Chris Ryan

I was trying to be nice.

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He's kind of the perfect example of English teacher guy, English student. Right.

Cooper in A Star is Born.

I don't think enough people have seen the movie yet. I think when he is actually like, first of all, this is he's already doing the Lord's work on the promo tour, which we're going to talk about. Yeah. But once people see this movie, I think that he might slingshot ahead of Ralph Fiennes and Adrian Brody. So what are the cases for Rafe Fiennes and Adrian Brody?

So Rafe is probably a... He deserves it. Body of work. Conclave's really good. Body of work? Like a Joel Embiid type of case two years ago? He's never won. Okay. I'm wearing a thunder hat. I don't even acknowledge that. Uh... Yeah, body of work for Ralph Fiennes. And I think for Adrian Brody, it would be like, this is it.

This is the performance of a lifetime, even though he's already won, which I think will probably count against him. Already won. That's a strike.

It's the first movie that I feel like, this and Dune, but definitely Dune 2, where it's like Timmy's a man now. He's actually a convincing guy in his late 20s now. Remember when this happened to Leo?

It was like the Catch Me If You Can era where it was like, oh, Leo's an adult now. Yeah, he had done The Beach and a couple of other things to try and move into out of heartthrob and into adult. I remember this happened to you when we went to The Ringer.

That was my blood diving.

Monica Barbaro. Monica Barbaro. Yeah, she was great. She plays Joan Baez.

Yeah, Norton is Pete Seeger. I think it's a movie that'll probably be like, a lot of people are like, I love the performances. I love the music. I don't know if there's like a huge story there. But that's been a lot of musical biographies in general.

That one had a little bit more inherent tragedy built into it. But I think that this one is just going to really blow people away. Because if you see the trailer, and if you just look at Timothee Chalamet in his day-to-day life, you probably wouldn't guess that he could pull this off.

So Chalamet's using the opportunity that he might have here where he's odds on, or he's going to be an odds on Oscar favorite, if not like the prohibitive favorite. And he seems to be taking most of that time to make it clear how much you love sports.

Yeah.

And I love it. Now there's a very, you know, not famous, but infamous clip of him on Kimmel from like eight years ago or whatever it was, where he talks about how much he loves you. Right.

Yeah.

He's done Theo Vaughn. He's done game day. He's done. He was good. He was great on game day. When are we getting Timmy on the bill pod? I put the request in.

The flip side is that like there are photos of him like autograph hounding Amari Stoudemire. Let's talk about it. Let's find out this side of you, the sports side. It's not coming out in a Theo Vaughn podcast. What do you think you would do to him? Would you just put him on Guess the Lines blind? I want to go full 80 minutes.

Travis Hunter, how does he translate to the NFL?

What if he's not coming on your pod because he has lost most of the money he's made following million dollar picks?

LeBron and Curry and Durant stay too long? What's your take? Are threes, are we getting too much of a homogenous product with threes?

Yeah, this is what the people want, Chalamet.

We don't want you talking about how you've just been building your whole acting career towards playing Bob Dylan. We want to know whether or not you think Jalen Hurts can win a Super Bowl.

Oh. Like a guy who's coming up through Texas high school football. Isn't Mike McDaniel more fun?

If we find out that Mike McDaniel got involved in some crazy Scarface Coke thing in Miami. Mike McDaniel crossed with Pain and Gain. Yes.

It's like we love these plays you're calling, but our wide receivers keep getting killed out there. Right.

Oh, like a horror? Yeah.

I think that this movie, when you see him in Dylan, he's got a little hair on his chest. And I think he needs to be back in the mix for Heat 2 conversations. I don't know what part, but I'm just saying he could be in the conversations. And then I think you're right. A horror movie would be incredible.

Is there anything from... Has he done Fincher yet? He hasn't. He hasn't done Fincher yet. No. It's Villeneuve. It's James Mangold for Complete Unknown. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Timothee Chalamet, The New Jersey Drone Story. Oh, that would be great. It's like just a guy in Jersey.

And it could be like Spielberg, like Close Encounters or War of the Worlds.

That sounds great. Yeah. Close encounters of the drone kind.

Oh, like a Bourne kind of thing?

Oh, sports spy. Maybe he's like... He's like Connor Stallions.

Yeah, maybe he plays Scott Boris. That could be a sports movie. Sure. That would be a great transformation. It'd be like when Leo played J. Edgar.

Because we get Miami. Yeah. There's drugs. You could embed him in the Miami football scene. You could make it be like Teddy Bridgewater is hanging out and stuff like that. It would be awesome.

You can't leave Cooper like that.

I don't know how good it is, but I know that I haven't had more fun talking about a TV show this year. Literally, every conversation I have about Landman seems to go 20 minutes. And it's just like... We're hysterically laughing, but also deeply, deeply involved in the plot. This is Taylor Sheridan's... I didn't know that he was ever going to have a home run again after Yellowstone.

I thought he would have shows... Much less a grand slam. That niche people... People love Lioness. People liked it in Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, whatever. The Yellowstone spinoffs. This feels like it could be the biggest show he made. I don't...

Billy Bob's no Kevin Costner in terms of the matinee idol department, but in terms of the amount of people watching it and the amount of times where you're just like, there's something in here for everyone. You can be into this because it's Friday Night Lights. You can be into this because it's Sicario. You can be into this because it's Dallas. I don't know, man. I love this show.

The first two episodes, Ali Larder mostly just appears on FaceTime.

They were like, well, can you FaceTime in? It would be like basically being like, we're going to have Sangoon just like only check in from the locker room. He's not going to play at all. Yeah. It's an incredible performance by her, but you're right.

Like after the first two episodes, I think the show teaches you how to watch it, which is essentially like there are going to be three or four scenes where Billy Bob absolutely monologues and cooks. And the only time that doesn't happen is when Ham calls him to yell at him. Right.

And then there's all this domestic drama between Billy Bob's character, Tommy, and her character, his ex-wife, now current wife. And it's just amazing. The funny thing is, did you notice that no one's giving Taylor Sheridan notes? This is Andy's big thing, Greenwald's big thing. There are scenes where you're like, how much longer is this scene going to go?

Like the dinner scene from episode four, I think, where she makes the wild boar bolognese. Yeah. And then he's like, are you on your period? And like, there's just, and you're like, how fucking long is this happening for? And it feels like you're just like in some sort of experimental drama.

He just wrote it for him. It's in his voice.

A little bit of the NASA guy from Armageddon.

Yeah. And I don't know what Allie Larder thinks the show is, but whatever she's doing, I love it. But the show seems to be bending towards her now. Like in the beginning, I was like, this is insane. Like she's in a bikini on FaceTime crying every scene.

And now it seems like she is an integral part of the drama and is like in every scene, even when guys are getting absolutely murdered by falling pipes. Right.

What's weird is that Demi Moore is in this show.

And if you would watch the trailer or if it was just the call sheet, you'd be like, yeah, Demi Moore is going to have a much bigger part in this show than Allie Larder.

needed the extra name but so those two and then the actor who plays Billy Bob's son in this oh Jacob Laughlin yeah so he was in this movie he's just really good yeah he was in a movie a while back this Jeff Nichols movie called Mud that's really really good when he was a kid actor and I haven't really seen him recently and he's awesome He is kind of like the Matt Saracen character.

That's a good comparison. The prodigal son who wants to be an oil man but doesn't want to do it on his dad's back. He's just really soulful, really good. It could be really bad. This show would not work if he wasn't doing a good job.

Well, he does a real live forever McBain speech in the middle of that.

And Dave Annabelle on Yellowstone.

One of the best parts about this show, which is so refreshing, is that it's not a overall mystery or overall plot that you have to keep track of all these different moving pieces.

You're just like, there's a problem every week. It's like dead body in the oil well that we got to figure out. We got another clue. Yeah. It's just every week, it's like West Wing or like Grey's Anatomy or like any big, really successful drama. They just give you a problem that Billy Bob has to solve by the end of the episode. Or not.

Or he's like, we're fucked and Jon Hamm's going to get mad at me.

It's awesome. It was so good. One other thing I wanted to mention is that I think I've realized that I'm a secret huge fan of shows where people have to travel a huge distance to have a very simple conversation. This was a big thing for Ozark where it was like, I need to see you. And they'd have to drive all the way around the lake to the resort or all the way back. In car scenes?

This scene, this show is basically like, They need to have a conversation. You have to get on a private plane and fly from the Permian Basin to Dallas to get yelled at for five minutes. And I was just like, if we had that at the Ringer, if the Ringer was based in West Texas and you were like, I'm going to need to talk to you. And I'm like, I got to go.

How fast can you get from Fort Worth to Houston? The private plane leaves Permian. I fly to Dallas and you're like, I didn't much care for that Celtics team yesterday.

Let's talk about it. It is like we said about Tatum. I know you're emotional, but don't ever yell at me. I'm your boss.

Yeah, but I think that he does a really good job explaining things for people who might be looking at this more from the business perspective. Like the two speeches he's given, well, the one... You're talking about Ham. Yeah, Ham. The one where he's like, this business is like constant crisis punctuated by extraordinary success. I'm like, that sounds like an incredible idea for a show.

And two, like when he's just like, I'm the bad guy. Like everybody hates... I've accepted the fact that the oil industry is the villain. So all my job is to do is keep oil between this number and this number. Well, and then the lawyer... Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And Billy Bob's got to memorize like five pages of a monologue. Right. It's an incredible feat athletically. I do agree. Ham seems to be always getting off a plane, getting off on his mobile phone and then hanging it up. Yeah, they're like, John, can you film from two to five? Yeah. We just need to get off a plane and you're yelling at somebody.

I put on a suit. I got off a plane. I talked to him. And Demi Moore was like, I loved it. Two-day shoot. I think that this show does really remind me that it's okay for TV to be a lot of fun. We have had a nice long stretch of prestige television that's very serious, very like, this is about important issues. There are important issues in Landman, but you can take them as seriously as you want.

There is at least three things in each episode where you're like, what did I just watch?

But the father-son story is like definitely really affecting. Like I really, really like it.

Are you going to say the line? There's been a couple of lines that are like... Oh, yeah. They'll push in almost an R. Yeah? Yeah. So she says, I may have to suck Victor's dick to get my Bentley.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I think that Yellowstone was like a phenomenon where there wasn't really anything like that. There was no Western on TV at that moment, I don't think.

This is a little bit more familiar to people, but I think as it keeps going, they're probably only going to be... It's so popular, I wouldn't be surprised if some huge star does a guest star next year. That's... I was going to bring that up. Andy Garcia is supposed to be on this season. It's going to be getting bigger and bigger.

No, people were actually watching Yellowstone. Yeah, right.

You know what's crazy about this show too is how fast they made a couple of the sets become like instantly recognizable and kind of iconic. Like the cafe that they all hang out at, the bar, where it's like everyone's drinking all day long because they have like crazy shifts. Yeah. And then, like you said, the McMansion and the Country Club, you're kind of like, I already know this world.

Like this is, it usually takes a show like years to be like, oh, and you know this place and you know that place. And it's like, no, they instantly kind of hit all of that stuff.

Yeah.

So where does it go? Where does it go? From here?

I think that they'll probably keep playing out the adversarial relationship between Monty and Tommy, but I think that the cool thing about this series is that it'll probably be like Yellowstone where there's a big bad every season. And so there will be a big plot for each season, but all the parts will stay the same.

What are the lessons?

And the daughter is just going for it. She's the sister of a woman who was on The Bachelorette.

And yes, is 28. I mean, she's 28 years old. She's playing like an 18 year old. It is an extraordinary bit that she's just like, I'm nude in this house while like the lawyer guy is like, I can't look at you.

Yeah, Succession is way more prestige.

Hardest one to thread. I think it's more, it would be something that like David E. Kelly did. It would be like Big Little Lies, maybe. That's good. Like that kind of like, this is very pop. It's got big people in it. People will just like looking at the furniture.

Or you would

My mom's like that with Lioness. She was like, have you heard about this Lioness show? And I'm like, yeah, I have. Right. And then all of a sudden it was like, all my episodes were done. So do you think Taylor Sheridan took like the limitless pill?

So he has now written at least 40 hours of television this year.

I don't get it.

I don't know, but this is like, we haven't seen a run like this in Sorkin, where Sorkin wrote every episode of West Wing. Can you imagine? And this show, honestly, it kind of reminds me of West Wing a little bit. It's a lot of people like walking and talking and solving problems in entertaining ways.

But there would be like three good plots per episode of West Wing.

There would be like an overarching thing where it's like the president's sick or whatever. But like for the most part, it would be like Josh is going to solve something. Sam's going to do something. And like CJ is going to do something. And then you get a big speech from the president. Yeah.

There is no writer's room.

I'll tell you what is unprecedented. It's unprecedented for someone to have the biggest show on TV end while possibly one of the biggest shows on TV is beginning and you're responsible for both of them. I can't think of another time that's happened.

That you were writing both of them.

That's coming up next. I thought you were going to be like first take, but for like actual land man. Oh, that'd be amazing.

Should Cooper have kept it in his pants? Coming up.

Does it use more energy than we think?

Oh, I can't even remember. I just refer to her as Allie Larder. She doesn't need a name.

Yeah. Because Allie Larder's Instagram. She's like, Angela's back. Episode four.

The odds of Mallory loving the show are 100%. She texts me on Saturday saying six hours till Landman. I'm like, Lamar Jackson's on.

Yeah. I'd like him to go to Boston and then orchestrate a trade for Kyrie Irving to come back to Boston with him. And then maybe orchestrate a trade for James Harden to come back.

Yeah.

Wasn't there, like, a 15-minute honorarium to him during the dunk contest or something? Like, yeah, that was weird. Yeah, it really feels like we're pushing. He's still alive. Like, he's right there. Right, then he came out.

Vince Carter's at SNL 50, like, ah, it's all right.

Is he coaching? He's coaching now, right?

What are you going to do if Leon Rose trades Josh Hart and that podcast gets broken up? Fuck.

Paul George, did you guys know that I found this stat? Apparently he's recorded 19 podcast episodes as a member of the Sixers and scored two points in his last game as a member of the Sixers before the All-Star break. It's kind of a bummer, yeah. Turns out that's why he was available. You know, like... Do you want to walk us through where I'm at? Yeah. Where are you at? It's pretty dark.

I kind of do, man. That's why I'm wearing this fucking thunder hat. It's just pretty brutal. I think Maxie is the thing that's made me most sad because he's obviously so bummed out by this that even his effervescence is dimming. The Embiid thing is, I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't think he's ever going to be what we thought he was going to be.

We thought Gordon Hayward was going to pass away that night. You know what? Eventually Brad Stevens.

Least favorite athlete ever? That's just what legacy media wants you to believe, man. Yeah.

Are we picking that up? They're buds. All right. Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong. Thank you, Lance, for coming tonight.

Yeah.

I'm going to go 19 just because it feels super recent. I'm sure it's genuine, but I don't recall him being a part of the Eagles before 2017. She's more recent. She was on a late night show talking about loving the Giants five years ago. So it's just cool. You can love who you want to love, but she just switched around on the NFC.

That's a really good one. I like that one. How about you, Sean? Before every game, he's like, Neil.

Bill, how many times have you seen the Brutalists in theaters?

It was like two and a half. Brutalist is too long, but a nine-hour Celtics documentary was just right. Could have been longer.

I actually do want to keep teasing this out of how you'd fix murder.

It's like 40 minutes longer than John Wick 4.

He's the people's champ, though. People love this kid.

That's true.

Yeah, I did. It's an underappreciated classic.

We were talking about a bunch of 2s recently.

We should jump straight to Heat 3. Just skip 2. Skip 2. Smart idea. You avoid the 2 problems and then it's just like, just finish the trilogy without making 2.

Ooh.

International movie. That guy is about to be right in the frame with Pope Francis. He's in the mix. What's your most disappointing sequel? I got recency bias, but Gladiator 2 is a real bummer. It had all the guys in it. It had all my guys, and it just wasn't as good. Isn't Ridley Scott like 88?

Are you trying to get a raise? What's going on?

We're going to circle back.

We almost died on the way there and back, yeah. It was fucking cold.

Is Caitlin Clark the most popular basketball player under 30? I mean, she's definitely like appointment television, right? Like if she's going off, people are going to be like, we got to turn this on. You got to turn this on. How many basketball players? What was that? Bronny? Yeah, definitely. Some of those G League games, me and all the fellas. Just watching some G League.

Do you think it would have been funny if LeBron had backed out of the All-Star game and inserted Bronny in his place? Yeah.

He should just start doing stuff like that. Would you have been surprised? Adam Silver would be like, what can I do? No power here.

You just won the Super Bowl. I'm fine. What do you have, CR? The Mavs. Yeah. Mavs in six over Boston. Derek Lively makes a great comeback. No, I think it's the Thunder. I think the Thunder are, like, historically good. Thunder over Celtics. What's your pick, Bill?

How are you feeling about second row Joe these days? Well, first of all, we call him Coach Joe. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to disrespect him. I don't know where I got that.

We're going to be here for like two and a half hours, by the way.

I'll take Neon Bordeaux from Blue Chips as my center. It's Shaq. Only red flag is that he got 520 on the SATs and misspelled his own name, but... Culturally biased. I think once we get him into our program and we just let our culture loose on him, it'll work and I get my big man. So I'm really excited. So I thought he was going to be the first pick. Me too.

But then I didn't know Shea was going to pick first.

I forgot that Patino coaches Western Texas in that movie.

If Palinka calls Neil McCauley for Luca, does he go, there's a dead man on the other end of this phone?

He's going to... There's another 7'5 guy in the tournament. He's going to take it over.

I think I'll take Billy Hoyle from White Man Can't Jump. I like it. I like it. It's a little bit of a debate as to whether Billy or Sidney are who's better. You know, I know they played right into my hands. But I think Billy just has that sense of fashion, that flair, that big game appetite. I love it. I would say that, so go ahead.

And if he hadn't had the distraction of Rosie Perez being on Jeopardy, who knows what he could have achieved, you know? We're just a distraction to Rosie Perez in general.

Well, we have to see how my backcourt fills out, Bill, but thank you for asking.

A lot of this. A lot of his stuff is in slow-mo.

I liked it to the extent, but it's really going to have to just convince these guys to want to play more basketball and to play more hard basketball. I was thinking about this. I just think that this is probably entering the Pro Bowl zone where you just got to move it to the end of the season after the season. I just feel like you guys want to play. We'll have like seven foot rims.

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

Kyle, turn the fucking TikTok camera on. I'm taking Jimmy Chitwood from Hoosiers.

It's a great pick. It works for the Lakers. It works for Team Chris. It's fine. Clutch just absolutely nails. He's mostly been playing on farmland for most of his life. So I feel like when we get him into a modern sports science program, who knows what he could do.

You can do somersaults, you know, like whenever you can get trampolines out there. Like it could be like basketball, but I don't know about like the mid season after Luka gets traded. Let's all stop, go to this place and pretend like we care about this game.

I'm up again? Yeah. Okay. I'll take Shep from above the rim. Our advanced analytics team loves this. 40 points in two minutes. He's 14 for 14 from the field. Just like bombing away from three way before three and D was a thing. In corduroy pants.

He was still in his work clothes.

No, no, no. Go back and watch the tape, man. Come on. We studied it.

Start at the beginning of escape.

You don't have to worry about load management.

Guy gets his head cut off, comes back to work the next day.

What's that? Is his owner a GM?

CR? All right. So I have Shep. I've got Chitwood. I've got Hoyle. And I've got Neon. It's a great team.

I need a deep bench guy who's going to keep everybody loose. So I'm going to go with Jim Carroll from Basketball Diaries played by Leonardo DiCaprio. I love the idea of him getting Jimmy Chitwood into heroin. You know, just to mix it up. Six man? Yeah, deep bench. Another white guy. I'm sorry about that. By accident.

I don't know why. That's a good laugh, Phil.

I'll take Tupac from above the rim as my coach. Oh, birdie. Birdie. Interesting motivational techniques, communication style, and I just think that this is a team of guys like you've mentioned, quitters, and perhaps Tupac will motivate them to do otherwise.

Yeah.

That's right. So I have two. Now Sean's up. Now Sean's got?

Gone with the Wind is a weirdly popular movie in my locker room, actually. Yeah, right. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER

Why are you staring right at me when you're saying that?

Would that go over well if I did that? All right. Let's think about it for a second. For my owner, I've been thinking about this a lot. From a heist film, I'm going to go with Krista from The Town, played by Blake Lively. I just think Blake Lively in the owner's box is box office. That's just absolutely amazing content. And do I get a second pick here? No. Okay.

You only pick once. Okay.

That's okay. Just one pick or two picks now?

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

You could win like seven games in the regular season and they get the one seed?

You never know when he could just light it up, like, just absolute great vibes guy. What race is he?

I have Tupac. He has Ben Affleck.

I had an idea I wanted to bounce off you for this, because I was thinking about, because if you say Pro Bowl and you make the NBA more like the NFL, why doesn't the NBA do bye weeks for teams but never take an all-star break? The all-star weekend always happens at a time where football's over, you want basketball. You want important basketball games.

Chris, you're up again. All right, so I need a sixth man and an assistant coach?

Um...

We can do the NBA player playing themselves, just one pick. Do it. All right, LeBron from Trainwreck. Yeah. Plays basketball. Why boo? You guys really want me to take Norton? Yeah. Sorry for just trying to put together a diverse locker room, Austin.

Wait till Krista from the town talks to him for five minutes. Hey, LeBron, here's some Percocet.

Why not just give the Bucs 10 days off, but then bring them back and have it all work so that teams have bye weeks throughout the season? That was a Joel Embiid joke you guys didn't hear because of the mic. But yeah, that is what they're trying to do with Joel Embiid.

Yeah, it's like the guy who came up with starting Draymond or whatever.

All right, for my assistant, I'm going to go Shooter from Hoosiers to his hopper. Woo! I kind of like the amount of substance abuse happening on my team. Yeah. Either these guys are going to keep each other on the straight and narrow, or we're going to turn into train spotting.

It's like when Spielberg made Schindler's in Jurassic Park the same year.

It's just one last sixth man or bench guy here for me.

I will be taking, this is the easiest one. I'll take Kelso from Heat. The guy who plans the whole robbery. The guy was just like, it's just out there. You just got to go grab it. So yeah, that's easy.

No, it's a heist movie, bro. Oh, okay.

Yeah, a lot to watch tonight, Bill. Now You See Me, Ambulance.

Like, probably the android from Prometheus getting picked before I got to it.

But this is the part of the behind the music where I'm like, I can do anything. But then Bill's like, we knew right then that Chris was overextending. Mountains of coke everywhere. It's like, no, put me on more pods.

2011.

Was me. My reaction was I was coming out of the movie Companion and was just like utterly shocked. Couldn't believe it. My favorite thing about it since it's happened is definitely that the Mavericks keep finding executives to do profiles where they're like, I underestimated the crowd reaction to this. Like Rick Welts just did one. I was like, Rick Welts works for the Mavericks?

And they're just pushing these guys out on the ice floe to get shot with arrows like every other day. It's amazing. Nico's doing a good job getting other people involved.

I kind of like having crazy owners back, though.

I swear to God, if the Lakers get some crazy deal for a center over the summer that they were saving the spot for or the trade assets for, I'm going to lose it.

When Rich Paul was like, I had no idea.

Luca was like, I just got an awesome $15 million house in the greater Dallas area.

Yeah, he kind of dresses like Neil McCauley a little bit. Maybe a slightly tighter slack. Do you think he has a condo with no furniture in it? Yeah, because genies never let him feel comfortable enough to buy furniture. I do like the idea of it being a Ryan Murphy FX series, but I would want the same cast as the Aaron Hernandez show. Like, just put them in...

Get Norbert Leo Butz to play Patrick Dumont.

That means you get to play Donald Sutherland who benefited. That sounds great.

And the Clips just have a bunch of fucking dudes to throw at him. What are you looking up?

Yeah.

But if this were abnormal for him in a game, I think those excuses...

Um... Plus 140. That's what I got it at.

It's not going to happen until they play Lakers. Um, Oh, it's Clippers-Denver.

Alvin had a good fight with Shaq. Remember that one?

Hmm.

Celtics or Orlando? Go for it. Come on. Give us a couple minutes, Bill.

Oof. Okay. We'll end with Pacers bucks. Best for last. I love the Pacers in this series.

Grant Williams, six threes. Rushmore.

Zero turnovers. Well, tomorrow we have Detroit, New York, and Clippers, Denver, which I think is a

Because if I'm Milwaukee, I need Dame to come back with the third game. And I also need him to be pretty good.

I'm getting in the way.

Jazz finals. Michael B. Jordan, his best performance ever.

So movies not dead yet. No, go to the theater kids. And you're still in the office. What are you talking about? You're still, not the office, the studio. Yeah. There's a couple episodes. One episode I... Dipped a little. Yeah, it's a little erratic.

Make the case.

Yeah. Are you excited for the Damon Affleck movie? Which one is it? It's called Rip. I think it's called Rip. It's a heist movie. Yeah, of course I am.

This week.

Oh, no.

Man, he was so good for that three weeks before he got hurt.

NFL draft? Yeah.

You just called him? Yeah.

Yeah.

I actually did do a little bit of research. I did some Zapruder on this. It does feel like Dort's slipping before he even realizes that Ja's there.

Do you want to get it off your chest early or do you want to save it for later?

Yeah, it's pretty rare to go into a closing stretch of a game, especially with a comeback that significant. I think they were down 29 at the most, right?

And then to have the defensive possessions be the thing you're going to walk away remembering, it's not like Corey Brewer and Josh Smith bombing away. It's like, no, Alex Caruso literally stopped the Grizzlies from scoring 10 times, and that swings the game.

I thought you were going to say as a guy with a receding hairline.

Yeah, I thought he had that one nice shot that went high off the glass towards the end of the game. Every once in a while, he pulls something out of his bag. His handle does not really... He doesn't have the handle of somebody that you can trust in a fourth quarter or in a big game like that right now.

I will say that for Memphis, it's probably incredibly difficult to navigate the Jaws here, Jaws not here. Yeah. Because they feel like such a different roster when he goes out. It automatically makes... you know, your canards like that much more important. Your conchar is important. Like, whereas those guys should be additive and not essential.

And so I just, I really feel for Memphis, they're probably not, they're probably never going to win this series and they were probably going to get, maybe not swept, but it was probably gonna be a gentleman's sweep. And now it just seems like this might be a franchise altering night for them.

I hated it, man. It was just like, it's the, the, the jaw experience and such a sick nutshell where he was about to do something incredibly sick.

And you're like, this is why I watch basketball. This is incredible. And then just the freaky fluky stuff. But I want, I want like guys to try to do stuff like that. That's why you watch hoops.

I missed it live, so I went back a couple of minutes because when I flipped over, I flipped over when I saw Verno tweet like, oh no, and I was like, this could only be one of three or four things. So I went back And when I established it wasn't a Cowboys draft pick situation, I was like, oh, let me find when the jaw injury must happen.

And I went too far back and you can watch him and you can see like all the life in his eyes. And he's just such the heartbeat of the franchise while he's out there. And like the crowd is feeding off of him. So it was really eerie to go back like even a minute before the injury and then it all changes.

Yeah, it's really hard. I said this last Thursday, it's hard for me to imagine them not winning the title. I thought that this was a real cool gut check win despite the fact that the headline will be Ja. The chat thing that I noticed down the stretch, Bill, with the threes was just how he rendered Edie kind of unplayable.

I mean, he was still out there, but watching Edie try to get out to the perimeter, I was just like... Just got to grab it.

He was MFing the crowd as a defender. I've not seen that recently.

They look like a team that fired their coach and GM a week before the season ended. Sure do.

And there's three guys on the team who have been the sort of core of this run. And it just feels like the end of a cycle. And these guys are looking around for reinforcements. And the only place they can look is to Westbrook, who's bounced around the NBA for a couple of seasons now.

And the bridge to nowhere, like the young kids that they were supposed to develop just are obviously not ready or capable. And Porter, on any given night, you're like, are you on planet Earth or not, man? So it's just... We've got one arm now, too.

After watching these three games, I'm surprised they won one. That's what I'll say.

I mean, Adelman is doing his best, I guess. I don't even know what you would do with a week's prep to become the head coach of a championship hopeful. But I think if we were wondering whether or not Josh Kroenke was like, oh, I think we actually have the pedigree to win the title.

We just need different voices in the room versus I want to get this stuff, these guys out of here so we can get ready for the draft and the offseason now. I think it might be the latter.

Just how taxing title runs are. I mean, even I think your beloved Celtics are experiencing this a little bit physically. Obviously, that has something to do with the elbows and the dives going on in that series.

But it's amazing to watch just even Jokic and how the tank is kind of like... I mean, it's not empty, but it is certainly half full and maybe has a little bit of accidental diesel in there at this point. And maybe he's looking around and he's saying, I don't have any help. But how do you rebuild this team? I'm asking you because I'm like, what are their moves here? What are their options?

Do you have to take two steps back to take a step forward? I hate to be writing their obituary already, but he's too amazing.

They squeaked out a Game 1 win in overtime and didn't really look that in it tonight. Game 2 was a little closer, but I just feel like the Clippers are attacking them from all over the court, like Rob said earlier. So the narrative here is like... Man, like winning a title and being competitive over the course of a three year stretch will really take a lot about a franchise.

And it's so hard, right? Because if you look back in retrospect, it's like, we've talked, I think everybody's talked about this on their pods and stuff, but like... KCP obviously would have been a valuable person for this team to have. Within the logic of the team's construction, it would have worked. But it's not like KCP set the world on fire as a member of the Magic. He has not.

I can see why they were like, we need to get off these guys. We can't pay guys a little bit out of their prime for past performance. I understand all that, but... Jesus, when you're watching what they put out there, it's like it's unbelievable that they won a title a couple years ago.

The flip side with the Clippers is they can beat you with just their two best guys, or they can beat you from the margins with Powell. If Batum's going to hit four threes, I don't know what the magic Nick Batum three number is for a victory, but it looked a lot like tonight.

Yeah, and it seems like the theme of all of these teams seems to be losing out on their core role players or veterans that are looking for a new contract. They miss those guys, whether it's the Warriors, the Bucs, whether it's Denver, and then they wind up regretting it because it's so impossible to find that exact guy, the exact KCP, the exact... name warrior role player.

I mean, I guess Iggy Buncey Potey retired. I mean, it's the person that holds everything together and does all this little stuff. And I just, I don't even, as someone who cheers for somebody who's not contending, I can't even imagine how difficult it must be. Who's your team? I forgot. You weren't cheering for Toby tonight? I'm cheering for basketball. I'm cheering for the Pistons.

I have a suggestion for you for the last act of your career. You've done a lot with your career, but I want you to lose all your hair, then grow out a crazy sports writer receding hairline, and become the poet of the Intuit Dome, and just write about Ben Simmons' connection to the wall. You know? You know?

I think it was probably intentional. I don't think you can have a roster so overly committed to this starting five and this core and just be like, but it's still a one-man show and you guys just stand in the corners. And also, I mean, Brunson missing time over the course of the season.

I think, tellingly, when he missed some time in this last bit of the regular season, that's when Bridges kind of blossomed a little bit. I mean, I know that Knicks fans have a love-hate relationship with him, but... he needed to be a little bit more featured and a little bit more set up to be a feature player. I got to admit, can we talk a little bit about the Brunson experience? Yeah, let's go.

I'm so excited to do so. I don't... Don't dislike Jalen Brunson. Yeah.

If I was a Pistons fan, I would hate Jalen Brunson. Yeah. And I want to like him. It's hard right now. I'm not enjoying this.

He makes Harden look like Bronco Nagurski.

The Pistons fans were trying to show him some shame. They were chanting F. Jalen Brunson or F. U. Brunson, and it wasn't really... It obviously kind of fired him up a little bit. He closed really well. I think it's probably his size throws me off a lot because he goes in there like a pinball, really, and he just starts flying around the lane.

The head snap thing is jarring, I think, to watch visually. Um, I think it's the stuff on the perimeter that bothers me the most, the diving in, like, you know, diving into guys when there's like there, he's being defended outside the three point line and just shoulder dropping, going into them or, you know, flopping down after he's coming down from a shot.

Cause he thinks somebody is in his landing zone. But, uh,

When Towns got into it with, who was the piston he got into it with? That was Paul Reed, wasn't it?

And then they pinched Isaiah Stewart on the bench.

And he's wearing like a full suit and he's just like, shit, I got to show it out there.

The funniest part about this game to me was that there were more dads in the crowd than like a California youth soccer match. It was like Bridges was fighting with Tim Hardaway Sr. Rick Brunson was fighting with Cade Cunningham and with Jalen Rose. I was just like, this is an amazing testament to like... It's like, what's going on with the amount of kids in the NBA? That's true.

He's like Woody Guthrie riding the rails. He's just, yeah, you know, he's just a vagabond of the NBA. I mean, I think that, The problem for the Pistons is that they're relying on Schroeder, Tim Hardaway Jr., and Beasley, although Beasley had an awesome season. Those guys can't be your second options, third options. Cade needs one more guy. I think they're hoping or hoped it was Jaden Ivey.

I love Jaden Ivey, even though he hasn't quite realized his potential tough injury. I have to ask you guys. Durant?

Oh, no. No.

No, come on, man.

Why not? Yeah. I wanted to know whether or not when you watch the Knicks, Rob, Does this look like a team that can go very far with this style of basketball? This just feels very much like we have now pushed this to the limit of what this team can do under Tibbs and with this roster construction.

It's just more like it is the guy. It's like the guy in Trainspotting who throws the pint glass over his shoulder and doesn't see where it's going. He's not quite Begbie, but he has like a little bit of like, who started the fight? Yeah, this is weird.

But he was pissed. I mean, like, do you think... I think the thing is that Brunson's... Whether or not you like watching it, it clearly works because it drives other players nuts. Completely. And, you know, like, I don't really have, like, the rule book in front of me to judge whether or not that was a backcourt violation in the last second there. But he was doing a lot of stuff to just get Durin.

Durin was going nuts for a while there. Yeah.

I was trying to, I was asking a couple of people last day. I was like, what is the Rudy original sin against Luca? And I guess he did punch him in the stomach or hit him in the stomach like a long time ago. Yeah. But I always laugh. I was at the game, game one. He's shit talking Rudy the entire game, like with like true hatred in his eyes. And nobody from the T-Wolf stands up for Rudy.

It is one of those things where it's just like, you know what, man, go ahead. You know, if you want to waste energy telling this guy to go fuck himself, that's fine. So I would definitely put Luca and Rudy up there pretty high team wise.

Yeah, they were getting in his ass a little bit. And I saw Draymond put up an Instagram story that was like, that's a dirty play. But I think when you go back and watch it, it's really hard to see Dort like, oh, I'm going to tackle John Midair here. He's slipping as Pippen turns around. I would challenge any human being

That's the funniest thing is you getting really cranky because you're worried one of the Celtics is going to get mortally injured during this.

It would be funny if after the Pacers get eliminated, you give James Johnson your dad's tickets so that it's just...

Me?

Same for you, Rev?

Bill, did you notice it was the loading up on Ant? Because he said after the game that it felt like a zone and that he has to go watch the tape. But in game one, they were loading up on Ant. And I didn't necessarily think it was zone, but they were definitely cheating onto him. And I thought they were moving the ball really well in game one. The Wolves were...

Obviously, they had threes coming out of their ears that game, but it didn't feel significantly different on TV watching it. So I was kind of surprised that Ant was like, well, that was a new wrinkle. I hadn't seen that yet. Yeah, I didn't see it at all.

But meanwhile, home prices on the Davion Peninsula are just... They're shooting up, man. I mean... It's a really competitive market.

I thought like I agree with Rob like I think Wolves Lakers is the best remaining series and the one that I feel like has the most chapters I don't know how many games it's going to go but after game one I was like holy shit these guys have more athleticism than the Lakers like this is crazy and now I'm a little bit more measured about it.

After a week, what's the team you're most impressed by? It's got to be the Clippers, I think, right?

Yeah. You'll be happy to know that folks on Warriors Twitter are doing collages of Emei Udoka coach teams diving at other guys' legs and making dirty plays. So there are watchers on the wall making sure our refs are accountable. Wow.

You got it though.

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I don't think they've gotten a chance to watch them. I think this is like a good corollary maybe even to the Rockets where your difference between I watch national games and kind of keep up on pods versus I'm out here just getting deep into NemHeart tape is a pretty wide gap. And I would probably say that I'm a little bit in the former camp. So it's like I...

I know everything that has gone on with the Bucs this season. They are getting Portis back as well. Is that right? I don't know what to expect with that. But like, look, I just think that it would be so funny if the Pacers just got like a weird slip and slide track back to the Eastern Conference Finals again and that this was like a sneaky great team.

I do think best player in the series has got to be Giannis and I still think I'm kind of leaning that way.

Well, you want a big picture. I'm also not a cardiologist. Like, I don't know what's going on with Dame's, like, this blood clot thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, but you can't tell whether it's Keanu Reeves being like, I keep getting injured on these movies. This needs to end. Or if he's like, you fucking woke up the Baba Yaga. I'm back. I'm here to take my corner back.

To Live and Die in Kuzma?

Has Giannis asked out yet.com? Um, yeah, but like, you know, listening to you over the last couple of days, you and Zach on, on Zach's pod, like, It is sort of starting to get a little difficult to imagine these massive star trades unless it's your problem from my problem. So I do wonder, let's just say, do you have a Phoenix-Milwaukee crisis swap? Is there something in there that you could do?

I don't know, but these guys are also going to leverage, like use their leverage and control their destination to some extent. So I'm trying to, it's hard to go into the trade machine and be like, oh yeah, well obviously you just do this for Giannis.

I know that there's the rumors about him wanting to go to New York and stuff like that, or even the broader New York, like it doesn't matter the borough, but I think we'll learn a lot from this playoff series.

I'm very interested to see Adelman's first playoffs against Ty Lue. It's probably the best team I have ever seen switch coaches this late into a season. And does that give them a spark? Does that give them any tactical wrinkles? And how much can Lue think on his feet and negate that? Because he's probably one of the best in the league along with Spolstra doing stuff like that.

The Joker talk towards the end of the season of like, What did he say? Like a caged beast is the most dangerous animal or whatever? Like, I'm like, let me watch this in slow motion, dude. I just want to like watch back cuts all day long. I'm so excited for that. But Adelman under the lights is like a really interesting question.

And like whether he does something different than the Malone teams we've been seeing over the last couple of postseasons.

I have to give them a statement.

Oh, my God.

Can I get a temperature check on big game James?

Some of my faves.

We're in a real wish him well zone.

yeah yeah okay i'm uh i'm excited for ben i'm excited for uh which excited what what part are you excited about ben when they go to zone and he doesn't know what to do if they do hack a ben if he takes a shot what are you excited about ben getting hack a ben shooting in front of the wall in inglewood like shooting in front of the the crowd wall i'm excited for that no no

But they were the only five people there.

Oh, I wanted to ask you a question whether you saw any parallels between the Denver situation and the Milwaukee situation. Not that Joker would ever ask out, but like how different could this Nuggets team look next year if this is a first round exit?

Because when they fired Booth and Malone, you could read that as white flag, we're getting ready for next season. I have my eye on another GM who might become available soon or is in the mix. Whoever. And the same thing for Coach. And then I think they kind of had a little bit of a dead cat bounce where they're like, no, we're not dead yet. We're fine.

You know, and like, we're still frisky and it's still Jokic. So it's kind of weird. It's like, on one hand, I'm like, are you guys playing out the string or is this like a... See, I don't think they were doing that at all.

Everything's coming up. Arsenal just beat Real Madrid and then the champions league got the magic touch.

Aubrey Plaza was hosting this podcast.

Do you think it's an advantage, Rob, that Finch has introduced this idea that there's no sacred cows on this team early in the season where he's like, I might run this five out for the end or I might run this five out. And it's like, just because of your rep, just because of the name on the back of the jersey doesn't mean you're out here because you, quote unquote, deserve it.

It's who I think is the best matchup at the end of games. If he's been doing that all season, maybe Gobert is more emotionally prepared for eventualities where he's not on the floor because the Lakers are throwing something at the Wolves that he's not suited for.

I was like, oh, I kind of like that one. Yeah, he might play Jackson Hayes off the court.

He can play free safety, yeah.

Yeah, what's the circuit breaker? What's the lowest amount of calls they could get before the NBA breaks? I think 30 is a nice number. I'm going with the Wolves. Going with the Wolves? Yeah.

Yeah.

You've been watching Lucas so closely over the last couple weeks, Bill. Do you feel like he's got his head screwed on right for this?

Yeah, I kind of wish they would bring in soccer yellow cards to this series where they could just flash a bunch of them in the beginning. I'm really excited for this one. I was really nervous for the Warriors watching that Grizz game, watching the Grizzlies come back. Felt like the Warriors crowd kind of died a little bit in the second half as they were getting clawed back into it.

Those are great, too.

Yeah, child services should be called if you've got like a six-year-old.

You should not be in the front row for that series. Counterpoint to this, that'll build character. Oh, there we go. That's true. And we're facing down a time in this country where people are going to maybe have to go back to the factories. And what better way to prepare you than by witnessing a massive crawl?

Brooks is definitely yanking that guy's thumb. I mean, it's going to be like, oh, no.

They got a little nervous. Yeah, and you never want to go into the playoffs with your two best players grabbing at various extremities. So Steph's thumb, Jimmy's ankle. I'm excited to watch this version of the Warriors, but the Rockets do seem like they were built in a lab to screw with them.

Yeah, Brunson has to do halftime entertainment.

Yeah, he has to go out there and spin plates. I just want to say I was always a big Kate Cunningham fan and I was really worried that his career was going to kind of get basically torpedoed by the institutional malaise of the Pistons. So to see this turnaround is really cool.

I hope that everybody, because it's the Knicks, it's New York, there's going to be a ton of people watching this series, just inevitably, that it's a great platform and he goes off no matter what happens. I think the Pistons definitely get one at home and it's a feel-good story. And I think it's a cool platform to introduce a new start of the league.

There was a show that I heard about the other day called State of the Union with Chris O'Dowd and Rosamund Pike. And it's just about their marriage. And Nick Hornby wrote it. And I was like, this feels like a poster in Seth Rogen's office in the studio.

Yeah. I mean, it's not my favorite Sheridan, but it definitely ended with some fireworks.

The median show for a couple is an interesting conversation. Like what show ticks three boxes each? I think Friends and Neighbors.

Yeah, Friends and Neighbors right now for my wife and I is a ticking equal boxes.

SAC fired their GM while they're still in?

I see what you're saying. Yeah.

I'm the Charlie Munger of buying into front offices. I... I find it incredibly funny with all due respect to our former colleague, Jason Gallagher, who's really going through it on social media about the Dallas situation. It was just kind of like, of course they're going to get into the playoffs and we're going to keep having to talk about this.

I still think obviously it is a historically bad trade, but AD is good.

It would be amazing if as tip-off was starting, a cage match cage came down and it was just Dylan Brooks and Draymond in the middle. And it was like, we're going to settle this right now, brother.

No.

I can guess based on some of your more recent podcast appearances.

It's almost most improved team becomes coach of the year kind of thing.

Also, if you had picked Pritchard, most people would have thrown their phones into a river by now.

Not a lot of Pritch Please shirts at the Coolidge. I could get you one, C.R. Thanks, please. I'm a medium.

No, I mean, the Castle thing is just so exciting to imagine him with a healthy Wemby, Fox, full offseason, and then maybe an addition that they make in the offseason. Like, it's really cool. He's like a perfect winning basketball player on that team.

Every night, it was like, I was at home in Philly watching a run of games that they had, and he would honestly be going nuclear, and you'd be like, all right, Quentin, roll an ankle. Come on. You know, like, you've done enough. You hit your over or whatever the hell is going on.

Yeah.

I was just going to say in honor of your Kia, I thought you sucked, but you actually impressed me this year award or changing that title. I think we could do the Kia. I like watching you play defense more than I like watching most guys play offense team.

I like watching Ahmed play defense more than I like watching like 80% of guys play basketball. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that you should almost give him credit for the adaptability that he's had. Yeah, definitely. Some nights he has to be the man. Some nights he's playing setup guy for Luka. He's weathered all these different storms, and he's actually been pretty healthy for a 40-year-old, and when he's been on the court, he's looked awesome.

Do you think it's just funny to cost Steve Ballmer a lot of money? Because these guys probably will like trigger.

Bill's keeping the positions of all NBA and we're going to start smoking inside a restaurant.

Well, I want to ask you whether or not you think you might regret it in two months if Oklahoma City loses like two games in the playoffs.

Because I know it's a regular season award, but how will it sit if Shea is leading this historically good Oklahoma City team to their first title and he is like, it's me. I am him. You guys are worried about Luka and LeBron.

It feels like Jokic has moved into the Jordan LeBron zone where he's MVP every year. And it's really up to the voters to be like, I'm bored or something has happened that feels like lightning in a bottle. You could tell me that next season Shea's not in the top three for NBA voting, MVP voting, and I wouldn't be shocked, right? But I would be if Jokic wasn't.

I've never seen anything like it. And when he was out, they were eating gruel.

I have Shea. But it was only just because I kind of have a weird feeling that Oklahoma could just run away with this. This might not be a very close postseason. I think they're so far and away the best team I've watched this year. And we haven't had one of those in a while where it's just like, whoa. This train just like left the station.

So I think that in honor of that, there's nothing against Jokic. Jokic played one of the best basketball games I've ever seen in my life. Was that 60 point game? Yeah. But I just feel like it was Shazier.

You can tell me at the end of this series that this was like... a version of like the early great Thunder teams that came out and just ripped the Spurs apart, you know, like where they lost the first two and then they just, it wasn't that they won the next four after losing two to the Spurs.

Thanks for having me, Bill.

And you could also tell me that this is too much too soon for Houston and that Wiley, Wise, Golden State are going to carve these guys to pieces. It feels like a real like,

uh clash of the titans to me and in in terms of like the two coaches are both awesome i think that everything offsets itself so there's like you can't say that draymond and jimmy are gonna mentally dominate the rockets guys or like trick them too much because the rockets have plenty of guys who are just like i live this dark art shit too yeah so it's gonna be like one of those like i don't want to miss a single moment of this series i'm

sentimentally hoping for Warriors to advance just because love watching Steph in big, big moments. And I feel like the Rockets are going to be around for the next five, six, seven years.

Yeah. I don't want to be in a world where the Warriors made that Butler move a year too late, which is entirely possible, but I want to believe in another Warriors run. And it's kind of funny with the NBA where I, you know, my, the season of the team that I cheer for like exploded on takeoff. So I have been, I forget who's your team. I have been sort of roving around, but like,

This is almost like previously on the Golden State Warriors, things were going fine. So I need you guys to level set for me. I don't really remember... the fourth best player on a team getting benched going into the playoffs.

He's going to get all the calls.

I was going to ask this and I was going to ask about the dangers of Dylan Brooks thinking it's him.

Bill, will you give me the money to go to GoDaddy and register a site called HeThoughtItWasHim.com? And every night after one of these games, I just put up a picture of the Rocket who thought it was him?

I'm ready for Austin Butler.

I'm ready for... That's on Ben Thompson, I think. For as bad as it might be for ratings or for narratives, I'm excited at the prospect of New Blood. People might be like, who the hell wants to watch Houston OKC in the Western Conference Finals? I think it would be pretty awesome.

Yeah, I would love that.

Interesting. There was a point in the middle of the season when I, in fact, I don't even know if Twitter turned to X yet, but I either tweeted or X'd that he's got some Michael Jordan in him. And then next thing you know, I saw that somebody, you know, in real consequence, saying the same thing made me feel very good. He does have Michael Jordan in him.

There's Michael Jordan-esque qualities in his game. Same size, body type, range of skill, swagger. He's got swagger, God knows. And he got everyone's attention last year in the World Games. Though we lost, he was the best player on the team. And that was news to a lot of us, that he would be the best player on that team. And he's built on that. And he's a growth stock.

My God, they've got something very special there. So, yeah, he's gotten my attention. Wait, hold on.

No, that's just fair. But that's where he first got my attention. Now, I was aware of him in Georgia, and I knew people that thought he was very talented, but there was something missing. But whatever was missing, he appears to have found it.

Bill, it's always fair to say guys remind you of great players and there's qualities about them without going overboard and saying that they are that guy or is better than that guy. I mean, absolutely. And people, there's types. We all know that. There's all kinds of types. There's guys that remind you. And then there are certain people that... They stand apart.

And I always say that one of the things that the truly great players have something special that is uniquely theirs. There's a something about their style Maybe it's a quirk of some kind, but you know, and it don't have to be the top of the line player, but I'm talking about just a hall of fame level, excellent player. It can be very special in a way that nobody else reminds you of him.

For example, And you'll like this, I think. I'm not saying he's the greatest player or the greatest guard of all time. I'd like that. But I've never seen another Dennis Johnson. There's something about his package. That's the word we want to use. The packaging. His package was special and different and worked for him. And I haven't seen anybody that reminds me.

I've never seen anybody that reminds me of him. And yet there were plenty of other great players that somebody would, you know, reminds you of them.

But of course, part of that is when we knew him and we saw him on Night In and Night Out and understood the... The overall approach that he took, which was that he didn't play 100% all the time. He took nights off. And he said 85, 86. He's absolutely positively. But he pre-announced them to the team, to Danny specifically. I love this. Danny, tonight you're getting the shots.

And he always picked a team that they were going to kick their ass at home. The game was going to be won. And you can see, I've got the logging game by game. Oh, minutes played, 28, FGA, four. Danny, minutes played, FGA, 17, because DJ was taking the night off. And yet the converse is, when the big games came, you wanted that guy. And Larry Bird would be the first one to tell you.

And as he famously anointed him as the best player he ever played with and never backed down from that.

No, he was special in that regard. But to me, the number one rule of rebounding, do you want the damn ball or don't you? And, you know, he wanted every rebound. I mean, and there's two types of statistically good rebounders. There's guys that get what comes to them and they're big and they're strong or they're athletic. And there's guys that get rebounds that, quote, don't belong to them, unquote.

And Moses was the champion of getting rebounds that didn't belong to him. And that's what he lived for. Rebounding was his identity. I know that was the part of the game that mattered the most to him. There was no question about that. He was an okay offensive player. He didn't have a great repertoire. You know, he had a big man post, you know, power stuff.

But he wasn't a finesse in any way, shape, or form, a finesse offensive player. But he sure was a phenomenal rebounder.

Yeah, well, I think the whole thing, they, I'm guessing I wasn't, I never did anything as in person as you did, but the Lakers, I guess, recognized the futility of their circumstance at some point during the middle of this series. Right. And I mean, you know, and they just weren't, they didn't have a deep enough roster. They're lucky they had two guys, let alone three.

And anyway, we all know, you saw it, you know. So now we'll see what that offseason brings.

Yeah, very, very true. You could, French is one of those guys that you could easily see playing in a 1968 All-Star game as well as playing today. I had two guys in a previous generation that I said were complete throwbacks games that they were combinations of the 1950, the combination of Dolph Shays in the 21st century. Paul Pierce and Manu Ginobili.

Those two guys had old games spiced up with a three-pointer. They added the little extra sauce, which was the three-pointer. But other than that, their game translated very well in previous generations. Brunson, he shows you what you have to do if you're going to excel at his size. He's figured out angles. He's figured out deception timing. He's strong.

he's strong he can take a bump and and keep the shot when he goes to hoop and he just he's got a basketball mind a phd um you know he's a he's a player's son and his coach's son who really had obviously absorbed all the lessons and and you and he's got and people talk about the the flopping it doesn't even bother me at all i think he's just smart that's all i don't buy i don't mind with him i got what's mine i've minded with some people over the years but

It doesn't bother me at all with him. You go, guy. I love him. I just think he's special. And here's the thing, Bill. When they got him, I always had my eye on him, back to Villanova. And now, of course, I didn't see him play much in Dallas, but I knew he was there. But when they got him, I said, oh, that's a good move, very good move. But they've overpaid. He's not a star.

He's a wonderful auxiliary player. That's what I thought. And boy, has he turned out to be worth every penny for them. Yes.

Yes. I think it's a good historical lesson. In fact, I've had this discussion this year with people about, you go back over the history of the NBA, and I only can think of one in my time anyway. And I'm thinking about what I know about the 50s, and Kuzny never won until he got Russell.

And, and, and so, and he was the preeminent guy and, and the other guys, the other little guards of his near, near him were Sater Martin and he did win. He had Mikan and, and Bobby Davies and they won one in 51. But anyway, Isaiah Thomas arguably was the best player on the bad boy Pistons and they went back to back and could have won three in a row.

And cause they were jobbed in 88 on a terrible call. Don't get me started. You know, when, They put Kareem on the line, and that was a terrible call. But anyway, I think we're on the same page here. Stockton never won. Chris Paul. Nash. No, you know, it's hard. It's hard when your best player is a point guard and the next best player is a point guard.

And so, you know, we'll see how far they can go, not just this year, but in the future with their best player being Jalen Brunson.

That issue was raised earlier in this series, at least in the New York Post, anyway. I read that every day, and I didn't see it. And they raised that issue, that he's got to be less ball-dominant for this team. And the next game out, he was, in fact. So, yeah, that's a very... It's like so many things in basketball.

That's why I love the... Among the reasons I love the game, I love... But the... What... goes into winning you know and and they need to calibrate guys skills that's what i always said about uh about jordan uh and the difference when jordan people think he didn't win a championship. Yeah, he got, he needed to win the championship when he finally got Scottie Pippen as a, as a tremendous sidekick.

But until he learned how to calibrate his skills with the other guys and not, you know, and, and, and balance it out and know when to take over, when not to take over, know who to go to, when not, I mean, this, this, this all very, very important stuff that you just don't throw together talent. You gotta, you gotta play the game in a quote unquote right way. And, and that, that's a universal truth.

And, and, um, You got to figure out how I'm going to blend with the other guys. There's one ball and five guys. And I know, I mean, Peter Carillo used to talk about that. Bradley grew up thinking that way. And you got to be able to think that way. Byrd understood that. And God knows Magic understood that.

And Michael didn't originally do, even though he came out of North Carolina with Dean, but he finally figured it out. And once he did, the championship started to flow.

First of all, before we get to that, I was thinking that I know one person sitting back having an extra late-toddy night last year was Nico Harrison. He must have been smiling as the Lakers got out the window. Anyway, yeah, Luke got interesting there because he does have the ball, you know, all the time. And I... It's hard. He's still only 25. He's still got lessons he can learn.

I think he's smart enough to recognize that he's got to think in these terms that we're talking about. The Lakers, though, unfortunately for them, their roster is shy. Who knows where they go from here with LeBron, I mean, we played 40 years, 41 years old in December of this year.

Is he going to play again and blah, blah, blah. No, Luke is interesting, you know, in that regard. He's so skilled. But that's the thing, that when you have all that skill, you have to learn how to utilize it properly. There's no question, you know. And some nights it seems like that he does, and other nights he's got the ball too much. So I don't think he's fully gotten there yet.

How seriously is he going to take this? There's the whole defense thing, too, with him. And I wondered, my big question about the series before they started was, will the other guys be able to take advantage? How much can you exploit him on defense? And it happened. And that's something that the Lakers have to be realistic about.

December 30th is his birthday, so I know that.

By the way, I've got a column in the Hopper. It's either going to come out Sunday or the week after. They didn't tell me which one they want to run. It's on Havlicek, by the way, for reasons that you'll see. And you'll like it. I know you will like it. But John did not quit. because he couldn't play anymore. His game had diminished, sure.

He averaged 16 points a game that year, but he could still play. And he said he would have hung around if he had any idea how good Bird was going to be, and he would have hung around. Anyway, no, John played 16 years. He ended at 38, went out with a 29-point game. And he quit because he didn't like the circumstance anymore.

He wasn't having fun with the way that the Celtics had deteriorated in the locker room, quite frankly. And it was a down period. And so anyway, but he still had skill. He went out to be able to play. But he was 38. Uh, that year he ended, in fact, he ended, uh, the day, his last game was the day after his 38th birthday, by the way. And that just so happened. He had turned 38 today.

He was born April 8th, 1940. And his last game was April 9th, 1978. Wow.

And they couldn't believe how good he was. These guys, these young guys, you know, that was his birthday present to himself to come to practice and suit up. That was fun.

I don't know. That's obviously would be a very rational solution that, you know, we know along the way, supposedly Brady was able to do that in his time with the contracts. And it's always wonderful. And, you know, with the money that we're talking about, these people make, it shouldn't be that hard of a decision if you really want to win.

but the issue about whether how long he's occasionally he's, has he not,

uh at times over the years or recent years when somebody would kiddingly say about playing neil 45 not dismiss the possibility that he wouldn't keep want to keep playing till he's 45 uh you know i mean if he did too i used to look at wait i i remember thinking about brady this way if he were to deteriorate take a percentage five ten percent you know with how much would you still like to have him

And the answer was always, I'll still take them. If DeFond deteriorates 10% next year, okay, that's still a pretty good player based on what he was able to produce this year, right? And so, you know, he certainly could still play in this game. He is in phenomenal shape. We learned that he spends literally a million dollars a year on conditioning. And we see the benefit of it.

And we've never been... We've had old guys. We've got... They've always been... The two oldest guys I can think of that played long this long were Kevin Willison and Robert Parrish, who still holds the record for most games, which I guess LeBron is eventually going to eclipse. But... Well, and then the old washed up Kareem, I think, got to 42.

But those guys got into their 42 and three range. Yeah. LeBron... But they weren't running up. They weren't doing the work, you know, the up and down work that LeBron does. You know, they were doing them down low at work. But anyway, we haven't seen anything like this. What I'm babbling is saying we haven't seen anything like this before.

Anybody that could play the game the way he plays it at this time, at this level, at this age. We haven't seen that before. You know, it's a whole new territory that we're exploring.

Jason Tatum at 6'10 is the most all-around skilled... player the Celtics have ever had at 6'10". You know, Larry didn't possess that kind of ball handling ability. Larry didn't possess that kind of get your own shot at your will against almost anybody at any time. You know, most people, but there were people, you know, we know that could give him, irritate him.

Now, this guy, it's funny because he's like Pierce on steroids because I declared 20 years ago that Paul Pierce was the best scoring machine in Celtic history. Not the best player, still Larry, but the best scoring machine. He had every aspect of scoring. You know what they say now, all three levels, right?

Well, the fact is that his mid-range games were superb and he could get a shot off anytime he wanted. And he had a three-point range. And he's the best. Bill, I think he's the best finisher on a break the Celtics have ever had was Paul Pierce. And he had that. And don't foul him because he's an 80 plus percent way up there, mid 80s percent free throw shooter.

This is the best all round consummate individual offensive player that they've ever had. Jason Tatum is making a bid for this honor. And as a matter of fact, I'm sure a lot of people now think he's already earned it. And it's funny you mentioned, not funny, but I'm glad you mentioned this because I've already been on local public record as saying he just came off yet another yawn.

routine 35 point x rebound ecstasy game uh in a playoff and it's not getting enough credit for it here in boston he's not uh this is part of the curse of the the history of the franchise he's he's up against you know the havacheks and the larrys and the pierces that's that's who what happens when you come to boston and and there's good in that and there's bad in that you know and and this guy is

I hope he's going to be totally appreciated for what he's done and how much he's improved his game and embroidered his game. Last year, the big thing I took away from the playoffs with him was improved defensive rebounding, traffic rebounding. I thought he became a terrific traffic rebounder last year, which to the likes I hadn't seen before.

We know he's brought in his passing game, you know, and then his individual offense. I mean, some of these step backs, you know, because all over the league we're getting used to it. Curry has set a template, you know, for distance that you've got to match now. And I used to call it Curry land. Now I call it Caitlin Clark land. But that's a story for another day. But, you know, look at the shot.

How about the shot that Carl Anthony Towns made, that last jumper the other night? After he was going out of bounds, which was a bird-like shot, going out of bounds on a baseline, making that from almost behind the backboard. The next shot, that was five feet beyond the arc. Minimal. Yeah. He's seven feet tall.

But Pierce has, excuse me, Tatum has this ability to make step backs almost in that range. And people, I think people here take him for granted. I really do. And I don't know what more they want out of him, frankly.

It's a confidence. I mean, obviously, he's smart and confident, but humble, too. There's nothing not alike with the whole package. I don't see anything different. It's a no yeah buts. You know, I don't have a yeah but on him. And we know off the court his personal life with it, his wonderful kids and, you know, the whole thing. He's entirely rootable is what I'm trying to spit out here.

If they win, you know, if they don't win, you know, there'll be all this. And I get, don't get me, you know, I'm not a championship or bust guy. Okay. I've never have been and never will be because too many variables going to winning any championship, including in this new game seven and things are going great. And then somebody goes down, they can happen. And we know that.

So I don't take anything for granted there. I'll say this. I'm going off key here a little bit. If anybody other than OKC, Cleveland, or Boston wins, I'll be stunned. One of those three is going to win. You've got to draw a line after those three teams in this league. You have to. And that's that. And one of them is going to win. I don't know which one. I'm anxious to see.

Let's go back early in his career here. And I remember a local writer out there came and talked to me and asked me about his passing. And how did I think his passing rated with Walton? And I hadn't seen enough of him.

I couldn't believe I was having this discussion that anyone would be so sacrilegious as to suggest that there was a center who would come along to pass anywhere near as well as Bill Walton. And guess what? He's hit. That was a fair... He is right... I mean, he's there. And we can have the argument. He's so... And so that's the thing.

Not only is he as good a passer as Walton, but he's a far superior scorer. Oh, my God. You know, not even a question. And so... My position on centers, as you probably well know, I mean, you start with the three all timers and whichever one you want to make the devil's advocate argument for, go right ahead. Russell, Kareem and Wilt, you know, and I could, you know, fine.

I mean, I'm a Russell guy, but I mean, I totally respect the other two for what they were. And and then I said, that's then you draw a line. Now we start to find who's number four. Well, now we got a guy. firmly entrenched in the discussion that we'll see how it all plays out, how many championships will win or whatever it is. But in terms of wanting to watch somebody play,

I'll tell you what, he's top of the list. I mean, it's extraordinary. You don't know what he's going to do next. You don't know what incredible pass he's going to conjure up. You don't know how many threes he's going to make. You don't know what great rebound he's going to get. No, he's a treasure. I mean, my God, it's a total delight to watch. And he isn't...

You know, he's still got a long way to go, you know, depending on how long he wants to play. We don't know. We know he might want to go become a jockey, you know, a seven foot jockey someday. Who knows about that? But anyway, count me among the admirers, the idolaters of Nikola Djokic.

there's always a danger of allowing yourself to think that way. I've done it myself. I'm not going to, you're never going to see anything.

I mean, when Havlicek retired, you know, I mean, of course, and we haven't seen, and we were talking earlier about styles and individualistic people and people that John, there hasn't been another Havlicek, but the point is an effectiveness bird comes along, you know, and then there's John is 1A in Celtic Pantheon now instead of one. Um,

Yeah, you got to prepare yourself for the evolution of the game. This guy is really ultra special. And the thing that made Bird so special ultimately was the mind game and thinking two steps ahead. And now we've got a big guy. Taller than him that, you know, that can do that as well.

No, it's, it's, it's, he understands that the game, the game in a way that so many other guys never, never, never will.

Oh, he's at a bridge right now. You're kidding. First of all, my number four is Hakeem. Okay. He's my number four. Okay. So, oh, so we're in between. He's closer to the big three than he is to the four. I mean, he's going to be in that. He's going to have to be in that discussion. You know, and we're going to harp on championships. I will want to, you know, and, and, The other guys won multiple.

Russell, of course, won 11 and Kareem won, what, six, whatever, five or six. Sheck had four.

Yeah, Moses wasn't pretty, but he was effective. But anyway, Robert Parrish got three, by the way, because he got one with the Bulls, by the way, although he wasn't prominent. Anyway, I got him in between. He's at three and a half right now on his way up.

Well, I still want Michael.

And you know who I'll take now? Because that gives me a weapon. Since I got Magic, I got the ball handling. I got the orchestration. I got the fast break. I got everything settled. I got special qualities that he had. Stephon Kerr. Why not? Wow.

The greatest shooter of all time. You know, and I'm coming, I mean, the greatest shooter of all time. I don't need LeBron, you know, multi-skilled. I don't need LeBron. I'll bring him off the bench. He can be my sixth man. He won't like it. Be an amazing sixth man. What a wonderful sixth man that would be.

Why would we dismiss the greatest shooter of all time? And who's a team guy. Oh, by the way, who can also pass, by the way. He's people. He's not a point guard. He's a two-guard who can pass, period. He's not a point guard. He doesn't think. It's not his role. But he can pass and will.

And by the way, the other thing is how well he goes to the hoop with either hand, you know, to set up things for himself and other people in the long run. So, Andrew, and I'm just, this is on the fly, the question that you're asking. My first, why not? With the guys you named, he'd fit in perfectly.

Yeah, but remember, the shot came in in his last year. Yeah. 1979-80, when he joined the Celtics in the midseason.

He did make, he's a guy that scored 68 points in Madison Square Garden without a three, averaged 44 points a game and 44 people, youngins. The guy averaged 44 points a game in three years of college basketball at LSU without a three. And he had that, you know, he would have done what so many of them who didn't would have done, go home and work on it.

And he would have gotten, you know, certain guys that occasionally took shots in that range when it was considered to be a bad shot. And sometimes they went in, you know. He would have worked on that shot. But he made some threes. I remember some games where he had effective threes for the Celtics. Yeah. Oh, my God.

Because, you know, they've done these estimates, you know, which I, at LSU, going over the game films and trying to project what his average would have been had...

It's like Larry. It's like Larry. People, anybody, my God, can you imagine how many flourished today? If you tell them, oh, you can take 10 or 12 a game. Larry, embarrassingly, would take four or five because it was there. He famously didn't want the three, didn't like it.

Yes, he did it as a psychological weapon more often than not and saved the spots. But he would have, hey, if you said, okay, if that's the game, I can play that game. And he would have gone, oh, you've gotten better. A lot of guys that can, you know, by the way, you know who would have been ready made for the game? I can still see him. Jerry Lucas.

Jerry Lucas was bowing threes before there were threes with that shot put thing he had. You know, I can still see him with legs extended and he shot it from here, not here. He shot it from here. But, you know, anyway, Lucas would have been a phenomenal three-point shooter.

And then computing his season's average in his head as he went back down on defense. Famously, re-computing his shooting percentage as he would go back down on defense.

He's spectacular. He's not, you know, now we were talking centers earlier, but oh yeah. I think the question now is going to be the rearrangement of the all-time 10, you know, the all-time 10. How can you not include him in any current discussion about all-time top 10 players? I can't. I can't ignore him. I'm sometimes in awe of him. I am a little annoyed that he is,

legalized not just a Euro step, but in his case, a Euro gallop. And it's, you know, that's this whole thing is this whole traveling thing. I used to laugh it off, but it is epidemic. It is, it is bad. And the league doesn't seem to care about it. And, and,

And he's an exhibit A, you know, and how devastating it is when he can do it because he can go from midcourt to the basket no more than from dribbles, you know, with Wiesel. Oh, he's phenomenal, I think. And this whole issue with the buck, that's a whole, you know, that's worth, you know, lots of discussion.

I know. And what could they possibly get? And who could afford them? And what could they possibly get back that would make it even remotely worthwhile? Not that in my head, I don't have the scope of the vision or knowledge of all the team's individual circumstances to know who could possibly make anything remotely ideal that Milwaukee would ever want.

But they have to start thinking about it, whether from here or now. So, you know, clearly it's over. And where's Doc going to be open here?

He's a tremendous guard, and he's tremendous. You know, I'm trying to think of... I can't think of, you know, among all the great two guards... Does he remind me of anybody? No, I just see him as a wonderful all-around shooting guard, period. But I love the idea, by the way, that that team has an all-Canadian backcourt. And, you know, he's from Montreal. And so I love that.

I'm still waiting for Canada to make a splash in the Olympics sometime soon, you know.

I know it. They're massive underachievers, Canada. But, you know, anyway. Oh, yeah. I could see FGA, you know, in the 1970 Florida Championship Series. You know, I can see him. Yeah, absolutely. Positively, yeah.

I... I think that, no, honest to God, I know it sounds parochial. I'm sorry. I still think that if everybody is fortunate enough to be healthy and able to bring their A game, that the Celtics... can win and will win if they're fortunate enough. But right now, the variables there, starting with Holiday, starting with Nen Brown, and will somebody mess around with Tatum's wrist?

And Porzingis, you never know when he's going to take a misstep. Never know. You can't count on. Too many what-ifs there for me to be totally confident. But I'm saying if they show up in the finals healthy, you know, then, and, and, and I don't care how, and I want everybody to be healthy. I still like their chances. Okay. She's interesting though. There's no question about it.

And I'll tell you who's, I'm, I'm, I've read about, you know, I mean, I was prepared for him, but having read about him before he ever set foot in college, but my God, Holmgren is good. Holmgren's good. He's a very, very useful player. And Hartenstein, he's not a star, but he knows who he is. And he knows what his job is. And he does it well.

And, of course, then, you know, the rest of the team, fine. And well-coached, of course. So, yeah, I like that. And Cleveland, don't dismiss Cleveland, but right now they're doing it without Garland, as we speak. And, you know, I think they would... They're not going to go all the way without their full compliment. But, you know, they're good. Salute Mobley, Defensive Player of the Year.

No, they're good too. But I still honestly believe that the Celtics have more assets ultimately than anybody. I still think if they're healthy.

And the vastly underrated Luke Cornett, who's been a nice adjunct to this team. Okay. You're right. Well, this is a new generation. You know, this is their team. The Celtics have had, you know, four or five incarnations. Well, you've got the 50s, then you've got the 50s and 60s team. That's one. You've got the Havlicek-Cowens team. That's two. You've got the Big Three team. That's three.

You've got the second Big Three team. That's four. This is the fifth generation. Celtic incarnation of greatness and a new fandom. I see so many young people in the stands and it's terrific. And it is, what a likable bunch. I mean, it is. It's just, there's no polarizing players. Marcus Smart, who I loved, but acknowledges foibles. To me, he and Jackie Bradley Jr.

were like Siamese twins of sports. Yeah.

Okay? And, you know, I love Jackie Bradley Jr. You know, I don't care if you're at 180. But there's no polarizing. Who's a polarizing player? Unless people want to manufacture something about, you know, like, oh, Brown, he dribbles in the traffic. He still doesn't have a left hand. All right. You know. Right. That's as close as I can come to any kind of a negative. You're right.

It's a beloved team and very well worth rooting for.

That came across clearly. It sure came across clearly how Garnett and Pierce felt about it in their time. How about Ray Allen?

That did surprise me. He was always kind of a little bit unscrutable as far as I'm concerned. That was good to know. Yeah, that was really good to know. No, it's all true. By the way, I can't leave you without filling out. I decided Peyton Pritchard is a cross between Larry Siegfried and Eddie House.

Well, he's same rough size.

Close and feisty, tough. He's a scrapper.

Siegfried was, oh, I can still hear Johnny most. Siegfried's in his shirt. Siegfried's in his shirt. Well, I can see that Peyton's in his shirt. And he's good for one sneaky offensive rebound a night.

And he's tough. He's not just a three-point machine. He's a good basketball player. And I love when he takes himself inside and finds a way to get the shot off, you know. And sometimes they block it. Okay, fine. But he can – I love him. That's the secret. And, of course, you know, the Eddie House part is self-evident, you know, the three-point. But that's what he is.

He's a cross between Nick Reed and Eddie House. Yeah.

Well, first of all, you can't do everything, as you well know. There are a couple of things I would have liked to have seen addressed at the time, maybe more thoroughly or at all. But I'm not remotely going to nitpick. I thought it was a spectacular job. I thought that they got the essence of it. You accomplished your mission. That's what I thought. I could say they've accomplished their mission.

And and then tied it up with a wonderful bow with with the 95 year old Bob Cousy saying how much he wanted the 18th championship to keep the continuum that he could relate to and be feel a part of going. That was exactly what you were trying to portray, I think, in the spirit of that. And and oh, no, I thought it was terrific. I'll tell you was a hard episode was was eight.

it was eight that was you know seven but that was hard you know they lived when you live through it you know and and i'm sure a lot of us uh i know how i felt watching it and and um um it but yeah it's real it's part of the deal you know those those things happened and it was a a down period and and um And it was, you know, those things were just frightening, but it was just awful.

But Biason, who we didn't know, you know, I had seen, I was so excited about him because I happened to have stumbled. I don't know what I was doing, Bill. I have no idea why I was in Durham, North Carolina that particular evening and why I was, because I don't know what kind of feature or whatever I was doing.

I was there at Cameron North Stadium the night, as a Maryland player, he dropped 40 on Duke. He got my attention. I could see. You went to that game? I was at Duke. I was at the game when he got 40 at Duke. Oh, my God. And then twice, twice, Mike Krzyzewski has said to me that the greatest two opponents he ever faced in college were Michael Jordan and Len Bias.

And, you know, and I know how excited Larry was. Larry was going to come early and work with him and play with him. And, you know, Larry was up to honor him. He knew he was really excited about it. To think all this happened in a flash and, you know, 36 hours and 40 minutes. It was just astonishing.

If I said eight, I meant whichever one encompassed the burden.

Okay, okay. But, oh no, that group... And I love that you got Wick there saying, Danny, how do you put together a big three? And well, here's how you do it. You take your fifth round, your number five pick and trade it for Ray Allen. And now you persuade Kevin or Garnett to come. And now you got a big three. I'll tell you what I remember, though, about me. And I'm on record.

I mean, I can't deny it. I printed it. that when they put the big three together, originally, that second big three, I said, yeah, well, guess what? You need a lot more than that. I wouldn't trade.

There's no team in the league would trade their next, their final other nine for the next Celtic nine, that they got the worst support, upon which they went out and got Eddie House, James Posey, and then ultimately, of course, P.J. Brown. which was a great story about being recruited, literally being recruited by the big three or parts of thereof. And so I was, you know, I was a skeptic.

I didn't think it was going to be enough, but never dreamed it would just come together as quickly as it did. Those guys were so ready to do it, you know, to get it, to have it. they recognized what the possibility was and they were so ready to do it. And, and it was going to require the word sacrifice. It's going to require a, a, a balance of skills that they're going to have to calibrate.

I love that word, calibrate their skills to get the most out of it. But ultimately, um, There's nobody like Kevin Garnett. He's special in terms of the approach. As good as all-around players Pierce was and great shooter Allen was, you know, we all know that the ultimate key person in that whole thing that made it work was Kevin Garnett.

I don't want to hold it against him unless I have a certain, you know, antipathy for somebody. In a sense, you know, I like to hold it against them. But if I don't care about them personally in their game, then, you know, fine. And it's like, you know, I think I got tired of people dumping on because he's never won a championship and obviously never will. Chris Paul, it's not his fault.

And once again, we get back to the little guy thing. Yeah. You know? Chris Paul's a great player, great point guard, a technically pure point guard, perfect guy, you know, in that job. And a worthy Hall of Famer. So I'm sorry, I don't judge him for not having won a championship anymore. And I judge Stockton for not having won. I hold Karl Malone accountable, though.

I think they could have beaten the Bulls in 97 for sure and should have. Mrs. Freit goes, he's not a guy you want in a big moment. I'm telling you, Karl Malone was not, I think he's the most overrated great player, supposed great player in NBA history. I do. He's not in my, just the top 10 forwards at all.

You'll love this. I don't know. There was a period of time when I carried in my wallet a little list of 10 forwards better than Karl Malone. Yeah. I swear to God, it was such a topic for me. And he's not a bad human being or anything like that. You know, no, that's not it. But I just, all those thousands and hundreds of millions of points. And, and I, I'm sorry.

He doesn't, he wasn't a guy you want.

Yeah, he was in the game seven. He went out of the game for whatever reason. And Mitch Kupchak came in and made the big play of the game in his... That he wouldn't have been in the game if Elvin hadn't come out. So they wouldn't have won if Elvin hadn't been watching from the bench. Yeah, that's for sure. And I loved it. I'll tell you what I relished. 1975, when the Warriors swept them. Yeah.

The rookie... Keith Wilkes, 6'6", one, God knows what, 80, 90, outplayed Elvin Hayes, you know, four inches taller, 50 pounds heavier, you know, and he outplayed Elvin Hayes. I loved every second of that.

Harden? Yeah. I can't stand watching him play. And so to a degree, I am vindicated that he doesn't come up in the playoffs the way people think he should. I just can't stand watching that dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble game. And I always say, he must have bribed every scorekeeper in the league. I don't know how there's assists.

I don't remember any of the assists, but they're there to the point in the league, right? I guess. I still can't believe it. I don't know how. But I mean, that's just my personal preference. And I don't. I'm not a big Harden guy.

Oh, Embiid. I said the beast. I want to like him very much. I love his game. I mean, I love his range of skill in offense. It's tremendous. And I've seen him in games where I just loved watching him play. But there's something, and he's an engaging online presence, that's for sure. But he's on another level. He's not, you know, he's not, even though he did get an MVP, and I think I would have...

I would have voted for him. But he's not Joe Kitchen. He's not Giannis. He's another level down where he belongs. But he's on the way to Hall of Fame. I have no problem with that.

The thing is, stay healthy. He has a hard time staying healthy.

Thanks for having me there. And I appreciate it very much. So long.

Yeah, he would have been in his 60s by then. Because he's like in his 50s for Death Wish, right? Yeah.

Well, because Hoffman had just been in Straw Dogs where that's the entire point of his character. Yeah.

Well, I think because this novel, I don't even know. I guess in Hawaii, maybe. Yeah, he tries to. And then he kind of gets a little bit of a bachelor pad going. He does. It feels like there's a dueted scene here, too.

Where he's back out on the... And he goes to the prostitute diner, too. Right. In any case, the fascinating part about this is it's adapted from a novel by Brian Gardner, I think. What was his last name? Brian Garfield. Garfield. I bought it on eBay. Okay. It's part of my collection of books turned into movies. There's a version of this movie that is way closer to like

say, Dog Day or Serpico than what we get. And I think that's why Bronson was probably identifying how he was the awkward fit, but then Michael Winter turns out to be right. They've identified a 1970s anxiety and talking point that the movie dramatizes and fantasizes about that I think captured something.

Did you wish there was a scene where Paul in Death Wish was walking by Annie and Alvy from Annie Hall? Yeah, he probably shoots... He probably shoots Alvy.

Right. Wacky era, CR. I mean, they're doing that in the media drops in Death Wish itself. Yeah. And I think one of the reasons why this is such an interesting movie to talk about on this pod is this was such a divisive movie at the time. Yeah. The reviews were like, all right, nice job. Or this is a deplorable piece of shit that should be flushed down the toilet. And it's true.

Okay.

I didn't know. Death Wish 2 is LA. Death Wish 3, he comes home. Back to New York. FYI, all of these are on 2B, Pluto, wherever you're going. I refreshed my memory about Death Wish 3 last night. Ed Lauder from Longest Yard. I got to be honest, 3 is pretty solid. Three is... Not against three? Three is goofy as shit.

Three is like, Paul comes back to New York from LA and essentially gets the green light from cops to start going around and killing thugs. But the thugs are way closer to escape from New York thugs than the 1970s guys. And Alex Winter is in it. Golan Globus.

I want to start Vigilantes, I think. And the idea of these normal, everyday businessmen becoming Batman in New York City, usually, and going out and handing out justice on their own terms, which then you have to read into the audience reaction to the movies at that time. Like, why were these movies popular? Yeah.

Yeah, no, I know.

Yeah, the PCP, whatever the anti-PCP lobby, it really worked. It really scared me off. PCP had a run in TV and movies where it scared the living hell out of me. Yeah, because it was like you would do it and they would never be like, oh, I'm high. It would always be like I'm jumping out of a window or headbutting a car.

Yeah, I remember there was a White Shadow episode where somebody went to the roof.

Well, PCP though, the real danger was like, it could be in weed. That was always the, the scary old wives tale. They would tell you is that that could be, that could be angel dust. And now we have fentanyl.

The actual New York Times called this film irresponsible. Yeah. I think a lot of... I mean, there were a lot of critics. Did your dad review this? I would think this was a little bit before his movie critic days. This is 74. I don't think he was doing movies until the later 70s. He would have hated it, though.

The New York cinematic universe of the 1970s? This is a billion-dollar idea. Actually, it's not a billion-dollar idea.

Just put everybody together? Sam Altman, come on.

Is this the origin of the term Death Wish pretty much? Sure. Okay. Yeah. Were people like, man, that guy's got a Death Wish before Death Wish?

Yes, but I think it's interesting that Paul is the one that has the death wish. He's the one who's pushing it and putting himself at risk. But nobody says, you've got a death wish, man. No.

Honestly, if you don't feel like you have the stomach for it, I think you can skip to the 40-minute mark. You could probably skip to him going to Tucson. You want to wait for What's Aged to Worst to talk about that scene? No, let's do it now, because I think it's a really difficult point of entry for people.

Also, it's always great to watch it and just be like, the guy could just walk up to the desk and be like, here's my plane ticket. No TSA.

Yeah.

You know what's also weird is that I kind of wonder how many times I had actually seen this movie on TV versus the actual film film. Good point. Because I forgot how graphic it was. So when I was watching it for this, I was like, oh shit, this is way worse than Deliverance. This is pretty close to Spit on Your Grave and some of the exploitation, like Grindhouse horror stuff.

Yeah, but it almost works better if it's a better actor than Bronson. That's the thing. Bronson's not reacting that emotionally to what happened to his wife and daughter. So it's like you would do that if you were going to do maybe some of the other actors that you had and watch them go into deep emotional crisis. Bronson's just like, I guess I got to go back to my apartment.

and I don't want to say this is a blanket term, but I think roughly more than half, if not 70%, the violence against the person's family either takes place off screen or is obscured somehow. Like, it's like, you get the impression of what happened, but it's not like, hey, let's spend like five minutes watching Jeff Goldblum do this. Very strange. Yeah.

Yes.

It's also like, why is he in the bank getting quarters?

But this is like when the Warriors win with just Buddy Heald. It's just swinging quarters around.

Yeah, I just wanted to point out... Does this happen? I... Like where they do like stage. That was an elaborate stage. Yeah.

Yeah. I ever see like the Indiana Jones stunt spectacular at Disney. No. It's pretty cool. Is it as cool as that? Guys are falling off roofs. Yeah, they do the whole boulder chase in the Indiana Jones thing. The guy runs away from a boulder. Yeah, it's at Disney, I think, or Universal.

Anyway, the whole sequence, actually, it's a sneaky, almost best, most rewatchable scene for me, like the 10-minute Tucson sequence.

Just because it really lays the groundwork, not only for what Paul's going to become, get a little bit of like, oh, when I was a child, I used to handle guns all the time.

Thank you.

He's really workshopping the Bronson. The Jane Schill character is awesome. The guy's taking him around Tucson, and then... Just the connecting what's going on with the Paul character in 1970s with our perception of what cowboys in the 1870s were like. Yeah. And like the Wild West mythology, Wild West justice, vigilantes out on the open range kind of thing. Twinkle in the eye.

Either that or they were shooting so much police stuff back then. And they were shooting so many movies and TV shows that they had working sets. So that they were able to dress it a little bit differently. But they would have a police precinct set. But a lot of this stuff feels location. Like the first precinct that he walks into to find the detective who's working on his wife's case. Yeah.

And then there's the guy who's like, I need my dog. He's key to my income. Right.

I think we're supposed to, Ochoa is like supposed to be like this amazing Popeye Doyle level famous cop. Cause he's on people magazine. Yeah.

I think I actually got served a YouTube video the other day that is McCauley killing Wangro and Heat. And it's apparently called Mozambique Technique. And I was like, I'm in a bad part of YouTube when I am now getting weird like Soldiers of Fortune videos that are praising heat for their kills.

Kirstie's heat checking it at this point. Also, the really interesting part of this movie is is whether or not curse he's getting addicted to the game.

He's walking around.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Never saw it.

And he's like having this fantasy life where he's still a cowboy. It's crazy. But it's actually like a really interesting portrait of a guy coming apart. I don't know always that Bronson is like up to that part of the job, which is like the serious side of this movie, but he's really good at shooting guys. So your favorite's the saloon brawl?

I just like, as part of the film, in some ways, the Tucson stuff is my favorite part. But the last shootout is like the iconic.

Yes.

I feel like whenever I would turn it on, it would be him stalking around New York City. And my dad would be like, oh, he's going to do that. Roll the quarters. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, just the way the guys dress.

Like Sam and Paula going to like a long bar and grill lunch in the middle of the day. And they'd be like, let's go draw some buildings. I've had four pops and a steak. I just wish the world was all white people. Yeah. Can I have another scotch, please? Oh, one more 1974 thing. Has anyone eaten liver with spaghetti since 1974? He makes his son-in-law.

I had liver last fall and I'm just getting over it.

No. What animal's liver is it? Cow. Cow? Yeah. I mean, it was delicious. Was it? But I felt like it was coming off my skin, like smell-wise, for a long time.

There's just no scenario.

We used to drive from Philly to Vermont and my dad would always stop at a Howard Johnson's on the New York State Thruway and get liver and onions. And I'd be like, I'm driving with mom now. Cap it off with a couple of cigs.

Yeah. Do you find it comforting to watch stuff that's set in the 70s or whenever and realize that we're just arguing about the same things forever? Yes. Rather than like, oh, the world is falling apart. It's like, oh, it turns out we've been having this fight for a long time.

Yeah.

I've done that with Big Trouble in Little China like 10 times this year. I'm just like, I just want the opening 20 minutes of Big Trouble in Little China before I go to bed. Right. But that's like...

I have Charles Bronson's Beachbody. It's aged the best, but it's also not a body you see anymore. Paul becoming addicted to the hunt is really cool. Even after, they're like, hey, all you have to do is just get out of town. We're cool to look the other way on this one. And he's like, I don't know. I really love it. He gets a taste.

And then all the New York media coverage of Paul, like giving him a nickname, all the like press conferences. It's really, it's kind of amazing to watch like the churn of newspaper and TV journalism back then pre like any kind of internet and just the depiction of that.

I got Sex Worker Diner. Interesting. It seems like an incredible cast of characters in there. The lady who's like, there goes the pussy posse.

They remade Death Wish later. Do we acknowledge that one? I'm just saying it happened. They're still continuing to do it. Look, the idea of... a man whose family has been taken from him and then he goes out to, you know, dole out revenge is like a pretty durable, it goes back to Westerns.

It's pretty disturbing, but all the weird wide-angle lenses of the mother and daughter kind of hanging out in the apartment before the thugs get there. It just makes you feel so on edge because you're like, why is this almost like fisheye, the way they're sitting on the bed and talking? And I think it really gets under your skin, as does obviously the subsequent sequence. Yeah.

Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness Award.

I think Inspector Franco Choa is a pretty classic cop name.

I guess he's Vincent Gardini.

I don't know. Inspector Ochoa is a really good cop name for the 70s especially. What do you have for your flex category choice? Boy, oh boy. The I used to fuck guys like you in prison award for craziest quote.

But that is it. He screams that and then he fucking hits the... He kills his wife. It's pretty awful. Yeah. You think we should change the award? Oh, no. I don't know if we're going to change that new title of the award. I just don't know if I can say the C word. Probably not. We'll probably have to bleep it.

It's that or it's like Jeff Goldblum saying, Shit, we want money, mother!

It goes back to like, but the idea of placing it in, um, either a small town or an urban environment and having the violence be so much more extreme was probably pretty new for death wish. It's also honestly like kind of a part of a pretty disturbing, uh,

I had this in Apex Mountain, but this character is definitely Apex Mountain for calling your father-in-law dad. It's really confusing for the movie. I'm like, wait, is that his father? Because if I was Charles Bronson, it would be like, I'm not your dad.

He seems so eager to call him dad. He's like, yes, got it. Yeah. Charles Bronson's my dad.

Charles Bronson architect?

The way that they depict Charles Bronson's architecture skills is... him sitting at blueprints for a while, seemingly drawing circles.

And then later he's just like, here's your development. And it's like a fucking Monopoly board with a bunch of little houses. And they're like, this is going to lose a lot of money, but it's beautiful.

primarily 1970s genre of rape revenge movies, which was like more of a horror thing, but starts with Straw Dogs or is a, you know, you can market at Straw Dogs, which is a couple years before this or a year before this.

uh let's go to what's aged the worst other than the terrible assault scene yeah sure graphic nature of the rape murder scene the uh legal apartment search i had some issues with not positive there's not a single warrant in this movie not not sure that was legal just to kind of waltz in with locksmith i've all heard this by the same token that that crime was out of control in the cinematic version of the 1970s new york cops did not adhere to the rule of law they certainly did not um

It's Paul Kersey, the architect. They would have also cameras in the supermarket, cameras in the apartment building. There would not be like, we snuck in with the movers. What do you have for What's Aged to Worst? graphic nature of the rape murder scene, the nickname The Vigilante. Just dig deeper, New York. Come on. There's not a single cool element to this killer.

Yeah, like the silver bullet killer. The real Batman, something like that. Just Paul's general...

guess it's time to go home and go back to work right three days after easily the most traumatizing thing that could happen to somebody and he's like well what am i gonna do moan and cry forever well and then he doesn't even paint the walls for like a month he just kind of yeah until he paints them the bright orange which is definitely a sign of a mental breakdown

I mean, there's so many random people showing up in this movie where like, I can't believe this. But that comes a little bit later. I want to say also, since you mentioned the casting, one of the things that's aged the worst is Michael Winner and Charles Bronson talking about who to cast as Paul's wife in the beginning.

And then it's like Hills Have Eyes and I Spit on Your Grave, mostly.

Not after what happens in the movie. Yeah. I'm not having her thrown around by a bunch of thugs. And then they just were like, could you imagine being Hope Lang who plays the wife? Yeah. And be like, oh, great. Thanks guys.

And it also felt too close to the equalizer. We've done it now. I think if you were going to really try to do something creative, you would basically have to tell Death Wish from the perspective of the criminals that he's hunting.

You would have to be like, we're a couple of New York street guys, but there's this rumor that this crazy white guy is walking around with a gun, and we're now investigating him, but also trying to protect the other criminals. Flip it on its head.

So this movie, I think, is almost more disturbing because for the first half of it, it's so grounded. I mean, the entire Death Wish idea is like this really shy, retiring guy who has a little bit of experience in his childhood with guns. Becomes traumatized and then actually goes out like seeking out altercations with people so that he can take out his revenge on the guys who did this to his wife.

Yeah, Goldblum. With Goldblum.

Goldblum, like, is in the Warriors, like, four years early or five years early. He's just doing, it's so amazing. He's like... He's been asked about this movie a couple of times since then where it's just like, oh, yeah. kind of ashamed that that's your early film. He's like, no, I got to be in the movies. Right.

And I think it was because he knew like a band guy, like a guy in a band who just got him into this film.

I'm in the first 15 minutes. You can't miss me. What a rocket ship to like start me as in Big Chill a couple years later, right?

Okay, so this, you go first because mine goes right into casting what ifs. Vigilantes. Eh. What does that mean?

I think that there's a difference between a vigilante and a thrill seeker with a death wish. And Paul's out there, like he didn't even do any detective work of like, let me find Goldblum. Right? He's just like, I'm just going around gunning guys down.

There's a version of this film. The original director who was approached for it was Sidney Lumet. And one of the original pairings of actors was supposed to be Jack Lemmon and Henry Fonda. As Ochoa. Within Death Wish, within this sort of iconic vigilante action movie that spawned multiple sequels, I think there is like an amazing fucked up 70s drama film. Couldn't agree more. About like a...

emasculated New York businessman whose family is taken from him and is like, I don't have the tools to process what's happened to me. And Jack Lemmon would have been an incredible idea. I don't know if it would have worked. But it would have been, I would love to have seen the Sidney Lumet, Jack Lemmon version of this movie.

If I don't get that Pacino performance, then that's a huge... It would have been nice to have Serpico right into Death Wish with Jack Lemmon.

Can we spend a second talking about Elvis Presley?

George C. Scott doing this in hardcore would probably be a little intense for him. He would have been good though. Yeah. You know what, that's true. We've done hardcore. You know, Death Wish is not uncharted territory. Hardcore, another New York... I guess that was LA. He goes to LA, yeah.

Same kind of like feel.

Best that guy award. I got Jack Wallace. Detective Hank. He's also in Boogie Nights. He's... Yeah, he's the guy with... With Ricky Jay, right? Yeah, and he's Ochoa's partner.

I'll give you Olympia Dukakis as the lady cop who starts to figure out the entire thing.

They should also do it as a Christopher Guest mockumentary.

Oh, man. I mean, John Cazale would be another... Imagine him playing Paul. That would have been amazing. Oh, him as Paul Kersey? Oh, my God, dude. Yeah. Paul shouldn't be this Greek god. He should be a frail dude. You don't talk to a guy like Ames Gensho like that!

Oh yeah. Yeah. That's right.

We haven't done Dirty Dancing.

I just think that there was a different system back then. If he's a guy who keeps his body in shape and can convincingly fire a gun, he's got a job for life.

Yeah. We had the socks, soap socks in, uh, in, um, full metal jacket. Right. A pile.

Yeah, because his book is much more critical of vigilantism. Probably number one. Did you start reading it at all or did you just get it to check it out? I actually want to read it, but I know it's completely different than the movie. Yeah, he wrote two books that were... I don't know if they were very similar, but two got optioned and this one wound up being a big deal.

I think that the first film... I was going to say romanticized it. Well, but do you say that because you've seen Death Wish 2 and 3 and all the other stuff from it? Like, do you think that this film romanticizes violence? Well, the last hour of the movie, you're like, get him, Chuck! Get him! I'm not. I was really like, this is fucked up.

I wasn't like, this is fucked up, but I was like, I'm watching a guy spiral out. It's a little more like Taxi Driver. If you just watch it in the context of one film. If you watch it in the context of part of a franchise where this guy goes all over the country killing people.

I mean, he takes up most of the second half of this film. They bring him back for two.

That's a really good example of basically John Wick is Death Wish, but then taken in an entirely different direction. But the first John Wick is essentially Death Wish.

It's just a kidnapping. I feel like this one stands apart. Because Wick and Paul can't come back. That's the whole point. Taken, he's still got to maintain some semblance of a soul. Yeah, Deathwish won.

I have a couple of Apex Mountains. This is Apex Mountain for switchblades in movies. Wow, there was a great switchblade era. Yeah. Just guys getting knives pulled on them. It's a great movie setup because you're like, it's dangerous, but it might not be that dangerous. Yeah, but you can... I can trump this. Painting your apartment orange two weeks after your wife is murdered there.

Apex Mountain for that. I'd probably move. And guys calling their father-in-law's dad.

Hanks? It would be cool, though, if we had Vincent from Collateral as Paul.

What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? I think he could have done a lot of things. Very young, he could have been one of the thugs. I think around the Master and later in life, he could have done the main role. He could have been Paul in a different version of this film. I think he would have made a cool Ochoa. Yeah.

I mean, the entire movie is a nitpick, but the way that he's like... Oh, your wife's dead.

But there's almost like this weird vibe to the doctor where it's like, he's like, oh yeah, your wife's going to make it. Did you guys see the Mets?

Oh, I would think that in the 70s, and I would just think that there would be more bedside manner, but I guess in a New York City hospital in the 1970s, that guy's probably seen some shit.

People aren't just eating and drinking in a restaurant? No, I love when everybody stops. I mean, in JFK, it makes sense. But in this, it would be like, you really think a New York bar would grind to a halt to watch the police commissioner talk? It happens in Rocky, too, when you're at the bar and the creep comes out. Hey, turn that up.

Any other nitpicks? No, not really. We said the one. The big one was the doctor's bedside manner. All right. We'll take a quick break and then we'll finish the categories.

I think it was a pretty wild time back then. To me, it's like the other versions of this movie, and we'll get to that when we get to casting what-ifs and the development process for this film, is there's a version of this movie that's way closer to Straw Dogs and way closer to a neurotic, I'm dealing with my environment, but I'm a middle-aged man kind of movie. The insertion of Bronson

Yeah, I mean, I think it's not that expensive to make. Bronson's like, I'll stand there and shoot. You guys can make whatever movie you want around me. He's probably not like, oh, the story's not working for me. Let me get a rewrite of that script. I would love to see a Prestige TV prequel called The Architect.

About Paul's early days in New York City. It's basically Mad Men. Right. Got this lead on a New Mexico real estate development. Yeah, it's just like an architecture firm, and he's got a great wife and daughter.

Eight episodes? Gyllenhaal? Yeah.

Maybe he goes to Utah, starts listening to some right-wing podcasts. He's like, huh, these guys have some ideas I like. And then the rest of the season. He comes back to the architecture firm. He's like, you guys heard Rogan? We're apparently supposed to be hunting our own food.

No, I would. I liked my, my idea too, but like, yeah, we can do both. Yeah.

I would love to see Wayne as a Choa in this movie. You know, like Wayne hunting this guy. Like, damn, you know, this guy is really taking care of some business out there.

It's a pretty straightforward film. Yeah. All my questions have been answered. I mean, I think my only unanswerable question would be, would the commissioner, district attorney, and cop all agree to suppress his arrest?

Yeah.

Yeah, it would have been. I honestly think it would have worked if he had been like, I got mugged. I can't live in the city anymore. Oh, that's a good idea.

makes it an action movie and then turns it into an action franchise going forward. So I think Bronson defines it, so I'm going to say it's a Bronson movie. When was the first time you went to New York? Do you remember? Yeah, in the 90s. It was fine. My experience with New York has always been that New York is actually nowhere near as dangerous as it's made out to be.

There's a lot of really cursed items in this film. Yeah, there really is.

Or I think the big part in the beginning of the film when they're like, is it time to cut and run from New York City? It's like, if you're feeling that way, maybe you should do it. Yeah. That's a lesson. Get out of there. Best double feature choice? Falling Down? Oh, I had The Warriors just to put a fantastic cap on the 70s New York experience. Because this is essentially the Jeff Goldblum movie.

It's like the flip side of it.

Charlie.

Yeah, this probably won't make the top five list at the end of the year. Did you see... what I was talking about with like Jack Lemmon and Sidney Lumet, like the bones of like a weirder movie in this.

You know what? It's not dissimilar from Rocky in the sense that it's a movie that's franchised as kind of defined the original film now unintentionally. Like Rocky is such like a small urban drama and it's about human relationships and then there's a fight at the end. And then Rocky, all the subsequent sequels are like, it's about boxing and this guy's boxing career.

Death Wish was about, like you said, you're like, holy shit, the first hour of this movie is really disturbing. And then it becomes about vigilantes.

But it's interesting that you would almost think about Death Wish in relationship to the sequels, you know? Yeah.

You think about how different the film-going experience must have been for people at that time period compared to what we get now, where 90% of what we see is so affirming at the end. We are made to feel good about what we just watched. This is almost the complete opposite of that, where people seemingly were going to the movies to feel bad.

or to feel like their anger was being shown on screen, or their depression or their anxiety was being shown on screen. It's kind of an amazing time to talk. I mean, I love this. It's one of my favorite decades.

There's a lot of campaigning going on behind the scenes for which these 70s films should be. Really? Yeah. By me. We had to do this. Should we do a poll?

And you know what? You kind of teased once and I don't know how serious you were. It was all that jazz.

It's not available on DVD. I don't know if it's streaming. You're right. Yeah. All right.

No, I mean, I think it's more like the stories around it, yeah.

Good to see you, too.

I think that there's this cycle that everybody goes through that this movie maybe identifies the anxiety where as you get older, it can't possibly be that you're getting older. It's that the city is falling apart. Yeah. And so when I was in New York, when I was a kid, when I was in my 20s and when I was in my 30s, I was just like almost completely blind to the idea of like crazy wild 80s New York.

Yeah. You know, and then as you get older, more and more of your friends are like, oh, the city, it's falling apart. It's falling apart. It's crazy on the subways. It's crazy here. It's crazy there. We got to move to upstate or we're going to move to California. And that's kind of what's driving some of the drama in the first half of Death Wish.

It's just like all of Paul's more conservative friends are like, we should throw all these people in jail or whatever. And Paul's like, well, that's not what, you know, proper society does. Yeah. And he gets pushed and pushed and pushed. But I think a lot of it is almost like a midlife crisis movie as much as it's like a revenge movie.

I don't know what the fuck's going to happen.

Oh, my God.

Kind of unintentionally. Like, that's the thing. I mean, he's obviously always been this iconic action Western military character, and is just one of the most unique faces, voices, and vibes in movie history. But the craziest thing about him is to read interviews with him, and they're like, so you made Death Wish? And he's like, yeah, I actually don't think violence solves anything. Right.

He was like this very different kind of guy than the people he played.

Yeah, he's never McQueen.

You got to see Goldblum in 4K.

It's hard to explain. It's honestly, when I look at him, when you see him in Hawaii, when the movie is first opening and he's on his vacation with his wife and he's like hanging out with his swimsuit and he stands up. You're like, that looks like an alien.

Like guys don't look like that anymore where the face is super old, but the body looks like somebody took a knife and carved it out of leather and rock. And he's never worn suntan. Like he's a real, like I put on tanning oil guy. Like I want to get like UV rays. It's an insane physique.

Well, but Bronson, I mean, there is an interesting thing where Bronson's, like, evolving from that character actor or that supporting actor. I mean, he's so good in those movies like Dirty Dozen and Great Escape that you're mentioning. I think he's good in everything. He's awesome, but it's strange to watch him carry an entire film. I think you're right.

Like, my favorite probably performance by him, other... I think it's Once Upon a Time in the West, just because he's so mysterious in that movie. But yeah, when you put him front and center, Liam Neeson is a very accomplished actor, but before he becomes Mr. Vigilante, I have skills. Bronson was more or less a character actor, action movie star that then became the centerpiece of these films.

I think there's always a guy, now I would say it's Statham, right? Yeah. Who can get these movies made. But nothing else. Like, William Goldman always used to write about the movie star galaxy in the 70s, about if you can get Redford or if you can get one of these guys, Newman, whoever, Clint, you can get your picture made if they want to make it.

Bronson, I don't think, could have done All the President's Men, respectfully. No. Well, there's a couple movies that he turned down.

Damn it, Ben Bradley. I don't know if that would have worked. Bronson, as Ben Bradley, would have been sick, though. Instead of Robards, if he was doing the speech at the end.