Two Crazy Play-In Games, and 2026 NBA Awards Picks With Kirk Goldsberry and Joe House

The Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by Fandall. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network where I put up a new rewatch about Monday. We did basic instinct that was the live show we did in San Francisco. It was awesome. Had a great time. Even at Craig on stage, we had five of us. As you know, I've always complained about five man studio shows. Five man live podcast kind of worked. Craig picked the spots. We were all passing the ball round. Really, really good show. Go check it out. Next week, Monday, you have six days to watch this on Netflix. We're doing kindergarten cop in Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic. Oh, yeah, kindergarten cop coming next Monday. Speaking of podcasts, we released the first two episodes of legata, a rare narrative podcast for the ringer. We don't do a lot of these. When we do them, we go all in. And this is an amazing story. I don't even know how to describe it. But I'll just say this. If you like Scarface and Miami Vice from the 80s, if you like cocaine driven, what the F is going to happen next kind of plots, this is the one for you. Just think like if me and Chris Ryan had created a narrative podcast from scratch, we probably would have created this, even though we didn't create this. Somebody else did. But legata, just go check it out. It's really, really something. Please listen to it. It's really, really good. I was involved in this one behind the scenes, and I'm really proud of it. So legata, speaking of things I'm proud of, I got Joe House to stay up late on the East Coast with Kurt Goldsbury down in Texas to react off the two playing games, Charlotte Miami and Portland Phoenix and then House left. And we go in a time machine. We go backwards in time. Yeah, backwards in time to earlier this afternoon when Kurt Goldsbury and I did our awards pick, including my MVP, which is at the tail end. So if you care about who I pick for MVP, something I changed my mind on 430 times over the weekend, that is at the tail end of the podcast saved it for last, like a big fat dessert. So that is coming up next. We're going to break and then bring in Pearl Jam and then Kirk and House late night Tuesday after two play games. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandall, the NBA postseason is here and Fandall knows the only thing better than watching your favorite team win is winning along with them. Fandall, the best place to bet the teams, players and plays during their playoff run, build the same game parlay or try live betting and jump in after tipoff. Don't forget with Fandall, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the Fandall sports book app now and play your game. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming, and probably called 1-800-Gamber call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat Connecticut. All right, we're recorded in this part of the podcast at 9.53pm. It is presented by new era thanks to them. Kirk Goldsberg is here. He's also coming up later because we did all NBA. Joe House staying up super late on the East Coast. I've never been proud of you. What did you have like an Arby's first beef? What happened? Oh, no, no, no. I don't need that. I had a little bit of coffee, but I live on the fuel of Danny Abdea. You guys did your all NBA. I can't wait to hear it. I'm here. Oh, wait. House for my guy. Look, I'm in my hat right here. We're putting that man's number in the rafters. The best Washington player in the last 15 years. Give that man his flowers. I'll tell you this much. We aren't allowed to do this, but I'm going to do it. We argued about the last third team spot in NBA much later in the podcast. And I said I was going to give it to Scotty Barnes and that I couldn't quite get get there with Danny because he hadn't, you know, barely played enough games all this stuff. But after watching tonight, Kirk, I'm just going to change my vote. Dude, the NBA is doing this to us or for us. I'm not sure, but they've given us another set of games to re-evaluate our choices. Yeah, it's a refining. Traditionally, our votes would have been due by now. Instead, we're watching Con Canipal. We'll get to there. But yeah, Danny obviously playing one of the games of the year for him and making us rethink where he should be in these awards. Unbelievable. He was awesome. It seemed like at various points house, the game was over headed for the Blazers. They were just going to go up by 20. Then it seemed like the game was over with the sons that they just bully balled Portland. Portland couldn't hit a shot. And I was watch. I love Portland tonight. I was really confused because I've been watching Portland the last couple months. And it was the first time I thought they looked a little spooked. Yeah. And it was kind of like, you know, once they started really like, hey, Danny, you're not driving to the basket anymore. We're throwing five bodies in front of you. And it was like, okay, who's stepping up? Who's going to step up on this Portland team? It turned out to be the much maligned Jeremy Grant, a staple of our worst contracts drafts with big was every year. Hit a couple big threes. And then I've the head took over late. But how, how did you let this guy go? I still don't understand. Well, I mean, I'm not going to go through the full recitation. What was going on? It's a true story that his ascendance timeline wise didn't line up with the tank effort. So I understand they could have got more about that. That's the only quibble. We're not going to talk about Washington. The most important thing setting aside the hyperbole is that for a lot of these guys, this is the most important game they've ever played in their entire basketball lives. Like I defy you to find another game for Danny Abdea that was more important for him than this game, this moment, this stage, this franchise, his identity in this franchise, his rise right now. And the same is true of some of those guys, you know, in Charlotte, tell me a game that Lamello Balls played in his entire basketball life, his whole basketball life. That was more important than tonight's game. Right. And, you know, I, it's a fair comparison to make. You had Danny with an incredibly efficient 15 of 22 for 41 points, 12 and seven. And, you know, we'll get to Lamello in due time. Yeah. Yeah. He and didn't get a couple calls to Portland, put all the hits, Kirk. They threw a scoot out there, little hope with the scoot stop there for a second. We saw some title. We saw a little Robert Williams clinging center thing. I mean, big picture before we talk about the game, now we have San Antonio versus Portland. And if I'm San Antonio, I'm beating probably either of those teams pretty handle it. I'm sure they're huge favorites. But I would have much rather played Phoenix. Portland at least has two big centers to put on Wembee. They have a guy who's really comfortable and really good at getting to the basket in Denny, although trying to get to the basket against Wembee will be interesting. True how it has been there before. I don't think it's a sweep is my point. I think Portland always make them work a little bit, right? Yeah, I'm happy for the Portland fans to have some playoff games up there. That'll be cool. But yeah, this is the 23rd ranked offense since the All Star break, but it's the third ranked defense. They're going to be tough to score on. And if one of the things I'm worried about as a spurs guy is the ability for these young guards to shoot their threes, we've both been really positive about them as the season's gone on about getting better. But the playoffs have a way of making teams cool off. We saw that with the Charlotte game tonight too. So yeah, I think that Portland defense is really, really playoff ready. And then like we saw tonight, Denny can go out there and win a game like 41 and 12. Are you kidding me? Yeah, the Portland at the green was how many green took 29 shots house? Yeah. What's the right number for Jalen green field goal attempts in a playing game? I'm going to say about 17. What really kind of revealed itself is this overachieving Sun's team. They just they have a talent deficit. And that's not a knock like this was supposed to be kind of a transition rebuilding year to wash out the horrendous taste that was left in their mouths from what they tried last year. And it turned out that like chemistry matters. The book of basketball, the secret that I learned from the book of basketball chemistry matters. Yeah. And lo and behold here, we just watched it. But, you know, they couldn't at the end of the day outscore Portland because Portland had had one guy that was unstoppable. Yeah. And, you know, they they play Gillespie less because they're playing those three guards together. I thought Brooks was pretty awesome in this game. But Phoenix had a couple. Hey, we've been in games like this before guys who who felt like it. And from the Portland side, I was really just drew holiday was the only guy who seemed like really comfortable in the game. But it's a weird Phoenix team. And if I'm golden state, maybe less the Clippers side at the Clippers game to game who knows. But if I'm golden state, I'm like, look. If we can get by this goofy quipper's team tomorrow night, somehow, Kirk, yeah, we could be Phoenix too, right? We can get in the dance. We have Steph, Al Horford's coming back, who knows, I mean, we know, we know it's going to happen. You're dying to get Steph. They're so bad. They suck. Why does that team make suck? Get a third. There's a win team in the playoffs house. That's what we need. Steph Curry in the playoffs is something we all want. I would say whoever wins that, that at nine, 10 game in the West should feel pretty good about their opponent in Phoenix. That's a team that I thought the wrong guy took 29 shots. I would rather that than Devon Booker. I'm fine with Jalen Green taking 29 shots in a world where Devon Booker is hurt, but in a world where Devon Booker is fine. I wanted him to take 29 shots house. How did you see how many he took? 10. Devon Booker. That's the issue. There you go. No, Booker ended up with 17. I'm sorry. Dylan Brooks had 10, that's the thing, right? Take nine of Jalen Green shots and let's have Dylan, Dylan Brooks take them. Dylan Brooks who just goes wherever he goes, it's the way he's a winner. His team always has a positive defensive rating. Just delivers wins anywhere that he goes. Let that man take some shots. He's been in big games. He's also a very hard guy to officiate and so he ends up fouling out in the game. I think you could argue. He could have fouled out in every quarter. He had 14,000. It was tremendous. He's doing that thing on offense too where he's just like bulldozing people with a shoulder and they're just like, wow, we didn't call that in the first quarter. I guess we have to let that keep going now. Phoenix was, they set these moving picks just constantly that they are really good at getting away with. There's a couple teams that only occurred great at that. Deep Kirk, did you feel like Phoenix blew this game or Portland won it? If you had to pick one of those two sides. Well, the home team, the home team with more of the vets, the more of the playoff experience guys. Again, I would argue coming into this game with all due respect to Denny, Devon Booker has been to the finals. They have the home port. They have that guy. They should have won it. And then when Portland went cold bill, I was already writing notes. Like, this offense just wasn't good enough down the stretch of Denny doesn't have it going. Nobody else could do anything. So there was a moment early in the fourth quarter was like, Phoenix is going to walk away with this thing. We're going to start the podcast early. And then Jeremy Grant hits those threes. And then Denny gets going, obviously fouls, dealing out with that and one. And here we go. So yeah, I feel like Phoenix blew this chance to just get the seven seed tonight. House. What are you on? I'm on the Portland took the game that came to come back from eight to 10 with four, five minutes left. And take the game with some big threes, some big drives to the basket, some really good defense. I thought come on on Booker was awesome down the stretch. They were doing everything they could to try to switch him off. But I felt like Portland took the game. So how's your the tie breaker? What do you say? I agree with the idea that Portland took the game and and they did hit that stretch in the third quarter when Kirk was taking his very salient notes about the ineffectiveness of their offense through eight, eight minutes and 30 seconds in the fourth quarter. They had 22 points in the entire second half. Yeah. 18 through, you know, the entire third quarter and then four points in the fourth. But when Denny came back into the game right around that eight minute market, 15 minute market came in immediately got an an one got the technical on Dylan Brooks and that that really started tipping things this ever works. You know what? Don't like this. When they get the sale clap for five straight seconds, that's going to get a technical. You go through it. It's 22 minutes for mark Williams with for four points and four rebounds. I have to say don't remember him playing right with the out there. It's 24 minutes for Royce O'Neill with seven points. It's 23 minutes for Oso with three points like this is the problem for Phoenix, they have a talent deficit and that's not a knock on them. It's just who they are. Jordan Goodwin 29 minutes like, okay, okay, good, good job. Yeah. Portland's pretty good, man, I they'll be they'll be a frisky seven so do we call them a seven seed? What's the rule here? I guess they're a seven seed now. Yeah. You got the rule. They're the seven seed. They're the eight seed playing in the two seven matchup or they just now the seven seed. They're now the seven seed. Did the Eryx score happen? They earned it. Does this see? Does this box score exist? Does then he have these? Does his numbers go up? What happened? Yeah, I forget. Is this a playoff game? No, right? They just put it over on the side. Like an area, what's the area? The alien area? Area 51? Yeah. It's in there. Area 51. Area 51. It's house caught in area 52. Here. Caught in area 41 for Denny. Oh, there you go. There was like two moments in this game where I was like fucking scoop and it's going to happen tonight. It's happening tonight. Here we go. And it just did not happen. All right. We talked about that game enough. Charlotte Miami. It wasn't the game of the air. It was the drunk game of the air. This game was drunk. Amazon got drunk. Amazon started to use shots in the fourth quarter and glitched out in OT when it was 123 to 120 and Charlotte had the ball with 30 seconds left. And we had a soprano's moment and it just goes away. This game was full of unbelievable shots, massive, massive, massive brainfarts. And at the center of all of it was the mobile ball who inexplicably injured BAM out of bio and might be suspended for Friday. Like, let's keep an eye on that. He missed 14, three's Kirk. Oh, my God. That's got to be at least a play in record. I don't know if it's an NBA record, but it's at least a play in record. There's multiple times where they had a lead, especially in OT, they're up five with like two and a half minutes left. And they're running basically the four corners and then doing a grenade shot with a second left. I got Lamello, which just had some horrific moments in this game, like horrific moments that make you wonder, is this guy just never getting it ever? Like what is up with the decision making and then what happens after he throws the ball away to lose the lead on a foul of Tyler Herald, which he commits for three throws. They come out of a timeout and he makes an awesome driving layup to win the game. House, he was the player of the game and the least valuable player in the game, all in the same game. Well, I mean, it's hard to be fair with this game because of BAM going out. So my inclination is to give Miami flowers for just fighting their asses off all the way through. It's really befuddling. I'd love to get inside that locker room and get some intel on when Tyler Herald came back. Why couldn't Tyler Herald and Norm Powell be on the basketball floor together at the same time? It was one of the worst defensive combinations over the last stretch of games. And Miami's defensive ratings suffered mightily because of those two guys being on the floor at the same time. I'd love to understand what was going on. Well, so Norm played 19 minutes tonight. And the entire second half had a look on his face like, I feel like I've lost $30 million in fridge. See just tonight. This sucks. I'm really bad. What's happening? I think it's crying. I don't know if I can manage it. Yeah. It was bad because the first half of the season for Miami, he was awesome. It was like, how could, how could the clippers possibly have let him walk for so little? Curately. I have to do it. Fuck it. Yeah. Eric Sposter. Are we sure he's good? No. No. I mean, to your first point, Bill, you nailed it. And Spowe was fired up after the game about the play, which it was just a weird play. I mean, it almost looked like Lamello hit his head. He just grabbing. But that was the moment. That's the moment we'll remember from this game. And I hate that I'm saying that, but it's crazy as the finish was like, that's Miami's best player. He's out. That sucked. And then you tell me that the number one and two three point shooters this whole season are con Caniple and Lamello ball, not for Charlotte for the whole NBA. And these guys combined to go two for 22. And you're telling me that Charlotte's still going to win that game. Conca crazy. Conca benched. Unless it's her, but they didn't say he was hurt. It was just a flat out. You don't have it tonight. You're 20 years old. The lights were a little bright. Have seat. And Diabata too. So like I look at Charles Lee is like MVP of this game. So con Caniple is minus 20 and 34 minutes. Diabata is minus 17 in 36 minutes. Lamello ball plus 15 in 40 minutes. I'm sure it's minus 14 in the 13 minutes. He sat. Yeah. Charles Lee finishing with bridges, Brandon Miller, Lamello ball, and Kobe White obviously. And Graham Williams, he went a little small with GW as the fifth guy. Can I give you guys my theme of the night? Yeah. Bad teams give away good players too soon. Kobe White, Davie on Mitchell. We're all on different teams a few years ago. They gave up on these dudes. They were the stars tonight, right? Davey on Mitchell played incredible. He played 48 minutes. That's one of the reasons Norman Powell didn't see the floor. Davey on was playing electric basketball on both ends of the court. Obviously Kobe White comes over from Chicago, Zach Loas, the great bid bill. Chicago and Sacramento should never be allowed to trade again. Well, we benefited from their trades again tonight watching those guys play. So and then obviously Denny in the first game. But look, Kobe White was fucking awesome, man. And I was electric watching him. And I know Lamella made the play that sealed the game, but Kobe hit some big boy shots down the stress for Charlotte to save their season. That was the trade of the year. They gave him some Amazon Prime award. He'd some some necklace with the plays on it. Yeah, they should give him an apology for the stream going out with it. It's even us an apology because it was a goddamn basketball game being played in fucking Phoenix at the same time. And they're doing necklace giving. There's a fucking basketball game all that's being played. Points are being scored in Phoenix, Arizona. I couldn't believe that either. The other thing with Amazon, the entire year, the audio has been a split second ahead of the video on half of the Amazon games we've watched the three pointers halfway toward the basket. It's like, bang, it's good. You heard the crowd. It's like the boss didn't got it yet. How we never figured this out? You guys have eight conjulling hours. They can send a tech bro to the moon, but they can't fucking broadcast the basketball game without technical difficulties. I haven't seen a technical difficulties slide on a basketball game. And since I was 12 years old, bro. And this is Amazon. Come on, guys. And they have the plan. You know, they've done a good job with the studio show. They've rejuvenated. They ain't been gunned for me. I did not like him as an announcer in the three man booths on TNT. And I would get bummed out if he was doing a selfie game. Like it was at that level of me. I think he's been outstanding this season in the two men with Iron Eagle. I've had it a great job today laying out all the storylines what was happening, having a feel for even like the cannibal thing. You know, I think at one point, he said something like, how long are you going to stay with him? Which is like, he's the third best player in the team. And as somebody that's watched way too many Hornets games this year, he started out so like that in games. And then he hits one. It's a lot like clay. He hits one three and he's fine. It's just he never hit the three. And you can see him starting to lose the confidence. But Kobe White to Kirk's point, saved it. I have no idea how he wasn't worth the first round pick. I don't know what happened. I don't know where the rest of the league was. He was an expiring contract making like, I don't know, $14 million or something. He goes, goes, ends up going back home to Charlotte where he's from. He went to college there. He's going to resign there. And this team, they're a big guy awayhouse. Like you could feel it today. Like Diabate, who's been good in some games, other games he looks like he, he did tonight. And they're just missing that one. It can't be Grant Williams. It's got to be somebody better. Yeah. And we kind of had that appraisal at the beginning of the season. One of our rare big W's was Charlotte, our forecast for Charlotte this season was was some success. We thought Conn was going to be helpful. And the big question mark, what's what are they going to do at the big position? I was impressed. I will say, you know, you're looking for guys that under the bright lights. We just gave Kobe White the flowers that he deserves. Not to me, the Kobe White addition to that team right guy right situation, right price, right place. Everything about it is situational for him. That success. But you look at what Miles Bridges did and you look at what Brandon Miller did those three guys. They combined. They were 15 for 28 from three. That that freaking Charlotte team shot 56 got three players. And those guys really saved their ass. And every time Bridges or Miller or Kobe White touched the ball, I was like, those are the adults in the room. And that's really to me more than anything, a testament to Brandon Miller. He's the youngest guy in that group. And he's the guy developmentally who needs to be, you know, carrying the water there. I don't want to talk about the mellow ball. I really, I don't there's no kind words that come out of my mouth. 31 effing attempts 31 and 12 for 31 two for 16 from three. And a lot of it was clown ball. He's getting it's it's a clown car full of Lamello balls. Look at the clown getting out of the left side. Oh, it's Lamello. Look at the clown climbing out of the trunk. Oh, it's Lamello. Look at the clown jumping through the front. Oh, that's Lamello. Look at the three pointed attempts from this inside the logo. That's the Lamello clown climbing out of the right side of the car. What the fuck is going on with this guy? He took like a 35 footer at one point. It's frustrating because he's so talented. And you're the leader of the team. You're the point guard. They don't have bam. He's out in the second half. And I felt like any time he wanted it, it just felt like he could get to into the pain or get to the rim. Like he's think we're staying in front of him. And Kirk, he was just settling for these step back 28 footers when none of his threes were going in. It's like, go to the rim. The one thing Miami does not want you to do is to go to the basket. And every time you said the reason he didn't do it. There was one big reason he didn't. That was Kalelware, dude, who was playing awesome basket ball. He had five block shots, played 42 minutes without bam out there. He had some one of those blocks he had where he caught the ball was a clear goal 10, the refs missed. That was pretty shocked. They missed it. But yeah, dude, I don't know whether to be impressed by the two of 16. The fact that he kept shooting those threes when he obviously didn't have it. And then when he needed to drive to the basket, it's almost more frustrating. He made the game winning drive. Like you could have done that. Like Denny did down the stretch of this other game. But that's the lack of experience though. And that's what like the older players who who know who have been in this situation. Like to me, a good example is Jaylen Brown in the Celtics. Like getting a game like that, he just would have started going in the rim. Get to the basket. Oh, where is your last center? I'm just going to start attacking him and making him challenge me and try. They just, they didn't have the wherewithal to do some of that smart playoff team stuff because those fun guys have been in a playoff game. Great. I was the only one who stole it, dude. Tyler Harrow almost stole a Reggie Miller style down the stretch with one of the great sequences. And, but yeah, it doesn't feel like both of the inexperienced teams. Like when I started seeing Harrow get going at the end and spow on the sideline and, you know, Andrew Wiggins, who's won NBA championship bill, I started to feel like, okay, Miami's just going to win this game. Yeah, this is an infrastructure DNA game. I was furious. I just want them to go in. I was going to go that way too. I thought Phoenix had that advantage in the other game. And we saw both sort of young, weird teams figure it out at the last second and get over the hump. But yeah, for Charlotte, man, they got a lot of learning to do that pass that Lamello threw. Oh, man, it could have ended their season in the same way that the duke turnover, right? Who was that? Who got a Kaden Booser? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Kaden Booser turnover ended that season. It was very reminiscent of a player under pressure who hadn't been there before just making a bone headed play. Well, we had house. We had three awards or LNBA spots that might have swung tonight. Because there might have been somebody who was like multiple people like, I don't know who to pick between flag and con. Stunk tonight. Oh, screw it. I'm gonna take flag. That's that's diabolical. I really. I think Hawke has for six minutes of the year, which we do this later in the show. And Kirk has Kelden Johnson, spoiler alert. And I have Hawke. And now he Hawke has who I didn't think was very good in the game and then had the biggest defensive fuck up at the end. He didn't. He just let Lamello go by him. I don't know what he was doing. He wasn't playing six man. He was being playing as a starter because the man wasn't in the god damn lineup. I mean, this is the thing that I'm I want to criticize some of the end of the game stuff for for Miami. I mean, Kirk was talking about Tyler hero. Well, I didn't love a lot of it. It felt like the same hero ball that we saw really at the end of games last year as well, where this Miami team goes into now again, no, bam. So it's not really fair to criticize, but they get they turn one dimensional. No, you know it's fair to criticize. So they tie the Charlotte ties it on the crazy Kobe way three. We had two crazy threes at the end of regulation OT, one from hero and OT, one from Kobe, but they tie it time out. Miami has 13 seconds to set up a play. I think Grant Williams was the center for Charlotte Kirk. Yeah. So what does Miami get? Hey, let's try to get a 27 footer from from hero at the end of the end of the like, how is that your play? That was a bad possession. Yeah. Get to the basket. Yeah. There's 10 seconds left. Make one pass. Yeah. Make every fucking set of eyes on the basketball court is looking at the guy with the ball. Nobody's eyes have to shift one time because the guy with the ball dribbles the mother, I've been ball the whole time. I just can't it makes me lose my shit. Well, here's the thing. I don't feel bad for Miami because they were the ten seed. I didn't think they were a playoff team And they were who we thought they were in a lot of ways with that said the band thing stunk So how's we have a San Antonio Portland line? Would you like to guess? For the series. Yeah. Oh God San Antonio's minus 490 oh no minus 1350 That's too much way too much. Yeah. Wow. What would you like there? What do you think what do you think a spare sweep is? Oh, I mean that that's preposterous. We don't want to guess the spur sleep sweep odds. I don't I don't want to guess like I can minus 1350 2 to 1 odds for the sweep curve. Yeah, that's crazy. Spurs When 4 to 1 is plus 190 on Fandall. I'm betting that it The here the problem with 1350 is the applied applied concept there is That when we will play all the games and that's right That that doesn't really line up with our recent experience. I would like for him to play all the games I want him to be healthy for all the games. It may not make sense for him to play all the games He may yet still need some rest. So I assume he's playing all the games. You know who's going to be playing against him though. That I've been cooking an elaborate the truth Williams Um for the guys who combine two for 12 for four points tonight. Those guys Klingons feisty man. He'll He he will take this personally. They only have 12 fouls. They definitely have 12 fouls I think Zach Low is the first person to point this out. Klingon looks exactly like Gunther the WWE superstar He's going to go through it up against Wembe. There's going to be some high elbows and some shoves and Klingons like kind of a badass like he's he's willing to throw Dillon books to the T-3. Yeah, he's to the ground I'm going to brave enough to do that. Yeah, I have I have a question that's going to send a Chilled down your spine Thought about the stator in the Charlotte game These young Carefree Awesome regular season teams or these stretches Built around the young guys Yeah, cut great. This is and then The old guys and inside the NBA come on and be like I bark. Who does that? I don't know I don't you I want to see it in the playoffs Um, and we're like all right settle down their offensive rating was this blah blah And then the playoffs come in the lights are nice and hot bright And all of a sudden that wide open that first wide open three didn't go in and then your second one Didn't come in and now like you can see with con today's like rethinking I made 275 of these and I don't know if I want to shoot this the spurs Have a few guys in that team that the lights might get a little bright right from 24 feet You thinking about that at all 100% I mean these guys are 21-22 You know and Dylan Harper's case 19 or whatever like yeah, of course Yeah, you just hope that Harrison Barnes and Deer and Fox and Julian Chimpeini Here's the guards Here's the Barnes is my whole mentalist and a world champion. Here's a once Yeah, so he is an NBA champion and I go, but yeah, there's some vets there But I think it is fair to say I don't think that's going to come up in a Portland series with Denny who by the way Has never seen this stuff or you know, Drew holiday has I'll give that to him But yeah, I think both of these teams Thiago splitter is going to be really coaching his first place series and so is Mitch Johnson Yeah, I think you're worried about that if you're a spurs fan We haven't seen it and the other thing I'd say Bill Simmons is the rules change remember last year how jarring It was once we got into the postseason. What is the contact what are the contacts allowances anymore? This was a foul for six months now. It's not a foul anymore How is that going to how is that going to affect Wembee to house his point about his fragility his durability? And just the the inexperience with that like that's kind of physicality that we're going to see here in the next few months I can't wait The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to by Fandall the NBA playoffs are here in the form of the plan tournament Which goes on for a half a week you can get better payouts this NBA plan on Fandall all Fandall customers Can claim a profit boost every single day of this tournament plus you can enter a Fandall's playing polusa for a chance to win a share Of two million dollars in bonus bets every day of the plan tournament. 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I'm an Uber on member Orders of 30 dollars or more save up to 25 dollars ends April 30th 2026 see app for details How so you ready for the playoffs? You got in there yet mentally. I'm there now. I mean For us yet tonight was the night. No because the first round is not lining up. I the But the team that I feel like you know that Atlanta could give the Nick some trouble That's the only one where I really feel like you know I don't think the unless there's some miracle happening With Lucas visit to where do you go? Italy? The line's kind of doing this. I don't know if you notice the series line It's going this way a little bit Lakers now plus 530 Her plus 590. I can't see because one of my context isn't working plus 530 Houston now minus 750. They used to be minus 900. I mean to me that's the linkers are a smash spot at that price So I'm probably not betting it Yeah, I don't think you're right It's what it's the playoffs are two and a half weeks basically round one. Yeah They'll stretch it out even if it's two one after three And then they could potentially get Luca back for the last Couple and you know, you know, I said this to Zach. They're the night. There's going to be the 55 free throw game That's happening. Just pencil that one in Um, but yeah, if they could Even if they're down three two heading in the game six, but Lucas back I don't trust that Houston team. No, I know you guys don't trust that Houston. No, not even a little bit um, so then The other weird thing that happened we had the 910 game before we had the 7-8 game in the east So we have Philly tomorrow and that line has moved. I love Philly today. Philly was like minus one and a half today It's up to minus two and a half um, I really like Philly in that game Warriors clippers just see by his well bet on two drunk guys having a fight in downtown, oh, I have no idea It's gonna happen in that game but Magic sixers who do you think Who do you think Charlotte's rooting for in this game Kurt Goldsbury? Oh Orlando I don't know if you sell the rumors on the internet today, but there's turmoil in the magic locker run head coach Jamal Mosley they're re-evaluating his future no matter what no I think your beloved Celtics bill really put a put them into a funk heading into these playoffs I without a question. I think it's got to be Charlotte Rooton to see or Orlando who has been a complete mess over these last few weeks And I just don't know if their offense can keep up with Charlotte on an average Charlotte night We saw Charlotte with a really below average night tonight beat a pretty good opponent So if they just get back to average, I don't know if Orlando will keep up. So I would say the Orlando magic house I don't know The problem is house gets a frenic the magic have been they are the more healthy team For certain we don't have any confidence whatsoever in Mosley But the problem is In the in the bright lights maybe those guys all come together maybe they're the nobody believes in us team They were supposed to win 50 games this season. They grossly under achieved But like Desmond Bain Doesn't want to look go out looking like a bitch and Hello wherever he ends up whether he's on Orlando or not. He doesn't want to go out looking like or Milwaukee or Sacramento Yeah, I mean, I don't know man. So I think we never Orlando We both bet on there was a Saturday game where Philly played in Charlotte And really kind of buoyed them and took it to them and if I'm Charlotte, I don't want to play them Yeah, I didn't like that. I didn't like how that game went for them. I thought they were really physical with their guards Um, I thought they were physical with Khan. I thought they're physical of the mellow. I just I didn't like the matchup. I want to play the magic for all the reasons Kirk mentioned as well Yeah, in the magic locker room. There was something this week about A team was anxiously waiting to talk to Jamal Mosley this this summer, what was that story? Who was the team? I'm blanking. It was one of the teams that needed coach. It was like the Taipei Tigers, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. Somebody who's excited to talk to, oh, New Orleans. That's what it was. New Orleans was really excited. Is there a difference between the teams we mentioned in New Orleans? Those all sound like the same teams to be. If you had to pick Warriors Clippers, what would you do, Hass? Not to step on Ringer Gamling Shadowbar? Take the Clippers. Kirk? What's the Warriors injury report? We're getting porzingis and porphyry. I'm going to this one tomorrow night. The Clippers are interesting because when they play Garland and Kauai together, they're really good. All of the minutes with those two guys on the floor, really good. Garland's the only guy in the team who can dribble. All you have to do when Garland's done out there is just press and trap whoever. Just try to get the ball because they'll give it to you. They don't have a backup center. Their swings kind of are hit or miss. The crowd's going to have a ton of Warriors fans there. This is the always the biggest issue with Clipper games because you're going to have 5,000 Warriors fans there. There's a real energy if Steph gets going. It's weird. I would either pick the Warriors to win or to lose by 20. I don't think there's any in between. I think they either get blown out or they win. I don't think, but it's a close game. I think they win it. Is there any conspiracy bill? We don't want the Clippers and the playoffs. Anything like, oh, we do want Steph Curry and the playoffs. That could be it. You know, I'm not a conspiracy bill. I'm just a guy over here. House. I'm going to put back and conspiracy bill. Do it. Conspiracy bill did notice. We did not see Scott Foster today. Now wait. Yeah. On the one hand, Steph Curry. On the other hand, the team that was in broke and some sort of weird aspiration. I don't want to call it a scandal. Whatever it was for a long time. Well, keep that gear conspiracy head on. What did we say was going to be the funniest possible outcome of the lottery when the ping-pong balls get dropped? Because if the Clippers lose, then they're in the lottery, but they don't have the pick, right? They don't have the pick. No. Who has the pick? Okay. See has the pick. Yeah. We don't have. That would be the worst. So okay. See gets. Yeah. The Clippers win the lottery, but okay. See gets the pick. I forgot to mention there was another outcome in that Portland game because they made the playoffs, they lose their pick. I think to Charlotte. So Charlotte gets a pick in the mid first round. And if you've been following this draft at all, somebody really good is going to fall to the middle of the first round in this NBA draft. And it's going to be a point guard. And it's going to be like the kid from Alabama who just goes 16-17 because everybody has a point guard, nobody need to take them. So that picks like not nothing. I think Charlotte was the one that has it. I am really excited for tomorrow. Zach Pupude, my love of just seeing Steph Curry playing and any sort of a game that means anything. The minute's limit is weird. The fact that the other game is going to be the 7-8 game is also kind of weird. We'll see how it goes. How's before we go, you want to give us your MVP pick? I would be SGA for me. If I got to, if I was lucky enough to have a ballot, I would vote for SGA. Who would be your number two? The Joker. Wembe three. Wembe three. Yeah. Without hesitation or reservation. Okay. Who would be your all NBA fifth spot if Luca doesn't qualify and fails is weird appeal. And we have the three guys we just mentioned in Jalen Brown and the fifth spot could be their Mitchell or Brunson or somebody else. Who would you put in there? I think I would put Mitchell in there because he kind of held that team together until Harden arrived and they made the push that they made. And for, yeah. For fourth and fifth MVP, would you have Jalen Brown fourth? Fourth seems fair, sure. With no Luca? Yeah, with no Luca for sure, absolutely. And who would be the fifth spot for you because this is something else we argue about in the next second? You could have Mitchell, you could have Brunson, you could have Kauai. Could have Kauai. It'd probably have to be Brunson for me, honestly. Okay, probably Brunson. House later, we're going to send you in a sound proof chamber. And later on, you'll hear if your picks match the picks of me or Kurt Goldsbury. Who do you have for rookie of the year, by the way? Calm. It's not even close to me. It's not even close. I mean, it's funny how House and I are aligned a lot. It just could not, could not under any circumstance. This isn't a year where you're, you're having to hold your nose and choose between bad choices. Like, this is not a, who, who's the, I'm going to, um, use say somebody, did the killer Alexander Walker, would it, a handful? No, Michael Carter William state. That's the one. I think it was a different hyphen guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, how should you against hyphen guys win in these awards? What's your problem? I just knew there was a hyphen guy that won rookie of the year because we couldn't come up with the answer to who the rookie of the year should be. That's not this year. Just the Dallas is a disaster. That was a absolute. I, what we are doing is saying, this 19 year old did things that a teenager shouldn't do. That's great. I don't have any issue whatsoever. Show me the winning basketball. I need to see the winning basketball. That's the part of it that's missing. Yeah. And if it's, and if it's a bad rookie the year year and we're not comparing the winning stuff at all, then it's just like, all right, who played the best in a shit situation? Yeah. It's, it, then you can say, okay, let's do the counting numbers. Let's do, let's do rebounds assists and points. But that's not this year. And, and I think the, uh, force, the force multiplier effect of Knipple on this Charlotte team, the settling effect of his coming in and being so efficient with the threes, that, that to me, flag will get his flowers, flower, flag deserves flowers. But how can you make any assessment of shit numbers on a shit team? Like it's like, what you're saying is he is the best 19 year old. Well, we have rankings for that. We, there's other ways to capture that. Not rookie of the year in the NBA. I just like to apologize to Kathy flagged for houses and flamatory comments. And I hope she's still a friend of the pot. My last point before we leave, man, I love flag. My last point. Love that guy. I will say there's been some strange movement on, in these newfangled betting markets over the last six hours on that rookie of the year thing. So we, we could be living in a world where Luke is protest. Luke is what is it called not a protest? It's a appeal. His, this appeal process may have changed the outcome of this award. If those market maneuvering, the movements in these markets are to be trusted. Cooper has had some positive movement over the last six hours. Hey, last question before we go, because how see you didn't come on and talk about this? Worry McElroy went back to back masters. He sure did. Man, he played the masters two years in Rome was the best guy each time. This is a thing that happened. Only four times in the history of the golf tournament. There's been, it's been around for 90 years. The other three guys to do it were Tiger Woods, Jack Nicholas, and Sir Nick Fowl though. Three of the all-time great Kirk. I mean, if we had started the decade, 2020 starts the decade, right? That January 1st, 2020. We start the decade and think about the things that have happened, the decade, including a pandemic and Trump winning reelection and named 17 crazy sports things. Worry winning back to back masters would have been way, way up there, way up there. Honestly, not. I have to push back a tiny bit because back to back masters. Well, I mean, but here's the thing. That's like Tiger Woods, Jack Nicholas shit. Yeah, it is that. And he earlier in his career, looked like that's the trajectory he was on. What truly makes him the figure that he is in this sporting moment is that there was a 10-year gap between him winning majors. He went on this incredible drought and the pressure built and the pressure built. And that's why last year's masters resonated across the world in terms of sporting golf fandom and sports fandom because he overcame something that felt insurmountable. And even during the course of the round, last year in 2025, he damn near-lossed three or four different ways. So this year was like a validation of the true caliber of, you know, a legacy, a legacy kind of mark that he put down. Kirk, my favorite part of the masters, other than betting on Justin Rose and thinking that he was going to win the masters and then he just turned into a pumpkin on the night pole. Scotty Shepler. kind of, he kind of sucked the whole tournament and he was like minus 11. It was the equivalent of watching somebody put up a 35 11 and 12, not making a shot from outside like seven feet. It was like watching the mellow ball. Like he struggled all game and then you got a stats was unbelievable. No, that is so disrespectful to Scotty Sheffler. No, I'm going to buy it. Yeah, you can't, don't compare it to the mellow ball. You're going to play in the house. Let me come back around Scotty Sheffler went to the University of Texas and studied at this business school that I teach and we are huge Scotty fans. I thought the same thing, Bill, he is playing terrible and that's how good he is right now. He played a terrible role by his standards. All of his drives were crazy. Every time he needed a big shot, he hit it off into the woods. He missed a birdie putt that would have, I thought really put the pressure on. I'm going to say a 12 to 13th hole and that stretch a whole house where they all gain ground. He had a chance. Yeah. I was rooting for him the whole time. I still think he's the best golfer in the world, but hats off the Roy. It was a great Sunday at the Masters. It was a great weekend of course. It was really fun. I was happy to see it, but now I'm ready for the NBA playoffs, Bill House. I love, I love watching great athletes struggle and get mostly to where they need to go anyway. It was like my favorite Jordan game other than the the flu game and the last game of his of his bulls career. Was that game seven against the Pacers when he just didn't have his legs and he said, I got to figure this out somehow. And just kind of patching together plays and stats with nothing. Those are the best hallmark of a true champion winning the B B minus game. Yeah. I mean, maybe it was closer to B plus for him for Rory. We're speaking though because of how good his putting his short game was especially in the first two rounds. But he shot over par, you know, on Saturday and only one under on Sunday. Well, yes. Rory just basically played two awesome back Nines, right? Yeah. Where he was like one of the back dines. He was like minus six. And then the other one was the Sunday back nine. But Shephler, I don't think put together any good back dines. No, Shephler on the weekend was a love. He was even par going into the weekend. And then he did not make a bogey on Saturday or Sunday. He shot 11 under par on Saturday or Sunday. He just could not score on the back nine par five. See, only had one birdie. The entire golf tournament. And those and that was a miracle one. Yeah. And that was a miracle. He saved that. You're right, KG. An incredible Rory. Second shot on 18, man. After he hit that air and drive as somebody's rooting for Scotty, I was like, did he just do what I think because that was almost going to be one of the most painful moments in golf, depending where that ball landed, man. The true Rory experience. That's it. That's the rollercoaster running. I mean, they missed a lot of replays and live shots, but they didn't have the perfect replay that one Rory shot. So it seemed like it seemed like it was going to ding and bounce backwards, which is usually what happens. And it just didn't. Somebody will cobble it together. There is emerging now. Some camera angles that that seemed like they captured it, but it would have been fun to see you in real. I have another thing I'm going to do as sports are after I settle Amazon's audio video issue where the audio is before the video of the game I'm watching. That's number one of my agenda. I think the masters, and this is the only event that you should be able to do this with the masters. They should be able to grab the best announcers from all the other networks. Like we should just have Toreco and Van Pelt and Joe Buck should all be on hold. Van Pelt is there. He should be on hold. I like this 1617. I want Van Pelt, Toreco and Joe Buck. And they're just there. We don't want anything else. We'll fly you in. You get your own house. Just work this whole on Saturday and Sunday. It's a two day thing and just do your thing. And let's go with the big boys. But Toreco does the radio call. He didn't do it this year because he went to the Olympics, but he he does cover the masters. I don't listen to the masters on the radio. I understand. And who would you have on the 16th pole if you could have anybody? Bernlund Chris. That's the answer. I burn. I won't burn for the rest forever for the rest of my life. What hole would you put Eric Collins on? Would you put him on what would be the most exciting Eric Collins hole? 15? A lot a lot of big things happen on 15, maybe 12, like 12. Yeah, yeah, 12. The drama there. Real catastrophes happen on 12. Oh, gee, I'm just picking my throat. He's in the water. It's it. There you go. Yeah. I love it. No, I was headed over the green and then flood the chip. How would Eric Collins handle that? I'm telling you, just get all these dudes. We just get them for two days. It's best of the best. It's like, it's like when they make those Avengers movies for the Marvel when they put all the great actors. Yeah. One movie. Let's just do it for the last two days. Nobody's against this. Kirk Gold's very pleasure to see you as always. We look forward to your masters shot chart map that I'm sure you're working on. By the way, that would be a good idea. Do that. I can do it. Do it right now. I'll buy one. I'll send you the memo right now. I love you. Joe House. Thanks for staying up late. We appreciate it. Seeing the ringer gambling show in a fairway rolling. And I'll be I'll be making you pop on during the playoffs as well. We're going to take a break coming back. Me and Kirk Gold's bear are going to go through all the awards. Let's go. As you know, I've been doing Wednesday bets on Fandall actually won the last two. We had a big parlay and Wembee. That was like nine to one. And then Justin Rose top five masters plus 650. That one hit two almost one Justin Rose to win the masters. I think it was 35 to one. He let me down, but he's still got the top five. So let's see if we can keep the street going. I already jumped the gun. I did my my playing bet Tuesday night Portland. That was my favorite bet of the four playing games. But I also really like Philly. I think Philly beats Orlando. I love betting on the NBA and Fandall. It's a brand I trust. Easy to build by bet. You know, you get your winnings instantly. Playing tournaments always fun. Do parlays. I did like a Charlotte Portland Philly parlay. That was like five to one. But I like Philly straight up. I just think Orlando is ready for the season to end. And they couldn't stop maxing the regular season. I am a Philly money line. Maybe throw that in with with the calves to be Toronto in the serious something like that. Go nuts. Do whatever you need to do. So don't forget to check out my middle of the week. That's usually the Wednesday. But there might be a Tuesday. I like on Fandall using the Fandall sports book app. Don't forget to use your profit boost token to increase your potential winnings before you place it. Fandall, play your game. All right. We just traveled in a time machine backwards to before the playing games when Kurt Goldberg and I banked this whole segment because we want to talk big picture around one playoffs. I want to do my award picks. More importantly, what an honor for you. You have a vote. I can't remember. Yeah. Democracy is back in America, Bill. Have you said your vote publicly yet? No. We're going to do this right now. Let's talk and do it. We'll talk about the playoffs later. So just look at thing is so weird. Yeah. It screws up the top five MVP because he would be fourth on my ballot. If he's eligible, we don't know if he is. There's some sort of weird appeal process. We have to go through. I don't know why the NBA doesn't care about podcast content and dumb shows like ours where we have shut out of this stuff. And then it screws up first team on the NBA. It opens up a spot for somebody. And it adds a spot on the third team for somebody because everybody moves up a spot. So I want to do all NBA first. We'll finish with MVP and we'll hit all the other categories. So I had first team. Yoage Wembee, Luca, SGA, and Jalen, which I think is chalk, right? Yeah. You have that as well. Okay. On the Luca in version of my spreadsheet. Now I have a Luca out version of my spreadsheet to your point. Let's talk about that because that's more interesting. So Luca's in if they do the weird ruling and they're like, Oh, he flew back for the birth of his child that somehow counts as a game. It would be funny. I've said this before, but if silver said, you know what? We reject the appeal. He would have played 65 if he hadn't gotten 16 technicals. And maybe he'll learn his lesson now. And we just all move done. All right. Luca out. Alternate first team. I have Mitchell in the Luca spot. Who do you have? I have Kauai Leonard, which was sort of surprising as I went through this bill. But you look at the dude's numbers and he's nearing 50, 40, 90 at 28 points a game. He's obviously a defender. But I just couldn't justify any other pick. I know it's a controversial season for Kauai. I know the clippers aren't that great. But this is probably his best season as a scorer of his career. If he's ever been first team all NBA, there's an argument that it should be this year. So I won Kauai. I can't kill it. So he was sixth and sixth and scoring in the league this year. He's 7.5 net. Plus wait 32 minutes a game. Career high points per game, which I couldn't believe. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either 27.9. Was that it was? Yeah. Third highest. Year 14 points per game ever. So of any year 14 guy, third highest we've ever had. And I think the other two were Durant Curry, both of whom played in the fifties for games that year. Defense was there. I think it's a good pick. I just, I had a hard time putting them first to my NBA when the team was barely 500. And he was there for a bunch of those. When they started, when they were six and nine, I just couldn't get past that, where it's Mitchell, you know, that was a top 14 the whole year. They had some injuries. I think there's some MVP conversation for him too. And it was pretty steady for them for the most part. I thought he had, I thought he had a, a good year. He played over 70 games, 33.5 minutes of game, seventh points per game. He was a 28, five and six. And I just felt like, I don't really feel like either of them or first team NBA is to be honest, but if Luke is going to be out, who else did we lose? We lost one more bad one. What do you mean we lost to Ant-Man? What do you mean we lost to? We lost Ant. I think Ant would have been the other one who could have swam in that swimming pool, for sure, but did not. Okay. So we disagree on Mitchell versus Kate. Sorry, Kate. Okay, this year, yeah, Kate had that spot forever and then just didn't make it. By the way, just missed it. Yeah, too much load management. Maybe too much a long management. I don't know what we're going to call it this time around, but Kate cutting him with a travesty. Well, so let's say you could have voted 60, like let's say 60 games and up instead of 65. Yeah. Would Luca and Kate have made it for you? I had to put Jalen Brown in there, man. Jalen Brown and Kate, I know other people are going to roast me for this, but I ended up with Jalen. He reinvented his game. That team had no business going on the run that it went on and he was the best player on that team all year long as they went through that incredible surprising run. I'm not mad at anybody I'd cade cutting him above Jalen Brown, but it would have been Luca and Jalen for me. I feel the same way played almost 2,500 minutes. Everything he did peaked in his 10 season, which is just incredible and usual for the NBA. There's really no, I had a whole thing I was looking up, guys who made first team NBA for the first time in their 10th season. John Stockton in 1994, didn't that say? Wow. It's the only one and he had six seconds leading up to this. So you could say in some ways, this is one of the great aberration seasons anybody has had 10 years or later in their career, but there were reasons for it, including Tatum. Him having to take the higher usage rate. I've made the case for Jalen over and over again. Kind of had to see the season and see how limited the Celtics were from, can we get a reliable basket anywhere tonight? Not knowing if Pritchard was going to be on or not. I love Pritchard, but he's a little bit on off. White shooting was near the whole year. And it's, Jalen had 30 points or more 35 times out of the 70 plus games he played. And they needed him all the time. It was just always nice to know like, all right, whatever happens. We have somewhere to go in the fourth quarter. We have somebody we're getting, we know we're getting 30 to 35 from this guy. We know he's going to get to the line. On top of it was taking on defensive challenge over and over again against people like Shay and Kauai. Anytime they needed a stopper, it seemed like he ended up on the bigger scores. And I thought from a leadership, physicality, attitude standpoint, he's the biggest reason then 156 games by far. - Yeah, and we didn't get to see what Kade would have done down the stretch. So we were robbed of that. And that's why this is a hypothetical. If Kade had finished, I mean, the case for Kade is the Detroit offense without Kade until he got hurt was a awful, awful unit. And when as soon as he came in the game, everything was fine. He ran that thing as well as John Stockton. He was like, he was the conductor of that orchestra. And also just a great leader. And so, we were robbed at the end of that. But yeah, Jaylin ended up absorbing on his, not easy Bill Simmons to deal with Jason Tatum just sliding back into the fold after doing what you do for 66 games. Now, now let's get back into the Jason Tatum. And he handled that as perfectly as anybody could have expected. - I'm really glad you mentioned that 'cause I don't know if that would have gone the right way all the time. Like Jaylin gets credit for, come on back in. Let's figure this out how this is gonna work. If Kade had played 70 games, and we had Luca, and I think Luca Trump spoke those guys, Jaylin versus Kade would have been an awesome argument, but we were sadly robbed of that opportunity. All right, second team. If Luca's in, I am looking at Jaylin Dern, Kawai Leonard, Donovan Mitchell, Jamal Murray, and Jaylin Brunson. Three guards, which I don't love. I, let's talk about this now. I'm just always voting a center for each team or at least some sort of big. I want my OMBA team to look somewhat like a basketball team. I'm not gonna do just handing out the trophies for everybody. There's what are there? 100 votes, 110 votes. I forgot how many votes there are. Everybody approaches it differently. That's the way I approach it. I value the eight decades of history. We had centers every year for the first seven plus decades of the league. And I'm not just gonna dump that because Joel and Beat and Yokech got weird with first and second team. It got weird with Russell and Will. I've talked about this ad nauseam. So I have Dern, Kawai, Mitchell, Murray, and Brunson. Who do you have? - So I have Kawai in this world where Luca's in, then Donovan Mitchell, Jaylin, Brunson, Kevin Durant. And I go Chet. I go Chet Hombren here, largely because I wanted a center in there and because defensive conversations aren't well represented in all NBA. And he's one of the most impactful. He's definitely the second most impactful defender in the league right now. - I battled Chet first Dern, went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth on it. Fairly similar case, Dern stats are better. Minutes are around the same. Yeah, the defensive stats for Chet are better. And Chet's rim protection stuff was pretty nuts. I actually, as recently as like three, four weeks ago, I had him on the bubble because I hadn't done the deep dive on all the defensive stats like Holy shit. He's second in rim protection. They're first in defensive rating just in general. They're 56 and 13 when he played. It's a 56, 36, 79 guys. So the statistical case is there. I thought the reason I went with Dern is, I just thought he meant more to that Detroit team where him and Cade were the guys that the physicality, the competitiveness, the attitude that that team had came from those two guys and spread down and everyone else kind of carried themselves the same way too. And when Cade went out, I was so impressed that they kept winning. And I felt like every time I watched Dern, I'm just like, that guy's a fucking badass. So I think that's a, you could go either way, I'm fine with it. I didn't feel 100% on it, but 28 minutes of game for him, 70 games. They're plus 1.8 net when he played. He was six in rebounds. And I thought he really grew as an offensive guy. He's gonna come up in another award. But I was really, so I didn't know he had this in him. I guess this is my bigger point. And he was there. I mean, Jay Dub wasn't there. I thought it was a good chance for him to sort of emerge in an offensive role, but also sort of the second banana role. But for me, ultimately, it's like, dude, this guy is one of the big reasons that are the best defense in the NBA for the second straight year. - Yeah. - And he's talking about Jalen before, but you're talking about Chet now. - Yeah, it's talking about Chet, my fault. - No, that's fine. This is very confusing, by the way, for the audience, to have this Luka non-Luka thing, I think Bill and I are very, very confused. So thanks NBA. So Luka out, I have Durin Kauai, Murray Brunson and Kevin Durant. And I didn't feel great about it, but here's the case for Durant. Second and minutes in the week, played 79 games, played 36 minutes of game. He was 26, 6 and 5. He was a 52, 41, 87 guy. That team didn't have a point guard, basically, at all. And he carried that. And I thought statistically, if you remove all the burner scandal stuff and some of the weird chemistry that team has, statistically, pretty incredible season. We've only had three guys, 37 years or older, ever average, 25 plus points of game. Him, staff, and LeBron, seems like a fitting class. And I had him 13, 'cause the burner scandal really bothered me and the whole thing, I thought it affected the team. I thought you could see it. I don't know how culpable he was in it, but I just didn't like it. But ultimately, like, I just, with all these other dudes out, I think he has to nudge up. So who did you have in that extra spot if Lucas out? - I put Jamal Murray in my second team with Jalen Brunson, Durant, Chet, and Donovan Mitchell. - Okay. So we're basically the, the same except you had Mitchell in the non-Luca first team, or I had Mitchell in the non-Luca first team and you had Kauai in the non-Mitchell first team. Yeah, that's exactly right. Did you think at all about Brunson, third team, second team, or were you just good to go with that? I'm so impressed by him and maybe it's bleeding over from the playoff run, but he's just so clutch and so important for that team and ended up earning the three seed in the East. And frankly, the other guys on the team bill are so inconsistent that he just has to be so high usage and so reliable as they go to score. When your second best player is Kat, who I'm sure we're going to talk about here in a second, it just impresses me. So Jalen Brunson, elevating this next team to the third seed in a world where there's so much inconsistency around him offensively, whether we're talking about bridges or anobie or Josh Harder, whoever else. I've always been sort of a pro Brunson guy, so I had a second team. Yeah, if Luca, if Luca N.K. had played, I think I would have had Murray over Brunson because of Murray was, he ended up playing 76 games or 75 games, he was six in minutes, he was fourth and made threes, 25, 4 and 7 every night. Almost. He was a 48, 4, 4, 8 guy and I just thought he had a harder job than Brunson, as well as that sounds as good as Brunson is where that entire next team is built around Brunson. Yeah. The Denver, you have to figure out, Yokech has the ball at the time. He's figured out completely how to play off Yokech, how to carry non-Yokech minutes, playing with this rotating cast of swings that we either heard or came Johnson's not playing well. And I just thought he was so steady and so good all season, but there was no drop-up with him month to month. I didn't look at his monthly splits, but they couldn't have been much different every month. And I thought he was just so impressive, anyway, it was his best year ever, right? Yeah. So I was thinking, like, if you switch them, would the Nix be worse, would Denver be worse? I think if you switch them, I think the Nix would be around the same. I think Murray could do a lot of the stuff Brunson was doing for them, but I think the Nuggets would have been worse. It's a dumb way to think about it. But I think the way Murray played, I feel like he could fit into any team. I was just really impressed by him this year. Brunson, you know, as a crunch time guy, the confidence that he has and the connection he has, but there's great things with him too. A lot of good teams this year, a lot of good players this year, okay. Now we're going to get wonky because we have a third team with some guys that I just can't believe or even in the mix. I have for my Luca, if Luca counts, here's my five, Chet, who you had, KD, who I had bumped up to second team without Luca, but he's third team if Luca's involved. That KD, Jalen Johnson, Steph Castle, and Tyrese Maxi. That's my five. I did it. So where are you talking about it? So Lucas out, that leaves me with Chet, Jalen Johnson, Castle, Maxi, and Scotty Barnes, which I just don't feel great about, but I'll give you the Barnes case. Well, I'll give you, you give me yours, and then we'll talk about some of the cases here. So with Luca and I, Murray Maxi, Jalen Durin, okay, there's my big Jalen Johnson and Cat. So that's why Luca. So you had Cat. Okay. Interesting. I did have Cat. And then on my Luca out, I have Maxi Durin, Jalen Johnson, Cat. And then Shen Goon is the beneficiary if, on my ballot, if, if, if Luca is not included. So it's crazy. Just for the audience, this decision is going to affect two people in a grand way. Luca Doncher, obviously, but the 16th best player in the NBA in theory is going to become all NBA, 13th or the 16th candidate. And in my case, that's Shen Goon. I mean, really, he's the 17th best, because KD, and Anzad, so I guess that was 17 to 18. I looked at Shen Goon first of all, I didn't want to have two rockets because I've made him watch them for the most part. They drive me crazy. I had him first half of the year. I didn't love how the second half of the year went. I thought the chemistry stuff, like, I always go down to like how much fun would, would someone so be to play with was Shen Goon. I'm not always positive. He'd be the most fun to play with his teammates. I think they're really frustrated with him. So he didn't even, he wasn't, I had, I just couldn't do two rockets. So I'll make the case for Castle Firth, because you see, I had him either way. So he finished 17, 5 and 7, 47, 33, 73 on the shooting, played high 60s, played 30 minutes of game. So one of the most impressive players I saw in person, I just couldn't believe what the bad ass it was on both ends of the floor and goes after every single play. And then when you watch him on, I don't have to sell you, you love the spurs. Just every play doesn't take off. I feel like there's more there. I felt like he sacrificed stuff for the team. I think if he was on a shitier team, Dylan Harper was another one that I thought sacrificed. I think if Castle was on a mediocre team, or a playing team or whatever, I think his stats could have been better. I think he kind of just, I think he's just all about how are we winning? How are we winning? How are we winning? I think guys hate dribbling up against him, trying to, trying to beat him off the dribble, trying to post him up, they fucking hate playing him. He got way better as a shooter as the year went on. That's the other thing. I care about that with all NBA that you actually got better as the year went along. He was over 40% from three seconds after the year. I thought his threes were going in when he took them during that streak, and I just thought he was their second best player and that team won 60 plus games. He was their second best player. One thing you didn't say that I think is huge with the spurs season is he's the biggest reason Bill. I think they give the Thunder a hard time aside from the obvious victory by Minyama. He is longer and stronger than almost any of their guards, which is insane to even say that. That's what the Thunder are. His ferocious perimeter pounds, and he gives them a personality, not only to counter that, but to supersede it in some ways. He's one of my favorite players. If not my favorite player in Pro Basketball right now, I'd love to watch him. It's a treat to go to the spurs games. He's a huge part of their team. Ultimately, his numbers don't justify his inclusion on this for me. But I'm happy to hear the sports guy given this dude some praise. There's one other thing with him, and it's a weird, we have no stat for it. It's a, you know, when you see it, he's really malleable with their lineups. Like the best guy ever for this was John Havitchek, a million years ago. John Havitchek could be a guard or a forward, depending on who else was on your team. It's like, we actually have more forwards now. You can be a guard. Like cool. Now, we're a little light on forwards. Can you play up? Sure. Can you guard this guy? Great. Can you guard this guy over here? Awesome. Can you fit in? And I think that Swiss Army knife thing with swing men are really hard to find. And one of the things I love about Castle is like, he can be an any line up they have. You want to go four guards? Cool. Play him at the fucking four. You want to play point guard for you and handle the ball like he can do that. Like, I think when you have a guy like that, it just becomes so much easier to be good. That team is really good. But like his flexibility, I thought was the second biggest reason that they were as good as they were. Pick a line up. Pick a situation. He can handle it. It's a great point because he can blend scoring the ball, driving it. He's so ferocious with two feet in the paint. He's a great pastor. He has these turnover issues that I'm sure he's going to get past because he's just so determined. But he does have turnover red flags. The shooting has come along, but I have the stat that Stefan Castle is the seventh player in NBA history to average, 15 points, seven assists and five rebounds at age 21 or younger. So this might not help him for all NBA, but the guys are magic, LeBron, Chris Paul. And then there's a couple of funny ones, Ben Simmons, whatever happened to that guy. Luca Donchic, Lamello Ball, and then Stefan Castle. So his blending, filling up the box score as a guard with those kinds of numbers. Obviously he's physical enough to get boards, get extra possessions. He's a big part of the Spurs culture. And I think even more so than Wembee gives them a toughness with the other teams in the West. I adore the player. I think that's coming through. I know Zach loves this player as much as I do and you do too. So I hope he gets third team all NBA as a homer, but as an analyst, I ended up with a different answer there. So Scotty Barnes, 18, 7, and 6, 50% shooting, but couldn't hit three. It was down to 30 by the end of the year. Did a lot of stuff for them. They ended up with a five seed. Now the five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 were all like two wins apart. And Toronto, I think, was 500 the last 60 games. It's not like this was an. awesome team, but he was the key guy in the team, did the most, defensively, I don't know if I haven't been first team, but he was right on the fringe. I think I put him second team all day and, you know, versus putting two guys from the same team versus having a guy who is number five seed, who's their best player. I'm okay with it. It's hard for me to wrap my head around him being a third team all NBA guy, but the only other one I was looking at was Avdia, and, you know, he barely hit the minimum. He's 24/7 and said, I just couldn't get there with Avdia. I didn't think the team was Toronto's team was better than Portland's team. And that's, I don't know, the winning piece matters to me at least a little bit. That's how I derived it. Some of these tough decisions, too, is, you know, show me when, show me what you did in the standings, to some extent, and in the Western Conference. So Shenguin, for me, is like, yeah, the West is a harder thing to win in. You know, it is really thin. I looked at Denny, too, and hats off to him. What a, what an incredible, most improved player case he has. Yeah. I did not see this coming with him as an attacker, learning the dark arts of foul baiting, as well as almost any other player as age in the league. For me, just can't shoot it well enough to justify that. I'd like to see him get Portland to a next level, and I could see him doing that next year, credit to him. If this continues, he's clearly got an all NBA future. If he continues to improve like you do this year. Yeah, the problem, I think there were two and 16 against the top three teams in both conferences. I got swept out of the Celtics, and they got swept by the next, and that's where, that's where the all NBA, like voting him on being, so it's the one I might change by mind on before we have to end in the ballots, but right now that's who I have. I didn't consider towns. I have the, it's, it would be funny. We're taping this before the playing game today, but it'd be funny if the playing games swung any of this stuff mentally, even though it's not supposed to. I couldn't get there with towns. So he was 20 and 12, 50% shooting. That's good. I just, I couldn't get there because just, he's a lot, he's just a lot in the game. Just games where you're just like, wow, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? Yeah. And I just, I couldn't totally get there. I thought about him for the, for the center spot, but I just don't think he had a case against Aaron and Chet. Yeah, I put him in that sort of front court, the vague front court position. I think what he does statistically is really impressive. I think rebounds remain one of the more underrated metrics in this league. Yeah. And you know, yeah, well, it's true. The Celtics really, we're a rebounding juggernaut this year. It's a big part of their story. And then I think what he does on offense, we when he doesn't have the ball, just stretching out the defense is so important for Brunson and helping the next B such an effective offense. Yeah. Kat's fingerprints are on that. That put me there. But again, this is a team that's in the top half of their bracket, a third seed. That means a lot to me. And so I had Kat there. An eligible arcade ant booker in LeBron if you wanted to get crazy. Harden is the only one who I took a look at. When Zach does this, Zach has like 48 guys and he's down looking at like all of the hornets and he loses his mind. I don't go that far. Harden, that traded mid season, that's a tough one for me too. I thought he made the calves worse defensively like almost overnight, like they just dropped down on 15 to 16 defensively, I just couldn't get there. All right. So that's what it goes. So my all NBA right now with No Luca is Yokech, Wembe SGA, Jalen Mitchell, Durin, Kauai, KD, Murray, and Brunson and then Chet, Jalen Johnson, Castle, Maxi and Barnes. We didn't talk about Jalen Johnson. That was another one like figuring out second team, third team, Ma Be with me. He was 23, 10 and 8. End of games, I just, I'm not, he's not there and they really kind of needed CJ to be the guy and then Alexander Walker when he's hot and so it's almost like he's the overqualified third banana on that team sometimes. He's doing a lot, but I don't, I didn't, it just didn't feel like he was one of them. And then had a case for being one of the 10 best players in the league, even with all the injuries seemed like a lot for him. No, if the season started in January, maybe because the hot weather that good since then, but it didn't and you're right about the CJ stuff and you know, I'm a big hawk supporter, but when they play a good team down the stretch, it is too much CJ and I'm worried about that in the playoffs and that's got a, that's got a damn Jalen Johnson a little bit. And then Max, he was first, first of minutes per game, fifth and points, fourth and steals, 28, four and seven and if you just want to have a second team of all guards, he makes it probably bumps. He's great. If you don't want to care about a center. Okay. Quick break and then we'll do coach of the year. Coach of the year is between Missoula and Bickerstaff. Who did you have as your third guy in this? I put Mitch Johnson right there, maybe even that with JB Bickerstaff, I'm a big believer in what Mitch and that staff was able to do this year to help the team go from a tanking team to what was their over under I mean, to put you on the spot, 42 and a half, yeah, 42 and a half to a 60 win team Bill Simmons. We went something again, that's one of the things that matters to me for this category coach of the year is what do we expect from you in October and where did you end up in April? Mitch Johnson has a very impressive answer to those questions. And so he's clearly in this conversation for me. He was for me. Well, I thought there were four choices for this. I have Mitch Johnson as well. I had your not for a while. Yeah. And I feel bad, I wish, I kind of wish we could have four choices for this just in general. I don't know why they limited it to three. I think that's, that's weird. You know what? That's a really good point. I never thought about that. At least a mount coach more for the year, but it's really good coaches. If we actually go 15 deep for all NBA and 5 deep for rookie and what are 10 deep for rookie, why can't we do 5 deep for coach? I don't know. The sun's finished 45 and 37. I thought they were very well coached. But Mitch Johnson, I mean, they were the best team in the league for four months. Nobody saw that coming. I thought he did a really good job managing everybody's minutes, not playing people too much, figuring out different lineups. So I had them third. I have Missoula first and Bickerstaff second. And I switched on this a bunch of times and I see the case for Bickerstaff. I just thought when they won all those games without Cade, that was nuts. It was like, holy shit, you don't have a single guy who I completely trust to create a shot. How are you still winning? The Missoula things nuts. Their over under was 42 and they went 56 and 26. The team played hard. I think they took maybe three games off out of the 82. The thing that impressed me the most is how they brought Tatum back into it. And I think that's what pushed it for me, the fact that they won 56 games but also brought this star back that upsetting anything that they just built over the last four months. I thought he had the hardest coaching job in the league of any successful team. By far, I don't think it's a question. And then ironically that game 82 was like a perfect example of why they should win. The team is just wired a certain way and he's the most important, it's not, I said this Sunday night, it's not Jalen's team or Jason's team, it's Missoula's team. That's right. Everything they do is based on the fact that he's just a competitive psycho in a good way. So I haven't first had bigger staff second. I feel bad but I just think that's the way it has to go. I don't think it's close. I mean, I agree with what you said about bigger staff. I remember I was on Zack's show when the morning that we found out that the Cade had the lung injury and we were like, oh, the Celtics going to catch him and it was like a realistic possibility. I was looking at their schedule and I was like, well, if you look at these numbers without Cade, they haven't been very, it was a really good stretch without Cade and bigger staff deserve some flowers for that. However, this is exactly what Joe Missoula did from October to March, the whole stretch he did that. And he turned the main red claws into a fucking juggernaut. And it was impressive. And like I've compared, I think on your show before it reminds me of the pop 2010 spurs when we're load managing Manu and Tony and Kauai and it's all of a sudden it's Boris Dianne Gary Neal and Danny Green out there beating anybody. They have that Baylor Shireman who go, that whole team has no business where they ended up. And to me, it's the most impressive coaching job and one other point I want to get to you, right? Nobody talks about Brad as much as they should, but it reminds me of Brad Stevens, the Butler coach, like the mid major that you fund your shoulder, mid major guy. How he's able to turn these guys, find these guys, to extend the college analogy, he takes a three star recruit and turns them into a player that can be Duke or North Carolina or Florida in a tournament game. That's what it feels like to me. So I feel like his college coaching and his play. player development era has come to life here, but ultimately it is Joe Mizzulu's job to get those lineups out there to make this a really competent two way juggernaut with players that nobody thought could do that six months ago. Yeah, and also losing assignments basically, they basically turn assignments in the Tatum, but they only have two guards and he's got to really manage those minutes and that when there's the nights when Tatum War Brown was sitting out and then you're basically just hoping you can get 35 to 30, 35 minutes from each guard and 36 from Tatum. And then you're hoping Baylor Shireman can run some of the offense like that. Like some of the shit that was going down was crazy. The other crazy thing about the Celtics season, I really thought they should have won more than 56 games. But if you just look at Denver was the other team like this, dumb games, you should go 50, 50 on dumb games, right? Like, whoa, that was a dumb win. I can't believe we stole that versus, I can't believe we blew that. Denver was like four and 16 in those games, like they, they always seem to lose games they should have won. And the Celtics, there's a bunch of them where there was a couple like end of the game. Rug got pulled out of them, stupid losses, they had I think two to Philly. There was the road games against San Antonio, no KC where weird shit happened, both games that felt like they could have, so anyway. I actually thought they couldn't even better than 56, which is not, and I, yeah. You talk about it being Mizzoula's team, I love that take. And to me, we talk about culture way too much now in the NBA, it's become a cliche. But when you look at how this story started, why your team ended up hiring Joe Mizzoula and when, and that story, that turned out to be, yeah. Yeah. And now it's like, that's the coach of the year. What a story that is. But ultimately, like I said, Bill, this team has his personality as one of the strangest sort of most aggro, competitive, unique personalities I've ever seen I had coached in this league have. And it works. It is contagious in the locker room. And my favorite moment of game 82, and you already talked about this a little bit on your show with legs or maybe it was that, but that ATO just to draw, drop that two for one where it's with Garza. Yeah, from 27 feet. And I know that was the play and that's an insane play and it works. And it was one of those guys who nobody thought would make a meaningful shot this entire season. And it was just a great moment and it comes from the mind of Joe Mizzoula. Incredible coached job and a little bit of revenge for him because I think he was really upset with the next series and those two games and just, you know, I think he was in the workshop. And the defensive player of the year, Wembee's going to win everyone's picking Wembee. Top five's interesting. So I'll just give you my, you won't be surprised to know I am not a, I'm putting five centers on my first team defensive team, I'm just not doing that. I, I will do maximum two. I still want each, I, I still want the guards to be represented a little in a swing. So we both had Wembee and Chatham guessing. Yeah. We both have a Sar Thompson. No, I put both Thompson's on the second team. Okay. All right, I'll tell you my, I had Wembee and Chatham, I had a Sar Thompson. I had Castle and I had Case on Wallace who I thought was the most devastating defensive guard I saw all year. I could not believe what a nightmare he was and I actually think they're going to have to get rid of the door. So he can play more next season would be my guess with what they're going to do. But that, to me, Wallace was the best defensive guard. I thought a Sar Thompson was the best swing and I thought Castle was the best kind of back and forth like attitude swing and then Wembee and Chatham were the two centers. So who'd you have? Well, I have three centers, I, I, I look at it the other way centers are by far the most important defenders in the sport. So I put three on here, three legendary defenders in my opinion. Wembee who is on another level, Chath, who's second best defender in the league right now. And then Rudy Gobert who's won defensive player of the year so many times. So you know, I know that's not the sexiest pick, but then I add two perimeter players because I also value that. I don't want to go over index on guys who just protect the rim. I put dice and Daniels on there who you talk about a nightmare is a walking deflection and steal and somebody who I bet Jalen Brunson is going to be very sick of seeing here in a couple of weeks. I can't wait to watch him in the playoffs. And then Derek White spurs great, but also single handedly one of the best shot blocking guards at that position. Always seems to be in the right place on defense might not be the athlete, obviously, that the Thompson's or Stefan Castle is, but Derek is just the headiest perimeter defender and one of the most effective in the league. So I end up Wembee, Chath, Gobert, Derek White, dice and Daniels. Interesting. White on my second team, I'd go bear on my second team. I had almond Thompson on my second team. I have Annobi on my second team. And I put Scotty Barnes. I did not put Bam. Bam was the toughest cup for me. And I also did not have dice and Daniels on either team, only because I thought as you made the case. I also feel like teams were pretty easily scoring on Atlanta all year. And it was the same reason I left Bam off. You're one of the 10 best defensive players in the league at a key position. But everybody seems like they can go for 130 on your team. So I have to reward that. Gobert, definitely, it's just tough to not come off. But Annobi was the guy that I really thought was really jumped out to me a couple of games this year. But there's just nobody really. Zach and I talked about him a little Sunday, like his size, physicality, and just his style is so unique that if I was a six foot eight score, I think at anybody, he'd be the guy I wouldn't want to see. He's so important for them. You mentioned this earlier, we still have time to submit our ballots. I do not have OG. And now I'm questioning that. And now you have for second team. So I both Thompson bros, I do have Bam. I have your guy, Kason Wallace, and then I have Steph Castle. So that's guard heavy. I love it. OG though, your convincing may do. I think OG is so important to guarding the exact type of players like Boston, right? Like that series last year, he's a big reason for that. He is a big reason for the headaches that Boston has and they play the next. Taken has real trouble against him. He's such a big, big, strong wing defender. I'm trying to think if there are any other top omissions for me here, and we're good. We can move on. Rookie of the year. Oh, we're going to disagree here. I know. I've gone. I ran in funny story spurs maps game Friday night, Bill Simmons, I ran into Kelly flag. She says hello. She says she's very interested who you're going to choose for rookie of the year. Did she really say that? Yeah. It was like one of those Mopfiosos. Yeah, that's how I say, say hi to Bill for me. Yeah. Say hi to Bill. Yeah. Listen, Kelly flag, we still love you. We still have your condo ready for 2031 when your son joins the Celtics. I have con and it comes down to being on a good team and all the stuff he had to do versus a flag being on a crappy team that just gave him the car keys and said, make all the mistakes you want. You're going to be awesome someday. You'll be better in game 82 than you are in game one. Just keep plugging away and go and no mistake is bad and learn from this. And by the end of the year, you're going to be in a good place, which he was. Yeah. If I'm a rookie, I would rather be in that situation. In the situation, Con was in where he was basically playing a playoff game every game from January on because they had dug such a hole for themselves early that they, you know, they're doing this, trying to climb into the playoff picture. I think if Con was on a bad team, I thought he could have scored more than he did. And you look at the advanced metric stuff and Con stuff versus flag like flags three point shooting was bad. I think flag is a better player, just like from a talent ceiling standpoint. And I think flag has a chance to be a generational star. I don't really know how to vote for the rookie is my other issue with this. Am I just voting for who jumps out as they're going to be awesome 10 years from now or is it am I just my just evaluate in the year because if I'm value it in the year, I've made this case a couple, a couple of pods ago, like Con had an incredible season. He led the league in threes. He rebounded. He played defense. I felt like his gravity and all the movement he has was the key to how their offense really worked. He played the whole year. He never got, I think he played like 79 games. And his team was, you know, we'll, we'll, we're tapeth this before the playing game tonight, but his team turned out to be a, I thought one of the 10 best teams of the last four months of the season. To me, that just matters, warm, always going to gravitate toward the winning. Yeah. I had no idea Con could translate this well to the NBA let alone this well, this fast and incredible clay, Thompson, Esk catching. shoot season. And I don't say that lightly. If you look at Clay Thompson and Steph or the only people who combine volume and efficiency like this, unlike Steph, he's doing a lot of it as a catch and shoot guy. And I'm not going to make the case against Khan, but to contextualize it, I would say every opponent when they're playing this lowly Mavericks team, their game plan was built around stopping Cooper flag. When you played the Hornets, you have other players to deal with, specifically Lamellable. At the end of the year, Cooper leads all rookies and scoring. He has more points per game, more assists, more rebounds, more steals than blocks than Khan, Kanepal. He is the first rookie Bill Simmons since Michael Jeffrey Jordan to lead his team and points, rebounds assists and steals. He is going to be an all NBA player for an eternity. Maybe next year. Yeah. And this shouldn't come into the discussion. But remember, this should be his freshman year in fucking college. I know. He reclassified. That shouldn't be a criterion. Don't get me wrong on this. I'm fired up because I think he's just and I appreciate how you look at the war. There is some ambiguity here. Khan has played more meaningful minutes for a more meaningful team that I hope makes the player higher pressure situations, too, is the other thing. Like we're just game to game. He's playing teams that these are real games, whereas flags playing games are there just down 20 in the second quarter. Yeah. And some of its vanity. I don't want to be the guy who didn't vote for Cooper flag in 10 years, because I know where this is going to go. And so I get it. I tend to look at it a little differently. And then the last thing I'd say is players like Wembee, who are rookie of the year, were on awful teams. And we've seen this a lot. You know what, I went back and looked at that Wembee year, because I remember voting for him. And I went back and looked at my notes. And he was like borderline defense of poor the year that year is looking. I had him go bare. I had a whole thing on my notes of like, it's got to be go bare. But God damn, I kind of want to vote for Wembee. And he was just way more impactful. He also average like 24, 10 and 5. And the guy that he was competing, I think he's going against chat. His stats were just way better. Flags that's aren't way better than cons. But anyway, keep going. And then Khan is is handed the ball. And he 80% of his shots are assisted, right? And then for that number for, for Cooper is like 45. I know. But I think there's more there with I feel like they could have done more with Con on that. Like I actually kind of liked when he would get around the foul line and be physical and try to like either take guys to the hoop or do that little pull up. I just think I just think that team had a lot of masters to serve offensively, whereas Dallas the bat. I respect, I respect your take. And like I said, Khan has a lot more shit to his game than I would ever expect it off the bounce, getting rebounds, playing defense. This is not what I thought. So if you're, if the award were to find like who's the most surprising rookie cons, I mean, if they redraft it, Khan is probably third. I'm still taking Dylan Harper to third or fourth. It's tough to pass Dylan Harper. It's, it's one of the, we did this the last time you run. It's one of the great top fours we've had. So if you switch these guys on their teams, yeah, let's do that. The hornets are good. That's actually like he could have fit in. It changes their style a little bit for that not, not the same kind of three point thing, but he's bringing defense, rebounding. He could probably like, he'd probably phase back from the offense a little and concentrate more on the glue guy stuff that he was so great at in his grade at. And Khan would give Charles Lee like his Jason Tatum character from his Boston era, right? Like this giant forward who can break guys down, get you a rebound, really incredible defense. So I think and I think Khan would have had around the same stats. I just, he probably would have taken more threes. Maybe wouldn't have shot the same percentage because they wouldn't have been as good looks most of the time. I don't, I really hate this because I don't even want to pick between these guys. But my, my move over the years has always been if, if winning is a tiebreaker, I got to think about it. It's not a flag's fight. He was on a shitty team. But do you think we can take Michael Carter Williams rookie of the year trophy and give it to whoever loses this year's and tie together? That would be another one. I take VJ edge, come third. God, I haven't even thought about that. Yes, definitely. No, VJ. I have to see this is the one I have to do. Dylan Harper VJ edge, come. Have you were those the two? It's not. That's why it's not close. But Dylan Harper, you know, was just in a different situation. So I listened to legs on your podcast, do I, I thought did a great job. But yeah, he made the point, well, Dylan Harper's on the wizards or whatever. He was seeing a lot more number of guys at least. Yeah. So Dylan's dropped into a really healthy environment where he's the third guard and gets those minutes. But dude, you talk about a guy who's getting better and better and better. The case for Dylan is he's on a team that is won 60 games. He too has become a much better shooter earlier than we thought. I kind of liked him the most when he's out there with Castle on the cell and Wembee and his shooter. It's not going to take long before he's the answer to this interesting. All rookie. I had flag con VJ Harper and I had fears as my fifth guy. Fierce, Fierce played 82 games. Fierce was there the whole time. And I thought he had a couple games this year. We were like, wow, what's going on here? Second team, I've coward ace, Bryant, Queen, and I guess we'll rally. I don't know. I don't even know. I'll figure out the tenth guy. But who did you have as your fifth guy in the first team? Yeah. So I think it's like the MVP race. There's four solid guys on the first group of five. But yeah, so we go Coup con VJ Harper and then I threw Joe Dumar's a bone and put Derek Queen there because he gave up so much for him. You got to give him that, right? Nice. Then coward Fierce, Ace Bailey, your guy Hugo Gonzalez and then Will Riley, so. Oh, that's what I'll put as my tenth guy. Who go? Great. Is it Hugo or who go? It's Hugo, but I really want to come Hugo clutch, clutch. I'm going SGA, Brunson, and Yokeh in that order. I have the exact same and it's SGA and then a big gap for me. Most improved is not a battle because it's going to be Nikhil Alexander Walker unless you haven't been watching the season 9.4 points to 21. Got better as a year went along and is just a complete wild card threat for the playoffs now because he's an absolute heat check. He's even more than a heat check guy. He just kind of takes over games. So I had him first, I had Durin second and I put Kada third and I'll make the case for it in a second. Who'd you have for your three? I have Nikhil by leaps and bounds and then you said Durin was second. I had Durin second, yeah. And then I put Castler because I didn't I didn't give Castel the award and I know some people don't like the second team second year jump thing. You might be one of those people. I'd violently oppose this is my least favorite Kurt Krogg's by the moment of the podcast. Well, he should be better this year. It's a second year. It's the fourth pick of the draft. I'm not mad at you, Bill, but that's the same thing I'm giving Jalen Durin. Like you're a lottery pick, late lottery in his case. You're supposed to get better as you go through the process. Did you ever think he was going to be a 21 and 11 dominant center? I never did. I won't say I did, but the first time I saw him in person, it was one of those like holy shit, look at that guy moments that you get in an NBA arena out of the 1990s. He's like, he looks like he's the lawns up morning or he looks like Ben Wallace. He's the person. He's the, I always say he's the perfect piston. But ultimately, I think the story here is Nikhil Alexander Walker who scored nine points a game last year for a very good team and was a stand in the corner and don't do anything else and we'll call you and we need a three. And then Atlanta gives him a nice deal, comes over 21 points a game on over 60% true shooting. So one of the only times in my career as an analyst in the NBA where I've seen somebody go from nine points a game to 20 points a game. And then their efficiency jumps to like that's that's crazy. And for me, this is the easiest vote on the whole balance except for defense of player of the year. Nikhil Alexander Walker in a walk away couldn't agree more. Shout out to Atlanta. Great signing. The case for Kada. He played. He, first of all, he, this is his fifth NBA season. He'd never played more than 13 minutes a game. Yeah. He turned this year into a 10 and 8 guy over a block of game. He's played 25 minutes a game. He's gotten better as the year went along. There's actually a little more offense. All the advance metrics were in protection stuff with him is really sought. He's just a good player now. And it's something like you would watch him come in the first hit like my daughter always loved them. She's like, why doesn't K to play more? I was like, I don't know. We would watch him. And he'd be like, there's something here. Yeah. But now this is somebody that conceivably could be playing 25 minutes a game in the finals. This was a team before the year where we're like, well, they're losing for Zingus and Horford. Who's going to play center? I don't know. And Tatum's out. They have no rebound. Yeah. I guess Garza. - Yeah, and we lost Kornet. It's like, I guess Garza and this member Kada, I guess he's gonna be there and turned into a real guy. And you actually, he's games, I've only, there was only a couple of times this year where you kinda could feel this was a guy that was on Sacramento three years ago. But the most part, he was awesome for what the expectations were. - And that's the key point, dude. I remember this was the second apron casualty that they dismantled this team. I thought a year ago, I was like, okay, there goes Porzingis and Horford, Luke Kornet's cast away, Tatum's out. That's their front court. That's their championship front court. And I remember when I was looking into the Celtic season and I'll put my hand up, I was like, this team's not gonna be able to rebound. This team is not gonna be able to protect the rim. And that's where I would say Kada deserves part of this conversation. They are now a very good rebounding team. It's part of their signature is turning miss shots into second chance points. He's the biggest reason for that. And I did not see that coming ever for this young man. So that's off to him and that Celtic staff for finding him and developing him. - They also, they redid, I mean, they did some strategy stuff with them. One of them was these little handoffs at the top of the key, which became like the bread and butter there are offense that he was just better at than Porzingis and Horford. And then the offense of rebounding was the other thing. He's just a good offensive rebounder. He's got good hands around the rim. So you really feel it when he's in the game. Like the best version of them usually is when he's in the game. I'll be interested to see against the Knicks with Darren Crunch time against Towns, whether they go smaller with Tatum. I think they're saving that. And I could see Kada getting bounced or maybe Kada getting moved to the Mitchell Robinson portion of the game where it's like, just go toe-to-toe with this dude and try to hold him to the standstill. We'll see. Sixth man, I have Hawkez. I put Keldin Johnson second and then I have a wild card at third. Who'd you have? - I only have two. I haven't figured out the third. I'll probably just steal yours. I'm a Keldin Johnson man. I thought-- - I get it. - Culturally he's great. The 160 games, he was in most of those games. Let all players and win shares off the bench. And again, over the Miami Hawkez, God, I just had a brand for it. The more substantial contribution in the league this year off the bench was Keldin Johnson. - I battled back and forth. I don't feel great about it. But I thought, Hawkez has basically been 15, 5 and 5 off the bench and he can't shoot threes. But when you watch, he's pretty impactful in an old school like 1970s, 80s. Like he's doing weird, like kind of half post ups or he's trying to beat guys off and he's banging into dudes. He's one of those guys who-- - He's kind of what? - He's one of those guys when you're watching him, you're going, could this guy have his own team? But obviously he can't, but he'll have moments. They're like, man. - Great heat player. I remember when they drafted him. It was all, this is what we knew we were getting it and they got it. - My third pick for this category. And there's a million people. The shame of it is Pritchard should have been a six man, but he started too many games. - Yep. - I went with Mammu. - Oh wow. - Yeah, I'm not stealing this. You're gonna have to convince me. - 22 minutes of game. He was 11 and five. He was a 52, 39, 75 guy. His advanced stats are nuts. And I test wise, I actually thought he probably should have played more. I feel like he was one of the only bench guys I thought this season that consistently he would come into, their bench was the biggest reason they started out well the first month and a half. But he would come into games and I felt like he would take over games for like two minutes. And I think if you're just talking about like a pure six man coming off the bench, swinging a game, he did it as well as anyone I saw this year. And I couldn't come up with a, I couldn't shake that. He was the third best guy I saw do that this year. So that's what I have. - Who did you have in your possibilities? - I would reach up, reach up. I feel like it's the choice, right? But now he started the last 10 games. - I couldn't get there with reach. - Because I don't feel like his coach was like, ah, I don't know if we should play him for six months. - Well, he should be fifth man of the year to piggyback on Wild's point. Why don't we just have a first man, second man, third man. - Reach up or should be fifth man of the year, e-mail, if you're listening. - So read was the other one. I just couldn't get there, I don't know. It is weird because the predicament Houston is so weird. I mean, in a world where Freddie Van Fleet is there and Stephen Adams is there, Reed is definitely like the heat check guy off the bench. And they didn't figure out. - So you're going to reach, I think so, yeah. - All right. I don't feel great about the mom-o, but I just, I don't know, the heart wants what the heart wants. - The heart wants mom-o. - All right, MVP. - Oh boy. - So we have Luke of four. We both have Luke of four. - Yeah, I have Luke of clearly four. - So Luke is bounced. I am going, it's interesting 'cause I had Don Van Mitchell first SEMA of BA. - Yeah. - But for MVP, I'm putting Brunson fifth and Jalen Brown fourth. That's what I have. Just because that Nix team for better and worse is just built around Brunson having to put a superhero on for the last five minutes of every game. Where's the calves can get, I don't know. It's just, it, I'm basically splitting the vote with Mitchell as first to mom-o, and be able to Brunson in my MVP battle. So that's what I have for four and five without Luca. I have Wembee third. I have Joker second and I landed on SGA first and I switched S.J. and Joker all weekend and really wanted to do Joker. And ultimately, like the wind difference. And how great SGA was in the clutch. - Yeah. - I just felt like, as you know, I love Joker and Joker's probably my favorite non-Seltic in the league other than Curry. And I just felt like, I wanna do this correctly. There's too much SGA evidence. I feel like I'm not. If I do Joker, it's almost like a personal pick versus like what's the red pick. I just couldn't 100% get there. The real problem, if Joker hadn't gotten hurt, I think he gets it. Because not only did he miss all those games, but then he came back and he wasn't 100% when he came back and, you know, and the other thing was the clutch stuff with that team just in general, not take care of business near the end. That's kind of his job and they weren't good enough. Whereas SGA, like every time last three minutes, he just took care of business. And I think his job was easier because of that team. They're so good defensively. All he has to worry about is basically, let me just be awesome and get to the foul line. And then in the last three minutes, I'll score every point. Not an easy job. Whereas Joker was doing everything. But to not vote for a guy who led the league and rebounds and assists and was sixth in points and did all the shit he did and had the best offensive career, I don't feel good about it. - I don't think anybody's gonna do this with the respect that the task deserves. It's gonna feel good about who's third. And in some cases, who's second. - Yeah. - This is the deepest one of these I've ever thought of. Like we have three legitimate candidates for MVP. - We do. - And we have better numbers than ever. I'll start with four and five. I have the same Jaylin, shout out to Jaylin Rose. By the way, big year for Jaylin's on the MVP ballot. Now we have two of them on our top five. I have Joker third, which is crazy. But again, Bill, my ladder is gonna be informed a lot by how the standing's turned out. And I think that deserves respect here. And so I have Wembee second, which was hard. By the way, not a homer pick. I wanted to put him first, other times I wanted to put him third. And then I also ended up with S.H.I. I mean, he's just, the team is too good. He is on, as you keep pointing out so astutely, one of the best runs we've ever seen from a guard and the history of the sports. - Yeah. - Once again, here we are with a net rating over 11. They're just the most dominant team in the NBA. And he's it. But Joker, dude, let me give him some flowers. I was looking it on off splits, like all the nerds do when it's time to do this exercise. The nuggets are minus seven and net rating when he's off the floor. Like that's a lottery team, Bill. They have the statistical profile of the Utah Jets. - No, no Gordon half the year. - Yeah. - Jam Johnson, not really healthy most of the year. You lose pay in Watson. This was like, when I was thinking this weekend whether I was gonna vote for him or not. And I was like, I'm definitely in the one thing and he put 400 more minutes in Wembee. And when Wembee skipped the last game of the year, which I just thought was really weird, that to me, like he put himself in the third spot because they should have tried to win that game and get Denver the fuck out of the three seed. Like, what are you guys doing? Just take them out. - I'm a spurs homer, I couldn't agree more. I was perplexed. - So yeah, when they played 1,86 minutes of Sherry, put 29 minutes of game and he missed, I thought, a fair enough. a matter of games that he probably could have showed up for the 82nd one and tried to knock him out. I just I didn't like that. Joker led the league in P.E.R. for his sixth straight year, 31 plus every year, second straight triple double season. He's with Will now as I talked about the other day with Will was fourth first and second and fifth first and third. So if you add that up less than 10, Joker was eight, one and one, so 10. Offensive rating, they 126 when he played. He led the league and rebounds the cis P.E.R. and Vorp, 10.8 net. His highest usage ever, 57% shooting like really one of the great offensive seasons and somehow didn't win the MVP. I can't believe it, but their record was a good enough. SGA like, I don't know, there was a lot of close games when he just took care of business at the end. I think that has to matter, the consistency of it. And then from some of my MVP questions, you know, one of them is how you remember the year. One of the ways we're going to remember this year is OKC becoming a little villainy. And as you know, the foul batting like that was a big part of the season, whereas for Joker, it was another great Joker year. I don't really, you know, stats that was good, but we're really going to remember Wembee and SGA, I think before just it was a typically unbelievable Joker year. It didn't really stand out from the other three, I guess. I think that's right. And I remember you doing those questions with Leglor and he was, his knee jerk reaction was Wembee. For me, that's it to that question. The minute thing with Wembee is really fascinating, right? Because you and I both agree on one big thing. There's too many games. And what the spurs have to do with this dude is try to keep him up right and get him into the playoffs. And again, I thought Miss Johnson did a great job. Yeah. Victor Wembenjama is healthy. I wish they would have played him gaming 82, by the way. But healthy going into these playoffs, that's the number one job. And in an era of calf strains and hamstring injuries, like just be thankful we have Wembee. So I almost don't want to ding Victor for minutes because that's that's what's going to happen with him is whole career in the regular season as long as we're playing 82 games and 16 back to backs or whatever it is. And the NBA cup that they win went in and played the extra game in. Well, so SGA deserves credit for having a better record, better statistical indicators. And ultimately, like you said, just the most impressive end to end season of a high volume player in the NBA. And not having Jada for most of the air plus 16.3 net. 9.0 free throws a game. Made 7.9 free throws a game. Trust first clutch points 175 points first. 59 free throws in the clutch. Shout 52% fuel goal in the clutch. There's also some games where they just killed teams and he didn't really play. Actually, I think he could have been around 33 minutes a game of some of their games have been closer. Last four years, he's 31 a game. Last two years, okay, C is 133 and 31. I think that's correct. The 31 losses. And he's the biggest reason by far. You know that night after night, your guy, it's a little it's it's the rich man's version of what Jayland did for the Celtics. So you know, night after night, I'm getting this for my best player. At the end of the games, I'm getting this. And I'm just and I know I have that every game. With you throwing the win totals and the minutes, um, he should, uh, he should be the MVP. And I can't believe yogurt isn't going to win though. I just can't believe it. I was telling my students earlier is like, if you would have told me that somebody would have John Stockland amount of assists in Dennis Rodman, three bounds when I was growing up. That's insane. There's just nothing in common for that. You just shouldn't lead the league in both of those categories. In fact, they're, they usually happen in different parts of the floor. Like, it's crazy that he's like, I don't think we were talking about that enough. Yeah. This has definitely got to be the best season of anybody who's ever finished third. If he finishes third, I think he's gonna finish second, but the defensive stuff is insane. I get it. The Brooklyn nets are the worst shooting team in the NBA. Okay. They're tanking their effective field goal percentage is 52, 30th in the NBA. When Victor Wemanyam was on the court this year, opponents had an EFG of 48 or 49, 49.7. So he essentially turns your offense into a tanking level offense just by being on the court. I wish we had better metrics in our discourse for evaluating defensive impact because we're always citing things like points, rebounds, assists, triple doubles. And that's going to favor Joker and SGA. It's really challenging us to quantify the impact of Victor on defense because that's going to be his case for years to come. And we have to get better. I'll take it on as me. I have to do better to articulate his greatness on the defensive end of the floor. What's that commercial that are like, yep, nope. That's the 40 song choices. No Bay Area. That's a Chipotle commercial. Yeah, Chipotle. That always makes me think of Wembee when the guys, the guys are laughing in the basket is like, nope, just jumping a dribble back out. Now it's gotten the point where the guys don't even consider it. No, they're starting to move. It's like, oh, yeah, I can't do that today because we're putting the spurs and they're just reset. If Denver had gotten, I was trying to figure out how many wins they would have had to have for me to flip my vote. And I think it's form, they're 54 and 20. I think if they had gotten a 58 and 24, I think I would have voted for you. Okay, just dumb as that sounds. 10 wins behind OKC with the same kind of season where Aaron Gordon's out for half the year. So was J. Dubb. Yeah. OKC seems obviously better. But I just, I weirdly felt like Denver should have won more games than they did and he's got to get tinged on that too. They finished with a 12 game winning streak. And still were on the 54 and 28. But I know that was a run and they beat the spurs in the game in the year. Like it was, that was MVP moment when he hit that fade right over Wembee. They had a stretch, 39 game stretch where they were 19 and 20. And I think that kills him. But I can't believe he's not going to win. We'll see if he finishes second. I think SJ is going to win. And we'll see between Wembee and Chandler Brown. All right, Kurt Goldsbury. See you soon. What's your do you have a playoff upset? I, if I had to pick an upset, I got two candidates. It's Minnesota Denver because we've seen it before. But I think Atlanta, New York is really interesting too. If, if, if Atlanta can find offense beyond C.J. McCullough. I think Denver is going to beat Minnesota. And I actually like that so many people, including myself, are scared of Minnesota in this series because they've had so much success. Yeah. I think a fun zag is actually Denver is going to kick their ass. Atlanta's the one I'm looking at. I wonder is there, I just wish Toronto wasn't so lousy against basically every good team. I wish everyone's just penciling Cleveland in for that series. And I don't trust them at all because I don't think they can, I just think they give up points to everybody. And if Toronto, the question for me is I just don't think Toronto is good enough offensive way to haunt them. But Cleveland, if Atlanta played Cleveland, I think I would have picked Atlanta in that series. Like for real. Atlanta is Atlanta has all the makings of a team that is, you know, if you look at the game, the way I do analytically, they look like the best statistical profile of any team that's an underdog right now in the last three months of the season with the exception, maybe Charlotte, who will find out shortly if they're even in the tournament. Yeah. That'll be the top of the pot in the time machine. I think Atlanta takes the next to seven and loses because of their bench. I don't like their bench. I think that's what the hell of a game the other night. Yeah, their bench is like, just never known it tonight. All right, Kurt Goldsbury, Pleasure as always. Thanks to Gahau and Eduardo as well. Don't forget about Legata, our new narrative podcast, which has cocaine and Miami and Colombia and all kinds of great stuff. You should check it out, Kurt Goldsbury. 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