Coming up, nick Sixers, some great MBA. Oh, and a lot of Pearl Jam. Yeah, that's next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network. I have new rewatchables coming for you on Monday. We are doing a long came Poly, 2004 comedy, came out 20 years ago. Ben Stowe, Jennifer Aniston, and the great Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is just out of control on this movie.

This is a really, really fun movie. It was me and Sean Fentany.

We had a great time. Coming up on this podcast, first hour, me Rob Mahoney. We did this live on YouTube, on youtube. Com/bilsimmons, right after nick Sixers, which was a very fun game in a very, very, very fun series.

We broke down everything that happened.

We talked some Bucks Pacers, Clips Mavericks, try to figure out what's going to happen in Cavs Magic, what's going to happen in Timberwolves Nuggets, which has a chance to be the best series of the playoffs. We went for about an hour. Then after that, if you're here for Pearl Jam, don't Don't worry, they're coming. Eddie Vetter, Jeff Amen. I went to Seattle last week, hung out with those guys in their famous warehouse. We were in the batting cage.

We filmed it.

You can watch it on youtube. Com/bilsimmons.

You can listen to it at the one hour mark of this podcast.

We talked about a whole bunch of stuff. I had a list of things in my head I wanted to get to, and we probably only got to half of it.

Went all over the place. I had a great time.

Their new album is called Matter. I got to say, I love their new album. I think it's either my third or fourth favorite album of theirs, and I've been listening to a lot.

It's just really good. If you haven't listened to it, go check it out.

Anyway, they're coming up at the in our own hour mark, and first, we're going to do some basketball. But first, unironically, ProJip.

All right, we're taping this.

It is 8:47 PM Pacific Time.

Rob Mahoney is here.

It's good to know. That's when my soul left my body, Phil. I'm glad we have a timestamp on it.

nick Sixers. Not a series for the faint of heart. We're doing this live on I needed time to regroup, but we had told people we were going live, so let's do it. The Jalen Brunson series. Do we start there?

It's good to see the greatest nick of all time at what's basically the ground floor. I'm glad we get to be here for this.

New York City Hoops God summons the Ghost, even though he's still alive, of Bernard King 40 years ago, who had the greatest two-series stretch in the recent history of the New York Knicks. Brunson goes, he goes 22 and 24 the first two then 39, 47, 40, 41, which is outrageous. There was a moment in this game when it felt like Philly was going to come back and win, when they had the little seven-point run there It felt chaotic again. The crowd was into it. Brunson calmed things down. He made a big shot. Missed the foul shot, but I felt like that stemmed the tide. But he was the best player in the series, and usually that's the rule. Best player in the series wins the series. I don't know how to feel about the Embiid piece of this because on the one hand, he was good tonight. 39 points imposed as well, 16 points in the third quarter. On the other hand, as was the pattern, stuck in the fourth quarter. They didn't really do very much, and then fouled out.

This was definitely the piece of complicating evidence for the mounting noise about, Oh, give more of the offense to Tyrese Maxi. Even more leeway for this electric scoring guard we have. I thought in the first half, especially, and particularly in the first quarter, you saw the real limitations of Maxi as a playmaker. He looked just dazed with all the activity that was going on defensively. And Joel is the only reason the Sixers got back in this game. I know they made a run without him playing small, but he stabilized them. And he's the one who really reversed the energy of it to that feeling of inevitability, where for a long stretch, the Knicks could not guard him one-on-one. And when they tried to double him, Buddy Heald came out of nowhere to hit every three from the weak side corner. The way all of those pieces inter blocked. I mean, Joel was sensational. And I think the inevitability that he was playing with for the vast majority of this game was really impressive. He does wear out by the end, though. And especially when you have guys who can't get him timely entry passes and guys who can't properly space for him.

And I thought the Knicks, to their credit, were junking up their coverage is just enough, where when he caught the ball, by the fourth quarter, at least, he couldn't be 100 % sure whether it was going to be a single or a double or a shading zone. It was mixed up just enough to keep him guessing.

I'm glad you mentioned that because I noticed that it reminded me of in football when they start trying to mess with the quarterback and they show blitz one time, they don't blitz, then they send a blitz. And they basically, for the first three quarters, it felt like They were just conventional. We don't want to give up any threes. You do what you got to do, Joel. He was burning him. Then we got to the fourth quarter. Now all of a sudden, the second guy out of nowhere, pretending to send the second guy, but then coming back. It did feel like it screwed him There were moments when it just didn't seem like he wanted to shoot in the last five minutes. You notice that? He was passing up foul on jumpers. He was hot potatoing it at the top of the key. And he also looked super tired to me. And that's one of the things... I mean, this is such a weird series, and I think we'll remember it as a really, really, really, really fun. I don't think we'll call it the greatest first-round series ever or anything like that, but a super fun first-round series.

Absolutely. One of the things I'll always wonder about it is why they never figured out how to pace Embiid so that he was peaking at the right times of the game. Because he clearly had about, what do you think, 29 to 30 good minutes in him every game. Maybe nick Nernst felt like they just couldn't survive it, but he always felt to me like this car that was like, when you're trying to get to a gas station, you don't want to get off the highway. No, there's a gas station 13 miles away. I think we could make it. That was nick Ners' strategy for this entire series. I think we can make it. I think, no, there's a gas station down there with the Chick-fil-A. And just wait, we're going to get there. And then you break down on the side of the road.

This has always been the nick Ners' school is, let's just add five more minutes to that guy's workload. Let's just keep pressing a little bit more and see if it works and see if it works.

But going against Tibbs, who's also like, oh, no, hold my beer.

I appreciate the commitment to endurance on all sides. But I think contributing to that and the nick Nurse dilemma as far as when to pull Joel Embiid and how to format the lineups to best accommodate that, every time he steps on the floor, feels incredibly precarious. There were five players in this game for whom it felt that way. The thought of, especially when Joel was roasting, Isaiah Hartenstein, The thought of taking Mitchell Robinson off the floor felt dangerous for the Knicks. Obviously, every minute that Jalen Brunson sits, but that was the determining difference, I thought. In the mid-fourth quarter, the Knicks bought two minutes for Jalen Brunson to sit. And he comes back in and makes everything happen. And Joel just didn't really have that finishing burst.

And they got a big three from Josh Hart at the perfect time. Oh, amazing. I think 25 seconds left to go up by three. And they figured out actually what to do in the last 10 seconds to protect the lead. Yes. Hey, use your fouls. Hey, maybe cut off Tyrese Maxi so he doesn't have a full start. So they actually learn from some of their mistakes. When you think of we're heading into the fourth quarter, and I was taking notes. I thought Philly was going to win.

It was tied going into the forest.

I just felt like this is going to be Philly's game. So I'm taking notes, but my notes are a little slanted toward Philly is going to win game seven. Where are we going? Who's going to have enough left in the tank? What's that crowd going to be like? And then all of a sudden, the Knicks were up by halfway through. All of a sudden, they were up seven. I was like, Oh, man, the Knicks. This series had so many different swings back and forth. I almost couldn't keep track. Ultimately, though, How good are these teams? That's a great question. Because we're going to watch Minnesota-Denver on Saturday night. I think the quality of basketball in that series versus what we just watched, where we're going to have size, we're going to have scoring, We're going to have playmaking. We're going to have guys off the bench who can actually come in and affect games. We're going to have teams with real identities. We're going to have teams that can protect the rim. I just think this was a super fun series, but it feels a little like the JV to me.

But it's two JV teams that are so evenly matched and know how to fight. And that's the important thing at the end of the day is you can get great series anywhere in the bracket. It just has to be the right matchup. And this was that. Neither of these teams are as good as Minnesota, much less as good as a defending champion like Denver. And that's okay. They're both pretty banged up. They're both playing to the absolute limit, balls to the wall. And the chaos was just off the charts. The series did only have one setting on the dial, and it was insane all the time.

To the point, as you Guys falling everywhere, like constantly.

And to the point, as you mentioned, the Knicks being buttoned up for the final 30 seconds of this game felt shocking. I'm genuinely jarred that nothing weird happened because I'm so conditioned to everything weird happening all the time with these two teams.

It never felt like whoever was up was going to make the two free throws. It just felt like the other team was always hanging around. Unfortunately for Maxi, who had one of the great, memorable random playoff games in game five in the seven on two possessions. Now, this is what happens. I talked about this in my pot on Tuesday night. You lose the next game, and those games, they just fade away a little bit. Still really fun. I remember that one, but it loses, what, 90% of the meeting? A lot of it. Still really fun, but not the same. He wasn't good tonight was the other piece. There were reasons for that. They definitely changed what they were doing defensively on him. I also think it's really hard to just have to Two incredible games in a row, as James Harden and Paul George can tell us.

And yet he almost pulled it out, too. As far as all of the closing plays, as we're mentioning, they weren't really coming from Joel Embiid, although he was setting screens, he was involved. But Maxi converting a layup in which his body was fully parallel to the ground and then following it up with that and one goal tend. I mean, if anyone was going to close it, it was going to be him. And in all due respect, Kelly Oubre, who came up with sensational plays throughout this game. I was flagging them as I was going to almost expecting the Sixers to win at various points once they came back from that initial. I think it was like they were down 19 after eight minutes. But once they started whittling that down, I started flagging plays. And one of them was Kelly Oubre's chase down block on Ogie Ananobi just completely saved a play out of nowhere. And I think you could do the same thing in the opposite direction with Ogie's and one on Joel in the fourth quarter, passing up a wide open three to drive in finish. Incredible play made by him. But then you mark it going down the other way because he missed the free throw.

And it's just like there's just constant toggling of these hugely momentous plays. And I thought this series was a great reminder in these playoffs in general. All the offense is great, but what makes offense cool is defense. It's like games that are this tight where every three feels like the biggest shot in the world. And that's where we want to be in this playoff basketball.

The biggest thing for the Knicks tonight, they knew it there again for Brunson, but I I thought DiFrancenzo, who ended up... Did he? Is that, say, 48 minutes? It's 46 or 48. I can't see. He had 23. He finally got going. That was the thing in the first five games. It just didn't look like him. Fantasy said that on the pot on Tuesday. The night. He'd been their second best player for the last two months of the season, and he was MIA, and I think he knew it. He came out hot. He made a couple of big shots early on when they built that lead. He made a couple of big shots late. His defense was He was scrappy. It just looked like him again. They had him going. I thought Ogie had another good game. They feel like a guy short to me if they're going to keep climbing rounds. Next round might not matter.

Is it the 48 minutes for Dante or the 46 for Josh Hart or the 45 for OG that makes you think they might need one more guy.

Are they playing Sunday? I hope not. Oh, my God.

Let's just pack them in a movable sauna truck and just keep them in there full stop as they head back. We got to get these guys some recovery.

Oh, they got it. So Monday night is the first game. That's good for them.

Okay, good.

Little time.

Little time to recoup.

At these paces of these games, you're not meant to play 45 minutes. No. That's just crazy. Plus, the way guys were flying around. There was at least 10 times in this series where somebody was down. I was like, That guy's out for the series. We're not going to see him again. Walk me through where Philly is mentally right now. The fan base, the organization.

Yeah.

And Bede was healthy enough, right? It's like, Oh, yeah, he wasn't 100%. I guess my question would be, is he ever going to be 100%? Is this somebody who's meant to play eight months of basketball each year? Is it bad luck? Is it something else? He seemed exhausted near the end of every one of these games. I don't know. From a physical shape standpoint, I wouldn't I would say he was an A plus. He was doing enough. He was still impactful. He's going to be 31 next year. I think the Sixers fans are like, We would love for this to be Maxi's team, too. I don't know how that plays out. They're going to probably lose Ubre, my guess, that he'll... Especially with all the teams that have cap space and the lack of free agents. They have cap space. There's been Paul George rumors. I don't know why Paul George would not go to Orlando over Philly if I had the choice, and I'm just betting on a team. I'm betting on Orlando over Philly. That's just me.

Wow.

Not a lot of guys left. It's just like, this is now year 10 of the unbeat era, and they've never made a conference finals. How do you even react to this series? What's your takeaway if you're the advisor to the Philly owners?

I don't know that you have a choice, if you're Philly, but to stay the course on Joel and making it the best team you can every time out. Obviously, Max needs to be a huge part of that. I personally would love Paul George as a fit there. And if I'm Paul George, I would love the fit there. I think in terms of what PG would want, playing in between an MVP player and a young ascendant star takes a lot of heat off of him, lets him play a much more comfortable role, both on and off the ball, and where he can be an impact defensive player, again, on the perimeter on a really consistent basis. I think that could be an ideal spot for him. And if you can land a player like that, everything changes pretty quickly.

What you worry about- Can I zag on that for a second?

Let's talk it through.

He's from LA, or LA area. Comes back, wanted to be here. Everyone thought he wanted to be in the Lakers, ends up on the Clippers, but he's in LA. Now you're asking him to leave LA Again, he's going to go back to... Now he's going to the East Coast, which he's never gone that far. The reason to leave would be, I can't take this Kauai thing anymore. I can't do it. This has been a half a decade of never knowing if this fucking guy is playing or not.

I just want to be on a good team that has some regularity to it.

So you're going to go cross country and play with Joel Embiid?

Do you feel like you're doing some self-projection as East Coast guy moves to LA and never leaves again? You're entrenched.

I'm just like, if I'm going to have uncertainty, I might as well stay in LA. It's fair. If you're going to talk me in Orlando and Palo, who's a shooting star upwards and cap space and a young team in defense and a team that really needs what he can do, if I'm I'm leaving the Clippers, I'm leaving for that. And I don't care where he goes. Either way, they're going to be a competitor for the Celtics. But to go to Philly and be in the same, is he playing or isn't he playing situation? I don't know why he would do that.

Yeah, I think it's with Orlando, it's a matter of how close do you think that team is and how much do you think their current problems are spacing mechanical problems versus decision making young player problems. And I think it's a combination of both. But if you're Paul George, 34 years old, you're We're picking your shot right now. This next team is going to be the team that's going to give you a chance to potentially contend for a title. And if you want to chill with the Clippers and enjoy all that that entails, power to you. But I think Philly could give him, if not his best, then close to his best chance to actually contend for something.

This message was presented by Darryl Maury. You know what? I was at the Clipper game last night, and they do the rosters. It's like, blah, blah, blah. In his 12th year. They get to Paul George. I've been to a bunch of Clipper games. I just never noticed this before. They're like, In his 14th season. I'm like, Oh, my God. Paul George. 14 seasons already? Because you think of him as this run of a young guy. He looks the same. But so this next contract will be years 15, 16, 17, and 18. Huge. And he's got a metal rod in his leg, and he's had some other injuries. I don't know. That made me think he's probably taking one last big-ass contract. I don't know what What happens with the Embiid piece of it? What happens if he's like, You know what? Maybe it's time. Maybe it's time for me to move on, or maybe it's time for me to get a fresh start. What happens if the Sixers get a little aggressive with him like, Hey, we need to be in better shape, dude. You can't play yourself in this shape during the season. You have a lot of miles on you.

You've had a lot of different injuries. We really want you to dedicate. We don't think you should play Team USA. Well, I want to play Team USA I already gave my word. There's ways this could go wrong. And then the Darryl Mori piece, what happens there? How many years does he get? Do they start looking at him side-eye a little bit? They just made all these moves. They traded James Hard and didn't really get a lot back. Not that if you watched them last night, you would be amazed to got anything back. But do they start wondering, is his vision the right vision?

All fair questions. I think as As far as the moves that they made with what they had, Uber is a great example. That's a home run signing given the financial investment. Kyle Lowry, a non-factor in this game, but has been meaningful in others. And that's a pickup, a marginal pickup along the margins a marginal pickup along the edges of the roster.

For this cost us nothing, that's about as well as you can do. Certainly better than Bogdanovic and Alex Birks.

Yeah. And if Dianthony Melton had been consistently healthy, maybe that would have made this team look a little different in terms of its perimeter rotation, Maybe you're not begging on a prayer from Buddy Healed and campaign to save you in some of these games. But that's where they found themselves. And those guys did deliver moments, not consistently enough, but they did all right. I think the problem with them is more like you look real sideways at Tobias Harris, as Philly fans have for a very long time. But as vacant and invisible as you could possibly be in a game in which he played 29 minutes and basically had to play 29 minutes. And that's the spot where, whether you're talking about Paul George or anyone else, they just have to get some flexible forward size that makes sense next to Joel that is not Tobias Harris.

Do you think they could have gotten Bradley Beal last summer straight up for Tobias Harris as an expiring? And would you have done that? And was that a mistake or was that a great move not to do that?

I think it's a great move not to do it.

How bad is that for Bradley Beal?

And we're not having this conversation about, could they get Paul George if you make the trade for Bradley Beal's nontradable contract? You're locking yourself into that massive number when the Sixers are one of the few teams that are going to play the Capspace game a little bit, and that's an actual asset for them.

Well, they could have gone after Siakam. Yeah. The Knicks also could have gotten Siakam. And we're going to talk about Indiana in the next segment. But both the Knicks, I think, were like, You know what? We're not close to winning a title. Ogie was our big move. These are baby steps. We're going to wait for the big fish next summer Well, plus, with all due respect, you've seen Ogie and Ciacom together. You know what that front court is. Yeah, so maybe they picked the one and the two. Philly could have at least matched what Indiana gave up for Siakam. Indiana didn't give up a pick this year for Siakam, but this is probably the worst draft in 11 years. If they had been future picks, maybe that would have been even more desirable for Toronto anyway. But I was just thinking about it because Siakam was good in that Milwaukee series. It was funny that we were all looking at that trade when it happened. Like, Yeah, Siakam, good player. And then, meanwhile, we do the Ringer 100 rankings. And he's always, I forget where he is, but he's always somewhere in the '40s, low '50s.

It's like, You know what? When it's nice to have a guy like Siakam, is he higher for you?

Don't look at me on that. I'm in those meetings, stumping for Pascal Seacom with a sandwich sign on, doing spin moves, trying to get him moved up the ranking a little bit. But sometimes it falls on deaf ears.

Well, the segment that I was most excited to do for this part was quickly pressure rankings for game seven. But there will be no game seven.

No pressure at all, it turns out.

And we should mention from the fan bases, the psyches of these two fan bases was one of the most fun parts of this series. You might have heard fantasy on here on Tuesday, having an actual mental breakdown. The Philly fans are an all-time mess. They don't know what to make of the future of this team. How do we feel about Joel?

There's camps forming.

And then the way this played out, where are we going? What did we just do with the last 10 years of our lives? All those questions are in play. The Knicks fans were going to a dark place if they blew this game tonight. I think that if that had been a game seven with them blowing big leads in game six and then blowing game five the way they did, that game seven would have been one of the most fascinating first-round game sevens, but we'll never know.

Yeah. How do you think Sixers fans are going to deal with, in retrospect, the Game 5 miracle. The miracle that the Sixers never get and have never really gotten in the Joel era for the most part. Every bad break is pretty much turned against them, and yet they get this one, and it goes absolutely nowhere and fizzles out basically immediately. That's got to be tough.

Yeah. Then there's the dark side of you if you're a Sixers fan where it's like, maybe if that didn't happen, maybe some tougher conversations could have then happened. Damn. Instead, we bought some hope. I just don't know where you are with this Embiid thing if you're trying to win a title. With all the miles that he has, the surgeries that he's had already, how we've seen these games go, what we've seen in the fourth quarters from him, how this is going to get better. This is what I talk to my Philly fan friends about. All of them are like, Love Joel. Like watching him. He's definitely one of the best players in the league. I don't know how this gets better when he's 31, 32, 33, especially if you look at the history of centers, too. Wings can age the best. Some point guards age really well. Centers usually don't age well. Years 10 through year 13, it starts to flip. You can look at any great center and it starts to flip. The knees, they just have a lot of weight and a lot of inches. It's like a big building. That would be what I would be thinking about this summer.

And I'd be absolutely furious if you played Team USA, if I was the Philly owner or if I was a Philly fan. What the fuck are you playing Team USA for? Take the summer off. Get healthy. Get your knees healthy.

He should.

Honestly- And Kawhi, too. Kawhi, just bow out. You can't even play for the Clippers. Bow out. Get out of Team USA. You're done.

It's a very anti-American stance from you, Bill.

I want to win the gold medal.

Our boys and boys are trying to win it for us over there. Come on. Yeah.

Get Jalen Brunson on that team.

I will say what the Sixers have needed, and it's weird because they tried this with the very wretched and cursed Al Horford experiment, but they needed a player all along who could keep Joel's minutes down and control his exposure in some of these games. And they needed it cheap. They needed Isaiah Hartenstein, effectively. They needed that discovery, that find, a guy who could really plug in and make the no Joel minutes, something other than an abject disaster all the time. And they They've never, ever found it. And as this series illuminated, Paul Reid is not the answer. He's basically unplayable by the end of the series.

Well, the irony of you laying that out was they had a chance to just not keep Paul Reid. What was it? Utah made a poison pill offer for him. Philly to match it, he became untradable, and they decided to keep the asset over just letting him go, and then you get to the playoffs and you can't play him. Too bad. I don't know if we can call him play off P anymore. Is that his nickname?

B-b-b-b-a-l. Come on.

But what about Play Off P? Oh, he's called Play Off P is Paul George. This is live on YouTube. You get to see my senility. We'll never confuse him for Play Off P. It would have been a better joke. Kyle, edit that out of the YouTube. Oh, no, you can't. Let's take a break on YouTube really quick and on the podcast, and we'll come right back. This NBA Playoff's Fandle is giving all customers two chances to bring home a big win with a no Bet. Same game parlay every weekend in the playoffs, just place an SGP on any payoff matchup, and you'll get bonus bets back if you don't win. Bet on everything from rebounds to assist the three-pointers.

And more, if you like Denver to be at Minnesota in game one, team it up with Jokage to score 20 points, get 10 rebounds and eight assists, and you're off. You have the same game parlay.

Fandle, by the way, now live in our nation's capital, Washington, DC. Visit fandil. Com/bs. Shoot your shot on America's number one sportsbook where I've been crushing it with boosts. We've hit 10 straight boosts on Fandil. I'm not kidding. Ten straight. Go to my Twitter feed whenever we do them, and we're on a hot streak right now. Visit fandil. Com/bs. Shoot your shot on America's number one sportsbook. Fandil, official sports betting partner in the NBA. You must be 21 plus, 18 plus in DC, and present in select states. Gambling problem? Go win a 100 gambler or visit rg-help. Com. Opt in a minimum three-leg parlay required. Bonus bets are not on the draw bone. Expire seven days after receipt. Max refund, $5. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook. Fanduel. Com. I want to talk about Indiana because they clinched tonight. They beat Milwaukee. You would have thought I would say, let's talk about Milwaukee. Oh, my God. Indiana feel good mid-market story.

Absolutely.

They have Paul George, doesn't want to be there anymore. They turn him into Oladipo and Sabonis. They get real all-star Four years out of Ola Deepo before he gets hurt. Sabonis turns into an asset. They turn Sabonis into Halliburton, who becomes a possible NBA guy. They trade Picks for Siakam, really smart trade. They have this Malcolm Brogdon piece, doesn't really totally fit with Halliburton. They want to turn team over to him. They turn him into Aaron Neesmith. They go discount shopping. They get T. J. Mcdonald. They get O. B. Toppen. Basically for nothing. Everyone waits for them to trade Miles Turner and Buddy Hill to the Lakers or just trade Miles Turner. They say, You know what? We're actually going to keep Miles Turner. We like the way he plays with Tyrese Halliburton. Now they're in the second round of the playoffs, and they wax this no Yannis Milwaukee team, which was, even without Yana, it's pretty expensive. Now they're playing the Knicks in round two, and we're going to be treated to just a slew of Reggie Miller, Spike Lee, 90s, four-point shot. We're going to get all that stuff, and it's going to be great.

But can you think, is this the biggest success story of the season to you, Indiana, or would you go another team? For what our expectations were.

Yeah, I think organizationally, it feels like a huge one. This was a team that I think seeing them make the next step was seeing them secure even a playoff seat like the one they had. Get to the top six, that's an achievement. Get through a series like this, even without Giannis, even with Dame, injured for all of it, but out for part of it, still an incredible achievement. Most importantly, I think there's a lot of ups and downs, clearly, for Indiana and their execution in some of these games. But if you look at game one and game six, those are very, very different teams that Indiana put on the floor. That's a team that grew up in their first playoff experience. And that's really all you want from this series. Obviously, you want to advance. You want to do the best you can with the opportunity in front of you. But you want to see these young guys figure it out. And they absolutely did. I thought, Tyrese Halliburton, in particular, even just seeing him attack the basket a little more in this closeout game, it's maybe three games too late, but a relief to see.

Yeah. I mean, McDonal was great. He got 41 from McDonal on top. And this is where the Giannis piece both, I think, matters Then it doesn't matter. Milwaukee couldn't guard anybody's point guard the whole season. No. Indiana was always a bad matchup for them and could just send these guards just constantly just flying by people getting in the paint, making stuff happen. I got to be honest. I think Indiana would have beaten Milwaukee with or without Yannis.

They did in the regular season, as you said, pretty soundly every time they played. I really do.

I thought that Milwaukee team was really suspect. I thought they were old. I thought they were unathletic. I don't think they ever figured out the wings at all. And somebody like Siakam was just feasting on every wing they had because they just weren't athletic enough. And then you could say, well, Dame was a little hurt. Look, man, when you're trading for super expensive superstars and they're past the age of 32, 33, 34, this is what fucking happens. It's not like bad luck that Dame got hurt. He's old. It's not bad luck that James Harden sucked last night. He's old. James Harden is going to play well once a week. This is what happens when guys get into their mid-30s, with the exception of LeBron James, who could play 44 minutes in altitude in Denver in game five, and he's in year 21. So we'll put him to the side.

But for the most part, older players are up and down.

This was one of the reasons I didn't like the Dame trade that much for what they gave up, because I'm like, maybe he's moving to a different point of his career. I think he is. Yeah, he looks awesome on certain nights. But when you think about Anthony Edwards, the stage of the career that he's at, age 22, I don't know what I'm getting from, maybe he'll go 6 for 17, 6 for 18, but I know what I'm getting from an athleticism, intensity, going up and down, durability. He's going to be in every game. And that's the difference when you're talking about guys in their mid 20s versus a guy Dame's Abe. So I feel like you can't use that as an excuse. That's what you traded for.

It doesn't feel like a coincidence that the guys who roaster the Bucks in this game are hyperactive T. J. Mcdonal, hyper athletic O. B. Toppen, everyone who is running full court, everyone who is attacking relentlessly. I think the fluke as far as the bad luck is Giannis. Him getting hurt is the part of it that is unpredictable and maybe somewhat rooted in how bad the Bucks were in the regular season and how hard he had to go all the time to try to correct it. They do have this thing where they are so old and they're so slow. And this is always like a talking point around the Steph Clay Warriors, too, where obviously one of the great shooting teams of all time because of those two guys. But if you look elsewhere, there really weren't a lot of great shooters on those teams otherwise. And the Bucks are the same way, but with athleticism with Yannis, where he's on the floor, they're dynamic, they're energetic. They have a lot of different ways they can play. You take him out, and it's three pretty old core players, all of whom, I will say, showed up in the series to the degrees that they could between Dame and Chris Middleton and Brook Lopez.

They did their best. But at that age, you're running a little bit too much risk on guys who could throw their back out with a sneeze. That's where your team is hanging at this point.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that about Giannis because, yeah, bad luck, you hurt his calf. But if you watch the Bucks all season, Everything he had to do for this team night after night and how hard he played. I called him a sociopath at one point during the season because he's just going all out. They're up there at 20 in fourth quarters, and he's flying around like it's game seven. The more of those miles you put on during the six months that don't matter, sometimes you can have bad luck. Doc finishes. My guy Doc, he finishes 19 and 23 on the Bucks. If you told me before the year, here's what's going to happen with the Bucks this season. Remember, the Bucks were one of the three favorites in the league.

Oh, yeah.

If there was a video of somebody saying, Here's what I think will happen. Griffin gets fired halfway through the season, even though they have the third best record in the East. Doc takes over, goes under 500. Giannis gets hurt right before the playoffs, doesn't play a playoff game, and they lose to the Pacer in round one. You'd been like, That's fucking crazy. What do we want to bet?

A hundred to one odds, 200 to one odds, 300 to one?

I think it's a weirder outcome than Phoenix. I think it's a much weirder outcome than Lakers or Warriors, because you could have actually predicted that because those teams are old. This is how Milwaukee season played out is the weirdest outcome we had this year, I think. Is there a weirder one for you?

No. They went down playing Danilo Gallanari, who's two years removed from being an NBA player. I know.

Yeah. Where was Blake Griffin? Was Blake Griffin like, I'm right here, guys. How is that not involved?

Just the most doc shit you can imagine. The number of players who get in these games over the Bucks young guys. As you're mapping their future, I think there's lots of things you could do as far as... They're a roster that just needed one more offseason replenishment to get to a functional rotation to begin with. They just had to carve out too much to make the Dame trade work, to make the roster work. They lost some guys to other teams. It just got away from them coming into this season, and I thought they might fix that along the way. They didn't. But they need a Payton Watson as much as anybody. They need a young guy that Doc will, and I understand the paradox of what I'm about to suggest.

Yeah, he's not going to do it.

Someone he can maybe maybe, possibly, hypothetically trust and at least work through some mistakes. That's what they do.

He'd rather trust Pat Beverly. It's like, I trust Pat Beverly who whipped a basketball at a fan today at the end of the game. Listen, I think they're in really bad shape. I feel the same way about the Lakers and the Warriors from the sense of, we do this with the talk cycle, and this is the ESPN shows. It's like, Can the Lakers turn around? What do the Lakers have to do? You can't think of it that way. You have to look at the best teams in the league, the youth of those teams, and how you measure your own team against the ceiling of the best teams. The best teams are Boston and Denver, and Minnesota, and Oklahoma City. Those are the teams that next year will be in just as good of a position as they are this year. And if you don't have a chance with the roster you have to swim in that pool, what do you do? If you're Milwaukee, it's going to be a real stretch for you to go jump from the kiddie pool to that pool What's your move? And if you don't have a move, maybe you blow it up because you already won the title.

That feels too hasty.

They have Yannis. I understand the skepticism, but if you are the Bucks, your hope is that it's Jason Tatum who pulls his calf and not Yannis. Your hope is that it's not Dame with the sour Achilles, but Drew holiday or Al Horford. You're looking across and saying, maybe the bad luck won't be ours next time. And maybe our roster will be marginally enough better that we can get through series like this one.

You're a year older, though.

You are.

Dane is a year older.

Lopes is a year older. Middleton is a year older, and Yannis is superhuman. But I don't really know what the fixes are for them. They don't have any pics. They're not going to have cap space. No. So now you're shopping stepping in the Jay Crowder aisle again. It's like, Oh, here's Kyle Lowry who wants to play for us. Hey, good news. Tobias Harris will take the mid-level, and that's who you're getting. I just don't see the fix for them. I think it's pretty grim. This could have been Dame's chance to carry them for a round, by the way. Yeah. They're like, We don't have you honest. Get on my back, guys. I'm Dame Lahrd, one of the best 75 players ever, and didn't do it.

I mean, put up 28 on a sore Achilles, struggling off Andrew Nemhardt at every opportunity.

I'm just saying he didn't do it. He didn't do it. I'm a results guy, Rob. I'm a results guy. He didn't do it. He had a chance. I was sitting there for him. Speaking of chances, we have Orlando, Cleveland tomorrow night. We have Dallas Clippers. Do you want to hear about my trip to Dallas Clippers?

Please.

Very excited. Game 5. Game 5 is always my favorite games of the series. I always feel like they're super intense. Was excited for the crowd. Wednesday night, 7:00. People were out having little early dinners popping in. People were drinking. Real energy in the stands. Unfortunately, that energy didn't translate to the Clippers. You guys talked about it on Ringer R. M. B. A. Show yesterday, but you could tell with Harden right away. He didn't want to be there. Paul George, they did some stuff to mess with him, but it wasn't the greatest game for him either. No. Dallas, who now I've seen a couple of times in person, That team's really locked in with each other. I really like the chemistry they have. Luka is a huge pain in the ass. He's talking to the refs after every play. He just doesn't shut up. He has to be for the refs, the single most annoying player in the week. If he doesn't score, he's chirping. If there's a stoppage on fouls, he's walking over and yelling at whoever. He's just like this, but he's really intense. I got to say, it's transferred to Kyrie. This version of Kyrie is the most fun Kyrie of all time.

Kyrie came out in that game, and he's like, I'm stopping James Harden tonight, and really went at him. I don't think they like each other. Went at him, went at him, and at him, he didn't really have a good offensive game, but his energy and his defense was really, really good. The interesting thing about that game, Rob, Dallas, I think, was three for 21 at one point from three, and they were still up 12. I was with my friend Rob Stone, and we're getting toward the half, and I was They're going to win by 30 because if any of their shots had got, this game's already over. They just didn't hit all their wide open threes. I don't know what this means for game 6, but my feeling is Dallas is better. The only way the Clippers are going to be able to stave this off is just another crazy Harding game with a crazy George game. I don't see another path for them, especially with the way Westbrook is playing. I don't really see anybody out. They might get Maybe they get a crazy Norm Powell game. I don't know. It's possible. But I think Dallas has figured them out, and I think they're better, and I think they're going to win game six.

What's your take?

Even the Clippers best stretches, there's been some incandescent three-point shooting. It's a variance series from their side of it. When the Clippers hit a ton of threes, they're in it. Otherwise, they really have to scrap and claw because the Mavericks will challenge guys like Russ in particular. And obviously, if Zoom's out there, if there's multiple non-shooters at the same time, there's so much room for Dallas to sag in and clog the paint. And most importantly, I just think sworn Paul George and Harden when they get inside. That defense is starting to feel pretty ferocious in terms of Derrick Jones on the point of attack with Paul George in particular. But you've got You got P. J. Washington swiping it. You got Gaffer and Lively. Lively, I mean, for a rookie, having this rim protection impact on a series is an incredible feat. I just think they have it together defensively and have more... They have more levers to pull. They have more options in terms of what they can do to adapt to a series than this version of the Clippers does.

They get some good rim runner stuff. They can score points even if they're not hitting threes, which I like.

During the regular season before the trade, they lost almost every game in which they did not hit a higher percentage of the threes than their opponents did. That's who they were for the first chunk of the season. Then Kyrie got healthy. They made those trades to improve the rotation. Other guys got back into the lineup, too, in all fairness. They've had injuries all year. Then after the deadline, they found this incredible rhythm. It was defensively, of course, that's where the greatest improvement was by the numbers. But also their offensive stability just feels so much more reliable now.

I'm not apologizing for anything I ever said about Kyrie. I really like watching Kyrie, and I'm glad he's reached whatever point in life that is in because he's so much fucking fun to watch in person play basketball. There's nobody like that, dude. When he He gets the ball, he's the only guy in the league. If he gets the ball on a fast break transition, but there's two guys back, and you can see him size it up and it'd be like, I'm scoring anyway. It just goes in and does his weird Kyrie fucking magician shit. He's really plays. I really think he has something special with Luka. I would not want to see those guys if I'm okay, see. If I'm okay, see, I'm rooting for the Clippers because they'll beat the Clippers. They'll outwork them. They're The Clippers will have these ebbs and flows. Okc is the same every game, basically. They'll have the one game in the series where they don't miss threes. But I guarantee they're rooting for the Clippers to come back. And I don't think they're going to come back.

I don't think so either. Ultimately, the Clippers are more predictable. And that's a weird thing to say when obviously the Mavs funnel so much offense through Luka and through Kyrie secondarily. But zoomed out, that's predictable. Luka is going to have the ball. But you zoom all the way in, Luka has the ball. What move is he going to make? What steps What up is he going to sell you with? What fake is he going to throw off your entire defense? And Kyrie has the same thing. He's so shifty, he's so clever, he's so creative. That's how he gets through all those crowds and finishes the way that he does to the point where, you're right, he didn't have an explosive game offensively, but the shots he hit were shots that no one else in the team can make. And that opportunism is so important for their general ecosystem, really.

And there's a swagger with them. One of those guys is always out there. So it feels like their offense never dips. I thought they were going to win last night. That was my big fan dual boost. I've hit nine fan dual boosts in a row. Oh, 10. There we go. Included the next one today. I really thought Dallas was going to win. I really thought they were better. I didn't think the Paul George Harden two games in a row thing could happen. That said, You can't roll out the Clippers just because they're too unpredictable. I think Dallas is going to win. I think they're better. But could the Clippers hit 25 threes? God only knows. Once a week, James Harden lived up to his name yesterday. You could see it immediately. The other thing that was weird, Westbrook has just lost not only his mojo, but almost it seems like his mind in these last three games. He's hitting the point, Rob, which is the worst point you can hit as a basketball player when he has the ball, when he's wide open in a home game and the crowd goes, No, I don't know.

You hear the no murmurs. They don't want him to do anything. It's like, man, I actually think he's unplayable now. If I were them, I would do I would try to pound the Mavericks inside with Zubats, try to get the big guys in foul trouble. I would never double Luca ever, would be my other advice. You double Luca, it's like you can't. Just let him get 40.

It's easier said than done, I feel like. But it's a similar philosophy to what the Knicks just had to navigate with Joel. It's like an injured player, and it's a question of how much you want to force them, in Luca's case, to exert that knee, where he's already feeling some stress with it. He's already pretty sensitive with it. Having an incredible series regardless of that. But do you want to just see him push it and push it and push it just to see what happens and not let all these other guys get off? The trade-off is it's so easy to talk yourself into the idea of we're going to live and die with Derrick Jones Jr. Threes and Maxi Kliba Threes. That's an understandable defensive game plan. But then Maxi Kliba is our greatest living shooter now, so maybe you need to adjust it.

I got to say, I think Luka seems fine. I know they're like, Hey, his knee's banged up. It's like, he was put... You talked about it on the show today. He was pushing the ball with real pace, and they really tried to, I think, push the pace partly because of Harden and partly just to change it up, but it worked. The other one we have tomorrow is Orlando, Cleveland, game 6. I call Cleveland three faces of Cleveland. There's three different faces. I don't know what face they're going to wear.

What are the three faces?

Well, there's the face where Jared Allen doesn't play and Moby goes to center. And I'm like, my stocks just skyrocketing because this is the position Evan Moby should play. And all of a and they look great. There's the no Garland, just it's Mitchell's team. Cavs, where it's like, Oh, this is like the Utah situation for him, and this looks like something. And then there's the other version where everybody's playing and nobody seems that happy. I think that's where we're getting tomorrow night of Jared Allen plays. I think Orlando is going to win tomorrow night.

I think Orlando is a really good home team.

This feels like one of these two has to go seven because of the rule. We have to have a seven-game series and run one.

Got to have it.

This would be my pick. What about you?

I would love it. It does feel like, temperamentally, the series where just home teams win every time. That's just how the balance of the series has swung for the most part. I agree with you that the face with Evan Mobile at the five is the most handsome of the Cavaliers' faces. That's the one I would love to see, personally. It's the one that... Look, I'm so invested. I'm so leveraged Evan Mobley's stock at this point that after he had an incredible game-saving close, I couldn't even gloat about it. I just had to wait for people to come crawling back to me and gloat in response. That's where I'm at with this experiment. Me, too. Anything we can do for me personally to let Evan Mobley shine, I'm in favor of. And honestly, it seems like in a lot of cases, and specifically in this matchup, they are better suited playing with a little more space, with a little more maneuverability. And from the sounds of some of the interview quotes that are coming out of the Cavaliers, I think Donovan Mitchell agrees with us.

Yeah. Well, so if he stays... By the way, Jared Allen will have real trade value if that's how they decide to go. Really good player.

Yeah.

Really good player and a good contract. Yes. And there's teams that need size. So maybe that's how this heads. I think Moby is a five. That's how I've justified my untenable stock position in him. It's like, when he's at the five, this is all going to pay off. Orlando has At home, they get stuff from their bench. They get scoring they don't normally get. It's not all on Palo's shoulders. But Palo has been... I mean, he was so good in game five, and I feel like he's one of the young guys that It's him and Ant are just in maxi in game five, maybe not tonight. But my hope would be not to put too many miles on Palo in game six, try to get the group effort, and then he's the one that's going to have to win game seven. It's going to have to be 40-point, 12-rebound, 9-assist type awesome game, I think, for them to win in Cleveland, because I don't trust any other scorer they have.

I trust Franz.

On the road in a game seven? He's not shooting. He's not. He's going to the basket.

Yes, that is true. But that's where I prefer him is going to the basket for the most part. I do think both of those guys have gotten better over the course of the series at toning down some of the more flustered decision making, possessions that are going nowhere without the space. Paulo is learning how to navigate it. And very common learning curve for young stars in his position. Everything, as far as his path through this series, has felt about right. Some early struggles, trying to run through the wall. And then over the course of it, you can see the gears turning, and you can see him trying to solve everything that's in front of him, whether it's a big lineup or a small one. He's a lot of tools at his disposal. And I think what's most exciting about the magic is he can do all this right now, and he's going to be able to do more when playing with, I would say, in particular, some guards who make his life easier. Right now, I love Jalen Sugs. It's not really what he does out there. He does a lot of other things, especially defensively, but they need some facilitation at some point.

And they may be able to get through this series without it, but that's next on the agenda.

Well, as Mike Lombardi would say, Sometimes you're one injury away, and Gary Harris got hurt, and that might have been one of the best things that happened in the magic because it opened some minutes for some other people. I was thinking, I don't I don't know why, but I feel like Orlando is going to win this series. It's not rational. I think they're going to win game six, and I don't believe in that. I could see that Cleveland team either winning by 20 or losing by two at home. But I was thinking, if it does end up being Orlando, Boston in round two, that's another stomach punch for the Philly fans. Faults versus Tatum. They're like, Really? Now Now we got to watch this. What if Fultz becomes one of the heroes in the last two games? Oh, wow. On top of everything else.

That'd be sensational. Look, I would love to see it.

Minnesota, Denver, do you have a pick?

Denver. I would say Denver 6.

I think Denver. I'm actually probably not betting the series.

You're scared off.

I want to watch a game If you were going to create a team in a lab to beat Denver, a realistic team, I think it would be Minnesota the way Edwards is playing. Because you'd think like, size to throw Jokage, size to throw at Murray.

Yeah, that's the big one.

Size and length. But it comes down to the late game stuff with them. How ready is Edwards? It's one of those things where it's like, You know what? Minnesota is going to win. I bet on Minnesota. And then you're in these last two minutes of games and there's Jokuj on one end just doing fucking Jokuj stuff. And then the other end, I have 22-year-old Anthony Edwards. And it's like, All right, we're not playing Phoenix anymore. We're playing the defending champs. And he got, what was I thinking? He's great. He's not ready for this. But then there's the flip side of this where maybe he is ready for this.

He's passed every test so far. Like the Suns, every game, I thought his decision making was pretty much on point.

Yeah. So There's a chance these are the two best teams. Yes. Because if Boston's not going to have Porzingis here for three, four weeks, I don't know. How would you rank Minnesota, Denver, Boston right now?

No Porzingis.

Are we just boxing OKC out of this conversation?

We don't have to.

Based on how they played in the playoffs, I think... See, this is the thing. Denver is almost better on paper than they are as far as their actual payoff performance right now. They They have not covered themselves in glory. They had incredible clutch moments. They had incredible stretches. I still think they're the best team overall, but they haven't quite played like it. I think Minnesota has played as well as anybody in the postseason has. So it just depends on how you want to weight those.

Or Minnesota got to play a team partly built around Bradley Beal and Yusuf Nerkich.

Also true.

And no bench guys at all.

It's a certain advantage for sure. But to be honest, Minnesota is going to have a bench advantage against a lot of these teams, Denver included. They just have more that they can plug into the lineup, and it's going to be a real test of how much Murray can stretch and how much Jokich's stamina, which is very impressive, can stretch in some of these games. They're going to have to play huge minutes because you can just imagine Reggie Jackson being thrown into the fire and what that looks like in some of these games.

The Chris Finch, Torin Patella thing, does that do anything for you for this series? It does a little bit. Do you know how hard that's going to be to coach with a fucking Torin Patella?

Yes. I mean, we've seen coaches struggle to get timeouts fully mobile. And imagine if he's either in some protected throne situation or if he's out there on crutsches. I don't know what all the permutations are.

You think he's going to be on the scooter? Like when they have the scooter with the... Oh, Rascal? Yeah.

You think of- It's kick Chris Fincher, Rascal.

Is he in a wheelchair? There was this rumor going around that he was actually going to be in a luxury box texting instructions that I don't believe. But it's just not ideal. You watch his coaches, and they're going up and down the sidelines, they're yelling at refs. It does feel like a slight disadvantage.

Well, especially the team we're talking about, which is one in which Anthony Edwards has been so impressive. But we are going to wring our hands a little bit in those clutch moments as far as what decisions he's going to be making on the floor and what chances he's going to be taking. Chris Finch is the counterbalance to that in some sense. He lets Ant play, but he also settles him down sometimes.

Well, the other thing with Ant, and this is the greatest thing about him, he really thinks he's the best player in the league, and he wants it so badly. This could be, he wants it too badly. Oh, yeah. He wanted a too badly series, and then he'll learn everything for next year. Or you watch Conley. I watched that. He was on the Barkley show yesterday. Yeah. Because he wanted to- For Teamate of the Year. Teamate of the Year. I know I heard the start of your show. Who did Verrier give the Teamate of the Year?

He gave it to Was.

Yeah, he gave it to Was. I thought that was bullshit.

I didn't even get a vote.

Yeah, that was ridiculous. But Conley has that thing. They ask him about Edwards, and he's just like, Yo, man.

He's like a young Michael Jordan and just goes on this.

He's like, You don't understand how good this guy is. He was doing those quotes. And as you know, I love quote, I love teammate on teammate quotes. It's my jam.

How did you feel about the ants checking cat at the podium quote, by the way?

I fucking loved it.

You got to stop fucking fouling situation.

I loved it. I love all this stuff. I think the team genuinely believes this guy is as great as everyone else in the league. And that's the feeling I get with Dallas, too. They really believe in Luca. They think he's the best player in the league. Denver knows Jokuj is the best player in the league. It's part of my fear with Boston is nobody in Boston is like, Tatum is the best player in the league. They're like, We are the best team in the league. It's not a specific player. All right, so you have Denver, one, Minnesota, two. You have OKC above or below, no Porzinger's, Boston.

I'll put them below. Out of respect for Boston's level of execution still, and the fact that at some point, OKC is going to run into either the size disadvantage is going to hurt them or the inexperienced disadvantage is going to hurt them. I do think they're at least worth noting, though. I think it's much closer than a top three and then OKC is off to the side. I think they're very much in that mix.

Okc I'd say Dallas, which feels like that can happen and probably will happen, is going to be an awesome series.

Like, awesome.

I can't wait. We might have to have the party and send out the eVite for the Jaden Williams breakout party because if they beat them, it's going to be because of what he does on both ends and how he defends him and Lou Dord on Luca and just them tag teaming him and trying to make him a little bit mortal. But I like that matchup for them. I actually think I would pick them in that series.

I think so, too.

Yeah.

And that's the where, obviously, Dallas has a lot of momentum with the way they finish the regular season. And some of these games are very inspiring in terms of their first round series. I don't really understand the okay skepticism in general. That's a good ass team that really just laid the smack down on the Pelicans in a lot of ways, tactically speaking. Left New Orleans without anything to do. And that's because of how versatile the Thunder can be.

It's a great point because the first game, they seemed really close, even without Zion. It was a nice up and down battle. And by game three, OKC had solved them. And SGA had solved all the perimeter guys in New Orleans. And yeah, I'm with you. I'm not ready to... I want to see them do it against a team with a really good player. The fact that they got to play New Orleans without Zion, I probably underestimated it because I thought New Orleans was a possible upset pick.

There's something, too, though, about the... You brought the best player in the league conversation, whether it's guys like Ant who believe that about themselves or Luka, who the team mates, and he believes that about himself. It's similar to something we were talking about on group chat, which is the face of the league conversation. To me, if you have to ask, you're probably not it. And Tateum is in that group. You're just not it. And I think what's impressive about guys like Luca, guys like Shay. Ant is a great example. When Ant was first emerging, you could sense a bit of tension between him and Towns as to what the identity and what the pecking order of the team was going to I don't really sense any of that anymore. And that's because you don't really have to ask with Ant. It's abundantly clear that he is that guy. And Luca is that guy, and Shay is that guy. And Tatum is a great leader and the best player on a great team, but he's not that guy.

Yeah.

Well, they lucked out because this poor Zingas injury happens during a year where the Eastern Conference is just completely decimated. You would have thought they were the LeBron Cavs mid-2010s team with all the injury luck they got. It's sitting there for Ant. As we head into the weekend, you beat Denver. That's the official arrival. For sure. They probably make the finals if they beat Denver, puts them in the finals. There's face of the League potential. And then we're going to Team USA in Paris in July. And there's a scenario here where he just starts checking off boxes and all of a sudden is the biggest star in the league. And I don't think anyone else in the playoffs can say that. I mean, SGA, if he runs the slate and wins the title, it's maybe a conversation, but he doesn't have the charisma that Ant has. I mean, nobody has the charisma.

It would be more of a collective thing. Like, oh, my God, the thunder are here even sooner than we thought. And of course, Shay would be a part of that. But I think it would be the credit and the praise would be a little bit more diverse.

Presti would be like, They've won the title, and he has 29 first. He'd be like the guy in Monopoly who's just paying people to roll the dice for him. He's like, Hey, if you make my pick, I'll give you a second rounder in 2029, and if you go get me a Diet Coke.

He's just taunting everybody.

So we We're going to have Denver. Yes. Minus 205 on Fanduel. I'm going to try to figure out some serious boost. It does feel like if I had gone to my head, I would do Denver, OKC. But I want to see if Dallas closes out the clippers in a certain way, it might make me rethink the OKC thing. I want to see Dallas come out and basically chop their heads off. Like, nothing left. There's no chance you guys are coming back. We are ruining you guys. We're going to make Paul George want to get the fuck out of here and go to the Easter conference and do one of those things. All right, Rob Mahony, thank you for staying up late with us. Live on youtube. Com/bilsimmons. You can hear this podcast on the Bill Simmons podcast. You can listen to Rob on The Ringer NBA show. And also, you can read you on theringer. Com. Any pieces coming?

Yeah, I just had one this week about the state of point guards in general.

That was awesome. We did good art for that, too. That was a really fun read.

Incredible work by the art team. And yeah, more features to come. We're in playoff mode right now, so there's some good stuff in the pipeline.

Great. Good to see you. Thanks for staying up.

Thanks, Bill.

All right, I'm in Seattle with Eddie and Jeff. We were supposed to do this in 2020. Covid intervened. We We did a pot on the phone. Wi-fi was bad all the way around. I wasn't totally happy with it. It was great to talk to you guys, but we're doing this correctly, throwing away the other podcast. We're just starting from scratch. But the same thing, 2020 that we have now, new album, some new energy. You guys go to Malbu to record this. Jeff was saying it was like the old days. You guys were trapped together and just had to come up with riffs and music. So what happened?

Well, I mean, Ed was making a record with Andrew, and mid-recording thought that we should be there and to experience what he was experiencing. And I mean, it was out of the blue. I remember, it was like middle of the summer. I was like, Montana, having a great time. You're like, what? I got to go to LA for a week. But anytime you get a call to record, it's like you got to do it. There was really no plan. There was no plan. We didn't know what we were headed into. I remember googling Andrew Watt going like, Who is this guy?

It's almost like a relationship you guys needed to just spruce it up. Just get somewhere new location of the band.

Just get a new location, new energy.

Well, it was a different way of recording with this guy, Andrew Watt. He'd always of come to visit the group on tour. We just knew him as this young musician cat. It seemed nice enough. Then he did some records with Osi, and then he did this record with Morris Racy, and then he was a friend of the Chili peppers. To be honest, I think the first time I ever really recorded on my own was, I guess, Into the Wild. That was a soundtrack, and I just played the instruments myself. Then the next was ukulele. Those things are very non-threatening to the group. But being down there and all of a sudden finding myself writing songs, and now I'm playing with Chad Smith, like actual other musicians.

I like Chad Smith, a sports fan.

Yeah, he's a good guy. I mean, he likes Detroit, but outside of that, he's a great guy. I like Detroit, too. Yeah, they're fine. Long as long as they're an underdog, I'll go. But I felt like this could get a little sensitive, and I don't need problems with me and the guys. That's the last thing I would ever want. I was like, Come check this out because It might be an acquired taste, but see if you like it. The results that we were getting and the speed at which we were recording the solo stuff, it felt like it could be a positive path that if the band was willing, they might want to jump on that train. Right from the first day, we were getting songs with power and songs that sounded great at loud volume, and we were all playing together. I mean, we were playing together in a room just about this big with a mix board and a drum kit, and you know. Keyboards over there. I mean, we were about as tight as we are now.

But literally bumping elbows with Stone and the kick drum like two feet in front of me.

It was fine. Well, what was 1990 when you came from San Diego to come after they were like, Hey, we like this guy's demo. Let's go. Then you guys just made a bunch of songs together, but it was pretty similar, right? You were probably in some crappy house in Seattle.

No, it was a basement about the same size.Not.

That different.Not.

That different, right.

Where was that, though? Belltown.

Second and Bell. How many-In the basement of an old art gallery called Gallery of-Potata Head.Potata Head. Then there was a... What was the name of the pool hall?

211.

Pool Hall 211. It was right out of Jackie Gleason. Yeah, the hustling. Yeah, it was right out of that.

You guys, you barely know each other. You get thrown in together and you have a couple of demos. They have some riffs. You probably wrote some stuff with your side, and then you just see if it works. Is it the longest date ever? What is it like? What do you remember? We're talking this is 34 years ago. What do you remember from that?

The interesting thing is that there was an interview recently that I read where you were talking about how Stone and I were talking to Dave Cruising a lot about the crew and this part should be faster or whatever, but how we weren't... I don't think we were communicating super well. I I think partly because...

I do remember.

Partly because we didn't know Ed, I think we were being probably extra sensitive to just letting him do his thing and not wanting to get in the way. But I mean, the story is that he came up for a week. We had this crazy week, four or five days of rehearsal, went in the studio for a whole day, recorded the six or seven tunes that we had, played a show.

I can't believe you played a show.

Played a show five days after we We were first together and then went and saw the Bulls and the Sonics at the Kingdom. The exhibition. On the seventh day with the guy from KSW. Then he got on a plane and left, and there was no- Went back in time for my Midnight Shit.

Then you went back.

I had work.

But there was no-How did you leave it?

Were you like, Hey, man, that was great?

Kind of.

I had a tape. If I didn't have the cassette tape from the day in the studio, I probably wouldn't have been Because after Andy died, you were probably wondering, Am I even going to be in a band again?

Yeah, man. I didn't know. I felt like my chance, our chance, was done. I was actively looking to go back to school. I went up to Bellingham and visited the art department thinking, I think maybe that's what I'm going to end up doing. Because I just quit my job a month before that and didn't have any money in the bank, didn't have a car, didn't have insurance, didn't have a safety net, really. So I was like, and It was only over the course of the summer, promoting the Mother Love Bone record with Stone, not really talking. I heard he was playing a little bit with Mike, and then Mike started saying, You should come over. I said, I don't know if I want to play with Stone anymore. Stone was probably thinking like, I don't know if I want to play with Jeff anymore. But Stone hit the ground running and wrote some songs. Then eventually, we went in with Matt Cameron and recorded those six or seven songs. That's the tape that Ed got that he wrote three songs to, sent back.

How aware of you were... I can't speak.

How aware of you I know the question.

Why still can't I speak? Did you know Andy?

Do you were aware of his music?

Andy, yeah, the band. To be honest, I'd come across Green River, Soundgarden, Mudhoney. I had a little group in San Diego that we got to open for them in a tiny club called The spirit. I think that was just because I made the flyers and passed them out. But Mother Labona, it It wasn't on my radar for whatever reason. I hadn't listened to it before. I was with Jack Irons because I had met him. He was playing drums with Joe Strummer, Earthquake Weather Tour. He was the only one who came to Soundcheck that day. I worked for free at these clubs, this one, and then had a real job, Midnight Shift. You'd work for free, but then you'd get to go to a Soundcheck, or you'd pump gear and then get to be around and see people. It wasn't a great club. However, it was either people on their way up or people on their way. It could be some schlocky band or MTV band, or it could be an okay MTV band like The Godfathers or something like that that had one hit, or it might be Ray Charles or Chuck Berry. Sound Chex, I lived for the Sound Chex.

A lot of times I'd have to leave before the real show anyways. But I was pretty excited for the Strummer Sound Check, but Jack was the only guy to show up. We just had a conversation and talked about chili peppers and the whole thing, and then we ended up Wasn't there a pickup basketball component to this? Yeah. Then I ended up practicing in a group that were more based in Los Angeles, so I'd go up on the weekends. Jack and I would play basketball on Fridays when I'd come up, and then I'd rehearse with the group, Friday, Saturday, and then drive back down to work. What was Eddie's game? It's an ugly shot, but it goes in.

He's athletic, competitive.

What NBA player is he?

I'm not competitive.

What, 1990, Eddie? Who's his comparison now?

Maybe Pat Bev.

Pat Bave? Like an agitator?

I don't know who that is.

He doesn't know.

That was why I picked that.

What was your game? You bastard.

Oh, man.

I don't know.

What's the question?

His basketball game. He's doing basketball doppelgangers.

Pat Connaughton, maybe.

Oh, a shooter.

Okay. Yeah, he can hit three. It's like nobody's business.

But Eddie was super shy when you were first hanging out with him, right? And then eventually, it came out.

Eventually what?

I don't know. Eventually, you-So you started playing basketball.

You glossomed out.

No, I got this one-handed shot because I used to practice after... I think we told this story on the last podcast.

Let's tell it again.podcast..

I used to carry this walkman, right?

Yeah.

After the midnight shift, I'd go to this little park up from my little apartment. I remember Mother's Milk being one of the main tapes I was listening to at the time, Chili Peppers, and always playing. I couldn't use my left hand because I'm holding the cassette deck, right? It's just all one hand, but I needed music. Everything needed music. Surfing, I wanted music. Everything, I wanted music. But anyways, the reason I told you that story, because then we ended up, probably three years from that time when I was doing that, three years I remember, I think we were in Cleveland. It was a ballroom, and we were opening for the Peppers. On the other end of the ballroom, there was this basketball hoop. We got a couple of balls and we were shooting, and the Chili peppers were sound checking the same songs that I had been listening to. Now it was... I mean, what a dream to go from holding on to with the headphones. Now it's them actually playing live. We're playing basketball, and I could use both hands.

See, this is why we're basically redoing the 2020 pot, because now we have this story of video. This is way better. There was a thing, one of the documentaries was about, I don't know, it was one of your early shows. I'm going to say it was maybe Vancouver when somebody's getting pulled out from the audience and Eddie got mad. Your stage presence was basically born and the other guys in band were like, Oh, what's going on here? And you just figured something out. Do you remember that?

Back in the day, Some places, you'd have security that didn't know what behavior to expect and what the protocol was for either a punk show or our shows were pretty active, and crowd surfing, and stage diving, and all these things. They might not have ever seen it before. They might not have. They're official reaction was to beat these people up, or that's not happening in our club or something like that. You'd have to... There was a little bit of lifeguarding. I don't feel like I was super angry or angry. It was more of protecting people.

We all had experiences as fans at those bigger punk rock shows where the promoter would hire the college football guys or whatever, and they would just beat the shit out of kids that got on stage or were coming over with barricade or whatever. And so we were...

With malice.

Yeah. To be in the position to have a little bit of say. I'm really proud of the way that you handled that and the way that we handled it as a band. I think we changed how that was handled. I think security is really different now than it was then.

When did you feel like you had channeled your energy in the right way as the lead of the band, as the performer?

I mean, we don't have to go a couple of years later when you're hanging off things.

It'll happen.

Are you going to be hanging off things this year?

Oh, that part of it? Well, I mean, that was later. That was probably '92, Rich.

I don't know. I'm hanging on your every word right now.

Because initially, you're playing for six months.

You're filling out the songs, you're filling out the audience, you're filling out what it's like to be on stage. But at some point, you guys became one of the best live bands that's ever been. When was the moment when that happened? Was it in the first couple of years? Was it later after you knew the material? Was there a moment where you're like, Oh, I remember it was this part of the tour when boom?

I think even at our most energetic and frenetic and... I wouldn't say that was our best performances as musicians. I think we were, in some ways, so shot out of a cannon and felt like... I mean, there was a bit of an evil caneval with all that climb and stuff, but I think you really wanted people to remember.

It's part of the era, too. It was. Some of those '90s concerts were a little crazy. Were you How many times were you actually worried for his safety and long term future? Oh, man.

I mean, there's pictures of me where he's up and I'm looking the other way. No. You would never watch. I think the thing that I was thinking about was, I'm not going to watch him die because that happened once before. There was a part of me that felt like I mean, I trusted him because I saw him do some fucking insane stuff, like iguanas. I mean, there's some Delmer fairgrounds.

I mean, there are some- Records were made It's not going to be broken.

No, it's like, shit that's never happened, that nobody's ever done. I mean, like really evil can evil stuff. But yeah, there was a part of me that was afraid.

We were talking about Jeff, about as you get older, in the old days, he would want to talk to the athletes, but now he wants to talk to the trainers and the doctors. With musicians as you get older, what injuries are you nursing these days? What shape is your body in?Me?Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you did a lot of live shows, a lot of running around, a lot of swinging, a lot of diving into crowds.

You know what it is? It's the picking an instrument and it's tendonitis.

Like tennis elbow stuff?

It's not from tennis.

Yeah. Is that what they...

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, but it's more painful than what I thought tennis elbow would sound.

They have that good stuff now. They have the norma tech and all these different things where you can put the stuff on there. You were saying you did the Germany stuff.

Yeah, I went to the Covay doctor. I don't have really any cartilage in my lateral side of my left, the jumping leg. I think 15 years ago, the doctor was like, Yeah, you need a knee replacement, but you're too young. You got to figure out how to... I immediately was reaching out to anybody that I knew. Wally, who worked for the Bulls, who was one of the first guys. And then he connected me with a guy in Indiana Because we were in Indianapolis when it was really bugging me. And they were all really high on that technology, the RegenoKind technology. So a few months later, I was getting ready to go to Germany to do it. They said, Hey, we're opening a clinic in Santa Monica in six months. Now it's like, Well, I'm just going to wait.

That sounds easy.

Yeah.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about that was because we're in this... You've never shown this place before. I don't Have you? This is your batting cage.

Yeah, we're in our warehouse. When we first got this place, our whole operation is under one roof. We practice next door and keep the gear, and then there's sell T-shirts out of that back warehouse, and we have offices upstairs for things like management, political activism, that thing. A couple of years into the building, we got this part of it.

This became the playground.

Seattle, I was always trying to figure out how to get a batting cage, either in the backyard or it's just too wet. Then Jeff, it was his shot at getting a skate ramp, so he built a skate ramp. Back in the corner. We built this. It started off just real like awhite concrete walls. It was all scrappy and pallets with some helmets and a few batting gloves and a few bats. But Johnny Ramone had left me about three pallets of lawyer legal boxes full of signed first-edition baseball books. He basically had a library.

I mean, who would have ever guessed that in a million years?

Well, if you knew Johnny, that was part of him.Baseball, Yankees.Yeah. Really, it was almost like the Ramones were a side project compared to his love for baseball.

Crazy 8 by 10 collection, too, right?

The third biggest collection of signed 8 by 10s, and this is going back to guys in the '20s and '30s. Yeah, amazing. The other two were foreign collectors, and they simply bought them. Johnny sent them to the guys. He had his baseball encyclopedia, and he had about one-third. So he had about over 5,000, 6,000. So he figured he had 330% of anybody who'd ever played. So he felt he was batting 350 or so, which would be a Hall of Fame number.

I don't understand how you do that in the early pre-Internet era.

Right? No, this was a Manila Yeah, this is like you're just cold.

Just living in a closed office. Writing letters to people, right?

My name is Johnny Ramone. I'm your biggest fan.

Self-addressed stamp envelope.

You're more of an eBay guy. He kept the...

You go on eBay, right?

Don't you get some stuff on eBay now?

A lot of this is gifts.

I think he's secretly on your bay.

He's named after me.

Eddie 75.

He's buying stuff.

But yeah, all those books. Then those three big binders, those are all cubs. He had mostly Yankees. His next biggest was cubs. That was his favorite National League team. Then after that, you had the 6000.

But Because you guys- It became the Johnny Ramone Memorial Batting cage and Library.

Everybody who works here, works in the warehouse or wherever they could come in at lunch, take a few swings, have a sandwich, and pick a book.

I didn't know what to expect when I came. I didn't know if Dennis Rodman was just be serving lattes here or how deep it went. But the connection you guys have with sports, I think- This is not a latte. What is this? It's a triple Espresso.

The connection you guys have with sports, though, is...

I would say you're the number one sports crossover band in all these different ways. Even dating back to when you wanted to be Muki Blaylock and legally couldn't pull it off. You almost named your band after a random starting point card from the early '90s. Then it just goes from there. Drama Shay.

Is that his real name?

Yeah, drama Shay, Playlock. Muki's your real name.

Yeah. I just don't know if the band... I don't know if it hits exactly the same as Muki Blaylock. I think it worked out. I think Pearl Jam was a better outcome. But you're here during... I wrote down a bunch of sports stuff, actually. This is why I had my iPad. Because we're taping this. It's the same day as Oklahoma City, game 2, which should be Seattle. You guys were here for basically the heyday of the Sonics. You did Star-Spangled Banner. What was that? Game 3, 96 Finals.

Bulls, yeah. Was that Bulls, Seattle? Yeah.

You did a poster with Sean Kemp. Even when you put the album out this year, you did the MOB and NHL, you did the tie-ins with You did the Sweet Lou song. You had the Rodman hang, which was... That could have been a spinoff of the Last Dance thing. Then you have present tense and last dance, which I think is the most viewed sports documentary of all time. You guys were the closer. And then keep going, 2016 World Series. But it's just like, sports always seems like it's around the band. And then on top of that, you guys have been together 33 years, which is like a version of the sports team in a way. The sports team, like what the Warriors have now, the team that actually stays together. I don't know. It's something that's there, but I never heard you really talk about it that much. Do you feel it?

I've just always... I mean, of course, you grow up and you have heroes. And growing up and we had WGN and the Chicago Cubs and Black and White TV. They just became part of your household because they were always on. And mostly day games. Home games are always day games. You had early heroes, but then as you grow up, you realize that sports... I think it's the drama. It's like seeing a play, but you don't know how it's going to end. That's where the art and the thrill, but also the focus, and I think it's the focus. I think it's when you get to, let's say, a game seven, or this could be this could be anything, maybe not golf. But the focus, it's the seeing a human being with that intense focus and a lot of weight, but then not letting that weight affect them and just go. Then that's where you figure out that's where the practice is or the practice being such a big part of or the mental stability because you've tried to go throughout. So don't panic. I think that's the stuff that you can use, that you get inspired by, and you can use it in the studio or in a live performance.

That's what's always appealed to me. First, there's the heroes. We have modern-day heroes in sport, but also they're probably our heroes because of what we've seen them do under pressure.

Attention to detail, then coming through in a manner's. It's a little similar to music.

Well, and I think Joe Madden was really good or talking to him about it at length, just about having just been through it, been through it, I guess, lineups compared to setlist. We used to have this conversation. He had color-coded on his thing like that. Then I had color-coded on my piece of paper. We were just talking about the... But you've thought it all the way through and visualize it to a certain extent. Then when the moment comes, you don't have to think about it. It's not a brand new equation.

Yeah. You hear that?

Yeah. For me, it was... I grew up in this little town and I had the same friends from when I was born until I was 18. There was a crew of about 10 or 15 of us that we grew up playing Sandlot, everything. We played hockey, football, whatever season it was, we were playing it. Then through junior high and high school, we played all those sports together and played Little League in Baybrooth. The one thing that I knew when I was 18 was that there was this, every once in a while, you'd tap into this thing with your group. I knew at an early age that the group was more powerful than the single person could ever be. There was something when it really happened, even if you weren't a part of the big shot or whatever, you were still part of the unit. I think when things rolled over into music for me, I wanted to feel that thing that I felt when I was a kid with my crew. I wanted to feel that power that was exponential. It wasn't five times. It was like 100 times because the five of you were doing this thing together.

To be honest, the first couple of days that we played in the basement together, I felt a hint of that. I felt like, whoa, there's something exponential happening here. And so once you How to taste that energy, it's a drug. It's not the crowd. I mean, the crowd amplifies it even more, but it's the tornado that you want When the winds are all moving the same direction, the power that comes out of that is like, it's just the greatest. It's still what I want to do. It's still when he calls and says, Let's get together, you're like, okay, we could... Let's go. We could hit on something.

It's interesting hearing you talk about that because the Warriors are at this point now. Clay Thompson is going to be a free agent. Steph and Clay and Draymond have been playing together basically since the early 2010s, they've been the same coach. They won four titles. They didn't make the playoffs this year. Teams getting old. You hit this point where it's like maybe Clay leaves, maybe he just signs with Orlando. But it really seems like those guys just want to stay together. I don't even know if it matters to them in the same way if they win another title. It seems like the nucleus of it is more important than the titles because they already have four. But you talk about that, it reminded me of that, where sometimes, all right, Clay goes to Orlando, maybe he makes the finals with these dudes that he just met five minutes ago. But is that going to be as special as playing his entire career in San Francisco and Oakland? There's no way, right?

You can't expect to To go to the finals every year.

That's a lot.

Yeah, there's 30 teams.

They had one of the craziest runs ever. I mean, organizations in a tough spot, and they re-signed Ramon.

Right. He's the modern Dennis Rodman.

You guys had- By the way, I just realized I know a couple of people who actually golf. Yeah. I'm going to Do you want to apologize to the golf community? Yeah, I don't want to.

We'll work that in. We'll edit that in.

I don't want to have little cleats.

We'll put a little graphic. Eddie apologizes in advance for his golf comments. How many times was the band actually close to maybe going this way? Because you had in the mid '90s, there was a moment. Maybe 2000, there was a moment. But was there ever really a moment where you felt like this is going sideways? Because there was a couple of times you took breaks. Eddie's looking at me like I'm crazy.

I mean, I think there were probably moments where all of us were ready to bail, like some misunderstanding or some lack of communication. There's probably some moments, but I don't know if... I think there's a semi-documented moment, like when we were making no code that I said I was ready to quit the band. That was probably lasting for two days. I felt that way. And then you're playing with everybody and you're...

Because bands, for the most part, aren't meant to stay together. I mean, it gets pretty rare when you go after 8, 9, 10 years, and then you see some of the bands that stay. It feels like they pass this invisible point where it's like, You know what? We're together, and this is just how it's going to go. I don't know whether it's six years, eight years, 10 years.

I tell you, though, we're not a band together because we're like, Well, okay.

Well, you know what I mean?

This is how it turned out. If you're okay with it, I'll It's not that way at all. It's between... Look, I think we have to give credit to the audience for showing up and supporting us, returning energy back to us.

Feeding off their energy, yeah.

Being a custodian of the music and for them and feeling a responsibility to that crowd. Then that's not something that just one of us takes on. That's something that we all take on. When we discuss set lists or a tour plan or whatever, it's all agreed upon. But this is a brotherhood. I don't know, outside of even our band lives, we've all been through a thing or two here and or whatever, maybe not all of us, but we've looked after each other. That brotherhood is strong. Again, I don't know if it would exist without an audience that gave us a reason to stay together that was bigger than us or anything that any one of us felt as an individual. It was or they forged or kept us tight in our relationships. But I really don't feel like there's ever been a We were able to maintain and manicure and protect the songs and the music and our future of playing music in those early years, and that was Probably that wasn't easy or it was taking a dare of, will that audience we were just speaking about, would they follow us? Because we thought the light was a bit too Bright.

Then the bright lights cast dark shadows. We just wanted to take it down a bit.

It feels like by the '97, '98 rage, you were good with what with the band because it was meteoric, right?

I remember you had some quote like, You were just playing guitar in your bedroom. You never expected any of this, right? Then overnight, all this shit happens.

Well, it sounds pretty whiny, but...

No, but it's true. Most people don't expect... If you love doing something and you're messing around with it, the great idea... It's not like you're a basketball player. I'm the number two player in my class in sixth grade, and I'm going to play in then get to the NBA.

I mean, two things. One, all of us have been playing music for 5 to 10 years before the overnight thing happened. True. The other thing on the other side of that is that because we... That first record, we had a plan. We wanted to play a lot of shows because we felt like we wanted to be a better band. And we did these things our own way, how we wanted the security to be the shows and how we made our shirts and the prices we charged and all these things. And because that first record was so huge, people left, like the record company and the people left us alone. They're like, Oh, they must know what they're doing. And so it gave us a little bit of a carte blanche to just follow whatever tributary that was the most powerful for us.

To say the word no.

Yeah.

But again, luckily, we were supported by an audience because otherwise, we would have had to go back to doing it the way we were being told or asked.

Jeff and I were talking before you got here about how it's 30 years since 94 and just all the stuff that happened that year. And if vitology came out maybe, I'm going to say, somewhere near the end of '94. It occurred that in April. You guys were on Time magazine that year. The grunge thing, it felt like commodified by '94, '95. In general, it was a weird time for music. Then it shook itself out over the course of the rest of the '90s. What do you guys remember just that whole mid '90s run, watching the music industry? It was almost like somebody shook a snow globe, and then it had to settle again. Does that make sense?

It was blurry.

Yeah.

It was blurry. I was sober and it was blurry.

Mtv's the biggest it's ever been. Rolling Stone is the... There are all these megas, pre-Internet. There's a million good bands. It was one of the most fertile times for great music I think we've ever had.

Well, I think us pulling back that time was the best thing that we could have done because it I think almost all of us spent the '80s trying to get on that bill for the band that was coming through town and just hustling, working your day job and bringing a tape to the promoter and putting up flyers and making T-shirts in your basement and whatever. Then when all of a sudden, everybody in the world, Neil Young is calling and Keith Richards is calling, and you're getting It's like...

You're heroes.

Well, and it's hard to say no. It took us a minute to figure out, no, the only way we're going to survive this is if we say no to... You say no to your heroes. You say, no, we're not going to go play those shows, even though it's like...

We didn't say no to those guys.

No, no.

But eventually. Well, also the second record, I think the second record, I think we got home on December 18th, and then we were going to play the New Year's Eve in New York with Keith Richards and the expensive winos. Then so from the 18th to the 29th, that would be your 10 days to write the second record because thenOh, God.

And you have a show.

After New Year's, you go into the studio or something.

That was it? Ten days?

You to write. Maybe you could write half the songs, but it was just whatever. We're not complaining now. That's how the old groups used to do it as well, the Kinks and the Who. They were constantly just record it. They would play shows while they were in the studio.

This album-So I don't mean to complain.

Don't be self-conscious about it. You didn't sound complaining.

I will always be because of that time. Yeah. Those were all the questions back in the day, and I'd say, Well, and this was true, but it was like, I don't feel like I changed, but I feel like everybody around me has changed.

Yeah.

That was the strange and isolating part of it all. I just We weren't really built for it. I wasn't.

Well, that was...

I'm a little younger than you guys, but that was that generation where you weren't supposed to want to be too successful. You were supposed to do stuff based on what was cool and what mattered to you versus selling out. Selling out was the biggest theme. I think we talked about in the last podcast about the movie Reality Bites, where the villain in that movie is just the guy who wants to make a TV show and make some money for everybody. It's like, Oh, look at this guy. He's trying to make money. What's he doing? This is this evil dude, this Ben Affleck's character. This is an evil guy. A lot of it was about hanging out and being authentic. Authenticity was so crucial to basically all the art back then. I don't know when that shifted, but it's a hard thing to explain now.

Well, I'm a huge fan of authenticity.

Well, now authenticity is used as this code word. It's like when documentaries, when people always say storytelling. It was about storytelling. It's like artists that always talk about authenticity. I'm just trying to be authentic to my brand and my fans. This album that you just put out, though.

That sounded like an oxymoron. Trying to be authentic to my brand.

Authentic to my brand. This album that you put out, it honestly feels like a '90s Pearl Jam album. I don't know if that was the intent. There's a different vibe to it. There's a start to finish feel to it. I thought some of the lyrics and some of the songs I thought were pretty poignant and things that I don't know if you would have necessarily said 30 years ago, which I thought was really interesting. If you're thinking, what's the conceit when you're going into an album, what was the conceit that you wanted from this album?

I don't know the term. You're The conceit.

The conceit. The conceit. If you were going to describe the album in one sentence.

That I was being conceited.

No, not conceited. The theme of the album, what are you trying to say?

Every album is trying to say something.

It's not just a collection of songs.

But I mean, this is more a question for you, but I never felt like we've ever gone into a record going like, Okay, we're going to make a record about this or that or whatever.

You have a couple of different riffs or songs that you like.

Or I think what you're saying is like, even having a focus or let's just... Maybe we should just... I'm thinking about this direction or I'm thinking about a bit more of a modern sound laced with some old or a lyrical focus or anything. I think you're... That's why when you come out of the other end of it, I think other groups can do that, or obviously, people write concept, conceded records, but they...

I'll never live down that one.

They have a They're able to... We've just never been able to do that. I guess what I was going to say is that that's what makes it even more exciting and thrilling. There was a mystery and a bit of magic that came out of simple musical problem solving and working together. Then all of a sudden it becomes this cohesive work that feels like a completed thing that had some aim and direction to it.

But that doesn't always happen. But really, it didn't. But that doesn't always happen.

I don't think it ever happens with us. I just don't.

Well, say, I think this album was more wistful than any album I can remember from you guys. I listened to it and it sounded like an album of guys who have been doing this for a while and who are a little older now and we're thinking about stuff in a different way. Was that the wrong takeaway? I guess every album has people differently.

Well, maybe if you're talking about authenticity or writing what you know. I'd be curious to see what somebody under 20 thinks about it or how they relate to it in juxtaposition to someone who has grown up with us or is a similar age and maybe can relate more or have a little more insight as maybe as neutral as some of the lyrics could be on an interpretive level, I think you would understand they might connect quicker if our age. But it's crazy because I always go back to Who by Numbers, which was the Who record, and there were some very autobiographical songs by Pete Townsend. However, How much I booze? How many friends have I really got, these kinds of... I was 15, and I totally related to all that stuff. They're really the songs directly I got transmitted from a guy in his mid-30s. When I got to my mid-30s, I understood them even more, but they were still anthems to me as a kid.

One of the songs, Waiting for Stevie, which is really good. You had the lyrics, You can be loved by everyone and still not feel that you were loved. Which I thought was really interesting. I don't know if you would have dropped that one in the mid '90s, right?

I don't know if I should drop it now. It just came out. I like it.

Then, I don't know, I just felt like start to finish, the album grabbed me. Does this mean the process now? You guys have to go to a weird location. Just lock yourself at a room.

I just think any time that the five of us can get into a room and focused and just be all hands on deck for 10 days, then there's a chance that some really good stuff is going to come out of it. It's the best thing.

Just give it to them. Just give them 10 days a year. Well, no, but it's him and three others.

But it's the real reason to keep the band together. We get to do that. Sometimes we get together and it doesn't... The It's not happening. It might be because maybe not everybody's on board or- Or on the same page. Whatever. But that was the great thing about this record was, I think the way that Andrew had it set up, it weren't TVs or wasn't very good self-service.

What are we doing for basketball?

I wasn't watching it. We had- cold turkey. We had one day off in the middle of it, and I watched the Gonzaga game in the NCAA. That was the only TV I looked at. But you don't need it. You don't need the basketball.

Yeah, I was busy.

I want to go through all 12 albums really quick. When I say the name of the album, what's the What's the first thing you think of? Ten, what do you think of?

I'm stumped already.

Come on, just do it.

Ten.

Even flow.

I'll come back to that one.

I got a better one. Rope swing. That's good.

Rope swing? Okay. Versus what's the first thing you think of?

Softball.

Softball? I'm terrible at this.

Should I just abandon this?

Vitology?

Accordion.

Accordion?

Accordion.

That we were making that record along a tour in different cities.

See, now Jeff's getting the game.

Now he's doing like, real memories.

Okay.

You're doing that record as you're on tour. And you have some regrets on it?

No, just no. I mean, maybe. I mean, we recorded a couple of songs in New Orleans, a couple of songs in Atlanta, a couple of songs in Seattle.

It's a hat-pass.

Is that a week? Yeah. Okay. No Code? Did we do-It is still there at the game.

No Code. We started to, and then, yeah. Okay. Did a couple of days. No Code?

Polaroids.

Polaroids. Okay.

Yield. The cover.

Yield?

Man, maybe one of my... Along with the new record, one of my favorite records that we made. Really? Yeah, it felt like the way Jack was playing with us. It felt like there was maybe like a... I don't know, like we came through some fire a little bit, maybe. I don't know. I felt really creative.

1998 was my favorite Pearl Jam year for this reason.

Well, first of all, I like when a band's been together for a few years. Then when you're in concert, you're going wherever, you actually have this library of songs. That's the point. You're together eight years, you're going to have 50, 60, 70 songs you can play in a concert. But you also have fans that they're not just like, chanting the lyrics to that, but this music means something to them. It's been with them. It's been in their lives for a while. Then you guys have all been playing together for a while, so you have a certain chemistry. I just feel like that year six, year, seven year seven, year eight is just a good time for really good bands. I think if you go through, that's easy around there. Eddie's looking at me like I'm crazy.

I think that's when the setlist problem started. What was the setlist problem? It's probably where it started to When you start to get a little wonky with the setlist?

Well, I don't know.

Well, I was just thinking that might have been the sweet spot where there's only 50, 60 songs and the puzzle is probably manageable. Yeah. As it It gets further down the road, there's 200 songs. Then the puzzle gets... It's a big puzzle of just a water of a lake. It's all blue.

How many nights did we play in Philadelphia to close the Spectrum? Was that three or four? Four. I think we did four shows. Are these chairs? Was there a day off? Yeah. The special chairs. Spectrum. It wasn't just the last concert. I think Chicago Stadium, where your last concert, concert, but this was the last event.I mean, it was wrecking after the This is it, yeah. But I think we played 110 different songs in the four nights, something like that. Seriously? I think there was only a few repeats over the whole... Maybe three songs were repeated somehow in those four days. I mean, it was... Remember those pens with the blue and green and yellow? Yeah, it was all color-coded.Well, it seems likeIt didn't take very long.

You guys use the internet eventually really well with the... How to build the build the internet eventually, really well with the... How to build the internet. Oh, they played that song. I can't believe they did that. I don't know. It's something that feels like it came maybe somewhere in the 2000s. Then now you have Instagram and a lot of the bands or whoever works for the band or whatever, they'll post whatever the setlist is for that thing that sounds like, Oh, man, they played that. It just feels like part of...

I don't know.

When a band has the library plus the performances, plus they're coming back to the city, it's like, Oh, they were in Boston, they did this.

It gets cool after a while. Our fans are really forgiving. We will occasionally, last minute, add a song we haven't played in five years, and we might not play it great. They're all in, which is... I remember us seeing that Grateful Dead. We went and saw three Grateful Dead shows in Las Vegas. Did we? Yeah.

I thought it was just one really long one.

But I remember the second show, The Crowd. It was a lot of us. I heard the crowd all weekend. I turned to this guy who... He was our trucking guy who had driven with me down from... I said, What's going on? What's going on? He goes, Oh, they're playing. He named some song. They haven't played this since 1972. I was like, whoa. It was like the loudest the crowd got was when they were playing a song they hadn't played in 20 years. I thought, that's something, that crowd. That's something.

That's when we decided we're going to stick around for at least 30 years. There are benefits that will be reaped.

Do you follow the Taylor Swift tour at all? Is your daughter into her?

Oh, yeah.

What did you think of the mechanics of that tour? How long it was? Some of the gimmicks she used with it? One of the interesting things was she was doing what we're talking about. She would play each concert, she would play some song, and they would know it was like, Oh, my God, she's going to play this, or she do a cover. It seemed like it built this strange momentum around what the song was going to be for each city.

Well, it illustrates what happens when she's an artist who's respectful of her audience. I know from my daughter that she's really incredible at planting these little... This is this hidden codes that they can pick up, and then all of a sudden, it activates all those people that are listening and has them involved in it. I think it's done in a very creative way. She changes it up, and there's talk about what she played that night and what she played. The other thing that she has working so well for her is she's incredibly prolific, so she's able to just She really is.

I don't fully understand it.

Putting out music and putting out music. My daughter's turned me onto this one B-side that I just think is incredible. It's just an incredible song. I think it was a B-side or something.

She did a 31-song album, even though she was also doing the tour every night. I think she wrote and came up with a lot of songs on the tour, which to say she's prolific is an understatement.

I think her producer choices, too. I think a couple of records ago, choosing to work with the Aaron Desner guy from the National and Boni Ver. Those songs, to me, are the most interesting songs because I think that palate I like. But I think she's I think she's not afraid to change and change in a way that maybe is anti-pop in some ways, which I have huge props for that.

Yeah, there's an ability to subtly reinvent yourself over and over again is a really hard thing to do. That's one of the biggest dilemmas an artist has as they get older, right? Usually, pop artists don't last more than 6, 7, 8 years. She's at 16.

I read a not great review in New York Times yesterday or the day before, and I was like, well, of course. She's at this...

Oh, the backlash is here?

Yeah, but she's in a place that maybe two or three other artists, music people have ever been in. I mean, it's nuts.

It's like her, Michael Jackson and the Beatles and Elvis.

Probably that's it. It makes sense that there's a backlash. I don't know how do you even level that off?

She's a really good person, and I also hear that she handles stress really well, so that'll come in handy.

Can you get her on stage? Can you get her on this thing? Just to yank her on for one of the concerts? You guys are going on tour soon.

I might be able to get Jason Calci on stage.

Yeah, go through the Kelsi, see if you can get her. What can your band learn from some of the younger artists and how they use all the stuff we have now? Anything?

I'm not going to.

You're done.

You're like, you are, you are. I'd rather just...

We're not going to see you doing Instagram shorts or none of that stuff?

I don't know. No? I don't think so. What would... Yeah, I don't.

I think you're good. I don't think you need it.

I'd rather... Yeah, there's... It wasn't like... It's almost like you were... How do you say? It's just not... I feel like a I have an animal, I have a human that's evolved in the whole... I didn't grow up with that stuff. I didn't grow up. I like- You just don't get it. Well, I don't think I want to. I don't think it would add more than it would take away.

What if you just did an Instagram post every day where you just reviewed a bottle of wine that you liked? That's it. Eddie's Wine.

And become an alcohol. Eddie's Wine Graham. See, there's more takeaways.

Well, what about when you're performing and you always have a bottle of wine? Tonight, I reviewed six bottles of wine for you. Maybe when you're performing, you're telling the audience what the wine was that night. I give this rating a 93. It was delicious. This great bouquet of the Spirola. I don't know. Think about it. Ask your daughter. Maybe your daughter could help out.

Yeah, it sounds like a slippery slope. It might be.

Yeah, you might be in a good spot. What have you guys learned doing interviews over the last 30 plus years? Because you went through phases where you just didn't do anything. Now you pick your spots. So what?

I mean, the The best part about doing just a handful of them after you've made a record, as I said, I think it helps you understand the record. You're talking about the record for the first time, and I think sometimes even in that process, you start talking about each other in ways that maybe you hadn't. I get excited about it because I feel like you learn something. You learn something about yourself and the band But you guys roomed together.

You didn't need to learn anything else about Eddie. Didn't you room together for two years?

Yeah. That was the book club room. Why?

Weren't you guys a giant band? Why didn't you guys have your own rooms? I don't understand that part.

We did as soon as... As soon as it was possible? It was 150 shows at first.

It was a year and a half straight of touring.

Just two double beds? Did one of you like the window more than the other? How did you.?

I think we got along pretty good.

I don't remember I remember running in to get the window of bed or whatever.

The verse is toward. He's like, I want my own room. I can't live with Jeff anymore.

He's putting on basketball at 2:00 in the morning.

No, we were pretty aligned. As Stone brought up the other day, him and Mike were pretty aligned as well.

Yeah.

I think we naturally split off into the... We were probably going to have some John Martin playing, or it's just a... Poured his head or something, and maybe some little drapey things over the lights and some incents, and it was like, you know. Then we'd read our books, and then you could hear those guys yucking it up next door really loud and laughing. That was fun, too.

We were just different.

How many people from those first two tours are still involved with you guys in some way?

Yeah.

Like 30%, 40%?

Oh, no, no more.

More? Yeah.

I mean, Smitty.

We've grown, so we've had a few extra people in the tour crew and the warehouse crew, but I'd say most everybody's been with us 20 years and then A big part from day one, still here.

Probably half of the first 10 people, probably half of those people are still with us.

Going speed round. Will you ever play the Super Bowl?

It's not at the top of my wishlist.

Any reason?

It's a lot of work.

Super Bowl? Yeah.

I mean, never say never.

Eddie seems a little more excited about it.

Oh, no. This is like... No. You thought that was exciting?

Yeah, I thought there was a hop in your step for a second.

No, there's not. No Super Bowl.

All right.

Where are you staying on the ticket industry? I feel bad for the players. The players, I mean, that's their whole... That's everything in this sport that's so incredible. Incredibly popular.

Then there's a 35-minute break, the biggest game of the year.

With all the... I think it's disrespectful to the players. That's my take on it.

Where do you stand on the ticket industry these days? It's been a rocky road the last 30 years. Where are we now?

With the ticket industry? Yeah. Well, you've got a big issue with what they call the second-hand market.

It's horrible.

It's still bad. That's where you're having a lot of the difficulties stem from there. It would be great to have some legislation to protect people from having that be the situation where you have to go through between the bot. What will you go through just to vet somebody trying to get a ticket and clean out the bot thing?

Yeah.

I think the day of an on-sale, I think there's tens and tens and thousands of artificial entities trying to acquire this.

Somehow that's not better. It just feels like I would have thought by 2024, we would have been able to clean up some piece of this.

It's battling out of control capitalism. It's just like everybody's trying to make money off of something all the time. I think we do as good of a job as anybody in terms of we have a really loyal fan club and people that run it that really care about it. We try really hard to get tickets in the hands of our fans.

Did you see the vinyl coming Did you ever imagine a million years vinyl would return? We're hopeful. It was more popular than CDs this year. Like, literally. About time. Sold more vinyl than CDs this year. Yeah. You see that coming? No. Any explanation?

Well, I think when the youth thinks it's cool, and I'm not sure exactly how that happened, but yeah.

It seems more decorative in some cases than anything. It's almost like they like having them put them on their desk or whatever, but not actually open them.

Well, maybe that's good that finally something physical had gone so far the other way, the pendulum. It was simply Spotify. There was no lyrics, there was no artwork, there was no... It was a thumbnail of what you would buy. To have it swing back where something tangible and vinyl does sound better. It's interactive. I'm really proud that when I look around and see the people, especially younger folks, appreciating vinyl, me and Jack White are thrilled.

It's a little like baseball cards where a lot of people threw out their vinyl not realizing the vinyl is making a comeback. It's like, Oh, shit. My mom threw those out three years ago.

I had a William Mays' rookie card.

You know what's amazing is I got an old ghetto blaster, and then just listening to tapes on it, like tapes that I had used, they were already used. Beat in. They just sound incredible.

Yeah, once your ear gets tuned into it, it's pretty great. Once you get used to the warmth and whatever, compared to digital.

You guys happy with Spotify these days? I don't. Okay.

Just had to ask.

They're on the ringer.

Our first record didn't come out on vinyl. Probably the months right before that. Is that true? Yeah. Ten did not come out on vinyl in the States. I remember we were getting copies of the record, and I didn't have a CD player yet. I remember listening to our first record on cassette. That was what I listened to. Oh, wow.

Jesus.

Have you followed a- Temple of the Dog came out on vinyl.

Yeah.

But Ten didn't because I think we were a small band, and so they didn't have to... I I think they were squeezing that out.

I feel like by that time, CDs had... Because set tapes and CDs felt like they'd taken over at the long run.

Have you followed the AI stuff at all, either of you?

Just where this is potentially going with artists?

Not really, but a little bit, I guess.

We're moving toward an era where somebody can just do an AI Pearl Jam song, and then you get, I guess you would get half the royalties or 80%. I don't know how the royalties work, but it feels like somewhere to sampling and hip hop in the in the late '80s, and I don't know how it plays out.

I had a conversation with a young artist the other day, and they were talking about using AI as a tool to write.

Yeah.

I'm just really excited about all this stuff. I listened for 15, 20 minutes, and then I said, Man, you're really missing out on the best part.

The points of music?

Well, no, just the best part of writing music. When you're writing music and it's coming out of Basically, it's osmosis. You're listening to music and you're thinking all the time about ways that you'd want to make music, and it just gets scramble up in there. And then when you sit down with your guitar and you start to play, it feels like magic. It feels like magic. I think if you sit down and you're like, I'm getting on my computers and I'm going to look and see what AI is going to come up with when I want to make a cross between a P. J. Harvey song and a nick Cave song, and see with that as a tool, I think you're missing out on that magical moment when you play something, you go like, Whoa, that's cool. Where did that come from? The wonder of that moment. I think, I don't know. So that was my argument back, was that I was like, Man, that could be maybe one little part of your thing, but don't lose the other part where you're just sitting down and... Creating something. Yeah, and opening yourself up to your your environment and your...

You agree with that?

Isn't there a power in listening to a new Springsteen song or a new Olivia Rodriguez in anybody's new song and know that that came from Olivia Rodriguez and what she's been through and Bruce and what he's been going through or what he's learned or he's singing about his... Growing up playing music with these young guys, and they were all kids, and now he's the last man standing. Isn't there... That's part of what you appreciate. It just seems it would feel rather strange-In authentic.to be listening to someone going, Yeah, I don't know. Did he write it? Did he not write it? Is that real? Did he... It doesn't... I think it's a real slippery slope. I don't know where the positives are. I think this whole... To sound totally antiquated, somebody still uses a typewriter. In fact, I've regressed into calligraphy. I'll I'm going to be fucking carving stones soon. Carving stones would be interesting. Which...

Hey, are you done with that lyric yet?

Well, I know.

And he carved three stones today.

You got to think a lot. Even with calligraphy, you edit a little bit more before you... You're not just scribbling. To think about where it could go with... And what are they doing? It's an algorithm that's supposed to know what you would say based on... What I've read is that it's moving very, very quickly and no one's stepping in to have some control over it.

I think you're right.

So that I would I think would be the problem. When they talk about how... What's the word? That word when the computers talk to each other. It says- Conceit? Not conceit. Not symmetry, not symbolism. It's that.

I know what you mean. I can't think of the word either. But yeah.

What happens if somebody...

I guess it hasn't happened yet, but at some point there's going to be an incredibly popular song that's just created out of a computer based on somebody's work. It'll be like that Whipp'Em, Gang'Em style type of song where it'll just be this catchy song that becomes a phenomenon and people will be like, Whoa, nobody made this.

Now what do we do? Then it'll be this other thing where people don't trust something else. It's like...

Then you're in a Millie Vanille situation.

It did remind... Did you ever hear the rumor back in 1980 that Tom Schultz from Boston fed all the greatest songs in the world into a computer and came up with the 10 songs on the first Boston record? Beethoven and the Beatles bills.

No, he was just a good songwriter.

That would be an amazing documentary if that was actually true.

He was way ahead of his time with computers.

He'd be the best.

Hey, if Seattle gets a basketball team back, which is going to happen as soon as they finish this media deal. Oh, yeah. Two years. It's happening. Yeah.

All right.

Why can't you guys be like minority investors? Can you get in on that?

It's too late.

No, you can sneak in there.

I mean, if Howard Schultz would have offered that to us-Oh, my God.

Can you imagine?

15 years ago, I would have been all in. I'm still so mad. I'm still so mad about that. I'm still mad at- I know.

It's like half of our conversation.

I'm mad at Howard Schultz, and I'm a little bit mad at David Stern.

You should be a lot mad at David Stern. We were talking about- I invested all my money in AI, so I'm not going to- We were talking about Kevin Durant, who has bounced around in different teams. He was in Oklahoma City, Seattle. They moved to Oklahoma City, goes Golden State, decides to leave. He goes to Brooklyn. Now, he goes to Phoenix. And it's like, if the Sonics just stay, He never leaves Seattle. His career is probably even greater than it's been. I think he's easily one of the 20 best players, but now he's the king of Seattle. He's like what Russell Wilson was for four years, but for 20. And It's just this amazing sliding doors moment. I actually feel bad for him because it seems like he's been searching for the right situation ever since.

He talks about Seattle a lot. He loves it. I feel like once a year, he's rocking the jersey and saying something about it.

When they get the team, I bet he finishes. I bet he comes back. I could see it happening. That'd be great. See, you're getting excited for this now. Courtside? Jeff's Courtside.

I don't know if I tell I just got Courtside tickets to the San Diego Clippers next winter. You heard about that, right? The LA Clippers, their farm team.

Oh, the G League team.

Yeah, they're going to Oceanside.

Oh, San Diego. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow, that's cool.

I like that. Good uniforms.

Yeah, it has to be.

We'll be free.

We'll be free, yeah. Unfortunately, Donald Sterling. Yeah, that was where Magic played his first game. He threw Kareem had this guy hook and won the game, and magic ran over and hugged him, and Kareem was like, What the hell is going on? Don't hug me. He was like, Don't touch me. Wow. All right, so you're going on tour, six months. Are you ready for this? Seven months?

Yeah, sure.

What wine is it? Is it a different wine each city? What's the wine plan?

It's usually a Barolo or nothing too fancy.

You don't go like, I'm in Philly, I'm going to Pinot Noir it up tonight?

No.

See, this is why we need the Instagram.

Right. You want the Yeah. So Barola's? Yeah, that would be a nice cab or whatever they got. It's really just I like the way it makes the throat feel. I used to worry about my throat all the time, and it used to go out all the time, the first couple of years.

Because you weren't taking care of it?

What was going on? No, because I was. No carbonase, no carbonated drinks, no beer, no alcohol, no smoke. I didn't want to be around to smoke. So you had to toughen your throat up? Well, I just had to get over it and have some fun. I was just constantly thinking about it. We were only playing 45 to 60 minutes shows. Then I remember watching, there's a little club called oddfellows up here, and Mud Honey was playing. There was this crowded room about this big, but just 60 people in a 25-capacity room and smoking and drinking and loud and cloud and Mark Arme being in there and then going out and singing his tail off and just screaming in perfect pitch. He was having a blast. I said, You know what? I'm going to try that.

The rest was history. How many six do you smoke a day, usually?

Oh, no, I quit a long time ago.

You quit a long time ago? All right. What are your bad vices? Anything?

My bad vices.

Oh, jeez, we're going to be here.Online gambling?One.

Of my bad vices, probably-Just for him to come up with one is going to take a while. Probably chocolate, probably. Probably sugar. Chocolate? But I don't have bad chocolate. I don't eat... But yeah, chocolate. I really don't hardly drink anymore. I eat pretty good.

He's ready for the tour.

Mostly, it's about feeling good. Mostly, it's just like, How do I wake up tomorrow and not feel like shit? I, whatever, what wherever I have to do to do that.

You don't agree with this?

No, I just I forget it until the morning. I remember that thing that Jeff said.

What does your daughter nag you about?

Nag me about? Yeah.

Dad, why do you do this?

Nothing.

Because I don't believe that because I have a daughter who's, I think, a year younger than you. Dad, you got to take care of yourself.

Dad, you got to do this. Oh, nag me about. No. No.

Nothing? They just let you fly.

No, I'm more of nagging them a bit.

What are you nagging them about?

If you're going to use the studio, you got to put everything back the way it was. I don't mind. I appreciate you're wanting to sing or play guitar, but you got to put the stuff back or... Support or clean up the art supplies. You can't just leave. I mean, if you imagine all these nice paint brushes. Well, paint brushes are expensive.

Or you're stolen, say, your stones that you carve into.

Just paint all of them, dry paint.

Oh, yeah. If they dull my... Yeah, that's how you communicate.

Do you really use a typewriter?

I always have.

Even now in 2024?

I can fix a typewriter. I can't fix a computer. Absolutely. I like the...

There's a West-Not even a word processor or an actual typewriter?

Typewriter.

You can change a ribbon that fast.

Yeah, you do. Then you have to I rewind it every... Probably twice a session if you're going at it.

Is it an expensive typewriter? No, well... Is it an old-school '80s typewriter?

My first type... Well, not my first typewriter, but one that I really liked. It came from a little Goodwill thing in West Seattle. That still has the masking. I think I probably use that for the first four records or record two, three, four, probably Live, but that has a piece of masking tape. It says $8. That was a good return on the investment.

I was so happy when word processor showed up because I was such a bad typer. I'm a two-finger typer. Even when I was writing my sports columns for 20 years, I was doing this. But I could type really fast. It was like people would watch me on an airplane or in Starbucks or something. They'd be like, How do you type so fast with two fingers? That's cool. I don't know.

Like a Mickey Spillane.

Yeah, I don't know. I never learned how to... Never took a class. I never took a class, so I always just figured out how to type. Then when I got the Black Bear, I was like, that was probably the peak of my productivity because I could just do this. But iPhone, I can't type on. Iphone is just beaten me. I'm just like...

My favorite typewriter now, it has a calligraphy font. It's called the Torpido. It's from East Germany. 62, I think. It's cool.

You use the torpedo from Eastern Germany?

Mostly every day.

It's amazing information. No idea.

I'll send you a picture. It's cool. I'll find one for you.

We're wrapping this up because you're going to show us all your baseball stuff.

Well, some of it.

I'm going to ask a lot of questions. I'm going to be super curious.

Hey, sorry, I failed. I thought I'd be good at that password thing.

Oh, we never We're finished.

We had six albums left.

All right, come on, go.

All right. I got to find it. Hold on.

I just read that.

Binoral.

Stereo.

Chad likes dog.

Riott Act?

Chess Pieces.

Studio X, I don't know.

Wow. Not a lot of memories of Riott Act, huh?

Oh, there's a lot.

Pearl Jam?

I guess that was the 2006 album. It was basically Pearl Jam. It had no title.

Adam Casper, but also I remember Ray Cameron playing drums and telling us what to play. He was like, Hey, play less. He was like, Eight? Or maybe younger.

Yeah, he'd sat behind his dad's drum kit.

He was telling us, Okay, you stopped playing. I remember he was like...

It was good. It was awesome.

Backspacer?

Oh, can I just share one? Yeah. We had this idea. We had song titles, album titles just written on Post-it notes, and we're sitting them on the back. It was a piece of foam in the back of the studio. Then one day, I think there was a... I don't know, the word avocado got put down. Then I started thinking about this very neutral color with a blue. We're going to do a test shot of an avocado. We had an idea.

That was Brad?

Brad was going to come down with his camera, and we painted a blue backdrop. Then on the way to the studio, I went in to get a couple of good avocados, right? Yeah. It looked perfect. What I didn't realize was Super Bowl Sunday. I think it was against the Steelers.Wow..

Bad Super Bowl.Yeah..

I get in, and I'm just going to just quit going to the store, race to the studio. There's just some The store is packed. It's just like you can't even... I can't even believe why there's so many people in the store. Then I realized. But anyways, I made it to the avocados, and I was like, Really inspecting. No, I was not going to be... I was auditioning avocados. I saw three people that recognized me, and they He was just staring at me just going, What the fuck is he doing? He's so meticulous about his avocada.

He's a big fan of the avocados and typewriters.

That's my thought on it, the avocada.

I remember George. Was George brought in the... Remember he put the Steeler's helmet on the TV right afterwards? I was about to kill him.

Well, I actually brought that helmet in.Oh.

You did?Yeah. Oh, my God.

I never told you.

Jesus.

Well, didn't he put the jersey on his dog or something?

I just remember. That was a painful one. There were some questionable calls in that second half of that Super Bowl.

Were they in Detroit?

That was borderline. That Super Bowl might have been rigged. Yeah. Yeah, it's a controversial one.

Lightning Bolt.Jerry.

Lopes.2013.jerry Lopes. What do you got, Jeff?

Listening to Sirens in Ed's room.

Oh, hotel room. Yeah. Right after he finished the vocal. It was just a demo.

The 220 album, that's got to be COVID. It's the thing you think of, Gigatan.

Oh, Gigatan. Made right over there, right next door, that whole record.

Then Dark Matter, you'll just think of Malibu, which is sunshine.

That's good. Shower a lot. It was just like white rooms.

It actually basically snowed while we were there. It was cold and rainy pretty much the whole time.

Southern California, so I don't know what's going on. Supposedly, I don't know if this is true, but I saw it on the internet, so it might be true. Supposedly, LA has had more rain in 2024 than Seattle so far.

Probably. It's dry. Yeah, dry here.

No, it was a great, great place to record, but I wouldn't say it was... It's not fancy. It's utilitarian, but with a lot of vibe.

Jeff and I were talking before about there's some songs in that album that are going to kick ass in concert. Sometimes you hear me and you're like, That's going to be a good On a scale of one to porch, as you know, my favorite concert, one to porch, there's some ones that are creeping toward porch. I don't know, there's no way that's intentional as you're making a song, but then sometimes they just translate. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

Well, I think what's cool about the record is you can listen to the rhythm section and the drums, and it was recorded quick enough to where he's playing on instinct and just free flowing in that. It's almost like a dog after you rinsed it off, just shaking. It's like just what he can do. It's like somebody at the peak of their power is playing their instrument. I mean, it's really shockingly incredible. We are living in a time of great, great drum. There's a lot of great drummers and great young drumers, but it's an exciting... Just his performance and the way they lock it together on this record, especially. I think that's a reason I'll always appreciate listening to this one. If you listen to Is it Got to Give? Is that the one I like the bass line so much. I mean, they're all good, but it's incredible.

You guys have had a couple of drummers.

But not. We haven't had a new drummer in 26 years, 27 years. She said it was just that early.

It's part of the early history.

Centrifical force of those early years. They just fly. Everyone's going to want to fly off.

All right, we're going to look at some baseball stuff. This was fun.

Thanks, Bill. Good hang. Yeah, finally.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rob Mahoney. Thanks to Eddie Vetter and Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam. Don't forget about Dark Matter. Thanks so much for letting me come to Seattle and hang out with you guys. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti as well. Don't forget to go to youtube. Com/bilsimmons if you want to watch anything you heard today, including the Pearl Jam interview that we did.

You can see what their warehouse and their studio looks like.

I'm going to be back on this feed on Sunday with Raseel. See you then.

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