A Basketball Movie Character Draft LIVE From Austin, Texas, With Shea Serrano, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey
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I'm in Austin, Texas. It's freezing cold. We have a Grant Lane reunion. It's coming up next. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Wherever you like to watch the game, at the arena, the bar, home, wherever. Enjoy every moment of the NBA season with an ice cold Michelob Ultra. And, you know, we've done some stuff with them. So they'll send me the Michelob Ultra. I'll put it in the fridge. It's really interesting what happens. People come over, they want a beer. They go, oh,

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a superior light beer. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2025. Anheuser-Busch, Michelob Ultra, registered light beer, St. Louis, Missouri. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Don't forget about the rewatchables. We did Wayne's World this week. Don't forget about the Prestige TV podcast. We're doing White Lotus and Severance covered all of it. I'm there on Sunday nights as well. My Sunday night podcast with Priscilla is coming back this Sunday.

I think, I hope, hopefully, hopefully we're solo knows we'll have to tell them. Uh, anyway, what you're about to listen to is me and Sean fantasy and Chris Ryan and Chase Serrano going to Austin, Texas, where for some reason it's 30 degrees was not on the agenda for me, but, uh, we're here anyway. And we put together a big show at the Paramount theater. Uh, there was 1100 people

apparently that are coming to this. I'm taping this before the show. I hope it goes well. Wish us luck. Let's bring in Pearl Jam. Why the fuck is it so cold? What the hell? We could have gone to Chicago or Winnipeg. Thanks to Michelob Ultra for sponsoring this. We're so happy to be here. We love being in Austin. I'm going to introduce... You guys don't know who's here tonight, right? First up, the Prince of Philadelphia, Chris Ryan. Next up...

The self-proclaimed king of Letterboxd, Sean Fennessey. And last but not least, from the heart of Texas, the one, the only, Shea Serrano. It's a Grantland reunion, everybody. How you feeling, Shea? I feel fantastic. I feel so good. Sean went to a DVD store for like two hours today. What store was that, Sean? I went to Waterloo Records. Shout out, Waterloo. Yeah.

And I spent $184 on Blu-rays. We almost died on the way there and back, yeah. It was fucking cold. Yeah, what is up, Austin? So I was here for the Dallas Super Bowl in Texas. When was that, like 2010? And it snowed like an inch, and nobody could get anywhere because they had no snow plows. And that was when I realized, oh yeah, Texas doesn't do well with cold weather. We are going to do a bunch of stuff with you guys today. We have a big...

crazy draft in the second part of this podcast. But we're going to start, we're going to do a hodgepodge thing. Let's start with All-Star Weekend because it just happened. Sure. Boom. Oh, wow. Tough beat. Second lowest rating ever. Shay, is this a sunk cost? Can it be fixed? It can be fixed. And I'm going to tell you how it's going to be fixed. There's a man, a 7'5 man in San Antonio. Woo!

And he's going to save it. What's going to happen is, the same thing that we saw happen with the in-season tournament, where LeBron said, hey, guess what? I care about this. And then everybody else went, okay, cool. We care about it, too. So that's Wimby. That's going to happen with Wimby. He's going to... There's another 7'5 guy in the tournament. He's going to take it over. I didn't know there was another one coming. Right now, Joker is the guy. And he's like, I don't care about any of this at all. I don't care one single percent. So everybody else falls in line. When Wimby's the guy...

He's going to care, and they're all going to care. CR, what did you think of my idea that we split the game up and the Sunday game is just guys from the top five seeds?

and they play for home court advantage in the playoffs. I liked it to the extent, but it's really going to have to just convince these guys to want to play more basketball and to play more hard basketball. I was thinking about this. I just think that this is probably entering the Pro Bowl zone where you just got to move it to the end of the season, after the season. Just be like, you guys want to play? We'll have like seven foot rims. You can do somersaults, you know, like whenever you can get trampolines out there. Like it could be like basketball.

But I don't know about like the mid-season after Luca gets traded, let's all stop, go to this place and pretend like we care about this game. Sean, Van thought that it might have culturally expired, which has happened a few times in our lifetime, specifically with some actors too. Yeah.

Like who? I don't know, who have culturally expired. Like Kevin Spacey? Well, that's... That was good. Under two minutes. I knew he'd come up. I was in San Francisco this past weekend and I had tickets to the event and did not go to any of the events, which is not a good sign, obviously. So...

Okay, I'll pitch you my idea. Let's hear it. I think they should scrap the game. I think they should scrap the dunk contest. I think they should scrap the three-point shooting contest. That's everything. They should scrap the futures game. What about the skills competition? So I think that they should only do the skills competition, but for two full days. I'm not kidding. And make it like an insane double dare obstacle course. Oh, like American Gladiators? Yes. Okay. But...

The winning team, and I was inspired by Wemby and CP3, should automatically get home court advantage throughout the playoffs. So there's like real stakes. So you'd have these guys like during practice, during the season, like really working on throwing the ball through that round circle or whatever and all the stuff they have to do there. It's just like the skills competition matters. You could win like seven games in the regular season and they get the one seed? Yes. I like that. Yeah, you could be like the playing team at number 10, but you got home court games. That would work for the Sixers.

I, for a number of years, I have told everybody that I met that Sean Fennessey is one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. I changed my mind right now. It's a horrible idea. It's the worst idea I've ever heard. No bad ideas in a brainstorm.

Well, the fact that we're coming up with ideas like this tells you how grim it is for All-Star Weekend. I had an idea I wanted to bounce off you for this because I was thinking about because if you say Pro Bowl and you make the NBA more like the NFL, why doesn't the NBA do bye weeks for teams but never take an All-Star break? The All-Star Weekend always happens at a time where football's over, you want basketball. You want important basketball games. Why not just give the Bucs 10?

10 days off, but then bring them back and have it all work so that teams have bye weeks throughout the season. Isn't that what they're trying to do with Joel Embiid? That was a Joel Embiid joke you guys didn't hear because of the mic. But yeah, that is what they're trying to do with Joel Embiid. Shay, how would David Stern have handled the NBA in 2025? Oh my gosh. I think about this a lot.

It's like the angry grandparent you had that you were like, oh, man. He would have been so mad. I hate grandpa. He's so annoying. And then you kind of miss him. Yeah. He would have cussed out everybody. It would have been some private meeting in a cafeteria and they all would have been sitting at cafeteria tables and he'd just been like, guys, what the fuck is going on? What are you doing? That's all that would have happened. Do you miss Stern fantasy? I miss the idea of the power that he represented. Yeah.

I also love the idea of him like firing Nico Harrison. You know, like he would have just done that. This guy is out of the paint. And he would have done something like that. So I missed that. Do people in Austin, so do you lean toward the Spurs? Or like what's that? Okay. So when the Mavericks...

So you guys are just Luka fans? Wait, so when the Mavericks traded Luka, you guys are just laughing your asses off? Yeah. What was your reaction, Che? That was the first time I ever felt bad for Dallas Mavericks fans.

Like, I've laughed at every single horrible thing that has ever happened. When they lost to the Warriors, the We Believe Warriors, number one seed, belly laughed at them. When they had their championship stolen by the Miami Heat in 2006, belly laughed at them. And then when I saw this, I felt like sadness. Genuine sadness. Because you're mad at the people. Yeah. 2011. What was your reaction...

When you heard the traits he had. Is Dirk here? Only people I didn't have on a podcast. Was me. My reaction was I was coming out of the movie Companion.

And I was just like utterly shocked. Couldn't believe it. My favorite thing about it since it's happened is definitely that the Mavericks keep finding executives to do profiles where they're like, I underestimated the crowd reaction to this. Like Rick Welts just did one. I was like, Rick Welts works for the Mavericks? And they're just pushing these guys out on the ice floe to get shot with arrows like every other day. It's amazing. Nico's doing a good job getting other people involved.

Have you been, I know you're a student of journalism, Sean. Have you been following some of these features with the Mavs? I have. How they've been trying to, we weren't actually going to give Luca the Max extension. People didn't realize because we're idiots. Yeah.

So we weren't going to do that. Yeah. I think that they shouldn't talk, which is not good for journalism, obviously. I think that everyone should be held accountable for their actions. I did have an idea for ownership groups, though, which is I think if you're going to buy a team, you should have to pass like an NBA literacy test. Like when you become an American citizen, you have to learn about like who wrote the Declaration of Independence. You should have to know the history of the game. So Patrick Dumont? Well, I'm not going to name any names.

Just be like, what year did the ABA and NBA merge? And he's like, ah, 1988. I kind of like having crazy owners back, though. Don't you? Well, I like the fact that we always seem to have six to eight terrible run teams. That's great for us for content. But the real thing that's interesting is the Lakers are villainous again. Because they pull off this trade. And then they trade for Mark Williams again.

And then they just void the trade. They're like, we don't like it. This hasn't happened in like two decades. And Mark Williams is like, I'm healthy. I'm fine. No, actually, no thanks. And then the trade deadline passed. Charlotte couldn't trade him. But like if somebody did this in your fantasy league...

It would be the angriest chain of emails ever. And people would stop talking. It's like, Bob's not invited to Gary's wedding now. Yeah. Oh, it's because of Mark Williams' trade? Yeah. Yeah, that's what happened. Seriously, they haven't avoided a trade in 15 years, Jay. Yeah. And apparently when you make a trade, you send the team the medicals and they can look at them.

So I think they just said, fuck it, we don't want this guy. Yeah, that's all that it was. I swear to God, if the Lakers get some crazy deal for a center over the summer that they were saving the spot for or the trade assets for, I'm going to lose it. Are you guys on my side that more people knew about this trade than everyone's letting on? Because I think a lot of people knew, and then they're all like, we didn't know. Found out last second. So when Rich Paul was like, I had no idea, I found out in a few minutes. Yeah.

No offense to him, I don't believe it. I think both coaches knew. I think Anthony Davis knew. I think the agent knew. He had to waive the no trade clause. I'm just never going to believe it. They're never going to convince me. I think LeBron knew. But Luka had no idea. I think Luka was the only one that didn't know. Luka was like, I just got an awesome $15 million house in the greater Dallas area. The Mavericks were like, yeah, he didn't know because he was out there getting fucking drunk and eating fried chicken.

Lazy motherfucker. He's like, binging Netflix. So, Shay, the Luka Doncic movie, when they make it, is it a TV movie, like a Ryan Murphy type of movie? Is it a sports movie? No.

Is it a dark, seedy drama that Sean would really like and do multiple big picture episodes of? Or is it a heist movie? It's like Margin Call. Margin Call. That's what it's going to be. Just a bunch of late night whatever is happening in a whatever. That's all that it is. You like that? Would you want to walk through the heist movie with Luka Doncic with Palenka as Neil McCauley? Yeah. He kind of dresses like Neil McCauley a little bit. Maybe a slightly tighter slack. Do you think he has a condo with no furniture in it? Yeah, because...

Genie's never let him feel comfortable enough to buy furniture. I do like the idea of it being a Ryan Murphy FX series, but I would want the same cast as the Aaron Hernandez show. Like, just put them in. Get Norbert Leo Butz to play Patrick Dumont. What do you think, Phetasy? I think this is the chance to finally get Oliver Stone back where he belongs. Oh!

Oh. Oh, yeah. And I think that we have yet to see the way we can conspiracy theorize about what's happened here. But I think he should do it entirely in the register of the doors where it's just like...

Nico Harrison is just tripping on LSD the whole time. He like micro doses every morning. He's like, yeah, Lucas should go like just losing his mind. But if they do a Native American guy in the desert, it would be great if they do it like JFK. That means you get to play Donald Sutherland who benefited. That sounds great. What you're laying out, though, because then Cuban, maybe Cubans like

Cause he's better that he sold the team. So he wants them to destroy the team. And he's like, he's like drugging Nico Harrison. Yeah. This is like, it's getting dark. It's like traffic. That would be great. Kevin Durant. You guys like Kevin Durant, right? He loves Austin. Katie's a little bit of a nomad, you know, starts out in OKC nine years there, goes to Golden State, goes to Brooklyn, goes to Phoenix, almost gets straight in the deadline. And,

And yet I think we all like him. I always feel like I'm like a KD defender. You saw the clip this week from the new Netflix series about the Olympics. And KD just starts crying. He loves basketball so much. Like, I really think he's one of the most genuine athletes that we have, but also takes a ton of shit. Shay, what do you want his next five years to look like?

I wouldn't mind him... If you could direct his next five years, what would it be? I wouldn't mind him spending two years in San Antonio. That would be great. That would be great. Maybe the two last prime years, right? You mean the last two good years, and then the last three years, they bring the Sonics back. It's time for the league to expand. And then he goes back there.

I think that would be really cool. So two years, like Wemby's first. I can't believe he's in the finals this young. He's only 22. And he's part of that with Daniel Fox. I like that. What do you think, Shaq?

I think he should make a sequel to the Disney original film Thunderstruck. Thunderstruck 2? Yeah, Phoenix Rising. Just keep following that story a little bit. You know, he messed up. He should have signed with the New York Knicks, but he was a coward. So, screw him. I actually... Oh, you lost the crab. Jesus Christ.

It's 30 degrees outside. We can't attack it. I love you, Texas. I actually think even KD would admit Nets over Knicks was a mistake. Yeah. I'd like him to go to Boston and then...

orchestrate a trade for Kyrie Irving to come back to Boston with him. And then maybe orchestrate a trade for James Harden to come back. Tatum and Brown for KD. Yeah. I think the San Antonio thing would be great because KD really does have genuine affection for

For University of Texas, even though he was only here one year, but the way he talks about it, it'd be cool. Hour drive, back and forth. He would be instantly beloved in San Antonio. Which is what he needs. Yeah, he does. Because you don't want to be the guy who played for 25 years and everyone's like, eh. Like Vince Carter.

Vince Carter got retired by Toronto. Yeah, he's like got a retirement ceremony every week. And it's like, you played for the Nets for four years. The retiring number. Wasn't there like a 15 minute honorarium to him during the dunk contest or something? Yeah. Like, yeah, that was weird. Yeah, it really feels like we're pushing. He's still alive. Like, he's right there pushing. Right, then he came out. It was like, I thought he was dead. Uh,

Vince Carter's at SNL 50 like, ah, it's all right. It feels like there's a lot of rehabilitation stuff with retired stars whose careers didn't turn out perfectly. Like Carmelo's another one. And then Dwight Howard's like, I'd like to figure out how to do this, but I'm too much of a mess. I can't. But in general, it's funny how...

Like, we hear way more about Carmelo and way more about Vince Carter now than Tim Duncan, who's one of the best seven players of all time. But it's kind of, in one way, it's Tim Duncan's fault because he doesn't do, like, the post-career, look at me, look at me. Remember, like, he just doesn't, he doesn't care. Yeah. But now nobody talks about him. Well, I think that's by design, though. There's nothing he wants less than to be part of a conversation. Right. So he's doing great. Yeah. Yeah.

He came in, won five titles, got the fuck out. Is he coaching? He's coaching now, right? Yeah, he might pop in and coach a little bit. But that's the point that we're making. Who knows? He's like John Wick. Who knows? He's like...

hunched over so you don't notice them. Tim Duncan's at a bar and somebody's like, yeah, Karl Malone was better than Tim Duncan. He over here is like, I don't care. I won five titles. He doesn't. Karl Malone can have this one. I kicked his ass all the time. This episode is brought to you by McLobe Ultra. McLobe Ultra, a superior light beer and the ultimate trophy. Win or lose, you're bound to enjoy the ride with a good beer in hand. McLobe Ultra, crisp, refreshing, only 95 calories.

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Shay, where do you stand on X-Player podcasts? Have we hit peak crazy yet? Or are there two years left to go? Because you go to Hoopsype now and every day it's some guy who made the All-Star team once who's like, I was toe-to-toe with LeBron for five years there. And you're like, what team are you on? How far do we go with this? I think Jeff Teague is the perfect podcaster. Yeah!

He's as good as... I like that one. I'll defend him. He's as good as it gets. Yeah. He's great. Yeah, we're at the exact right level now. One more and it all falls apart. Don't go anymore. What do you think, sir? I hope Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart pod forever. I'm really enjoying that show. That's a good pod, yeah. It's them just shitting on each other for 45 minutes. You're the biggest loser. What are you going to do if Leon Rose trades Josh Hart and that podcast gets broken up?

hire an assassin to kill Don Rose. I'm not sure. I don't listen to a lot of those shows, if I'm being honest, but I do respect that they are currently working very hard to eliminate shows like this. We have been observing your strategy of hot takery and we can do better. Just like we can dunk better than you, we can also hot take better than you. And that's kind of what each new show that comes along needs to go to a higher level.

So do you listen to that next podcast? Sometimes, yeah. You're like, these are my guys? I have an emotional relationship with these men who don't know who I am.

Chris, does Embiid have a podcast that he does once a month? Does Embiid have a podcast? No. Just like once a month he does it? Paul George, did you guys know that I found this stat? Apparently he's recorded 19 podcast episodes as a member of the Sixers and scored two points in his last game as a member of the Sixers before the All-Star break. It was kind of a bummer, yeah. Turns out that's why he was available. You know, like...

Do you want to walk us through where I'm at? Yeah. Where are you at? It's pretty dark. You know, it's like I kind of do, man. That's why I'm wearing this fucking thunder hat. You know, like it's just pretty brutal. Like I think Maxie is the thing that's made me most sad because he's obviously so bummed out by this that like even his effervescence is dimming. The Embiid thing is, I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't think he's ever going to be what we thought he was going to be.

I remember the 2019 Celtics. The year was the year after the conference finals. Just to make it about you? We can't talk about you for a minute? No, when you know something's wrong with a season and you're like, maybe this will be the game and it turns around and then it doesn't. And then by December, January, you're just kind of like, oh, this is going to be one of the... It's like every Jets season for Sean. But it's just like...

I'm sorry. That was a call for it. I apologize. We're talking about the Sixers. Well, but you know it's not going to come back. Then you're stuck with the season. Come back from what?

I would like to know what's the furthest away from basketball somebody has said something to you and then you win. It reminds me of the 2019 Celtics. Let me think. So we go politics? It could be like, my father passed away, Bill. You know, the 2008 Celtics. We thought Gordon Hayward was going to pass away that night.

You know what? Eventually Brad Stevens. Yeah. We're not at Ron Contra. You know, with that affair, well, at that time, we know Larry Bird was going for 26, 9, and 7. Were you sad to see Aaron Rodgers go? Sad to see Aaron Rodgers go? Yeah. No.

No, I honestly hope he goes to hell. Least favorite athlete ever? That's just what legacy media wants you to believe, man. My favorite thing ever, no one here cares about the new Jets regime, so I'm sorry, but the story that they were like, you can come back if you don't go on McAfee, and he was like, no dice, tells you everything you need to know about that guy. Yeah.

I liked when they did the Hard Knocks series and you were like, wow, Aaron Rodgers is in this. And then they got to one episode and he talked about aliens for two minutes. Yeah. And you're like, oh, that's why he did it because they told him he could do this. We were talking about this earlier. Who is the number one celebrity or athlete that's attached to Austin where Austin goes? Is it Glenn Powell or McConaughey? All right. So it's Powell and McConaughey in the finals, right?

Do those guys have beef? Do those guys have a little tension? We picking that up? They're buds. All right. They're buds. Okay. All right. Thank you, Lance, for coming tonight. Yeah. I'll tell you, that reminded me of the 2019 Celtics. All right. So let's go. I'll give you McConaughey and Powell. So who says McConaughey? Who says Glenn Powell?

All right. McConaughey. Jesus. Done deal. Wow. They did not like posters. McConaughey's really figured it out. Yeah. Because he goes to a lot of the Texas games, too. He's like an assistant coach now. Yeah. See our...

Scale of 1 to 20, how genuine is Bradley Cooper's Eagles fandom, would you say? 1 to 20, I'll give you. I'm going to go 19 just because it feels super recent. Like, I'm sure it's genuine, but, like, I don't recall him being a part of the Eagles before 2017. She's more recent. She was, like, on a late-night show talking about loving the Giants, like, five years ago.

So it's just cool. You can love who you want to love, but she just switched around on the NFC. Can I love the Eagles? Is that on the board for me? Sure. Okay, cool. Water's warm. Shay, who's your favorite celebrity attached to a team celebrity? Let's go with... Does San Antonio have one? Danny Trejo. Yeah. They play, like, during Spurs games, a Danny Trejo clip of him being like, Hey, let's fucking go.

Do they really? Yeah. That's a really good one. I like that one. That would be great before every game. It's like, no. Please. Come on. What about you, Shaw? Favorite celebrity fan of one of my teams? Of a tied to a team, any team. The one you feel is the most genuine. I mean, Jack and the Lakers is the realest shit ever. Not Larry David and the Jets?

No, he abandoned the Jets. Larry David quit the Jets. Yeah, he quit the Jets. Once again, smartest guy of all time. A couple more quickies. Speaking of Austin...

If Austin tried to steal the Spurs from San Antonio, would it cause a civil war in Texas? There would be two million Mexicans outside of the Moody Center. Mad as hell. So it's never happening. Never happening.

Where is this arena they're playing tomorrow? It's a nice one, right? Yeah, who knows? It doesn't matter. Look at Shay. No, I'm kidding. He doesn't like this. I like Austin a lot. It's one of the ten best cities in Texas. Easily top ten. No question. Sean, who's winning Best Picture at the Oscars? I had that on my list. Nora. Yeah.

Which... Yeah, Nora gang? Yeah, hell yeah. Thank you. Because it did the DGA, PGA, WGA, whatever the hell, that triple crown. Yeah, you nailed it, brother. In August, we were texting about the... No, in September, we were texting about the Oscars. And I was like, I think it's a Nora because there's like nothing else going on. And you're like, no chance. Well, there's a lot of sex in that movie. There is. What did you think of that? And a lot of old people that vote for the Oscars. Did you like those scenes?

I thought they were very well done. Yeah. Very tasteful. Very tasteful. Very tasteful. Yeah. I thought for the character it made a lot of sense. It did. It did. Really strong writing. So the last movie that did those three but then didn't win Best Picture was Crash. It was Crash, yeah. Well, Brokeback Mountain won those three awards in 2005. Oh, yeah. Brokeback Mountain won the three and didn't get the last one. And then Crash won on Oscar night, which is...

the first time I gouged my eyes out and then had a reconstructive surgery. So, Enora, what if it's not Enora? Bill, how many times have you seen The Brutalists in theaters? So... Three and a half hours is a long time. Yeah. What was the name of the Netflix true crime doc you were telling us about backstage? Didn't you watch eight episodes of Gabby Petito today? Gabby Petito? Yeah, so Netflix has this new documentary. Yeah.

This girl is a vlogger and just a lot of vlogging footage. And I got sucked in three episodes. Guess what? She didn't make it. Was it roughly three and a half hours? It was probably longer than that. It was like two and a half. So Brutalist is too long, but a nine-hour Celtics documentary is just right. Could have been longer. Yeah.

These true crime things, I love when the guys, the killers, make the same mistake every time. Like, this guy in the new one, once somebody's dead, they take the phone and they send texts back and forth like the police aren't going to figure that out. These people are so stupid. Anyway. Wait, what were we talking about? I actually do want to keep teasing this out of how you'd fix murder. Oh, Brutalist. No, so...

I watched a combined 14 minutes of Wicked, Amelia Perez, and The Brutalist.

They send me all the screeners. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to watch this. I'll watch three minutes. I'm like, I'm out. And then other ones, I'll keep going. I don't have time to watch 50 Oscar screeners. There's terrible basketball to watch. I got like Hornets Hawks on a Thursday. I got real shit to do. But I do want to watch The Brutalist. That just feels like you got to be in a mood, right? Yeah, a mood to enjoy something great.

My wife liked it. I forgot to tell you. Did she? Yeah. Did you like it, Shane? Did you see it? Shane, did you see The Brutalist? No. I did the same thing you did. I saw the runtime and I was like, I don't want it. It's intimidating. It's like 40 minutes longer than John Wick 4. Yeah, that's 40. That's a lot of time. And nobody's riding a horse with a sword? You wouldn't know. I'm out.

I'm out. That's going to be in The Brutalist 2. Yeah. I'll watch that one. I'm excited about that. More movies should have that. I would have you give your Oscar bets to everybody, but they can't bet here in Texas. What the hell, Texas? There's some Fando people here. They love this. Best actor? Chalamet. No.

No. No. Really? What happened? He has not won a single precursor. So if he wins, it's going to be really surprising. He's the people's champ, though. People love this kid. You know what? Better for the career if he doesn't win.

I agree. It builds up. It gets a Leo thing going. I think part of his campaign for this whole movie where he's been doing non-traditional media like Nardwar and doing photo ops with Carl Anthony Towns, which I fully support, has been so that he maintains his cool without having to seem like he's glad handing every Academy member. I like it. Adrian Brody is going to win, though. Who's winning best actress?

Two weeks ago, I would have said Demi Moore, but now it feels like Mikey Madison. She won at BAFTA over the weekend. She has to win. I don't know. It feels like we'll find out on Sunday at the SAG Awards. That's when we'll figure it out. If Demi Moore didn't win for about last night, she's never winning. That's true. So good in that movie. You thought for striptease. Yeah, I did. It's an underappreciated classic. Speaking of movies, Shay, are we scared about Heat 2?

I'm scared about it. There's been a lot of conversations in our circles. Sequels are tough, man. It's almost better off not happening than having one. We were just talking about Den of Thieves 2. We were talking about a bunch of 2s recently. Yeah, 2s are tough. I'm nervous, but I feel like

You can't go into it expecting it to be bad if it's Michael Mann making Heat. You know what I mean? Right. Go into it expecting it to be good. Don't automatically be like, this fucking sucks. I can watch it and then go, that fucking sucks. We should jump straight to Heat 3. Just skip 2. Skip 2. Smart idea. You avoid the 2 problems and then it's just like, just finish the trilogy without making 2. What's the most disappointing you've ever been in a sequel, Sean? Ooh. Um...

I mean Batman forever sucked. That was tough. You know, we came off to Burton movies. Yeah, like I'm mixing it up Schumacher. Yeah, he's interesting. Lost boys. I like that guy. The client was big fan of that film and

Batman Forever is terrible. That was tough. I mean, Godfather 3 is a famous one, but we've come all the way back around. International. Oh, my God. International. That guy is about to be right in the frame with Pope Francis. He's in the mix. What's your most disappointing sequel? I got recency bias, but Gladiator 2 is a real bummer. It had all the guys in it. It had all my guys, and it just wasn't as good. Isn't Ridley Scott like 88? Yeah.

He's 84. Yeah, my card was up. Yeah. What about you, Shay? I think I'm going to go with Gladiator 2 also. Really? The first Gladiator is a perfect movie. And you just, I was like, all it needs to be is like 70% of that. And it wasn't 70% of that. I have another 48 hours. Yeah. Eddie was like 20 pounds overweight for some reason. I didn't understand why Jack Cates...

He was in jail for five more years and then they just fought the whole time. But then at the end, Keo ends up being the Iceman. It sucks. And it's like, what the hell? Because then it ruins how you watch the first movie where it's like, this guy was the Iceman the whole time? And it just like, it was like a Jedi mind trick. It really bothered me.

None of you guys have even seen it. It ruined... I don't like when it ruins the movie before it with what they do with the sequel. When they go retroactively backwards and it fucks up what was in your head already. Really annoyed me. You think that could happen to Heat 2? That's what I don't want. I don't want my...

brain chemistry to get. I mean, we've seen heat 430 times. That's definitely affected our brain chemistry. Shay, you were early on the WNBA. Yeah. Well, I was early for guys. No, you were early. It was like 2018. You were the first player in the WNBA. And now we're at the point with Caitlin Clark. Mm-hmm.

Would you say she's the biggest under 30 basketball star we have or would you go with somebody else? Like on the planet? Yeah. I think, I mean, it's her, it's Wimby and maybe Anthony Edwards in that conversation. But Angel Reese is coming up quick.

Like, she's playing a smart game. She's playing the personality game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's very charming, and she knows how to turn it on. But yeah, Caitlyn just has this gravity about her that I think puts her right now a little bit above everybody else. It's unreal. What do you think? It pains me to say this, because I don't know that he's the most charismatic person in the world, but, you know, Jason Tatum is, like, really famous and successful. Holy shit.

And I'm not kissing up to you because honestly... Are you trying to get a raise? What's going on? He can follow Aaron Rodgers to hell, honestly. I don't want anything good for him. But I like the premise of the question, but, you know, first of all, Jason Tatum, he's only like 21. He's got that going for him. 26. Is it actually Jha?

I know. John doesn't play. I mean, John plays. He just misses games left and right. But kids love him. Like, younger generations love John. Shea's not going to like this, but he's going to respect it. Tatum's got Tim Duncan-itis. He does. Yeah. When you watched him on the starting five, Doc, that was my favorite part of the doc, is like, you didn't learn anything about him. Are we supposed to be talking about Caden Clark? We're going to circle back. You didn't learn anything about him. And I said, I miss that. I miss that in basketball players when all I know about them is what they do on the basketball court, and that's it. Like, he gives you...

Yeah, but that's why he's not more popular than Caitlin Clark. Like, what's the Jason Tatum, like, thing or the commercial or what? Like, he doesn't have that magnetism that she has. Right. You know? Yeah. Sure. I care about insurance because of Caitlin Clark. She was, like, in an insurance commercial, and I was like, I should get renter's insurance, I think. Luca? I just don't understand the... When they say Tatum's boring...

I don't really know what that means in the context of the NBA now. It means that they're frustrated. Because it just means he's not tweeting enough? Is he not, like, doing enough Instagram videos? Like, what's boring? Yeah, we were talking about Kevin Durant earlier. He's the only player who has, like, improved his image because of social media or making himself available. He's the only guy who knows how to do it. Everybody else is bad at it. Well, it comes down to, like, authenticity, right? Yeah. So KD, whether you like him, don't like him, can bitch about the Warriors decision, whatever, like...

He really seems like who he is. Like he's the most authentic of, I think, all these guys. Tatum's pretty authentic. He's just, you know, plays basketball, works out. Inspiring. Loves his son. Yeah.

I don't know. CR, what's your answer? Is Kaitlyn Clark the most popular basketball player under 30? I mean, she's definitely like appointment television, right? Like if she's going off, people are going to be like, well, you got to turn this on. You got to turn this on. How many basketball players? What was that?

Yeah, definitely. Those G League games, me and all the fellas. Just watching some G League. Yeah. Bronny is the best thing that's ever happened to go into a Laker game because if it's a blowout, everyone stays for Bronny. You could just leave and get your car. It's like, this is great. I'm out of here. Do you think it would have been funny if LeBron had backed out of the All-Star game and inserted Bronny in his place? Yeah.

That would have been cool. He should just start doing stuff like that. Would you have been surprised? Adam Silver would be like, what can I do? No power here. Before we get to the big thing we're doing, who's winning the finals? Give us a pick. Give us a finals pick, a matchup, and a winner. I still think Boston wins. I don't see anybody that's beating them, but they're going to beat OKC in five.

Sadly. What do you got, Sean? Yeah, I think it's Boston. It is really painful...

Shut up. It's really painful knowing, having a, like rooting for a great team and knowing that they're what I want them to be, but knowing that they're still just like one inch below a couple of other teams. That's painful. You've been there before. You've never been there. I just want to serve. Well, I'm fine. What do you have, CR? The Mavs. Yeah.

Mavs in six over Boston. Derek Lively makes a great comeback. No, I think it's the Thunder. I think the Thunder are like historically good.

Thunder over Celtics. What's your pick, Bill? I mean, I'm sticking with Celtics-OKC because it was the preseason. I think Cleveland's really good. I actually think that they've somehow become underrated and undervalued. The Hunter trade was great. They're going to have home court every round for the first three. How are you feeling about second row Joe these days?

Well, first of all, we call him Coach Joe. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to disrespect him. I don't know where I got that. My dad's getting a little gamey with him lately. Hasn't really liked some of the subs. He's come home complaining a couple times, but he's fine. It's a hunger thing with them. We just saw with the Eagles and the Chiefs, like...

We always forget the hunger piece with sports where the Chiefs, they're complaining. It's like, oh, the Super Bowl, we do this every year. And the Eagles are like, I'll fucking kill five small children to win this one game. And at some point, the hunger piece is a real thing. And you're playing like Cleveland or OKC, these teams that have never been there, and you won last year. It's that little extra something. That's the part that worries me, I think.

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They'll be friends. They'll be family. Ideally, they'll be the ones who also root for my teams. Plan a winning vacation. Make it a Vrbo. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. So you sign up to stream a show and then months later, you're still paying for the service long after you finished it? That sounds familiar. Try Rocket Money, a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending. It helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

cancel your unwanted subscriptions, reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash bill today. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax. Didn't file a TurboTax last year? That's in the past. Now taxes...

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Now this is taxes into a TurboTax. New filers and filers who didn't use TurboTax last year only must start and file your own taxes in app by February 28th. Excludes TurboTax live full terms at TurboTax.com. All right, it's time. So you guys don't know what we're about to do.

The lamest and most overused gimmick at a live show is to do a draft of something. And we're going to do that anyway. But we have a twist. We are going to draft sports movie characters who play basketball, and we're going to make a team out of them. And the catch is going to be for the two assistant coaches, the GM and the owner, are going to be from heist movies. And we're going to build our team...

And I swear this is all going to make sense. We're going to be here for like two and a half hours, by the way. We're picking a starting five, a six man, a bench player who has to be a real bench player. It can't just be like a starter who's coming off the bench. We're going to pick a basketball movie coach. So it's like Coach Carter, those type of things. And then two assistants from a heist movie.

A GM from a heist movie and an owner from a heist movie. So much stuff. This is going to be very long. It's not going to be that long. Shay, you have the first pick since you drove an hour to come here. All right. Wait, I have notes. Let me get my notes. We flew like four hours. Why does he get the first pick? All right, I got the first pick. Let me pick. I'm going to pick this guy because automatically my team is going to be better than everybody else's if I have this character.

And I don't think he's on anybody else's list anyway, but I'm going to get him. I'm going to pick Elliot Richards from the movie Bedazzled. Anybody familiar with Elliot Richards? That's great. In Bedazzled, Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Hurley, she plays the devil. He plays a guy who's asking for wishes. At one point, he wishes to be an NBA player. And she's like, poof, you're an NBA player. The hook, every wish he makes, there's like a bad part. With the NBA player, he has a really small penis.

So then he's like, "Never mind, I don't want to do this anymore." But he's an NBA player for one game, and in the game he plays, he has 104 points, 45 rebounds, 32 assists, 37 steals, 28 blocks. He's 7'6", and he shoots 100% from three. - Wow. - You can't-- This is Shaq and Steph Curry mushed together. - Nice. Foundational piece.

So you're taking him as a center. I'm taking him as a center. Yeah, big men are at a premium in a fictional basketball player draft. Stretch five, though. But not downstairs. Yeah. By the way, I forgot to say three rules for this. No cartoon characters. Space Jam's out. No...

See, a lot of Lola Bunny fans. How dare you groan at our dumb rules that we made up five minutes ago? No NBA players as themselves, except with one exception, if you want. But it can't just be like, I take whoever, Jason Whitechocolate Williams, because he was in Eddie playing Jason Whitechocolate Williams. Yeah.

Well, you can, but that's just the only one you can take. Right, right, okay. And that's it. And nobody from Celtic Pride, because that movie sucked. But you're not allowed to do that. And we'll go snake fashion. Sean, you're up. Shoot. I didn't have Brendan Fraser's character from Bedazzled on my board. He's going to fire a scout. I knew you wouldn't. That's a tough one. Well, the first name I wrote down is Jesus Shuttlesworth from He Got Game. Yay!

Which has the added benefit of being a great movie. And, you know, honestly, there are not a lot of great basketball movies, which you realize when you're going through this. A lot of great basketball characters. But Jesus was loosely modeled on a LeBron-esque figure. Somebody who could come. Supposedly Stefan Marbury. Could save the game. Yeah. Memorably played by Ray Allen in the movie. And he had it all.

And he had incredible range, handle, good defender, good team guy. His teammates loved him. He had a lot of fun at Big State on his trip there. So he seems like an obvious centerpiece of my team. Yeah, good pick. So, Jesus. You know, it's really, we did He Got Game. I can't remember when for Rewatchables.

I just, Ray Allen was just such a one-on-one with his basketball style. So good. Like, I just miss, I wish there was somebody like him now, but it's even fun to watch him in that movie. Just like...

his shot, the way he carried himself, the whole thing. C.R., you're up. I'll take Neon Bordeaux from Blue Chips as my center. It's Shaq. Only red flag is that he got 520 on the SATs and misspelled his own name. Culturally biased. I think once we get him into our program and we just let our culture loose on him...

It'll work and I get my big man, so I'm really excited. So I thought he was going to be the first pick. Me too. But then I didn't know Shay was going to pick first. I could have told you he wouldn't. He's dominant in Blue Chips. It's Young Shaq. Skinny Shaq. How do we feel about Blue Chips? I'm pro Blue Chips. Great movie. It's one of those movies I was disappointed by for like 15 years and then around 2009 I was like, this movie's fucking awesome. Yeah.

It's the best basketball we've ever seen in a movie. Because they just set the camera down here and just followed. And they had all the best guys from 93, 93. They're just running like real games. I forgot that Patino coaches Western Texas in that movie. All right, I guess I'm up. With two picks. So there's a lot of guys left on the board that I like. And I'm taking an owner pick out of the gate. Wow. I'm sorry, a GM pick.

I'm taking Neil McCauley from Heat. Okay. I have to have him. He's got to be on my team. Why are you so interested in what I do, lady? I really feel like, you know, he's methodical. A little Sam Presti-ish. Yeah. It's like you call Neil McCauley and you're like, we...

We need Paul George because that's how we're going to get Kawhi Leonard. Neil McCauley would hold out for SGA in the six first rounders. But what is his version of going back for Wayne Grove? It's a good question. Panic trading Chet. You know, you don't want to do that. But that's why I'm here because that's where you talk Neil out of like, don't know, dude. We won the Paul George trade. Don't go after Wayne Grove. If Paulinger calls Neil McCauley for Luka, does he go, there's a dead man on the other end of this phone? Yeah.

So the guy that you want running your team... My GM. ...is his whole team dies. Yeah. Except for one who's holed up somewhere. He dies. Yeah. And the only rule that he ever says he has immediately breaks the first time it comes into play.

I was really impressed with some of his heists. Put in the stuff on the... What are those things called? The things that break the tires? Yeah. Not only the ambulance, but then putting that across the way. I don't know. I just like how it is. He got the job. All right. All right. My other pick. So, I mean, this is a layup, but Fish That Saves Pittsburgh, Julia Serving plays Moses Guthrie, and...

And it's right, he still has his knees. It's like right after the ABA-NBA merger. And he's just crushing it in real life. He's in the movie. There's a playground scene where he takes a girl on a date. That's the best. Starts dunking for her with slow motion with like romantic music. That's the absolute best. And it just lights out.

Tour de force. Women love that, by the way. Yeah. They love it. Well, it started 50 years of people doing that on dates. Anyway, he's on my team, too. So there you go. Shay, is that? No, Chris, you're up. Oh, we're going to go. We're going back. We're stink drafting. OK. I think I'll take Billy Hoyle from White Man Can't Jump. I like it. I like it. It's a little bit of a debate as to whether Billy or Sidney are who's better. You know, I know they played right into my hands.

But I think Billy just has that sense of fashion, that flair, that big game appetite. I love it. I would say that. So go ahead. So...

It's because he's white? Yeah, that's why. Billy Hoyle, great character, very inspiring to a young me, but also a complete fiction. The idea of that guy bawling out on the Venice courts, absolute nonsense. Sidney Dean would have broken his ankles a hundred times out of a hundred. I've seen videos of the professor on that same court. Yeah.

doing that same stuff. Yeah, that was AI when you were watching. Woody was, Woody as Billy Hoyle, very Austin Reeves-ish when you watch Austin Reeves now. The kind of herky-jerky crossover. And if he hadn't had the distraction of Rosie Perez being on Jeopardy, who knows what he could have achieved, you know? Right.

We're just a distraction to Rosie Perez in general. What about the Sanuki brothers, right? That was kind of an issue for... CR, do you see Neon Boudot and Billy Hoyle running a lot of pick and roll or high school stuff? Well, we have to see how my backcourt fills out, Bill, but thank you for asking. Okay. Sean, what do you got? I'll just take Sidney Dean so nobody else can take him. We can close out. White men can't jump right here unless you want to take some of the guys they were voting against. No, I have people nobody's picking. I just...

I just think Sidney Dean and Jesus in my backcourt. We've got a lot of speed, power. We're going to be really hard to defend at the rim. We've got range. I'm feeling good about my backcourt so far. Also, I had my eye on Neil just to make you mad, but you jumped the line. I'm going to make the crowd mad. I didn't think Wesley Snipes was good at basketball. I never bought the high dribble.

A lot of this. A lot of his stuff is in slow-mo. And then when we did the research for Rewatchables, it was like he had never really played basketball and they had to put him through a basketball clinic and I was like, I fucking knew it. I could just tell. Whereas Woody, you could just see he had the flow to him. Anyway, congrats, Sean. Great pick. Uh...

I feel like Giannis didn't pick up a basketball until he was like 15. Kind of a similar situation. Quick study. Shay, you have two picks. I'm on the edge of my seat. I have two picks. All right. You don't know how we're going to defend that backcourt. I'm going to tell you how we're going to defend that backcourt. Number one, we still have Elliot Richards, who's 7'6".

But give me Wood Harris from above the rim. Oh, my God. You're going with Wood first? I want Wood Harris because I want a guy who, if he's going to lose, he's fucking shooting up the court. This is a man who takes winning and losing very seriously. That's how we defend. They go like, we can't beat... No, it's Wade Martin. Let's lose this game because he's got a fucking Uzi in his Adidas bag. And I don't want to deal with that. So you have Wood as a forward? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Small forward. Okay. Yeah. And what do you have for your other pick? I need a point guard and I need a person who can get the ball around. I need a proven champion. I need somebody with a little bit of bloodlust. Give me Monica Wright from Love and Basketball. Yeah. That's what I need. I was re-watching it recently. That's a good basketball movie. It is. Right? But there's a part in it early on where the first time we meet her, she's a little girl, the little girl version of her.

And she walks up to the boys. They're all playing. It's three boys. And she's like, hey, can I play? She's got a hat on. And they're like, oh, yeah, sure. And she takes the hat off. Oh, my God, it's a girl, whatever. Becomes a whole thing. They're, like, talking shit about her. And then immediately, immediately, she fucking starts putting them in the blender. Just bucket after bucket after bucket. And then she's going up for one bucket. Quincy has gotten fed up. He shoves her in the back. She falls down. Her face drags on the floor. She picks it up. It's covered in blood. And then we cut to her in the house.

cleaning it and she's fucking smiling i'm like hell yeah that's a hooper that's the only person who could play point guard on a team with a guy with an uzi in his adidas bag that's who i need i'm feeling real good about my team right now well you went for toughness yeah wood harris mona mccall and a seven foot six guy who played one game who do you have sean

I'll also be selecting a stretch five, another incredible athlete with a gift we've not seen before. I'll be taking Sandy Lyle from Along Came Polly as portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. I'm putting him in your bench spot. Okay. Well, I don't know what you mean by that because raindrop! I had him on my board. What do you have, CR? Disney, your turn?

No, it's it. I picked. No, you're doing two now. All right. He hasn't picked in a while, right? Did I screw this up? Yeah, you went this way. Then we went that way. You picked two. Then you went back to me. Then we went this way. Then you went. This is going great. It's your turn. It's your turn. No, it's. Fantasy. Fantasy's third pick was what?

Did you make a third pick? I just took Sandy Lyle, yeah. Yeah, so you have three. Yeah, we're doing this correctly. You go, and then Bill goes two, and then you go back. My turn. My turn? Kyle, cut this out of the pod. I can't believe this is still happening. Kyle, cut this. No, you go, and then I go. Kyle, turn the fucking TikTok camera on. I'm taking Jimmy Chitwood from Hoosiers.

Another white guy. It's a great pick. It works for the Lakers. It works for Team Chris. It's fine. Clutch just absolutely nails. He's mostly been playing on farmland for most of his life. So I feel like when we get him into a modern sports science program, who knows what he could do. It's a great pick. He did quit on his team. And came back. He did come back. All right. That's a good pick. He was on my board. Yeah, no shit. I bet he was on your board. Fuck.

Now, I'm going with guys who were awesome in real life when they were making the movie, which brings me to Hustler from Fast Break, a movie that none of you have ever seen. Fast Break movie that came out in 1979. Bernard King plays Hustler, who's like a pool guy who ended up not going to college, but he was an All-American. And if you watch Fast Break, it's just Bernard King just being amazing. So I'm putting him with Dr. J.

And I'm kicking ass with those two guys. Plus, I have a team of Moses Guthrie, Hustler, and Neil McCauley as my GM. I'm feeling great. So there's two. And then I'm so excited this guy's on the board. Anita Center is a little undersized. In Teen Wolf...

You can't make him your center? Are you serious? I'm not taking Teen Wolf. Oh, okay. No, you're taking Big Body. If you've watched Teen Wolf enough, number 45, white guy...

Teen Wolf, you know, he turns into a wolf. Then he did it in the last game. He got all the praise. The school rallied around him. They're selling merch. Teen Wolf, are we sure he's good? No, well, he was great. Number 45 is just fucking carrying them. You watch that movie. He's protecting the rim. He's rebounding. He's doing everything. It's like heroic to watch.

I don't know what his name was, and I don't even know if he was in the credits, but if you watch, he's like 15, 12, and 5 in the final game. This is an iconic draft from you. So I'm going number 45 on Teen Wolf as my fourth pick. Chris, you're up. I'm up again? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

I'll take Shep from above the rim. Our advanced analytics team loves this. 40 points in two minutes. He's 14 for 14 from the field. Just like bombing away from three way before three and D was a thing. So Moriball. In corduroy pants. I know. He was still in his work clothes. Imagine if he was wearing shorts. This guy's wilt.

You know, now if they did above the rim now, those would be all threes. Yeah. There was a couple of threes in there, though, wasn't there? He had 10 threes. Yeah. In that game. 10 for 10. I thought he was just taking like 17 footers. No, no, no. Go back and watch the tape, man. Come on. We studied it. Get on second spectrum. Use money from the top of the key. So I have Shep from above the rim. I like that. That's a really good pick. And he goes in with your team of quitters. Jimmy Chibwood quit. Shep quit. Neon tried to quit. Yeah.

Billy Oil tried to quit his relationship. You're up, Sean.

I'm going to take a more recent vintage of player and the most recent great basketball movie, Hustle, starring Adam Sandler. Oh, I like this. And I'll take Bo Cruz as portrayed by Wancho Hernan Gomez. He's on the board. Great pick. Wancho, need a big man. Obviously, a bit of an unknown coming overseas. Really needed a strong voice, an advocate for his game. And frankly, we need his size on our squad. Need size, unselfish. Yes.

I thought you were going to go Edwards there. Shit, Shea has two picks. I got two. Jimmy Chitwood, great pick. Very clutch. There's only been one player ever in fictional basketball who was more clutch than Jimmy, and that's Snake Plissken from Escape from L.A. He's in the full court torture chamber of death. He's got to hit five shots before the 10-second clock. Whatever. It ends with him throwing a full court. This is the second one, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Throwing a full court shot. Let me explain what happens. Start at the beginning of escape. They have a basketball court with guys with guns all around it. They've captured Snake. They have him in the basketball court. The guy in charge, some whatever bad guy, tells him, hey, you've got to score 10 points. I'm going to put 10 seconds on the shot clock. You get the ball at half court. Every time you score, the clock resets itself. And if you don't score 10 points before half court,

The clock resets itself, or if you miss a shot, we're going to shoot you and you're going to die. So the first one, he makes a layup. Easy. But he bobbles it a little bit so he doesn't get all the way down. So the second shot, he has to shoot like a 15-footer. Now he's got to shoot a three-pointer. And then his last two shots, he has to shoot from half court, fucking drills it, and then full court with his life on the line with one eye. He's got one eye, and he fucking drills it. It's as clutch as it gets. What did you think of Kurt Russell's shooting form?

He's 100% from the field. I don't care what it looks like. I don't care. Fucking Sean Marion, that bitch up there. I don't care. Let that thing go. He's so cool. He's such a cool guy. Such a cool guy. Great. And he came by himself. It was 10 in the morning. He was wearing a leather jacket. It was 78 degrees outside. And he stunk of cigarettes. And I was just like, you're fucking awesome. From you.

Sean, you're up. Wait, I got one more. Oh, you were up. Sorry. I didn't do my last pick. I need a wild card. I need a guy who's going to do something nobody else is going to do. Give me David from Prometheus, the android. You fucking stole that from me, man. Yeah, see? There's one scene where he's playing basketball. He's riding a bicycle and shooting. He's shooting three hook shots.

On the bike, drilling it. And you know what the best thing about David is? You don't have to worry about load management. You don't have to worry about load management. He's an android. This is an unbeatable team. So, is that a forward or a guard? That's a guard. That's my shooting guard. Android guy, okay. That's my five. Wow, that's quite a team you got. Thank you. Bedazzled guy, Wood Harris, Monty McCall, android, and Snake Plissken on Shay's team right now.

We're going 82 and 0. What do you got, Sean? I've got an incredibly flexible roster, but I need an owner. My man is stressed. Somebody who I can really trust. Somebody who's got big ideas, who knows how to continue building out a front office. No Nicos in this business. So I'm going Joe Cabot from Reservoir Dogs as my owner. Oh.

You know, we know how he knows how to put a job together. We know he's just a mean bastard. Is he owner or GM? What's that? Is he owner or GM? He's owner. Okay. And he also loves his nipple baby son, gave him a job in the front office. Which is very owner behavior. And I'm just really excited about what we're going to do together. And also he loves colors, so he's going to be great with uniforms. Nice job. That's a really nice pick. Thank you. CR? CR?

Alright, so I have Shep, I've got Chitwood, I've got Hoyle, and I've got Neon. It's a great team. Not enough balls for that team. I think I need a glue guy. I need a deep bench guy who's going to keep everybody loose. So I'm going to go with Jim Carroll from Basketball Diaries played by Leonardo DiCaprio. I love the idea of him getting Jimmy Chitwood into heroin. You know, just to mix it up.

Sixth man? Yeah, deep bench. Another white guy. I'm sorry about that. By accident. This is the EI? Well, I was going to draft David. That's right. I feel somehow emboldened. I don't know why. That's a good laugh, Bill. I have two picks. This is a big part of the draft for me. I need a guard.

Right now I have number 45 from Team Wolfe at center, Moses Guthrie, Hustler, and Neil McCauley is my GM. And I'm going to take Butch McRae from Blue Chips. Yeah.

Keeping my philosophy of real-life basketball players playing characters, this is Penny Hardaway. He had not ended up on Orlando yet. And I just want to tell you, because this was over 30 years ago, them drafting Penny Hardaway to play with Shaq, but they were both in a movie together, might have been the single coolest thing in 1993. I think that's why they drafted him. That hit all my interest points at the same time. Anyway, so we'll take him.

And then I can't believe he's still on the board. I think I'm going to use him as my bench guy. But Fletch during the dream sequence. Fletch with the afro. You know, it's not a long scene, but you can see there's a lot going on there. He's just a force.

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So hire smarter in the new year. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Simmons. Once again, linkedin.com slash Simmons to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Workday. There are two kinds of people in the world, backward thinkers and forward thinkers. Forward thinkers have plans 15 minutes from now and 15 years from now.

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for long-term success. Workday, moving business forever forward. Find out more at Workday.com. What do you got, CR? I'll take Tupac from above the rim as my coach. Oh, birdie. Birdie. Interesting motivational techniques, communication style. And I just think that this is a team of guys like you've mentioned, quitters. And perhaps Tupac will motivate them to do otherwise. Yeah.

Little razor blade. Yeah. Trying to balance out all that white. That's right. So I have two. Now Sean's up. Now Sean's got. Yeah. A lot of guys left. Yeah. I'm going to take. I'm going to slide Shuttlesworth to the three. Okay. And I'm going to take Uncle Drew in the cinematic masterpiece Uncle Drew starring Kyrie Irving, which is the film I've not seen.

But I have seen that commercial and that old man can ball out. So he'll be bringing it up for us. So you're going a little smaller. Yeah. Trying to counter all the white guys. Shay, you got two. I got two for my sixth man and my deep bench. Sixth man, not a sixth man at all. He's a sixth dog. Give me air, bud. A champion. The greatest winner in sports movie history.

Championship in basketball, he plays volleyball, championship in volleyball. Plays soccer, championship in soccer. Baseball? Fucking played baseball and won a championship. That kid's a winner. Give me air, bud. It's a movie that only makes sense when you have a kid.

Yeah. Because it came out, I was like, this is the fucking stupidest thing ever. And then you have like a five-year-old and they're like, what is it? It's like Gone with the Wind for a five-year-old. It's the greatest cinematic achievement anyone's made. A dog scoring baskets. Gone with the Wind is a weirdly popular movie in my locker room, actually. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Billy and Chip, which is like, I love this part. For my deep bench... Wait, are we allowed to pick TV as well, or is it only movies? No movies. Don't try to cheat. You already took the bedazzled guy. You have a dog on your team, for Christ's sake. I was going to grab Jim from the office because he was a fucking monster. But if I can't have him, then I need a deep bench person.

Give me Spaceman from Sunset Park. Does anybody remember? Yeah. Young Terrence Howard. Terrence Howard. Right? Rhea Perlman's coaching this inner city team. They're getting beat real bad in a game. She's yelling at them at halftime.

And he plays the crazy kid on the team that nobody talks to. And she's screaming at him. And she's like, is there anybody in here who's not afraid to play this other team? And then they all look at him. And they just go, no, no, no, no, no. And then it cuts to him diving after loose balls and taking charges and crashing into people and smiling. And it's just great. It's a great moment. I need a guy coming off the bench running into people. Give me space, man. I just want to say we've known each other a long time. And you had seven player spots. Yeah.

You not taking Timo Cruz from Coach Carter is the most shocking moment of my year so far. I don't need him. I don't need him. I just can't believe it. He can't do anything better than the guys on my team. Can't do it. I tell you what, Coach Carter would not have sent Bedazzled home. I'll tell you that. I'll tell you that. Sean, what do you got? Tough one. Got Uncle Drew. Lock that down. Jesus Shuttlesworth. Sidney Dean.

We're closing out the Blue Chips Triumvirate. I need a stretch four, so I'm going with Ricky Rowe, the real pride of Indiana, who is the horniest, greediest dickhead in the history of basketball movies, but who has an incredible stroke, as portrayed by Matt Nover, and I'm referring, of course, to his bed game. Why are you staring right at me when you're saying that? When I think Ricky Rowe...

I think CR. And so we're going to be playing seven seconds or less Phoenix Sun style. That's what I'm thinking. I like it. CR? Would that go over well if I did that? Let's think about it for a second. For my owner, I've been thinking about this a lot. From a heist film. I'm going to go with Krista from The Town, played by Blake Lively.

I just think Blake Lively in the owner's box is box office. That's just absolutely amazing content. And do I get a second pick here? No. Just one, okay. I have no idea what the order is anymore. You only pick once. Okay. I'll take Blake Lively as my owner. So you're taking Krista from the town. Yes. Shine's mom. Yes. Shine's mom.

And who shines dead? I think it's supposed to be, the implication is it might be Doug, right? But it's going to be Ursula. Yeah. I can't believe somebody threw out the Ed Norton. My scouts did look at it. The two-hand dunk.

His real name was Derek Vineyard. I'm not taking him. Team chemistry was too risky. Just didn't seem like a great move. When I got to Austin, I went to Kirk's house. I was hanging out with Kirk, and he was trying to convince me to take Derek. He was like, the advanced analytics say you should take the Nazi. He was unbelievable. He's like, it's worth the risk. It's worth the risk. I don't think it is, Kirk. It's worth the risk. That's what guys were saying to Nico Harrison. It's worth the risk. Kirk's showing you his shot chart. Um...

His shots are in the shape of a swastika. I couldn't not make that joke. I'm taking as my owner, Danny Ocean. There you go. Interesting. There you go. Handsome. Good at his job. He'll represent us well.

I think the fans will like him. And he's got a Rob Palenka-y kind of vibe to him. You can see him talking Nico Harrison in a Give Me Away the Farm. I have some questions about Neil reporting to Danny. That's one of the reasons we have Danny. Yeah. Yeah. And then for one of my assistant coaches, I'm just going to lock him down. Also from Heat.

Michael Charetto. Played by Tom Sizemore. I just feel like you need him every once in a while for that, for me, the action is the juice. Like, you just need him in the room for the big moments. So he's on there, too. I got him. Sorry, CR. That's okay. Just one pick or two picks now? You get five picks now. Five picks. You always have one pick. Okay.

All right, for my assistant coach, I'm going to do Rusty from Ocean's Eleven. Just absolute, like when the coach yells at you, when Tupac's done yelling at them, Rusty will just be like, sorry guys, don't worry about it. He's not really going to kill you after the game. So yeah, I'll go with Rusty for assistant coach. I like it. Sean? For my coach, I'll be taking Jack Cunningham from The Way Back.

because we know that Jack knows how to fight the good fight and inspire. And we need to find a way to beat 7'6 Brendan Fraser somehow, so I feel like he can really draw up some interesting plays for our seven seconds or less offense. How do you see Jack working with Sandy Lyle on your team? Well, I see some potential issues, but I'm excited to see what Jack can pull together. All right, Shay, you got two.

All righty. I need a coach. Yeah, you sure do. And I need a coach who can handle a devil-wish man, a guy with an Uzi, a point guard with bloodlust, an android, and a one-eyed mercenary. Yeah. And there's only one guy we've seen in any movie who could, I think, handle that lineup. That's Coach Finstock from Teen Wolf. Yeah. He's just sitting on a bench. One of his players turns into a werewolf, and he looks, and he's like...

Bucket. Ball up top, baby. That's right. That's who I need coaching my team. So give me him. You know, just as an aside on coach, because he was on my board. He was the one who had the three rules. Yeah. Always get 12 hours of sleep. Never play cards with a guy who's got the first name as a city. And never go near a lady who has a dagger on her body. Yeah.

You stick with that and everything else is cream cheese. That was Coach Finstock. An absolute legend. He was on my board. We're winning a championship. For my owner, I'm going to go the sort of same strategy you went. I need a guy who pulled off the perfect heist. Give me Dalton Russell from Inside Man. That's all I need. Nobody dies. He walks away a hero and very rich. Give me that guy. I want him running my stuff.

All right, Sean, we're running out of spots. You have two assistant spots, a GM spot. I don't know, that's Shay. I have a GM spot still. Yeah, you have a GM spot still. Yeah, and I'm going double Affleck. I'm going Tom Redfly Davis from Triple Frontier. Oh, wow. Affleck will be reporting to Affleck in a never-before-seen doubling in a basketball character's movie draft. Great idea. And Redfly, of course...

fails miserably at the end of triple frontier killed. Nevertheless, I trust him to run this franchise effectively to a championship. Can I ask the crowd? Where do you guys stand on triple frontier?

Yeah. See, that's why it's on the list. It's excellent. It's excellent. It's on the rewatchables list. Affleck reporting to Affleck. I'm back around. Sean Fennessey is the smartest person I've ever met. I'm back. I'm back. That's great. CR, do you think you have one pick or two right now? I think I have one. Don't flip it on me. I just didn't understand what you were doing.

What do you got? What do I have left? You need a forward spot, a bench spot, an assistant coach, and a GM. All right, for my bench spot, I'm going to go Jackie Moon from Semipro.

You never know when he could just light it up, like just absolute great vibes guy. What race is he? So you have Jimmy Chitwood, Billy Hoyle, Jim Carroll, and Jackie Moon. Christmas franchise is playing in Utah. Or Boston, yeah. All right. So now I have two.

I really need a coach, but you need a coach too, right? Oh, you took a coach. Who needs a coach? Am I the only one that needs a coach? I have Tupac. He has Ben Affleck. Oh, yeah. All right. So I need one more assistant. I thought long and hard about Jim from the town, but I just feel like somebody would get murdered. That's probably a bad idea.

But I really like this guy, and I think he's like a Tom Thibodeau 2008 type. I know exactly what you're going to say. Who am I going to say? Give her a little taste. No. Fergus from the town? The flower shop? No, I'm taking a... He's kind of a banjo of that movie, yeah. I'm taking a Merriman from Den of Thieves. Good planner, takes his work seriously. Family guy. Donnie planned that heist.

Merriman family guy. Yeah, but Donnie got family here, bro. Benihana. Trying to enjoy a nice silent dinner with his family. So I got Merriman. So that gives me I have all my assistants. I do not. I'm not hiring my head coach yet. I still need a guard and I still need a six man.

And Teen Wolf is still on the board. And you know what? Not any longer. So I'm taking Teen Wolf. I'm going to have Scott Howard and Teen Wolf. I get them both. And we'll just decide game to game if he's going to be the human or the Teen Wolf. And maybe even during the game, he'll turn into Teen Wolf. But I think it'd be really hard to prepare for.

So you just go to the game and you're like, is he going to do the Wolf thing today or is it just going to be, oh, he's just a 5'4 point guard who can't triple today. But the other team's going to be on their toes, so I'm taking Teen Wolf. Chris, you're up again. All right, so I need a sixth man and an assistant coach? Yep. Um...

And can we do that breaking the... That would be funny for the social video they make where people are like, what the fuck happened in Austin? We can do the NBA player playing themselves, just one pick. Do it. All right, LeBron from Trainwreck. Yeah. Plays basketball. Why, boo, you guys really want me to take Norton? Sorry for just trying to put together a diverse locker room, Austin. You...

You just entered a world of shit. Every December, he's going to be talking about how he needs more help. Like, I don't know if Shep from above the rim is enough and forward. Got to get a better score. Wait till Krista from the town talks to him for five minutes. Hey, LeBron, here's some Percocet. All right, Fantasy, you're up, and you need a...

I need two assistants. And you need a center. I have you with three spots left. What about Wancho Hernan Gomez? I have him at... You can have him at center. I have him at forward. Do you have a center? Ricky Rowe is at four. I have you as a center. Here's what I have for your team. Jesus Shuttlesworth, Bo Cruz, Uncle Drew, Sidney Dean, Ricky Rowe, and Sandy Lyle as your six players. And Wancho Hernan Gomez. Yeah, that's... That's Bo Cruz. Six guys, yeah.

but you got you can have a seventh okay so i need one more player and two assistant coaches yes okay i'll come back to the player because i have a good idea for that one but i'm not drafting kazam you um i one of my assistants i need like a live wire i need a real mouthy guy you don't totally know what he's gonna do wangro

I'm going with Danny Sharp as portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal in Ambulance. Ooh! That's a deep pull. Good. Ambulance, which might be the best movie of the decade, and featuring an incredible performance by Gyllenhaal. And, you know, sometimes there's a guy who's behind the guy.

Who you're like, that guy's going to get fired tonight because he keeps yelling at the best player. That's Danny Sharp for my team. Coked out wearing a turtleneck. Shay, do you like ambulance? I do like ambulance, yeah. It just hasn't gotten me yet, but I know it will. It's just one of those things. I know it's going to happen at some point. It just hasn't happened yet. Let us know. I'll let you know. I'll keep you all posted. Shay, you got two. All right. So here's Shay's team. Oh, tell them. Bedazzled Brendan Frazier, Snake Plissken.

Wood Harris. What was his character? Muta? Yeah, I don't know. He's just Wood Harris all the time. Monica McCall. Android guy. What movie was that? Prometheus. Yeah. Air Bud. Spaceman. Coach Finstock coaching. And Dalton Russell is the owner. So you need two assistants and a GM. All right.

For my GM, I need somebody who's going to outsmart everybody. And because of that, I'm going to pick this person who she pulls off the coolest move in any heist movie that's ever been done. It's a small thing. It's in Set It Off. They break in to rob the bank. They're doing the, you know, everybody put your hands down or whatever thing.

All the customers get down on the floor, and then the undercover cop starts to pull his gun out, and then there's T.T. was hiding with it. She was pretending like she was a customer because she knew somebody was going to do that. She outsmarted them all. That's who I want running my team. Give me T.T. from Set It Off. She's a fucking genius. T.T. is your GM. Yeah, she's my GM. And then for my assistant coach, I think Chris was right. You picked the wrong person from Den of Thieves. Give me Donnie. Give me the mastermind. That's who I want.

I need a guy just like the GM. I mean, the assistant should be the guy who leans over and is like, you should try this. And then the head coach tries it and it works out. Yeah, it's like the guy who came up with like starting Draymond or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Like the triangle. Did you just tell me that Ray Merriman was a bad pick? Yeah. Did I hear you say those words? It's a great movie. That's a bad pick to run your team. It's an assistant. He's just there for the defense. Fantasy, what do you got?

Well, I need another player, and it would not be a Ringer-related movie draft without Tom Cruise. So I'm going with Brian Flanagan from Cocktail. Wow. It's a great pick. He gets buckets. Obviously, he's not guarded in that film. He's taking wide open free throws, barely making them, barely looks like he's ever held a basketball before they shot that sequence, and yet...

He looks amazing. So I'm going with Flanagan. $10 a shot, right? That's right. Well, where are you putting him? Because you can't put him at forward because Tom Cruise is 5'8". Is he? Is he guard? He's your sixth man. He's my sixth man, yeah. All right. That's a good pick. Thanks. I learned by watching you, Dad. See, cocktail's a good example of...

They didn't make a cocktail, too, and thank God. Because Cocktail One didn't need a sequel, and they would have fucked it up, and it would have been like him owning the bar, and then we would have had the memory of Cocktail Two. They would have called it Cocktails with an S on the end. Who should have played the hot young bartender, though, that he brings under his wing? That he groomed? CR! Done. CR, you need an assistant and a GM. All right, for my assistant, I'm going to go Shooter from Hoosiers to his hopper.

I kind of like the amount of substance abuse happening on my team. Yeah. Either these guys are going to keep each other on the straight and narrow or we're going to turn into train spotting. How do you feel about the coaches meeting with birdie from above the rim, rusty from oceans 11 and drunk shooter game plan into that? I would love to be a part of that dinner out. You know what I mean? Christmas culture. Yeah. That's what she's building. All right. So I have two picks left and I need a coach.

And I'm not taking Norman Dale because I've written about this, but if you watch Hoosiers, he's secretly terrible. I don't know what he was doing. Almost doesn't design the last play of the game for Jimmy Chitwood. Yeah, he abandons him. Jimmy Chitwood was 20 for 21 in the game. He's like, all right, we're going to do this instead. Not doing him. Pete Bell, I looked at for a while.

But, you know, he had a point shaving scandal on his team. I can't have that in my locker room. So I got to go with my guy Gabe Kaplan and Fastbreak. You can see when I do the podcast, you see the Fastbreak poster behind. I love Gabe Kaplan. He was in Fastbreak and Welcome Back Cotter at the same time, which has still never been approached in Hollywood history, Sean. Can you think of a twofer like that? I can't.

It's like when Spielberg made Schindler's in Jurassic Park the same year. I mean, you said it, I didn't. I was going to say Dune Part 2, A Complete Unknown, but you got me. Gabe Kaplan gets the job. He's got to go to Las Vegas, and he just cheats and gets all these people who shouldn't be in college. He does all these crazy things, and he's my coach. I still need a sixth man, though, and it's not going to be Ed Norton in American History X. Sorry to disappoint you guys. You know...

Man, there's some good ones left. Kyle Watson in Above the Rim, I'm going to go with. You know, great value late in the thing. It was a little me first for the first, what, hour of the movie? Little like Lamello on Charlotte just getting his stats as the team loses. Yeah.

And then slowly figured it out and became a team guy. Yeah. Set up Shep, road Shep in the final game. Like Schroeder's arc, right? Where we're like, oh, a little too ball first. Yeah. And now he's a good teammate. Yeah. So he's my sixth man. What do you got for your last pick, Chris? It's just one last sixth man or bench guy here for me. Yeah. You know, you need a GM. Oh, yeah.

And I took Neil McCauley off the fucking board. I will be taking... This is the easiest one. I'll take Kelso from Heat. The guy who plans the whole robbery. The guy was just like, it's just out there. You just got to go grab it. So, yeah, that's easy. Because he invented the internet? Yeah. Okay. Sean, last pick. You need an assistant coach. Yeah, easy one. I'm taking Bodhi from Point Break. Is there basketball in Bodhi in Point Break? No, it's a heist movie, bro. Oh, okay, yeah.

You're super spun around tonight, Chris. It's Chris's first draft, everybody.

Bodie rules. Does he live to tell the tale of his own success? Maybe not, but that's not really what we're thinking about when we've also got Danny Sharp from Ambulance coaching our team and Jack Cunningham, who obviously has a long history of substance abuse. So this is one last season for us. We're just trying to go out in a blaze of glory, and I'm really excited about it. It's not a long-term project. Not trying to build anything here.

Joe Cabot, we saw what happened to the last team he had. They all shot each other. So this could be complicated. Shay, you have the last pick and it's an assistant coach. And then I'm going to read everyone on the teams and the crowd can decide. All right.

Well, you know what? I'm a sucker for a magic trick. I want a guy around who could do magic. Give me Jesse Eisenberg's character, J. Daniel Atlas from Now You See Me. High pressure situation, we're in the playoffs, and he's like, hey, check this out. Ta-da! Some sleight of hand magic in the finals. What movie was that?

Now You See Me. I don't like the face that you made when I said that. It's a good movie. Yeah, a lot to watch today, Bill. Now You See Me, Ambulance. Now You See Me was a movie that came out in the theater? Yeah. It made like $300 million. It's a good movie. Is that not on the list for you? Now You See Me? So people who didn't get taken...

Junior from Coach Carter did not get taken. The guy from the year up there did not get taken. Sala. Flatch from Hoosiers, who all he did was go through a trophy case, put a bandage on it and keep going, trying to rebound. He didn't go. We mentioned American History X guy.

Yeah. Lewis Scott from Celtic Pride. Nobody jumped on that. Yeah, you forbid that. Buddy from Hoosiers who quit the team came back and really became a lockdown defender. Like shades of Dyson Daniels on the Hawks this year. Nobody took the Like Mike guy. Yeah. Calvin Cambridge. Nobody took Andre 3000's character from Semi Pro, Clarence Withers. Yeah. Chris took Jackie Moon. I thought...

Nobody took the kid from Finding Forrester. Yeah. Jamal Wallace. Liked his game. How about Odin James from O? Was he on anyone's board? No, but that's funny. Yeah, just as Billy Shakespeare imagined it. High school basketball player. This is a rough podcast for Eddie.

Because there were no Eddie picks, including Stacey Patton, played by Malik Sealy. Would you have included Kevin Garnett from Uncut Gems as eligible? Yeah, that could have been a good pick. Nobody took Quincy McCall. You took his wife. Quincy was a bust. Strap from Hoosiers and Chubby from Teen Wolf were the big bench guys that I think were pretty shocked by. And then nobody took Jem. I guess nobody wanted Jem in the locker room. All right. So here are the teams. And you guys can decide who won.

Chris Ryan. Neon Boudot. LeBron from Trainwreck. Shep from Above the Rim. Jimmy Chitwood. Billy Hoyle. Jim Carroll from the Basketball Diaries. Jackie Moon. And a coaching staff of Birdie, Rusty, and Shooter. With Kelso as the GM and Krista from the town as the owner. So that's Krista's team. Fantasy has Bo Cruz at center. A little undersized.

Jesus Shuttlesworth, Ricky Rowe, Uncle Drew, Sidney Dean. I wrote somebody down twice. Of course, Brian Flanagan from Cocktail. Brian Flanagan. And Sandy Lyle. And Sandy Lyle. From Along Came Polly. Not the strongest bench in the league. Weak bench. People want to get your guys in foul trouble and see if Brian Flanagan or Sandy Lyle can come in. That's very tips of you. Yeah, we don't second apron Jesus Shuttlesworth's contract. It's an issue. Jack from the way back as your coach. Yep.

Yep. Danny Sharp, Bodie is your assistants. Tom from triple frontier. So glad I got an ovation from the crowd. And then Joe Cabot is your owner. And then my team is,

Little undersized with number 45 from Teen Wolf at center, but the guy's a fighter, man. I just believe in him. Moses Guthrie and Hustler, two real NBA players. Butch McCray, a guard with Teen Wolf. That backcourt's amazing. I think Fandle just made me the favorite. Kyle Watson coming off the bench with Fletch with an Afro. Gabe Kaplan, Merriman, and Michael Charetto as my coaching staff. Neil McCauley as the GM and Danny Ocean as the owner. And then here's Shea.

All right, so I didn't read the team. Bedazzled Brendan Fraser, Snake Plissken, Wood Harris, Monty McCall, Android, Air Bud, Spaceman, Coach Finstock, Donny, Eisenberg, TT from Set It Off, and Dalton Russell. Yeah, baby. Yeah, baby. Is that our winner? Yeah. Yeah. I think we know one. I'm like fucking R.C. Buford up here, baby. This feels like a hometown verdict. We never had a chance. Yeah.

He already said he was going to fight all if he stole the Spurs from San Antonio. Now you're rooting for his team? All right. What was the most surprising pick for you, CR? Like probably the Android from Prometheus getting picked before I got to it. That's going to wrap it up for us.

Sierra, what are you working on? You still podcasting? Just cranking out different stuff, yeah. Still doing the watch? Yeah. Oh, the watch? Okay. Actually, I'm really excited to let you know, Bill, we've been working on an eight-part narrative podcast series called Podslut, The Rise of Chris Ryan. It's about all the pods he does over the course of one week. It's like a follow doc. How many ringer pods have you been on? Like over 20? Yeah.

Because we have like 40. Do you think you've been on half of them at this point? But this is the part of the behind the music where I'm like, I can do anything. But then Bill's like, we knew right then that Chris was overextending. Mountains of coke everywhere. It's like, no, put me on more pods. Sean Fennessey got the Oscars coming up. Yes, sir.

You excited? Scale of one to ten? No, it's been going on for six months. I need it to end so I can go to the next thing. But it's okay. Ringing endorsement for the pod there. Thank you for listening. What do you got to plug, Shay? I'm still co-hosting the big picture on the ring.

No, I'm doing the basketball podcast Six Trophies with our beloved Jason Concepcion every Wednesday. Still going. And there might be a book coming out at some point, maybe? I hope. I hope somebody will give me some money to write a book. Who knows? I don't know.

What are you doing, Bill? What am I doing? I'm just getting ready for the playoffs, baby. We got the Celtics thing on HBO Celtics City March 3rd. No, don't boo. It's a great achievement. It's an NBA doc as much as a Celtics doc. I really think you guys will like it. So we got that coming. We got some good music box stuff coming as well. SG back on the Red Sox? Pregnant? Excited? Yeah.

And USA Canada, the most important sporting event of our lifetime, tomorrow night. Thank you all for coming out. Thank you for the freezing cold weather and the pneumonia. And we love seeing you guys. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chris and Sean and Shay. Thanks to Kyle and Saruti and Gahal. As always, don't forget you can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can also watch it on Spotify. Hopefully you're watching on Spotify right now. And I will see you on Sunday with Rizella.

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