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Episode: Part 1: An NBA Popularity Check and Tyson’s Big Comeback With Wosny Lambre and Van Lathan
Author: The Ringer
Duration: 01:32:22
Episode Shownotes
In Part 1 of a two-part podcast, The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Wosny Lambre to discuss whether tanking in the NBA is possible with as much talent as the league currently has, the new-look Knicks, the serious Cavaliers, and the confounding 76ers (2:07). Then Van Lathan joins Bill
and Wos to zoom out on the NBA and wonder whether it's in a better or worse spot now than in other eras (31:29). Finally, they discuss the upcoming Jake Paul–Mike Tyson boxing match and remember Tyson's turbulent career (1:01:51). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Wosny Lambre and Van Lathan Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Summary
In Part 1 of The Bill Simmons Podcast, host Bill Simmons is joined by Wosny Lambre and Van Lathan to discuss the current state of the NBA, focusing on team dynamics, player roles, and the rising celebrity status of athletes. They analyze unexpected performances, particularly from the Chicago Bulls and the evolving Knicks and Cavaliers, while debating the difficulty of tanking in a talent-rich league. The conversation also covers Mike Tyson's boxing comeback against Jake Paul, reflecting on his storied career and the cultural significance of both sports. Overall, the episode emphasizes the changes in player accountability, team strategies, and fan engagement in today's NBA landscape.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Part 1: An NBA Popularity Check and Tyson’s Big Comeback With Wosny Lambre and Van Lathan) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker_00
What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at The Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year-round with all my NFL draft information.
00:00:13 Speaker_00
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00:00:21 Speaker_00
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00:00:31 Speaker_00
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00:00:39 Speaker_00
In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week.
00:00:47 Speaker_00
So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, and get ready for the McShay Show on the Ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts.
00:01:00 Speaker_02
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00:02:01 Speaker_01
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00:02:06 Speaker_02
We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Put up a new Rewatchables on Monday. We did Meet the Parents. You can watch on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch a whole bunch of Rewatchables podcasts on that as well.
00:02:19 Speaker_02
You can watch all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. We got a two-parter today. I don't know, lot going on.
00:02:26 Speaker_02
Wanted to talk basketball and wanted to talk about the Tyson fight and why NBA ratings are going down as interest seems to be going up. So I have Big Waz, I have Van Lathan, they're joining us for part one.
00:02:38 Speaker_02
And then part two is gonna be a football podcast that's going up later tonight after. I wanna see what happens with that Eagles-Washington game too. So part two will go up much later. Part one's going up early.
00:02:49 Speaker_02
And let's bring in our friends from Pro Jam. All right, Big Waz is here. We're taping this 12.30 Thursday afternoon. Last time I saw you, we were doing the League Pass rankings. Yep.
00:03:20 Speaker_02
And trying to figure out who we like the most, who we were the most excited to watch. What's changed for you since the season has started? Has there been a team jump out? Has there been somebody that captured your fancy?
00:03:32 Speaker_02
Has there been a new League Pass mistress for you that you didn't expect to be cheating on with some of the other favorites?
00:03:38 Speaker_06
Yeah, it's, and I owe a big apology to Justin Verrier, it's the Chicago Bulls.
00:03:44 Speaker_02
Oh, look at you.
00:03:45 Speaker_06
They thought the Bulls were gonna be fun, and Josh Kitty was gonna have this new role, and DeMar DeRozango was gonna open things up, but like, they've been way better than I could have expected. Obviously, they beat the Knicks last night. Yeah.
00:03:59 Speaker_06
On a crazy last-second foul on a three-point shot. But they're just so well-coached. Kobe White's hair got fouled.
00:04:06 Speaker_02
I know. I really think that's what happened. I thought he hit his hair. I've never seen that before.
00:04:11 Speaker_06
That is what happened. I don't think he actually fouled him. But you know, he airballed the shot to make it look like he got hit pretty bad.
00:04:19 Speaker_06
But yeah, it's Kobe White, it's Zach Levine, who I don't know if he's found clarity in his role on the Bulls or if he's really dying to get traded. Um, because he was so unhappy this offseason.
00:04:31 Speaker_06
Like, I just thought, you know, they lost their most consistent player in DeRozan. Zach Levine has been sulking for like a year and a half. Um, they're bringing in Josh Giddey, ushering a kind of youth movement kind of thing.
00:04:45 Speaker_06
I just thought they would stink, and it's been the opposite. And Vucevic, He's been playing some of the best ball of his career. He's taking and making threes. Like, the guy looks rejuvenated.
00:04:53 Speaker_06
They've been, to me, the team that has kind of jumped off the screen. Like, wow, I thought you guys were going to be horrible, and you're way better.
00:05:02 Speaker_02
They're 5-7, which sounds like it's bad, but that's the sixth seed right now in the East. I'm with you, I was thinking about it last night, watched that Knicks game.
00:05:11 Speaker_02
Everything they seemed like they wanted to do on paper, including pick up the pace, play with some pizzazz, it's all happening. I think they're a really, really frisky 5-7 team. And Levine, yeah, I get it. He was upset about whatever he's got.
00:05:29 Speaker_02
I don't know what he's upset about. He's certainly got an amazing contract. But you watched him last night against the Knicks, and my thought was, this is actually a great situation for him.
00:05:40 Speaker_02
He's got guards that push the ball that are pretty, Giddey's pretty unselfish, right? Kobe White, I don't think is like a Trae Young, monopolize the ball type guy, and just seems like Levine's in a nice spot.
00:05:51 Speaker_02
And what stuck out to me yesterday, they win the game on that weird Kobe White foul. get the Brunson toilet bowl in and out to win it. But you watched the way their bench was celebrating. It actually seems like they liked each other. Last year did not.
00:06:05 Speaker_06
No, it was, man, last year was toxic as hell by all indication when you talk to people who was in and around the team at that time. And I think with Vucevic and Patrick Williams, who I'm still like, whoa, what were they thinking with that contract?
00:06:20 Speaker_06
Yeah, he's like one of those, What do you do? I don't know if it's the three or the D. What's your specialty? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out. But he's been a more willing shooter.
00:06:32 Speaker_06
And like with Vucevic finally being a stretch four, Levine is playing with like a really spaced out floor in front of him. And the guy is really talented. Like he's not afraid. Well, this year he's not been afraid to take it to the basket.
00:06:48 Speaker_06
And there were just some isolation plays last night. in the fourth quarter, where it just felt like the Knicks had no chance against Zach LaVine, which like, when's the last time you've said that about Zach LaVine? He looks incredible.
00:07:01 Speaker_02
And then, you know, the Knicks- Wait, hold on on Zach LaVine, because I want to talk about the Knicks. I was thinking about him, Brandon Ingram. Yeah. I think Trey Young's about to be in this boat. These guys that got these big deals- Julius Randle.
00:07:13 Speaker_02
Julius Randle. These guys that are being paid like they're superstars. they do put up production, and yet there's not a market for them.
00:07:22 Speaker_02
And it's because of the second apron, Kurt Goldsberg was talking about in my pod on Tuesday, it's just, it's changed the dynamic of roster building, of how we think about players, where you take somebody like Brandon Ingram, who was available all summer for anybody who wanted to offer anything, and they couldn't trade him, now he's scoring 23, 24 a game, Sacco being the same thing, and we're moving into this new era of these guys that it's like, well, this is my price,
00:07:48 Speaker_02
I don't want to pay that. I'm stuck with you. But you're still producing. I don't remember another era like this. The only time I can think was that 2000s when guys were getting those six, seven year deals.
00:08:01 Speaker_02
And you would just be like, I guess we have Allen Houston now for the entire decade.
00:08:06 Speaker_06
Yeah, I think that's the difference between now and 2000 and like 11 or 12, which is like when I first became a regular on League Pass, it was like,
00:08:17 Speaker_06
whoever the Bulls were, when they decided that they were going to stink up the joint, they were going to have basically three rotation worthy guys in the starting lineup.
00:08:27 Speaker_06
And everybody else was kind of going to be like, okay, this team is headed for 17 wins. They're playing the lottery game and whatever.
00:08:35 Speaker_06
Nowadays, like the Bulls, we expected to be a bottom four Eastern Conference team, but because they haven't gotten rid of, like they would have sold off Vucic, they would have sold off Levine, they would have sold everything off.
00:08:47 Speaker_06
But not because they kept those guys. Like, they're just not a given win. There's no, like, given wins. And then, even the Wizards on some nights of first game, I think Zach LaVina— —Brooklyn.
00:08:58 Speaker_02
Brooklyn's another one. —Brooklyn's another one.
00:09:00 Speaker_06
—Charlotte. —Yeah, like, there's no— —Toronto. —There's no processed Sixers, is what I always say. Like, that processed Sixers team with Michael Carter-Williams was leading that team in scoring for an entire season. That was insane.
00:09:13 Speaker_02
And we were like, he's not good. And he was like one of the rookie of the year. It's like, well, he's 20 points a game. Exactly. You know, this is a really interesting point. Can you have tanking when there's too much talent in the league?
00:09:25 Speaker_02
Because I think about that with Brooklyn. I watched Brooklyn. I saw them in person on Friday. I talked about it on the pod. Watched them yesterday. The Celtics played really well and beat them and they played one of their best games.
00:09:35 Speaker_02
But I watched Brooklyn. I'm like, I know they wanted to be terrible. It's going to be really hard to be terrible with some of the guys in this team. Like, Schroeder is a above average point guard. Cam Johnson's good. Cam Thomas is a 28-a-game guy now.
00:09:50 Speaker_02
They have shopwalking. This is not like in 2013, 14, when you could just be like, yeah, we're gonna throw a year away. Like, think about what the Lakers had. during the last couple Kobe years, where it was like, here's Kobe and nobody else.
00:10:04 Speaker_06
Yeah. It's so different. And I don't know if it's just the talent. Like, these dudes have just come out and played with a lot of pride. Like, just quite frankly.
00:10:13 Speaker_02
Do you think it's social media? Like, I wonder if it's just hard to suck now, because if you suck... With the fantasy and the everything gambling aspect, that might play a part, man. I feel like it's social media, because I was thinking about this.
00:10:26 Speaker_02
Vince Carter got his number retired in Toronto, and I was just thinking how fucking crazy that is. Yeah, where he started.
00:10:33 Speaker_02
Because I was writing for ESPN back then, and he completely tanked on them that year to the point that- I was reading those columns. Yeah.
00:10:40 Speaker_02
He tightened on the point that the trade that they made for him is probably the worst superstar trade anyone's made. They had to like take back Alonzo Mourning's contract and a couple other bad contracts. They got two shitty picks.
00:10:51 Speaker_02
It was like a 20 cents on the dollar giveaway. And it was because he stopped playing for them. But we didn't have the apparatus we have now to be like, oh my God, did you see what Vince Carter did last night? Like he just didn't give a shit.
00:11:03 Speaker_02
I don't feel like anybody can do that now.
00:11:05 Speaker_06
Yeah, but I mean, it's really hard to explain why none of these teams have come out and been, you know, just dog shit. And again, it's early, like nobody's had- I guess the dog shit team has probably been Philly. Yeah. Right?
00:11:23 Speaker_06
Sorry, Chris Ryan, but yeah. They stink. But there's a reason for it, right?
00:11:27 Speaker_02
No, there's a reason for it, but they still stink.
00:11:29 Speaker_06
Yeah, they've been god-awful.
00:11:31 Speaker_02
Well, think about the other day. J.J., D'Angelo Russell had that play in the corner. And whatever he did, he got his three-pointer blocked. He did some stupid step back. And the camera showed JJ so fucking mad.
00:11:44 Speaker_02
And he sat down and he just sat in his thing. And he was like a parent mad at a kid. And even that, so now he's like, well, that'll never happen again, because he just saw the video of it. It became a big deal the next day.
00:11:56 Speaker_02
He's like, I can't do that anymore. I just think there's a lot of checks and balances now for bad basketball, lazy basketball, lethargic basketball, people who don't give a shit, people going through the motions. I don't know if you can do it anymore.
00:12:09 Speaker_06
And I think what's crazy, too, is that the NBA, because of how they handled some of this load management stuff, have been- How did they handle it? Poorly.
00:12:20 Speaker_06
They've been so effective in messaging that the regular season doesn't matter, this isn't real basketball, playoffs is where things really start, and people are playing hard. That's not been the case to start the season.
00:12:32 Speaker_06
Every single one of these games feels super competitive. People are playing. People aren't playing with super low motors.
00:12:40 Speaker_06
There's some teams that are like seem to have a bit of a hangover I think Denver started the first four games of the season with a bit of a hangover Minnesota's hangover has been extended. Minnesota's not just hungover.
00:12:51 Speaker_02
They're like They're like lying in bed with the shades dry.
00:12:55 Speaker_06
Yeah, they still can't drive.
00:12:57 Speaker_02
Yeah, they're like, ah, man.
00:12:58 Speaker_06
Can you go get me some Advil? Still, yeah, 100%. But for the most part, man, teams have come out and been playing out the gates. Like, OKC feels like they got something to prove. Cleveland. Phoenix, I got something to prove. Cleveland, I mean, my God.
00:13:12 Speaker_06
They've come out like gangbusters. And it's made the regular season excellent for it.
00:13:19 Speaker_02
I'm going to read you some of the 2013-14 Sixers. Leading scorer, Evan Turner. Wow. Michael Carter-Williams, your rookie of the year, shooting 264 from three and 40% from the field. Thad Young was our number three. Spencer Hawes.
00:13:39 Speaker_02
Number five, James Anderson playing 29 minutes a game, 80 games. Who was James Anderson? I don't know. I was on a studio show that year and I don't remember who James Anderson was.
00:13:52 Speaker_02
James Anderson, he went to first round pick from the, I remember him, okay. Henry Sims. Tony Rotten?
00:14:02 Speaker_05
Tony Rotten?
00:14:03 Speaker_06
That was a Tony Rotten apologist in those days.
00:14:06 Speaker_02
Hollis Thompson? LaVoy Allen was their ninth man, but this is our point. Like, you look at the ninth man now in the Nets. The game I went to Friday, like Jalen Wilson's coming, I'm like, this guy's good.
00:14:17 Speaker_06
Should he play more? That Sixers team would challenge the Bobcats. in terms of worst win they played this season, in terms of worst win-loss record ever. And teams just aren't that horrible.
00:14:32 Speaker_06
And some of it, like you said, is the second apron where, you know, contenders, I think in a different era, Golden State would have looked at, they would have said, you know what, instead of doing the Melton and Buddy Heal to replace Klay, we're going to pull the trigger on Zach Levine.
00:14:48 Speaker_06
In a different era, but now with like all of the salary constraints.
00:14:52 Speaker_02
You can't do it. The Lakers would already probably have him.
00:14:54 Speaker_06
And you know, maybe they're keeping the powder job for Trey Young, who knows? But yeah, it's just a different era, man.
00:15:03 Speaker_02
2014 Bucs who were 15 and 67. Brandon Knight led the team in scoring. Ramon Sessions was second. Remember him? A young Chris Middleton third, Ilya Sova, John Henson, OJ Mayo. Larry Sanders, hey now, playing 20 games, but man.
00:15:21 Speaker_02
And then Young Giannis was just, that was great for Young Giannis.
00:15:25 Speaker_06
Larry Sanders is pissed right now. KD like smokes weed openly. Yeah, Larry Sanders is like, I tried this, why didn't it work for me?
00:15:32 Speaker_02
They kicked me out the league for this. Yeah, so if you think about the actual bad teams, Toronto's probably like fundamentally the worst team, but then Scottie Barnes can come back and who knows. And they're competitive on a lot of nights.
00:15:47 Speaker_02
They can rebound, they can shoot threes. The other thing is, we didn't talk about the threes, like this is the first season the threes are 40% of the shots that everyone takes. That's just the variance that comes from that, you just never know.
00:16:00 Speaker_06
Yeah, the threes is always, it's been a sort of, you know, less talented teams. You want to up your variance factor with the threes. Everybody's kind of known this for like seven, eight years now, but like, the discipline with which
00:16:16 Speaker_06
coaches are actually able to enforce it, is different now.
00:16:21 Speaker_06
It's just better infrastructure to make sure, like, it's just one thing to say, like, we're gonna play with pace, we're gonna, you know what I mean, we're gonna shoot the three-point shot, we're gonna encourage as many threes as we can, but to, like, actually coach it and get your guys to be doing it in consistency, to go against their instinct, to dribble, dribble, dribble, shoot a long two, is different.
00:16:42 Speaker_02
You were gonna mention the Knicks. What about them? I miss last year's Knicks. I miss Hartenstein. I miss Dante. They were just more fun to watch last year, and I know they'll figure it out. The Towns has been incredible. Brunson's not been as good.
00:17:04 Speaker_02
They're five at the end of games, which it seems like it's a little better offensively, but it's definitely worse defensively.
00:17:10 Speaker_02
And that's when the rim protection isn't there in the same way, and there's a bunch of it, now that we have a sample size, some of the advanced stats are like, huh, this isn't really the profile of a TIPS team. So what are you seeing?
00:17:23 Speaker_06
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the Carl Towns rim protection, we knew that was going to be a problem coming into the season, and we just talked about this on group chat with Rob and Justin, Mikel Bridges is getting smoked on defense.
00:17:39 Speaker_06
He's just not been a deterrent at all. And again, OG and Enopi.
00:17:44 Speaker_02
You can't mention this to the Knicks fans. Well, listen. I mentioned last week, I was like, what was the point of trading five first for this guy if he's going to shoot 13 times a game? But the other side has been interesting too.
00:17:54 Speaker_06
I think the scoring is going to come. I think he's going to learn what spots to pick, when to attack, when to just let it fire.
00:18:03 Speaker_02
Didn't they give him the ball more and just have run through more stuff for them? I guess the Towns Brunson pick and roll is so good.
00:18:09 Speaker_06
They can't afford to because their defense is so bad. Like if you're getting cooked,
00:18:14 Speaker_06
you kind of have to look at your best player and say yo we need points right now if they were stopping people then they would be a lot more patient about who gets to do what on offense but when like you're constantly having to put out fires because you just gave up you know 10 points in a row like at a certain point it is you got to give it to Brunson what I'm encouraged by is that
00:18:37 Speaker_06
The Towns and Brunson pick and roll is clearly difficult to deal with. It's a nightmare. They're putting defenses in a bind. Because Brunson, unlike a lot of these star point guards, can be the center on a switch.
00:18:49 Speaker_06
Like, Halliburton's been having trouble with it this year. Brunson, as soon as you put a big man on him, he's killing that guy. And if you, God forbid, you drop on freaking Carl Towns. Like, that's a nightmare.
00:19:01 Speaker_06
And so, I like that that's already started to figure itself out.
00:19:05 Speaker_02
Wait, can we say one thing about Towns? Sure. he's been kind of a winner of the season. Because he's been, I think, better offensively than anybody could have ever expected on the Knicks. And then Minnesota feels worse.
00:19:19 Speaker_02
And it's like, ooh, we missed Towns. I feel like this has been a win all the way around for Towns, and then instead of the Knicks fans being mad at Towns for whatever, they can just now be mad at Bridges.
00:19:30 Speaker_06
So he wins in every way. Look, I think the Bridges thing is everybody's in a patient wait and see moment. It's been 11 games. I'm not crazy worried about it.
00:19:41 Speaker_02
I do wonder if you stop playing defense for like, you're just on bad teams for two years. Like I wonder if it almost you have to get back in the hang of what it's like to be on a really good team playing defense.
00:19:51 Speaker_06
It's not just that though. It's like when guys start conceiving themselves as 20 point per game scorers, And all of a sudden it's like, no, you're back to being that role guy that you were in Phoenix. And it's like, no, I was a ball in Brooklyn.
00:20:08 Speaker_06
I was like a way back.
00:20:09 Speaker_02
Can I show you a YouTube clip of my game winners?
00:20:12 Speaker_06
He got to get back to what he was doing in Phoenix, for sure.
00:20:15 Speaker_02
If you truth serum them. I wonder what they would say about the whole Giannis piece of this.
00:20:25 Speaker_06
I know you saw the graphic last night where they showed all of the picks that the Knicks sent out to bring Richeson. A couple of them were good picks.
00:20:35 Speaker_02
We didn't know that whatever that Bucs pick, which is so complicated, where New Orleans gets it if it's 1-4, now Brooklyn gets it if it's everything else. I don't, I think the Bucs are a 500 or worse team.
00:20:46 Speaker_02
If anything happens to Giannis for a month, that team's gonna be a bottom five team in the league. They're pulling these games out of their assholes. Well, it's like they've won three games. Well, but the one yesterday. Yeah, that was a miracle.
00:20:59 Speaker_02
Guy gets fouled with the second left. He just has to go one and two and the game's over and he bricks both of them and then Giannis wins an OT. Yeah, I just, I like what they're like. The next thing,
00:21:11 Speaker_02
If we're gonna be rational about it, the Towns thing has been a huge win. All the other stuff is explainable. Robinson is gonna come back.
00:21:19 Speaker_02
There's probably some sort of buyout guy they can get in February to replace some of the DeFrancenzo, because it feels like there's a lot on McBride.
00:21:26 Speaker_02
And then the Brunson, I know he hasn't been quite as good and efficient as last year, but I also feel like it's... Teams have been watching this now for a couple years. It's like Jalen Hurts on the Eagles, where it's like, oh, I know what this is.
00:21:36 Speaker_06
And he's learning how to play a new way. Like, this is a completely reconstructed offense, like, that he hasn't been completely comfortable yet. I don't think it's the biggest deal.
00:21:45 Speaker_06
I just think it's scary that, like, missing Mitchell Robinson and Precious Achua is this damaging to him.
00:21:52 Speaker_06
your team like that's a that's a bad sign so far but again I think it's pretty early and right now the 20th and defensive efficiency just stunning down to 13 but that's the bigger question is is this the right tips team
00:22:09 Speaker_02
Is this a Tibbs team, the way it's currently constructed, or is this maybe somebody else with the car keys?
00:22:14 Speaker_06
I mean, I think if Tibbs is worth what he thinks he is, then he needs to also adjust.
00:22:19 Speaker_02
Players have to adjust, coaches should adjust. Can I do a PSA for the other 29 teams? When the Knicks have the ball with like three seconds or less,
00:22:29 Speaker_02
and they need to score, they're going to throw it to Jalen Brunson in the corner, he's going to pretend to go left, and then he's going to do a follow-away jump shot. I'm just telling you that's what's going to happen.
00:22:40 Speaker_02
You can pretend to bite on the going left, but then dive forward when he's doing the turnaround. That's his move. It works every time.
00:22:48 Speaker_03
I don't know, do these guys have tape? It's tough in the moment, Bill.
00:22:53 Speaker_02
It's like Tatum. Here's what Tatum's going to do. He's going to dribble through his leg seven times, and then when there's two seconds left, he's going to do a step back 26-footer. We know all these moves. LeBron, he has a specific spot on the court.
00:23:05 Speaker_02
He's going to shoot a three from there. He's going to make you think he's going to the basket, hop back.
00:23:08 Speaker_06
The accurate step back.
00:23:09 Speaker_02
Yeah. There's some guys that you just, you know what they're gonna do, and then there's other guys like Durant, where I'm like, I have no idea what he's gonna do. He's gonna go right, he's gonna pull up, he's gonna do the turnaround move.
00:23:19 Speaker_06
Brunson's, yeah, he's gonna try to create space with a little shoulder fade.
00:23:22 Speaker_02
He's gotta be so hard to guard, because I think they know what he's doing, and he still gets...
00:23:27 Speaker_06
He's got a little Luka in him in terms of the stop and start. Like, he's not the fastest, but he can get accelerated faster than everybody else and decelerate faster than everybody else. Yeah, it's not easy from the couch, Bill.
00:23:42 Speaker_06
That's what they would tell you.
00:23:43 Speaker_02
Well, you know what I think the secret hardest move is the Luka two-on-one.
00:23:48 Speaker_02
when he slows down, and then almost makes it like a low post move, where he's got momentum, but he stops, and the guy's also playing the pass, and then Luka's just like, I'm just gonna bounce off you in a bank.
00:24:01 Speaker_02
I don't even know what that move is, but I feel like he's perfected it.
00:24:05 Speaker_06
And I'm like, that's Trayvon Green, one of the best defensive players in my life, and he can't even stop it. It is weird.
00:24:12 Speaker_02
Are you scared of the Cavs?
00:24:14 Speaker_06
The Cavs, man, listen, I know, like, every single smart NBA person, you guys included on the over-unders, had the Cavs over Kenny Atkinson winning coach of the year, and I was like, yeah, they're gonna play better, they're gonna be way healthier this year, but, like, I don't know, they kind of took off last year when their guys weren't playing.
00:24:34 Speaker_05
Yeah.
00:24:35 Speaker_06
But Kenny Atkinson has been smart about Deploying the lineups letting Mobley play center at times being the lone big he's gotten these guys to understand like the importance of spacing and They're like Niang for instance.
00:24:50 Speaker_06
This guy is completely unconscious like he shoots with the green light of a Kevin Durant at certain points and Donovan Mitchell God bless him. He's getting off of the ball a lot faster than he has at any other time in his career.
00:25:04 Speaker_06
That's always been my biggest criticism of him is that he doesn't see the floor as well as a lot of the guys that I think are a little bit better than him. But this year, he's seeing it. They're believing it.
00:25:14 Speaker_06
I think there's something to everybody feeling like they have ownership of the offense, which Atkinson You know, he spent some time in Golden State with Steve Kerr.
00:25:22 Speaker_06
We make fun of Steve Kerr a lot of times with his hippy-dippy, like, the ball finds energy shit. But Atkinson has brought it— —Hippy-dippy. —That's what it feels like to me. It feels like he's on a commune when he's saying some of that stuff.
00:25:34 Speaker_06
But, like, Atkinson has brought that ethos to Cleveland, and they've been way better for it.
00:25:40 Speaker_02
—And he brought Ty Jerome, because he knew Ty Jerome was good from, like, two years ago. —Revelation. —It's like when football, when the guy, like, when, uh, The guy, Dan Quinn, went from Dallas to Washington. He took a couple Dallas guys with him.
00:25:51 Speaker_02
He's like, I know this guy's pretty good. I'll grab this guy too. I'm 100% in on the Cavs being real. I don't think there's any fluky shit at all. From the first, second, third game, you can see it.
00:26:03 Speaker_02
I talked about it before, but there's like a charitableness now with Mitchell and Garland. I don't think Mitchell cares if he doesn't have the ball in the last minute anymore. I felt like he did last year. I think Garland did a little bit too.
00:26:18 Speaker_02
I just feel like they've sorted out something and then they can defend, they can switch, they have a bench. If, as Celtic fan, they're on my radar because I thought we would have the one seed unless somebody got hurt.
00:26:36 Speaker_02
Now it's like, this seems, I think it's going to be tough to steal the one seed from them. You start out 14-0, 15-0, like just think about it logically. For the rest of the way, you just have to go like,
00:26:52 Speaker_02
45 and, you know, 18 or whatever, it's not the same pace to get to 60. And the Celts are gonna have trouble getting to 60.
00:26:59 Speaker_06
And if you look at the Eastern Conference standings right now, a lot of teams are gonna have trouble getting to 50. It's crazy how these things flip because
00:27:12 Speaker_06
You know, there was all this smoke around Donovan Mitchell for years that he was not gonna, he was not long for Cleveland. He ends up doing his extension.
00:27:21 Speaker_06
Shams puts out that report that Garland's representation might see good trade if Mitchell's still on the team because he feels like he's not being optimized. They bring in Kenny Atkinson and
00:27:35 Speaker_06
Shit, man, everything sort of flips and everybody has this level of buy-in. It's just so crazy how things can turn on a dime in this league.
00:27:43 Speaker_02
Kenny calls him and he's like, I'm going to optimize your shit. And A, just bear with me, buddy.
00:27:49 Speaker_06
They've bought in and they look so much better for it. And like I said, Before, it did feel like a your turn, my turn situation.
00:27:58 Speaker_02
It did.
00:27:59 Speaker_06
With Mitchell and Garland, where I'm just like, man, these guys have complementary games. They both can shoot, both can drive it. They should be elevating what each other do.
00:28:09 Speaker_06
And this is the first time in that partnership that I actually feel like it's happening and it's been exciting to watch.
00:28:16 Speaker_02
I'm good at very few things. I can spot toupees. I can make meatballs. That's like me with BBLs. I can spot that your turn, my turn. I'm just a tune. I've been watching basketball my whole life. You know it when you see it. You know when it's not perfect.
00:28:36 Speaker_06
Look at when Tatum and Brown got rid of that dynamic where they now elevate what each other do where back in the days we were like, oh, these guys are too duplicative. Like we might have to move on, blah, blah, blah.
00:28:48 Speaker_06
Now these guys actually play off of each other.
00:28:51 Speaker_02
That is a freaking lie. I always believed in my guys. No, I think you can tell the difference between your turn, my turn, competitive versus elevation.
00:29:05 Speaker_02
And now I feel like those guys elevate each other, which is a boring topic for a podcast or a YouTube video or an NBA countdown segment, but it's what's happening. That team's playing super unselfish. And then you watch a team like,
00:29:17 Speaker_02
you know, like Philly, when Embiid comes back and how they have to navigate. How do you take care of Embiid? How do you, how does Paul George make sure he's involved up? Oh wait, there's Maxie too.
00:29:28 Speaker_02
Oh, there's Jared McCain, who's having, might be the rookie of the year if he could just get playing minutes. How do you navigate all this stuff? He's got to beat out Eric Gordon. And what happens, right. And what happens with zombie Nick Nurse?
00:29:43 Speaker_02
Does he ever turn back into Toronto Nick Nurse or is he just zombie Nick Nurse now?
00:29:47 Speaker_06
I mean, Nick Nurse did a great job last year. I think the Sixers definitely overperformed most of our expectations. Maybe the playoffs wasn't ideal, but they overperformed most of our expectations.
00:30:00 Speaker_06
And I think what we can be bullish about is- You're nice you're in the Nick Nurse Kool-Aid drinking camp. I'm just saying last year.
00:30:07 Speaker_02
They were good.
00:30:08 Speaker_06
Was it on my research? Last year they were good. The thing is, Embiid, I know a lot of people killed him for saying, I don't care about MVP, it's about the playoffs, it's about winning.
00:30:17 Speaker_06
I like that for a team that's trying to incorporate Paul George, that has Maxi, he was ascendant. I like the idea that he's not gonna feel the onus to dominate every possession like he traditionally has for the team basically his entire career. And so,
00:30:34 Speaker_06
That's a good sign. I think they're gonna be straight. You know what I mean? When Embiid isn't beating dudes up in the locker room for writing bad columns. And, you know, he got all the guys.
00:30:43 Speaker_02
Well, here's the thing. Yabasele and McCain are guys who could play in a playoff series.
00:30:48 Speaker_02
So, you know, when they're operating on the fringes and trying to, you're picking out of the lottery, you're trying to grab, take flyers on dudes, and usually it doesn't work out.
00:30:57 Speaker_02
And it seems like both of those guys I feel like could be in a top seven on a good team. So, but the NBA is gonna be the big thing. Let's take a break, and then I got a couple more things for you.
00:31:09 Speaker_02
Van Lathan is here, we're gonna talk about the NBA Cup, because sometimes in basketball, 30 points could be worth more than 30 points. You get 30% profit boost on 30-plus point scores with FanDuel's 30 on 30. Like it.
00:31:23 Speaker_02
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00:31:37 Speaker_02
I'll give you a couple options. Brooklyn Knicks, anybody loving that one? For 30? The Cam Thomas action? No. Clippers Houston? James Harding going against the Terror Twins? No.
00:31:49 Speaker_08
No, they're gonna lock up.
00:31:51 Speaker_02
Phoenix OKC? Booker? Devin Booker, yeah. All right, great. Booker's gonna do it. We'll give it to Devin Booker.
00:31:58 Speaker_02
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00:33:11 Speaker_02
This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season and Uber Eats is dropping undefeated deals on all your game day favorites. This week, score a free medium two topping Domino's pizza with minimum purchase only on Uber Eats.
00:33:23 Speaker_02
And if you're craving even more, we've got you covered with game day and deals on pizza, burgers, tacos, and more. Order Uber Eats now for game day. Terms, taxes, and fees apply. See app for details. All right, we're back. Van Lathan has joined us.
00:33:37 Speaker_02
What's up? This is the fun of having an office, when people are in there. We're just like, fuck it, let's turn the mics on and go. You know how I feel about this. You've been preaching this forever.
00:33:45 Speaker_08
Yeah, you know how I feel about this.
00:33:46 Speaker_02
Bring people to the office and shit goes down.
00:33:49 Speaker_08
I'm saying, everybody's about to get mad. I'm glad I'm not going to slack, because it's going to go crazy. But I think that, first of all, look, it's a new time. Toxicity is best.
00:34:01 Speaker_08
I feel okay saying that I think everybody should have to come into the office at least 20 hours a week. Like three, that's three days or two days.
00:34:11 Speaker_02
Take your 20 hours. It's not a bad idea.
00:34:12 Speaker_08
20 hours, three days, however you want to do it. You can still have your Thursday and Friday off. But I'm just not from the era where it was offensive to act. Show up to work. I laugh at you.
00:34:26 Speaker_07
I don't care how it comes off.
00:34:27 Speaker_08
I laugh at you. I'm not from the era where it was like, one time back in my day, I was on a movie set. I actually brought an air mattress to the set. Oh my God. Because I wanted to be there. work, then sleep there so I could be there early again.
00:34:43 Speaker_08
That's the toxicity I was brought up in.
00:34:46 Speaker_06
Yeah, I, yeah, I, I honestly, I'm, I'm more in the middle of you and some of our Gen Zers who just like see like any stress-related issue related to work as fun.
00:34:58 Speaker_02
Van loves live bodies to just talk to. I just like to talk to people all day long. He wants to hop in conversations.
00:35:03 Speaker_08
Hey, how you doing?
00:35:04 Speaker_02
By the way, we were just talking about Melrose Place.
00:35:06 Speaker_08
I have some buds.
00:35:07 Speaker_02
Boom, here I come.
00:35:08 Speaker_08
By the way, Gen Z turns out not as well as we thought. So we can leave it. We can stop pretending now. Everybody come to work. It's a new day.
00:35:21 Speaker_02
I'm bringing a text thread combo that Van and I were having to Waz about the NBA, about the phenomenon of a league that is having its games watched less, but feels like it matters more. And what's going on? And we all have theories on this.
00:35:38 Speaker_02
Is the NBA in better, worse, or the same shape?
00:35:42 Speaker_06
I think it's a little bit worse than the peak of our recent peak of 2016, where Steph was like a global phenomenon and like him and LeBron playing that epic seven game finals.
00:35:56 Speaker_06
Like, I don't think we're anywhere close to that level of health in terms of the league, but They do have the most famous players in American sports.
00:36:08 Speaker_06
Again, the teams don't, like, people don't watch games as much as they might even watch the Jacksonville- So you take Mahomes, Kelsey, Lamar, and you would take 40 NBA guys.
00:36:16 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah.
00:36:17 Speaker_06
It's not, like, Lamar, who I love, that's my guy, he's nowhere- Is he as famous as Jalen Brown?
00:36:23 Speaker_08
Don't think so.
00:36:25 Speaker_02
No, no, no, he's not.
00:36:26 Speaker_08
A player of football and basketball fame is just like a ridiculous losing game for the football players.
00:36:31 Speaker_06
Yeah, it's just not. They're recognizable people. They can get people to pay attention to them, whether that be for who they're dating or what clothes they're wearing, whatever. They got to find a way to monetize that attention.
00:36:44 Speaker_06
But I think once you're in a space where you create celebrities, like even recently, like a John Morant, that's a good place to be. And they just got to get more creative about getting people to love the game.
00:36:56 Speaker_08
It's interesting talking about the celebrity because I would argue that Austin Reeves is more famous in LA than Justin Herbert is, okay? But this is what I would say.
00:37:04 Speaker_08
Those players still exist in the league and they are the most famous guys, but they're less consequential in the league than they used to be.
00:37:11 Speaker_08
So they're not, it means something at the top of your league to have your most famous players also be your most important players. And I would argue that Steph, LeBron, KD, all of that older guard,
00:37:25 Speaker_08
They're not really serious, although you could argue this year with how the Warriors are playing, serious threats for the NBA throne.
00:37:33 Speaker_02
Oh, don't tell the Laker fans that. They're 7-4. JJ's got this team going. Why do you do this? We beat Scottie Pippen Jr. last night.
00:37:43 Speaker_08
Why do you do this? We beat Huff. Bill, the vindictiveness towards the Lakers.
00:37:49 Speaker_06
No, it's the Laker fans. Hold on, Bill. We got it. And because we're on this, because I have to talk to you about this. Carl Towns over LeBron in the top 100. I didn't do that.
00:38:01 Speaker_02
I had LeBron. I had LeBron 15. Yeah, I had Towns 25. Yeah, I had LeBron.
00:38:08 Speaker_06
I had LeBron.
00:38:09 Speaker_08
No, I had Towns 25. Don't you think you're too influential a voice to have this specific bias?
00:38:18 Speaker_02
Don't you think, like you, every single shot. I just want to see the Lakers play Oklahoma City and some of the other good teams. They played Cleveland and lost by a hundred. The crowd was chanting for Brody with six minutes left.
00:38:32 Speaker_02
Can we go back to, you're talking about those three guys. This is what I said to Van on the text thread. These unicorn situations they had with six guys, Bird, Magic, Michael Jordan, then Kobe, then LeBron, then Curry.
00:38:49 Speaker_02
I don't know if we can replicate that with any under 30 American guy in that way. Even the Kobe thing, if Kobe goes to Charlotte instead of the Lakers, what happens to him?
00:39:00 Speaker_08
The problem is that you're describing 40 years of the NBA, basically. When you're talking about those guys, you're basically going from 1979
00:39:08 Speaker_02
I'm talking about our last six guys that broke through in a real way.
00:39:13 Speaker_08
I know, but think about the sample size of those guys. That means that every single generation, they've been able to find a guy or two like that.
00:39:20 Speaker_08
And if this is the first generation, why they can't, it's probably the scope of society and culture has changed and not the actual NBA. And so when you look at social media and other things, for example, you have Zion, you have Jah, right? Like,
00:39:37 Speaker_08
Ja is an incredibly likable player with a incredible fan-friendly style. 30 years ago, him with the blick, blick, blick, blicky, like, up-posting it also, it's not a thing. He would post it on the blicky.
00:39:51 Speaker_08
It's different, so maybe making stars is harder now because of the scrutiny.
00:39:55 Speaker_06
I think it's harder because of the stars and the culture around our stars themselves. Like, I was asking somebody, who's now a huge F1 fan about the Netflix show. I was like, do they get into anything on that show? Because I've never watched it.
00:40:10 Speaker_06
She was like, yeah. They'll be like, that team is cheating. This person's an alcoholic, blah, blah, blah. They've made the characters compelling, as opposed to that damn NBA show on Netflix, where Jason Tatum is like, I love my mom. I love who?
00:40:28 Speaker_06
And I love my son. These are the things we learned about Jason Tatum, who's one of the 10, 8, 7 best players in the league. Like, they don't make themselves interesting. People don't care.
00:40:39 Speaker_02
They're afraid to be interesting because it makes them less marketable.
00:40:43 Speaker_08
I'll just bring up something and we're potting. Have to talk about it. If we talked about Kobe and what Kobe was able to become. If Twitter's around when Kobe has the situation he has in Colorado, he doesn't survive it.
00:40:57 Speaker_08
I mean, his legacy, I'm telling you, it's- I think he survives it in LA. He might survive it in LA, but in terms of things like that, as murky or whatever you want to say that they are, things like that used to happen to athletes.
00:41:12 Speaker_08
There used to be narratives about- We talk about room for error, for lack of a better phrase. Things used to happen and they just wouldn't stick. Like, we are retroactively punishing Karl Malone. Things used to happen and they didn't stick.
00:41:28 Speaker_08
So making stars was, right, there was less margin for error, you could do it easier. Now, you got a gun, you got an adult star going at you for three weeks harassing you on Twitter.
00:41:42 Speaker_08
All of that stuff, it sticks to you in a little way and it changes people's perception. And we have to ask if all of that's worth it. It can make you a star, but it can also take you off your perch.
00:41:53 Speaker_06
I wonder how much of that stuff actually sticks to people, like, off of the internet. And I get it more and more of our society, our internet-based creatures, but I do wonder how often and how long that stuff sticks.
00:42:07 Speaker_06
Like, to me, what I'm talking about is, like, Draymond goes on his podcast And he's like, yo, Klay freaking ghosted Steph. Steph was going to say some nice words about him before the comeback game.
00:42:21 Speaker_06
And after the lack of, or the conversation that he had with Klay, called PR and said, I'm not doing it anymore. Like, you telling me you put that in that Netflix show? That kind of stuff? That people won't be interested in the story of the NBA?
00:42:36 Speaker_08
I think they would. But being interested in the story of the NBA? is starting to become, because you don't have to watch the games to, and this is a Tommy Alter decision. Nah, you don't have to watch the games to be involved in that drama.
00:42:51 Speaker_08
You can follow that drama without watching the NBA.
00:42:55 Speaker_02
This is what Derek Thompson, he came on my pod, I don't know how many months ago, and he was talking about how he's this new breed of NBA fan that loves the NBA but doesn't watch it that much, but loves everything around it and loves following it.
00:43:07 Speaker_02
My son's like that too. My son wasn't watching Buck's Pistons last night, but he knows what happened with Giannis, that Giannis had 59 points.
00:43:18 Speaker_02
And you know, when I was a kid, I felt like anytime the NBA was on, I was like, oh my God, the NBA's on the USA Network on Monday night. I'm watching, I can see the bullets. I never get to see the bullets.
00:43:29 Speaker_02
They're like, sports center in the 90s, you'd watch, you'd come home, come home from drinking. 1.30 in the morning, it's like, oh, Craig Kilborn and Rich Eisen, they're gonna tell me what happened in the NBA. I have no idea what happened.
00:43:41 Speaker_02
Oh, Karl Malone had a 30 and 25. Oh my God. And it just felt, but now it's so available and not just the games, but like the players. I do wonder if that's a piece of it too. Like all these guys have podcasts. There's no mystery with any of them.
00:43:57 Speaker_02
And then if you feel like you have mystery, you have something like the Netflix show where it's like, I'm not buying this version of you. I know there's more. It's crap. You know what I mean?
00:44:07 Speaker_08
Is there anything just to ask? Is there anything about specifically the quality of the play that lends itself to any of this? I've heard this.
00:44:16 Speaker_02
I think basketball is better now. I really do. I've been there the whole ride. I'm like amazed by the skills.
00:44:22 Speaker_06
I watched the Warriors and Mavs play to like 130 and at no point was I like this is an interesting Competitive, compelling, like, I don't know. I think people could fall in love with it how it is. I think the TV product is a problem.
00:44:38 Speaker_06
And I know this is like not a populist thing to say. I think they should ban League Pass or just like make it as extremely expensive as possible, like cost prohibitive.
00:44:47 Speaker_02
Or just you only get to pay for three teams. You don't get all 30.
00:44:49 Speaker_06
Or something like that. I'm not understanding. Make the product less accessible. Make it more scarce. You know what I mean? Because I think there's got to be a way to make this thing feel less accessible. There's a game every single night.
00:45:03 Speaker_06
And like, what do you really miss? If you miss the heat game last night, what did you miss?
00:45:08 Speaker_02
You didn't miss anything. Well, the schedule's too long, too, is the other piece, and they're never gonna change that.
00:45:13 Speaker_08
But doesn't, if you do that with League Pass, I've actually never heard that, it's really interesting, but if you do that with League Pass, doesn't that put the game back in sort of a regional space?
00:45:22 Speaker_08
Because right now, if like Charlotte will never, I wanna watch, LaMelo. And Charlotte's never gonna be on national if I don't have league pass. And then that makes the game more regional.
00:45:32 Speaker_02
You know, LaMelo's a Vann type of player. Oh yeah, for sure. He puts up huge stats, fun highlights. And then the wins and losses don't matter. That's Vann's wheelhouse. Built from the shit.
00:45:43 Speaker_08
I like to watch players that are fun to watch.
00:45:45 Speaker_02
Yeah, fun to watch over winning is fans' mantra.
00:45:48 Speaker_08
Is this like a Westbrook thing? Yeah, he loves Westbrook. No, no, no, I don't. But this is what I was saying. Bill wants to thrust this onto me, boss, but because of his Jokic thing. He's still holding on to that.
00:46:01 Speaker_07
Oh, we're still doing the Jokic thing. What else?
00:46:02 Speaker_08
What other winning player don't I like? I'm just saying that you love watching LaMelo.
00:46:09 Speaker_02
I love watching LaMelo, he's fun to watch and he's unpredictable. Career winning percentage, 440.
00:46:13 Speaker_06
He is unpredictable and he's playing better this year. No, he is playing better.
00:46:16 Speaker_02
Shout out to LaMelo.
00:46:20 Speaker_08
Hey, he's playing better. I've enjoyed watching him. So we get into a situation where the regionality of it and the sport starts to feel like baseball a little bit. Sure. But, so I don't know.
00:46:30 Speaker_08
I think that's an interesting idea and I've never heard it before.
00:46:32 Speaker_02
But we didn't talk about, one of the things we were talking about in the text thread is if your best players in your league are all foreign, That's a problem. What is the history of people connecting with foreign players in America?
00:46:43 Speaker_02
Because like, I loved Hakeem. Hakeem was amazing to see in person. He was fucking awesome. He was a badass. Like he would, there's videos you'll see on Twitter or just be like, Hakeem punches a guy. Like he was like a badass.
00:46:57 Speaker_02
There's multiple videos of him just like turning around, just popping. He was the Draymond of his day. He was like amazing to watch. He was an amazing defensive player. He was the best low post player of his generation.
00:47:07 Speaker_02
And people are like, ah, Hakeem's boring. It's like, I don't, Giannis, Luka, Embiid.
00:47:15 Speaker_06
I think Giannis' appeal has been mismanaged by the league, by Nike, like. Oh, what's this case?
00:47:22 Speaker_02
This is good.
00:47:22 Speaker_06
I just think, like, this whole, like, oh, the poor, humble immigrant who was selling, you know, yogurts in Greece for a dollar. Like, I just think that was just mismanaged.
00:47:32 Speaker_06
They should have leaned into, like, the insane competitor, freakish athlete, whatever guy. Like, the way he's been packaged to America as this, like, cutesy immigrant story, I think was done a disservice to, like, his actual star appeal.
00:47:49 Speaker_06
And Giannis is somebody who's actually embracing Americana in a way that Jokic and Luka just don't. They're just not interested in being American celebrities.
00:48:00 Speaker_06
They're just like, yo, I want to hoop, win, go home, be a great teammate, move on with my life. But Giannis is interested in being a cultural figure. And I think that could have worked. I just think that they didn't.
00:48:15 Speaker_06
I think Giannis is pretty compelling. But I think the freaking foreign stuff does hurt the league. If Luka was from Indiana, bro... He would be out of here. We've talked about this before.
00:48:28 Speaker_02
I'm trying to think what would be the best town or city for Luka to be in if his name was like Luke Doncher.
00:48:36 Speaker_08
Either Indiana or Kentucky. Oregon, Kentucky, all of those places.
00:48:40 Speaker_02
Kentucky would be good.
00:48:41 Speaker_06
Where white hoopers thrive. We need.
00:48:43 Speaker_02
Be like, oh, did you see what Luke did last night?
00:48:45 Speaker_06
Yeah, seriously. And he would have been a phenomenon in the state of Kentucky. He would have went to UK. He would have been Basically what I have with Drake Bang.
00:48:54 Speaker_02
North Carolina superstar Drake Bang.
00:48:57 Speaker_08
Or Cooper Flagg, your new obsession. All these obsessions have something in common. So look, this is the thing. This is a boxing problem. We're big boxing fans. Boxing has insanely good stars right now. I'm talking about good in their skill.
00:49:16 Speaker_08
Terrence Crawford, Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury, even though he lost to Usyk, Inua, like all of these different guys, right? People care for reasons that really, as fucked up as this is, they care for reasons other than how good you are.
00:49:32 Speaker_08
Like stories make people care. UFC's like this. Skills make champions. Stories make stars. And you have to be able to relate to a story. Now, some of these foreign guys, they have stories that are just as interesting as anyone. Really more interesting.
00:49:49 Speaker_08
I left war torn, whatever. Like, if you ever, like, Jokic's story is really interesting.
00:49:54 Speaker_02
Right.
00:49:55 Speaker_08
Francis Ngannou, Jesus, like all of that stuff. The problem is, isn't it accessible to audiences?
00:50:01 Speaker_08
Even in boxing, when guys, when they don't speak English or when they can't really get over to American audiences, sometimes you have problems making stars with them.
00:50:10 Speaker_08
The only difference there is that for somebody like Canelo Alvarez, his country backs him to such a degree that you can still make a worldwide star. Yeah. What I wonder about the NBA, you gon' have to, you gon' have to have some dude from LA.
00:50:25 Speaker_08
You gon' have to have some guy from Ohio. Cooper Flagg, as much as we joke about it, Chet Holmgren, as much as we joke, those guys are important to the league.
00:50:35 Speaker_02
It could be. AJ could be the guy. This is the first, if AJ lands on the right team, AJ DeBanca, a year from now, you might be the guy. Cause I feel like it has to be a wing. This is, Wemby has two problems. Centers have never resonated with people.
00:50:51 Speaker_02
Like we talked about that with the Nike contract. That's like, nobody has ever been like, oh, I got, like when I was a kid in the late seventies, we weren't like, oh, I gotta get Kareem's shoe. Or like, oh, I gotta get Ewing.
00:51:03 Speaker_06
I can't talk.
00:51:05 Speaker_02
Shaq was a huge star. But Shaq from a shoe standpoint. No, it wasn't the thing. And also, like, I was there for Shaq. Shaq was pretty polarizing for the 90s. How do you mean? He's just like, people were like, eh, like, why are you making so many movies?
00:51:19 Speaker_02
Why aren't you in shape all the time? Why'd you leave Orlando after four years?
00:51:22 Speaker_08
We're talking. Video game, movie, writing, it was everywhere.
00:51:24 Speaker_02
No, I get it. But people felt in the moment, and they weren't right, but people felt in the moment like, why does he care about all this other stuff? Why isn't he just trying to win titles? And then he had the MVP season and it flipped.
00:51:35 Speaker_06
And I've said this before, I think another thing, if we were doing the foreign players thing right, we would be doing it, like boxing. with the xenophobic, nationalistic sort of spin that we do with every fight.
00:51:48 Speaker_06
Like, I do remember when Floyd came out to fight Oscar De La Hoya in a sombrero. Like, I'm not saying we should do that in the NBA. I'm not saying we should do that in the NBA.
00:52:00 Speaker_07
But think about Floyd, though.
00:52:02 Speaker_08
But I'm saying. But think about Floyd, though. Floyd just went total heel. Yes.
00:52:10 Speaker_02
To, like, total heel. And today's NBA players aren't comfortable with that. So do we need heels in the NBA? You definitely need heels in the NBA. That's Jimmy Butler. It's sitting there for him right now.
00:52:20 Speaker_06
But he's also 35 now.
00:52:22 Speaker_02
Dreamon tried to do it and it just made people mad. He's a great heel.
00:52:26 Speaker_07
He is the best heel. He's a good heel.
00:52:30 Speaker_02
He's at this point now, because I really like watching the Warriors this year, where he had his arm flailed and almost hit this guy in OKC or whatever the team the other day. It's like, no, no, Draymond! No! Don't ruin this! No! Please! It's the best.
00:52:44 Speaker_02
But do you think Wemby could be the biggest star in the league? As a 7-foot-5 French guy.
00:52:49 Speaker_08
I've never seen a player that the NBA fans, that I know the diehard NBA fans, had more invested in him being good. Like, if you— There have been guys that have come into the league that it's like, hey, I like him, hey, I don't like him.
00:53:05 Speaker_08
If you talk— Jacoby is fucking great. Because if you talk shit on Wimby, you get 50 different people telling you that Wimby is basketball Jesus.
00:53:15 Speaker_00
There's nothing to it.
00:53:16 Speaker_08
I think if Wimby lives up to the hype, he's a global superstar.
00:53:19 Speaker_06
People just love Victor Wimby. I made the same mistake. I don't know if you guys remember the Adrian report where it was like, people were saying he's the best prospect of any sport ever.
00:53:32 Speaker_06
So I had this bid on the show where I was like, oh, he's the best prospect since Satchel Paige and Ty Cobb. Like, I would come up with some old whatever every time.
00:53:41 Speaker_06
And like, cause you know, I was like kind of, kind of a little bit doubting it at first. And my goodness, man, like the people, like whatever, Twitter is just what it is.
00:53:50 Speaker_06
But in person, people be like, I heard you said about Wimpy, you're crazy, you're wrong, blah, blah, blah. Like, you're right about the Wemby investment. So, like, I do think he has major potential.
00:53:58 Speaker_06
I think Wemby's broken through, honestly, in terms of culture. Like, even when Britney Spears got beat up by his bodyguards at Summer League for trying to talk to him that one time.
00:54:09 Speaker_06
No, I'm just saying, you don't remember Britney Spears wanted his picture. I know, but you throwing so much gas on that, Britney Spears got beat up. That's how she represented it on the internet anyway. I wasn't there, I didn't see it.
00:54:22 Speaker_06
But yeah, I think Wemby's definitely up there.
00:54:25 Speaker_02
One thing that he has, and I think Edwards has too, and I've seen this happen over the years is,
00:54:30 Speaker_02
when we really want it to happen for somebody, because you really felt this when Jordan retired and there was that whole, it was like we were auditioning the next star. It was like, would you like to have Grant Hill maybe?
00:54:42 Speaker_02
How about this T-Mac character? Vince Carter. And then Kobe, I feel like starting in the 2000 finals kind of grabbed it. And then Vince all of a sudden, that one year when he went ahead to head against Iverson, I was like, oh, could he grab it?
00:54:57 Speaker_02
Iverson, even though I think he had his base, but I still feel like it would have been really hard in 2001 for him to become the guy.
00:55:05 Speaker_08
But the thing with Iverson, Iverson is a good example.
00:55:08 Speaker_02
He was like a belated, after the fact, people appreciated him more.
00:55:12 Speaker_08
Iverson is a good example of what we're talking about, right? In a time when the NBA was looking for the next Jordan, Iverson was able to carve out his own superstar aura by being completely antithetical to Michael Jordan.
00:55:29 Speaker_08
He was able to be, and now what we have, I'm sorry, bro. These dudes ain't got no personality, bruh. I mean, they are... Edwards does. Edwards has personality.
00:55:41 Speaker_02
Edwards is our big hope.
00:55:43 Speaker_08
He's great. But the older guys do. Steph has personality. LeBron has personality. The way we judge people and the conversations that we have around people and the way that we excoriate them for every little, the food getting a little bland.
00:55:59 Speaker_08
And if you want to be a superstar, you gotta be spicy. There's gotta be some spice to it.
00:56:03 Speaker_06
Yeah, and I remember David Stern's dress code thing that everybody said was like mega racist and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
00:56:12 Speaker_06
It was just the idea that a lot of these guys from the streets or whatever we're called, inner city, whatever euphemism we want to use, were less polished, less media trained, right? Our league is now way more suburban. These kids come from
00:56:27 Speaker_06
They're way more affluent backgrounds. They're way more media trained, focus group, consultant, freaking to death. And as Van says, it's not as fun. It's just not like, I love Devin Booker. I love watching him whoop.
00:56:40 Speaker_06
He's famous enough to date Kendall freaking Jenner. Nobody knows anything about him. Nothing. Nobody knows a, you can't, a lot of people don't even know what this guy's voice sounds like.
00:56:51 Speaker_02
He's Devin Booker. But then the flip side of everybody is like, hey KD, Can you stop being so out there? Can you get offline?
00:56:58 Speaker_08
Keep doing it. I like that. Keep doing it.
00:57:00 Speaker_02
I like it too. We need more of that.
00:57:02 Speaker_08
I think KD is interesting and I think the fact that he has embraced the fact.
00:57:08 Speaker_02
Yes. I like it. I like it. I think he's one of the most authentic superstars we've had in any sport this century. Like almost to his own detriment a lot of the time.
00:57:19 Speaker_06
Like, could you imagine Donovan Mitchell? He's another one of these guys who's, like, perfect. Like, great suburban upbringing, says the right thing, beautifully eloquent when he speaks, like, he's so polished.
00:57:32 Speaker_06
Could you imagine him ever saying anything as interesting as KD does on a freaking daily basis? No. And I don't think that's a good thing.
00:57:40 Speaker_08
Now, while we say this, once again, I want to come back to the climate, right? Because we Part of this is because if you're James Harden and you like to go out to the strip club a little bit, that becomes your whole identity. You know what I mean?
00:57:54 Speaker_08
So what I'm saying- He's earned that. He's earned it. Once again, I like him. Once again, I like him. But all I'm saying is, look, the NBA is not boring. It's so much fun to watch. All these storylines are so much fun.
00:58:11 Speaker_08
but loosen up a little bit, have fun, play basketball, but everyone, not just the players, the fans too. I don't need 12 saints that never did anything wrong or never said anything wrong playing basketball.
00:58:24 Speaker_08
Your favorite players from back in the day, I'm sorry, these guys were intensely flawed. The GOAT is a legendary asshole. One of the other guys is a legendary whore.
00:58:36 Speaker_08
And one of the other guys, if you said the wrong thing to him, he'll throw your ass through a plate glass window. So these are people that play basketball. The people part makes the superstar.
00:58:46 Speaker_08
And so I think that turning them into robots only makes the league a little bit more.
00:58:49 Speaker_02
Larry Bird, bar fight during the 1985 playoffs, hurt his hand. Yeah. Shooting went south, one of the reasons we lost the title. I was like, what if that happened now? Yeah, that would be a problem.
00:58:59 Speaker_02
It's like, oh yeah, Anthony Andrews got in a bar fight and now Minnesota's out of the playoffs.
00:59:02 Speaker_06
And what I would say too is like, Adam, God bless him for all of his shortcomings in my opinion. I can't wait for this take. He went out and got these guys the bag.
00:59:14 Speaker_02
Oh, I thought you were going another direction.
00:59:16 Speaker_06
No, he went out and did that. And you did a great job. Bravo, Adam. Now your next freaking job is to get people to care more about what's happening on the floor in your freaking league.
00:59:27 Speaker_06
So it's not- And I get it, he was putting all his energy- It's not the NBA cup courts. No, it's not. Oh, there's a green one. I think Adam has an amazing business sense. He's smart enough to get the Emirates involved in naming rights.
00:59:38 Speaker_06
And like, he is incredible at getting the corporate partners to buy into what they're doing. Now he's got to be better at the basketball part and getting people to care more.
00:59:48 Speaker_02
The number one thing to me that tells me that that's not going to happen is the schedule, which I've talked about a million times in this podcast. The fact that it's 82 games and not 70. or 72 even, like that they don't care.
01:00:01 Speaker_02
They have too much of their product. They love the inventory and it's too much. And it's just night after night, there's eight games, nine games, 10 games, none of them. You never know what's special, what's not special.
01:00:12 Speaker_08
It's been A2 forever. At what point did it become that you would have thought, what was the point to where you felt like they needed to scale back?
01:00:20 Speaker_02
Late 2000s. I also think, I talked about this Tuesday, I think that sport's much harder to play and it's a big reason why these guys are getting injured.
01:00:28 Speaker_06
For me, I got religional in 2014 when everybody was praising Popovich for not playing, they were playing the Heat too. It was the Spurs and he set like three of the starters. He set everybody. Ruined the Saturday game.
01:00:44 Speaker_07
Yes.
01:00:44 Speaker_06
And everybody was like, the NBA media consensus was like, Pop is such a genius and blah, blah, blah. And I gotta give it to our guy Amin. He was like, it's cool when the Spurs do it, But when everybody's doing it, it's not going to be good.
01:00:59 Speaker_06
And our partners pay us for these games. This is how we make the bulk of our money.
01:01:04 Speaker_02
But the thing is, they just paid them more money for the games. Yeah. Like they ponied up again.
01:01:08 Speaker_06
They got blessed with the media environment where these live rights are so impactful. But that's when I got religion on it, when everybody was like, yo, Pop is a genius for this.
01:01:19 Speaker_06
And I'm just like, well, if teams need to load manage their stars, then that means we need less games.
01:01:25 Speaker_02
Think how good the 72 would be right now with Philly's situation, where it's like, holy shit, they're 2-9 in the 72-game season? This is dangerous now. They can't fuck around. They could be the number 10 playing team. Not with 82.
01:01:40 Speaker_06
They'll be fine. They'll finish in the top three of the East.
01:01:43 Speaker_02
That's no problem. I've asked so many people, and there's some people in the league who have really pushed for it. Steve Kerr is a massive advocate for it, and he's written letters and all this stuff.
01:01:53 Speaker_02
There's no answer other than, nah, we don't want to give up the money. That's it. It's 100% money.
01:02:00 Speaker_06
Mind you, these are the masters of the universe. This is what we're told. These are the smartest business people in the history of planet Earth.
01:02:08 Speaker_06
And you get this massive increase in revenue with your new TV deal, you would think that it's like, all right, With this windfall, we can make the product better.
01:02:17 Speaker_06
It might like hurt us in the short run in terms of our inventory, but we're going to find a way to make these games feel more interesting, special, and better monetize the decrease in inventory.
01:02:30 Speaker_06
But instead, they're just like, no, we're going to bash them over the head with 82 from now till eternity.
01:02:35 Speaker_08
Well, I mean, they're probably, I mean, the conversation now around the league in terms of the quality of the games, the viewership, might spawn something, but there's been no reason to, right? The league has been incredibly popular.
01:02:48 Speaker_08
The NBA helped to normalize the American society in the bubble after. They should have won some kind of social award. This is dumb. I've said this to you before, bruh. I literally was driving around LA like a zombie during the pandemic.
01:03:06 Speaker_08
And then I heard on the radio, people were like, I've heard that there are rumblings of the NBA getting everybody back together in one city and playing all the games. And I was hope. I was like, oh my god, if I could just watch some NBA basketball.
01:03:23 Speaker_02
You know what's crazy about that? I was thinking about that the other day, because it feels like it happened 130 years ago, and it was four years. We were putting cardboard cutouts of fans in the stands.
01:03:39 Speaker_02
Not only did we not have fans in the stands, we were pretending to have fans in the stands. Like that Stallone Cobra thing behind Van's shoulder there. And it was like totally normal. That's how desperate we were for basketball. Let's take a break.
01:03:53 Speaker_02
We gotta talk to Mike Tyson. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. State Farm helps you score an affordable price when you choose to bundle home and auto insurance with the personal price plan. Bundling home and auto, that's a pro move.
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Make sure your home is safe this season. Once again, simplisafe.com slash bs, SimpliSafe with two i's, simplisafe.com slash bs. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. All right, Mike Tyson against one of the Paul brothers. Which Paul brother is it? Jake.
01:06:46 Speaker_02
All right, Jake Paul.
01:06:48 Speaker_08
I was about to say Logan. It's Jake. All right, Bill. Wait, wait, wait. All right, Billy, man. Jake, take everything personally. Jake, you're going to find out. I'm old.
01:06:56 Speaker_05
Don't take it in person. Jake Paul.
01:07:02 Speaker_02
Wes, are you old enough to remember early Tyson?
01:07:05 Speaker_06
Or just the clips of early Tyson? Early Tyson, no. Tyson, my first real memories of Mike outside of OVHS was when he came out of the first prison stint. Like the Bruno and all of those guys.
01:07:19 Speaker_02
What do you remember of early Tyson?
01:07:21 Speaker_08
I remember the way things used to go back in the olden days was whispers, reality, stardom. That's how it was with Shaq. My uncle wrote a letter from prison.
01:07:34 Speaker_08
to my dad, and it was like, yo, have you heard about this boy from LSU, seven foot one, 290 pounds, have you seen him? Shaquille O'Neal.
01:07:45 Speaker_08
Whispers, boom, and with Tyson, it was this unbelievable wrecking machine, then you see him on HBO, reality, and then stardom. And so from, I guess he came out,
01:07:57 Speaker_08
At no point in my young life do I not remember Mike Tyson not being the baddest motherfucker around. And when you watched him, it was obvious you were watching something different.
01:08:07 Speaker_02
That's my memory as well. Well, although I was older, but it was Sports Illustrated cover, HBO Fights, This Is Must Watch. Saw literally every Tyson fight.
01:08:16 Speaker_02
Everyone cared the most about his fights versus really anything else in sports except maybe like the Super Bowl.
01:08:23 Speaker_08
That's crazy.
01:08:24 Speaker_02
And I don't know, the audience doesn't match up with that, but just... No, no, no, they do.
01:08:28 Speaker_08
No, it was a huge thing. It was boxing, because remember now, boxing is in an interesting place at this point. Muhammad Ali is gone in 1980, but really he's gone.
01:08:39 Speaker_02
And nobody likes Larry Holmes.
01:08:40 Speaker_08
Before then, Larry Holmes comes in at the lower weights. Sugar Ray Leonard is your baby.
01:08:44 Speaker_02
The middleweights and the welterweights took over for half the decade.
01:08:47 Speaker_08
And then there's an unstoppable heavyweight buzzsaw, and that becomes must-see television.
01:08:53 Speaker_02
But it wasn't just the buzzsaw. It was the way he talked. It was how weird he was. He was just the most compelling person. He was dangerous.
01:09:00 Speaker_02
His interviews after the fight, he would just use crazy words and had like this weird empathy for somebody who he just sent their nose through their forehead.
01:09:08 Speaker_08
I'm telling you, that was the biggest part of it. The biggest part of it was, You didn't, you never knew which mic you were going to get, right? No, I don't think he knew either. Right. And so, and then Mike becomes ubiquitous.
01:09:20 Speaker_08
He's got the, the punch out video, punch out video.
01:09:24 Speaker_02
I remember that. Well, the girl pay-per-view is what pushed her over the top. He knocked him out in 91 seconds. And everybody was like, that was one of the early, Hey, whose house are we going to? Which is now a staple of how we watch sports back then.
01:09:36 Speaker_02
It was like, who's getting the fight. Are we all chipping in? What are we doing for food? And then my mom, I don't even think had brought down the nachos yet.
01:09:45 Speaker_02
I had 12 people in the basement and we're all like, yeah, the fight's over, but the food's still coming. Right. It was just done. That was the only thing.
01:09:52 Speaker_08
I was terrified. The only that I remember that fight specifically.
01:09:55 Speaker_02
Remember the deer in the headlights look at Spinks?
01:09:57 Speaker_08
We had everybody over he and him and my uncle, rest in peace my uncle Ray. My uncle Ray is like, Spinks gonna make it a fight. Spinks gonna make it a fight. He from a boxing family.
01:10:07 Speaker_00
Yeah.
01:10:08 Speaker_08
The whole nine, whatever, whatever. He's gonna box him. He's gonna box him, he's gonna move. My hit Spinks Spinks goes down to one knee and my daddy like, uh-huh.
01:10:15 Speaker_02
And then hit him with the second, the punch that ended it was one of the single hardest punches in the history of boxing. And he's gone. It's over. He's moving forward like it's like in Roadhouse, just to like clear him out.
01:10:26 Speaker_08
And we didn't really, that was the big, we didn't have very much else to do. Right. We all had to just sit around and talk about how raw Mike Tyson was.
01:10:33 Speaker_02
The thing with Mike was he was involved in four, I remember where I was when I watched it, sporting events, which is like, I think he might have the record for me. Cause it was that Spinks fight.
01:10:45 Speaker_02
It was getting knocked out by Douglas, which is still- Holyfield the ear. Both Holyfield fights. The first fight was incredible that we had that at my house. We had that party. Still thought he was going to beat Holyfield.
01:10:57 Speaker_02
And then the ear was, was also insane.
01:11:00 Speaker_06
It's like, uh, when he came out of prison and he had that like sort of exhibition tour where he fought the big doofy white dude. Peter McNeely. Yeah, Bruno in the UK. Big Massachusetts moment.
01:11:11 Speaker_02
Peter McNeely.
01:11:12 Speaker_06
And like, you know, it was like this warm up to like the real big fights against Holyfield and Lennox Lewis. And like, I would say even back then, the aura still existed. And everybody around me assumed he was going to kill these guys.
01:11:24 Speaker_05
Yeah.
01:11:25 Speaker_06
Like everybody thought, no, it's Mike. Like he had the fluke. He went to prison. He's back. He's down with the Muslims.
01:11:30 Speaker_02
Holyfield was a cruiserweight who had moved up to heavyweight. He'd lost to Moore.
01:11:34 Speaker_08
By that time, it was more mythology though. We had, and they knew it because they were picking opponents very strategically for Mike. Mike beat Bruce Seldon for a championship, maybe Buster, no, he beat Bruno for a championship.
01:11:49 Speaker_08
They actually paid like $4 million of step-aside money to Lennox Lewis at one point so they didn't have to fight him. So at that point, it was a little bit more- It was smoke and mirrors. It was more mythology.
01:12:00 Speaker_02
The fights were awesome, though. They were. Even the Gulotta fight.
01:12:02 Speaker_08
Yes. The Mike that we knew was gone even before the Buster Douglas fight.
01:12:10 Speaker_02
The way he would move side to side and the combos, like that guy, that guy died in jail.
01:12:15 Speaker_08
And all of those other guys, like, leaving. But he still had it.
01:12:19 Speaker_02
You know what was another amazing thing about his arc was living it in real time, watching somebody, like, fly too close to the sun and Even the mistakes aren't even done yet and you just kind of knew her.
01:12:31 Speaker_02
Once you started dating Robin Givens, it was like... this isn't going to go well for anybody.
01:12:37 Speaker_08
Something that was always resonated with people about Mike was the real fight of Mike Tyson's life was never going to be in the rink. Because when you started learning about where he came from and what he went through, you always were wondering.
01:12:53 Speaker_08
It still feels like Mike Tyson won because he won the biggest championship he could have won. You were waiting for the... Mike Tyson has experienced intense tragedy in his life. You were waiting for the moment that it was over.
01:13:08 Speaker_08
And he ended up in a really bad, life-altering, life-changing situation. And he went through some of those.
01:13:15 Speaker_08
him fighting was it was a happy ending to a degree whenever you saw him in the boxing ring because everybody sold you on just how much he had gone through you mentioned certain things mike flies into a rage you mentioned other things mike breaks down and cries and so
01:13:34 Speaker_08
of all the things that he's been through and they are not woke. They are things that he's been through. They are not.
01:13:40 Speaker_06
He's a case study because there's an extension of grace that Mike is afforded even after the sexual assault charges and convictions that like people just have decided collectively that we're going to extend Mike
01:13:54 Speaker_06
some level of grace and i think it is some of that vulnerability that you're mentioning right now because like there's other people who would have gone through what he's gone through and would have been completely written off by every single segment of society except some of the worst elements but like mike has managed to fight his way through that and be embraced we this is weird territory that we're treading into but i'll say it like this oh boy
01:14:20 Speaker_08
He is brutally human. He's brutally human. You watch him and you're like, this is supposed to be the strongest guy in the world, right? He knocks people out. He bowls people over their heads.
01:14:37 Speaker_08
But there's an interview with him and a guy from Canada where Mike's out there to do his play and the guy brings up Mike's old case. and he cannot control himself. And you get the feeling of, man, I've been through that. I put that behind me.
01:14:54 Speaker_08
I'm trying to move on and be better. And you're throwing this back in my face. This guy is mentioning something that Mike was convicted of. He is not wrong in saying this is something from your past, but you still look at him like he's an asshole.
01:15:08 Speaker_08
You're like, yo man, why are you bringing that up? You know what I'm saying? You still look at him like that because there's something compelling about the amount of truth that Mike Tyson has failed into. And it'll always be that way.
01:15:21 Speaker_06
He's one of the last ones that we're just like, yeah, I wonder if anybody else could ever have the type of redemption arc. And you know, some people might say it's undeserved.
01:15:32 Speaker_06
You know, some people might say, like, you know, maybe human beings deserve to make mistakes and live past it.
01:15:38 Speaker_06
But yeah, I'm fascinated by that element of it, where, like, everybody understands that, like, Mike has lived a traumatic life, Mike has mental health issues, Mike has done some really fucked up things, but yet Mike is, you know, still somebody people root for.
01:15:54 Speaker_06
I think it's amazing, honestly.
01:15:56 Speaker_08
There's one more thing that might factor into it, is that he's... I don't think people think this consciously. He's been punished. So he hasn't gotten away with anything per se. There's a lot of things that he probably got away with.
01:16:14 Speaker_02
But he even said that. He said, I didn't do this, but there's some other stuff, so we're probably even.
01:16:19 Speaker_08
Right. So he went to jail. He lost a child. He lost all of his money. He lost his mentor. He lost his best friend. life has taken a lot from him. Now he's gotten a lot, right?
01:16:35 Speaker_08
And he's been able to come back from all of that, but you've seen part of it is, and you don't wanna, you don't, I'm trying to pick my words very delicately because the thing that Mike Tyson went to jail for is something that we have to root out of our community, our society, and we have to make sure that we're serious about talking about stuff like that.
01:16:55 Speaker_08
But there's a part of it to where it feels like, it feels like, He's got a chunk out of his ass taken out of it because of it. It feels like he's gone through some really terrible, immensely gut-wrenching, horrible things.
01:17:11 Speaker_08
And look, if no one ever wants to watch or look at Mike Tyson, I get it. I get why you would feel that way. But like, even my mother. Yeah, people love Mike, man. Yeah, even my mother is just like, she still likes to see Mike Tyson doing well.
01:17:27 Speaker_02
You know what I think it is? Jalen and I interviewed him once when I was at Grantland. We did a pod with him and it was like, it was like a thrill. It was like really, it was so cool to just shoot the shit with him.
01:17:39 Speaker_02
And I might've even said this to him on the pod, but I always felt like he was one of the most self-aware athletes that I ever followed.
01:17:46 Speaker_02
He was somebody that you would have thought was a complete disaster, and he was, but he was also completely painfully aware of all his faults, all his mistakes, all the issues he had, and could talk about it, which I can't even think of anybody
01:18:01 Speaker_02
Iverson, I think, has a little bit of that too, where there's an self-introspection that was always unusual about him, even as it was like, I'm talking Robin Givens era all the way through.
01:18:13 Speaker_02
He always kind of knew, I remember writing a column about it once about, He kind of became the Tony Montana, say hello to the bad guy character, because he kind of knew that was how society saw him. He was like, yeah, say hello to me. I'm the bad guy.
01:18:26 Speaker_06
That was who he became. These people think that I'm an animal. So I'm going to act like one. So I'm going to do it. And I'm going to sell this fight. And I'm going to intimidate this dude. And I'm going to talk about him. I'mma fuck you till you love me.
01:18:43 Speaker_06
That was nuts. I wanna eat your kids.
01:18:45 Speaker_02
His crazy run was the craziest.
01:18:48 Speaker_08
Mike's crazy run is the craziest run we've seen by any athlete. The only person that comes close to Kanye a couple years ago. Yeah, but like- Maybe Charlie Sheen too.
01:18:59 Speaker_06
Oh, that's, those are, these are iconic crazy runs.
01:19:03 Speaker_02
So in my column, I created the Tyson zone, which was when somebody acts so consistently crazy that you'll just believe any story. And Charlie Sheen entered that. Kanye definitely. Oh my God.
01:19:14 Speaker_02
You know, there's certain people where you're like, I'll believe any story now.
01:19:17 Speaker_08
Mike's crazy run, and then there was like, not just crazy, but it was like, odd, funny, like, my back is broken spinal.
01:19:26 Speaker_06
It's like, odd, like, Mike. I guess I'm just gonna fade into Bolivian.
01:19:31 Speaker_02
That's my favorite. That was the best one. We went, the first year of Jimmy's show, we went to go, he was the guest host, and we went to, he had like this pigeon coop in Harlem, and I went with Uncle Frank, I was like the writer, and we spent,
01:19:45 Speaker_02
I don't know how long, on the rooftop, just watching Mike flew pigeons. And he was so sad and so traumatized by his whole life. But he could also talk about it. And he really connected with Uncle Frank.
01:19:57 Speaker_02
And it was this really cool five-minute video we got out of it. But even that, I was like, why is he even letting us up here? It was like he wanted to. win people over, even though he knew he was the bad guy.
01:20:10 Speaker_08
For everybody out listening right now, I want you guys to, you're gonna, this is gonna be hilarious when you think about this. Think about how jumpy Bill was on the roof of the pension.
01:20:18 Speaker_05
Oh, I loved it.
01:20:21 Speaker_08
It was amazing.
01:20:22 Speaker_02
It was such a cool experience. Bill was like, uh, Pookie, nice to meet you. No, the thing is, it was only him and like one other guy. Like he, he didn't have the entourage anymore. Like all these boxers. He hit that point.
01:20:35 Speaker_02
He hit that in the Douglas fight. He had two people in his corner. You think he wins tomorrow? Phil doesn't think so. What do you think? I'm gonna look at the odds while you talk about this.
01:20:45 Speaker_08
I don't know what to think.
01:20:47 Speaker_02
He's 58 years old, which is just like... Waz was asking, could he just like die if he got punched in the heart? Like how... I think he's gonna be okay.
01:20:54 Speaker_06
I think he's gonna be okay in terms of physically. I just, yeah, I just find it hard to believe he's gonna hit this guy enough times to win.
01:21:02 Speaker_08
So from a boxing standpoint, people like to hate on Jake. They do. I've seen Jake in the gym, like in the gym.
01:21:09 Speaker_00
He's not bad.
01:21:09 Speaker_08
Out at Fields boxing. He's certainly not bad in terms of the guys that he fights.
01:21:17 Speaker_02
This isn't Screech from Saved by the Bell.
01:21:19 Speaker_08
Fuck no. This is a guy that actually has a right hand, like a real right hand. Like he can detonate you with a right hand, right? And he's a big, strong, athletic guy who's got a fair amount of ring experience now, right?
01:21:33 Speaker_08
So he's not somebody to be fucked over and play with. Any version of Mike Tyson Pre-age 50 will work Jake Paul, but it's not pre-age 50. Your stamina goes, your punch resistance goes. I could, I don't know what's going to happen.
01:21:54 Speaker_02
To be honest with you, I don't know.
01:21:55 Speaker_08
That's the thing about Mike, you don't know what's about to happen.
01:21:58 Speaker_02
People have been asking me like, is this, do you think people are going to watch this fight or people are going to care? And I'm like, people are 1,000, first of all, it's on Netflix, which is the single most important channel we have now.
01:22:10 Speaker_02
It's a Friday night. People are going to get together. Somebody's going to get it. It's super easy to queue up Netflix at whoever's house or whatever bar. People are going to care. I actually think people are going to care.
01:22:22 Speaker_02
Way more than I think people realize.
01:22:24 Speaker_08
Yeah. I'm watching it. Like, I thought it wasn't gonna happen. I thought after it got canceled the first time that they would never come back to it.
01:22:31 Speaker_08
The only thing that makes me think that you could see a Tyson victory is that Mike seems genuinely motivated.
01:22:39 Speaker_06
Yeah.
01:22:40 Speaker_00
Yeah.
01:22:41 Speaker_06
Like this young kid, he's just parachutes into my life's work, my sport, and thinks that he could take me out. I understand why anybody would be motivated by that, but yeah, the man is 60.
01:22:54 Speaker_02
I just can't. The man is 60. I can't believe, like I was watching Mike Tyson fight in the mid 80s, followed by some like erotic thriller on HBO, and it was like the greatest night.
01:23:04 Speaker_06
The greatest night. I was like, oh my God. The heart was pumping.
01:23:09 Speaker_02
Oh, the hitchhiker's on.
01:23:12 Speaker_03
And now, 40 years later, he's still doing it. Bill is watching Emmanuelle in space. Yeah.
01:23:17 Speaker_08
I was like, oh, she's in space now. See? See, everybody tries to act like it's only me. Waz knows what's up. Oh, my God. What?
01:23:24 Speaker_06
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Waz knows what's up. On the weekends?
01:23:27 Speaker_08
I never went to sleep before 2 a.m. What's your big boxing fan? Jake Paul, real boxer?
01:23:36 Speaker_02
I think he's an elite celebrity boxer.
01:23:38 Speaker_08
Yes, he's a great celebrity boxer.
01:23:41 Speaker_02
To me, it speaks to more the evolution of celebrity boxing, which was in the 90s and 2000s where we would put Screech against Rorschach and we were ready to go.
01:23:50 Speaker_06
I don't think he'd be in the top 100 of actual people in his weight class in terms of, especially not in the world, but even in America for that sense. But to be that famous, And to fight that credibly, I think is an actual... It's impressive.
01:24:05 Speaker_08
Can I tell you guys a quick story from the gym with Jake?
01:24:09 Speaker_02
Oh, story from the gym. Story from the gym. Sponsored by State Farm.
01:24:12 Speaker_08
Sponsored by State Farm. Like, Philosophy Boxing, Woodland Hills, Phil Polina. Shout out to him. There was a heavyweight in the gym. Jake used to come in the gym. come in the gym with BJ and they will fight.
01:24:27 Speaker_08
Jake's whole team, Jake Rowe, he got a whole team that comes in with him and they do their whole thing and they spar different guys. Pros, normally they would spar people out of weight class though. So Jake.
01:24:39 Speaker_08
At that time, he wasn't as big as he is now, 175, 180. The guys he would spar would be middle. Sometimes, sometimes, even Welter, that he would spar with. And they were bringing him along, but he was taking it serious. He was in there all the time.
01:24:51 Speaker_08
There was a heavyweight in there that was like, just hated Jake Paul. Just hated Jake Paul. Like, just did not want it. Like, I want to spar Jake. I want to spar Jake. I want to fucking fight Jake. I want to do all of this.
01:25:04 Speaker_08
This is the start of Creed V. Hated Jake Paul. Hated Jake Paul. They got in the ring and he was like, this is a guy I've been boxing for a long time. They got in the ring and they sparred. Jake fucked this guy up.
01:25:17 Speaker_08
When I'm telling you this is like, this is what I consider to be like a real, we haven't seen him since. Jake fucked, I'm like, you guys, I know that Van has a reputation of embellishing stories. This is, when I'm telling you, hurt him bad.
01:25:34 Speaker_08
And I was like, Oh, because I did not think that was going to go the way that it did. This was a guy that was his same size, had been boxing for a long time. There's literally pictures of him with gloves on when he's like 13, 14 years old.
01:25:48 Speaker_08
Jake beat the shit out of him. And I'm like, he's going to win some fights.
01:25:51 Speaker_02
Waz, are you familiar with Bacoli?
01:25:53 Speaker_08
No, who's that? Oh shit, this is Bill's guy. He's your guy too. He is, but Bill is like obsessed with Martin McCullough. He's a gigantic guy from the continent.
01:26:03 Speaker_02
He's from, he's Congolese.
01:26:05 Speaker_06
Oh, the Congo, the continent continent.
01:26:07 Speaker_02
Can I, I'll just give you the one sentence cell job. Congolese Ernie Shavers meets 1974 George Foreman. Wow. That's Bacoli.
01:26:20 Speaker_06
So is this like more credible than the Deontay Wilder early clips?
01:26:25 Speaker_02
Yes. There's nothing like, there's nothing like this guy.
01:26:28 Speaker_08
Deontay Wilder is, I don't want to take anything from Wilder.
01:26:30 Speaker_02
Nobody wants to fight this guy. Like he can't, he literally cannot make fights.
01:26:34 Speaker_08
I don't want to take anything from Wilder. Wilder is a bronze medalist. in the Olympics, who became heavyweight champion with one of the most devastating right, uh, right hands of all time.
01:26:42 Speaker_08
But, like, Martin Bercouli is like a, like a, there's a big young heavyweight, Jared Anderson.
01:26:48 Speaker_02
Yeah.
01:26:48 Speaker_08
Great young fighter, just got demolished.
01:26:50 Speaker_02
The Saudis, the Saudis threw him a ton of money. They're like, will you fight Bercouli? He said, no. And they're like, here's a lot of money. And it's like, all right. And he got, got absolutely, like, his career has been altered.
01:27:01 Speaker_08
It was one of those, you ever seen, It's not quite this level. It's like the Frasier foreman. I was just about to say. That's what the final's gonna bring about. Like Frasier foreman to where you're at. Ball Frasier just keeps falling over.
01:27:10 Speaker_08
Halfway into the fight, you're like, ooh. Like halfway into the first round, you're like, ah. And Jarrett Anderson, give him credit. Like one of these guys. He was landing shots and fighting his fight. That's what he was doing the whole fight.
01:27:23 Speaker_02
But it's not just that, like McCoy is skilled. Yeah, no, but it's ultimately when somebody can just And you just see the other guy moving backwards, and it's like he's getting hit by a tornado.
01:27:33 Speaker_02
And then it became, and so now, after that, he can't get a fight. Nobody. He's my number one. I just want to see him fight. I would watch him fight every two months. They just made a fight. Jump on the bandwagon once. I made a fight with him.
01:27:43 Speaker_08
I want it. But it wasn't with Zane or one of those guys.
01:27:46 Speaker_02
It's in December.
01:27:47 Speaker_08
Yeah, he's gonna kill somebody. Yeah.
01:27:49 Speaker_02
He's gonna kill somebody. All right. Mike Tyson. So we're all watching. Yep. Kyle, you watching?
01:27:55 Speaker_08
Yeah.
01:27:55 Speaker_02
All right.
01:27:56 Speaker_08
Oh, oh. News for everyone. Kyle and I going to Frolic.
01:28:02 Speaker_01
When is that? Allegedly. I don't know. Sounds great.
01:28:05 Speaker_08
What day is that? When did we say we're doing it?
01:28:08 Speaker_01
I said the weekend Saturday vibes are great. Will they have the games on? Yeah. Three TVs. Not the best though.
01:28:14 Speaker_02
You can go now that LSU season's over. You start going to bars on Saturday.
01:28:18 Speaker_08
I'll just let y'all know, y'all fuck with me with LSU. I'm not like a stable person when it comes to LSU. So y'all, you know how everybody likes to get razzed about their team and all that stuff like that? I don't like that shit.
01:28:32 Speaker_08
Yeah, but our season is kind of fucked. We still outside hope though. We run the table.
01:28:37 Speaker_02
Now you have Jaden Daniels. You just transfer all your love to Jaden Daniels for his Washington playoff run.
01:28:41 Speaker_08
And we got, there's a whole NIL battle happening right now. We're about to play probably 10 million for a quarterback.
01:28:47 Speaker_02
I don't like this at all.
01:28:48 Speaker_06
I saw Cam Ward bought his entire offensive line diamond chains. Like he had like a platter out and as a gift for his amazing season, he got them diamond chains.
01:28:59 Speaker_02
He should have bought them for the defense. Maybe they play better. This is a better podcast for another time, but if you told me what is college sports in 10 years, I'm prepared for a hundred scenarios.
01:29:11 Speaker_06
Yeah.
01:29:12 Speaker_02
He'd literally tell me anything. He'd tell me it's like a 10 college league, and everyone else is D3, and I'd believe that.
01:29:18 Speaker_06
Yeah. It's a strange direction. It's headed in, for sure.
01:29:23 Speaker_02
I can't say it's great. Waz, great to see you. Same. Van, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Cochran and Steve Cerruti for producing as always. Thanks to Van Lathan and big Waz, Wazney Lambray.
01:29:39 Speaker_02
Uh, stay tuned for part two. It's coming later tonight. I'll see you there. ♪ On the wayside ♪ ♪ I'm a person never on the scene ♪ ♪ I don't have to worry ♪ Must be 21 plus and president in select states.
01:30:10 Speaker_02
For Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and president in D.C. Gambling problem? Call 100 Gambler or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland.
01:30:29 Speaker_02
Hope is here, visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York.