HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons hosts the most downloaded sports podcast of all time, with a rotating crew of celebrities, athletes, and media staples, as well as mainstays like Cousin Sal, Joe House, and a slew of other friends and family members who always happen to be suspiciously available.
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Downhill then kicking out to somebody. I think Nance has been kind of a semi revelation over the last few weeks. Agree. Where it's like I I don't even who else in the league reminds you of him right now? The type of player he is where it's like he's not totally a center. He's not really a powerful yeah. It's like a good Dwight Powell. My revelation from this from this, just what we saw tonight is I just think New Orleans matches up really well with OKC. And OKC is probably gonna win the series, but New Orleans has good matchups. Like, I thought Herb gave SGA as much problem as I've seen anybody give SGA. The there's gonna be games where Valens Schuners just puts fouls on Chet, and Chet's gonna have to come out. I thought Chet was good today. I I actually like that we played. There's gonna be games where he just puts 3 fouls on him in the first half, and we don't see Chet again. Dort on Ingram on the reverse, I thought was another interesting one where it's like, ah, this is a bad matchup for New Orleans. You know? But it just seemed like all over the place there were bad matchups. Like, it's not really an Alvarado series because when OKC had all their dudes, you know, they they could just kinda find Alvarado and go at them. But that that's what I this was the only series that we had out of the 8 where I was like, oh, man. If they do this, then they're gonna have to do this. And then if they do this, then they're gonna have to do this. It's one of those, which I I think that's why it just feels 70 to me. If you had to pick 1 7 game series out of the 8 if I told you one of these 8 are going 7, who would you pick? Because I would pick this one. I would've picked Clippers, Mavericks. And maybe I'm letting history play with it a little bit there. I just felt like there was gonna be a very, like, quick Clippers correction if all those guys are playing together.
With the zone, it's like they're just gonna dribble right into 2 guys, and nobody's gonna be able to throw a pass to Embiid. So just having that be over with, I'm so excited to play the Knicks because It's just a fresh a fresh page for the sixers. It's not the same villain every time. It looked like a classic garbage, Miami win, where, like, hero is gonna take 30 shots. Nobody else really played well. Yeah. They're only in the 6 threes in the first half. Yeah. Butler's having a bad game, but then, you know, you got Nick Batoon. Fantasy. Have How do you work up the proper amount of hatred for Kyle Lowry? Like, is it just you go to the fridge and grab it, or do you are there some calisthenics you're gonna do? Like, what? Play this out. Because I think in a trip Brunson in the first hour of game 1. But you gotta remember, you know, he's a child Philadelphia and and the Novanix or children of Philadelphia too. So I'm expecting him to come out and just rip off his Sixers Jersey and reveal a Nick's jersey underneath, you know, just like we're taking over the city of Philly. We're gonna there there's gonna be is it gonna be 30%, 50% Knicks fans at those Philly games? I mean, stupid. We we got the Josh Hart Boys. We got the d vincenzo boys. We got the Brunson boys. They're all coming out. So I'm not right. I love. He's a 50% Knicks fans in Philadelphia, man. You need to shout out. I need my I need my Nick's brothers to stand up and show up in the city of shitty love. And just show out. I always try to be diplomatic to you. What's your problem? Now I hope now I hope Kyle falls right onto Jalen Brunson. Oh, yeah. No. He's gonna do the thing where he takes the charge, but pulls Jalen Brunson with him and Jalen Preston, like, slants his elbow. Yeah. That's happening in the first hour of the game. Well, Sean, the athlete you hated the most in your entire life was Chase Suntley. Yes. So I believe played for a Philadelphia team. Yeah. He's a war criminal, and he was tried at the Hague, and he was killed for his crimes publicly. Well, now that now you're gonna have flowery. Yeah. Put them on the list. Yeah. Put them on the list. Well, send in the
Been over this part of the regular season versus the kind of borderline unplayable lead guard he was in last year's playoffs at times. That's a monumental difference. Now whether you believe that to be true in playoff basketball, I I think that speaks to your point about the regular season being a different beast. Like, once you can target him consistently in a matchup where everything is controlled, it looks a little bit different for guys like D'Lo. I will say, though, there's, like, a fucking attitude with him Oh, no doubt. That I think once he got thrown into trade rumors again starting in December and nobody stuck up with him, and everybody was like, yeah. You you know, this is the deal you signed. You probably are getting traded. It kinda unleashed him. And this version of of Dilo, I think, has been by far I he's never a player I've I've enjoyed watching ever, but I've I've kind of respect and admire him. He was, you know, just seemed like he had a forced sale sign on it around his neck, and he was on Ebay and, you know, just was being offered all over the place. And, I don't know. I I thought it weirdly made him better. Oh, definitely. Would you agree that this was your favorite version of him, or is that just me? There's no doubt. I I've had a lot of skepticism about a lot of different versions of D'Angelo Russell over the years, including the all star minted versions. But this one, you're you're right. There's an abandon he's playing with. There's a let it fly kind of attitude as far as, like, what shots he's willing to take, and the fact that he's just hitting them at a much higher rate. That's really healthy for the Lakers offense. You don't want LeBron to have to micromanage every single thing at this point. You don't want to have to run so much go to offense through a d. You want it to be able to find him and to have that kind of ecosystem. You need someone like Dilo taking shots that are kind of on the edge of responsible. And he's been so good at hitting them. That's a big huge reason why their offense has been so formidable over the course of this year. Big picture, though. Do you see anything in Denver Lakers that makes you feel comfortable that the Lakers would be able to stop the Murray Jokic pick and roll down the stretch in the final 5 minutes of a game? No. Okay. Absolutely. Like, I think that's the
Meaningful game in a month. They've literally had nothing to play for. I don't have high level concern for the Celtics, at least for the first couple rounds, But I know this is gonna be a narrative. It's like, Miami, Miami is their number. And they're a completely different team. If with all that said, if they lose this series to Miami in round 1, after going 64 and 18, after doing the holiday and Porzingis extensions, after going all in on this nucleus, like nothing we've seen, and then they blow the Miami series and Miami beats them again, that would be in the running for worst non championship slash finals losses of any Boston team. I mean, what an absolute, like there's been some Bruins ones where the Bruins were like the best team in the league and they lost in round 1. But I think this would actually be worse. This is statistically the best Celtics team in 16 years. They've had all the battle scars. Everything is leading to this playoff series. The east has broken for them in the perfect ways with Embiid and, and Giannis, and there's no good east team at all. And even the Knicks who have been playing really well there on Brandle, if they blow this, holy shit. What happens? The hockey thing isn't even a good like, I know what you're doing, and I I think it makes sense, but it it just doesn't Yeah. Hockey is more random than basketball. Right. It just doesn't matter because hockey, like, that's kind of the sport even though the year that the Bruins lost, you're like, wait. What what's happening here? They can't lose. They have more pressure on them than any other team. If they make it to the NBA finals, lose to the Nuggets, I don't think there's necessarily gonna be shame in that, but they've been a really interesting group and that it feels like it's been around forever and then you realize how young everybody is, and I've already done this segment far too many times of like them being way ahead of schedule and probably getting further along, that that actually counts against them now as, like, more failures. So their failures are just bigger. But if they don't get out of the east this year
Because game 81, game 82, it feels like the NBA finally figured out what to do with this final weekend. I'll explain why when we talk to Priscilla, but we are gonna do a 2 part podcast right here. Part 1 is gonna be all the stuff we saw this weekend and all the playoff stuff that's coming. All the matchups, everything we think. And then we're gonna put that up as fast as we possibly can and then take part 2 as part 1's going up. Part 2 is gonna be all the award stuff and then gonna save some UFC and master stuff for the end. A 2 part staggered BS podcast with Brian Marcela next. 1st, our friends from Pro Tip. Alright. We're a tape of this. It is 3:45, Sunday. The Masters is still going on, but Scottie Scheffer wrapped it up. So Ryan Russillo's here. This is part 1 of the 2 part end of the season NBA Extravaganza and Russillo. Awesome weekend of basketball. A lot of subplots. Some things changed. Some things shifted. I wanna talk about the weekend first, and then we can go into all the playoff matchups. But what was the number one thing that jumped out to you this weekend? It's Phoenix closing with this brutal tough schedule. Their last 10 going 7 and 3. It was off the charts harder than any other remaining schedule. When you started looking at strength to schedule, they were, like, opponents winning percentage of, like, 650 or 660 at one point, and then the next toughest schedule was 540. So we were like after that San Antonio game, I'm like, alright. Who are these guys? They went 7 of 10, and then they just beat Minnesota where they still Minnesota would have been in the 3 seed, but now they're facing a Suns team they don't beat. So that I thought was the biggest thing of anything that happened on Sunday. They didn't just beat Minnesota. They
