The Bill Simmons Podcast
An NBA Scoring Boom, NFL Holiday Picks, 'Landman' Is on Fire, the Return of 'Stranger Things,' and the Future of TV With Kirk Goldsberry, Joe House, Chris Ryan, and Zoe Simmons
26 Nov 2025
The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is first joined by Kirk Goldsberry to discuss trends around the NBA, top 10 point guards, and lots more! (2:05). Then, Joe House joins to make their Ringer 107 picks for the week before talking about their top three Thanksgiving dishes (01:18:09). After that, Chris Ryan hops on to talk Philadelphia sports and ‘Landman’ (01:56:41). Finally, Zoe Simmons catches her dad up on ‘Stranger Things’ and other TV shows she’s been watching (02:46:48). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Kirk Goldsberry, Joe House, Chris Ryan, and Zoe Simmons Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Post your job today at linkedin.com/simmonsbill The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday. We did Two for the Money. That is a gambling movie from 20 years ago that has aged beautifully as an unintentional comedy classic. Also a pretty good movie. Pacino, McConaughey, and it was me and Chris Ryan and Cousin Sal breaking it down.
So I'll just give you a heads up because we don't have another podcast till Sunday. Rewatchables next Monday. It's time. We're doing Rocky II. It's the last Rocky that we haven't done out of the first four. So we did, I think we did three, four, one, two. And that's probably the right order. I think that's what we did. Anyway, that's coming on Monday. So you have five days to watch that.
I have a mega pod coming up because this is my last podcast of the week. We're talking NBA with Kurt Goldsberry. We're going to talk NFL picks and some best point guards ever with Joe House. We're going to talk to Chris Ryan about the Philly sports scene and the future of TV. And then last but not least, my daughter's home for Thanksgiving and Stranger Things is launching soon.
And we're going to talk Stranger Things at the end. She's going to give us a report card. She really just bullied her way into this podcast. I don't know what to tell you. It's all coming up next. We're going to take a break and then Pearl Jam. This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by State Farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm.
It's like needing the protection offensive guard on the football field, but getting an elementary school crossing guard. Sure, they're both guards, but you can only trust one to keep your quarterback safe when the game is on the line. So don't settle for just any insurance. When you can have State Farm, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. All right, Kurt Goldsberry is here.
He has a new piece on TheRinger.com today. We're going to nerd it up. I want to talk advanced metrics with you and a whole bunch of things. I asked you to come up with a couple trends, things you're looking at, things that have jumped out from a basketball slash nerd number standpoint. There's been some good nerd numbers this year. I can't wait to go through them. What's your number one?
Well, I think the biggest one, Bill, is that scoring is way up in the NBA. So we're seeing scoring numbers. It's great to talk to you about this because we haven't seen scoring numbers like this since the 1960s before the three-point line existed. NBA teams are averaging 117 points per game. Those are crazy numbers up from last year, but definitely up from anywhere this century.
I saw, I was looking at, uh, some of the assist numbers. There was multiple teams just averaging 29, 30 assists a game, which I thought was, was kind of exciting.
But so you mentioned the early sixties and I remember debunking the Oscar Robertson triple double stuff for my book because just the way they played back then, they would just kind of run up and down and take shots and nobody could make a shot back then the way they could now. Um, There's a bunch of reasons why scoring's up. I'm going to throw a couple at you.
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