NBA Panic Teams, Best QBs Ever, and Sorry Seattle With Rob Mahoney, Chris Russo, and Danny Kelly

The Bill Simmons podcast presented by Fando sports book. We were also brought to by the Ringer podcast network where I have two rewatchables this week. We put one up already on Monday night. We did just one of the guys a 1980s HBO classic. We did with Kyle Brant and Joanne Robinson. I had a lot of fun. It's been on the list for years. We are moving rewatchables from video from YouTube to Netflix next week. You will still be able to watch it on Spotify as well and get it as a podcast wherever you get your podcast. But the video will be on Spotify and then starting on Monday with Netflix. So we are doing one more before we do that on Wednesday night. It is going to be another 48 hours, the Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte sequel, controversial sequel. I have a lot of thoughts, but it's me, Van Lathen and Chris Ryan. That's coming Wednesday night and then coming next Monday on Netflix because we are going to try to at least for the first few weeks do movies that are also on Netflix. We are going to be doing Zodiac, which is a movie we did. I think the first year of the feed, we didn't have all the categories. The pod was under an hour. I wasn't on it. So Zodiac will be on Monday night on the rewatchables feed and also the video will be on Netflix. So you can watch the movie on Netflix anytime over the next five days. We're going to rewatchables. So I mentioned how there's a Bill Simmons podcast live in Los Angeles on February 11th and you can get it. It's at the will turn ringer.com slash events. There might be a couple tickets left. I'm not positive, but I'm just warning you now. It is a Bill Simmons podcast, but a rewatchables will be breaking out during this podcast. I think I'm allowed to do that since I host post shows, but there's just heavy rumors right now about a Michael man movie and maybe even a Michael man movie that we've already done. And that it's going to be me and Chris Ryan and Van Lathen. Just heavy rumors. I can't confirm. Can't confirm them yet, but there's a lot of buzz. We'll see if Sean Strani reports on it, but so yeah, it's a Bill Simmons podcast live. We might even do a little MBA at the top for about 15 minutes because MBA I'll start weekend is going to be hitting that weekend, but there might be a rewatchables breaking out. I'm just telling you now, anyway, coming up on this podcast, second one of the week, we're going to talk to Rob Mahoney about what the hell did you do MBA teams, especially with the Warriors losing Jimmy Butler last night? So we're going to hit a few teams there. The legend, the Mad Dog Chris Russo is going to come on to talk about Josh Allen, Hall of Fame quarterbacks and just what happens if you fall short in the playoffs over and over again? How do we think about you? And then last but not least, I made a mistake on Sunday's podcast. I'm going to hash it out with the ringers Danny Kelly, and we're going to talk about the Seahawks in the NFL. So big, big, big ass podcast coming up. If you noticed, I didn't talk about college football and any of these segments because we have good college football pods. We've Todd McShay that broke everything down with the ringer tailgate guys that did an awesome job last night. So if you want college football, go listen to those podcasts. I'm doing football in basketball today. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Rob Mahoney. And Bill Simmons podcast is presented by Fandall. Playoff mode is on. Fandall's got it all. Same game, parlays, quick bets for jumping in live, offers to boost your winnings every game day. You do not want to miss out on the playoff action. The remaining playoff action we have on Fandall, download the Fandall app or head to Fandall.com/bs to get started. 21 plus and president select states are 18 plus and president DC Kentucky or Wyoming. The game prom co win energy gambler or visit rg-help.com called 888-789-77777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. All right, taping this with Rob Mahoney early afternoon Pacific time, I was actually watching last night and Jimmy Butler clearly did something to his knee and fell to the ground and took the Warriors season with him and it ties into a game we're going to play called, "Okay, what the hell do we do now?" Go and stay as a long time curry season tickets guy just rooting for him to be in my life for as long of an NBA season as possible every year. This feels insurmountable Rob. I don't know what they do, I looked at it, I'm sure you did too, I looked at spot track, I made up fake trades, I just tried to figure it out and I just couldn't figure it out. This season is pretty much cooked but they just didn't have 20 points to spare, much less everything else Jimmy Butler gives them. The offense does not have that much give to it right now. All you can really do is I think maybe take like a slightly longer view, take a little bit more risk than you would otherwise is just, this isn't a front office that takes a lot of big swings, that makes a lot of big gambles and so I don't know how much I'm expecting them to do that even with Jimmy Butler down. Yeah, I mean, basically your gamble is going to be, "Hey, John, I think Kaminga, how you doing?" Trying to have a conversation with John of the Kaminga for the big risk at this point. 930 breakfasts, want to get some eggs, maybe some yogurt, some granola. I don't know what else they would do, the only trade I could think of and I don't even know why Philly would do this is if Philly just wants to get off this year plus two more years of Paul George and you're like, take Butler, he's back, all start break next year as an expires contract, we'll take the extra Paul George here, here's a protected pick and any interest in getting off Paul George. That's pretty dark if that's where we're going like right off the bat. Dark for everyone, including Paul George, it's like, this is my trade value, a guy who just tore his ACL, that's pretty rough, Paul George, I will mention the last 17 games is 16 and 5 and 4 and shooting 37% for 3 and playing 33 minutes of game Rob. When he's out there, he's played pretty well and so the same has been true for Joel and Beat. I know we want to talk about the sixers too, but they've got like at least some momentum and something going and it felt like the Warriors maybe finally did too. They were finally stringing some games together. It felt like the rotation was maybe starting to finally make some sense. It just sucks to see it fall apart like this, especially when as you mentioned, like the big picture in terms of solutions, there's nothing that's going to fix them for the season. I think, I think it's a matter of for them, if they want to target guys who might be like by low kind of candidates, who could be something for them next season, who can give them something beyond what they already have. If you call New Orleans and kick around the idea of like bringing in someone like Eve Misee, for example, if you talk about, even like Gigi Jackson, like trying to find guys who are on other teams benches who aren't delivering, who aren't being trusted, who aren't fulfilling the brief for whatever they're being asked to do, and thinking, okay, if we put them around Steph and Dremont and Jimmy whenever he comes back next year, could they be something for us? Because otherwise, they just don't have that many guys who are rock solid steady rotation players. Yeah. I mean, the other option is just to do that with the guy you already have on your roster in Kaminga. You could do that. This would be, what is this 9.0 of the Kaminga era of talking to yourself into it? But this is, I think they're going to get this one right, you know, 9.0. That's how you really is the charm. It really is. Well, they're 25 and 19. Their net rating was up to 3.0, which was 8th in the league. And I actually saw their last couple games because I'd kind of written them off and obviously with OKC and Denver, it's hard to imagine a worse run, but they still have a top 10 guy. And it did feel like they were rounding into something. And I think that was what was frustrating about last night because they were beating Miami and they look good and they felt like they had figured some stuff out. I was going through the curry bad luck in the 2020s, starting with the second clay injury. They get that high pick and it's the COVID draft when you can't, you don't have a March badness to work out of. You can't really work anyone out. You're doing stuff by Zoom that 21 draft when they're splitting the room on Kaminga versus Wagner, Moody versus Shengo and Murphy. And they just go over to with those decisions. The dream on pool disaster right after they win this miracle, 22 title, not dealing Kamingo when they could have, I think I'm going to count which times, well, out of the many times, but especially like two, two plus years ago, like they, I think could have gotten Caruso for them. I think it was that level of, like he was at that Josh Gidey trade value level. They just didn't pull the trigger and then the ACL last year. You could flip it and say they had so much good luck from 09 to, from, from Minnesota passing on Curry twice, right, to clay falling down in the draft where they did the cap spike all the way. Dream on in the second round. All of these things that happened, the bucks having a choice between Monta Ellis and Curry and picking Monta Ellis and the bogat trade. That's a real thing that happened. So you could argue they used up maybe all their luck after the cap spike. I don't know. Maybe so. I mean, it's still like so much of what goes wrong with the warriors has nothing to do with Steph not living up to his job, right? He still elevates everyone around him. He still makes this team incredibly functional, despite the fact that they don't have anything resembling traditional shock creation, right? Like he is the engine that makes it all make any modicum of sense. And there's just only so much you can, you can only do that for so long. And I think we've gotten used to having the conversation about, oh, he's doing this at this age and this remarkable. It still is. It's just everything around him has to, has to bear some load, right? Like it has to carry some of the weight for the team. And increasingly, Dreymon can only do so much and even Jimmy Butler can only do so much. And even Anthony Melton is unavailable every third game and like he's one of the most reliable players at this point. So he just needed a little more at basically every step. And if any one of those things you mentioned goes a little differently, if like Moses Moody is 40% better as a player, 30% better as a player than he is, maybe Golden State's entire trajectory looks totally different. So the Porter trade, which I think they were considering and didn't seem like they were that interested in is one that could do with coming in salaries and basically try to replace Butler's production with him. I don't think that changes their destiny as a team that's not coming to title. There's a Zion Ristle dice roll, but at least if you and I are running the Warriors, I think we go out and get a coffee and talk about the pros and cons of Zion, maybe for 45 minutes. You have the conversation, you kick all all of the odds on that dice roll. It feels a little loaded to me. Like that's a casino. I don't know that I want to step foot in. Yeah, that's one of those where they've changed the blackjack to five to five even. Train Murphy, Hail Mary, that's the last deed available, which apparently, you know, supposedly the Pelicans would never dream of trading Train Murphy. I find it hard to believe he's not available if it's a Godfather offer, but I don't even know if they have enough for a Godfather offer. So sadly, this is a wrap and I don't think career ever leaves. So I'm sure day three of this will be, what if they trade a career? I'm sure that'll go, but I just don't think he wants that. I don't think they want that. I just don't think that's happening. What might happen is the, my knees bothering me. Sure. Like we could zag that way too. They're not that far away from being able to zag the other way and getting a tough time pick. It's crazy. All right. The next, as we continue to play, what the hell do we do now? The next are two and not in their last 11. Yeah. And you could spin that one in two ways. Teams, they lost to a pretty good. They lost to Phoenix twice, Spurs, Atlanta. Sure. They're playing pretty well. Detroit. Yep. Go in state during a nice little run for them. Dallas has been frisky lately. They lost them yesterday and then the one bad one was Sacramento. They could say, well, yeah, okay, those aren't awful losses. But if you don't a lot of spinning like you are trying, don't make yourself dizzy here. The problem is if you had a television, you actually watch what was going on was a little different. The Dallas game was a disgrace losing a Sacramento at this point of what Sacramento is when they're minus 11 net rating and just a disaster. The nicks are five and ten in their last 15, 26 net rating, two and nine in their last 11. Towns is now the one getting the most fingers pointed. Right. I have some other ideas that I'll give you in a second. But what do you see? What do you think's wrong? Yeah. I mean, normally with teams like this, the nicks are on paper, still a good team. They're in a conference that has a lot of opportunity for them to go deep. Normally, I would be pretty conservative with the team like the nicks. I just think something is really off here. It feels awful in ways that transcend just the last like three weeks, right? That's been a particularly bad stretch. But really, you're looking at two years now of the team's best players, not fully understanding how to best play together, how to work off each other in total. Like they're, quote unquote, best like best five on the floor this season. They're losing their minutes. And that was, that was not quite sure under tips, but there was something that was like a little off, clearly, they don't fully understand exactly how to play off each other in this offense. Defensively, they're just like structural problems with having Jalen Brunson and Cat as like core members of your team that are always going to be issues. Yeah. They can find ways to work around some of that stuff. And we saw it last year in the playoffs, right? Like who they can be collectively when they do tap into the best versions of all that. I just, I'm pretty apprehensive about just trusting this team to figure it out because they've had time now under two different coaches. And I wouldn't say they ever fully figured out they fired the first coach because the process behind the team felt busted. And now at this point, the same roster, more or less with some like additional supplementary players hasn't really figured out anything different. Yeah. To me, it's like watching a football team that spent all this money on the two cornerbacks. In this case, that would be bridges and in and OB. Sure. It's like, we have these awesome wing defenders. It's like, great, love wing defenders, need them in this day and age. And those are like the awesome shutdown cornerbacks. And then the defensive line is just awful and everybody can run on them and there's no pass rush. And it's like, we have these quarterbacks, the quarterback has seven seconds to throw. Kind of makes it tougher at the quarterbacks. I just think this started with, you know, this has been Brunson's whole career as the undersized guy. But I think Indiana really tapped into something against the Knicks with the guards. And just being able to attack him with multiple people who had the ball and multiple people that he was having trouble staying in front of, not to mention towns too. And I really feel like the biggest thing that has happened this season is how many teams have modeled themselves after Indiana and all these different ways. Indiana, it's weird because OKC has been, you know, the North Star of the league and the team you have to get over. But I think Indiana was the one everybody's like, hey, we could do that too. We could full court press. We could use a bench. We could have multiple guards at the same time and spread the floor and have people attacking one on one. The Celtics. The Celtics are doing a better version of what the Pacers did last year. They had the same fucking recipe. I mean, your version was pretty good. I got them to the end of the finals during the regular season, like they're net rating and stuff. The Celts are second in net rating, but they're doing the Pacers. They're just doing an imitation of it. Right. And I think it's bad for Brunson. I think what they go into these games and these, you just have all these different guards that are just attack, attack, attack. And then on top of it, you have towns going into this funk. And those two things alone, I think not to mention they don't seem to trust their bench very much. But that's what I see. So does that add up for you? It squares for me. I mean, Jalen Brunson is one of the best in the world at kind of making something out of nothing in some of these situations, just like, you know, broken possessions, situations where she shouldn't be able to create an advantage and does, obviously baiting guys into the air and drawing fowls and doing all those things, but he has to do it a lot. And to your point about the pressure that other teams are applying, full court and otherwise, that takes its toll. You want to find ways to get easier mechanisms of offense. And this is a team that has to have overwhelmingly good offense to overcome everything that they're not on defense collectively. And it doesn't feel overwhelming right now. It feels like they can be a decent offensive team and maybe a fundamentally flawed defensive team. You can get away with town. So when he's 25 and 12, last nine, he was 18 or 11, shooting 32% from three. And when it's going badly for him, and he's in one of those town's funks, you really feel it. Yes. I would say he's first team on B.A. Of I'm really feeling it when it's not going for well for you. You just feel it. You feel it. This teammates, I think teams attack them. They try to fuck with them. So I would go and stay the other night. Tramon is just messing with them to see what he can get away with basically. And his mistakes are among the loudest in the entire league. It's not just like guys like you and I watching the games, you feel it as a teammate, right? Like when he messes something up, it feels glaring. It feels like something that, oh my God, now we have to talk about this. Now we have to call time out. Now we have to rally the troops to address this thing that Karl is doing or not doing. But that's a not insignificant part of like the ecosystems of these teams. Do you think, so I genuinely think Davis for towns was going to gain traction as we got close to the deadline because that was a trade that made a lot of sense for both teams. And he's just a really good basketball trade. But if you're Dallas, like, yeah, we could put him with Gafford and he could be like a stretch forward. We need more shooting when Kauai comes back, like, there's some good things with this and we're getting out of the Davis business before he gets hurt again. Yeah. Then he got hurt again, became a move point. I say this tentatively, not happy about it. LeBron for towns is sitting there. Okay. You're at least a little happy about it. It's just it's so classic, just the stupid internet trade, somebody would make up and yet I'm looking at it going, eh, not a bad trade. Like for to solve two things, right? If you're the next, just trying to get out of the towns business before that track gets crazy. If you're the Lakers, this is a pretty interesting guy to put with Luca. I'm now going to war with Luca towns and reach together. I don't have to worry about getting nothing for LeBron a year from now. If I'm the next, it's like, well, this will be weird with Bronson and LeBron and all of a sudden I don't really have a center. I'm going to have to rely on Mitchell Robinson. There's all these other variables that are opening up, which is fundamentally a pretty interesting basketball trade. My take is way more fun for the league. If you just do that right now, most fun, like, side me up from an entertainment fun standpoint of just towns for LeBron, but you seem a little more skeptical. I just, LeBron's 41 years old. Yes. I want to throw it on him that he needs to now save the New York Knicks and especially needs to make sense of their defense in some way. I think obviously adding LeBron as a secondary playmaker as someone who's going to take, you know, relieve some of the pressure off of Bronson, that's a hugely valuable thing. I think where you and I are different is like, for everything that towns is done and not done and as frustrating as he's been, especially over the last couple of weeks, I'm not operating from the mindset of like, we have to get out of the Carl Towns business, right? Like, I'm open to any town's trade, certainly like an Anthony Davis one, I think might be more appealing, especially if like your medical staff believes that he might be back in five to six weeks, right? That it might be a non-surgical recovery for him. That's something that would be really interesting to me, but I wouldn't do it if I don't know if he's coming back this year. I think that's where I have moved on the Knicks is if you asked me a month ago, should they even consider trading for somebody who has a serious injury and might come back or to say, obviously not, they're in, so they're so well positioned in the east, they're talented enough. I'm going to trust them to figure it out. I no longer trust this team to figure it out. Like, I think they need to consider some pretty dramatic changes. Yeah. They don't necessarily have to be towns oriented, but he's the natural guy you look at. Yeah, and it's weird because that whole identity matched a lot of what we're watching with some of the successful teams this year, like that over, overachieving underdogs, scrappy. That's who they were two years ago. That's who it's all right. They were at times last year. And now they feel like just your classic, everybody's making a ton of money on an NBA team. I thought this was going to go better. We just see it. We've seen this happen for the last 40 years with certain teams. I don't know what the answer is with having towns and Brunson at the same time. And I think back to that Celtic series, which was the best series they won in the last years of Brunson. And the Celtics just, we were saying as it was happening, it was one of the dumbest offensive game plans. The way they played them was the one way that was great for the next offensive way. It's like, we're just going to launch three. It's like, the nicks are like, great. That sounds awesome. Please keep doing that. And they, they were able to scrap and win. But I do wonder what Brunson and Towns together, how sustainable that is. All right. That's one, speaking of the Celtics, the Tatum's back Celtics, this is much, we can do this quick because I've talked about the Celts a lot. It's a weird team, but they do have Tatum coming back as the, quote unquote, trade deadline move. And they might have Tatum coming back as the trade deadline. Well, did you see what, did you see yesterday? I saw it. The work out in front of reporters is like, that's basically, that's now that, that's like the soft, that's the friends and family launch of a restaurant. Come on in. We're going to try to make some sort of leaning. Soft launching Jason Tatum's return is a very funny way for the Celtics season to go. He's, he's coming back, I expect that he will come back at some point in what form is my question, right? Because 60% Jason Tatum and 80% Jason Tatum, those are radically different players. But if I offered you a small dose minutes version of a 90% Jason Tatum, how are we accomplishing this medically? Like, does he need to have like a cybernetic arm? Like, what's happening? Well, I think he's going to be all right. Like, I think he's just going to be fine. I don't think he's going to be fine to be playing 39 minutes of game like he did before the injury. But the question, the tech starts it on, because this team has overachieved 26 and 16, they're third in that rating now. Crazy. And when you look at like the, the bigger stats with them, it's just a fucking weird team. Like, they're first in turnovers, which is great. Mm-hmm. They're sixth in offensive rebounds, big part of the strategy of like just shooting three crashed the boards, basically. Second in May threes, they're seventh in three point percentage. They're also 29th in free throw attempts, they're 29th in assists, they're 30th in pace. If I just gave you those three, and I'd be like, what do you think the team's offensive rating would be with those three stats, you'd be like, I don't know, 20th? Yeah. 24th maybe like it's, it's not a great recipe by that standard, but they make it, I mean, they make it work. And by that, I mean, mostly Jalen Brown makes it work. And the three guards and the fact that they always have these two guards and White has been in a slump lately, which is one of the reasons their record is dipped. But look at it the minutes yesterday, Brown plays 38, White plays 37, Pritchard 33, Simon's 24, K to 28, guards of 15. And then how's their Walsh and Shireman are at 57 and you figure if Tatum comes back and he's just playing 20 minutes, he's grabbing 10 minutes from somebody, which I would assume is that Shireman Walsh combo. But then on one of my threads, we were like, are we sure, Pritchard should be playing 33 minutes a game? I don't think he should. Yeah. So maybe he gets 10 of those. Then there was a, well, what happens in a playoffs because I don't know if they could play Garza, who I think I like Garza, but I wonder if he's going to get targeted. It's like, could Jason Tatum, gasp, place some stretch five? Why are we doing this to him? Like the man is on a surgically repaired leg and you're asking him to play like, basically going small ball with Tatum in the Garza spot. And here's why I bring this up. I don't know how this is going to play out. And it's one of the weirder variables I remember. A team that's playing really well, that's a two seed is now just bringing this guy who is the fourth best player in the league last year. And he has to fit into what's happening. And I don't know how they're going to do it. And I don't know what he's going to be happy with. And then if I'm Jaylen Brown, who you didn't see the game last night, he's guarding Kade on one end. He's doing everything on the other end. And he's the best forward in the league right now. And I don't want him to lose some of the stuff he's doing, but Tatum's going to want to prove that he's, so they have, it's just this. There's a lot of balance and can we keep the identity of this year's team and not be last year's team? And I don't know how they're going to unlock it. I think that whole, that balance is incredibly delicate. And you're right. You should be mindful of what it does to Jaylen Brown as a player to introduce this huge variable when he has been able to dictate terms in ways that have been incredibly beneficial to him. And wildly successful, given all of our expectations, I would be mindful of that. I would be mindful of Jason Tatum, as you said, like, is he going to be happy with this sort of arrangement? It's really hard to ask a competitor who is that talented and that successful to, oh, you're just going to play 20 minutes a game. You're going to be on these hard minutes limits, even as you work your way back. Even for someone who I'm sure wants to be a part of it, talk to him after our competitive crunch time or fourth quarter where he's not allowed to play because he already hit his limit in that game. Right. So basically you're trusting him to be responsible this minutes. You're trusting the Celtics coaching staff to be responsible this minutes. You're trusting every member of that roster to be like so squarely in their zone in terms of role that they will understand what Tatum coming back means and doesn't mean. There's just a lot of ways that a really successful season could just be upset all of a sudden. I'm not saying don't do it. If you have Jason Tatum available and he's healthy enough to play, he should play. But these are huge variables for a team that, as you said, is basically strong all this together because they have overachieved, because they have tapped into something like kind of magical in the alchemy of the group and now you're challenging the alchemy of the group. Yeah. And the style that they play is different with how even how they use the two bigs to set picks, how much runs through the guards compared to how much ran through Tatum last year. So it is, it's going to be fascinating. But people really like the Celtics team and people are also really excited that Jason Tatum might come back and it feels like if you have a great coach or a really good coach and I think that Mizzle has been really good and a good organization that doesn't want to rush him back, that trust, you got to come back, this team I think is pretty realistic. But it's definitely what are we going to do? Orlando just quickly, so they're 23 and 19. Every time I become intrigued by them or think maybe something will happen, they just suck in a game. They've got some bad losses. Like the last one they had though, getting killed by Memphis and London or whatever the whole way that came. I guess the thing I keep coming back to Rob is I think we have a, we're halfway through the season. There's some really good advanced stats now. There's good sample sizes. There's good five man lineup stuff now. There's even good like last 20 games where you can look at a team like the Clippers and be like, throughout the record, look at the last 20. There are Sugs, Bane, Palo and Franz, there's plus 18 per 100. So even though I'm 23, 19, I've had some weird injuries. I'm just looking at that and going, you know what, let's, we can make a run. We could be Dallas two years ago. Let's just trust the process, right? Is that fair? Totally. I mean, maybe that's a lofty ambition for them, but it is what they should at least think about embracing. And I think they've been a different team when Jalen Sugs has been healthy. They've been, certainly, they've opened my eyes just with the Anthony Black like. A wild card. Oh my god. He's been incredible. Yeah. So like as far as navigating the deadline goes, I don't think they should do anything dramatic. I want to see the healthiest version of Sugs and Palo and Franz and Bane in particular. And now adding Anthony Black to that makes some capacity. I want to give them a shot to show something and to prove something. And I think they've earned that. You can still shore up around the edges a little bit and I think you can maybe find another backup guard who can give you something a little more than what they've gotten from Tias Jones who has been muted at best and kind of writing the bench at worst. You know, I'm like, I would assume you in Chicago, like is that a guy that's pryable, right? Someone who's like an energy defender who's hitting like 45% of his threes this season. Could that be an option? Is, you know, the Anthony Simon stuff has always been out there. Is there like a mutually beneficial Simon's Goga Patatse oriented deal that gets Boston to back up big and gets Orlando some shooting? I don't even know. But that's kind of where I'd be looking is like that fourth guard spot. Basically, I think there's some room for Orlando to do something. Would you like to know my Anthony, Anthony Simon's update for whether I'd want him to be Trader or not? I would love to hear it. Have you got my newsletter? I have a sub stack. I don't want them to trade them. No. You're holding on tight. I like them. I actually think it's taken them a while to figure out what he is and isn't. And I don't know. He had a game a couple games ago when they just spread the floor with them and kind of unleashed him. And it was awesome. And he was just, I mean, he has, I think out of all the guards, it's weird. One of the best first steps when he's really like just zooms by people and he's also like one of the best, I'm feeling it shooters, I think in the league. And I think if you look at the advanced asset in the last two months, combined with just like the way he's been shooting, like I, I just wouldn't trade him because there's a, there's an easy Malik monk trade sitting there if they wanted to shed salary and get under the first apron and yeah, they could be involved in a variety of ways. I actually think Malik monk would be really good with this team. I wouldn't trade Simon's. I think the team like son, like the players like them, the coaches like them. So when, anyway, when I look at Orlando, yeah, it's like, is there like a Kobe Jones, Alvarado, you mentioned to Simon, like one of the, is somewhere, one of those three levels of guards that they could add to give them a little flexibility. I'm more interested in like, what am I getting from Palo? Why aren't you better than you were last year? Why are we so beholden to you at the end of these games? And are you just going to be Sheree from Dorahame from the 2002 season that school life? You're just a 21 and eight and you take, you're taking some 20 footers. Okay. This a little harsh. I know. I'm being honest. Look, he's been disappointing the season in playoff games. He has consistently been like one of the only guys who shows up, right? Who shot isn't completely failing him. Who's kind of like able to, I say force it, but I mean it as a compliment. Like force his way through tough defense and create opportunities and shots in ways that other guys can't always do. So I want to see them. And the plan begins there to, there's things that, I wonder like if you gave all the magic fans truth serum and they woke up from a nap and you gave them a true serum and you said, we've traded either Franz or Palo. We'll be more disappointing to you. I wonder what the answer would be. I feel like Palo's approval rating in Orlando among magic fans is still pretty high. Now nationally, a lot of people who are skeptics, a lot of people who are wondering about, you know, whether it's the jump shooting efficiency or the defense or kind of like who he ultimately will be. Yeah. I feel like magic fans don't like Palo. Here's the, here's the best thing for Palo and the best case for it. He'll be fine. Look, it would happen to Jalen Brown. What we've learned is social media can just beat out all the bad habits of a player and turn them into an awesome person while it be air. We're so worried about the effects the social media have on the use on our brains. What if it can fix that? Jalen Brown now has a crossover dribble and doesn't move the ball in traffic. It has the devastating two point game. It's great. Incredible. I, I think Orlando is fine. I was actually looking at the odds for them on Fando for Eastern Conference. I thought they'd be higher, but it's only 10 to one. I could see them making a little run here, like a little post all star break. It's like Orlando is 18 and two in their last 20. I'm not ruling them out. Philly from what the hell are we going to do now, standpoint? I think their fans really liked what was going on with this team and then Paul George came back in and beat came back and they're both there playing and beats played 12 of the last 14 play three minutes of game. Like knock on every piece of wood you have in your home, but like it's kind of playing pretty well, kind of moving and looking like Joel and beat again. Every point shot seems gone. The second jump stuff's gone. Sure. It looks like one of his legs doesn't really work anymore, but that's, but this is Tim Duncan. I don't know about that. Tim Duncan's last seven years. I think he was on one leg. Like eight years. That's fair. It's fine. Rebounding that where it used to be. No. But it still feels like he can score when he wants to. So he's at least become almost like the greatest version, version ever of like August in the late 2000s where it's like, we could throw this guy the ball and he'll get a basket for us. The greatest version of Sojourner. So Galski. I'm sure that's what Joel and Beat has been striving for all these years when he was hoping for. And Paul George has been playing too as we discussed earlier and yet it hasn't really affected their record. And now when you watch them, it's like, it's like when you're on Prestige TV with a bunch of our shows. It's like a TV show where there's two shows going on at the same time. It's like the writer's room is struggling to pull it all together. I like this procedural room over there. I'm not sure about like the romcom going on here. Can we do more of the procedural? And I think that's how the six or fans feel about Maxi and Edgecomb. I think that's probably true. I personally am waiting for the bottle episode of Dominic Barlow and his exploits. Like, I'm into that personally, but the solo episode, yeah. This thing that like, this is what's hard about the Sixers is the East is open enough. Yeah. Good enough as is. I think they should consider themselves to be a pretty serious player and more buyer than seller. But what exactly do they need because they're not complete, but you look up and down the roster and it's like, yeah, they could use, you know, a little more forward depth, they could probably use a different kind of creator, especially off the bench to kind of compliment what they have. But you don't want to take the ball out of Tyrus Maxi's hands too much. You don't want to take away Joel and Beads momentum. Like, they kind of have some of the stuff that should work in theory, but it's hard to know how much to hedge against Paul George and Joel, not being available for this game or that. Right. Exactly. You need to add to this group. Like, it's just not immediately clear to me where the obvious upgrade is. Well, and they have this Grimes contract. That's basically a one year deal, which I think is hard to trade when it, at some point, they can trade it though. Right. They can't trade it. They can't trade it. They can't trade it. And I think maybe the Grimes contract plus Kelly Ubrei, like plus that mentality of people. Yeah. That's, that's starting to happen. Like, now that's a conversation. And those are two guys who can actually help teams present tense and maybe can help the Sixers resolve some of like this redundancy, basically. There's a trade asset that they have that would be a trade asset for me if I ran another team. But I'm not sure is actually a trade asset anymore. Is Jared McCain sure to look good for a cup of coffee last year? We got super excited about him. Got her. Now he's a Delaware blue coat. Now he's in the G league, which is just incredible. I remember before the year talking about, could they put Paul George's contract with Jared McCain as the asset attached to try to get something better than Paul George? Now it's like, I don't even know if McCain's an asset, but I still. I would trade for that guy like, like to me, that's like a guy Minnesota should be staring at. Oh, yeah. That'd be awesome. Like teams or Houston or Golden State, like teams that are just like in a position to take a chance on a guy who isn't as good as he could be right this second. And who I don't think has a path with the Sixers, they have their back court. Like he's just never, he's going to be a 15 to 20 minute a game guy for them for eternity. They have their two guys. VJ is way too good. Like, yeah. He's just not going to play. And I'm sure maybe that's part of the thing with him that, oh, this sucks. Like I have my path is to be the third guard on this team. I, that guy is an LA high school guy. I watched him in high school play. Like I just thought he was awesome. I liked him at Duke. I think there's really something there and that, I think is a real asset. So what do they need? Probably some Paul George swing insurance, like if you're in a playoff series, who's guarding Jalen Brown? If I catch the Celtics, right? On that team, I don't know. No easy answers. Yeah. Currently, I think it'd probably someone like Kelly Uprey, right? Getting a bulk of that responsibility and that's, you know, flighty at best. Not awesome. And then the upbeat thing, I guess this has been a success when we thought two months ago that he seemed like he was not going to be in the week. Yeah. I mean, beats the alternatives. Yeah. I would say this is we're in the pleasant surprise. Yes. Stage of this. So their odds to win the East are 11 or one. So Fandoah is Detroit of plus 330, Celts plus 340, Knicks plus 390, Cavs, 5 to 1, Magic 10 to 1, 6ers, 11 to 1, and then the only, is there any other team you'd want to know the odds for? I think that's really it. The Charlotte Hornets, where are the Hornets odds to win the East? 125 to 1. I'm glad you asked. You know what? Speaking of Bilo. Speaking of incredible five band lineup, advanced metrics. Maybe now we're talking. They were second in net rating with their best five at everyone in the league over a hundred minutes with the Knipple and Miller and, um, those are good with those, and they've like kind of their West Coast trip was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I went at Zach on Twitter. Zach and I have been feuding about the Hornets ever since he left the end of the room. And I said they were number six is my lead past him. Oh, no, they should be higher than six as your league past him. They're great. They've been over just a reliable entertaining team this whole time. So you're what do we do now as the sixers is, let's wait another week to see how healthy these cars are? I couldn't hurt or like, you know, modest upgrades on the bench, I think would be nice. But otherwise, like, see if you can string together some of these contracts and make a meaningful deal. All right. Quick break. And then, uh, we'll quickly talk about the Lakers and some others. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandall four teams left two games this weekend, a trip to Super Bowl LX. I think that's 60 on the line, Fandall is turning on playoff mode. And right now, all customers get a profit boost pack during the conference championship round. That means you'll find a pack loaded with multiple profit boost waiting for you in the app. More boost means more way hits to level up your playoff bets. And on Thursday's pod, we are going to break down not only the games themselves, but a bunch of fun props related in the game. So stay tuned for that visit fender.com slash NFL grab your profit boost pack for the NFC and aFC championship games. You must be 21 plus president, select states are 18 plus and president DC Kentucky, Wyoming, opt in required bonus issue. There's now a drawbook profit boost tokens, restrictions apply, including any token expression max wage or amount. See terms at sportsbook.fandall.com. Some problem call 100 gamble or visit rg-help.com, call 888-789-777-777 or visit ccpg.org/shagcanadicate. The Lakers are my favorite, what do we do now, team? Because they're 25 and 16. And if you just freeze frame it right there and you're like, they're 25 and 16. They've basically the same record as the Celtics. What's wrong? Why are you complaining? It's like, well, you haven't watched them. They're last 20, they're 29th defensive breeding out of their 30 teams. That's kind of a big deal. Yeah. They're 25th and net rating minus 4.7. I thought this was funny. They're 26th and rebounds, 28th and blocks and 23rd and made threes. If I just gave you those three stats, you're like, that seems probably bad. They are second and free throw attempts, but that's just because they're the Lakers and the league is rigged for them. Well, and because Luca Doncic is the best at doing that basically in the whole league right now. Yeah. They have a bunch of expiring contracts, Rui, Vincent, Kleber, Kleba, and it's basically 40 right there, eight and eight Vanderbilt's 11, 12 and 13, then they have some smaller ones. All the Laker fans, I know, hate the fact that this might be the team in March and feel like they're just drawing dead at the poker table with the defense. What do you do now for the Lakers? The defense is really bad and it's awful. There is not one move or one series of moves. I don't even think that fixes all that this season. It's, to me, the framework is, can you hit a solid double or can you find a contributing perimeter player who will be a part of this team next year who will make some of this make sense? And I'd be calling every day about like Tari Esen, about Anthony Melton, about Keon Ellis, about like maybe if the bucks go to shit and they start fire sailing guys off like Ryan Rollins, someone like that, right? Who can you get in on that can give you, honestly, the skill is great and you want guys who can contribute offensively. But they just need somebody who is a dynamic enough athlete that when they try to get back on defense, it doesn't look like they're running a sand dune. Like they just don't have anyone who makes getting up and down the court look easy right now. And that feels like a huge problem. Every time they bump up against any young team, any athletic team, they just work them because of that. And so they just feel like they're stuck in the mud because that's where a lot of their guys are athletically right now. Yeah, I was saying I wanted my Laker fan friends. These teams have the Lakers on the schedule. And if you're a younger team that likes to go up and down and try to score points, you must be like, we're playing the Lakers tonight. He's going to be great. I'm going to try to score 40 points. I mean, why wouldn't you? Like that opportunity is there for you. And again, it's like there isn't one silver bullet solution to that problem. But you need somebody who's going to make sense longer term or at least medium term with Luca and Austin Reeves of that works with LeBron. If you want to consider him part of the mix beyond this season, like they just need somebody who fits better than what they have. And they just don't have enough actual supplementary talents who fit that. If you catch them on the wrong night, they have successfully replicated the energy of the guys who have been playing pickup for three hours and decided to play one more game. They realized halfway through that it was a bad idea, and they probably shouldn't have, but they still have to finish the game. Been guilty on many such occasions. You know, that's like I was crazy. Yeah. It's like, should we go one more? I don't know. My feet hurt. Well, one more. And then you're just like kind of half-heartedly jogging after dudes for 20 feet Pianny. That's what they look like. They still look at Donutcha, choose having an awesome offensive season and some of his effort on defense has been as reprehensible as ever. Of course, LeBron, it's even tough to complain about him at age 41. I think it's amazing that he's still as productive as he is at this point, but you're asking to lock down people. Good luck. They have probably the top two guys in the league who don't move, who move the least when they don't have the ball. Who drew the most with the least in terms of their actual body move? It's like I'm out. I'm out. I'm just out of the play, I guess. And it's just a bad mix of guys. So the bright side is their record's pretty good, but I think that 20 game sample size is pretty illuminating. I actually like Rui as a piece for somebody else, not this team. Because ultimately, I think LeBron has to be a four at this point. To play Rui, LeBron, and Aiden is just nonsensical to me. You can argue Luka could be a four sometimes, but I think Rui, they can turn into something. And there's teams like we talked about the Sixers a little bit ago. It's like an interesting sixer to me, like some size, some three point shooting, but there's some teams that I just think, honestly, he's a pretty interesting, okay, see guy for me. This is kind of one of the problems, though, is that one of the benefits of having Luka on your team is in theory. It opens up room to do a lot of interesting things positionally. You can mix and match guys, you can play different sorts of skill sets, you can move guys around the board in ways that they might not be able to on other teams. But they're so locked in between when Reeves is out there and healthy and Luka and LeBron, but really it's a Luka and LeBron issue in terms of playing those guys together, where you don't have that flexibility. And that makes Rui less valuable. It makes Jake Luravia slightly less valuable, like you just feel so hamstrung by centering so much of your team around guys who don't open up the room for you to play more interesting combinations of players. You wouldn't consider trading Reeves, right? I mean, I'm not like completely ruling it out. I think Austin Reeves is awesome, but this is maybe a team that needs an awesome player who plays a slightly different position, or at least stand to go through the thought experiment of it. Because he's 45 billion a year next year. It's going to be 50. Because now, whatever you pay him, you're locked into Luka and him as your top two expensive guys. Yes. So you have to decide, if these are my top two, my winning a title, basically. But give me all the best possible people to put with these two guys. Right. I'm fully comfortable paying him at this point, like I really have doubts about him as a creator. It's more like, is this the best possible use of all of that cap investment? Is it Austin Reeves and Luka together? Or again, do we need somebody who's giving you a little more defensively? Do you want someone who plays off of Luka, like Austin, honestly plays off of Luka well, but plays off of him in a different way? Yeah. Well, to be continued with them, there's a possibility. JJ might have to be hospitalized though, if they have to keep playing defense like that. I could just see him all of a sudden be like, I think something's going on. The aneurysm potential is high. Oh my god. Bucks, 18 and 24 somehow. They are 15 and 13 with Yannis and 3 and 11 without him. Part of the issue is they only have two tradable contracts other than Yannis and Turner. One is Kuzma, 22 this year, 20 next year, and then Portis, 13 and then 14. And then they have a bunch of small ones. And those are two guys who have been around the trade block. Like Kyle Kuzma has been available at many different points for many different teams at this stage. There, you know, there's always some interest, but not overwhelming interest. And Bobby Portis, wildly productive for the role you slot him into, but has so many like little red flags or asterisks or like trade-offs to his game that make him hard for a team to like really take a swing on? Yes. So you're looking at Simon's and Portis together, I'm sorry, not Simon's. I have a four-teamer with the Kings getting Kuzma, the Celtics getting Monk, the Grizzlies getting Simon's and Portis and the Bucks getting John Morant. You're looking at crazy trades like that where you have to my end up turning your two trade assets into John Morant and then crossing your fingers really hard. I don't love it. I don't need it. I mean, I don't love the Jai Yanis possibility in general. Maybe the Bucks are desperate enough to do a bill. This is ultimately their problem, right? They really only have two options and it's you either go hard at basically any decent proposal that is put in front of you to try to make this team better as soon as possible. Like that would be what investment in this core looks like. The standing pat like middle ground option, I don't think really makes a lot of sense for this team at this stage. The other option is you do, like you make the hard call on trading Yanis or something you don't want to do, something that you've been loathe even consider to this point. But if you're not like really swinging at like big trades and possibilities like a John Morant style deal, even if I don't like Jos fit specifically, what are you doing here? Like what is the point of going through all this of turning your cap sheet upside down to fit Miles Turner into it? If you're not willing to make then further dramatic like the calls you make are only going to have to get bigger and bigger and bolder and bolder to make any of this work. What heat character is Yanis right now, I mean, because I have a hard core answer on this. I would love I would love to hear yours. Who do you have? But she knows girlfriend or wife, whatever she is. She knows she needs to break up with Vincent. Yeah. Doesn't really have the balls to just say it. So she's like, she's putting on makeup and going on on dates and disgracing herself with Ralph. Yeah. Yeah. Because Vincent will bring up with us. This is my question. Who's the guy she's bringing home from the club, basically? I don't know who that is yet, but Yanis, just ask for the trade, just do it. The Bucks fans are going to be mad. The Bucks fans want you to basically do it at this point. Just do it. Just go and just ask. It's just hard to imagine their way out. Like we're talking about John Morant, the Jeremy Grant trade rumors have been out there for a long time. Like Jeremy Grant is your big solution, like, I think you might already be buried. Like, it might just be over. It's sad because this Turner thing that they did, which I did not like, I was on the record. Yep. Dame, I think, would have been fairly tradable with that contract to at least be a big money figure that you could have attached a couple other things to. Sure. If they didn't do that, they're not going to trade Turner. I mean, it's not like he was an expiring deal, though. No, but it was this year and next that at least you could have been in the conversation to take back a big contract back, plus other stuff, and you could have patched together or something. Yeah. And they just could have do it. They took that off the table. So now it's all you have is Portis and Kuzma. Extremely tough. Yeah. I don't really see a way out for them right now. The way out is to trade Yanis, and they should get to that point, do it. Talks. I don't know. Do they know? Talks. Like, they don't know. They know what they are. The polls are quietly, like, pretty good last 20 games. All right. A couple of good wins. No, I mean, like, they, I thought they were going to tank. Sure. They don't, well, they don't do that. No. Well, they're, I'm, I had it, they're 11 and 9 in their last 20, they're 20 and 22 overall. Nobody can remember a single moment from any game they've had. I mean, 20 and 22 overall is the most Chicago Bulls record that one could possibly have. So this is what they do. This is who they are. It's the lot they have chosen for themselves. Well, and then the Hawks, they do the Trey Young trade. We think it's later another trade, Davis gets hurt. I guess they could mortgage everything for Yanis. I don't know what they would do. They can't play defense. Even, I mean, now that Trey Young is on, it's still a team that doesn't seem like they can defend properly. I just, to me, it's like, let's see what we get with the Pelicans pick. Let's see what we get with our, don't they have, what's the other pick they have, they have their own pick back. I think they have two picks. Who are you missing? Well, big one has New Orleans. I'm waiting a year. I'm seeing what happens this summer. Yeah. There's no word. So you're not making the finals. I just kind of wouldn't do anything, right? I mean, I think they could, at this point, everything is so new post-trey that I think they need to stabilize a little bit and figure out who they are. Like, it's been kind of a struggle of late, but really, it's like offensively who are they going to be? What kind of team are they going to settle into? You're right that the defense hasn't been great. And they have the profile of a team that probably needs to win with defense and then have kind of a come and go volatile offense. They just don't really show any signs of that. It's, I think it's hard when you have, you don't have organizers who get everyone into place and you don't have volume drivers on the team really other than Jalen Johnson kind of, like, it's hard to have a good stable offense when you don't have either of those things. And until they do, I think they're going to fall into this zone because it's like this read and react. We're just going to figure out every possession as it comes expectation. It seems pretty clear these guys are not up to that. I think they're pretty fun to watch sometimes and then other times you put them on and they're down 75 to 50 in the second quarter and like, what's going on? I would wait a year and figure out what I had. This would be a fun Jared McKay and team too. They need somebody like that, like one, like some sort of normal guard, which is like I'm here to set up a video. So I'm just here to make some spark basketball plays guys. So if you're the Hawks, are you totally ruling out Anthony Davis? I think I am. I think I look at this year and it's like, look, we did a really good job. We made an awesome trade with the Pelicans. We rolled the dice with Porzingas and we knew it was on 100% but it was a smart trade, a smart way for us to use our money, didn't work out. We thought, Trey, with all these athletes around him, maybe this would be it, it didn't work out. Nope. Let's reboot it this summer. We gave it a whirl. Let's see what we got. We got to get Reese's Shay going. We got to figure out if we can run a playoff offense through Jaylen Johnson entirely. And let's kind of look at this and see what we're missing. That's how I would look at it. The counter point is if you're already thinking about, let's let's reboot this thing and take another crack at it next year, couldn't Anthony Davis be a part of that taking another crack at it? Like, couldn't you reimagine the team around him being a critical part of your defense, giving you a different element inside especially? Counter. I just don't know if he's ever going to be healthy again. Oh, none of us do. It feels like Blake Griffin was in this point with Detroit, where he'd had a lot of injuries already. And he had that one last really good healthy Detroit season. But I don't think any of us felt like this was sustainable in the 2022 range. Now he was a little different. He was a jumper and an athlete and you only only have so many things in your legs. He had some knee injuries. Well, ideas of those things too in terms of, especially his offensive game. Like he has a little bit of mid-range to him, but he is a jumper and an athlete too. But some of his injuries were like, he has this eye thing now that he has to wear goggles the rest of his career. He has this hand thing. Right. And then he had some some leg stuff too. I really get nervous about injured big guys who are expensive hitting their, hitting the stage of his career that he's in which is basically like year, what will be year 15 next year? I mean, he's getting longer than the tooth really fast. And some of it is just, you blink in home as a season, you blink him as half the season. And all of a sudden, like next spring, he's going to be 34 years old. He's not a young up and coming player by any means or even one who's comfortably in his prime anymore. I've been nervous. He's going to have to, he's going to have to adjust his game for sure. I think for me, if the price is low enough, like if it's just, can you help Dallas clear salary and offer them something for their trouble, then maybe that's enough to take a risk on. I'm not, I'm not throwing Nikhil Alexander Walker into a deal or something like that. Right. If the price is low enough, I still think maybe there's enough reason for them to do it longer term. So you're just saying expirings will give you a pick, but not a really good one. We will take Anthony Davis off your hands. Yes. Because if I'm Dallas, I'm keeping him for another year and, and actually with the team that I have, I'm probably more excited about that because that, there's, if you catch Dallas on the right night, there's some interesting stuff going on with them. There's always interesting stuff going on. I think for them, it's the, the extension looming scares the hell out of me. It's like if you are not comfortable paying Anthony Davis on his next deal, then why would you keep him beyond the season? Because like that is going to be thick. That's what you're playing for it. That is the expectation of keeping him around, whether it's on an extension or infre agency. And if you're not comfortable doing that, you should trade him now. I know it's hard to do that. I know it's hard to potentially take a return if you're the Mavs that feels like you're selling low on a, on a really good player. I can assure you it can go lower whether guy who has injured this often who's only going to be older by next trade deadline. Like, if you wait, I think it's going to get worse. I couldn't agree more. Well, the Mavs were the next team on our list and you just made the key case. I, I'm probably hanging around and popping the Mavs and not doing anything either way. And I could probably make the plan team the, the plan with Kyrie back and get flag. All I care about is flag. I just want flag to be in a good situation, gets it being the right kind of games. They're not going to be bad enough to tank ever unless they started shutting guys down right now, which I don't think they're going to do. And if anything, Kyrie's coming back and AD might be back in mid March, so I don't know. I'm just, I don't think I'm doing anything. There was a moment a couple of weeks ago where like they should trade PJ Washington. They should trade. They can't. Oh, that's right. They can't trade PJ Washington. I don't know. I think I'm just kind of ready for the AD era to be over and I don't say that coming from a place of like, over, like he has to leave the country and you know, you know, you know, to, you know, eject him. That he's going to be an NBA Europe, moving him out of the league. Someone needs to cut the ribbon, you know, when Paris comes around, all right, we'll have him do it. I just, I like the idea of a Kyrie Irving Anthony Davis version of this team for the last couple of weeks of the season, potentially does not excite me very much. And the idea, especially if that now becomes, you're welcoming that team and being beholden to AD's next contract, I don't, I think the Mavericks have to run from that possibility basically as fast as they can. I just disagree. I'm looking at it. Like they're four back from the nine seed. Let's go. Think of all that we do at that nine seed. Jesus Christ. Like what are you playing? You're telling me it's all about Cooper flag and now you're like, let's chase the nine seed. I know. I don't know what they do. Well, they're not going to tell Cooper flag to stop playing and he's, no, an additive really good player, right? So you can't really tag. Cooper flag. I mean, he's really good already. Max Christie's having a really nice season, like they got stuff going on there. It's just all stuff that should be centered around watching them. I don't mind watching. I just like every, every decision they make should be what team are we going to be two to three years from now and not who are we going to be by April of this year? Clippers we don't need to discuss because it feels like they figured it out. So that's why they weren't on the list. They last 15 games, third net rating, their third two and you know, it all depends can they just coag can they keep them on the court doing this for the next four months, three months, two months, however long their season is going to be and if they do that, they're going to be good. There's no trade. They're not going to trade Zubat's their John Collins is an expiring, I don't know where you're getting back if they wanted to go nuts and get Michael Porter Jr. The last team I want to talk about quickly is OK, see, and just like is there, is there a move for them? What do they need? A notoriously patient, Sam Prestey to his anti detriment to his championship validation to his title as best GM, you could they get, could they get Murphy, could they actually do the Godfather offer? Yeah. Could you take Dorit, Caruso and Case on Wallace and say, we only need two of these guys, AJ Mitchell can get more minutes and we can add Murphy to this. Could you, Dorit has a team option next year at 18, Caruso is tied down for a couple years. If you're the Pelicans and you could turn, let's say they get Dorit back, let's say they get four first round picks, the OKC is a million of them, they get Troy Murphy, then they take Dorit, they trade into the pistons for Levert, two more for it, they get turned Murphy in a seven picks potentially if they got the right OKC package back. And honestly, if I were them, I would think about it. If you're the Thunder, I would think about it if I was everybody, if I'm the Thunder and I could, I'm basically not losing anything with the defense I have because I still have two of my guys left, but now I'm adding this other piece that gives me insurance and shooting and all these things like a pension plan crunch time and can guard different players. And if I'm the Pelicans, it's like, well, what's the point of having Troy Murphy, we're not going to be good for three, four years and then he'll probably leave. And then if I'm the pistons and I could get my hands on one of those dudes, that's exactly what they need. So I don't know. I, I, I, I'm not convinced OKC is going to stand pat is my point. I think they have a lot of reason to talk themselves into standing pat, right? There's still the best team in the Western Conference. They still have everything at their disposal. I think you could make a pretty strong argument that what they need most is the best healthiest version of Jalen Williams they can get. And he's been pretty up and down all year. And who knows if that's going to happen this year, right? Maybe the handle just being such a state where he's a little more inconsistent that they need him to be. But I think you're right about the market for trade Murphy, which if you are New Orleans, yeah, they're not going to be good in the near term future to make the most of someone like Murphy. He's also so good and so young that they don't have to trade him. And so what they should be waiting for if you're the Pelicans and to just kind of like set the, you know, the trade machine market, it needs to be an overwhelming offer. It needs to be something that convinces the Pelicans to give up a player who could be a part of their next core if they just decide to keep him around. And this is kind of what it takes. It's like an overwhelming amount of picks that make you stop and say, holy shit, like maybe we just have to take this windfall from a team like, okay, see, even if it means giving the defending champions really like the one kind of knockdown shooter they don't have. Yeah, it's a 140 cents on the dollar trade. And I think if you go back and look at the history of these trades and we, you know, there's been, we have such sample size now with all of these type of trades. Like, should you trade first superstar? What about a trade like this? The one thing that seems to work over and over again is overpay me with picks for a guy that I probably wasn't going to win the title with anyway, right? And like even the Bane and Bridges trades, if you just go to the fan bases or the front offices of either those teams right now, and you're like, would you do that one again? They'd be like, yep, totally would or even what they got for Durant for the net's got initially. Like, right. I don't know. I just think when you're getting too many assets for a guy, you got to think about it. And it's not like they're trading one of the 10 best guys in the league. This is a really, really good player who makes them all start teams. I don't think he's an on the A player. No. And if I could turn him into four first round picks and then an asset that I can flip for more picks, I'm doing it. I mean, he might end up in that very overqualified role player who never makes an all-star team kind of category. That's sort of like where he slots in right now. Yeah. And there's a weird, maybe this is just me like overthinking it from OKC's perspective, but there's this thing happening where they are so conservative in their decision making. I don't see the thunder making the swing with all of these picks to get another huge high usage star in the door, right? To change the makeup of the team and it feels antithetical to everything that they're about. And so if you're not going to make that move, if you're not going to package all these picks for a traditional star in the most straightforward sense, then what are you going to use it for if not overpaying in a deal like this, right? Convincing someone to get the exact supporting player who you think can help your team. And maybe it's that. Maybe it's the thunder like like like, but don't love Trey Murphy enough to make that kind of Godfather offer. I would understand that or maybe it's their, you know, so wary of the financial implications with all of these young guys coming up for new deals that they want to keep the picks to either draft new talent or, you know, flip those players into guys on cheaper contracts who are also very good. But it feels like it has to go somewhere, right? Like you have to invest all this draft capital in one of those two places. And I think the argument for trading for someone like Trey Murphy is pretty compelling even with the thunder already being as good as they are. Yeah, my thing is they have too many picks. So just start there. You can't, if it's a 15 man roster at some point, you have to consolidate the picks or use five to move up 10 spots in a draft or whatever you want to do, like at some point, it's just ridiculous. Yeah. And that's just everything in a different way, right? Like you're going to end up consolidating all of this into something and it's just a matter of picking your exact right spot. Yeah. And I can get AJ Mitchell and daughter of Caruso and picks and I can turn, dored into more picks. Like that's the kind of tradeout I would be thinking of, but I think there's two teams in the league right now that can overpay for players, okay, seeing San Antonio. There's a player in Murphy who fits perfectly both of those teams. And those are the two teams competing with one another. So I don't know. I just feel like he's a chess piece that is going to really matter over these next two weeks because I can't imagine you can't feel the pelicans. You can't say he's untouchable. You can't. I mean, you could say it, but it's not true. But I'm a huge fan of his, but he's not untouchable. He's not one of the best 15 players in the league. He's not. So you can't say he's untouchable. Yeah. So like to me, like Tyrese Maxx is untouchable. If you're calling on me, I'm hanging up. If you're calling about Troy Murphy, I'm, I'm a, I'm a, Troy Murphy. I'm at least listening to what you're thinking. Yes. I'm saying he's untouchable, but you're staying on the line. Do you notice how I almost did the old guy Troy Murphy instead of Tray Murphy? Remember Troy Murphy? Floyd, do I? You know, what it would have been placed where Troy Murphy was just like an actual somewhat impactful NBA player. What do you want him? A kesky word? All right. Rob, what TV shows are recovering? Coving industry right now, which is on quite a heated open the season. And the pit, we love the pit. What? I don't even know sports wise how to describe the first two industry episodes from a heater standpoint. Mm-hmm. Because it's like a heater, but it's a deranged heater. The Jon Snow episode was deranged. I was riveted. Yes. Riveted. I thought it was so good. I don't really fully understand what happened, but, uh, but I really loved it. I really, that says great. It is, it's deranged in all the best ways. It's like, it's fucking mean, too. I mean, we need a little bit of that edge in the TV landscape right now, so I'm, I'm thrilled to have it back. Well, as you know, I'm rewatching thrones in the sauna. Talk about your meeting shows, that shows, that's about as mean as a show we've ever had. Anyway, all right. Rob Mahoney. Good times. Great. See you. Uh, we can watch and listen to on the ringer NBA show as well as the prestige TV talk to you soon. Thanks Bill. Welcome to we kept the receipts presented by tax act where we look back at our predictions and figure out who deserves a victory lap and who is completely off base. Tax act helps you with actual receipts, like the kind that you can use for tax deductions or credits and the ones that help you get your maximum refund every tax season. So I have two from the last year that would be fun for this one, good one, one bad one. Uh, the good one. I went on Zach Lose podcast over the summer and we were picking our 2020 Olympic team. And my dark horse for 12th spot was Conniple because I thought by the time we got to 28, the shooting, the way he moves without the ball, like they're going to need somebody like that. And I picked him to make that team. Even though I didn't put an NBA game yet. That was great. Uh, the bad one was, I think they're in the college football playoffs last year. I made fun of some game management from Kurt Signetti, the Indiana coach. And uh, was talking about, oh, Bella check can't coach college. Is this guy again? And what happens? Bella checks sucked as a college coach and, uh, and uh, so many went 16, you know, one national title. Tough fun. We kept the receipts. That was presented by tax act. This tax season make your max refund. The one prediction that actually pays off is a tax act.com to learn more conditions apply. See tax act dot com for details. All right. Late morning Pacific time. The legend is here. The man dog himself, Chris Russo, uh, I wanted to talk big picture quarterback. All time stuff. And I used to love once upon a time, listening to you, you were always like in the all time context, which is framed a lot of how I think about this stuff, too. And I was talking to Sal on Sunday about Josh Allen. How this is now becoming a career unlike any quarterback career that we've had where you can make a case. He's a top 10 all time guy, but he's never made a super bowl and he's had all these terrible playoff losses. And where does he fit into context? So you're your decade older than me. You've seen you remember the stopback Bradshaw you even go back to the 60s a tiny bit. Where did we're seeing the context of all the guys? Let's start there. And then I want to dive into the history thing and great to be on the bill. Uh, yeah, you can't put them in top 10 that you can't do. Not yet. Um, you know, I think it depends how far you want to go back. I mean, Don Shuler once said, you know, if you're going to rank these quarterbacks, don't forget about old auto, meaning auto, Graham, you know, a play in 10 straight championship games. And remember, Paul Brown never want to title in Cleveland after Graham retired, Graham retired after the 55 season and Brown never won another one. Yeah. Because he wasn't a coach of the Browns in 64. They fired him. Moldell didn't want to plant in Kyron. And of course, the quarterback was Frank Lyon, not at all time great. But if you go back to that level, you got to put Graham in. If you want to go back to the modern day quarterback, that usually starts, you know, guy who closes on plays and football is a little shaped like it is today. That's usually starts with the United, if you don't even want to start United, that's too far. Well, then maybe it go, you know, since the merger, I've heard people say, well, let's start it since 1970. So it depends on the year that you want to begin at. But if you look at the guys, I mean, you know, it's certainly going to be Brady. It's certainly going to be Montana. You're going to, you know, you've got probably put your Addison here. If you want to start with his era, quote, unquote, you know, obviously, I put my homes in. He's one, two super balls. So I'll put that. That's four right there. Right. And so before you even begin, that is four, then you got those next six or seven slots, you know, meaning, uh, storeback, one, two titles, you know, so back up there. Okay. No, storebacks up there. He's an old time great. And of course, so once told me, and he was at Maryland as an assistant coach and played against United's. And when he was at Florida State, United States at Louisville said that storeback was the best college player ever saw. Wow. So you got to keep down on mine, too. And obviously storeback, one to two titles, he got floored by the concussion, so he'd be titled a little early, but I love him. You know, certainly, you know, L way, you got to consider L way, you got to also figure out what you're going to do with the championships bill. Here's that up to you requisite. If it is a prerequisite, well, you got to win a Super Bowl. Well, if that's the case, then, you know, you're in a tricky spot with Marino. We lose Marino. Yeah. I knew it's Marino. He has to be in the top ten for me. Okay. So you're going to do that with the titles that helps Allen, you know, in the long picture. But you know, those next five or six, after the big four would be Peyton, would be, you know, L way would be Marino, would be Bradshaw, one four championships. He's very underrated, great quarterback. So you haven't mentioned Rodgers yet, and you haven't mentioned Rodgers yet. So he's only one to one, not great in the flow of games, but him. So that loop after the four, which to me, you can't go anywhere, you can't go. And I'm leaving Graham out because that's too far back for your purposes. So we're going to leave Grant out a Graham out. So if you look at it from a Holmes, Brady, Montana, United, those four, those next six slots, if you're just going to narrow it down to a top ten, he's dicey because he got manning is one, L way two, store back three, Bradshaw, four, Marino, five, Rodgers, six. You got a lot of guys here that you got to put in the equation. And sooner or later you're going to, you know, I'm trying to think there's a couple, there's a couple more. Well, there's two more. You got far be dimension. Yeah. I wouldn't put far up in there. Too many turnovers. And who's the other one? Too many far fell apart, really in the 2000s. And then some people have Steve Young. I don't think he, I don't think he was good for long enough to put him in the condo. And I love, and I love fouls, but I can't put fouls in it. Can't do it. Three and four and a close. So I can't put his stats are hilarious because that error was like you'd throw for 30 days and 28 picks and stuff like that, but, and he, and he played for the right coach, Corielle, and I mean, the else, but the problem with fouls is he wasn't great in the post season. He's got a couple of bad losses, so he can't put him in the top 10. He's a whole family. Right. But he can't put him in the top 10. So you really have to figure out what your criteria is for the top 10. You want to see a lot of playoff wins. Would you like to see a Super Bowl or two? Would you like to see some heroic performances in if the team loses? Which, Alan, of course, has got a couple of those couple of games against my homes. Right. So it depends on how you want to grade it. If you get by the five or six guys, I think LWAY, who is the guy that you got to put somewhere in that one to six level, you know, one, two Super Bowls, he was in, he was in five Super Bowls, one, two, he's got the heroic drive, John Wayne, fun to watch. I think you got to put LWAY, probably in that five, six category, too. Well, you think like probably the most talented, like if you're just talking about being able to move around and to the gun that he had combined with the league game stuff. You could argue that he might have been the best one and just was probably the worst situation of any of the guys from the last 40 years. Quite possibly. He had a couple of bad Super Bowls, and I just have to be able to lay a fact that you have to, you know, take serves thing, what are you going to do with Barged Star? Right. I knew one of the playoffs, Super Bowl MVP, an MVP in 1966 for the league. He was an MVP in the league in '66, he had a great year to four touchdowns in the NFC championship came against Dallas, killed the Chiefs in a very pressure pack game, and led the most heroic drive in the history of the NFL. Right. Ray Scott told me at Lambo, it's the greatest mind, the longtime Packard broadcaster, it's the greatest mind over a matter of drive in the history of the NFL. Wow. And that was the ice bowl when he went 68 yards in the last 438 of the game after nine straight three and outs in 59 degree below zero temperatures with a windshield fact that you can't believe on the ice in Lambo, and he called all the own place. See, this is what happened. I wanted to have you on because I knew you'd need barely any prep and you'd be like AI. You might be AI. It's possible. I don't know if you have an AI engine in your brain. But Star gets stars underrated because you know, other way we members that's lumbarity, they think about it all, they'll, you know, it's like Vatio, too, Vatio and Star in a lot of ways, Bill are very underrated historically because they've played with so many whole of Famers. Right. You know, Starworth and Swan and Mike Webster and Franco, and then of course the guys on defense and Star who's got, you know, warning and Taylor and two or three offensive lineman and Nitsky and and Willie Davis and it goes on, obviously Willie Wood and her badly, they got a man of all of Famers, he almost forget about the quarterback, L way does have any whole of Famers. Randy Gladysharn, you know, have any other Famers? Well, think about it. Remember the offense that he was like one of the first, we got to get this guy. Got some help guys in the modern talk radio era. So L way gets to look that higher because there's not a lot of great players around him. All right. Well, can we, can we do this exercise differently? You laid out all the cases and the resume. Let's go. I test them. I test. I think my home's myself, he's only had one bad half in the history of his postseason plan. He's been in main games, it was not his fault in the two Super Bowl losses as offensive lineman's a mess. He runs tremendously. He's one to three Super Bowl's have been the five already. It's a very tricky year and now with the power in everything else. Yeah. I think from my mind, my home's is the best quarterback I've ever seen. Most talented. You've ever seen. If you know, I know Brady now Montana four Super Bowl's 11 touchdown pass is not one interception. So you got to, you know, that's pretty damn good for an owner Super Bowl 11 TD is not one pick. But for my money, where just in the running abilities, I'll have to do with it. He is a great runner, he's a tremendous competitor. He now, you might disagree, but he's the best quarterback I've ever seen. And I would take him over anybody and that's saying a lot with Brady and with Montana and people like that. I would take my home's one myself. So the problem and we're seeing this now in basketball because we're in the steroids air with basketball stats now. You just have everyone's stats are 20% higher than they should be because there's more shots, more possessions, three pointer, just people are going up and down and LeBron is averaging the same stats that he had when he was in Miami, you know, at the peak of his career because the sports totally different now. And there's no way he's the same plurie was 12 years ago. So I look back at, like I look at the stuff L.A. and Marino did back when you could hit the shit out of quarterbacks when if you scrambled or if there was no sliding back then, if you scrambled, you were going to take a hit. If you're going to try to stay in bounds and lay one more in, they're going to knock your head off, not to mention they could hit you after you're through the pass. They could hit your receivers over the middle. I think it's really hard to like could L.A. do what my homes did if you just took them in a time machine to move them 40 years. I feel like he could. Yeah, absolutely. And Marino, the knock on Marino, is he had a couple of really bad playoff games, lost the playoff game, the Stan Humphries with the chargers, lost 31, 14 of the Patriots in 1985 and home games. Switched to fish. It's a bad one. That's a bad loss. I mean, you know, you know, Marino, young in your career and you got, and you got them coming in. I said, you're after they got the Super, and you got the Patriots coming in as a wild 14. You got a home game after you beat the Bears in a regular season. I was the only lost to Bears in 85, and he played badly in the game the 95, the 95 chargers won. They're up 15. And it's like, it's more in shot. And Harmer, murder shot. Harmer was usually the one that was blowing the playoff games and it actually flipped it. And they came back. And that was probably Marino's last chance. I just know how it made me feel as a fan where you felt like you'd be going against them. And you're like, oh my god, this guy's going to kill us. Absolutely right. You know, you always were worried about him. He had that bad loss to Buffalo. When Buffalo that year, he'd be used to it and a great comeback. And then they went to Miami and won the championship game in Miami. One great neck in L.A. I can't think of a championship game way or a playoff game where he was bad in the game. Superbowl's yes, superbowl's yes, because he, you know, he played, he played, he got ambushed by Washington. He was terrible again. San Francisco. Now listen, they were going to beat him anyway, but he was bad in the game. So he went against the couple of the greatest teams in the history of the sport. That's fair too. And the Giants in 86 were a great team too. Yeah. So you got to give him a little break. See, the thing about L.A., that you like Bill and you, you're on top of this. You're doing a good job here. Think about the thing about L.A., think about L.A., you like when he lost to three Superbowls, they were by far the inferior team. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I know Doug Williams beat him, but they scored 35 points in a second quarter. That's not always full. Well, in the case for O.A., it's like name. How about this? Just randomly named the offensive player, as he was with in the first 10 years of his career. Most people would probably get like three of them. I don't really know, man. They do. They do it. Right. Right. Wicking the two. Mark Jackson. Mark Jackson. Sammy Winder. There's not a lot of guys. 100%. But then it all circles back and all of a sudden he's playing with McCaffrey, Rod Smith, Terrell Davis. So I still think pound for pound just those two years is in the running for best running back I ever saw. Shannon Sharp. He's in there too. Like it's just all the sudden they were like a loader. Yeah. And he had Johnny Han too, you know, who was the better coach than Dan Reeves. Yeah. And it was a different, it was a different stage of his career and I think he had taken a lot of hits. But that's why it's really hard to, I think about L.A., I mean, I'm sorry, Josh Allen. He's definitely a one-on-one with how he plays and how the physicality and the size that he has and all the different things he can do. So it's almost like you have to think about him in a basketball context where he's like the basketball player who can do everything. And yet something's happening in these playoff games. I think this, you know, you always try not to overreact. You're on a show. You're on first take on Wednesdays where one of the goals is to come in, come in hot with an angle. I don't think it's possible to overreact after that last game because he, I thought he was the reason they lost and this season parted for them in these playoffs and there's just no excuse for it. So now I don't know where to place them. Well, I disagree with you on the idea and I'll do this tomorrow too. To me, he left the field and air up 27, 23 and on 3rd and 11 with 238 to go, that defense allowed freaking nicks to throw a 26-shard completion of Sutton. It's fair. Well, I could have thrown a boy who was so wide open. Right. If they make a stop there, Denver Punts and one first down wins the game. All right. But Canada, Buffalo had the ball back all they have to, they had a chance to score and he overthrew Knox to win the game basically. Yeah. But he also, if, if Harderman makes a catch, which he should have made, bad throw, he's got to get a bad route, I guess. Yeah. So he got to get two hands on the ball. And if Cooks comes up with the ball, which he should have, they would, they win the game. Well, so the Buffalo fans who are defending out and are like, look at the supporting cast. He's only playing with a couple pro-ball caliber guys that the front office let him down. I do think this is part of the sport now. If you're paying 55, 60 million a year for your quarterback, you're going to lose stuff in other spots. This is what happened to Brady in the 2010s, right? At some point, and Brady was even taking a little bit less than the highest part, but at some point, you have to pick and choose. You can't have, it's not like the 90s with the Cowboys where you could just be like, we need to be on Sanders. Let's get him and you just get him. So you're going to be missing stuff all over the place. And for them, it's like, all right, if we give him more weapons, now I can't stop anybody on defense or maybe now I can't block, you know, so you're always giving up something. I don't know if that flies for me. Now, now listen, I can't absorb them, the play before the half was bad. All right, he had Shakir there, he hit a ground, we threw a ground ball to him. That could have been a touchdown. You mentioned the Knox play. I cannot absorb him on something. He wasn't great in the games. We're working jerky. You are a thousand percent correct. But the defense hooks Fumble at seven, three, a huge play in a game. If the interception, he fumbles there at the 32-year-old line. That's a terrible Fumble. You know, can cooks make the, can he come down with the ball, can he come down with the ball, can he do that? Can he do that? And not take, and not get it taken away. Can't heart him in. Now, I don't know enough about the actual route, but everybody seems to think that he didn't cut it left enough and he went up field instead of going to the sideline. But even if you say that, he still should have caught the damn thing. He catches the ball there. Buffalo's got a first down at the Denver 43 and overtime. You're going to win the game? Right. They are going to win the game. And I'm not even going to talk about the overtime defense with the two pass interference. Kind of. With all those out. Third and 11. With nicks. Can they make sure they don't get a first down on that plane? Is it possible that maybe you get a five-yard catch instead of a 26-short catch? Right. And not put, and not put him in a tough spot. Now again, if your point is greatness on the Brady level means that you've got to do everything in your power to overcome the team's weaknesses. And you have to be the guiding light when everybody else is kind of form back whether it's a receiver job in the past, whether it's a fumble by a running back, whether it's a defense, a battle fix to make a play with all that stuff. You've got to figure out a way to win the game. That's what you're getting paid for. And if that is Bill Simmons' argument about Josh Allen, I cannot argue. But I would also say, he's up 27-23, 238 to go in a game on third and 11. I dare you to think, I wasn't. You were thinking about the fumble before the end of the half at that point in a game at 27-23 with 238 to go. I was not thinking about the fumble. Guys, make a stop, Peyton's going to punt. He's got three time outs and he's got obviously his two minute warning. He's not going for a fourth and 11, he's going to punt. Hope his defense can make a stop, get the ball back and do his thing. I don't think he's going for a fourth and 11 and the defense couldn't make a play. But I think it's land to go all the way around with the loss for Buffalo. That was an underrated piece of the Brady Super Bowls in New England. There's a couple of ones where if they don't get a stop for him to get him the ball back, they lose the game. Atlanta, Atlanta, who seems like they won the game with the Julio Jones catch. The game's over at that point. This is after the past defense got the ball back with high tower, all that stuff. But then they somehow made the Falcons go 10 yards backwards so they couldn't get the full hold. They got a holding penalty, but they came through for Brady in a way that Buffalo's defense never did. That's a very good point. And then the Seattle one was the other one. They're down 10 Brady scores, two touchdown drives, but they also stopped Seattle to get the ball back. They don't. They don't win that one either. And that's Super Bowls. How about a couple of times in the playoffs? Brady got a break of all time and Troy Brown caused that fumble in the San Diego game. Right. Well, when he threw the intercept, he forwarded off sides was probably the biggest break. There's another one. He threw a bit. You know, Ford was off sides, which was an interception in the game. Yes. A lot of this sometimes has happened since. And for whatever the reason, the bills themselves, the team, the franchise, it's almost like their curse. I know. Nobody has had the kind of losses that they have had since 1990 in big spot, or even going back here before Cincinnati, when they beat them, they've had incredible losses that Norwood missed. Feel goal. The other three in the Super Bowl, music city barricades, my home two or three times. I mean, they've had so many bad ones. And this is one that is in line with the bill's history. There is a black cloud over that franchise. Minnesota has not had as many of these chances as Buffalo's had. No. You know, they had to Gary Anderson miss field goal against Atlanta when they were 15 and one, but they have it as meant they haven't and every time they play in the Super Bowl, they got killed. I mean, Buffalo should have beaten the Giants. I mean, so for me, it's incredible that this franchise just can't get out of its own way when the money and everything is in the middle of the table. And Allen is now part of that because he can't win these games either. Yeah. And you and I have both been in that position as fans because I was certainly there with the Red Sox and even like wrote column after column and books about it about what it was like to just feel like you're just cursed with your team. Do you want to pass this team down to your kids to should you just get out? Should you just have a sports, but you were you were in a similar spot with the Giants for a while where it's like, is this going to happen in my lifetime? And that what's happened in the bills, I think is as dark as anything that's happened since the Red Sox. I think I still feel like the Red Sox for going 86 years and cold weather in New England and all the history of coming up close and falling short. And it just was in our DNA. And it feels like it's in the DNA now for the Buffalo fans. I think there's no, remember what the Red Sox, you had the Celtics who won all those championships. True. You know, you can clinical them. You also had the Patriots who won an '01 Bobby or we had a couple cups. Yeah. You know, above the notice, I mean, the teams. This is it. Yeah. They don't have any other teams. There's no baseball team. The Sabers are right. But they have one of Stanley Cup. They've been closed. But they have one one. And they have the NBA team now after the, you know, the Braves left to San Diego. Right. So from that standpoint, this is this. This is their franchise. Yeah, that's true. At least in a place like Boston. You know, you have some other franchises. You're the huge Celtic fan. You got all those. You got how many champions? It was a 20. I don't know how many. But even after we lost, you have 18, I think. 18. Now that we have, like, when we had, we lost the Bears, the 45 to 10 game, whatever that, the 46 to 10. And then we had a cocaine scandal two days later. But we immediately moved to the 86 Celtics. And then Roger Clinton. What do you guys think? And we had at least other stuff talked about. You're right. So the, I think Buffalo is number one. It's weird because the Browns fans have to be heard from as well. They at least had the LeBron Cavs thing. But in a way, it's almost worse to have this many where you come close. And you have all these sort of losses. The Browns have just been a relevant and not mattered, which in just futile, which is almost almost easy. I remember Alan's going to be in Buffalo for a while. They're going to have a few more of these opportunities. And they may lose more of them because he's still young enough. Now stadium will get my loot juice next year. You know, they, they, they made, they made McDermott the space scapegoat. But you know, they get somebody else in there. They're going to be a competitive team. I mean, it's not like the bills, the division stinks, the jet stink, my army stinks. You know, the Patriots now they're going to have to deal with. But you, you get the idea. The bills are going to be a blowoff team for the next five, six years. When you have a quarterback, this good. Now, now where you and I want to rank him is different argument. But when you have a quarterback, he's a whole family. When you have a quarterback, this good, you're going to be good every year. And he had a foul. There's very rare way you have a great quarterback where you have, you know, you're going to be bad. You know, once in a while, my home's team gets hurt injuries. It doesn't click for you. You might go six and 11. But most of the time when you're a quarterback is this good. You're a player of team year after year after year. Which means that he still has a chance to redeem himself when that championship. You know, we said there's a lot about Manning for a long period of time in his career. Eight years. And he won that one against the Bears. So he lost a lot of brutal games before he beat the Bears. Then one of the other one never Denver against Caroline. Yeah. Manning's playoff history is pretty checkered. He had a lot of like as big favorites, blowing games and choke jobs at home. But then that, you know, you win one Super Bowl. That stuff washes away. Who's your number one? This guy was great. But something was missing when it really mattered athlete in any sport. Any sport. Any sport. You can pick baseball football, basketball hockey. Just somebody that had everything and they couldn't get there. I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of his, but Harden is a perfect example. I mean, Harden is terrible in a big game. He's going to look at his games and elimination games. Yeah. I mean, I know I used to talk about Gandhi about this little time. He thought he was better than Joey West. No, he's not. It's better than Joey West. No, it's stuck with him. His punishment was to have to coach him. Then I was going to do it. Harden, I would never trust Harden in a big game. You could see it in the game seven last year. He wouldn't even look at the rim. Parable. How about a game seven? But it was with Philadelphia against the Celtics that won you in game seven. He was tired. There's so many examples of Harden. And he's a whole of famer. Everybody thinks he's an all-time great. Because Carmelone was a legitimate one. Carmelone. You could see it on his face as the game got bigger and bigger. And he just. And people now we live in this stats era where you could go back 50 years later and be like, whoa, are we sure he wasn't better than Tim Duncan? And it's like, no, we're sure he wasn't. You know, you would have much rather had Tim Duncan trust me. We were there. You didn't feel that way about Stockton. You did not feel the way you knew Stockton was his buddy was going to figure out a way to beat you. Was going to overachieve with his talent. Malone, I think at times now he had to go up against Jordan. But I think at times the moment became a little too big for him. So I do think I think there's and I think you definitely can make the case. Full will. Yeah, so you were you were barely there for will but you you got to see some of it. It was when you were getting into sports. But I mean will all the all the everything written said will was the number one guy like this. That's something would happen to him in these games. Well, he did win the two championships. And he did anchor two teams that were the two greatest arguably teams of all time. That's 60 16 with that Pete the Celtics finally and then of course the 71 72 Lakers that won 33 in the world. So so you can argue that. But he you know he could have made his free throws took himself out of game seven against Russell in his last game. Yeah, looked around the arena before Willis tree game seven at the guard. Hey, is Willis playing tonight. Geez. Well, you will champion who gives a crap. Right. He'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. Good. You know, as have a check once told me in a Rollins college dinner where he was at and I was the MC. Wow, we never that game seven the following year when Philly played the Celtics and he were trying to go back to back. Philly was up three games to one that year and in game seven in Philadelphia. Will did not take any shots essentially in the second half because he was in foul trouble. And he didn't want to get caught for an hour. He had that dumb streak about he never wanted to foul out of a game. He never he never fouled out of the game. Yeah. And he never wanted to be in a situation where he fouled out of the game. So he got very passive and Boston beat him in game seven when he were down three one in that series. He never the Celtics have lost the sixers. You know, I told you anything. You don't know they lost the sixers in 66 67 and then in 67 68 Philly's up three one right. And will goes quiet at the end of game seven against Russell doesn't want to shoot the ball. So I think that will has got a little bit of that aspect to him. We're in a big moment life on the line to get a little nervous. I'm gonna make you laugh Aaron judge. You know, he helped himself this year. He helped himself last year in that Toronto game. He was down. He helped himself. There's a little that can judge. Yeah. I will say I thought Clemens. I thought Clemens had it in him for a while. I thought especially in the Red Sox. I thought in the 90s. So I think let me go sideways on him a little bit. Clemens had some big moments later on. He won a championship Yankees. So a couple championship Yankees. Yeah. He said it now. He was on a great Yankees teams, but he 99 and 2000. So I give Clemens, but I think there's some truth to that. I tell you the one guy that you're going to think I'm crazy that I say this all the time. And the media loves him that is if you look at him in the postseason, he's atrocious. And that's Clayton Kurshaw. Well, I mean, I think the Dodger fans, I was at the 18 inning game when he had to come in. And this year, all out the world series game. He was lucky that feed to pitch. He swung at it. That was ball four. Well, that's the thing. He came in and it was, it was a legendary game even before it went 18. And he brought, they brought him in and he could feel it in the stands. The Dodger fans were like, no, no, please no, no, no, no. We don't need another one to his legacy here. Please. 4 4 4 4 4 5 ERA in a postseason and a 2 4 ERA in a regular season. People don't like to talk about that with Kurshaw, but he, he's a little overrated in these big games. Right. A lot of times you don't want any, any how, a lot of terrible moments. That's just reality. You know, people don't like you to say that because everybody loves Kurshaw, but that is fact. That's one of the things I really miss about whatever baseball has turned into is these start. You had one with bomb gardener, the starters that are just like outbet my life. This guy's coming through tonight because now nobody's allowed that was why the Yamamoto thing was so fun. The guy was like, wait, do we need, do you need me again? I'll come back. Let me, let me save another game for you guys, but that was so old school because that's what we grew up with. That grew up with Jack Morris, just going tan in the game seven. You know, and these guys were like, give my back, I got you. And that's why I killed Scooby all the time. Game five in Seattle. Yeah. And then the last sentence, 98, 99 pitches, he took himself out of the game with a one nothing lead. Finnegan comes in, gives up a one and a seventh inning and then they lose the game in a 14th inning and the Tiger season is over. I understand he's a free agent and you know, Boris, who knows he tells the hey, your money is more important in game five of an AODS. And you're the best pitcher in baseball. And it's one nothing Tigers in the sixth inning, seventh inning, staying again. 98 pitches, staying again. And school ball took an AJ Henson taken out, school ball took himself out. You think Bob Gibson would have done that. How about Randy Johnson? You think smokes shilling? You think Randy Johnson who pitched many back-to-back games in a postseason? Yeah. You think he's taking himself out of, how about Tom Seever? You think Tom Seever and that spot's taking him, hey, going to kill Hodges, put somebody else in. That really, really bothered me. We had that with Clemens, game 686. When he got taken out, they said he had a blister and it was, yeah, we never know who was right. And then John McNamara died. But each guy had a different version of the story. All I know is he came out of the game. I did. And then of course McNamara. McNamara to his grave said Clemens asked out and Clemens says not true. So who knows. But yes, that is, that's a famous one. That's a good job, Bill. Did you ever think about if a game had swung? When you really cared about the sports, sports the most when you were a kid. If a game had swung, would you be different as a person, as a personality? I always feel like if the Red Sox had won game 686, I just might be a fundamentally different person. I don't even know if I could do this. Do you have one of those where you're like, wow, that might have been a sliding doors for me in life. That's a very good one. I think it's more, I think if Star doesn't sneak and get to, and get to touchdown in 67, I was a packer fan, young kid, Love Lombardy. Yeah. I think if they got stopped in that situation, I wouldn't have had the same Love Lombardy and star on all those packer teams. I think that's one that went in my positive direction, not the other way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did the Giants have a bad one? Yeah. 93 when they were 100, you're an adult at that point though. Yeah, I'm an adult. 93 when they went 103 in 59, and the Braves went 104 and 58. The last great pennant race, you never know, 94 they did, they had no season. And 95, they came back with Wild Card. Yeah. 93 was the last great American pennant race. And the Giants who blew an 8 1/2 game lead won 15 of their last 17 to get even if they blew an 8 1/2 game lead, took a 3 1/2, fell 3 1/2 back. And got the game and tied last day of the season in game 162. And we lost 13 to one of the Dodgers at Dodgers stadium. And the Braves beat Colorado to win the pennant. That one, that one really pained me. Well, that was the 78 Red Sox blow in the 14 game lead. That's another good one. And then losing anyway. Very similar. And the Red Sox won 99 that year and Yankees won 100. So it was the first to 100. And that's still based on the regular season. Yeah. And the fact they battled from April 1st. That is still the most significant game I've ever seen. Red Sox Yankees, Fenway 78. It was very much like the regular year. Red Sox lead first half of the year to nothing through 6 10 hits the home run. Thel behind by Moore and then Claude and battled and scratched. And then of course, he has pops up a 2-1 and the 9th of passage. And I lose the game 5-4, you know. So that to me. Penel and the sun stabbing. I believe a bouncing ball gets it. Lynn hit it down there. That game has got so much trauma to it. Yom Kippur. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We didn't have school that day. That was Yom Kippur. Yeah. It was October of 78, 5-4 Yankees. It was Monday. No school. And the Yankees won a championship that year. Yeah. They beat the royals and they beat the Dodgers. That game. Tough one. Those innings were for the World Series. Those 2-3 innings. That was one of the great games every season. You have to go to prepare to do your show soon. I had one next question for you and then we can do this whenever. I'll come on your show whenever you want. Nick's are 2-9 and their last 11. Yeah. This was a conference that had the season parted. Hal Burns out. Tatams out. They clearly had their built to win this year. And they're going backwards and they look miserable together. So what's going on? Yeah. Well, number one. Does anybody give a clap about that stupid nation cap? A champion's cup. Whatever they called it. And Nick. And Nick's feet disperse. Yeah. I think that the argument was should be put a banner up. Really? We're going to do something as dumb as that for a regular season tournament that nobody cares about. And now the Nick since that moment in whenever it was December, have been absolutely awful. And I was one that thought Tibadol got a terrible deal. Dolan just woke up one day and decided he didn't want Tibadol coaching him. Coaching the team. And Leon Rose got stuck. And he didn't have a list. And that's why he went to the Jason kids of the world because he didn't have a list. And he was not prepared for it. And he was scrambling. And so he got his sixth choice in my ground. And I'm not not going to my ground. But the bottom line is Tibadol did not deserve this. And Nick's law last night, which I did not see as I was watching the college game. But the Nick law last night to Dallas. When they're down 28 at the half to a Maverick team. That's got nobody, you know, no Davis, no Kyrie Irving or 18 year old kid in flag. PJ Washington's out and so was Gafford. And the next lose by 28 points to the Dallas Mavericks. And everybody played. I mean, you got to be kidding. After they've been playing poorly, that's his battle loss. And Tibadol not out of laws like that. Whether they gave up 75 points in the first day, 75, 48. I mean, I mean, that's ridiculous. And I'm not playing my ground. But this to me, Dolan deserves this. He's the one who wanted Tibadol out. He couldn't stand looking at him anymore. Tibadol got a terrible deal. They got people in the end. And it was better than Nick's. And Halbert made that incredible shot to force the first game one over time when it bounced nine million feet in the air. And somehow went in and Nick's lost the game. And O.T. changed the whole series. I mean, I really feel, you know, that was a move that was just not fair and unnecessary. And again, I'm not trying to kill my ground. But the Nick's deserved what they get. And the fact that the Celtics without Tatum have been this good. Give that head coach a lot of credits and Jalen Brown. That is a tremendous job. This is a year you could completely write off a few of Celtics, man. You know what? We've had a good one. I did. I did it in the first week. I was like, let's split. We got to trade Derek White. This is going to be a bad season. Let's keep. And as it turns out, what are they by 15 games over 500? 2015. There's second. Second in net rating. They're 26 and 16. They're in the two seed. And Tatum, he had a very conspicuous work out yesterday. He's definitely coming back soon. So you're adding that to this. It's everything they have going. They're not going to make a trade deadly move. I think he's the deadly move. But the Tatum will try. It's really good though. I just, like, I got to shout them out. That's a really. I got to see Detroit fast pistons team. I got to see Detroit make baskets. Last six minutes of a playoff game. Right. Yeah. I got to see them yesterday. I said, yeah, I got to see them make some baskets though. In games on the line in the post season. Something they could not do last year against the next. Brunson made the baskets and they didn't have anybody. I got to see them make baskets in that kind of spot. But I agree with you. They're tough. They're physical. Cunningham's a very good player. You know, they take the personality of Berkerstath. And they're hungry. Detroit. It means something to Detroit to finish it the best record. They're hungry. They're hungry. Yeah, there's a physicality. Then aggressiveness to them. That's going to be great in the playoffs. And actually, honestly, bad for the next because. And all the next fans, I know are really turning on towns now. They're like, this is this is the guy I was terrified. I was terrified. We were going to get this version of this guy. And now we're seeing him. All right. You're going to read a lot about Yonus now because the next is going to be desperate. And you're going to read, you know, the bucks are bad. I know Yonus said he wants to stay there. And Doc Rivers has said he's going nowhere. But yeah, you're going to hear whether it's true or not. By the deadline, you're going to hear a lot of Yonus to the next stuff. Whether the next could ever pull off a trade like that. You can hear a lot of that. Well, the problem is they traded all of their first run picks for the three to 53rd best guy in the league. I don't know if they would do that one over again. And Michael Bridges is fine. But they basically that was their Yonus chance. And they traded it for Bridges. Yeah, that was a terrible choice. That was a terrible choice. All right. Bridges is a decent player, but you can't give a five drip picks for a decent player. You got to give a five drip picks for a whole family. And he's not a whole family. The problem is you do a trade like that. And I didn't mind the trade. But it was like, this is you have no outs now. This is your team. You do this. You this is your stuck with this. And the next might be one of those teams that will be, you know, a 50 win team for the next three, four years. But always never on that top show, you know, sort of be a top four top five team. Which is purgatory. You got to get past the top four, top five. Getting that last jump, Bill, you know, from, you know, put it decent to pretty good. And then a championship level with the same group. That is very important. I never did it without them. No. That is a very, very. And they never, you know, they had duck worth. And they had Terry Porter. And, you know, they never, they never were able to pull that all. How about the sons and the 2000s? They had seven years there. They never could never get over. Yeah. They did lose to the bulls that one year, you know, so you get a little break there. Yeah. But I'd be a little worried about the next historic. I'd be a little worried about the next. And I tell you right now, Dolan deserves it after he did the tip it up. He deserves it. To undo a chief. He fired to be all thinking he was going to get to the NBA final. What? And you do that. I was, he did not deserve that decision. And because of that, I've been down on the next. I thought they had for him. The great Chris Russo. You can hear him on Mad Dog Radio and serious. Say hi to, uh, are you doing first take tomorrow? Yes, I am. I will say hi to Steven. And please say hi to my gosh, Shraggs. Shraggar. Yeah. Yes. Of course they will. Yeah. I think we're like, we're like his two surrogate media fathers. I know he's a big, he loves you too. Yeah, he's a big fan. I know he grew up with us. He grew up with us. All right. Let me know a couple of weeks ago with Kelloman. You did a great job. I saw that. Oh, thank you. Well, let me know if you need me on the show. I'm here for you. I will. All right. I'll keep in touch. Thank you Chris. You got. All right. Last but not least, a year one ringer guy. Danny Kelly. You can find him in the ringer fantasy football show, as well as on our, on our website, the ringer.com as well. He's also a diehard Seahawks fan. I made a horrible error in Sunday's podcast. I just want to talk it out. Yeah. I feel like I've been in a really good spot with the Seattle sports fan bases. Sunday night doing a live pot of Netflix. A lot of stuff going coming up. Bears Rams. Heads, heads spinning. All these different directions. And we're talking about Super matchups. And I say the Seahawks never won a Super Bowl. Right. Right. Now, you could say I'm a mold. I would go with brain fart. Because I'm just saying I know the Seahawks won a Super Bowl. I was writing for Grandland at the time. I was doing podcasts and writing about that Super Bowl year. I thoroughly enjoyed watching them kick-pate manning's ass. And if I had thought about it for a split second, I would remember they won. But I think I brain farted and mixed them up with the Mariners. So I'm here to ask for forgiveness. Well, I appreciate it. I'm not mad. If I was mad, I would say something like the Seahawks defense, which could be counted among the best of all time. Shut down. The best offense the NFL has ever seen. That literal, highest scoring offense and paid manning. Yeah. Most touchdown passes in a season. And the Seahawks defense completely shut them down in the Super Bowl. That's why I would say if I was mad, but I'm not mad. I understand. I also think I won money on that game. I don't know. How did you forget that? Because that would have been the Seahawks would have beaten paid manning and then Tom Brady and back to back Super Bowl. Of course, that didn't happen. But yeah, that's, that's what the Seahawks, I got a lot of texts about this. I know my state of response for this stuff is it is hard to host a pod. You're not going to bat a thousand. It's, it's, unfortunately, it's not like flying an airplane, where if you have a screw up, you're just a plane crashes. Right, right. You can just kind of get fast and save it. But yeah, I couldn't believe I was thinking afterwards. I was like, why did, why did I say that? Like what? I don't, what happened to my brain? But then I realized the Rams, bears and the bills game probably broke my brain. Yeah. That's fair. Well, so I've been texting with you and Mina about the Seahawks. Really since the summer when I was like, I like the Seahawks from in the division and we were talking about pros and cons. And the season could not have worked out better. You had, I think you're the one that put the electromagnetic thing next to the Niners practice field. I don't know. We got to check the security camp footage. I love this. You have that. You have the Niners season goes to hell. You have the Rams and Seahawks left. First of all, is there animosity between Rams and Seahawks fans? Is this a feud? Like what do we have here? No, I think it's different. So there would be, there would be definite animosity between Seahawks and 49ers. No question. That is like the biggest, longest rivalry I think in at least for the Seahawks point of view. The Rams have always just been a really tough team for the Seahawks to play. I think there's some grudging mutual respect between the two teams. I don't like grudging mutual respect. I know. I know. But it's not as fun. I think it's the 49ers thing is just, I mean, the Seahawks fans have been in absolute heaven the last two games. They played the 49ers their last two games and absolutely annihilated them both games. So that's been incredible. I would say it's a different dynamic with the Rams though. We hate the Rams, but it's, it's not that that primal, deep-seated hatred. It's more just like one of beat them. Got it. Well, ever since, so the season's evolving and it's like, still nervous about Darnell, then he's fine. Then it's time to get nervous again. Now it seems okay. The running game, frustrating all year. There was always like, why isn't Kenneth Walker doing more? And then he looks awesome in the last game. The offense got really stagnant there for about six weeks in the second half of the season. That looked like it was going to be the Achilles heel. And then they finally, I don't know, that part of it was special teams and just figuring out different ways to use Shaheed. Which we had been texting about, like, just use this guy, figure out ways to give him the football. It feels like that's going better. And then the defense is really good. So why wouldn't they win the Super Bowl? What are, give us here two things you're the most scared of. Other than same Darnell number one, what's two and three? I've been kind of hard on same Darnell this year. He did lead the NFL in turnover, so that's the big one. Honestly, with two with the other ones, you know, sharpening got hurt. He has a torn ACL. He's out for the year. He's been a big part of their offense in terms of the really high leverage situations where they need to they need a yard on third down or fourth down in the in the red zone. He's been good in pass pro, which is important. Kenneth Walker is not nearly as good at pass pro. So that could be an effector. So I think that's one thing to worry about. And you know, generally speaking, just I think offensively making sure there's a spark there. Because there's some games where the offense just doesn't really click all that well. Yeah. I think I'm really confident in this defense. The defense can give them a chance to win. Yeah. But I think it's like honestly just weird stuff happening for the offense that really worries the most. There should be a special teams advantage. Yeah. I don't know. He's been such a big, I mean, he's been huge. He's been a huge spark on special teams. He's been a huge spark. He's kind of like the no drama, Percy Harbin for their offense where he can create explosive plays on some of these gadget plays. He's really good in special teams to kick off and punt returns. So he's been a huge huge bonus for them. It's frustrating for me as a patch fan because I thought he would have been a perfect dad. Yeah. I think they probably felt Kyle Williams could do some of the Shaheed stuff. At least was stretching the field and they're good on special teams. At least for punt returns and Marcus Jones, so maybe that's why. Yeah. That was the trade when you made it. I was like, fuck, that's a good trade. That's kind of exactly what they need and he's perfect for them. I think there's been a little bit of consternation because they haven't incorporated him into their offense quite as much as people thought. Yeah. If you look at what Clint Kubiak did with him in New Orleans last year before he got hurt. He was a huge part of that off. He was getting deep every other play, every other game he was creating like a big touchdown down the field. He hasn't really done that as much on offense, but he's been such a huge spark on special teams that I think people are totally happy. They want to keep him long term all that stuff. Do the Rams have the kind of defense that could take out JS Anderson or is he just going to get as a catches for 110 yards? I think no, I don't think they have the shutdown defense to do that. I think, especially with what they do on play action, if they can get the run game going a little bit, they've always been really good at getting JS and behind the line, behind the second level of defense when they get play action rolling. I'm not too worried about that. I am worried. The CX defense is really good, but they did give up like 500 yards to Matt Stafford in the last game they played. I think the Rams just, the offense is really, really good. Yeah, I think just straight up McVeigh and Stafford is one of the scariest combinations I can think of on a football field. And Puka is really good. I just think that's kind of, you know, the big thing in this game is like, what can the CX do? And the first time they met, the CX pretty much shut down the Rams offense or at least stymied them more than anybody else had to that point. And then in the second game, the Rams offense went absolutely nuclear. So I don't exactly know what we're going to expect from this game, but I think that's in this Rams matchup, the big worry I have is not necessarily JSN or shutting them down. It's just what is, what is Stafford going to look like in this game? Yeah, especially coming off a terrible weather game. Yeah. That was just funky in every single respect. Do you must have been watching like dying for the Bears to win that game? I'm guessing. Yeah, well, but, well, but again, it's not the hatred with the 49ers. It's, it's kind of like a healthy fear of, and again, I just don't want to play Stafford. He's so good. But a young, erratic Bears team. Yeah, I would feel like a pretty shaky defense. Not at home. Probably seemed like the perfect matchup. Yeah, I, I just don't think the Rams looked that good the last couple of weeks. And I don't know how much of that was the Panthers game, you know, just a, just weird. And I don't think the Rams played that well, but they still pulled it out. And then the Sunday night game, how cold it was in the field as no, whatever. I thought it was the weirdest puking game I've probably watched. Yeah. Where he just didn't feel like as present as he normally does in these games. I'm guessing in Seattle. What's the weather? Do we know? Oh, that's a good question. It's cold here right now. Um, I don't know what it's supposed to be like on Sunday, but yeah, it's been cold and clear here. So I think, you know, hopefully it'll be cold again. I didn't think that the, it's going to be like 44. Yeah, that's not too cold. But I think the one thing you did notice a little bit about the, the Rams offense in that really cold game was it just didn't feel like that anybody that was very explosive or fast. You know, Puka is more of a physical. Yes. You know, tough, tough over the middle, run after the catch. Yeah, that kind of player red zone threat and, you know, Dante obviously is not super explosive at this point in his career. Um, that's maybe like one variable we can talk about here. It's fun to talk. You mentioned that because I was thinking, as I was watching the Bears game thinking the Seahawks, it feels like a game you push everyone close. And basically get super physical and you're not really worried about them going over the top on you. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think you can do with the Seahawks. This is like the perfect type of team to do that with. Seahawks have an incredible secondary the way that they can match up with pretty much any personnel formation with their diamond nickel packages. You know, they have Nick and one worry. They have Devon Witherspoon and those guys play like linebackers, but can cover, you know, like safeties and corners and nickelbacks. And so it does give them a pretty unique schematic advantage. I saw this. I think from the, from the 49ers game the other day, the Seahawks had something like a 50% pressure rate on a 10%. Blitz rate. Ooh. So they just you know, yeah, that's the sign of death for an offense. Yeah. And so if they can do that against a Shanahan team, you know, I'm feeling pretty good. Like I think all CX fans right now probably feel really good about where the team is. I think you've been saying this. This is a great chance for for the Seattle, especially with really has kind of how the season is gone. But the big bad. In the NFL to me is the Rams. Like they are the scary team. If you look at DVOA, it's Seahawks and Rams number one and number two by a mile. Yeah. So this is, this is a big, big matchup and obviously there's a lot of history between these two teams and, and McVeigh knows the Seahawks and, you know, I think McDonald was probably brought in to kind of like contend with McVeigh. So there's a lot of cool narratives with that. So yeah, it's going to be an awesome game. So we have home teams that have blown it at home in the title games. Oh God. Ravens 17, 10 in the chiefs. That was two years ago. Chiefs at home to the Bengals that goofy 2021 game where I think my homes got concussed at halftime in over a minute. 2020 Bucks Packers in Green Bay during the Bucks run when they was a Brady. Yeah, the Brady run. Yeah, yeah. Then we really don't hit anything until 2018. Chiefs and Saints both lost their home to the Pats and Rams. And the Rams honestly should have won. And then it was like we did the last one before that was 2012 Pats and Falcons both losing home. So, you know, being at home does help playing a team that's played three games in a row in the road in the playoffs. I think I think that's it. Yeah. And the Bucks were able to just win four straight and we're all four of them on the road. I can't remember. I think we had this quite a discussion today. I want to say one of them was at home. Yeah, but I think the first we had maybe the first one was. But yeah, just in general. So it feels like an achievement. And I felt like the Rams really did look creaky the last couple of weeks. They were really lucky that Bears game. The Bears are midfield, you know, T with momentum and felt like they were just getting eight yards whenever they wanted. I don't I still don't understand what they were doing on that play. Yeah, we had this discussion on after the game. It was like basically we talked about the Bears for the first like 20 minutes on our show. And I think a lot of Rams fans are probably pissed about that. But that was kind of the story of the game. It's like, man, how did the pairs not like follow through with this miracle? It just felt like it was their destiny that they're going to win that game that touchdown throw by. By Caleb was completely just, you know, an incredible. Yeah. I know. It's one of those like footnotes of whatever happens next is just like, oh, yeah, remember that play by. By Caleb Williams. That would have been would have gone down as one of the most miraculous things I've ever seen. But yeah, it you know, the Rams are good. I think they're I think the better team won. This is kind of what we were saying to is just like the better team did win. But they didn't look as dominant as I think I was expecting them to. They looked more mortal. A lot of that had to do with the weather. I think they're pretty banged up. Stafford hurt his hand a little bit in that game. And I think that affected his ability to throw a little bit. Yeah. Before I let you go, because I promised I don't wouldn't keep you on that long. But I did want to ask you, your Pat's Broncos take. Lion is back up to five and a half directly in the Vegas zone. Jared stood him. Yeah. Starting for Denver, obviously. Pat's fans feeling good. The thing I was saying to you and Meena, because to Pat everyone's like, oh, the pastor, this is going to be amazing. You're going to win the Superbowl. You didn't play anybody. Well, first of all, the Seahawks are like the six best DBOA team all time. Yeah. I think since 1978. So that I would consider that playing somebody if they played the Seahawks either. Yeah, the Rams have been way up there too. So that's one thing. You could argue they'd be if they played the Seahawks and the Superbowl. If they were managed to get past the Broncos that those are the best four defenses, they would have beaten on a row. I think that matters. Yeah. Chargers, Texans, Broncos, Seahawks. Is there anybody else? I'm sure there are, but those are the big three that I can think of. Yeah. And I think the even squeak, shoehorn and the chargers in there is probably a reach, but they would probably be the number four pick. Yeah. So anything I should be scared of in this game for my team other than the playoff history endeavor. Yeah. I think obviously the Broncos defense is just really good. If weird stuff starts happening, you get turnovers on offense. That's kind of the way that I see this going. If the, you know, the past can play clean ball and not turn the ball over. I don't see how they lose this game, but that's kind of the variable that you can't control. That's a very tough variable on the road in Denver. So against a very strong defensive, very experienced playoff coach and Sean Payton. And they're going to be hunting. They're going to be hunting for turnovers and trying to get dragged off the ball. I think he has what five or six fumbles now just in the last two games. And they're going to be targeting Will Campbell. Yeah. I thought it was so fascinating in that game. It felt like the Texans really had just the timing dialed of his backswing or whatever. They were just able to time to get the ball out by May. They had two plays where he hit it when he was like putting the ball back behind his head. So they're obviously going to try and do more of that type of stuff. They'll try and drag the Patriots down into the mud and play like a defensive battle. Yeah. I think Stidham is one of those backups that we haven't seen him in like two years in the regular season. I don't even remember who he looks like. I remember there was like one game a couple years ago where he was look good. Stidham. Okay. See that. Yeah. That's all I remember. He could be in theory like a very poor man's version of Nick's and sense that they could use him and some of the run game stuff that they do with Nick's like rolling him out. So what is he? What's the comparison for him? Is he like, is it Davis? Like best case scenario is Davis Mills. The guy who came to my mind was Drew Locke actually. Oh, interesting. And you know, you remember Drew Locke last year had one six touchdown game. Yeah. Like I don't think he's good necessarily, but I think that there's some there's some physical talent there. And in the right situation, things get, you know, he can make some things happen. But I, you know, obviously, I think. I think the line's too high. I really do. I think this is. I don't care that Stidham is a quarterback. Yeah. This is a lot to ask to go in a Denver. What's the weather there against a really good defense? Yeah. I don't know what though. I haven't seen that. I haven't heard anything about like, you know, 36 and sunny. Yeah. So it shouldn't, shouldn't be a huge factor. But the, but the height, you know, the, the altitude is certainly a thing. The past fans, like we're concentrated on the positives. Like the, we put together three good touchdown drives on the Texans. Right. Which is ain't nothing. Now, the other drives that they had two yards, but like, like, total. But they did put together three and, you know, the issue, especially with these road games is the Drake May slow start, which just seems to be part of the package for him at the stage of his career, where he just. It's kind of choppy for 45 minutes and then gets going and there's going to be a time and place where that doesn't fly in a playoff game. But you don't get going. But now I'm down 13 nothing. Right. So, um, who do you trust? Who do you think is going to make the big play in this game? You think it's digs? I think it's Ramanjray. Is Ramanjray? He's good to go. We lost Ramanjray for like an hour of that Texans game. He came back, right? Yeah. He went back to the game. Okay. Yeah. Um, I really think boot is good. And I love when they throw it to him. And, uh, so Sir Tan, I'm guessing is going to try to just take him out, which would make digs the key person. But one of the things that we don't know yet, Matt Collins was massive for the past all season. Oh, yeah. Late in the season, he was huge. He was big in fantasy. He really was important and he was a good run blocker and, um, I'm looking right now. We don't know for sure if he's back, but it seems like he might be. But I just felt like he had something with Drake and Drake really trusted him. Totally. And they missed him the last month. So that would be one. But, you know, and then, uh, I don't know, just winning in Denver in my head is, is a tough one. Before we go, can we talk Mendoza really quick? Yeah. I think we will 100% in on him as the number impact. I think so. Yes. Okay. I think he's, he's definitely during the season. It felt like he was getting shoehorned in as the number one, just because there wasn't really anybody else. But the way that he's played during the college football playoffs, I thought has been pretty illuminating. He's just got that. He's got that steely, you know, drive and, and he's really accurate. He played, he throws with anticipation. He's got a little bit of athleticism. We saw that on that fourth and five where he ran the ball in on a touchdown. I think that is tough too. He takes a couple of big hits and then just gets up. Yeah, he, he like wants to get hit. Yeah. He wants, he likes that physicality. If you looked at his arms after the game, his arms were just all completely beat to hell. Yeah. Um, so I, he really has grown on me. I think my initial impression of him was like, this guy's kind of a Cornball, you know, personality. He's looking directly, he's looking directly into the camera when he's interviewing after the game. And I think it's like, but I think honestly, now I kind of like that. I've gone the other way. I'm like, he's kind of infectiously genuine and optimistic. And I can see why his teammates love him. And so I'm kind, yeah, I'm kind of in on him. I think he's, you know, certainly not as physically talented as some of the other number one overall picks we've seen over the years. But I think he's got a lot of the other things you really look for at the quarterback position. Like I said, he throws with anticipation is back shoulder throws in this game. We're huge. You know, he has a ability to kind of elevate this entire program that came out of nowhere the last two years. So yeah, I think it makes a ton of sense for the Raiders to take him. It just feels kind of locked in at this point. I like that he's super smart. Yeah. And I look forward to the draft cycle of, I think people are going to start working on the tape and stuff for a couple of weeks. And they're going to be like, holy shit, this guy has everything any smart. And then there's going to be the backlash. Is he too smart? I can't wait for that that part of the process. That's probably the second week of March. Teams now worried Mendoza is too smart. It could be like an Andrew Lux situation. Can you just take coaching? Yeah, he could just, yeah, he will be coach. Could he just walk away at age 28 because he has other career options? We'll do that all week. That'll be fun. But I think it's if you're Vegas, first of all, I can't believe they wouldn't try to get an offensive coach. Like I can't even believe they're looking at. Right. I'm just trying to match somebody with him that, you know, there's been some weird hires already though. Man, Salah was. I know. There's Salah was a weird one. I'm not even necessarily against it because you could argue that with the Jets, like, we, he never had a quarterback. So what are you going to do? But who knows? I think it is. It's a strange one for me, just because it's hard to understand exactly what he brought to the Jets because they were such a disaster. And then he comes over to the 49ers as their defensive coordinator. And they lose their tops who players, they're completely banged up all year. And their defense wasn't very good. And then, yeah, the Titans decided to hire him. I just, the timeline of how it went was a little strange to me. Obviously, you know, I'm not in there in the interview and see how impressive he is. I think the players, he gets the players to play hard, which is huge. Are you? I'm in the pro McDaniel camp. Yeah. I've come all the way around on DJ Mike. Yeah. I would spin in the, spin in the song. It's like, if there's a raiders, keeping him up with Mendoza, it's like, fuck it. We're not going to win the Super Bowl in the next couple of years. Maybe we should just put like a fucking genius with them. I know. I'm into that, honestly. I like him. I think he had the, in an exact same thing, what I was just saying was, oh, he had the, he had the dolphins playing pretty hard at the end of the season. And he was, I think it was a, you know, what the word is, but he, it was a good that he benched to and decided to kind of like go a different direction with it. And I don't know. It felt like to me, the dolphins rallied around him and he had them playing really hard. That's like, it answers a little bit of the question of, you know, how, how is he in a room of, you know, alpha pros and all that stuff? Because that's always the question with him. He's kind of a quiet guy, kind of an awkward interview. And how does he, how does the team react to this type of play or just type of coach? And I think, I don't know. To me, that answered at least a little bit of it that he can get these guys going. Keep them playing really hard. We know that he's really good with scheme. I would just like to see him with any other quarterback besides Tua at this point. And look, see what his offense would look like with with a lot of the openings right now. So it'll be partly to design that offense because he had two who make a decision after one second. And if he got hit, it was going to get knocked out of the game. Yeah. So you design the offense accordingly. And I mean, honestly, seeing him with Ash and Gentie would be incredible. I think because he's, you know, he's gotten the proven production from the run game over the years. So I think that would be really fun to see what he could do with the, with the Raiders run game. Yeah. So we'll see if he ends up being a head coach again at the very least. If he doesn't get a head coach job, like he's going to be at the top of his level for a lot of offense. I think the thought of him in Vegas too. Yeah. Listen, if the Pats can make the Super Bowl. All of these teams that suck, but have, you know, a fourth play schedule and some real draft capital. Like they have to think about it because we saw it with Washington. We talk about this every year when we're doing the previous summer. There's always the team. And that Vegas team was poorly coached last year and had some bad luck. And they're going to have another high draft pick and they've some other stuff. They're probably going to turn Max Crosby into a couple of things. Yeah. It would be my guess. Yeah. And they're in a division that maybe you don't mind being in as much as you did a year ago. Right. But we'll see. All right. Do you have your number one fantasy player for 2026 yet? Uh, B. John Robinson. I don't know. Boring. It's going to be tough. It's the boring ones like Jameer Gibbs, B. John. Jamar Chase Puka. When his high fets do the. It's actually Ashton Gentie. And here's why it's actually the opposite. It's Ashton Gentie. Yeah. Uh, that'll be coming probably in like July. I'm sure he'll he'll workshop something. I'm in that playoff. That fantasy lead that goes to the playoffs that I told you about. Yeah. It's basically kind of going to come down there. Can Drake may play two more games? Yeah. As if I didn't have enough at stake without the other things going on in life. Anyway, you can watch and listen to Danny Kelly in the ringer fantasy football show. He's with Craig and high fets. Craig's on the rewatchables as well, premiering on Netflix next week with the video. So we're having fun. Good to see you. Good luck with the Seahawks. I'm almost definitely betting on them in some form. Absolutely. And by the way, we do appreciate that you've been in the corner of the Sonics this whole time. As long as as long as I'm back and as long as my library watchables in Seattle. At some point in 2026 will not be awkward for everybody. I think we're fine. I think we walked through this. All right. Good to see you DK. All right, you too. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Mahoney and Mad Dog. Thanks to Danny Kelly. I apologize again to the city of Seattle and all the Seahawks fans. Thanks to Gihau and Eduardo as well. Don't forget. New rewatchables is up. Guys, another one coming Wednesday, another 48 hours. And again, February 11th will turn Los Angeles. If you liked the rewatchables and Michael Mann movies, I would strongly consider going to this. I will see you on Thursday with some playoff picks, some football, maybe some basketball too. Go Pats. [MUSIC] Must be 21 plus and president select states for Kansas. An affiliation with Kansas star casino or 18 plus and president DC Kentucky or Wyoming. Game problem call 100 gamble or visit rg-help.com call 888-797777 or visit ccpg.org/chat. Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling. Help line ma.org. 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