Minnesota’s Coming, OKC’s Here, and We Can Save the NBA Season With Kirk Goldsberry and Bill’s Dad
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every week about White Lotus. I'm on one of them on Sunday nights, the recap pod. And then Joanne and Rob midweek doing that as well. Plus we're covering Severance. I think it's the final week of that too. New rewatchables coming on Monday night.

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Kirk Goldsberry and I are going to talk about some things we've noticed as we head into the home stretch of the NBA season. And then more importantly, Kirk's class did this big study of how to fix the NBA season. And we're going to dive into that. And it's really cool. And I urge you to continue to listen through the pod until we get to that part. And then I brought my dad on because he wanted to do a Boston sports report and went to the OKC Celtic game last night. And I had to indulge him. Anyway, that is next. Here are our friends from Pearl Jam.

All right, Kurt Goldsberry is here. You can read him on TheRinger.com. You can listen to him on various Ringer podcasts. He is based in Austin, Texas, where we saw each other after a depressing Spurs-Suns game with no Wemby and with the Suns team imploding. We have something really good that we're going to talk about later in the pod, this big picture idea that I'm excited to throw at the world. Short-term,

There's been some stuff going on as we hit these last 20 games. And I talked about this with Russillo two Sundays ago, that there's always a team right around now that starts making a surge like Dallas did last year, like the Celtics did a couple of years ago. And it's like, who, who's the team? We talked about possibilities kind of glossed over Minnesota and Minnesota kicked Denver's ass last night. The three point shooting has gotten way better. There are 11 and O in the last 11 Randall games, uh,

stuff's kind of happening yet. They're in the seventh seat. Golden state's 37, 28, Minnesota's 38 and 29. Um, are you a believer yet? Easy schedule, just a great matchup for them against Denver. Is something happening? What are you seeing? Well, I've always liked this team and I feel like, uh, they traded Carl Anthony towns in part because of the new CBA. And I think it, it sort of took them off course, uh,

I'm a believer that they're going to finish this season very strong for a few reasons. One, you just pointed out Julius Randall is playing his best stretch of basketball since he's gotten to Minnesota. He missed pretty much all of February. That's important because they went five of seven in February, but they won those last 11 games with him. I think five in January, now six straight.

Well, what are you saying? That's what's he doing differently? Because in the in the first part of the year, it looked like a bad spacing fit. It looked like a weird who's who should take the shot this time. And it just it just seemed off. So what changed? I think he's playing. He knows his teammates better and he's making better passes like at his best. He's a scorer who can also pass. And I think during this stretch, I haven't looked it up. I think he's leading the team in assists.

So you have, you have go bear obviously is the defensive anchor. You know, what ant is going to do as a score. I think he's sort of your second score and maybe your primary playmaker when things are going well for him. And without him, their second scorer bill, that's a pretty big question mark for this team. So I think his biggest thing is, is scoring and playmaking and just filling that void below ant on the box score. Yeah.

And here's the sneaky thing with this team. They have the easiest remaining schedule of all of the Western Conference competitive sort of teams, that top seven group. And it's by a landslide. They have this homestand where Orlando, Utah, Indiana, and two games against the Pelicans coming in. This current win streak could extend to 11 very easily. And I think

If there's anybody that's going to catch that group two to five on the Western Conference standings, it's the Minnesota Timberwolves. So I really like their chances of finishing this season pretty strong. Yeah, it's interesting because in this run, they're 16-9 in their last 25, basically. I think 16-8 last 24. So the record's better. The schedule's been pretty easy, but they did go 2-1 against OKC and they beat Denver twice.

which I think are good signs, especially now that the Lakers don't have a center. Maybe those are the two teams they have to look at. I was studying it today. I test wise, I didn't really notice it until the last week. Um, just that they seem happier playing together. I thought last night they looked like last year's Timberwolves was, was noticeable. They might feel like they have Denver's number, but looking at all the numbers, the three point shooting is way better. Right? So, um,

Uh, Nas in his last 25, he's 41% from three and he's 18 and seven and he's having a really nice free agent run. We talked about him on the worst contracts pod talking about how all these moves they've made, especially the go bear extension might have screwed them to keep Nas. And then Timberwolves fans are like, we're keeping Nas. And it's like, well, you made this Carl Anthony Towns trade to save money. Mm-hmm.

Which leads me to believe you're not keeping Nas, especially if you have this new ownership. But who knows? He's playing 33 minutes a game and he's been great. Conley in his last 17 is shooting 48% from three. And he looked like dead legs washed up the first six weeks of the season, right? That surprised me more than anything. I didn't think they were going to get anything out of him anymore. And it seemed like he wasn't going to be able to play a crunch time for them. And then DiVincenzo is the other one. Since Christmas, he's missed some games, but

16 points a game, 47% from three. And he's playing 29 minutes a game. So you say how they don't have a second score and you're right, but they've been able to patch it. Like Nas will have a big game. Dante have a big game. Randall might have like, it feels like they're all rotating. Who's the second guy. Um, and they're pretty good. I'm surprised Dillingham isn't having a bigger impact for them, but maybe they don't need them.

Yeah, Dillingham is a nice rookie story, but like, come on, we're talking about a team that had Western Conference title aspirations at the beginning of the year, and a rookie really isn't going to slide into that and make a lot of noise. I think Dave Vincenzo is a great, great sort of similar thing to Randall. He's gotten time to learn this team. He's fitting in. But remember last year, I thought this team had the best vibes in the playoffs for a while, and a lot of that had to do with

Nas Reed, who is like the spirit animal of the whole Timberwolves fan base. Never say anything negative about Nas Reed, Bill. Right. Alexander Walker. I'm sorry he's going to be on New Orleans next year, but you guys are right. Or Washington, wherever he's going to go. Somebody with calf space. Brooklyn?

Who knows? But they're big and they're physical and they're long. And they gave, you know, what everybody forgets, like they give, they give some, they gave Jamal Murray a lot of problems last night. They gave MBJ a lot of problems last night. When they're really at their best, you know, they have McDaniels on defense. They're long on the perimeter. They're playing hard. And when those same dudes,

that are playing great perimeter defense are also knocking down shots like that. There's a really good team. That's a really good team. And I like it. And there was a couple of times last night where I thought Randall, like, yeah, it's like what it looks like. He'll just take it right at,

Joker and just overpower him. And that's another thing he can do is go get an unassisted bucket in a way that some of these catch and shoot guys can't do. Sounds like he's won you over. It sounds like the Randall fan club might have to make room for you. Dude, he is like the ultimate hot and cold analytics guy. Yeah. Even there are even whole seasons, Bill, where you're like, this guy's terrible. And then the next season, you're like, this guy's an all star.

If he has sort of a legacy for the stats nerds, it's like he is the hardest guy to pin down maybe in the whole league. And so he's been a frustrating guy to characterize even through the most advanced numbers over the last five years. Well, they also have this weird bench because Shannon had a couple really good games for them. Like when they beat OKC by three last month, end of February, Shannon played 29 minutes in that game.

Alexander Walker played 35. McDaniels played 42. Nas played 40. They didn't have Gobert. They didn't have Randall, but they, they're able to the nine through 11 guys, which is something I think Cleveland has. Yep. I think the Celtics have to some degree. And OKC has 20 guys. It literally doesn't matter on OKC. They could be like, Oh, Jalen Williams isn't playing fine. We got three more guys. We could just slot in there.

But I do like their depth and they have a little more depth, Minnesota than I was thinking. It also seems like they're getting a little more than McDaniels was starting to look like a possible worst contracts guy, but he got going too. And then, you know, the big thing for me when you're thinking about the late surgers is, do you have like one of the best nine guys? Do you have one of the best eight guys? You have one of the best six guys. Edwards is somewhere in the 10th.

You know, you could have them, you can have them eight, you got nine, wherever. But, uh, during this little 24 game stretch where they're 16 and eight, he's 29 a game, 8.9 free throw attempts and 10.4 threes. And I, I mentioned that because I felt like the, the threes were too high before.

And I want, I, I ultimately like in the playoffs, I think the free throws have to be next to the threes. I want like in a playoff series, I want 10 and 10 from him, something like that. But, um, you know, he has some stinkers every once in a while. He'll have like the six for 19. He'll have the seven for 29. But for the most part, like I'm kind of happy where he's at in this season after the season, where are you at with them?

I think he's ready to be the best player on a playoff team that's going to win one, maybe two rounds. It's hard for me to see them winning two rounds. Just out of respect for the rest of the West. Although one of the more sort of emergent stories with last night is they give the Nuggets a very difficult time. And it's not just last night. I think it's five straight against them. Yeah. And...

It is because Jamal Murray, who has been great, you know, the Nuggets, Jokic, you can set your watch by. This guy's going to be great. But Jamal Murray, they seem to have his number. And I think if you can slow down Jamal Murray, you have a good chance to beat the Nuggets in the playoffs. And I think this team is built to slow down the Jamal Murrays of the world because of their perimeter defenders. And I think Anthony Edwards is just the kind of

fourth quarter crunch time score, go get a free throw, go get a bucket. I think he's there. And I think they're really well-rounded. The last thing I'd add, Bill, is I do like their coaching. I like their coaching staff. I think they're built for a playoff series. I think they make adjustments. I think they're not one of these coaching staffs that just goes in and does what they always do. So I like how they're built. And

And depending on the matchups, which I think is the biggest story in the Western Conference, Bill, going into this last 20 game stretch, 15 game stretch, how these seeds shake out is going to be fascinating. Who gets who in the first round is going to determine a lot of who makes it to the conference finals, because some of these matchups are really good for one side and really bad for the other. And I think that Minnesota Denver matchup is a great example of that. It's a great point.

OKC 68 in their last 24, including four losses of either one or two points, fifth net rating. And they play OKC really well too, which we should mention. Denver, they're built to beat Denver and they have all these athletic wings to throw at Murray and they have size to throw. Not as much size as they had last year with Towns, but they still have a bunch of size to throw at Jokic and

you know, it's just a good matchup for them. Doesn't mean they'll beat them in the playoffs, but it's a nice matchup. OKC was interesting because when they played those games, and I thought those games were really fun to watch, there was a competitiveness, fuck you, athleticism piece that you rarely, the physicality, you saw it. We're going to talk about OKC Boston in a second. OKC, even though I think the myth on them is they're undersized when they're really not anymore or they're skinny athletes,

they're really physical. And I thought, I think Minnesota likes it and they like playing it. And I thought those games, I thought that was a good sign for them that they hung with them. They also have a lot of guys to throw at SGA who nobody has shut down all year, but they probably have the best chance, you know, and then, uh, and they have a guy on their team who's not afraid of any of them. You mentioned the matchups.

So we're taping this in the morning on Thursday and Golden State and Minnesota are basically fighting for the sixth seed. Golden State has 37 wins. Minnesota has 38, but Minnesota's played more games. And there's a world where Minnesota gets six and Denver gets three. And that's our three, six. And Denver's like fucking A. God damn it. Why is that our team? Just the matchups in general, like

Golden State, I'm sure, doesn't want to see Denver at all because Yoka Jones them. Minnesota would be delighted to see Denver. You just go through and it's like what you said. It becomes a little rock, paper, scissory. I was waiting for Houston to drop out

But Houston's kind of hung on here. Houston still has a three-game, three-loss lead over Golden State and a four-loss lead over Minnesota, and they're the five seed. And then the Lakers, who, you know, we don't know how long LeBron's going to be out. That's another team that could potentially drop, but they'd have to drop a lot down the stretch. So a lot of shit going on, but we could end up, listen to this, Goldsberry, we could have Minnesota-Denver as a 3-6. We could have Golden State-Memphis as a 2-7. And we could have Lakers-Houston-Denver

As the four or five with MA and Doka and Dylan Brooks against LeBron, the two guys who have really gone at him in the last two years, that'd be super fun. And then the other one that's in play is the one eight with OKC and the Clippers.

you know, the Clippers trade SGA to OKC. They make this, OKC has their pick this year and there's just all this history between those teams. So that would be the most fun version, I think, of the four matchups. Yeah. Another thing to watch on strength of schedule, because the Western Conference is brutal depending on how your schedule sort of shakes out. The Lakers and the Grizzlies are on the opposite end. They have a very tough remaining schedule. So the Lakers sort of

hanging on to that fourth spot right now, as you mentioned, without LeBron James. The Rockets have won four straight. They could surpass them. You could see a world where the Lakers, the Timberwolves, and the Warriors are really good teams, but all going into these first-round series as a road team. And many of them with championship experience. Obviously, the Warriors and Lakers have some championship experience. So it's really interesting to me. I think

In a nutshell, the hottest teams out West, not counting the Thunder, who've been hot all year, are the six and seven right now in the Warriors and Timberwolves. And that just sets us up for a great, great first round. Not to mention the talent over there, the superstar talent, the all-star talent fighting for these slots is just off the charts. Well, what's funny is Minnesota is a really good road team. They're 20 and 15 now on the road, which I think other than OKC is the best record in the West.

The Clippers are a terrible road team. They're 14 and 20. I don't think the Lakers care where they play and they're going to, they're going to have Laker fans at any, whatever. I think it matters for Houston though. Houston, I kept waiting to fall off. Um, and it felt like it was going to happen a couple of times, but they're kind of lingering around, hanging around. And, um,

Lakers-Houston would be a really, really fun kind of old school, new school series. I don't know how the Lakers are going to hold on if LeBron misses three to four weeks here. And who knows? We've seen him recover really fast sometimes and recover really slow other times when there was less at stake. But when you take him out of it...

But you take his, you take the rebounding defense, second playmaker thing on top of all the other stuff they've already lost. And it just feels like insurmountable for them. Yeah. They lost that game in Brooklyn the other night. And I think that's a fair indication of the kind of game they can lose. Yeah. You know, and again, the West is just jam packed. I think two to five is separated by a game or something like that. So you start losing at Brooklyn.

You're going to drop the rockets. As you mentioned, they're hot. They've won four straight. Uh, they're gonna, they're gonna win, uh, those, those kinds of games. Um, so it is, I think it is fair to expect the Lakers are going to drop and maybe their next ones are at Denver Friday, home sons, home spurs might be able to go two in one of those three home nuggets, home bucks, home bowls. Josh Giddy Renaissance is here. Yeah.

At Orlando, at Indiana, at Chicago, at Memphis, home Rockets. That's the rest of the month. So they have to go 500 in that stage. But do you care if you're the seven seed? So you're probably playing the Clippers in the 7-8 game, right? With real stakes because you don't want to see any part of OKC in round one. And you're playing the Clippers at home.

Like it would suck to be the seventh seed and have the extra game. But if I'm golden state, I'm fine. You know? All right, fine. We'll beat the Clippers in the seven, eight, and we'll just play the two seed. Like it's not a complete disaster. It's a disaster. If you lose them, it's terrifying. You got Kawhi Leonard, Tyloo on the other end. You got one game. I love the plan tournament because it makes these sets up for real meaningful games and

And, you know, I think the executives and the coaches of these teams much prefer the six slot to the seven slot just because of the uncertainty, the stress. Yeah. You're locked in. Yeah. And you get another couple of days to game plan your three seat opponent in a playoff matchup. And that's a huge deal, too. So do you like the 7-8-9-10 or would you go 7-10-8-9?

I like how they have it because if you finish seventh, I think you've got to be twice at home to get kicked out. I like the format. I think the 7-8 format is cool. Win one and it gives you this advantage to get in. What are your thoughts on that? Part of me wonders if it should be 7-10, 8-9, and then the seven still doesn't necessarily...

it's not a win or go home for the seven, 10. They would still get to play the eight, nine with home court, but the way they have it, I think probably makes more sense. And the seven, eight is usually a really good game. I mean, part of the problem with the plane this year is the 10 seat in both conferences sucks.

Like we're it's at least in the, uh, in the West, they have an excuse because of what happened to Dallas, the zombie Mavericks. Yeah. But they're still the 10 seed. The zombie Mavericks was Spencer Dinwiddie. And, uh, I don't even know what center they'd have left and PJ Washington. They might actually be the 10 seed. Phoenix is just like, guys, we've been trying to make this clear for two months. We want to have the season from out. We don't want to be in there, but you go to the, uh,

the East. And it's like, ah, all right, Chicago, that Chicago's 27 and 38. It might be in the, it might be in there. And then you look at Miami who's 29 and 36. They've lost five Joe house on the ringer gambling show for the last two weeks. He's convinced Miami's tanking.

And his thing on the last two weeks on the Marine gambling show is bet against them. Second half live bet against them. They take a lead first half, then they throw it away. Second half. I don't know if that's true, but they're a fucking mess. And bam looks terrible lately. Um, anyway, I think the nine 10 in the East has a chance to be one of the more depressing playing games we've had. Maybe the number one. Yeah. Bulls heat, uh, heat who don't even want their pick.

Right. You just hope that the Orlando Magic, because the Magic and the Hawks, they could be decent playoff teams if they awaken from, you know, these pretty dark stretches. How long do we have to wait for Orlando? Apparently longer than two months. Yeah, so really, Magic are dead. Sucks us out for the year. Like, Magic are a cross-off to me. Atlanta at least has...

All of these wings, when they get everybody back and healthy, and then the random Trey Young, who the hell knows game. Yeah. And they have some size that could always be the Okongwu in a playing game with like 24 rebounds. I feel like Orlando is a cross off. Sorry, Saruti. Oof.

I think the Cavs and Celtics deserve to have a pretty easy first round series. Oh, man. I think they will. I mean, look at this. The Cavs are going to get Orlando, Miami or Chicago unless one of those teams beats Atlanta. But yeah, I think Atlanta is like I'm not going to say they're frisky, but they're 32 and 34. I've watched them a lot. I have a I have an overbet on them. And just in general, I kind of enjoy watching them. And I think they're they're not bad.

You know, they're in the Western. Yeah. With Jalen Johnson, they're a good team. Yeah. The Hawks. Unfortunately, Jalen Johnson out for the year, but you know, this is why you believe in Zach research. This is why I spent the number one pick on him. Um, let's, let's take a break and then we'll talk about, uh, okay. See in Boston. This episode is brought to you by Audi.

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and max wager amount see terms at sportsbook.fielder.com game prom call win andrew gambler visit rg-help.com hey before we talk about okc in boston quickly uh the bottom seven right now washington 13 wins utah 15 charlotte 16 new orleans 18. that's going to be our bottom four for capture the flag then we have philly 22 wins brooklyn 22 wins toronto 23 wins

Russillo's furious. Toronto's making a run at their season over out of nowhere, even though they were supposed to be tanking. So Philly right now is in the five spot. They keep their pick if it's in the top six.

And they're doing everything that they scratch Paul George for reasons that remain unclear for the season and beads out and Philly's going for it. And I think if they get the five spot, it'd be pretty hard for them to get jumped twice. So in a weird way, uh, this could work out for our guy, Daryl Murray, you went to Sloan conference in Boston, weirdest Sloan conference ever.

Well, Dorca Palooza, they did the they named the transaction of the year and the MB extension did not win it. Didn't get it. Oh, wow. It was the Luka Doncic trade. The Luka Doncic trade. The Paul George deal did not get the transaction of the year.

But it was given to the Los Angeles Lakers. But yeah, I got to see the Boston Celtics play the Philadelphia 76ers, more like the Delaware 87ers than the night I chose to attend. Yeah, tough one. Tough one. They're two and eight in their last 10. They are doing all they can, as they should. The saving the season for the Philadelphia 76ers is keeping that draft pick in a good draft position.

That would be really good draft. If you get in the top five in this draft, you're getting like a legit dude. Yeah. And so they have to do this. How crazy would that be after all the hype and buzz about them? If they ended up with like a top three pick, I mean, honestly, that'd be insane.

What were the odds? I guess the odds were actually half decent. I remember even forget the Georgian and the Georgian and beat stuff. They have a pretty good young backcourt and McCain and Maxie here. Like they could have a young core if they hit on this draft pieces. Yeah. So it's, it's crazy. I know the cap they're in cap hell. They are in cap hell for the rest of this decade. But if they have rookie players playing over value, they're,

that's a pretty good deodorant for that situation. The Embiid thing's tough. We've been down this road with injured older centers and you're just kind of held hostage by it for a couple of years. And then somebody will write this story, Embiid's knee feels the best it's ever been. And Embiid, full scrimmage today. And then he plays two games, he gets hurt again. And it's just this cycle you don't want to be in. Washington, Utah, Charlotte, New Orleans. The shocker in that group is New Orleans.

we knew somebody in the West was going to have the year from hell and they were a really good candidate, but to, for them to be in the top four of the lottery is nuts with the kind of talent they have. I mean, honestly, it's crazy. Yeah. They, they're deep. They can survive a few injuries you'd think and still be better than this. So here are my OKC Celtics takes and we might, we might call my dad at the tail end because he went to the game after, after you go, but, um,

First of all, OKC has beaten Boston twice and I watched both games and I thought they deserve to win both games and I thought SJ was the best player in each game.

There was no KP last night, but OKC didn't have Jalen Williams. So I'm not going to make excuses. The free throw advantage was way skewed toward OKC. I thought that was more a result of how both teams played and what they're trying to do. The Celtics took 63 threes, which is fucking absurd. But the thing that has jumped out to me over and over again with OKC is

They play so fucking hard and they're so physical and they're so good defensively and the switching that they do. And they're just so committed to a certain level of intensity and competitiveness. It's going to sound like I'm making an excuse for the Celtics and I'm not.

I think I've watched it over and over again. I think teams have a lot of trouble going through an NBA schedule and then you play OKC and they're playing like they play. And it's like you can see it like the guys. And then the quotes after the game, Tatum said it. Jalen Brown said it like we didn't do a good job of matching their intensity. That's been this is why this OKC team has been so special as a regular season team.

They're fucking animals. You watch them. It's like every guy in the team is completely beasting out, going crazy. They're just like... And if you're not ready for it, you can see it. And you can fight back. You can claw back. They do it again. And they just over and over again make these teams look bad from how hard they're playing. So my question to you is, it's a one night thing that works. Could you get used to it over two weeks if you're playing them in a series? Over the course of seven games, would you eventually...

figure out how to match what they're doing, at least competitively and physically. I don't know if last year is a fair precedent, but yes, you could if you have a really physical, strong front court like the Dallas Mavericks did. That seems like a thousand years ago now. But yeah, it seems like...

They are by far the most physical, nasty defense. And that depth really enables them to play almost like with line changes. They had that perpetual sub story this week. But they have such a great deep bench play.

But as you mentioned, they didn't have Caruso, who's one of the biggest dogs on the team, and they didn't have Jalen Williams. Didn't matter. Didn't notice. Other guys just came in flying around. One of the things that crossed my mind yesterday is that could the second five best players on Oklahoma City be a playoff team by themselves? That's the kind of thing I was thinking, like, oh, my God, this team is so deep, right? You take one of the backup bigs, you take Kaysom Wallace,

You know, you take one of the Jay Williams. They have so much talent. But the coolest thing about them is they're all aligned to play this ferocious defensive style. One of the crazy stats from that game last night, though, is like, OK, the 63 threes. We can talk about that. They play like that and you only get 12 free throws.

The Celtics only shot 12 free throws. Now, Celtics fans might say this or that or the other thing. A lot, like you said, has to do with your 63 threes. It was nine free throws when the game was being decided. So they weren't getting in line at all. They got three at the end. And then here's the stat that I thought

I was looking at it today. SGI, again, was a magnificent player, but he drew 10 fouls himself on the Boston Celtics. He drew 10 fouls himself. He puts you in foul trouble, like it or not. And Jalen Brown was the Celtics player I was most sort of concerned with after this game because he got off to a slow start. He started getting hot in the fourth, but then he entered the fourth quarter with two fouls.

and he fouled out with three and a half minutes left. What happened? SGA got him twice. SGA got him with some of the foul merch and stuff twice, his fourth and fifth fouls. Nobody's going to remember that because they remember him fouling Chet at the end. But he had the fifth foul because of SGA's sort of antics there at the elbow. But...

SGA does that to you. Derek White fouled out at the end. SGA needs a nickname, maybe the bonus, because he's just always drawing. The bonus. Yeah. They're just always in the bonus. When does Jalen Williams and Derek White both foul out in regulation? I don't know. SGA is a pretty good nickname on its own. It's a good acronym, but the bonus is solid. I like that one. Well, it just,

I was looking it up. He's drawn 10 or more fouls by himself like 11 or 12 times this season. Well, it's funny. I was talking to, obviously, have a lot of Celtic fans in my life, some of whom don't watch a lot of OKC. And all the Celtic fans were so mad at SGA for like,

the fucking foul baiting and all that stuff. And it's like, this is, he does this every game. He's the hardest guy in the league to guard, like hands down. Uh, Russell and I talked about it the other day. And we're going to talk about the MVP stuff with him or Yoko. She's having one of the best guard seasons in the history of the league.

And I haven't seen a team figure out completely how to guard him yet. You can throw, it seems like part of the strategy is try to throw bigger guys on him like the Celtics did with Brown. You'd think on paper, with Derek White and Drew Holiday, perfect guys to go against him. But he always gets the matchup he wants. He always gets the shot he wants. He's always either able to get to the rim, get a foul, or do a little pull-up. And I haven't seen anyone stop him yet. And if you're going to make the case for

OKC to win the title. It's like they play harder than everybody else and nobody can stop their best guy. Seems like two pretty good things. Yeah, you can't hate him for what he's doing. I mean, he like we define athletes in different ways. But in the 2020s, we really started to understand that guys who can change direction and decelerate

better than other guys are athletes. Those are the, those are top tier athletes. Uh, we learned that with Luca and Harden. Um, but this guy just makes it so hard to have proper defensive position. Um, even for guys like Derek White and Jalen Brown, who are incredible at that. Yeah. And, and, and,

Then he layers on this off-arm Hardenism where he snakes his left arm when he's dribbling with his right hand into anybody's defensive arms. And then he flails and it's, there it is. And that's what happened to Jalen Brown on first fifth foul last night. So he's, most scorers do this though. That, that, like the thing that the reason I still think Brunson's the best, the best flop foul baiter guy is,

Is he's also doing it off the ball. He's doing it when he's on defense. He's just flopping around like a Marlin. SGA is just purely trying to get to the free throw line. Yeah. Well, there's like whatever trick I can do to get it. I looked it up. There's three guys who are drawing six fouls themselves per game. In other words, they're fouling out the equivalent of a player on the other team every game. And it's, you got Jalen Brunson, your favorite. There's SGA. And then there's the one guy who actually deserves to be on that list, Bill.

which is the most physical assaulting player in the league right now, which is Giannis, who I thought you were going to say Scoot Henderson. Well, and, and Celtics, my guy is back. Scoot Henderson. I'm so excited. He was unbelievable. He looked like Russell Westbrook yesterday.

I was going nuts. Yeah, he's still right. We're good. We're good on the scoot island or whatever we're going to call it. But I would say the Celtics fans also can't complain about this off-arm hijinks that Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown both played. Listen, that game played the hits for things that are going to drive Celtic fans crazy. Tyler Ford as the ref. Just, I think there's a lot of he doesn't like us stuff. The free throw advantage spoke for itself. SJ is super frustrating.

And then Jalen had his worst game in a couple of years, you know, and you can't survive no KP and a horrible Jalen game like that. If you're on positives for the Celts, Tatum was awesome again. I mean, I just feel like he's gone up. We're still, and I, we talked a couple of weeks ago about, I still feel like it's in play that he could make, go to that last level.

Marcelo thought I was being a little too optimistic on it. I think he's at least going up a half level. And I think there's an intensity and competitiveness to that, that I just don't feel like was totally there. That physicality that is just at another level. They're also, Maz is putting a bunch of minutes on him, which I like and don't like, but like he played 45 against the Lakers and I think 42 last night and he wants to be out there. And I think that's the best thing the Celtics have going for them right now.

Yeah, I think bigger win for the Thunder than it was a loss for the Celtics. And same, I would say about that Cleveland win in the same building a couple of weeks ago, that comeback win. That was bigger for Kenny Atkinson and the Cavs to win in that building for what's coming down the road. Again, I don't think there's anything to worry about. If there's one thing to worry about in Boston, it's Kristaps Brzezinski, like get well soon. It's a weird injury, yeah. Yeah, let's get that guy back.

he needs to get there before I make any judgment about where the Celtics are in this title defense. But dude, he hasn't been there.

And that's an issue. We need to get him back in the fold to see this fully fledged Celtics title defense, because I think teams like Boston OKC are good enough to beat them without Christophs Porzingis. I think that's one of the lessons we've learned over the last few weeks that the Celtics team isn't quite as dominant as they were last year. And maybe that there's better candidates to upset them in the postseason than there were last year.

Well, there's definitely hungrier candidates and hunger becomes such a big part of this as the season goes along. I, uh, it's funny, like I'll get texts from people sometimes, or I'll hear it on a show or a podcast and people, we have to do this thing now about, uh, OKC is not getting enough credit. When will people start talking about OKC? First of all, I think people are talking about them and we did this on Sunday. Um,

I'm at the point with this where if you're not taking OKC and Cleveland seriously as the two best teams in the league that have the two best chances to win the title, I just feel like you're not watching the season. They're passing. Cleveland's had two 15 game winning streaks.

I don't know what else they have to show us. That team is awesome. And Mitchell is having a great year. And if like they play OKC in a series, he'll think he's as good as SJ. Like to me, they check all the boxes and OKC. Now that Chet's back, I was one. We're going to talk to my dad, I think later. But my dad came away like he hadn't really seen a great check game in person. Chet's been a fucking beast since he came back, you know, and

I just think they can go small and big. I think OKC is awesome. I think beating them in a series is going to be really, really, really hard, especially with their good home team too. They get a good crowd. It's a weird place to play. Their fans are like really rabid. They affect the game. They affect the refs. And I don't know. I just like they're the favorite on FanDuel for a reason. They have the best team. And they have a guy who can score on every team in the league whenever he wants. That matters. Yeah.

Dude, I'll remember it was Tim's last season. I think I was at the Spurs and yeah, we had the playoff series up there and that place is insane. It's a very difficult place to win. It hurts your head.

That was my takeaway in the 2012 finals. Like I actually had a headache after the home games. It was like, this is too loud. My head hurts. Not to go full Spurs deja vu, but it was like that 2012 Spurs team was so great. You remember that? That the team didn't make the finals and OKC came back with Harden and Ibaka and took them out. The Spurs were one. I wrote the, I wrote the Grantland piece after the Spurs killed the

somebody about how this had a chance to be like a generational team. And I think, okay, see swept them after I wrote the piece, like they just like destroyed them. Yeah. They won game two, like by 30 at home in San Antonio and then didn't win the rest of the series. That building is a very, very difficult place. Well, especially when you have, you're putting young and hungry guys in there. And you know, look, you look at the game yesterday and you go back and watch the fourth quarter, which I did this morning, the Celts missed wide open shots.

a bunch of them in the fourth quarter, whereas OKC actually made some shots. And the big guy you have written behind you, I think because you want to remind yourself to talk about him, was Wallace. Wallace made the two dagger shots of the game. And Wallace was awesome. And Wallace is one of those guys, like I do the trade value list.

I was like, where does this guy go? Cause there's no way they're trading them. What's he worth? Like he, if somebody is like, yeah, we'll do this. We'll give you this awesome player. Give us back Wallace and some pigs. Presti is going to go. No, thanks. You know what I mean? I'm actually going to keep Wallace. Thanks. Thank you though. Thanks for your interest. They can't pay all these guys. And Wallace has written on my board because he, he deserves to be. Cause he, he played really well last night. His starter made those big shots, made five of six.

Great shot blocking guard like Derek White. He loved that. And just another great young two-way player in Oklahoma City. By the way, 21 years old. Born on November 2003. Two years in, they have him at least for two more. SGA, I'm sure, will work with them a tiny bit for salary stuff, but they're going to have to pay Chet

And they're going to have to play Wallace. And they're going to have to play Jalen Williams on top of SGA. That's going to be really hard. Dort and yeah, like Wallace, Isaiah, Joe, Isaiah, Joe. So SGA took his rest at the beginning of the fourth last night. The Celtics were making noise. And then he hit his own like killer three at the top of the arc.

Yeah, the depth. I think this has come up with a couple of the teams we really like out West. Depth is going to be a real separator. It gives you versatility. It gives you sort of injury insurance. And Oklahoma City has the biggest depth. I think your team had the most depth in a way last year. Just could play so well. This year, I think the Thunder and the Cavs can match that. I couldn't agree more. Well, the other thing is,

OKC has way better variables than the Celtics do. If you're telling me I'm getting everybody for four rounds with the Celtics, I feel great. But I have Horford, who's I think 39, who's still playing 28 minutes a game and they're still counting on him in a real way. I have Drew Holiday, who's 34, who's got a fucked up hand.

I have Porzingis who I just have no idea when he's playing and when he's not playing at this point. And it's like a pleasure to see him, but I don't trust that he's going to be out there a hundred percent of the time. I have Pritchard who's hit or miss depending on the game and the matchup. Um, whereas like I look at OKC and it's like, it would really have something weird would have to happen for any of those guys to get hurt. They're all young. They're all, you know, same thing for Cleveland.

It's a mostly young team that's, you know, you'd have like Darius Garland got hurt last year because he broke his jaw, somebody hit him in the head. But I just think the durability and consistency of those young guys, when you combine the hunger piece of it, it's going to be a challenge for the Celtics. This is going to be a way different journey for them this year. Like even right now, they're 2-7. They'll play the Hawks. Let's say the Hawks are the seventh seed.

They'll beat the Hawks. That's not going to be like the most fun series. Like the Hawks are, you know, they're, they're, they're not going to roll over. Then they'll have the Knicks or Detroit in round two. That's not going to be easy. And then they play Cleveland or Milwaukee probably.

And that's before we get to the finals. And I need all my guys to stay healthy the whole time. Like it's, it's just gonna be way harder. Yeah. Well, the, the, the Indiana conference finals last year, right. That, you know, that this is going to be leveled up. Um, so that could be every round. Yeah. And they won last year, which you can't sleep on. Like it's so much harder to do it the second time. Let me ask you this Detroit, New York. If you had to pick that series right now, who are you taking?

So I watched the entire Knicks Portland game last night as my wife and I also watch Paradise. So I had it on the iPad watch going back kind of back. Paradise is the perfect show you can watch while you're also doing something else. The Knicks have had, they pulled out some of these late ones and I kind of think they needed that game last night. I thought Bridges really needed it. Bridges was threatening and just become like this appendage.

And, uh, I thought that was a really big game for them. Towns hit a couple of huge threes down the stretch in the fourth quarter. But, uh, I actually think these, this Brunson injury, which you never want anybody to get hurt, but I think it's a, it's a weirdly okay thing for them because now they have to use this different muscle. I thought they were way too reliant on him.

And now it's like, hey, guys, McHale Bridges is a good offensive player. Maybe you should give him the ball every once in a while. Hey, Towns is a good matchup for the last two minutes of a game. So I think they're going to figure some things out about the supporting cast that's going to help him when he comes back. That's all good. A good analysis. What I see on my my end of the efficiency landscape is over the last 15 games, Detroit has the second best net rating in the entire NBA. I know it's I look at this constantly and it's they're the one outlier where you're like, why is this team there?

It's because they have, you know, Cade Cunningham, Malik Beasley. Malik Beasley turning into Klay Thompson. I don't think many of us predicted that, but he is averaging like 43% from three-point range. He's turning into 2016 Klay Thompson. Yeah, he's shooting almost 10 a game and he's making 43% of them. It's one of the best catch and shoot seasons of all time. And, you know, they are playing great defense in a way that the Knicks are not.

Well, and they rebound. The rebounding is the other thing. They get second chances. They control the boards. They have size and they're nasty. It's like a nasty team. I wouldn't want to play them if I were the Knicks. But, you know, we'll want to see what the Knicks get whole. But anyway, I just thought throw that in there. I like that every guy in the Pistons is ready to get in a fight. Talked about it before, but I just I love their attitude on everything. And by the way, they have a realistic chance to get the four seed.

So we're taping this Thursday morning. Milwaukee's 36 and 28. Indiana's 36 and 28. Detroit's 37 and 29. Yes. And playing better net rating wise, name a stat from the last 25 games. I'm going to look it up right now as we're talking. Just last 25. This is nuts. I have all these bookmarks for the net ratings and I have like 15, 25 and 20 Detroit 69, the last 25 and there's six defensive rating and

They have the second best D, as you mentioned. That's not a small sample size. 25 games is fucking, that's almost two months. It's like seven weeks. And they have a great offensive player. And I know if you haven't gotten a chance to enjoy the Cade Cunningham breakout season, it's appointment television. Wow, it's beyond a breakout. Would you vote for him for most improved?

Most improved. Who are our candidates? I'll give you them right now. Do you have a vote? I can't remember. No, I do not have a vote. I have a vote, so I'm not allowed to bet on this. I always want to mention that. Oh, there it is. Yeah. Oh, he's the favorite. Minus 270. Is Mobley in there? Dyson Daniels is plus 220. Mobley is 100 to 1. Now, I will get... The crazy one is Pritchard as the favorite for six man at minus 240. Malik Beasley's plus 300, which tells me nobody's watching the Pistons.

Cause I would have thought Beasley should be the favorite at this point with how important he is. And he's like their, you know, their number two crunch time guy. And I tied your room is down to 25 to one. It used to be 55 to one. I think he's in there too. And then I guess Nas at 25 to one. I, I don't really think of him as a bench guy because it feels like he starts so much and there's always somebody hurt, but.

He's in there too. Who would you have? Would you go Beasley? No, I'd go Cade because I think it is the most significant. Oh, for improved, you'd go Cade. Yeah. What was the other? Oh, Beasley is six man. Yes. I mean, as a nerd who loves catch and shoot stats, like this guy, this season is incredible. It's up there with the best catch and shoot seasons we've ever seen. Well, you know what? The thing with Beasley that I noticed at the end of games when they're coming out of timeouts and the other team knows they're probably going to run a play with him coming around on a three.

And they're like treating him like he's Clay Thompson in 2016. This is not, this is now like, oh, this is a nice story. We've we're well beyond that. Teams are treating him like he's a real guy because he's been a real guy. Yeah. And what he brings to that team's offense that needs more offense is, um, is very important to their, their recent success. And Kate is a perfect example.

distributor. I love what they're doing. And they are not. I think you're right. Milwaukee and Indiana sort of fading while they're scorching. I don't think they'll end up as a six seed, which should be good news for for Knicks fans. There's just no good stats with Milwaukee. Like last twenty five, they're 12th. Right. Last 20, they're 16th. And then you go.

If we do, yeah. Well, last 15, same thing. Uh, they are, they are Jesus. Oh, nine. That's not bad for last 15. So there's signs of life, I guess. Um, but last, but Detroit's played better for them for seven weeks is I guess the, uh, the big point. Um,

Let's take one more break and then let's do our thing. I'm really excited for this. This episode is brought to you by Vrbo, private vacation rentals. With Vrbo, you always get the whole house so you and your fellow fans can cheer on your team in peace. What's worse than watching a game with somebody who's not rooting for the same team you're rooting for? Nothing. But that's why if you book a vacation house with Vrbo, you know all the people in your house.

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 the Wells Fargo Active Cash Credit Card. This is an ad for the Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game with your mom or grabbing a coffee with your dog.

earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases made with it. Say it with me. The Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at wellsfargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. All right. So when I was in Austin, Texas last month for a live show, we went to your sports business class at the University of Texas in Austin.

Had a bunch of really smart people who had been working for a while on a big project. So you explain what the project was. Yeah. Like, so when the semester began, I'll take you back to January of 2025 and you and Rosillo and a bunch of people were doing check-ins on the NBA vibe. And at that time, the story was ratings are way down. And so we designed a case around what's going on with the NBA and,

what would you do to change it? And we had a bunch of students like 40 or 50 students and we'd work with FanDuel. They'd sent us some of their handle data, which was really interesting. So to go beyond just TV ratings and look at betting handle as a proxy for interest in the league.

Especially the live betting and all that stuff. Yeah, because the theory is like whether you gamble or not, I think we would all admit if there are more bets on a game, that probably means more people are paying attention to it. It might not just be on in the background. People are actually paying attention to it. And the key thing we found right away is that it is a good proxy for interest. It mimics a lot of the TV ratings stuff we saw early in the season, which sort of troughed in December and rebounded with

with that famous Christmas night game between the Lakers and Warriors. And now we're slightly down year over year, but I had the students like, hey, what would you do? What would you recommend to the commissioner of the NBA to improve the popularity of our broadcasts and the overall league itself? So,

Right now, the season is 82 games. It starts on October 22nd this year. It ended on April 13th. It's 24 weeks, 82 games. The play-in is the mid-April. First three rounds of the playoffs this year starts April 19th, ends June 2nd. So it's seven plus weeks for those three rounds. And the final starts June 5th and ends June 22nd. And your students decided what?

Got to start later. Move the start 45 days later in the calendar. Now, the opening day is in December. You still get that Christmas slate and you go into July, Bill. And this is really for one main reason.

which is to get away from the monster that is football, specifically NFL and college football, which hogs all of our attention, it hogs my attention in the fall, it hogs your attention. We think that there's a compelling case for the NBA to consider moving out from under that boot of the football attention. In an attention economy, I think if you play more of your games,

in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, there's a much better chance for better television audiences and other sort of signs of interest. So two things with that. They're launching the season October 22nd. They're going against the World Series. They're going against the NFL season has really kicked into gear. All the teams are starting to play better. It's like the height of college football. The presidential election.

Oh, yeah. Every four years, a presidential election is coming. And they're just popping right in the middle of that. And people are like, cool, thanks. They're going the way they have it structured now. They're basically going against the NFL for the first 11 weeks of the NBA season. So it's like 45 percent of the season. They're just going head to head against the NFL. Now, the playoffs, there's less games eventually.

They have the, I talked about how stupid this was a couple weeks ago. NFL ends, Superbowl ends. The NFL, the NBA has already done their trade deadline. So they lose that whole bump from whenever that happens.

And then they go right to the all-star break. And what happens during the all-star break? There's no basketball and everybody's complaining about how bad all-star weekend is. So that's, that's your first arrival. And then what always happens is we hit the end of February and there's good basketball games and people are like, whoa, the NBA has got really good. It's like, no, the NBA was really good. Actually. You just, you, you were concentrated on the football. So I was like in 45 days seemed like a lot to me.

And I did all these different, I sketched it out a bunch of different ways. And I think 45 days is around the right number. So the first thing I did was 42. So if you move everything 42 days, that's six weeks. Yeah. Right. That starts the season on December 3rd, the week after Thanksgiving. At least that's what would have happened this year. You start December 3rd, 24 weeks, ends May 25th, play in May 27th to May 30th.

First three rounds, May 31st ends July 21st. And then the finals go July 24th ends August 10th. That seems too late to me. I love second. To me, the goal should be, how do we get away from football as much as possible? How do we take advantage of all of June instead of having the finals end on like June 18th, June 19th? Why are we throwing away June? And then could July really work for us? And I think

We both agree it could. And your students, I mean, talk about the case they made for July. Yeah, July traditionally. And we had we were lucky enough. Bob Iger came to our class a couple of weeks before and said there's a metric called H.U.T.'s households using television that traditionally says July is a no fly zone on television. Like that's why there's no new shows.

But with streaming and the changing landscape of media consumption, even he was saying this is no longer the case. Like July is open for business. There's there's streamers that are launching huge shows during the summer now. I think it's a little bit antiquated to say that there's no business case for playing. It's a lot. It's a lot antiquated. Yeah. I don't think this shit matters anymore. The whole model of like.

TV goes from September to May and we have three networks and we release stuff and we have sweeps and like...

It's fucking out. Shows can hit any time of the year. And if you're on vacation, you have you bring your cable package with you. All of us are bringing Hulu or YouTube TV or whatever it is with us wherever we're going. I do think it is a fair criticism, Bill, to say that the NBA finals being in July would be annoying to a lot of the key stakeholders, whether those are the players, the coaches, the

the executives, the people running the buildings, people in Phoenix or Los Angeles might not want to be in town in July. Those kinds of thoughts are relevant here. But ultimately, I think there is a strong business case to be made

that we could play the playoffs in the finals later in the spring than we currently do. That's where I landed. That's where the students landed. And I think it's compelling enough the league should consider it. Well, so there's two big things. One, the number of weeks you could just get away from football is just 100% positive. That's it.

Like you're not equal to football. You're not going to be, it's a way bigger audience. You don't have the gambling fantasy stuff that football has. You don't have the ability for everybody to mobilize around Sundays and football is getting better and better at doing their own schedule. They're better at,

Oh, here's a Friday game. Oh, now we're going to have two Christmas games. Oh, now we're going to tackle Saturday. It's like football is just going to get better and better at killing the NBA during these first two months. So the more you can get away from that, the better. And then I just feel like for the NBA, April, May, June, July should be the peak months and all of July. So one of the things I was looking at

If you moved everything 42 days, but you had a 76 game regular season. So everybody loses three home games, three away games. Sorry, you guys just signed a $76 billion deal. You'll be fine. That would start the season on December 3rd, but ended on May 11th, 22 weeks, 76 games. Play in May 13th to May 16th. First three rounds, May 17th to July 7th. Now we're talking. Finals, July 10th to July 27th.

And now all we've done is we've targeted basically post NFL draft, our three best months of the season. We don't have to worry about the NFL at all. It's out. And the only thing we'd have to worry about is like the freaking Olympics. But I don't think the NBA players should send our guys to the Olympics anyway. So we're fine with that. So I've asked NBA people about this in the past and they said the biggest reason they wouldn't move it is because of the summer schedule.

because we need our summers. It's the two months off. Our kids are home from school, whatever. Counter, you'd still have August. During July, you're working anyway with the Vegas Summer League. That's become like almost a two-week event. I would get rid of Vegas Summer League completely and use that so that we're done July 27th. The draft is July 31st. Tone down Summer League. Don't make it this huge thing.

And then you basically get August and September and half of October off before we get the preseason. That makes way more sense to me. Yeah, I think it would make way more money too. And there's one word that hasn't come up, which explains why it isn't like this already. And that's baseball. When the NBA started, avoiding baseball on the calendar was that era's version of avoiding football now. You know, Mickey Mantle and the Yankees, we can't compete with that. Like let's,

Let's start our season right after the World Series. Like that was the logic. This is now an updated version of that where Mickey Mantle and the Yankees is now Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. And one further point, what did Disney just do?

this week or last couple of weeks is get off of their baseball relationship. That's one of the major media partners and they need inventory later into the spring and summer. There's no Sunday night baseball anymore. Well, let's put, you know, the first round of the playoffs.

into April, May, June, and give them more summertime content for those key moments because they're also strapped down with football for the entire fall too. So I think there's a lot of compelling reasons to think about this from a media perspective and as a league that's trying to gain more eyeballs and revenue in an attention economy that's increasingly competitive and increasingly in the sports world dominated

by both pro football and high-level college football in the fall. Yeah, if you're being smart about this, everything moving later also means the trade deadline is after the NFL season. Your all-star break, an all-star game, if you have one, now that's moving to mid-March, maybe even during March Madness. Maybe you just don't have an all-star game anymore and you just have all-star break is March Madness. I still love Chris Ryan's idea of having all-star break actually just be bye weeks.

with 10 team bye weeks, three weeks in a row, or each set of 10 teams gets one week off. And I would get rid of the all-star game. I don't think it works that they want to have some sort of big corporate event, make that the NBA cup whenever you have that. Um, but the big thing to me that we know we're right is because some of the stuff that they're already doing is a reaction to the fact that football is just killing them. Right. Yeah. Moving the TNT Barkley show, um,

from Thursdays to Tuesdays during the NFL season is a direct concession that you're getting destroyed on Thursday nights. Right. Just period. Doing this NBA cup thing is a direct concession that nobody gives a shit about the NBA in late October, November and December. And you need to do something to be like, Hey, we're over here. They just need to move it. And here's the other thing, Kurt Goldsberry, we know expansion's coming 32 teams.

If there's ever a time to go to a 69 game schedule, it's when they do these expansion teams because 32 games, you play the other 31 teams twice, right? You have four 18 conference, 18 divisions. So you play everybody twice and you play everyone in your division one more time and it's 69 games total. All right. So let's start the season December 10th. Let's end it May 4th.

Let's play a 20 week season. Let's start the play in May 6th and May 9th. Let's play the first three rounds, May 10th to June 30th. And let's start the finals July 3rd and on July 20th with a 69 game schedule. There's no fucking way you can tell me that's not going to be better for the NBA.

If attention is good, then that's better. And I think the other thing you mentioned in there is like make the NBA Cup the all-star game right after the Super Bowl. That's our welcome back to the NBA moment for football. It's such a great format. Shout out to the NBA for adding that. It really makes those meaningful one-game events that the NFL has taught us are so great. But the NBA Cup is a winning event.

addition to the calendar. And I think you're right. I think we could survive

in July. I don't know about summer league in August. That's a tricky part. There will be people who are annoyed. You just have it for the, don't make it as big of a thing as it was and just make it like, if you're going to do a counter on this, the hardest thing to figure out is the college season ends, kids graduate, but you wouldn't be able to have the draft until end of July. So none of those kids would know where they're playing, who they're working out for for

an extra six weeks. That's not nothing. Maybe you have the draft between the regular season and playoffs. I don't know. But that's the only part I couldn't figure out. Well, so let's say, you know, early April, college season ends. You know, if we're not starting until December, who cares if the draft is not till August or whatever? I think that's fine. Right. Those kids are all working out on themselves. All right. Screw the rookies. So,

Just, I'm going to go through this one more time. 69 game regular season once we have 32 teams. Starts December 10th, ends May 4th. We could even say, we'll give everyone an extra week. We'll start May 11th. But let's say May 4th. The playoffs are done. First three rounds on June 30th. Finals goes July 3rd, right before July 4th, which would be cool, through July 20th. And we're done on July 20th. So we basically...

If you shorten the season and then move it and it's a month longer and now I'm concentrating all my best stuff in May, June, July, that's how you win. And this is how they have to think. And if they don't start thinking this way, I'm going to really start thinking that they need the leadership at the top. I know they got this giant media deal, but these are easy fixes that they should do.

Well, and the other thing that I think is starting to percolate out there is this rumor of alternate leagues coming around. And I think that it's not a rumor anymore. It's not a rumor anymore. And I wonder, you know, in an era where live golf came in and the Saudi soccer thing came in, if the league keeps jamming us up with 82 games and making it such a slog, if they don't show some concession to the athletes or the players, you know,

Are they making these rival league potentials more attractive to some of their talent around? And you can call me crazy all you want. I'm saying if you follow soccer or golf, you've just seen this. Those things weren't going to be real until they were. I think there's a real chance the NBA needs to be proactive here. That's what I would say.

Keep being proactive. Don't be reactive here. There's a chance to make the NBA better. And if you look at the numbers, I think it was Lakers Celtics biggest broadcast of the year. Perfect. When did that happen? After the NFL. If you put that game on a wild card Saturday, you're done. Nobody watches that. And you put it instead in March and

And here we have five million people watching it on American television. That's a big deal. That's the kind of incremental improvement we could ramp up across the across the business if we got out of the way of football. Well, one of the cool things that your students did, I mean, there's all this anecdotal evidence we have anyway, that football is just destroying everyone else and that it's an absolute monster.

But then the college football piece, not just NFL, where college football really crests from the end of August, mid-November probably. And then we start getting it. So it's probably mid-November range. So you're going against two monoliths every weekend, right? I just don't know why you would do that if you don't have to. The only thing, my big takeaway, and I didn't really think about it until I was in your class,

It makes zero sense to start on October 22nd, October 23rd, anywhere in October. It's fucking stupid. They shouldn't do it anymore. And if they're going to move, if they want to move it to mid November, even that makes more sense. Right.

But first week of December makes the most sense. And they just have to start thinking that way. And I really think like, if you're just trying to get like basketball NBA nirvana for how a season should go, it should be 69 games. It should start in December and it should end in July. And they're going to win if they do that. One. So one of the people at the NBA told me is like, you know, we came up with the NBA cup as a way to sort of help the owners compensate for a loss of regular season inventory.

And when confronted with the idea, hey, let's go down to 70 games or 74 games. We're going to add this in-season property to compensate for that. We'll sell it to a media partner. The owners, of course, came back with, well, why don't we do 82 games and the in-season tournament and not lose any money? So I think somebody needs to do a better job of convincing owners and players that somehow we're going to

make the same amount of total revenue if we drop the games to 70, 69, whatever we decide. Because right now that's the case that has failed to make it across the table and land with the owners. And that's the simple reason why we still have 82 games. Hey, I have a question. How much fucking revenue do you need? We're going to have guys making $75 billion a year. Like how much is, how much is enough? You just signed a $76 billion deal. Like

Do what's best for the sport. Try to grow the sport. And this is the best way to do it. You mentioned the alternative league. So it's, it's being pushed by Maverick Carter, who's LeBron, one of his business guys. And when I heard about it, I thought it was, I just thought it was bullshit because I didn't think it was real because I thought initially everyone thought those guys were getting the Vegas team.

And then I, I don't, I think it's wide open. I don't think they have any inside track at all. And in fact, there's other groups that I would bet on before them. And I thought this was a ploy by them to pretend they're doing raising Saudi money and blah, blah, blah. And ultimately, all right, we'll drop it. If we get the biggest team, that's not the case. They, they have got a shitload of money for this and a plan and everything I've heard

is that it's kind of real. I don't know if they have all the money yet, but they have enough that could you form a six-team league and convince five, six, seven stars to basically jump when their contracts... I think the contracts would have to be over, but I look at Luka. He's down in 26.

Like that's somebody like, all right, if he's, could this be a live situation? What does he carry? Does that mean loyalty to the NBA? He just got traded. So like, could you pay, could you build a league and have like six, seven Luca type guys? Hey, Luca, here's a hundred million dollars a year. You're playing a 35 game season.

And, uh, and you're going to be the face of one of the faces of this league. Like, I think it's real. And I think the NBA owners are a little more worried about it than I think has been reported so far. Yeah. Imagine a world where you get paid more money to play less basketball and travel around less basketball, way less basketball, right? Imagine a world where you're paid more money to play less basketball, travel around the world, uh,

You get to live if you're Luka. I haven't heard anything, but if you're Luka, you can live in Slovenia and make these flights to Singapore or Manila or Shanghai to play in this touring style F1 almost structured basketball league. Again, anybody who's followed soccer or golf knows that

This could happen. This has happened. So to sit here and say this is impossible is to be naive. And it's also that we're in a world right now where rich people throw money at sports stuff. It's just a fact. We're in a world now where the Saudis and everybody on that side of the world is pumping incredible amounts of money into UFC events.

And the WWE and boxing, like they've completely transformed boxing. To think that they couldn't decide to just do that with basketball is nuts. It's naive. Basketball is legitimately a global sport now in the NBA. It is a global league to its credit. I got to go to Paris and watch NBA games. But there was two games on the continent of Europe all year long. People in the Philippines would kill to see this level of basketball. People in China, people in Europe.

people in Africa, Australia. This is truly a global game, unlike baseball or football. And so I think that makes it even more attractive to somebody to come through and try to disrupt it. Because you know what? Memphis and Cleveland, those are cool cities, but so are Singapore and Shanghai. And there's real money around there. You mentioned that it's a global game. They also have players that I think unlike with some of the golfers,

You have players that have huge social media footprints.

that if they switched leagues or went or did something else, they'd actually be able to promote themselves, you know? And it's like, I remember when, uh, when my contract was almost up with ESPN and it seemed like people thought I was going to leave and they were writing about it. It's like, well, you can't leave ESPN, can't leave the machine. It's like, guess what? And then all of these people over the next 10 years, including myself, were able to leave and start stuff. And it's like, you don't need the fucking machine. I don't think the basketball players need the machine.

I think if they were part of another league, I think people would pay attention to it. Dude, down here in Texas, there's like more than one of my friends, multiple friends, Mavericks fan friends that are not joking when they say I'm rooting for the Lakers this year. Right. Like maybe these brands aren't as strong as...

we think they are in the, in the social media era where you say, Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm a players. Yeah. Shout out to Jason Gallagher's kid again. I mean, like that's the future. I'm just going to kid just repeated mentions of the pod. You're right though. They're just going to follow. They'll follow him there. And guess what? They'll probably follow him too. When he's playing for the Singapore giants.

That's what soccer's taught us, dude. I mean, that's exactly how these kids follow soccer. They're Ronaldo or they're Messi or they're Mbappe and they're going with them wherever that's going. Why wouldn't that happen to these athletes that are just as popular?

Well, I'll tell you this. The NBA has to start taking all this shit seriously. They're throwing away the first two months of the season every year. The season's too long. Nobody likes it. The players don't like it. There's all these solutions that they're unwilling to explore. They're going to add two teams and somehow keep an 82 game schedule, which is fucking stupid. And they have all this money that they already got.

That allows them now the luxury to rethink this whole system. And that's how they should be thinking. And if they're not thinking that way, they need new people to run the league. And one last, one last point about the 82 games. It's more than just too much inventory load management. If you look at the data load management really annoys fans. People don't want to turn on TNT like we did for that Celtics Sixers game the other night and see the main red claws and the Delta where Delaware 87ers. Yeah. Uh,

One of the reasons that happens is we're putting too many games out there. If we had fewer games, there'd be fewer load management situations. We would have full teams playing each other. The product would be better managed.

on average. Well, you'd also have a situation like Philly is now punted on their season. You don't have to watch the zombie Sixers for the next two months, not give a shit. Like, all right, we're, we're out way sooner, you know, simulation mode you can enter. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I think that's a big thing, Bill. I think the shorter season where games feel more like events, uh,

It takes a little blind faith to see that that could get you to more revenue. But I love your point about, hey, well, you just locked up this huge media rights deal. Do you really need a lot? People are paying the most money they've ever paid for your teams. Like this is a time now to be proactive.

and try to get better at stuff. And that this is going to require real vision. And it's not just like, we've come up with the NBA cup. We've added a new event to all-star weekend on Saturday. It's like, we're not talking about that. Like you have a chance to actually fix it. All right. Kurt Goldsberry was fun to sit in your class. Shout out to your students. That was a great presentation. Uh, I will see you soon. Sad. Everybody in Austin. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn.

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Watch Nine Bodies and a Mexican More streaming now on MGM Plus with new episodes Sundays. By the way, great movies at MGM Plus. All right, my dad is here complaining to me all during the OKC Celtic game. It's been a tumultuous year for him. He just adopted a new puppy. Lost, sadly lost Sally a couple months ago. You thought you were going to be a one dog family. And then all of a sudden you're telling me you're getting a puppy.

Ruby is the name, and now you're up with a puppy that's peeing on pads and scratching you and biting you. Was it worth it, I guess is my question. - Yes, I think. I'm just watching it 'cause she's been peeing on the floor all morning. - Oh good. - Yeah, actually last night was good. She got up at two o'clock, she did her business, went back to bed, woke me up at 7:30.

She's only 10 weeks old. Sounds great. Yeah. I mean, like you said, Molly, my wife, Molly can bring the puppy when she's 10 years old to the nursing home to visit. It's going to work out great. All right. Good. Congratulations. So you went to the Celtic game last night and you hadn't seen this version of OKC in person. What was your take? What was your in-person takeaway of the Thunder?

A couple of things. It's the best team I've seen all year come into the garden in person. They seem to have 20 players that they just rotated in and out. I didn't know half the names of the players on the team. They just came in. They played great defense, whoever it was. They got rebounds. They passed well.

They didn't settle for the three. They only took the three when it was open and they had no lane to the basket. But they went to the basket a lot. I don't know if you saw the free throw disparity. They had over 30 free throws left yesterday. And they earned them. They went to the basket. They were physical.

Meanwhile, we were terrible. We just settled for three-point shot after three-point shot. Nobody wanted to go to the basket. Jalen Brown had one of those horrific games that he occasionally has. Fouled out, which is so unusual, but he made dumb fouls. And on top of it, it was my least favorite referee crew. So when I saw who the refs were, I was thinking, wow.

You know, this is a big game for the NBA. It's on, you know, you think they could have brought in a good crew and, uh, I wish I should mention my dad's not a Tyler Ford guy. So if you see, if you see Tyler Ford doing a Celtic game, just know my dad's upset immediately. Yeah. It couldn't have just been me the whole game. The Celtics were, I know we complain a lot. The Sox complain a lot on the floor, but,

There were some really horrendous calls last night. And the disparity. You're the home team. Even though you're not going to the basket, you should get a few calls, right? Yeah, see, all the Celtic fans were saying this, but we shot 63-3. So at that point, you're probably not going to get a shitload of free throws. You weren't going to the basket enough. I also think, Kirk and I talked about the game a little bit, but I left some stuff for you. I thought Dort was like the worst possible guy to guard Jalen.

I thought Jalen could not solve him at all. He's just strong. He's smaller. And he just couldn't figure him out. Yeah. It was so ironic after watching what a good job Brown did in the previous game on defense. And in this game, he not only did a poor job on defense, but

Dorff killed him. You know, he's built like a linebacker. He just really out-muscled him. I know everybody's talked about what great shape Jalen Brown is in from working out all summer. And, you know, he is a pretty big guy. But Dorff made him look small. It was a frustrating game for everybody.

So this is 51 or 52 years season tickets for you. This is my 51st year. How many guards have you seen in person that were better than SGA? Oh, I mean, Jordan, obviously. Yeah. Would you, would you put him on like the, like second highest level, highest level? Like he's unstoppable. Um, and we were throwing everybody at him. Yeah. He's, he's in the top 10, obviously. Um,

I've not seen him in person because I didn't go to the game last year against OKC. He was unstoppable. And also, he's fluid. Like, he goes to the basket, looks like he's going to be contained, and gets the shot up somehow. He has a lot of tricky shots, too. And they all go in. If I'm a defender, I'm really frustrated trying to guard that guy. He was really good.

I already mentioned that he has my MVP vote. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you got a vote this year, but I'm going to pass it along anyway. I thought because I was in the documentary, I got a vote this year. No, you don't get a vote. The SGA, the inability for us to control him reminded me of Andrew Toney a million years ago. I was thinking of some of the other, because I remember we went to that finals game in 08.

When, uh, when they beat the Lakers that year, but Kobe, there was that game too, when the Lakers started coming back and Kobe all of a sudden was unstoppable for like two minutes. And there's the crowd. You can feel the energy kind of die. Cause you're going, Oh my God, what do we do? Um, SGA is a little bit like that. Like I was thinking about a series against him.

And you'd think like with Holiday and Derek White and then some size with Brown and Tatum, this is the right kind of team to stop him. But I'm not sure anyone's stopping him this year. Well, I will have a caveat though.

He goes to the basket frequently. I mean, he has a very nice, obviously a good outside shot, made a couple of threes, but his game is going to the basket. Right. No Porzingis? Are you going there? Yeah. Porzingis would have made a difference in the middle. We got out-remounded, out-hustled. They played a two-big lineup and our two bigs were Horford and...

Yeah, Luke Cornett. Luke Cornett. And we just didn't match up very well. But it wasn't just that. They're a driving team. And they had a lot of layups. And I know Porzingis would have made a difference out there. Yeah, but the problem is, and you and I talk about this constantly, like Porzingis has hit the point where it's exciting to have him.

You notice when he's in the game and he just hasn't played enough and there's this reason, that reason, another reason. And now I'm at the point where you think about having to get through the Knicks and Cleveland and OKC potentially. I don't think they can win all three of those rounds without Porzingis. And I have no idea if he's going to be available. I agree. I was just reading. He's missed seven of the last eight games. And the one game he did play, he was limited minutes.

And it's very mysterious. He has this virus that they can't find out what it is. He was at the game last night, all dressed up, sitting on the bench. He looked great, but he wasn't playing the game. I don't get it. You've gone to a lot of these games. What's up with the, why aren't they better at home this year? What is it? Too many threes. They get three happy at home. They don't seem to

That's one thing. They don't go to the basket as much. The other thing that I've noticed is they always start slow. It's like they didn't wake up yet. Last night was a prime example. It was 9-0, and they took a timeout. Now you have nine points you have to make up. And what did we lose by? I think we lost by seven or eight. I don't know why the slow starts. I don't know whether...

I don't know what's going on there. They, you know, if you noticed last night, our first 10 shots were three-point shots. Yeah. If they're not going in, that leads to a defensive rebound, a fast break by the other team, and suddenly they're scoring. And we don't work the ball inside when Porzingis isn't there.

I mean, the thing is, if I showed you, if you didn't even watch the game and I just showed you the stat sheet and it was like, I shot 63 threes and 12 free throws. Like, ah, we lost. Like, that's just, that's a guaranteed loss. The guy in front of me, Mike, said to me, it was almost the end of the first quarter. He said, you know, we haven't taken or made a two-point shot yet. Every shot was a three or a free throw.

You can't win against a team like OKC playing that kind of basketball. It's hit or miss. Can you give us your Tatum? You've watched every season of Tatum's career you've been going. I feel like he's gone up half a level. I thought he was awesome in the Laker game. I thought he was really good last night. It certainly wasn't the reason they lost. And in general, feels like he's gone up a notch. So what are you seeing in person?

I feel I agree with you. He's gone up a notch. It's the best season he's had that I've seen him play. He's like a general out there. He controls all of our offensive action. You know, it's every game he takes three or four shots he kind of wish he didn't take that maybe. And I don't know whether...

Too many times going to the basket, you don't want to be hit every time you go in there. But it seems like every time he goes to the basket, he can score.

I like when he goes to the basket, but then pulls up and takes that 15 footer. I feel like that's unstoppable. It's been unstoppable the last month or so, but he doesn't do it that often. He'll more often settle, you know, he'll be out three point line. And all of a sudden I look up and the shot clocks at six seconds, five seconds. And he takes that fall away pretty long three point shot and it's hit or miss. He doesn't have a good percentage on that.

I'd love to see him go to the basket more. Maybe if Porzingis was out there opening the lane up a little bit. OKC really clogged the lane with their bigs. There wasn't a lot of room to drive, which I understand from why they took so many threes. But you would have been frustrated sitting at that game. Yeah, I didn't enjoy watching it on TV. I mean, the biggest thing that shifted this year is we left last season Tatum and Brown were kind of 1A, 1B. Yeah.

And Tatum has really, and it's not, Jalen's has had some good stretches and some bad stretches, but Tatum,

the amount of stuff that he's doing game to game on both sides is he's also the best rebounder on the team. He defends everybody on the other team. He runs the offense. I think he's having an awesome season. Like to me, he's clearly the number three MVP and there's, there's some Giannis people are like, well, Giannis is 30 and 12 and six, but I just think the Celtics are more successful and Tatum has as big of a burden. And he's also running the offense. Yeah.

There's a couple of other trends that I noticed. You know, it was the fourth quarter, middle of the fourth quarter, and Jalen Grant had four points and five fouls. That's your highest paid player.

You can't get that out of that guy. You're trying to light a fire under Jalen Brown right now? I didn't understand his game last night. The other thing, you and I have talked about it. Their bench. OKC's bench was terrific. Our bench wasn't. I know when you have a starter out, everybody moves up a little bit, but...

I love Pritchard and I love Hauser, but in really big games against really good teams who have a good defense, they shut him down. Yeah, I agree. I agree. That's why I don't think Pritchard, he's favored to win six man, but I've just seen too many games where I don't think he's impactful enough. Whereas like Cleveland, that Ty Jerome will come in and he'll just swing the game when he comes in. There's games where Pritchard doesn't do that. But I also think the amount of money they're paying for

the top six guys in this team, it's really hard to have a bench. It's just hard to find that ninth, 10th, 11th guy when you're shelling out the amount of money that they're paying. So it makes sense. But I agree. I thought OKC just seemed so much deeper last night.

OKC did something else that the teams that are beating us seem to be doing. They're picking us up almost at half court. Trying to put miles on Tatum. Yeah. Yeah. And pushing us out, pushing us out further and making us...

And by doing that, when you look up at the shot clock, it's 10 seconds to go. By the way, we did that to the Lakers on Saturday. That was one of the big reasons they were making Luka and LeBron really work just to bring the ball up, which I don't understand why more teams don't do against them. Yeah, that's why Brown was so effective against Luka, against the Lakers. Brown was on Alexander last night quite a bit.

But he's a different kind of player than Luca. Yeah, he's too crafty. In person, he's very slight. You don't expect him to be... He gets a lot of rebounds. He slithers through the lane. Very few players I've seen. And Brown couldn't stop him. So would you have us...

You saw a Boston-Cleveland game in person, too. Yeah, yeah. Would you have us third with those three right now? Right now, I would. Yeah, I would, too. Well, for kind of a different reason. I know that OKC had a... The Williams kid didn't play last night, but...

Cleveland is 100% healthy usually this year. And you and I talked about it. I thought they made a couple of great additions for their bench. Yeah, we like Hunter. I always loved Hunter. And when Jerome was on OKC, I thought he's a great guy off the bench. So who gets them both? Cleveland. Right. I know they had Kaplan. And that's like you said earlier, that's where we...

have a difficulty when our six players make so much money at the top. What's the Patriots fever right now with the free agents and the number four pick? Well, I think people like the additions. Yeah. With the exception of

why haven't we signed a receiver and why haven't we signed an offensive tackle? And, uh, like the paper today that cam, I don't, I can't say I've ever seen cam Robinson play except he is a left tackle and maybe a plug them in for a year. Yeah. It's tough. It's tough when the case for somebody is he has two arms, two legs and a head and he plays left tackle. All right. 20 million. Let's give him a chance. Yeah. Uh, a Cooper cup from, uh,

The Rams? Do you think he's done? I think it's a wrap. There's some bad stats with him about getting open year by year the last five years, where last year he just doesn't get open anymore. We don't need another guy who can't get open. We already have five guys who can't get open. Here's where I've talked myself into.

Well, first of all, I'm praying the Giants take Sanders because they don't have a quarterback and it seems like Rodgers might go to Pittsburgh and they haven't done anything else. So it's like, please take Sanders. I am all in. I'm planting my flag on this because they don't need Graham because they beefed up the defensive line. I'm all in on Travis Hunter. I'm all in on taking him at receiver at four.

And then maybe in the dime packages, he comes in and plays some D-back. But just can you turn him into a top five receiver? I think you could. That's your number one receiver. You also have the flexibility. Maybe he can play on the other side of the ball a little bit. It just seems like he's a sure thing. I want a sure thing at the number four. I want like a blue chipper who would be a $35 million player a year someday. That's what I want.

I agree with you. It seems like there's two short things, Hunter and Carter. And it would be fabulous to have Carter on a defensive line with the additions we've made. Otherwise, trade back. If you don't get one of those two, trade back. Trade back. And maybe take one of the other tackles at 10 or 11 or somewhere in there. I do love the Drake May-Hunter idea. It would be super fun. But I think this has been a really fun draft to follow, especially like...

We just need two teams to take a quarterback ahead of us. And then it shoves the guys down. You're just watching the Giants not get anyone, not make the Stafford trade, not get a free agent. I'm feeling optimistic that, you know what happens in these drafts? Teams get really anxious. I don't have a quarterback.

And there's two quarterbacks sitting there. I'm not going to be at all surprised if we don't see the Giants take the quarterback. They have no quarterback. I can't wait. It's going to be the most exciting draft we've had in a while because to pick this high and potentially have it work out. Marshan, can we talk Marshan for a second? Yeah. I hate the way the Bruins...

Let our 16 year old, 16 year veteran captain of the team just walk away somewhere else, especially to an arch enemy team. That was the worst part for me was Florida. Just come on at all the teams. That's who, that's who you're going to trade them to.

Well, the other thing is they gave a crazy amount of money to Lindholm. Yeah. The forward or center forward. And he's terrible. So we know Marshan gives 110%. Yeah. He's our second leading scorer. Was our second leading scorer. Pony up some money. And he's a legend. He's going to retire as a Hall of Famer, all that stuff. It's the part of sports that I hate.

But it's the Danny Ainge thing, right? Where Danny Ainge used to say, if I was running the Celtics in the late 80s, I would have traded Bird and McHale and started over. You can't be loyal to the memories. He traded Kevin Garnett in 2013. It's like the best thing for the team is to make the move, but

I don't know. You get like a late pick in the first round. It's not like this is making or breaking your future. Well, it's not even a first. It's a second round. It's a conditional second that can turn into a first. Yeah. I just think that Marchand was not the guy you traded.

You work it out. Or you let him stay here until the end of the year. We're not going anywhere. Is cousin Brian all right? I know he took this one hard. He did take this one hard. There's nobody left. I mean, who's going to be the... Well, Pastor next to your number one jersey in the stands now. But other than that, nobody left from early 2010s, that whole run. Right. No, the...

The irony is I think within the two weeks that they traded Marchand, they identified next year's ticket prices, which they raised quite a bit. So the timing was terrible. I also...

Don't you think that Neely and Sweeney are on thin ice in terms of where we're headed and the moves we've made over the last five years? Well, it's a whole generation now that they won the cup, though.

the month I started Grantland. Right. That's a million years ago. You know, it's like, uh, you have like 20 year old kids now that barely remember it. It was for me, it was two dogs ago. Right. That's how, yeah, I forgot. That's how you measure dog years or living dogs. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Uh, cause they have that. And then the other thing is the Celtic sale that somebody today, did you see it?

There's four left. The four left, yeah. And the bids are, the final bids are coming in Friday. There was five and Lurie dropped out. The Eagles owner, I think he, I think like pretty soon after the Super Bowl was out. I thought they thought, they thought there was going to be five. When they look, they had a lengthy write-up in Boston Globe about that. It doesn't look like anybody has the means to,

to pay for this team without a lot of backup support. So that's one of the things about, well, one of the things is nobody knows the composition of all the groups. So you have all these minority partners who are going to throw money, but nobody knows what side they picked with the four left and who's on whose team. So it's, it's a lot of, uh, but tying to the Bruins, I think part of the play would be you'd build a new arena, uh,

And so you're paying for the team, but then you also know, like in the 2030s, there's going to be some sort of basketball arena that you build that's like what the Clippers did. So it's really, you're like 10 billion all in. So you need like capital behind that. But for the Bruins, it's not great because they're going to be stuck in this other building. They'll be the only tenant in seven years. And then the team hasn't been, you know, it's definitely arrow pointing down. And it's a building that's going to be 30 years old soon.

Isn't that crazy? Remember driving by the garden and just seeing the carcass of half of a stadium for that whole winter in 94? I remember almost 30 years ago after we'd had our tickets in the old garden, 20 years plus.

Them taking me into this new garden to pick a seat 30 years ago now. And I know they've done as much as they could refreshing it, but it is what it is. It's not like the new arena. Like you've been talking about the Clippers place, how spectacular it is. Yeah.

No, I think the Lakers are in the same boat. The Staples was built, I think, in like 99 or 2000. It's quote unquote state of the art, but it's really not. It sucks. And now they're in this, what do you do? And you have the Clippers who have this incredible arena. So I know that's going to be a piece of the Celtics purchase. You have to think arena. But you know, Boston as well as I do, there's no land. I mean, there's one part that if you go back and you read

Remember when we were going to have the Olympics in Boston before it got shut down? They had a whole plan for where it was going to be. And one of the big locations was going to be on 93 past where Emerson is going toward Quincy and the Cape. And there's this whole section. Yeah. And I think that's where the arena would go. I think that's the location. And I think it's open. So whatever...

It'll definitely, something's definitely going to happen over the next 10 years. But that the big thing for me with the Celtics sale is like, Pag Luca is one of the four guys left. He's the number two owner right now. He's the one that if he gets it, you have the stability, you keep the organization intact. If the other three guys don't,

Any of those guys get it. Who knows? They just come in like, here are my ideas. I'm bringing in my own guys. And you could have just complete dysfunction. Yeah. And that really worries me. It's like the year John Y. Brown came in from Kentucky. You know, people come in from outside of Massachusetts and

They come in with their whole group, different ideas, you know. Well, they all want to do their one thing. And then you end up in the Luka Doncic situation where you have the new Dallas owners. Yeah, let's trade them. We get Anthony Davis and a pick, Max Christie. Well, the other thing we've talked about it, if they don't have deep enough pockets, Brown's probably on his way out the door.

The tax bill is pretty crazy. It is crazy. Yeah. I think like some of it will depend on what happens in the playoffs, but yeah, I'm, I'm prepared as a fan. I'm prepared. And you are too. Like, I don't know what's going to happen. You're going to have this new owner group paying six plus billion dollars. The team, let's say they don't win the title. And then they're looking at a tax bill of $200 million on top of what they just paid. And it's like,

All right. First move. I've decided to do this. God only knows what that's going to be. They've already, we just got our packages a couple of weeks ago for season tickets for next year.

significant increase in ticket prices. Oh, really? Yeah. And I understand, you know, we wanted to wire you some money. I just wanted to mention it. All right. I'll flag it. I'll talk to my guy. I read online yesterday that you signed a new contract. Well, yeah. Might have some extra. So they jacked it like 10%? Oh, it's a good... Each seating area has a different percentage, but...

I just wanted to mention it, you know, as long as we're talking. Well, you, we have the episode three of Celtic city, which spoiler alert, we, you popped in, we interviewed a hundred plus people. We interviewed some old season ticket holders, but that first year you bought the, you bought your ticket. It was four bucks. $4. Yeah. $4 for the 73, 74 season, $4. So now it's like, what is it now? Like, like 400 a ticket? Well, no, not that high.

Is it up there? We can talk after. Jesus. They flex the tickets. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. So there's no one price for the seat for one game. You come in and you see Dallas now, one of the terrible teams or New Orleans. It's a totally different price than the Lakers, for example. And Philly, they could probably, when Philly comes in again, they could probably tank those tickets and knock them down.

But, you know, it's understandable that they raised the prices. - Yeah. - On the Bruins end, it's not understandable for the product they're putting out and the fact that they let their captain go. - Yeah. It's funny, like when you had, we used to go to the games in the 70s and it was all blue collar, all like just the most normal people possible. And then the 80s, we just started watching them go away one at a time. - Right, yeah.

I remember the guy with the hat, with the mustache, like that guy who's, and all of a sudden he was gone. And just, and it just, and then by the time we got to the fleet center, it was just completely different. Yeah. Big bird with the sun. Yeah. All the regular, Mary in front of us, all the regulars. There's a new group of very nice people. Yeah. It's a different group. There's still some old timers there though. Yeah, there are. Yeah. Yeah. But you're like, I think you're like in the top six of longest runs now or top five.

Yeah, I should be. I think... Should honor you at halftime or something. Well, they mistakenly...

say that this season Tickleville has tickets 55 years, but he got them from his brother who passed away. Right, right, right. It sounded like it should be straight through. Yeah. I mean, I consider that the same way the Lakers count the Minnesota title. Right? Yeah. Right? It's the same thing. Right. We had that in the episode two of Celtic City. They mentioned how the Lakers trying to win their first title in Los Angeles and

you know, they're not counting the Minnesota titles at all. And then somewhere in the eighties, all of a sudden they're like, yeah. And those five titles we won in Minnesota. I'm sure like if OKC wins the title this year, they're not going to be like, it's our second title following the one we won in Seattle. They're not going to say that. Yeah. I think it's crazy. I guess where they've been Minnesota Lakers. So they changed, they didn't change. Minneapolis Lakers. Minneapolis Lakers. So that's, that's what they hang their hat on, I guess.

You live out there. I mean, you should have an argument with some people about, they probably have 12 titles. I'll tell you the Luca thing is maddening because they love Luca and that energy at the home games is completely different already. And this is like LeBron, like obviously most part, one of the most popular NBA players of this century and one of the most famous and one of the best, but he's been on all these other teams and, and,

it's always year to year with him and he's a Laker, but it's, it's a little more of a hired gun. They look at Luca and they're like, this guy's 25. Like this guy might be in our life for the next 15 years. Like you can just feel the energy shift. So when Zoe's date shows up at the front door with a Luca Jersey on, that's it. That's the door gets slammed. That's not happening. Don't worry. Don't ever worry about that. Okay. All right.

Good to see you. Congrats on your dramatic debut in episode three, Celtic City. I still can't. I still haven't hired an agent. Yeah, probably not. I don't think you need to. Okay. All right. All right. Good to see you. Thanks, Dad. You too. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kirk and my dad. Thanks to Kyle and Sarita and Gahal as well. Don't forget, new rewatchables coming Monday, Prestige TV Sunday night, White Lotus recap, and...

And you can get all this as video podcast on Spotify, which is what you should do. I will see you on Sunday with Priscilla. Have a great weekend.

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