjoy watching that Memphis team and their identity. Peterson, I think will be hit or miss. There's going to be games. You catch them on the right night. And you're like, Oh my God, we haven't had a two guard like this since forever. AJ is, probably in the worst spot. Cause I don't know how much he's going to have the offense running through him. And he's playing with Trey, but then Caleb, it just feels like it's, it's the ceiling has been removed for where it could go. I have no idea where it's going to go. And he's one of the guys we're going to do an NBA, one guy gimmick in a second, but he's clearly the guy for the bulls run. Like I literally can't wait to watch this. Yeah. I mean, and there's a lot of runway for him to, to experiment and be messy because they're not in a hurry to be, to be good, obviously. And, you know, he, he and Booz Ellis with, with splitter, I'm just interested to see how he uses them. You know, they imported some shooting when they went and got the buddy healed thing done just to, just to, they needed, they just needed another space or to go with Norm Powell. So, yeah, I mean, he's going to, I think you're right. I mean, Boozer's kind of the guy you just kind of set it and it's going to just run. I don't even know what the appliance comparison would be, but you just know that that thing is safe. But Wilson is going to, he's going to have a, on both ends, of the floor. I think he's going to have electric moments where he just erased, you know, chase down blocks, things like that. So I think night, night to night, I mean, the, the texting, I don't, I don't think there's going to be as much of that with Boozer, right? They're like, can you believe what he just did? But it's just going to kind of hover at the same speed. Whereas Caleb's going to spike really high at moments. And he's also going to a fan base that desperately needed somebody like this since forever. Like this is, there's real energy around this team. Now we're going to play, I'm calling this NBA, one guy. So we're doing the East today, you and I, and I'm going to do the West on Thursday. But this is one guy from each team that jumps out to me from a kind of swinging the ceiling or the floor of the team itself. But also I'm really interested by the position they're in. So I told you I could have mailed all these to you, or you could have just played off. And you were like, ad lib, baby, let's go. I don't want to know any of these guys. You like, I, you like to surprise me. So I figured out, I did say that. So, yeah, well, I was going to go in alphabetical order in the conference, but we'll go out of order because Caleb was my Chicago guy because he's checked every single buzz box so far, but I'm going to tweak it. It's him and Bezellus together. And if you read, do the training camp, like just reading the coverage of the team, those guys have already bonded and seem like they're Bezellus is smartly aligned with him. But I also kind of like the matchup of the two of them together. That makes sense to me as a combo. And I think there's going to be something there. Like all the early indications are like, you know, somebody wrote a huge, I think it was ESPN wrote a huge Caleb piece. And there was some anonymous quote from a team source. And they were like, we think we have a guy. And when you start seeing stuff like that, that was like when the Patriots got Drake may like, you see this with quarterbacks sometimes see with the NBA. But when, when the organization is like, Oh shit, we have a guy. And it feels like that's happened already. But Bezellus, I think both of us, we liked never felt like he clicked with Donovan. But them as the three and the four together kind of makes sense to me. I don't like Nick Claxton necessarily as the center for that, but those guys as the three and four, let's see what this is going forward. Long-term makes sense to me. Yeah. We, we saw a little flash. I wasn't sure what to make of Bezellus when he was coming out of a G league night, but he's kind of slowly won me. He's very like chaotic. Good. Which I think is what this tandem is. Going to be like, it's going to be, I said messy before with both of them. Yeah. It's like Bezellus showed little flashes of playing in ball screen a little bit. I was revisiting a lot of that stuff in our, in our prep for our preview thing. And I was like, he's going to have to, he still dribbles really high when he's in traffic. He's going to have to work on a lot of those things and not to step on, you know, a point I made about him with the, with an on, on our pod, we elaborate on it in a lot of detail, but I, this, the way Tiago splitter rolled out, uh, um, Denny, you know, last year in the way that he empowered him to get downhill, I could see him taking a similar mindset with, with Bezellus. Um, so that, that in that sense, and defensively, I think that they're going to be pretty electric too. These are like two crazy, crazy athletes. Yeah. And that was my thought too, was splitter the Denny point. I didn't think of that, but if I, if I'm coaching this team, I just want both of those guys to be going downhill and running and just being athletic, being, in space. And, um, both those guys can do it. I, I thought Buzz Ellis really had moments last year and then there'd be moments where he just didn't play. And, and you never really knew what the objective of the team was, but I thought athletically he's top of the line. And then Wilson is a level above him athletically. So you put those two together and I just think there's going to be some really fun nights. There's going to be some ugly nights, but there's going to be nights when the crowd, especially if they haven't had a home crowd in so long, that's really been pumped about the team. They're going to have nights at home. I think when, when they're going to be flying up and down, especially giddy. So if you're looking at giddy too, like this is like the perfect kind of toy chest for him. These two athletes who just want to run and want to go, you know, to the rim. So, um, I'm excited for those two together. All right. We'll go in alphabetical order from, from here on one guy, Atlanta. My guy is Lou Dort for this team. And it's not a sexy pick. 27 years old contract year. Hmm. Um, playoff threes last three years, 39% and 24, 34% than 31% last year. And it got to the point where it felt like the other team was dying for him to shoot. Right. It was like, we'll take our chances with Lou Dort. Presti dumped him. Never a great sign. I trust saying Presti. And you could say it's salary cap. I get it. But if they really wanted to keep, um, like they wanted to keep Hartenstein, they would have kept Lou Dort. They felt like they'd be okay without him. But I look at him with Atlanta and I think about like, if they're going crunch time and it's McCollum and Dort, Alexander Walker, Jalen Johnson, and a Congo, right. I kind of like it. And then you could go super small if you wanted like super small and just put Daniels in for a Congo and just play Jalen as the smallest, small ball five, and maybe have Dort guard big guy. But he gives them a physicality and something that they didn't have. And I also think he's going to have a huge chip on his shoulder. So to me, he's the swing guy for them. Um, if he, if he can be 2024 Lou Dort, I think that's a massive thing for them. Yeah. It's interesting to think about like why Presti would offload him because I've, I've been kind of going through and, and looking at, you know, like Wiggins ends up with them as well. Isaiah Jones ends up with the Pistons. Yeah. It kind of made me have flashbacks to, you know, Presti with his connection to the Spurs kind of makes your mind go here where you're like, there was a funny thing that happened with the Spurs where they would have role players sort of leave the, the, their little community at some point. And we would value those guys super, super high. And I caught myself having a moment where I was like, is that going to happen again? Are we going to have that thing where they're, they're within their value is affected by being within the thunder ecosystem, like Danny green syndrome almost. Yeah. Or like, or what was it? Was it Gibson? Gary, um, I'm blanking on his name. The guy who hit all the ton of threes in the, in the finals, Gary, uh, whatever, uh, or, uh, speedy Claxton. I remember. Didn't he get a big deal, uh, after I think it was 2003, I just kind of wonder if we might see that again. I don't know that that's the case. So you're saying like the system role players when they leave the lead, the nest, it's not the same. Yes. What was that Gary guy? Are we that old? We can't remember the Gary Neal. Gary Neal. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. You, you hit it there with the lineup thing. I mean, Daniel's can guard up and guard bigs. This team has still has a lot of overlap between their guys. Even like you don't read a lot into preseason, you know, you try not to, but watching them, I'm like, I do expect Kingston to have a positive impact on them. Like I think he'll play early, but it still feels like there's the roadmap is just not totally there yet. Like I, it kind of made me wonder, it got my wheels spinning about like, are they a team? Do they have a potential to make, to push in because there is some, like a two for one or something. Yeah. Like some, I was trying to figure out, I was like, who, who could they put on? Cause I was looking at it. I was like, Kyrie doesn't really make sense for Dallas and Atlanta to do business together. Cause they both have kind of similar needs, right? It's like Dallas. Isn't like, well, we don't need more non-creators or whatever it is. And then I was like, maybe Garland. I don't know. I was kind of trying to look across the league about what kind of a guard or creator could give them more options. Cause I kind of wonder at the end of the day, if Jalen Johnson is probably like at the ha on the highest type of a team, like a second or third type guy, you know, I've been wondering about that. Well, they also have the ability to trade toward if they wanted, which I was wondering that at 17 million, that guy is definitely a February piece. Atlanta is a team to me that seems unfinished and a lot of it is tied around how he fits in. And then if Fleming's is going to be good or not this year, 20 year old guards, I'm, I'm just not gonna. I'm just gonna make a prediction. You might, you might end up with Jeremiah fears. You might end up with James book night. You just don't know. Um, Boston, who do you think my guy is for Boston to discuss? If you had to guess, uh, Ron Harper, Jr. Oh, I do like Ron Harper, Jr. No, I'm going, uh, I'm going chalk here with Paul George. Always down to talk. Paul George, 36 years old. NBA season. He's played 945 regular season games, 125 playoff games. And since 2019, a seven year run, he's missed 213 games, including 41 and 45 the last two years. But then you flip it around the other way in the 2020s, it's 22, six and four 39% from three, uh, statistically sexy, good, sexy statistical profile. Uh, if you're. For his career. Yeah. For sure. And I guess I was trying to figure out if he's ever been in a better NBA situation, which is weird. Cause he's not, not the same guy he was four years ago, but just from a, Hey, Paul George, anything you do for us as a bonus, if you're good, that's fucking great. If you don't have it or you're a little banged up or whatever, we don't really need you. We have all these other young guys we can throw into your spot. I'm thinking. So Jalen played 20, 2,443 minutes last year, which Tatum basically is just going to take because Tatum's back. Tatum is usually around 26, 2,700 minutes, who go and Shireman were around 2,200 combined. I think if, if I think they need 55 Paul George games during the regular season and 1500 to 1600 good minutes. So he doesn't play all the time, but when he plays, he's around 28 minutes. Um, you can. You can switch with him. I think him and Tatum together are going to be really fun to watch these two tall guys who can guard every position on the floor. And Dave sold me on the, this guy will actually play off Jay Jason better than Jalen did, which is just going to be true. As you know, I love Jalen brown. Um, but I think he could be a really additive piece to them and I've talked to myself into it. So tell me either I'm crazy or I'm right. The idea of Paul George is one of the all time, like the idea of a player he's one of the, the best players in the league. I think he's one of the best players in the league. He's been an elite player in the league. men who they're going nuts about. And it's a, to me, it reminds me a little of the Philly situation where you have these other options. If somebody doesn't play, right. It's like Paul George isn't playing tonight. Well, we're fine. We have Shireman Walsh played 1200 minutes last year, Harper, and then Hugo and they'll patch it together. Um, but I, I think the, the ultimate goal would be, what does this look like in the playoffs in a series? Can you count on him every other night? Things like that. I, that I have no idea, but I do think they can get 55 games, 1600, 1500, somewhere in there minutes. And I think that fans are going to like them. I can't believe I'm saying that, but I just think he's an additive player. You like them less if he's one of your two guys that are going to decide whether you win the title or not, but he's like not one of their five guys. So we're going to decide whether they're a title team. He's in a much better situation. So, uh, I fully drank in the Kool-Aid. I poured. I poured it all over myself. And I don't, I think he's going to be additive for them. I think, I think he's regressing a little bit into like overqualified role player status. A little bit, but, and I, but I think that's okay. And I, you're thinking about like the best basketball situations he's been in. This'll probably be the bet. I just keep thinking about cumulative passing. When I think about the Celtics, you think about Derek, why you think about Jason has always been a little bit better at that. Not that everything's about Jalen, but he's always been the better of the two about getting off the ball. I just think they're going to have a lot of good pastors on the floor where it's not going to bottleneck. And if you think about the teams that Paul's been on last year with Embiid with Maxie, with the, it's just the ball didn't move quite as well. No, I think this will be one of the better. Yeah. Yeah. I think this will be, he's going to be an overqualified connector too. I think I still don't understand the trade, but I at least understand the trade. I wouldn't have done it, but I get why they did it. And I think it was a basketball decision. For them with the minutes and all the players. And I just don't think it was sustainable with those two guys. I think they thought we've hit the ceiling with this. We won the title. We need to get out of this Brooklyn. I have Michael Porter jr. For this one, because I thought about Demin because Demin, there's some interesting stats with him. Like he had this crazy month where he shot like 44% and he has size and I'm intrigued by him, but I went with Porter because he's the total internet podcast package. He is. His first team, all NBA trade machine. He'll be in the trade machine until the deadline in mid February. Well, he'll just be just throw them in. He's got the good stats, bad team stuff. He's a really good. And I think Randall's like this too. We don't want to finish in the bottom three. Can you win a couple of games for us and get some stats and maybe push us into the bottom five or six. So we're not in the bottom three. And then just as maybe the craziest interview of anyone in the league, I wrote down just some of the things he, he said, he once texted yoke edge how to approach and date a Slavic woman and yoke edge left them on red. This was a tidbit. He once said a McDonald's all American high school team would absolutely beat the woman's Olympic team. He said he wouldn't date anyone who has dated another NBA player. It's just a automatic cross off. He said the Porter's family has vices. His brother loved gambling and he loves women. He shared that. He accidentally put Adam Silver's number on Snapchat. Do you remember this? This was a few years ago that happened. He said in a podcast that he tests potential girlfriends by throwing on Andrew Tate to see how they react. And then back in 2020, he said he thought COVID was used for population control. So I'm, I'm excited for him in a free agent year. I don't know what he's capable of. We have more podcasts to go on. Um, I don't think he's really, I think he's going to be letting it fly. But, uh, he's a trade machine guy, Michael Porter jr. I'm in the, yeah, it's interesting. Some of the risk for somebody who gets the, gets shots up the, some of the riskiest and most harmful shots that, that, uh, that Porter takes or when he's in front of a microphone. And I was just thinking that, um, whenever you relaunch the hottest take, you were giving me the tour and show him where that, where that would be taking place. Bring him, bring, just bring him in, bring him in cold. Just bring, bring Porter in cold and just like turn the mic on him. Just let him stay there. Um, I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know. on him just let him start speaking and you'll be able to just kind of trim it into episodes right we'll get like a half hour of straight content um yeah look he's an expired contract i think at 37 million a good team is going to trade for him yeah for sure well detroit would have made a whole lot of sense it isn't interesting that you hear people i think bernthal was talking about this because bernthal's dad was a basketball coach i think or something he was saying your your personality your play style reflects your personality and it is so funny how porter jr's personality absolutely is reflected in the way he plays basketball with just no conscience just yeah absolutely doesn't doesn't second guess anything but he's still for all the joking around it's like he's 6 10 and he is just an incredible you know he can get his shot up in any situation even if even if it's a closeout even if he's driving i mean he hits shots over anthony davis like he's just he's uh he's uh he's one of the most talented shooters in the world and he happens to be six foot ten and you're right some team is gonna look around and just go let's add that and i've also been encouraged by him coming to this team he his quote something sensible that he said was that he wanted to be an even better off-ball player it's like in a way he kind of knows who he is i was glad he wasn't coming in there and just being like all eyes on me he it's uh it's not a harmful way that he plays he's 28 years old this will be probably his last big contract if you catch him on the right night coming off screens and just firing he seems unstoppable i think he from all the guys from this decade i think he's going to be the number one blank was a problem video that we have in 2039 i think there's going to be a three-minute michael porter jr thing where it's like is this kind of the best part of all time uh do you see the do you see the prompt i put out last night we should i said we should just start challenging ourselves to see how hard we can make it like just to pick oh somebody yeah somebody suggested it's gonna be a three-minute michael porter jr thing where it's like this is kind of the best part of all time uh do you see the do you see the prompt i put out last night we should i said we should just start challenging ourselves to see how hard we can make it like just to pick somebody yeah somebody we should just start challenging ourselves to see how hard we can make it like just to pick oh yeah somebody suggested we make a coast of kufas uh he was a problem video and i'm working on that in my spare time right now interesting like a like a greg steams but yeah you'd have to really pour off some tape for that one but yeah all right next next team is charlotte naz read is the easy pick for this 27 years old last three years 14 and six 38 from three 25 minutes a game uh beloved teammate i think he's a guy who could be on the floor in the last five minutes of a good game oh we know that yeah um which they needed here's what's interesting to me because they traded lamello and you would think the charlotte threes would go backwards they made 16.4 threes a game last year which led led the league that's a lot of threes miller khan kobe white grace and alan who they have now naz reed and o'neill those guys combined just those six made 16.4 made threes a game last year and i wonder is this team could this team potentially make like 19 threes a game 18 and a half like what what's the ceiling for that and then how much of an advantage is that going to be because we're we're seeing this in baseball where they look at all these different inefficiencies for regular season and lately it was like defense or you know like tampa bay just always zags against where everybody's going to be you know like you know like everybody's going and with charlotte i wonder like if you're making 18 19 threes a game is that worth like 10 wins and then could naz reed play 30 minutes a game instead of 25. can he play with both with the abate and without him or are they going to play him a power forward with steinback but i think how they use him is going to be the key to this team um because i like all the other pieces yeah it's it seems like that's been the recurring thing you hear from people is just you know they want to get these threes up but how are they going to create them um and you assume that you know lamello not being there i kind of think it might just be a little bit of a stylistic shift because you don't have like the elite you know pass or uh playmaker pick and roll guy um but i've kind of wondered if they might go a little more warriorsy where they're depending on their their movement shooting and just kind of playing and then getting cutting from that um i think that's what they want to do i think they want to have i think they want to run a lot of the stuff through miller and khan and then kobe white obviously too but a lot of where it's just way less predictable than just lamello dribbling the ball up yeah and something interesting and underrated about naz is he can handle the ball really well for his size so he'll be able to like space the floor effectively in a way that miles didn't and then um he can drive his position really well so that he just he's a really versatile piece um we'll see if the wolves fans they're how heartbroken they are at the over the course of this season just missing him not just because he was a great vibes guy but he he is really really versatile like really really yeah skilled for his size shot heavy heavy volumes bought up threes last year and hit 40 of them so charlotte really leaning into their their shooting thing even if the means to the end is going to be a little bit different this year he's always been a good per 36 guy he's always been a good eye test guy and i like the fact that you know in in your head it feels like he's been around forever which lou dort's like this too it's like you're only 27. i was getting 2019 yeah or you could have told me he was 32 i would have believed that but yeah he's only 27. so i think Charlotte, the other key for them will be how much can Khan, how much can stuff run through him, right? Because we forget Khan really flamed out the last three weeks of the season and in the playoffs, and I don't know how healthy he was, but it cost him the rookie of the year. But these year two guys, and we're going to see with Flag too and a couple others, like year two, you make a huge jump. Now you're used to the schedule. You've worked on conditioning different things to get, you know what you kind of need to do. And I think for him, he'll be, I think he'll be in good shape, but I also think he's going to be ready to run plays and offense for them, which I don't know. I always felt like when they did pick and pop with him and he had the ball and it's either he was throwing it back to whoever set him the pick or he was just playing off the pick and shooting. I always felt that was unstoppable. And I want to see like, can you do that with Nas Reed? Can you do this? And then the other one is Steinbeck. What is he going to look like for them as like a rebounder? Because. It feels like they're a little lighter than rebounders. Anyway. Okay. For Cleveland, it's clearly Peyton Watson. 24 years old. Signs a four-year $88 million deal. Kyle, his first three years, he was seven points a game, 19 minutes a game, 33% from three. In the 25 playoffs, which is less than a year and a half ago, he played 14 minutes a game for them. And then in 26, it all jumped up. Mainly because of this 19 game stretch he had where there wasn't a lot of yoke edge and he was like 22 a game. He was hitting threes. He looked like just an awesome two-way player potentially, but he also had the ball a lot. Now he's going to Cleveland. Guess where he's not going to have the ball a lot Cleveland. Cause they still have Mitchell and they still have hardened. Um, we've never seen him succeed with a lot of minutes in the playoffs. We haven't seen it at all. They paid him like a playoff guy. He's in the salary group right now. He's IO Brooks, giddy, Jabari, Hartenstein, McDaniels, uh, Nem hard on the Pacers, the cell, Kobe white zoo bots. These are like proven really good. I'm not one of the two best players in your team, but I'm right underneath and they're paying them like that. And as talented as he is, I'm, I don't know if he has it or not. Like, I just don't, I don't know yet. And I think anyone who says, oh, we definitely know. From that 19 game stretch. I don't think you can say it. I don't know how it's going to play out. So where do you stand? I mean, he's definitely going to take a hit in terms of the organic, just cutting style that of just flying around Yoko that comes, that comes with playing with him, it's a little bit different playing in such a heavy, heavy ball screen, uh, situation and, and you're playing with two guys who are rough spacing bigs. I, I think you could argue at this point and Jared Allen and Mobley, so that'll be different too. But I mean, the. The catch and shoot stuff with him, he's, his shooting has really, really improved. He was almost 40, 45% last year from, on his catch and shoot. So, um, I think he'll be able to serve that role. It's just kind of, um, he's going to have to be hyper-efficient, I think, to justify, um, the payment that he got for, for, you know, based on he has, he has a lot of kind of upside ambition. I don't know if this is like a Jeremy grant thing where he's going to pursue that and pursue that, and then we're just kind of, and then we're. Like, eh, I think you're probably better over in this box. We might be on that path. Um, but it'll be interesting to see how he responds to being a little bit in tighter kind of parameters, I think, as opposed to who, who's spacing wise, was he working around in Denver? That was really somebody to move around. I mean, Aaron Gordon, Aaron Gordon's become a pretty good shooter over time. So this will definitely be a much different space spacing challenge for him in Cleveland. I feel like it's either going to go awesome. Or it's going to be really rocky and awkward for the first month. And I, and you could give me either look, I thought Denver should have kept them. And I, if I have yoke edge, I'm just, I'm paying the apron and the tax. And obviously the cronkies have a ton of money because they just bought the angels and they keep buying sports teams with that said, I was more surprised from the Cleveland side of this. And I know they were able to shed some contracts and kind of, kind of figure out how to Scotch tape this together and make it work. But they don't have a lot of outs. If this doesn't work because they gave Mitchell the extension, um, mobile's make a lot of money. They're back in, in the heart of business for two more years. And they kind of like, they don't have a choice with this. This has to work. And we've never seen him as a side piece of a really good playoff team where he does them the ball a lot. And I just want to see it. How is he going to play? Cause at Denver, he looked awesome, but he had the ball, like it was, you know, the team didn't really have a choice. They had to run a lot of stuff through him and he did really well. But, um, how is that going to work in Cleveland? We'll see. It's a, it's a pretty big number of risk. Cause those guys I mentioned are all with the exception of maybe Jabari guys who had real like IO Brooks, McDaniels, zoo bots, the cell. Like these are guys who played in big games and kind of know their role. And I'm not sure, you know, your role with them. Um, okay. We're gonna take a break and then we're gonna go through the rest of this. The bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. On FanDuel, a player leaving the game, doesn't have to mean the end of your bet. It's called pinch hit protection. If the player you bet on exits the game and is replaced by a pinch hitter, your bet stays in play with the player who takes his place because in the post-season managers are going to make moves, lineups are going to change and FanDuel gives your bet away to stay in the game. I agree with what cousin Sal said on Sunday. I think we're headed for a Tampa Milwaukee world series. Just seems like the perfect matchup as we head into a lockout. And also both of those teams are really good. I am on Ben Rice for homers, basically every Yankee playoff game, the rest of the way, because he's on fire and he's the only one on that team who's hitting it. I don't think it's going to stop. Uh, so there you go. Uh, when you're making your player picks this post-season, look out for pinch hit protection, check it out in the FanDuel app or visit Fender.com/bs to get started FanDuel your home for home runs. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC or Wyoming restrictions apply. See [email protected] game problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by state farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why state farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor state farm is there. Detroit business. I wish this wasn't the answer, but I think it has to be during is the most fascinating guy in this team. He got the contract 40 for 200 centers making more than him. This year will be Anthony Davis. If you count him as a center and bead towns, bam, Sabonis triple J if you count him as a center Chet and Wemby. So he's being paid as a top tier, dude. I voted for him for a second team, all NBA. Um, he was absolutely abysmal and horrible in the playoffs. And if you're going to be favorable, you say, whoa. He had a lot of, he was putting a lot of pressure on himself because this contract was coming. Yeah. The glass half empty would be the league kind of figured out what to do with the roles and be physical with them before that lobs even thrown. And there wasn't really a plan B for them. And he got in his own head and didn't do as well. This is a, this is a bigger version of the Watson contract. If they're wrong on this, it's kind of a, it's kind of a half a decade sinker for them because this is, you can't have three expensive guys. So now they've locked in him. And, uh, I don't know, we'll see how it goes. Cause if it doesn't go well right away, the piston fans, I don't think are going to be that friendly about it. Yeah. It's, it's a twofold thing where, you know, it's partly the guys that are around them. You need somebody, some, some of the people that they invested in, like, you know, they hoped that Kevin Herter could come in, not trying to just randomly blame Kevin Herter, but it's the people who are surrounding this, you know, central method of scoring that the Pistons really bludgeon people with in a year. when the east was down it does does need to be in you know mentioned that in this vacancy they came in and just kind of occupied the space with the k during i heard you and kirk talking about it and i absolutely think it's true um they just they killed people with that because it was so tough to prepare for yeah but if you're playing the percentages you're looking at it and you're saying i don't think jalen has a whole lot outside of catching the ball in the um you know in the block off the roll and and you know taking one dribble and dunking it like not a super great you know connective passer from that spot in the short roll doesn't really have much of a pop game it's just he was very very limited and you watched uh against the the magic and they just said all right man we're just going to kind of set up shop whenever you're whenever you catch that ball and you're ready and we don't think you have anything after that and and it was like so when you combine that with you know jenkins kind of turning into a pumpkin in the playoffs and then you know those guys that you you know you're in the middle of the game and you're like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god you're in the middle of the game and you're like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be to kind of take pressure off of that not doing anything um well and you lose tobias you lost tobias it was the only other guy he could run a play for and and know he'd get a decent shot he's gone yeah yeah so there are pressure on those two things i mean we'll see we mentioned isaiah joe is another one of the the okc guys who sort of you know was pruned off of that experiment and they got him for so cheap we'll see if he can add something you know him playing with john collins i guess can play at the four or some in that tobias spot i don't like but it is tough man i mean he's still young i don't know i was wrong about them last year and they won What, 60, something like that? Their over-under this year is 48 and a half. And there's like heavy juice on the under. Them going 49 in the much-improved East where there's no tanking anymore, that seems like a tall task. But yeah, this will be, if he starts out badly, this will be tough. Now, he could come out and be fucking awesome and be like, this is why I deserve the contract. But that's why I'm watching him. This is another, like, here's the ceiling, here's the floor. If he looks like the guy from the playoffs, it's not going to be great. They also don't have the beep stew anymore. You know, it's like a little security blanket for him. Now you're actually counting on Paul Reed in a real way, which, Paul Reed's fun. You know, he comes in, does the big man D on waiters every once in a while, but now you need 82 games of it. Indiana. Who'd you think I had for this one? I had Oubre. I didn't know if you were. Oubre, good defender last year in the. at least in the Celtics series, Oubre. So you think Oubre's going to play for him? I think that he just makes sense. Like, I think that he's going to line up with Halliburton's sensibility pretty well. Like, I think that just the speed of the way that they're going to play. I was looking at it. It's a version of the way that he played with Charlotte, I guess, but a more sane version. Yeah, I just think he's going to fit with their style of play. And he's matured over the past few years and the types of. It's been. It's been interesting because I think that he is a 3 and D guy. Had a, like, I don't know, Kelly Oubre, too. You kind of heard it over people's voices change over the past couple of years. You're like, Kelly Oubre's actually a pretty serviceable dude. Who'd you have, though? Well, with him, when he went to Golden State and it was just such a bad fit, it made me think, like, oh, this is a guy who can only fit in certain situations. Right? So now he found a better situation in Philly. Now he's in a team with Indiana that plays a little more like Golden State does with a lot of movement. And things are moving around. And we already saw him fail in that. I had Zubats because what they gave up for him, but also, like, just looking at their. In their playoff run in 25, which was a lot of games, they made it to Game 7 of the Finals. Miles Turner, 14 points a game, five rebounds, two blocks a game, four three-point attempts a game, 29 minutes. Zubats in the 25 playoffs, even though it was one series, but it was against Jokic, the best player in the world, 17 and 10, got a block, 36 minutes a game. So you think, all right, he's not going to be able to space the floor like Miles Turner did because he doesn't really shoot threes, doesn't shoot threes at all. But Miles Turner wasn't, like, an amazing three-point shooter. He was okay. But OKC, by the time we got midway through that series, was like, knock yourself out, dude. We're giving that to you every single time. And Zubats being around the basket, playing off Halbern, I just feel like it's such a better fit for these guys. I mean, and I also got to watch him in person, you know, a bunch of times. And he was way better in 25, 26. I think he was a little hurt even before they traded him. But I just really like him. And I'm excited to see them with a real center. And I continue to be really bullish on Indiana. I don't know why people don't consider them a contender in the East. Yeah, Zubats is so different than Miles in the fact that he aims small and misses small in terms of, like, positionally, he doesn't really gamble the way that Miles does. Like, the highs might not be as high in terms of, like, when Miles is flying around, he's long, he's athletic, he's blocking shots and things like that. It's like, Zubats is much more conservative, but he's very smart in the way that he's conservative as a defender. Like, he's positionally really smart. So you may not get, like, the block totals, but I think that he processes the defensive side of the floor really well. And it's like, even though he doesn't space the floor the way Miles does, that hypothetically, that criticalness of Miles spacing the floor killed Indiana in some really critical moments where if you just think about what was it that, was it game six or game five that he missed a couple just backbreaker threes? Game four, too. That was another one. Yeah, it was the midway through the series. OKC just was like, we're fine with this now. Please knock yourself out. I think it might have been game four where he missed a couple and OKC took that game on the road. It's all blurring together for him. But it's like, even though the width of what Zubach does is not necessarily as wide, he's very realized in who he is and what he does. So it's like, you're going to get a little bit more post-up game. He's a pretty good connected passer. That word keeps coming up. But I think that he's going to accelerate the way the Pacers play in a good way. I agree. Plus, fun to cheer for. He goes, zoo. Whole crowd goes, zoo. We're not saying boo. You know, that old one. When I was at those Pacers games, I was surprised by how annoyed all of their fans were by Miles Turner. Because you can't really tell until you're in the arena who the guy is on each team that the fans are like, ah, this guy drives me crazy. He was there. This guy drives me crazy guy. And zoo is, zoo is as reliable as it gets. You know exactly who he is. He's in all the right spots at all the right times. No center is going to torture him. And they're, they're playing now against some, you know, there's some good centers in the East now, but he'll be able to go toe-to-toe with us. All those guys. I continue to be mystified by the Pacers. Like they're over-unders 44 and a half. Yeah. Like to me, that's a 50 win team. If Halburn's healthy, I just think they're going to be really good. I guess the other question would be, what are we getting from TJ? And is he moving toward a different bench point in his career? But I, I continue to like them. All right. Miami. I'm really fighting off the urge to wonder if I might've been wrong on being too glass half empty on Miami. So I watched some of their preseason game. It's great. And it's preseason. Giannis looks great. I said the 14 minutes swung you, swung you. Giannis looks great. I have no idea how him and Bam are going to play, but obviously their swing guy is Wiggins because you could even, you know, you can see it from when you read this stuff and just in general, like Giannis is just, he's, he creates open space for guys. They, you still have to put the wall up if he has the head of steam. And I just, I just think Wiggins is in a nice spot. He's at a weird point in his career. Wiggins is over 15,000 points. He has 834 games. He's played in the 2020s. He's averaged two made threes, a game and 38% from three. And he's never somebody you want as one of your best two guys, right? Golden state didn't even want him as one of their best three guys. They, they would seem pretty delighted to finally move off them. But this is the perfect situation for him because Giannis is going to get all the attention. He culture, Spolstra. And, you know, they, they doubled down. He did this extension. That was a pretty fair price. Like he's making, he signed an extension for half of what Peyton Watson got two for 34. And at least with Wiggins, like we saw him, he was the second best guy in a title team. I think he slipped a little over the last couple of years from that level. But, but this is a nice spot for him. Somebody who's done it before, which I think you have to respect. Yeah. In Miami's kind of pursuit to answer the spatial questions of having Bam and Giannis on the floor together, your natural, you know, it's just like a, I'm not a chef, but we got a dish that's too sweet or salty, whatever you're sprinkling in shooting to sort of balance out the, the, the problem that think the question that you're going to have to answer with Giannis and Bam. And naturally you're going to add guys that are going to just be implied challenge defenders like the Tim Hardaway juniors, the clay at this point in his career, and I think that that opens up a world where we, we know that Davion Mitchell can guard point guards. He's a bulldog in that sense, but there's a big in between where even though Bam can switch up and down the chain, it's like, who's going to guard these big perimeter score type guys. And that's going to be an opportunity for Wiggins to, to really cash in defensively. There's the catch and shoot opportunities that he's going to have, obviously. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be, you're mentioning just the cumulative quality of his career. I brought up a stat about guys under 25 who had scored. I forget the point total, but it was only like 12 dudes and it was a lot of stars and Andrew Wiggins. He's in this interesting purgatory of we're just like, don't love Wiggins. He's almost like the, he's almost like the wing version of what the way we talk about Miles Turner. It's just Miles Turner never got his opportunity. If he'd made some shots, maybe he would have entered this, this, this elevated spot, but it's like, he's not quite what you want him to be, but he's still not an outlier. He's not a outright failure. Wiggins is a fascinating player. Shock. He'll be a shocking 20,000 point guy. He'll be one of the other one. Well, Jameson didn't Jameson get there. He might have. I'm trying to think like, like those Jim Jackson type guys who just, you're like, man, it's pretty good total at the end of it when you zoom out. But that also reminds me of when, when I was doing my basketball book, there was this old NBA writer who was like a guy in the 50s, 60s, George, I think Casito is his name. And he said, Walt Bellamy is going to be the skeleton of the 20,000 point club. Cause Walt Bellamy was like, she's getting to, nobody liked Walt Bellamy in the sixties. Walt Bellamy, I think I ended up with 20,000 points, but nobody ever thought he was a winning player the entire time it happened. Wiggins is at least been a winning player, but, um, the Knicks traded Bellamy for the busher. Yeah. Right. Okay. He had a couple, couple homes, but, um, the thing with the thing that's so tough to figure out my. Miami is if Giannis plays 70 games, it probably is a team that's going to be in the high forties. Cause so much is going to run through him. If Giannis misses like a month or five weeks, I don't know what they're going to do offensively. What happens at that point? Cause they, they have a lot of role players and guys that are specifically built around this, the, the force of somebody like him. And if you don't have that, they don't, how are they going to create shots at the end of games? Yeah. Giannis dictates a certain type of roster bill, but I think in all the concern, which I think it's fair, all the concern about like how he's going to age with his play style. It can be forgotten that he is an elite floor raising player still. And I think just having him on court, you can roll him out with like a replacement or even a little bit below replacement players. And he's just a pain in the ass. Cause you know, there's just so few people in the world that can guard him. He has at least two really elite years left to peak and stay healthy. And then we'll see. Absolutely. For that. He's the, the stats and the history are against it. But, but I think it's a nice spot for Wiggins. We could skip over Milwaukee really quick. I had Tyler here up for them just cause he's in a contract year. He's never been in a situation where it's like, just let me cook. I think he's a sneaky 27, 28 points a game score potentially. Yeah. You can see that that feels like it's common for sure. I think his first team all NBA trade machine, he's averaged 20 points a game for five straight years. And this is the first time he's been in a contract. He's been in a situation where they're like, just go ahead. Cook. Yeah. You know, especially the roster that they have. And we'll see how it affects Burris. Who's the guy I really care about in that team, New York. I have Carl Anthony towns for this. Okay. A couple of different reasons. Extension's not happening. He sacrificed last year for the title, you know, and really I think goes down and Nick's history and all that. Did everything you'd want might've faded in the last couple of games, but it's fine. They won. Usually the history of the NBA is when you've sacrificed to win a title the year after probably less prone to sacrifice. And there's different versions of the disease of me disease of more, which I've written about and talked about forever. But this is a staple of this where it's like, all right, I sacrificed last year. Now, what about me? So, so you have, this has been Brunson's team. Brunson was the one that got to host SNL towns was in the stands. Brunson is a God in New York city. Everybody loves towns as well. I wouldn't have given him the extension here and he's under contract for the next couple of years anyway. I don't know how he's going to age when he hits his thirties. And I'll w I'll wonder if the, this team in general, but specifically him, do you sacrifice as much when you've already won? And it's been the question of the NBA. For 75 years, how do you act after the year you won? And I just, I don't know with them. We'll see. It's interesting how it's like, no one is immune to that with, you know, there might be little situational moments where people are, you know, people are just praising a team for their guys doing what you're talking about for this. Oh yeah. But it's the rubber hits the meets the road at some point with every person, you know? Uh, so towns, you know, they, they've got a lot more to mine. Um, we went like, again, I'll plug the group chat up. So again, for it with the Knicks, which it'll be later this week when we get to them, cause they're at the top of the NBA, cause we're going bottom to top. But, um, he really hit on something where him as the high post passer guy, I think that's the part of his game where if he continues to lean into that, um, and the Knicks continue to play through him, there's a lot more for him to show. So maybe that's a way for him to just kind of, you know, squeeze the rag as the season goes on and just show like, Hey, you know, without me, that seems like the quintessential argument. If you're Carl Anthony towns, like I'm not just out of your space in the floor for Brunson. That team hit a turning point when they started playing through him like that. And that would be, that would be my argument because there's nobody else on here. It's like, do you expect McHale bridges to tap into Brooklyn McHale where he was like running, pin roller? I don't see any other primary offense outlets for them. Uh, so you would think that would be the way that he's going about arguing for his value. My guess is it's going to go fine, but I'm always watching this stuff. They also, he doesn't have the Mitch Robinson security blanket this year. So when he gets 3000, the first seven minutes of, you know, a Sunday ABC game against Miami or something that it's not Mitch Robinson coming in the same of the day. We didn't even mention that with Boston Mitchell Robinson. Yeah. Oh, I'm excited for him. It's on your mind. I want the center situation is going to be pretty good with Boston, um, Orlando. So I have sucks here. Okay. Who's missed 72 games the last two years, who was 40% from three and 24 and fell. Off a cliff and in the playoffs last year, 30% field goal, 24% from three. He shot almost eight threes a game and made 13 in the playoffs. He was 13 for 54 and his shot just went out the window. And if he can't shoot, but has the confidence that he should shoot that single handedly will sink a team. It's interesting. He's only 25 years old, but he did miss 72 games the last two years. I don't, I don't, this is not exactly Cal Ripken jr. Um, they can figure out, they can figure out the fronds Palo ultimately, like if they decide those two don't make sense together, they'll just trade fronds, right? The sucks piece is a little harder because they're kind of stuck with that contract. And if he's offensively, the guy he was last year, that guy's just on your team, but with the confidence that he should be taking big shots and big games. And I think there's more there. I really like sucks. I just didn't like how he played last year. And I feel like this is a fork in the road season for him. So what are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, he's like, if evil can evil, we're like about, he just can't, he has no regard for his, his own safety just throwing himself around all the time. And that can be good and bad. Um, I think it's the thing that with the magic is it's almost like the, the on court version of the knucklehead theory where they're like, you know, you can have one knucklehead, but it's like, you can, you can have one really hyper-confidence shooter that's self-sabotaging at moments. It's like Anthony black. That's who I had down as my guy for the magic, who I really love. Or, you know, you have Palo's, who can be inefficient with this shot selection and his credibility has been up and down. Interesting. You, you automatically went to Franz is the guy they would get rid of. And Palo was kind of, was the implied person for the past. Did you want to say something about that? I think it's easier from a money standpoint because Franz's deal is less. Um, and I think teams are always just more scared to trade the guy who they've already anointed as their franchise guy. It's a little bit of a Tatum. And, um, Jalen situation. But, um, if I were them, I wouldn't do anything cause I'm not going to win the title. I want, I want to take that as far as I can go with those two guys and see if it can work. And Franz has had some injuries. And, um, I also think there's a lot more there with Palo. I just wouldn't, I wouldn't give up. I, their big move this year was our coach was bad. What is this going to look like with a better coach who can kind of unlock some of this? And I want to see a year with Sweeney. With the same pieces, trying to figure out something that made more sense offensively than whatever the fuck we watched last year. Um, so I, this team, I don't think this is a big deal this year team, but in the off season, that's where you make the Palo Franz to say, if this goes badly again, that's where you probably make the move. They don't have any picks left. Yeah. It's I mean, this roster suits Sean Sweeney's sensibility as a coach, like as a defensive minded coach. So I think he's going to be able to, you know, that pallet, cleanse of, of just getting somebody new and new voice in the locker room. We'll see if they can, you know, get back into some of the intensity and the physicality that we like so much of them when they were kind of a hipster team a few years ago, but we're kind of far into this experiment and I'm looking at this team and I'm, I'm thinking we don't really have many more years to just kind of fritter away and be like, ah, you know, we'll move on. It's like, yeah, they're, they're way up there salary wise too. So yeah, yeah, this is not a, so you had black, huh? You think there's more there with black? Oh yeah. I like, by the way, Anthony black's younger brother, I would recommend you go check him out back on black. He's a bad-ass. I know about him. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I love Anthony black. He had a month, I think it was in January where he was shooting like 40% from three, like just really, really good. It kind of makes me wonder if there's an opening with the, if you were going to pick one lever for them to pull for a guy that does have some value, but doesn't totally fit what they're trying to accomplish long-term. He's somebody that I could see somebody was, with like really coveting eyes come after him like a smart team. Yeah. Well, you know, it'd be mutual because I think the magic know what they have. He's so good. You did to be blind basketball wise, not to see that. But I think, I don't know if you're just kind of looking around and thinking like, where, what is the move? Because I, it does feel like something needs to be tweaked. It's just unclear what it's going to be. I think there's a real chance it was the coach. And that's why this whole team, the sucks piece and the coach seemed to be the two things that held. Them back the most. I just felt like he took, I thought Suggs in that playoff series took the most. I can't believe you think you should have taken that shots out of anyone in the entire playoffs, next team, Philadelphia. I, we don't need to dive into this, but Jalen's obviously the guy for this and I'm making this as concise as possible. There's going to be nights where they need him to be last year's Jalen brown. And there's going to be other nights where they're going to ask him to basically be Lou Dort on the thunder last year. you know, and just, can you stand over there and just stay out of the way? and how he handles that will be one of the many fascinating things about their season. Because there's going to be nights where we're like, hey, can you just set some picks and guard somebody and maybe take 10 shots? And I don't know if he's going to handle that well, would be my guess. Yeah, the Maxie Brown dynamic will be interesting to watch. But in terms of like satiating him over the course of the season, this is a unique situation with him being LeBron who, oh, shocker, he's 41 from those reports that kind of went around yesterday. It's like, yeah, his feet and his back hurt. Big shock. There are going to be enough openings over the course of this season, I think, to make Jalen happy. Also, hey, I wanted to say, there's some little birdies chirping that LeBron Phylon is kicking some ass. I know we share an affection for him. I heard that he's been kind of taking it to the starters. I heard that. Interesting. Yeah. I really wish Charlotte had taken him. I'm still upset about that. That was sitting right there for them. Well, we have plenty of time to talk about Philadelphia. Two teams left. I'm going to go backwards, alphabetical. Washington, it's Anthony Davis, who just, they're basically like, we're not giving him an extension. So he becomes a February trade deadline guy. Rich Paul, who continues to work his magic, as we saw recently with the Peyton Watson deal, seems bound and determined to get him, an extension. He's 33 years old. He's played 277 games since they won the 2020 title, the Lakers, which is 45 a year. And he can also opt in next year at 62, which is just kind of lurking over all of this and was the reason like his trade value wasn't nearly as high as he thought it would be. He's got, always has weird quotes about, oh, I put on too much weight. They asked me to be center. It's like, I don't know what position he thinks he is. Cause he's, you know, especially as you get, you get older, I think he's a center, but he is fundamentally on paper, a nice fit with SAR, right? Now SAR, we'll see how healthy he is this year. And SAR Davis to Bansa together makes sense to me. Yeah. But at 33 years old, I'm not positive what's left here. And all we've seen is him in street clothes. So what do you think? What's left for Anthony Davis here? I would say. What would you bet? If you had to bet his stats for 2020, 26, 27 season games, points, rebounds. What would your, what would your guests be? If he plays, I would say. Can't do plays. Games have to be part of it. You have to pick games, points per game and rebounds per game. Oh, I mean, games will go. I mean, I think the safe bet is to keep it in the four low forties. I mean, based on what we see, I wrote that 48, I'll, I'll go 40, 44. Okay. I think when he, when he plays, I mean, he's gonna. I mean, the, the Trey young Anthony Davis combination is, is just kind of like match and NBA jam heaven. I mean, they, they do fit together how, how they figure out the spacing around that with SAR and with Devonta, who isn't known as a great catch and shoot player. So that could be interesting. Um, I'd say 18 points a game. Is that too low? It might be too low. 18 and nine. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, this is such a weird roster. It's such an odd. I was at 19 and nine. So we're right around the same. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I can see that. There's a lot of people to serve on this team. Mm-hmm there's a lot of shots to be passed around. I'll be interested to see how they do that. You know, even like some of their swings and you have Trey Johnson come in and he's like, I'm only playing five minutes. I'm shooting, you know, Bob Carrington was being held back as we, yeah, we poor Bob Carrington in the shackles, but, uh, yeah, I just don't, I don't know what to expect from Davis either way. And he'll be, I think first three weeks and I test guy where I think. Yeah. I think you'll know it on the TV. It's like, oh, Davis looks great. Hmm. He's he's either playing for a trade or extension, or it'll be like Davis isn't playing tonight. We're kind of on the up and down rollercoaster and I don't think that'll be good for anybody. I still don't know why Dallas traded him though. Okay. Last guy, Toronto. I have Murray boils for this wondered, I figured. I'm going to go with Murray. coaches in the league, San goes the other one, San Francisco, it seems like they lose a guy, you know, they lose two guys a week, one guy a week, whatever, every week, somebody else goes down, it never seems to matter. They're always chugging along the game management. Uh, the end of the game stuff is always great for them. So Kyle Shanahan would be the other one I would think for the ages of change. I think the best thing about an NFL coach when they're successful is no matter what's going on with their team, they can adjust and try to win with it. And I think those two guys specifically have been the, the linchpins of that. And football real change doesn't come from moving fast just for the sake of it. It comes from having the right systems in place to act when it matters. Like what we just talked about. The same goes for business. That's why Workday helps enterprises put agentic systems to work with the context permission and guardrails to move fast, safely, and not just get work done, but get it done. Right. It's a new Workday. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows. Not yours. It's for 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. This episode is brought to you by Tik Tok. When you watch a football game, you follow the ball, right? Well, there's a video on Tik Tok where this guy says to watch the players without the ball. Watch the routes and the action away from the play. I'll change how you see the game and guess what? He's not wrong. That's the thing about discovery on Tik Tok. One video can change the way you see the game. You can learn something new or see things in a completely different way. Your next discovery is waiting on Tik Tok. Visit Tik Tok.com/discovermore. All right. We're recording this. It is a Monday afternoon. We just did a rewatch of us. Chris Ryan is still here. Van Lathan is still here. There was a couple of extra sports culture topics I wanted to hit. I mean, one of the things I wanted to throw. You see our, and I'm so glad bands here for this Dominic West, who's in war, the new HBO movie, uh, HBO TV show where it's like the most high profile, nastiest divorce ever. Um, is he a cable hall of famer? Cause I feel like he is now he's then who's in the cable hall of fame. Cause I feel like you have to be at, and at least two or three signature things. Danes is up there. Danes is definitely in there. I think Matthew Reese, Matthew Reese is. A first ballot when he might be the number one guy. I think my guy hams on their ham. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I'm not as big into your friends and your friends and neighbor, Matt, Matt, man, your friends and neighbors. I don't go Fargo popped in on morning show. Okay. But he was Don Draper. I mean, that's one of the six, seven best shows of all time, but I think he has a case, but Dominic West is a good one. Cause he's McNulty, but he's not quite the star on the wire because basically in season four, he's, he's barely. In it, which is the best season, the show, but he's still important, but then the affair, which was like that kind of the end of a showtime era and was, I felt like a show that, that had some mojo and now he's in war. Um, and then, but he was also in a industry, Dominic West, wasn't he? No, I don't think he was in an industry industry. Who am I thinking of then? Uh, all right. So there's three, three for him. I'm thinking of Kit Harington. I'm mixing them up with English people stuff. Is Kit Harington in the hall of fame? Well, he's got two, two big ones. He's got two big ones. So I guess the, so how many do you need to be in the cable hall of fame? Well, if you nail a Tony Soprano, you're in. Right. If it's an iconic role, you're in. Here's the problem is that now we're, we've gotten to the point now where like Reese Witherspoon essentially makes TV shows. Laura Dern essentially makes TV shows. Um, Woody Harrelson makes a lot of TV shows. Like you're getting all these movie stars who kind of dilute the value. You have the trophy. I think you're trying to give out, which is people who are like, I am been here from when it was like FX, Cinemax, HBO and Showtime. And now I'm here when it's Apple, Netflix and a bridge in the gap. I've, I've, I've like, I've just lasted and I can lead a show. I can be second in a show. So with like Amelia Clark is Khaleesi, but it doesn't have the second one. I don't know if Khaleesi is enough. She tried to make, uh, ponies was the, like the big effort that she had. Not effort. I mean, it was a good show, but then the fun thing about this idea is then you'd have the, the people would be like, it's time for Sharon Horgan. Like that. I don't know. Then you have other people. We don't appreciate Sharon Horgan. Obviously like, look at her stats. Yeah. Like Edie Falco's in, right? Yes. Oz. Cause Carmelo is Carmela. She's in, but nurse Jackie as well. Yeah. So that's, but then Oz like kind of important for Oz for two and a half years. Oz is an important jumping off point. Elizabeth Moss is probably in there. Cause she goes from West wing to mad men, to, uh, Handsmith handmade handmade still. And it's done a couple of other shows. But I think it's diminishing returns for movie stars that are dipping into television. I don't know. They have to do a little bit more. So maybe they're, maybe that's like a different wing in the hall of fame. Right. Carrie Coon. So like put in there white Lotus, gilded age and, uh, leftovers. Um, so like the color of Lee, what's her name? Ray Seahorn. Ray Seahorn. Pluribus plus better call Saul. Yep. But like, Nicole Kidman can't be in, I think if you're an established movie actress, you're kind of not slumming on TV, but you're or Kate Winslet. Dominic. Dominic West is the guy who this is made for. That actor is the guy that this is made for. Like the guy who he's not the main character of the wire, but he is the wires oriented. I'd put Goggins in this Goggins has done justified the shield. Uh, and then his principal's and righteous, uh, gemstones and yeah, Lotus. There's a great one for this that would get like, and people would be all excited. Little finger who was also a mayor Garcetti. Yeah. That guy, whatever that guy's name is. He's a hundred percent. Yeah. He, what's his name? I can't remember. He starts off as Garcetti. That would be the, that would be the hall of fame category. It's like, what's his name? That would be every year. You elect one. Pedro Pascal's done game of Thrones. Last of us. Uh, I don't know. Oh, Pascal's good one. Cause, but he was only in Thrones for like eight episodes. Yeah. They were pretty fucking memorable. Yeah. Like he has one of the most iconic scenes of all time. If you're going to be in game of Thrones, that ensemble is so expansive. You have to either have a other, another show to buoy you, or you have to be one of the main drivers of plot in game of Thrones. I mean, Khalees is one of them. Emmy Rossum's there now is two good ones. Shameless. I like Claire Danes is good for this. That's like the, that's the perfect one where it's like, Oh, she's first bout. She's got to be in there now. It feels like every five or six years. It's like, Oh, she's going to win an Emmy probably, you know, like, yeah. All right. So you're down with this. So you think Dominic West, definitely. Sure. Yeah. And then you have Idris Elba needs one more. Well, he's done Luther hijack and the wire. That's true. He does have hijack. He's in, I forgot about hijack. First season of hijack is awesome. I think he's in. I think he's definitely in. And like, once again, in the wire, what stringer last till season three, he's three full seasons. Yeah. So stringer last till season three. And he is such an important component to grounding the entire world. He's not like an also ran character in the wire. He's really, really important. Punisher, uh, walking dead bear. We own the city. We own the city. Yeah. American gigolo. Yeah. A show only Mallory and I watched. Never saw it. Never heard of it. We were the, we were the last two. What about, uh, the guy from the bear? Jerry, Jeremy Allen White. Yeah. Cause he was shameless. He's kind of where he's probably in obviously Brian Cranston. Oh, Cranston. Yeah. And then it's like, when is Aaron Paul's time going to come? Well, he's done. He's done breaking bad. He's probably in do a third one. I'm forgetting. What's world breaking bad. He's probably in. Oh, big love. Big love. Big love. What? Forgotten forgotten show. Yeah. That for the time that it was, it was awesome. It was really awesome. Yeah. At a BC. Might just make it just for the three seasons of us. And yeah, I'm lost at a BC or I'm forgetting, but you count network TV. I'm saying you're going to network. I don't count the network TV. This is the cable streaming hall of fame. Okay. Who we're missing some glaring ones here. I know. I'm just, I did this up top of my head, but I was, I think this would be, it made me think how with culture we do have the award season, right? We have the Emmys and the Oscars, a couple others, but we don't have any sort of big thing that we could argue about besides hacks and a watchman. I would argue Jean smart's probably in just because of hacks. I mean, she won the Emmy five straight years. There are no years are this fucking crazy. Yeah. That, that, that puts you in. And I'll say Louis CK is in because Louis was the most important show for four years. He's fucking in. There'll be controversy, like whatever, but no, I just like it. Cause it's like the, the, the topic is kind of losing air and it's like, Oh, it's going down. It's going down. And then bill brings it right back up. You guys listening to the R Kelly lately, that show, that show was the most important show for which version of Louis, the FX one. Okay. So though, cause there was an FX one. There was an HBO one too. There's lucky Louis. Okay. And then he made the one about we were doing Grant land and Louis was on par with all the other shows that we talked about for years. It's still, it was pretty high up in the New York times top 100 list given, given like his legacy. He owns all of the shows that you can, get on his website, but you can't get them. You can't rent them. They're not on any streamers. And I was what's happening right now, Louis, you're going on a whole new, No, I'm just saying I wonder what would happen if it was on Netflix. I wonder if it would have a resurgence or not. Oh, okay. Interesting. Chris, you want to. It's pretty rare to make Van uncomfortable. This is exciting. Just saying, it was a good show. I think both of us are having this meta experience of this from one topic we weren't prepared to discuss to reckoning with Louie's legacy. And I'm like, I thought I was talking about Manchester City. That's coming up. Wait, before you do Manchester City, Van Saad Digger. The biggest bust of the last two years and the final. Two, yeah. The final nail in the Tom Cruise coffin unless he's playing a Mission Impossible guy. I'm not pronouncing that dude dead yet. He could play Mission Impossible or Top Gun Maverick. He's going for Days of. Or Cocktail 2. Days of Thunder 2. He sequels only at this point. So I'm going to say this and I understand how this is going to sound to the audience because of my reputation. As a Zagger? As a Zagger. Okay. Professional Zagger. I would rather them call me a Zagger than something else that sounds the same. Okay. So I saw Digger. Yeah. I went to see the movie. I saw it by myself. Did you see it because you thought it was going to be fun to see how bad it was? So I saw the movie just because of the divisiveness of the reactions to the movie. Okay. Now a lot of people that I know have said that this is like one of the most terrible movies over on the big picture. They seem to be a little split. Sean liked it more than Amanda. So I was like, I have to see this movie for myself. You guys, I thought Digger was brilliant. Brilliant. Are you an NRE2 fan otherwise? Like Birdman? Birdman I liked. The Revenant, I was like, I'll never see that again. Those are the only ones that I've seen besides this. I thought Digger was. I like The Revenant. I thought Digger was brilliant. Like I thought Digger was brilliant in execution. I thought what I heard Amanda say about it is very true. There are times where, the movie is incredibly grating and like just like hard to watch and you can tell that at this point, like AGI doesn't have anybody to like pull him back or edit him from scenes that go on a little bit too long. They're a little too off-putting. But beyond that, which is, you know, flaw of a director that has a lot to say, I don't want to ruin the movie for CR. I know you haven't seen it. I thought it reconciled itself really well. It takes on a really important topic and it is entertaining. But I legitimately loved the movie. Did you read a lot about it or listen to the big picture or any of those other, like did you, did you go into it with any expectations other than like I want to see what the big fuss is about? So I didn't read enough about it to have the movie ruined. I watched clips of what they had to say about it just because I was kind of interested. And then I went into it without having any of sort of the meta commentary in the movie spoiled for me and expecting excess. Yeah. Because it is excess. I'll say something. That role for Tom Cruise at this point in his career is to me the perfect role for him to take. And for me to say why I would have to spoil the movie, which I don't want to do. Okay. I mean, the bitch only made eight million dollars in the first, so it doesn't seem like. But to me, there's a juxtaposition of how we view Tom Cruise and how he probably wants to be viewed that is illustrated through his performance in the movie. Okay. So I really enjoyed it. And at the end, I sat back and looked at the film and taking it in in its totality and I thought, there's probably a little bit of this that I couldn't put my finger on it why this one is overhated. When there's so much space made for these big, gigantic swings by these directors and the $175 million art movie that people are saying is this kind of like, it's almost heresy. And this is what is happening now. Like, we're giving tons of movies to. Seems like it got the people fired at WB too. There's the final nail on the coffin for them. But they're having a putrid, terrible year as well. Like, just beyond this. Supergirl and a couple of other films. I don't want to be typically hyper-verbose about it, but I really enjoyed it. I really liked it. And it seemed like my theater did too. I have a couple of Tom Cruise thoughts. Okay. I don't think he should have promoted the movie at all. I don't think he should have done anything and I don't think it helps when he does interviews and those things. I just think he's gotten too weird. This did lead to my favorite social media video of 2026, which was Tom Cruise on the red carpet realizing the lady was missing one of her legs and then realizing he didn't appropriately have the interaction go reflecting that he knew that. So he kept coming back and circling back for two extra handshakes with her. And it was the weirdest fucking thing I ever watched and I watched it 20 times and I just couldn't believe how strange it was. And just his general energy. I don't know what's going on with this dude. I think one thing that's really been a hallmark for him since I think night and day even, if not before that, I think he's always had like incredible marketing push, pushes and has done these wild stunts. But I remember back when that movie came out and it was like he was going to go to a premiere on seven different continents in 24 hours. And it just, I wonder whether or not it serves the movies anymore. Like when it becomes the spectacle of Tom Cruise, you know, in interviews or doing social media stuff becomes like a bigger deal than what the movie is. Because obviously people hear like, like this movie was marketed. Like you couldn't be like, I didn't know Digger was coming out. People chose not to go. So people are like, pass. Now once people understand what the movie is about, I'm sure there's a bigger debate to be like, should they have shown more of it, you know, to people in the trailer or whatever. But I do think it's a fascinating commentary on like our modern media moments. That people can kind of feel like they know what it is and have seen it just by watching all of the accumulated clips that they see. So based upon what actually happens in the movie, the movie was completely and totally mismarketed. When I say completely and totally mismarketed, the movie seemed like it was marketed as almost a farcical morality tale. And that's like not what the movie is at all. The movie is, it's part like absurdist. But another part of it is devastatingly grounded in real world stakes and consequence in a way that that interplay just keeps you or at least kept me enthralled all the way to the end. To your point, Tom Cruise does not know how to exist outside of spectacle right now. And our belief in Tom Cruise as a spectacle is running out because we've been with Tom Cruise. I told somebody this, I was talking to Jack Sanders about this. And I was like, you know, I played the Top Gun video game on the first Nintendo. Yeah. The first Nintendo. The Nintendo Entertainment System. Mid-80s. That means I'm in elementary school. Yeah. And I'm playing the video game that is based on a movie that Tom Cruise has starred in. That's a long fucking time ago. All right. That's a long time ago. So at a point, you can't spectacle yourself through your career in your 60s. People have to, they have to feel like some type of actual connection to you beyond things going fast. And he just doesn't know how to be anything other than a star. He's been a star. He's shown that he can do that. It remains to be seen whether or not he's going to be able to show that he's a human being. And I think when you look at these interviews and stuff like that and you see him talking, we're like, Tom, why can't you just talk to us? Like, why can't you just. Well, because the last time he tried to do that, it couldn't have gone worse. But he wasn't even doing it then. The 2005, that Matt Lauer interview, which was. Oh, now he was doing it then. That was the last time it was like. The psychiatry one? Yeah, and about postpartum depression and medication and how mad he was at Matt Lauer that he didn't understand. I felt like ever since that happened, he just scaled back. And he's like, you're just going to see me as. Man, I love higher learning. It's so good. Yeah. God, it's such a great. You've got to be so proud of that man. Handshake. Yeah. It's just this like unrealistic energy at all times. And I don't know what's going on. But if there was a person to sell this movie, a movie that's like really. It's a. You have to make people kind of fall into the narrative of the film. I just think it would've went better. I think a lot of this stuff. So who would've been the right actor for it? That's a good question. Do you think another actor should've played it? Because people thought it was almost like Tropic Thunder Tom Cruise as Digger was what I had in my head. I intentionally. I try not to find out too much about the movie. I'm trying to think an actor that would've been big enough to. Like, could Christian Bale have played this? Nah, because you need a bigger star. He could've, but you need a star that. Because there's something that's happening in the movie that's a commentary basically on the lead. Okay. So you need a bigger star. There's just not many guys. Could've been Leo? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Like, almost definitely yes. It was set up with Leo at Netflix, I think, is the original version of this. Almost definitely yes. And also, it would've made sense because of some of the stuff, some of the passions that Leo actually has. He knows the worst thing that happened to Tom Cruise for this aging thing you're talking about. How good Top Gun Maverick was. And when it hit, we all loved that movie. He's great in it. They nail it. There's, like, just legitimately great scenes in it. And I think it made him feel, you know, a little like LeBron winning that Houston series last spring where he's like, I can still do this for 10 more years. I think he's also somebody who looks really good for 65 or 64, whatever he is. Yeah. And is most. interested in archival legacy performances of his own rather than like creating new characters which is what I guess this is really going to send the wrong message because like he really put his ass on the line for this one and now he's going to go do Days of Thunder. This was like his Paul Newman in The Verdict basically. And I'm sure they'll put Top Gun 3 in. Yeah. I'm just so surprised that he hasn't learned the collateral lesson. Collateral lesson is Evil Tom Cruise. Evil Tom Cruise but also lowercase T Tom Cruise. I remember even when Tom Cruise went on He went on 106 and Park and he goes on 106 and Park which was a big deal. The motherfucker is still Tom Cruise. Everybody was like oh shit. But he goes on there to do the to sell that movie with Jamie Foxx and I never forget that he's talking up Jamie Foxx as Ray. And that was interesting to watch him. He's like Jamie is Ray. And it's like fucking A. Like Jamie has fucking arrived. But it also felt like Tom Cruise in that moment was just being a good guy. Like a good pal. He was still in promotion mode. But that movie and that performance was grounded in a way. I don't feel like he's tried it again. I don't feel like he's had. I don't know. It's like at this point everything else has been established for him. The only thing that hasn't been established for him is the small or muted role where he gets into it and it feels like he's really connected to it. I just wonder if he has too much bag. to play parts that we don't already know what the part is. And I mean baggage with like we know so much about the last like 50 years of Tom Cruise basically. Yeah I mean I think he's just a celebrity in a way that it's kind of an alien. You know what I mean? That's what I mean. He doesn't. He had all these celebrity relationships and then they come and go. He doesn't talk to them anymore. He doesn't like have relationships with his kids. And I don't really know anything about him and it seems intentional. The science ology thing's been explored forever but he's out of all the celebrities we have. I think that's the one that I have no idea who the real person is. If you went to dinner with him for two hours what would it be like? Well I think it would probably be like everybody who's like directly interacted with him in a dinner or working with him. They all come out of these movies like that dude is the fucking man. Yeah he's so much energy. Like he made sure this happened. Yeah. He's like never. He's tireless. He has so much attention to detail. He's always just trying to make the best movie and it sounds like he did the same thing with this. Everybody who came out of Digger is like I can't believe like what I witnessed on that set with Tom Cruise and his level of preparation and his dedication to the movie. It just didn't work. That's what carries it for him. But Van saying that makes me want to see it even worse. I just didn't get a chance to see it this weekend. So there's a monologue that he delivers in the movie and it's a long one and it's heavy handed and it's this sort of commentary on what's happening in the movie you're watching and the movie that you're not watching at the same time and all that stuff like that. I think he's going fucking crazy. I think he's on top of it. I think he's on his shit. But that film needed a human being to sell it because it is about the very nature of, I can't spoil it, but it's about the very nature of performance. It's about the nature of what it means to be performing. Not only in the story that you're watching but in a different story. It's about how those things connect and take our eyes off the ball of what's actually going on. And it is, to me, it worked very, very well. Now look, it's a lot of movie. It's a lot of movie and there's some masturbation in there. It's some jerking off. Just when an artist is masturbating. Oh, thank God. I thought you were doing big sounds of lambs. Anyway, I just think that Tom's going to come back. He's going to make days. Who knows? Were you intrigued to go see it or were you like, this is a renter? It's a renter for me. I feel you. I worked out on Friday. I came home and I turned the TV on to see if there was baseball on. Forgetting that there was no baseball on a Friday. But the last cable channel was a movie channel. Cocktail was on. And it's cocktail there in Jamaica. He's behind the bar when Flanagan shows up. And Elizabeth shoes at the bar and she's like giving him the, you know, flashing the eyes at him. And then Flanagan shows up and he's like, I'll bet you $500. There's a, I'm not going to do his Australian accent, but he has a success manual in his thing and Cruz and him are vibing. And I was like, man, Cruz fucking, there was just nobody like this. This is a ridiculously stupid movie. He's a bartender in Jamaica and it's like riveting and he's great in it. He's so charismatic. And I don't think he ever figured out how to audible from the charismatic thing as he hit his fifties and sixties. Like what, when you have that kind of power that you can bring anything to life like that, what do you do when you're 65? You're not gonna be able to do it in the same way. So what movies do you make? But this is the kind of place where like he made Color of Money when he was a kid and Paul Newman was an older man and Paul Newman is bringing along a younger actor, is playing a guy who's like grappling with the last loss of his own masculine virility and all this stuff. And Cruz, I haven't seen Digger, doesn't typically engage with that. In Top Gun Maverick, the whole point is that he still is the better pilot than all these fucking kids. Right, he's teaching them. Yeah. Like he couldn't have played the Newman part in Color of Money, I don't think. I mean, he should. But I don't think he would. But like to me, that type of shit is right there. They all did that. Another film is I think the perfect, this being perfectly deployed, is Redford in Indecent Proposal. So in Indecent Proposal, obviously Redford is a millionaire, billionaire guy who wants to sleep with Demi Moore and her all-time finance, right? Pay the money, whatever. Redford is both, I am being supplanted here because it's got to work out for these younger kids, but at the same time there's still this magnetism of power and experience that makes that character desirable. Yeah. Tom won't even do that. He's holding on too tight. He's still got to win the race at the end of it. Brad, quiet as his cap, same thing. In F1. They're the same age, basically. Yeah. F1's a good example. Like Brad kind of quiet as his cap, same thing. We talked about that when we did the F1 rewatch, boss. Right. He's not quite ready to lose the. The other guy should have won. He's not ready to lose the race yet. Gotta be ready to lose the race. Everybody loses the race. Including Man City. Good segue. Oh, look at that. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Whether you're racing to build the biggest sandcastle, seeing who can throw the fastest pitch, or competing in a championship match, it's always better when there's a prize on the line. Like a Michelob Ultra. Smooth, refreshing, and so satisfying after all that hard work. Superior is worth playing for. Michelob Ultra. Superior light beer. Enter for a chance to win Superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at MichelobUltra.com slash Superior Access. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch. Michelob Ultra light beer. St. Louis, Missouri. All right, so Sierra's going to explain the Man City thing to us, which is 100 times worse than the Clippers? Yeah, 114 times. So they've gotten found guilty by the Premier League's independent commission that was looking into their financial malfeasance or their trespasses over the last when they came in, Sheikh Mansour bought the team through, like, the Abu Dhabi investment group in 2008, and you probably were, like, somewhat aware that this team came in. They spent a ton of money. Well, they also ran forever. It was the Clippers. Totally the Clippers. So Manchester United is historically one of the biggest, if not the biggest team. It just turned at one point. And then a lot of money from the golf came into Manchester City. Where that money came from is what's up for debate. And they immediately hired Roberto Mancini to be their manager and then started buying all these great players. And they finally win the title three years later. Won, I think, six Premier League titles. Won the Champions League. Won tons of trophies. I knew that things would change for them when they hired Roberto Mancini. Did you really? Yeah. I knew. Because you were a big Bobby Mancini guy? As soon as I saw Roberto Mancini get hired, I was like, they're fucking sick. They hired Bobby? They hired Bobby M? They got, they immediately just started, they basically, like, changed the calculus of transfer spending in world football. Well, this was when I was friends with Mark Stein when I was, when I picked Tottenham. This was before this all happened with Man City. And Man City was one of the finalists. And the reason, one of the reasons I didn't pick them was it was like, they can't ever win. They're the lovable losers. And then the money came in and it changed. So, over the years, many raised eyebrows. How the hell are they spending this kind of money? There are rules put in place a couple years into their ownership cycle where it's basically league-wide called a financial fair play, which means basically you can really only spend in a relationship to what you make. Now, you can make the argument that that helps bigger clubs. So this is like NBA second apron or something? A little bit. So if you bring in $500 million, that's what you're working with in terms of your transfer budget. But if you bring in $50 million and you spend $300 million, you're negative $250 million. And if you go over negative $100 million over the course of three years, if you don't balance your books, basically. So you can't just be the rich guy who's like- You can't just go out and get a bunch of money. Money is no object. I'll spend a billion dollars on this. And this is made all the more complicated by two things. One is that this has been something that people have been speculating about for more than 10 years. And when this is starting to happen- So speculating that they weren't making as much money as they claim they were making. Yes, because Manchester City's books would essentially, their claim would be that they're as big of a club as Real Madrid. And Real Madrid is one of the biggest brands in sports and have built that up over decades. Manchester City coming along and, I mean, just ask yourself how many Manchester City fans you know. Probably not as many as Arsenal or Liverpool or Real Madrid or Barcelona fans. So this sounds like if somebody was pretending they had more podcast downloads than they actually did. Several years ago, exactly. The Premier League- You started putting like five episodes up a day to try to juice your Apple rankings. Yes. Several years ago, the Premier League levels these charges against Manchester City because one of the problems is so many of the ways in which Manchester City is showing revenue comes from companies, sponsorships through companies that are also connected to either the UAE, Royal Family, companies in Abu Dhabi, the National Airline. This sounds like the Mark Walter. Yeah, we got a lot, but like the money- Just money going back and forth. The money is there. Yeah. But where they're claiming- Where they're claiming it comes from is what's up for debate. And for years, these charges have been sort of looming and hanging over the league and hanging over Manchester City. And the kind of cynical view is like, I think they just have better lawyers and they're just going to delay and delay and delay and delay until this is just like- It's not unlike the fears I think people had that like Balmer had more financial might than the NBA itself. I think that there is a concern that Manchester City would be similar to the Premier League. At the- At the start of what has been an eternal three-week break in the Premier League because they're off playing for their national teams. On the Friday that that started, the Premier League is like guilty. 114 out of 115 charges. Wow. Manchester City has until October 2nd to appeal this. Then we're going to wrap this up by December. But like we are going to- We are going to like- What's the penalty? They don't know. We don't know yet. They have not articulated what the penalty is. So that has led to this crazy speculation. Of everything from they are expelled from English football to- Expelled like no team like done like SMU death penalty? So there's the pyramid system in England where it's like these lower leagues that- And it all goes up to the Premier League. They're run by different governing bodies. But the lower leagues have said we don't- We stand with the Premier League. Like if they kick them out, like we're not going to take them in. This is SMU death penalty. Some of this is like- I'm reading this from a bunch of different places. But ultimately like it's really bad for Manchester City. But how- I mean, you can't do anything other than that as the penalty, right? You could vacate titles. Who cares? I mean, you could deduct them 114 points and they would just go down and come back up next year. Yeah. If you- Or the following year. But if you ban them from Premier League for 12 years. But do they just go join La Liga or Bundesliga? No, they can't do that. They can't do that. Why can't they? Because those are national leagues. So those are national leagues. A team from outside the country can't join those. You do bring up a good point that this would- Perhaps spur on a revival of the conversation about having a Super League. About just like 12 breakaway teams in Europe. But the bigger issue that's come up over the last couple of days is last week, finally- Why am I so into this? Because it hasn't been reported in a way that you and I would understand. It's a global story, but England is a small place. Let me tell you what I mean. They ask the new Prime Minister of England, Andy Burdum, who is coming into Downing Street. He's become Prime Minister after being- The mayor of Manchester for a very long time. Manchester, Manchester City. And his reaction, when the entire tide of public opinion is clearly, get these fucking guys out of the paint. We always knew this was cheating. They ruined this, that. Think about all the teams that came up short against them. Teams that had their rosters raided by them. Like, this is big fishy. Well, they have Haaland now, the guy from the World Cup. And I'll tell you about him in a second. My guy. So they're the- Oh, okay. So they have him. So they're the- Blue team. But he is an example of the reported bullshittery that they were taking part in, which is they bought him for, I think it was announced as like 51 million pounds or euros. I can't remember. He's obviously worth three times that. Yeah. But they apparently paid more for him and just made the public announcement in agreement with this club. Now, a lot of this is just like rumors and allegations and stuff like that. Anyway, the point I was trying to make with the Prime Minister, somebody asks him, they're like, what do you think of this Manchester City thing? And he goes, well, I would really hate for these guys to really, you know, face a lot of trouble for this. They've been incredible partners with us in Manchester. So now he steps into the bear trap where they change prime ministers in England pretty frequently. He had had like an amazing first couple of weeks of making these pronouncements. And he had like a real, almost like Mamdani kind of energy about like, we're going to fix this and fix that. And one of his- One of his big things was like, I'm going to make, take a lot of the lessons we learned in Manchester and bring them to the rest of the country. And now people are starting to dig into whether or not there's a lot of like land deals in Manchester. There's a lot of investment. And it's like, it's, I mean, Beats were getting wet. I really like this guy, the politician. I'm like, I'm like impressed with him. But it's just like this, this thing just got like global political rather than just like, oh, what are they going to do with Manchester city? It's like, well, if Manchester city, their chairman has diplomatic immunity, apparently they've invested in all this land. Diplomatic immunity. Are they, what do you mean? Like the government's going to get involved and put people in jail? No, but like he, I don't think he could have any like tax charges filed against him. Yeah. And on top of that, I think it's just this idea that if you have enough money, you can buy your way out of whatever trouble you're in. So- Well, America's not like that. No, I mean, this is fair and square, brother. So it's just become like this very, very, very interesting sports story. And I think- Well, the end game of it- To people who care about football, this is like Lance Armstrong times 50. This is, we've been watching these guys dominate this league more or less for the last 15 years. Everybody was always like, damn, dude, you guys just bought another 300 million in defenders. Yeah. Cause Barry Bonds never won a world series. Right. It was all for, for him. Yeah. And there are multiple clubs. Like there was a year when Arsenal at one point had lost like six players to Manchester city, you know, like had this, nobody was asking anything then it's like, no, they did. This was a thing. When they first came in, this is when the debate about, and I think this is happening in the NBA too, where the debate about, do you allow sovereign wealth funds or, you know, in, in the NBA's case, I think private equity, but like, do you allow these huge financial powerhouses to get involved to the point where they're bigger than the league? Yeah. Obviously this is not like, Oh, the car dealer in Pittsburgh has the hockey team. It's about a trillion dollars. The fucking government of Saudi Arabia. Yeah. So they have diplomatic relationships with this country. They have economic investment relationships with this country. They have, um, 200,000 people from the UK live in, in Abu Dhabi. Like it's, it's all interconnected. So how do you punish this team? And what happens if they're like, all right, cool bet. I'm liquidating this team and have fun city of Manchester. Well, didn't they build the new stadium? Yeah. Yeah. Etihad is the stadium there. Yeah. So then, okay. So, so big winner, Manchester United. No, I mean, they still stink. I'm just saying like getting man city out of this completely. And, but at a certain point, cause I'm trying to think college football being one thing prior to NIL, there were all kinds of things that like, if you shut down was the death penalty at SMU, you didn't destroy the school. There's still a lot of stuff that's there at the school. Like SMU actually just has to stop being a college has to stop being right. It's just gone in this situation. Think about the economic damage it would do in any league that we've been in. We follow to just nuke a franchise. Like the Dallas Cowboys are just gone for 10 years, but we're going beyond just like the 5,000 people who work at a Cowboy stadium are out of jobs. We're talking about like a massive economic footprint in a country. Yeah. And in a, in a region, right. And that, that was the same thing would exist here. Right. You nuke that you nuke the cow would be like, if Balmer was like, I, it would have to be like almost like Balmer and Cronky together pulling out of, or something like that. - Oh, wow. - I was gonna say, It would be the equivalent of if a city lost all its sports teams at the same time. Like if Boston lost the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins all at once. That's because in Manchester, this is the team. It's not like there's a baseball team and a football team and a basketball team. The reason why I ask is, in your opinion, doesn't that mean that there will be some self-preservation involved in whatever the penalty here would be? But what if the Saudis are like, well, fuck it. Fine. No, I'm talking about the league itself. Abu Dhabi is the one who owned Manchester City. Saudis own Newcastle. So then like, I mean, they don't give a fuck, right? That's another thing is like, if money can buy everything no matter what, well, there is a region where the finances of the people who we're talking about, if it's MBS, if it's anywhere else, is directly connected to the price of oil. And they can essentially buy whatever the fuck they want to buy. So whatever they want to buy, they can buy it. They decide they want to pay a guy $600 million. And a contract, if it was a year to play soccer, it's not no skin off. It doesn't matter. I mean, that happened basically. Basically, it did. Right. So there was always going to be some, if not malfeasance, there was going to be some improperness there. I'm a little improprietary. I don't know what I'm trying to say. There's going to be something there that was improper. If they get involved in that much money comes into it. On the other side, it's just like, I think that they started spending and perhaps there was no rules to prevent something like this because nobody had ever thought that a Petro state, they would buy a football team and start funding it as a way of using it for soft power across the world. What I'm saying is in this situation right here, can the league swing the machete as much as they want to? Well, so. You like that whole region, the team is gone, the jobs are gone, everything gone, the economic, like what's the worst they could do? I mean, they took Chelsea away from Roman Abramovich. He had to sell. Okay. So the multiple outcomes are you have to sell the team. I don't think that they're going to do that. Well, if we're going through everything, that's the best case scenario if you're a Manchester City fan. It's like, well, they just have to sell the team. Yes, and you know, a consortium that includes Jeff Bezos just bought Liverpool or bought a big chunk of Liverpool. It's not like sports franchises are going down in value. I don't know. I would say they would have some takers. So that's number one. Number two is you're out of the league for 10 years or five years or 15 years, whatever they say. And then number three is you're out. You're never coming back. Yes. You're liquidated as a franchise. Is there any other possible outcome? It would be a. Here, for the next four years, you start your season at minus 25 points. So like a kind of rolling penalty. But then why would anyone want to play for them? Right. So you just destroy the franchise. Right. So you just destroy the franchise on the pitch. Basically. You keep the semblance of the franchise together, but you make it basically like now you have to go to the bottom of English football and fight your way back up. Essentially what the death penalty was, it wasn't like we're contracting your sports program. You don't have scholarships. You don't have nothing to do, necessarily a roughness type shit. How about vacating the titles? Well, this has been a huge debate. And it's an interesting conversation because I think obviously we've had scandals in American sports. Like whether it's been steroid baseball or Lance Armstrong and Tour de France or even somebody would say like, you know, NBA, NBA stuff. Right. There have been discussions about whether or not they should have to vacate those championships. Should the championships then go to the people who are teams that were in second place? Oh, congratulations. You're that you're now the 2018. There's a handshake to me. The kind of you have a parade. If you get it. If the shit is vacated, right? If it's like a retroactive 2018. Right. Like if Alabama, Alabama play LSU, one of the most debilitating experiences of my life to 2011. We, we get the championship. They make us champions. Do you have a parade? Do we like Baton Rouge? It's like a fake title, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think anyone's excited about it. So here's a question. Like in terms of the, we all knew all the whole time. I am not saying that Alabama was cheating. But there was like a feeling when NIL came in that it was like now everybody is doing what the teams in the SEC were doing. We don't need to talk about it. You know what's up. But is that like, does that negate or take away from what Saban accomplished? Nope. Because the reason why it doesn't is because on one side was all of the fucking dogs that they had. And on the other side is fucking Honey Badger and all of these other guys too. So the competitive balance that happens there is for other teams. Like that's actually more a Mississippi State problem or even like a Tennessee problem or a problem of those athletes not being able to go to those schools. By the time you got to the national championship game, it was good on good. So that was, that's less of a fucking issue. It's first round talent everywhere. And there have been several Premier Leagues that were decided by two, three, five points. That was about like a guy slips and doesn't, you know what I mean? Like the margins are very fine. Well, you're a Liverpool fan. Does this make you mad? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Do you feel cheated? I feel cheated in that I really liked our previous manager who was mostly the manager during this era, Jurgen Klopp. Um, and I think he's one of the most dynamic coaches. Ben's a big Klopp guy. I've never seen. Klopp. And I think. Kloppster. I think he knew he was playing with one hand tie behind his back or against uneven, an uneven playing field. And they went about their business, but I don't, I don't, I just don't know what the right answer is. Here. I don't like it's, it's that thing where you're like, well, you can't liquidate the franchise. That's crazy. I don't even know that they have like the legal means to do that, but you can ban them from the league. Well, especially the, the rest of the years in the league could vote to, to expel them, you know, and just be like, play football elsewhere, you know, start your own league. But you just said there's nowhere to play. If that happens, like, I don't see, I don't see the Abu, Abu Dhabi group being like, yeah, we're just going to stick around. We like love England. So we're just going to hang out, you know? Oh, so maybe a way to send them. Well, okay. Another question I'll ask real quick. My last question. I'm going to say, hang out, like continue to invest in England. So is the premier league prepared to force teams or compel them to sever their relationships with golf money? Is there, is there, is there going to be, no, I don't, I, that would be, I think what they would say is that the money is the money. It's the way in which the money was accounted for and they tried to hide. It's just, which is the crime or not the crime, but the, that's the, that's the problem, right? None of these leagues have ever said, yeah, we can't let that person in. Nobody's going to do that. If the check clears, they're letting them in. No, it doesn't matter what the league is. You saw Adam Silver was delighted about the, the Vegas valuation. But he let him broker up. But the problem is this though, but the problem is this though, when it's that much money, what people are not going to want to do is leave three or $400 million, a billion dollars on it. On the table, they want, they're going to want to figure out a way how to utilize as much of the limitless spending that those countries are willing to do. So in that lies, like a festering opportunity to do shit that's behind the, like there's a salary cap. Sure. And it's all this stuff. Sure. But sure. But yo, man, there's an extra $400 million out there. Like, how do we get it? Like, is there a world where there's also a reality where England left Europe several years ago when they did Brexit? And economically are not in the same position that they were when they were part of a common market in, in terms of like trading with the EU. So like, they're like, I don't know if we can really like afford to, to give this up. I, I don't, I don't know. I'm not a great. So even if, even if you find them for, or you get that rid of them for five years, it's half a decade. That's a long time. All their players will leave. They'd have to start over from scratch. They lose a ton of revenue. Maybe that's how it plays out. The whole point of that people like Mark Stein, who's rooted for Man City. His whole life. Yes. You do have like, so he just doesn't have a team anymore. He's they're dead. I don't know. I mean, SMU had SMU fans probably felt that way. It's a long ass time until they became a relevant college football team. Again, it's like they are a relevant college football team right now. They got their program back like before then. But like now with NIL, there's so many fucking rich guys that are in and around that program. They're always going to be a problem. Texas tech places like that are going to be a problem. I guess what I'm saying is, you know, I'm trying to be with you. Like UCLA. I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think. You're not. You're not a booster yet. I'm not a booster. Okay. You're a booster. Not a booster. He's an emotional booster. He's a, you know what I am, man? He's a cultural booster. You know what I am? I'm a connector. There you go. I don't know. It's just, it's very fascinating. Because how do you do it? I think they'll wrap it up by Christmas. I mean, the appeals process being what it is. But they're playing the season right now. No, they, well, they've been off for three weeks. No, but I mean, they're all in the middle of the season and the first game back. Next weekend for Manchester city is at Liverpool. And what happens to Holland? Yeah. What does he do? That's all I really care about. I'm sure a lot of these guys have clauses in their contracts about what it takes to break it, what it takes to escape it and get out. I think this would be a force majeure kind of thing that is, but I've never seen something like this happen in sports. I personally, like there was scandals in Italian soccer, Italian football, Calciopoli. There have been cheating scandals, whatever happened. Top Choppily. Top Choppily. Yeah, I remember. Do you remember? Italian. the difference the Titans would just kill people this is a situation where I think those guys would probably be like the thing I think keep coming back to is the reason why I think Abu Dhabi got involved with the team in the first place was to use it as a platform to express a different version of their like vision for the world and their vision of themselves to the world sports watching if if if they've been disgraced here and people have written about this like what's what's the incentive to be involved well no this I mean what they what they essentially do is they it's really interesting if you take boxing or golf or soccer they just go all in let the chips fall where they may and if it goes bad they're out no fucking big deal a lot of these countries know that you know they're based around fossil fuels like that's what the economy is based around that's not infinite and so at some point there needs to be penetration into other areas of like travel travel come here there was this gigantic this gigantic development that was supposed to be happening in Saudi Arabia they were essentially building a city yes you've heard of this and there's gonna be this gigantic huge thing like four trillion dollars or whatever they're gonna do it and that was a way to like have people come there and vacation come to a tourist destination come to a tourist destination to kind of get out of needing to you know have your have your economy dictated by the rises and falls all I'm saying is that like they're not gonna give a fuck there's something else for them to buy like there's a different way for them to incept themselves into western culture and I don't mean to come off sounding like in any way xenophobic no I agree with Van they just move on to the next thing they just move on to the next thing the question is what is the franchise and the stadium worth that's like a state of the art stadium right it's a big franchise in a good spot with a big fan base and Liverpool just went for whatever but it's a it's a it does the and are you buying a disgrace team that can't compete for five years do the charges carry over like if if uh they'd have to carry over for five years if Billionaire X comes in is like I got it I'll buy it I'll buy it for six billion let's get out of here I'll buy it for ten billion let's get out of here nah there's gotta be ramifications does the does Holland and and uh Rand Shirky like all these guys stay on the team like that seems like a pretty cool I think they're out for if I was sports are which you know a job I've been applying for for 20 years sports are then would have the global sports are brings me in yeah I would just be like look you're out for five years and you gotta sell the team and that's where we are team's gone out for five years and sell the building the team cannot compete in the premier league until 2031 okay and that's what I've decided and what I say to you is hey we have this fucking stadium right it's a big huge deal yeah we have all of these jobs that are on the table what about the economic we can't come back in five years the economic distress we can't come back might kill this is where you get into too big to fail stuff right the economic distress might destroy what it is that we have going on and permanently alter the league doesn't mean they can't play somewhere else just don't know where that would be they join the Saudi Arabia league no I mean it's not happening MLS yeah MLS yeah there you go jump up right next to the Philadelphia Union this is my this has been my book report there you go it's a it's the rare sports story that there's no solution that is the solution that's obvious there's the fair solution you know the fair solution is they broke the rules and there should be a punishment other teams have gotten these punishments Nottingham Forest Everton well they're definitely getting punished right yes but is it gonna what this is the problem with um three weeks of nothing but people trying to outdo themselves by how outraged they are about it is like now we're getting to the point where it's like alright man you guys want Elliot Ness to come out and put these guys in handcuffs like what are we gonna do like yeah what's an approach appropriate punishment for what these guys did and it's been three weeks of like I haven't had any football I watched so I'm just thinking about this I'm listening to sports radio all day and podcasts about this so what's the mood in like your average Manchester pub at like 730 on a Saturday night it's gotta be grim it'll be really interesting to see Liverpool versus Man City next weekend because it's at Liverpool and a lot of people think that it's going to be like a real hornet's nest but it will be also interesting if it's just like another game I don't know I don't know I can't I can't really call it truly last question if in fact Ben loves this he didn't know anything about it I think it's it's really fascinating because there are a lot of other problems that exist in the world that are that this is kind of a microcosm for yeah if I can agree yeah so if if in fact the road less traveled less traveled happens here and there's really not a big penalty and everybody decides that we're gonna do something that's more for show and do our best at sweeping this under the rug how will the worldwide or English soccer fandom respond to that would there be outrage wait so say phrase that again so if they're soft on the penalty if they're soft on the punishment but the thing is they can't be softer than existing penalties I think it will confirm the way a lot of people feel which is like you can buy your way out of trouble but what's the worst penalty that the Premier League has ever given out I think like have people been banned for a couple years to an individual or to a team to a team you get points deductions and then you get banned from like you can get a transfer ban but they have not been significant and the teams that have had to take them on for the most part have either figured out ways around them but what they did was a hundred times worse than anything anybody else probably did so like there's no punishment that could even they invented a new infraction yeah so there's so there's no punishment that could even be yeah dozens a dozen fan bases at least who are like these guys directly impacted my like my enjoyment of my life see like we had this team we were this close to champions league qualification and they fucking bought it we had this team we were in the FA cup final against them they kicked our ass we had this guy who was supposed to be the backbone of our team for the next five years and they bought him and like that's they got blood in their mouths like people are pissed off this is what would happen if like the Clippers had won three titles with Kawhi and then all this stuff came out people would have been so much madder about that story yeah but they were you know they felt you think about like the things where it's like if the Clippers had also just continued then to be like we'll take Tyrese Halliburton we will take this guy you know what I mean and every year you were like damn we got a good little player like this is we got we've got something for the future and the Clippers were like we'll have that yeah we'll take Nick Batum this is why there is a second apron though you know like this is if you would let three years ago Mark Walter have full like I can I can outspend everybody I mean baseball fans would say that's this is kind of what happened with the Dodgers and it's a relatively similar situation and the Dodgers and then like the Yankees before them even though he didn't put everything within the rules yeah how he had the money to do this stuff seems like it was not in the rules and it's also like I think the idea of rather than caring about like competition between athletes you're caring about like bookkeeping and the fact that the Dodgers figured out this way to amortize these contracts over the to pay themselves with their own money but also to be like we're gonna back load your deal or we're gonna make it an eight-year deal that pays out like this you know it's like if you guys had thought of this you should have done it but I think it feels unfair it feels unfair when Scoogle goes to the Dodgers I mean I think Sierra's pissed off I think he is too I think he's a smoldering volcano there is there is these motherfuckers cost Liverpool Liverpool's had a nice run it's fine there's daylight between hey you know what how about a league me and Max went back and forth about this like how about a league where there is some type of care put in the competitive balance where you just can't use the rest of the league as a farm team I understand that this is something that's like actually much more breathtaking and that is hidden money that is not supposed to be there this is like a complete subversion of the spirit of the competition in the league and rules I'm sure there's a Manchester City fan out there who's listening to me and they're like this is what Manchester United used to do people would have a good player Manchester United would come pluck him up it's not like this is the first time anyone's ever splashed the pot in English football but I think the scale of it the fact that year after year you would get to the spring and the team you were cheering for was playing with a kid from the academy and some converted winger was playing fullback because they were like everybody's fucking hurt and then Manchester City just brings another million dollar guy off the bench and you're like god damn dude I forgot you guys are Jack Grealish like how do you guys have all these people this reminds me of the rewatchables category how would Van Lathan get out of this one I'm wondering like if you're Manchester City the people that own it with the fans how do you get out of it it's like hey you guys wanted to win yeah we did I didn't hear you guys complaining when we were lifting up trophies you weren't asking how the meat was getting slaughtered every year they won the governor's cup yeah like the king's challah the zag would be to do Leo and Wolf of Wall Street and be like I'm not fucking leaving give us our penalty but we're committed I'm not fucking leaving Jordan Belfort defense and we're hanging out and we're going to build this back up from the studs we love Manchester we love being here so in the short term you save a ton of money because it's all the players are out of their day in the short term you're also going to have to pay a huge fine I think well like just at the end at the risk of this going on another 30 45 minutes like what what what what's that number look like like what would that be oh 500 million dollars i mean yeah i i i like the the level of like accounting alleged accounting fraud would suggest it would be in the hundreds of millions if you were going to be like you have to pay that back if this happened with the knicks i'm trying to imagine what it's like to be fans of other teams that's the other thing they are going to get sued by these other clubs right individually if this happened in the next i'd be like get him get him so this could be potentially a billion dollar mistake sure cr's book report new feature i love that this was great yeah um thanks guys thanks for having me man no problem all right that's it for the podcast thanks to kyle and van and cr thanks to eduardo and chris and gahow as well i'm going to be back on thursday with a big ass football podcast um don't forget about rewatch texas chainsaw massacre is up and i'll see you on thursday must be 21 plus and president states for kansas in affiliation with kansas star casino or 18 plus and president dc or wyoming gave him a problem call 1-800-GAMBLE or 1-800-MY-RESET call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in maryland hope is here visit 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