Coming up, talking the NBA, Celtic sale, the Bear, soccer, Team USA. Lots going on next. We're also brought to by the Ringer Podcast Network. Put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did the Naked Gun. It was me and Kyle Brandt. You can watch that on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch a lot of the videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. We have an action-pack pod. I got a bunch of stuff to talk about with the NBA at the top, including where Lorri Marconin is going to go, the Celtic sale. I have some thoughts. Which teams are actually going to try to tank? I did not work in the Kyle Anderson going to the Warriors trade that happened after I taped everything, but I like that one. Man, if you could turn Clay Thompson's contract into the Anthony Milton and Kyle Anderson, I'm just doing that. I think that was pretty good for them. Anyway, after that, bringing in Rob Stone, my buddy. You saw him as the face of Fox Soccer hosting all those shows, and we had to talk about Team USA and what is going on as we're two years away from the World Cup after they crapped the bed in Copa America.

Then last but not least, Van Lathen, he wanted to come on and talk about the Lakers. We talked a little Axel F. We talked rap beefs. Talked a little bit of Biden, then a lot of the bear. I saved the bear part for the end, the bear season 3, because I really had some stuff I wanted to hit about season 3. Some of the backlash, an episode that really jumped out to me, and just some big picture thoughts on a show that I still feel like I will defend to the death. That is the podcast for today. First, our friends from ProJap. All right. I wanted to rip through some quick NBA stuff before we get to the rest of the podcast. Taping this 3:00 Pacific Time, Tuesday afternoon. So if anything crazy happens, don't blame me. I talked about on Sunday's podcast with Wilds, the concept of tiers and trying to figure out self-evaluation style where you are if you're one of the NBA teams, say, the Warriors, because I was saying how I thought the Warriors were the 19th team if they didn't get Paul George, which is where they landed. At that point, if you're closer to the bottom, then you're at the top, what do you do?

I blew out those tiers a little bit more. The contenders are the same. Boston, OKC, Denver, Minnesota, New York, Dallas. That next tier, I think, is three teams, the Party Crashers, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Cleveland, probably in that order, you could make cases for all of them. Philadelphia, a bunch of new guys thrown together. Injury history of Embiid and Paul George. Still not sure if Paul George as the third of a team is something that he's going to be super happy with. Milwaukee just has not gotten better this summer. I don't know what they were doing with their draft. Free Agency, they seem like they basically punted on except for DeLon Wright. It feels like there's still a trade coming with them. Cleveland was able to resign Donovan Mitchell, which I did not think was going to happen. I'll take the loss. I do think one thing that changed was he felt like New York was looming. That was where his head was at. He He grew up in Connecticut. I think he was thinking Knicks or Nets down the road, and everyone in the league felt that way. My job on this podcast is to pass on the things that I hear and make some educated guesses on stuff.

But what changed? The Knicks went in on Ananobi. They went on Mikael Bridges. They did not need Deneuve and Mitchell anymore. Jalen Brunson, I have him ranked as the sixth best player in the league. Mitchell didn't make sense for the Knicks anymore. And guess what? It didn't make sense for the Nets either because the Nets got their picks back and they're blowing it up. He didn't really have anywhere to go. So if you're Mitchell, do you take the max at Cleveland, ride it out with a team that was good enough to be a round two team that has a lot of talent? Do you hope Miami trades for you? But if Miami is trading for you, the stuff they're trading back now is just you and Bam out of bio. You're in a worse situation basketball-wise than you were before you did the extension. So he's better off in Cleveland. See what happens this year. See if Mobile gets better. See if Kenny Atkinson can improve stuff. And then evaluate in a year. But as you know with this stuff, just because you sign an extension doesn't mean you're there for life. Still a big win for Cleveland because that felt like this summer he was going to push to one of the New York teams.

It didn't happen. Next here, illusion of contention. Phoenix, Indiana, Orlando, the Pelicans, the Lakers, and Miami. If you're in that group, it's just not realistic that you're going to be in the top six unless something transformative happens. If you're Palo jumps up a level. If you're the Lakers, you somehow stumble into DeMard de Rosen by some miracle, and even that might not be enough. The next tier is Illusion of Hope. This is where you're a feel-good story or you have a feel good past, and maybe that's enough for this year. You have some assets you could throw together, but really, it's not about 2025. That's Memphis, Houston, Sacramento, Golden State, and the Clippers. Then there's a who are we tier, San Antonio, Toronto, Atlanta. I have no idea what those teams want to be this season, and I'm not sure they're positive what they are either. Then the last tier, which is the real reason I wanted to break this down, the tank teams. Who are going to be the tank teams in 2025? We know Brooklyn for sure. We know Washington. Detroit's too young to do anything but tank. Charlotte, probably Portland. Chicago, seems like it, especially if the Rosen leaves.

Then Utah, as the wild card. I bring up Utah because the most interesting remaining question for me, where does Laura Markinna go? Why are they so anxious to trade him? Because he's 27 years old. He only makes 18 million this year. He's a free agent next year. They have the cap space. They have a bunch of picks. He's somebody that you would think would be a building block on a possible title contender. And yet he's been super available. At some point, when there's enough smoke and you hear like, Oh, teams feel like they can get him or they'd be open to trading him, then I'm going to just start to believe that. Having had Danny Angel in the Celtics for a long time, he's probably looking at marketing going, Well, if this guy is the best guy in your team, you're 500 or under. If he's the second best guy in your team, and now I have to pay him 50 million a year, he's not as good as some of the other second best guys. Maybe what's the point of keeping them? They have all these pics. Maybe we just get more picks, and we just have more swings at trying to get Cooper Flag in 2025, AJ in 2026.

I think that's probably how he's thinking because he had it happen with Tatum and he had it happen with Jalen Brown. He knows the difference between having a lot of pics and actually getting somebody who's a transformative guy. That's the only reason I could think why they would trade him. Here's the question on marketing for me. The suiters are probably Golden State and Sacramento and San Antonio if they got crazy. But I would say from a necessity standpoint, Golden State and Sacramento are the two teams. Golden State needs them the most because this is probably their last chance to save the Stephair and actually maintain some level of competitiveness. Could they pull something off with their expirings? Could they pull something off with just picks and swaps? They can give up a slew of pics and a slew of swaps. I think they could trade three first and either three or four swaps and just go all in. That's how you salvage the end of the courier. I personally wouldn't do that because I think even if you get marketing, you're still pretty far away. But you leverage the curry piece and the guilt over, We don't want Curry to become 2014 to 2016.

Kobe, let's move in now. Marketing, he's a real dude, He averaged last two years 25 and 8. He's almost a 50, 40, 90 guy. I thought he was really good at the end of games. You can go to him last two minutes and he can produce. If they can somehow keep Kominga, get Markanin, have Steph, obviously, have Draymond, and figure out a way. It's a little complicated because they're an apron team, but could Wiggins be in the deal? Could Wiggins go to Toronto and they get Bruce Brown back for Wiggins to save some money, and then they send expirings to Utah and they get more stuff Then they just give all the pics and clean themselves out. It's not nothing. If they could figure out how to have Curry, Markanin, and Markenden and Draymond and Kamenga as their four, you can probably build around that in some way and talk yourself into contending. The reality is Curry is the sixth or seventh best player in the league, and it's tough to just kick that aside. The other move is you trade Draymond, you try to dump Wiggins. You really got this, and you try to use this as a gap here, but as Wilds and I discussed on Sunday, it's a tough one.

It's tough when you have a guy who has won you four titles and is one of the 12 best players of all time and wants to win. That's what makes me think they're probably the lorry team. The Kings could also get in pretty hard. Whether Keegan Murray is in that trade or not, I don't know. But again, marketing salary being so low, they basically just be Kevin Herder or Harrison Burns, and then just all their picks, as many picks and swaps as possible. If you're Utah, you want as many picks and swaps as possible because that appears to be their game plan. Then San Antonio would be the other one because they could offer Zack Collins or Devante Graham and a bunch of picks. They could end up, potentially, if they really wanted to go nuts, try to get De Rosen, too, and end up with Wemby, Markanin, Chris Paul, De Rosen, Castle, Devin Vasselle, Sohan, Ryan, Ty Jones, Trey Jones. Trey Jones. Trey Jones. Jeez, I'm old. Trey Jones and Keldon Johnson. But you could do a sign and trade with De Rosen. The Spurs could say, Fuck it. We have Wemby. There's no way we're going to be a bottom five team with Wembe anyway.

We have a bunch of pics from other teams. Let's just try to be good. They have so many pics that they could probably put together the best package for marketing. I like the combo him Wembe-Yama. I don't know. I would think about her if I was the Spurs. As you know, I'm on the record. I don't like being in the middle. But if you have Wembe-Yama and the history of having these transformative guys is it always happens much faster than you think. It happened with Luca, happened with LeBron. You're speeding up the timetable for when you're going to be relevant. Maybe it's time if they feel like they have all these excess pics, grab market and now you can pay them, maybe do a descending extension where it's the most money the first year and starts coming down. You got to think about it. Then that's really it. I can't really think of another team that makes sense for him. The only other thing was Dallas. There was talk about how they got better. They turned Derrick Jones, Tim Hardaway, and Josh Green into Najee Marshall, Clay Thompson, and Quentin Grimes. Whether they got better depends on how much you think Clay Thompson has left in the tank.

I know we talked about that on Sunday. Could he be 2013? Ray Allen. I thought defensively, he really slipped the last couple of years. It's unclear if he feels like he's ready to be 2013, Ray Allen, yet he's going to be standing in the corner a lot on this team. You think how many times the Warriors are trying to get him involved, coming off pics or coming off a little pin downs or popping up. Dallas has Kyrie and they have Luka, and they don't have a lot of room to run offense for anyone else. I know they had to do it. 50 million for three years makes sense, but I'm just not positive how huge of an upgrade it's going to be. Najee Marshall, who I actually really like, Derrick Jones, maybe that's sideways. I thought Josh Green gave them some athleticism in some of those playoff games last year. I'm just not sure Dallas got much better, maybe slightly better. All of it hinges on Clay, who is pretty old. I thought it was pretty erratic. As a basketball player, on and off the court the last couple of years, I thought he was clearly struggling with what his place in the NBA hierarchy was.

We'll see. You're betting on change of scenery, revenge Clay. I get all the reasons, and I'm actually rooting for it to work because I love Clay Thompson. But I absolutely 100% didn't think he made sense for the Lakers because his defense has slipped. How many times can we say this about the Lakers? They keep trying to offense. They keep trying to add points. Almost like they're putting together a fantasy team and forgetting. In 2020, the team that won the title, they had Caruso, they had KCP, Dwight Howard, Danny Green, Ron no. This wasn't a team that was put together like a fantasy team. That team could actually defend. If you're going out and your answer when you already have LeBron, who's 40, and Austin Reeves, and Rui, who has trouble against certain matchups, how is How is Klay Thompson going to help on that front? Is he going to be your lockdown guy? I don't understand what they're doing. As we talked about Sunday, it's the stuff you do when you're beholden to your superstar at all times. He's like, I like Klay Thompson. Let's get him on the team. I don't think he made sense for him.

De Rosen makes a little more sense, but even that doesn't solve the problem of how are you going to get stops. They never got stops against Denver for two straight years in the playoffs. Over and over and over Denver would come back and beat them in the fourth quarter. I'd be more worried about that. Last thing before we get to the rest of the pot is what's going on with the Boston Celtics. That's a two-tiered question. It's weird for a team that just won the title and then took care of Jason Tatum and Derek White, and you would think like, Man, Celtics looking great. The second apron stuff is alarming. If you just look for this season, they're paying 84 million for Brown and Tatum. Now with the white extension, which doesn't kick in for a year, but 79.4 million for Drew and KP and White, and then another 20.4 million for Horford, Pritchard, Cornet, and Sam Hauzer, and then another 10.5 million for guys who weren't even in the rotation. Their salary is heading toward 200 million if you add the extra slots. The tax will be 30 million. When you get into some of the penalty stuff, that's another 50 million.

This will be a $275 million team next year, which is expensive. Don't quote me on that number, but it'll be in that neighborhood. But then the next year is when it gets horrible. This is what a lot of my Celtics text have been about with the people I know who love the team. 2025, '26, Tatum and Brown, because the Tatum extension now kicks in. Tatum is at 54.1, Brown would be at 53.1. Those two guys, 107.2 million together. That's fine. A lot of teams are paying two guys a lot. But then Drew and KP and White are now at So you have five guys for $198.4. Then you have your next four guys who are on our contract, Prichard, the rookie, Shireman, Jordan Walsh, Kata. That's another 14.3. Every salary slot is between one and a half, two million bucks. From a tax standpoint, they're going to be between like 45 and 50 million. Then when you kick in repeat or tax and all these other penalties, It could be like a $250 million tax, assuming they don't trade Porzingas or Drew or White, combined with the payroll of the team, which makes it like a $450 million check for the 2026 Celtics.

Oh, my God. It might be higher than that. On the one hand, you got to do it because you're trying to win a title. On the other hand, I find it hard to believe they're going to bite the bullet like that two years in a row because this year they're going to do it because they have a chance to go back to back. Next year is the year. Horford is coming off, and even with that, that price is still that high. But I just find it hard to believe those five guys make it back together two years from now. This is the problem with the apron, and this is really my issue with the CBA, and I'm going to sound like I'm a bitchy Celtic fan, but you should be able to get rewarded for homegrown guys who turn into superstars. I feel that way. If it's Dallas with Luka, if it's Golden State with Curry, if it's the Celtics with Tatum and Brown, if it's Cleveland with Mowbley and Garland, every year you have a guy that you draft on your team, There should be some bonus for the team because what the league should actually want, if they really cared about this shit, which I'm not positive they do, because if they cared about the overall health of the league, the schedule wouldn't be 82 games.

We wouldn't be in this situation where it's roulette every summer with guys just jumping around and 15 teams that are unhappy and 20 superstars and stars that are unhappy. We would just try to fix some of this, and we're not trying to fix it. One of the things we should fix is the continuity piece and rewarding franchises for continuity, for drafting players correctly, for keeping nucleuses together should be what the league wants. What What the Celtics have should be the platonic idea of the team. What Phoenix has is the opposite. Just telling somebody, spend a ton of money, give away all your pics, and just every year, you're just grabbing people off the bargain out to try to put your team together. That's not what the league should be, and that's not what good basketball is. One of the reasons the Celtics were so good last year was because those guys had scars together. Tateum and Brown have been playing together seven years. I just think sometimes I wonder, because I do think Adam Silver cares about this stuff, whether he wants to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty on is another matter.

But I think ultimately the league should care about good basketball. Denver, who had to lose KCP this summer because they're afraid of the tax. No, they owned by Stan Crocky. He shouldn't have been afraid of the tax, but he should have kept KCP for three years, 66. Supposedly, they offered nearly as much as much as Orlando did and still lost them. But Denver, who drafted Murray, who drafted Jokić, and who drafted Porter, should get some benefit over the fact But they ran their team really well. Basically, what they've done with this whole system is they're so desperate to create parity and to not have that bottom half of teams that suck that they're penalized the teams that are I think this initially started with trying to penalize a situation like the Warriors, where the Warriors are just like, We'll spend whatever it takes. We don't care about payroll. We don't care about tax, we're just going to do whatever. I get it. You want to protect that. But I think you also want to protect continuity and ingenuity. This is what's been lost. You look at this Celtics thing, which all they did was make great draft picks and really smart trades, and they're still getting penalized by it.

You'd be like, Well, that's sour grapes. You're a Celtics fan. Of course, you're saying But it's the same for the Nuggets. It's too late now to fix it. I guess what bugs me is we're probably not going to see great runs again. What we saw with the Warriors and why it was emotional when Clay Thompson got bounced from Golden State because it was... People were like, It was the end of an era. That was the greatest backcourt ever. I was like, Yeah, it was also the end of something that's probably not going to exist anymore. What we have with Yokeh and Murray and what we have with Tatum and Brown, Those are going to be anomalies. That's not going to be where the league is actually. That's not going to be the foothold, the foundation of what the league is going forward. The foundation is going to be guys jumping around and Embiid every year having a different teammate. Jimmy Butler, Ben Simmons, James Harden, Tyrese Maxi, now it's Paul George. It's just like speed dating. I don't think anybody wants that. It's fun to talk about at the end of June. It's fun to talk about in July.

But ultimately, I think it was one of the we were all dissatisfied by the playoffs. The playoffs weren't good. They weren't. We didn't have a lot of good playoff games. We didn't have a lot of good playoff series. We had a lot of injuries. I think people were more unhappy than happy with it. I love basketball the most, and I wasn't happy with it. I was like, I'm ready for football. I'm ready to throw myself in. I'm ready for week one NFL. Football is more fun. It's a more smartly put together sport at this point than basketball is. If you're going to do something like what done with the Celtics, where instead of this being an eight or nine-year run, it's going to be a two or three-year run before it becomes financially impossible to keep the team together. That's fucking stupid. That leads to the other announcement we had, which is with Grossbeck selling his share of the team. The way this got reported initially was like the Celtics, their whole ownership group is for sale. It's actually just the Wick part and probably the stake that his dad had as well. When Wick Grossback bought the team in In 2003, he put together a group.

The biggest money person in that group was his dad, Irv Grossbeck, who was just a famous business guy. Then he had Jim Polata was in the group. Steve Pegg, Luca was a big shareholder in the group. He had some other people as well. Because the Grossbecks had the most money, Wick was the governor of the team. That means he is the steering wheel, he's in charge ultimately, he's the face of the team, he represents them in the owners meetings. I got the feeling not just from him, just from... Just little hints dropped here and there the last couple of years. But you hear this from the other teams, too. A lot of these guys are business dudes who fundamentally they're wired to make an investment. When you 10 times it or 15 times it or 20 times it, it's time to sell the investment no matter how attached you are to it. That's just how they're wired. I think once the valuation started to shoot up, especially with Ishmael, was the catalyst a year and a half ago when he paid for Sarva's share of the sons, what he paid, what the team was valued at.

That caught everyone's attention because they were like, This is nuts. If you go back to 2010, even the stuff I was writing for ESPN and eventually Grantland at the time during the lockout, there was real fear that the franchise values had cratered. You're talking about the Sixers, the Warriors, the Hornets, some of these teams, the Grizzlies. Some of these teams got stolen for less than 300 million. The Hornets, they basically gave it to Jordan. The Warriors was one of the best deals ever. I said that at the time. Everybody was worried that the prices of these teams were going to level off and maybe go down because they couldn't figure out the CBA with the players. They couldn't figure out where the next media money stuff was coming from. Well, now that's obviously flipped. Now Now we're hitting the second point that reminds me a little 2010, where I think that some of the people that own these teams are going, not only is the team never going to be more valuable than this, the amount of people eligible to buy my team is dwindling by the day. I talked to somebody in the rich guy circles this week, and I was like, How many people have the ability to just cut a check for a team at this point?

If the check's 4 billion, 5 billion, even if it's 40, 50%, you're still cutting a check for 2 billion, 2.5 billion. I was like, How many people are out there that could just do that? The guy said, Not many, and I know all of them. That's what you're dealing with. I think for Wick, he's looking at it. He's probably 22 pooled the value of his team. I think the Celtics are worth 5 billion. They don't own their own arena. But if the Suns are worth 4 billion, there's an extra billion Just for the Celtics, one of the most iconic franchises in any sport, beloved in Boston, sell out every year. It's a great team. If you take over this team, you're sitting courtside and you're going to be in the playoffs every year. There's real intrinsic value to this. That's at least 5 billion. Then you figure if two people are going at each other, maybe it gets to six. My guess would be somewhere between five, seven, and six is the value of this team. If you're buying the grossback shares, maybe That's a $2 million check to be the majority governor. I don't know what the exact numbers are.

He's probably looking at it like, It's never going to be better than this. I won my 18th title for the franchise, Wix second, but the 18th for the franchise. That tax, all the salary stuff I mentioned is coming. Tate and Brown, who knows? Is somebody going to have to break them up two, three years from now? He doesn't want that on him. He's leaving, and he's just remembered as this awesome owner. He probably looks at what happened with the Red Sox. John Henry brings the Red Sox, and Tom Warner brings the Red Sox a title. They win four World Series. And then now, nobody in Boston can stand John Henry because he's ruined the Red Sox over the last four or five years with some of the decisions they've made. So that's how fast they can flip. Bob Kraft, not as bad as the John Henry thing, but he went from Everybody loved the dude to over the course of one winter, thanks to the Apple Doc and how Belichick was treated. Now people are like, Kraft, a bummer. This guy couldn't have paid for a drink anywhere in Boston for 20 years. Now people are looking at him a little side-eye.

I'm sure Wix saw some of that, too. But the big thing for me, you could talk about, Oh, there's all these people that are coming in. It could be a casino. Casino could build downtown Boston. Some just super rich mystery person who's always wanted to own the Celtics. You could give me a bunch of scenarios, but I think the next owner of the team is already an owner of team. I think it's Steve Pagliuca, who was really the number two owner on this team the whole time and was somebody that you'd see him on the podium. He didn't have the steering wheel, and you always knew he wanted it. Then he ran for a political office in Massachusetts, spent a ton of money on his campaign, didn't get it. He went for the nets a few years ago and had it. He had the nets. I think there was... I forget what happened at the 11th hour, but something happened. He froze or he backed off for a split second, and Joe Seye stepped in and took it. He probably shouldn't have taken the nets because that's when you consider Barclays and all the other stuff in there, that was probably a good deal, way more than what he was going to pay.

I think he wants it. He also has a stake. Usually, when you have these ownership groups, if you're buying in, the other partners have the right to be like, Well, then it's called a put. Well, then you have to buy me out, too. That's what happened in Phoenix. That's why the ishpia thing. It's a bigger check than just writing the check for the majority guy. This is all easier in a hundred different ways if PAGS just takes it over. He had a statement later in the day yesterday saying how he couldn't wait to be a bidder for the team, be a proud member of the bidding process, whatever he said. I I think it's going to be Pags. I think he's ready for it. Whatever happens here with the ownership process, it's a really interesting one because these guys have worked side by side now for 21 years. The easy thing would be for Wikt to just sell his share to Pags and let him take over. But he's going to do this as a whole process to get the most amount of money he's going to get. I'd be shocked if Pags didn't get the team.

If he gets the team, that's good for Boston fans because what they've had with Wick Grossback in this whole ownership group the last 20 years has been... You can't ask for more. I wouldn't say it's an A plus, but it's been an A, especially how they were able to ride out that KG error. They got a title out of it, and then it peters out the rebuild and then immediately good again. They've spent money every time they've had to. When you think about some of the owners the Celtics have had in the past, Paul Gaston's, there was just an endless slew of guys that owned the team in the '70s and '80s. They were the drunk stepdads that would come in for a couple of years on the team. Red R back would try to hold them off, then we go to the next guy. They've been great owners. I was talking to my dad about it yesterday, and he was like, Man, my dad was really bummed out. He was like, Why now? We just won the title, the Tateum extension, the white extension. Why would they do this now? I think it's because this is the right time to sell and you get the process going, you see what's going to happen.

My guess is Wix is going be involved for at least a couple of years. But as we saw with Mark Cuban in Dallas, they say that, but the moment that team transfers hands, they start nudging the other dude out. You didn't see Cuban on the podium in the Western Conference Playoffs. This is a guy who's, Oh, no, I'm still in charge of basketball. He got just gently nudged to the side. That's what happens when you don't own the team anymore. That's why these guys are so scared to sell it sometimes, because once you sell it, it's never the same. You're not the You're not sitting there and you picked your seat on courtside. You're the first call from everybody. That's it. Whether you're the owner of a team, whether you're a Commissioner, whether you're Lord Michael's Running Saturday Live, whoever you are, once you give up that job, it's never the same. I don't think he took the decision lightly, but he did it. He was an awesome, awesome sports owner. We'll see how it goes. We're going to take a break and bring in Rob Stone to talk about Team USA soccer next. All right, I'm taping this on a Tuesday afternoon.

My buddy Rob Stone is here. You've seen him on Fox and on a FS1 He's always looking sad after the latest USA soccer debacle. 2009, 15 years ago, actually, we're in Mexico City. We're watching Team USA. Seven years earlier than that, USA had They had their best World Cup, made the quarterfinals. There was a lot of momentum. We had this young generation of players coming. There was just a lot of excitement. We were like, What's this next decade going to be like? Soccer is taking off. This is happening. Premier League is taking off. The Barcelona and Real Madrid was becoming a big thing in America. It just felt like this new generation of players was coming. That was going to be awesome. It was like, Hold on to your seats, baby. Buckle up. Here we go. Then it peaks in 2014, even though Tim Howard makes, what, 100 saves in the last World Cup loss. The last 10 years has been a steady drop, and now we're 15 years removed. The World Cup is here in two years, and I feel less optimistic than I did in 2009. So where do you stand?

Yeah, that's the problem. We should be ecstatic right now. We're two years out from hosting the World Cup. There should be two years of joy and happiness and excitement and optimism. I feel like we just keep getting punched in the head. Failing to qualify for the World Cup in 2018 in Russia was a huge hit. Our failures to qualify for the Olympics through those years was quietly something that submarined this program. I think we were softly blinded by the names of the clubs that our players were going to, but what were they really getting out of those trips to Europe? That's always the tricky part. Oh, wow, it's amazing that you're playing in country A, country B, but are you getting the minutes? Are you playing in a good system? Are you getting better? This team, Alexis Lawless had a little comment the other day about your generation was nowhere near to this generation. Then he was like, Well, I would take Tony Miola in goal over Matt Turner. I would take Marcelo Balboa in the center of the defense. I would take Eric Winalla Alda up top over these guys. I take Taboramos over these guys.

That generation was really good. And that should have been a base. That should have been the base of the pyramid. We should have been growing on it, and it hasn't happened. Billy, the quirky thing about international soccer is you're tied to these generations, right? Sometimes you get one great guy, but they're surrounded by a bad cast, but there's future talent down the pipeline. That's a problem, though. The pipeline just doesn't seem to be there. And Clint Dempsey last night went off on the lack of creativity, the lack of 1v1 skill. He's spot on. Where's our speed? At a minimum, years ago, we had speed like, get it to the dude down the wing and he's going to fly down. Who knows what the hell happens with it? He's going to get He's going to get by the defender. He's going to create chaos. He's going to create worry. Outside of Polisic, I don't know where you really point to as far as saying, oh, well, there we go. That guy is the answer. I think Flo Balgan, through the course of this Copa America, I feel good about him up top. Me too. But the rest of the guys, I'm just like, meh, about.

Weston McKinney, I was super high on a few years ago, and he lost that swagger, that charisma, that, Hey, I'm going to go up and I'm going to win this corner kick and head a ball in for a winner. Hey, I'm going to make this amazing 30-yard defensive run and win this tackle. Something is missing. I don't blame Greg Burhalter. Maybe I just blame this generation. I don't want to be like the guy mowing his lawn in the socks and sandals and like, Man, we were different back then. But there does seem to be this lack of grit. I do think at moments it appeared and it's that blue collar mentality Hey, guys, maybe you're not that good enough. But damn it, you better work hard enough to represent those colors. I think to some extent, we're too busy trying to play these perfect passes out of the back and do this and do these tactical things when rather like, dude, I want a bunch of Joe Max mores run around their slide tackle and their jerseys dirty in the third minute. And when the game is over, you're like, God, dang. Yeah, we beat the US, but it was a bitch to get past them.

We're not a bitch anymore, right? You know what I mean? We're not hard to play against compared to, I think, the old days. It would be nice if we got some of that attitude back.

Wow, that made me feel worse.

Sorry.

I I was thinking that Panama game was a good example where you're talking about, I think Panama finished with 18 fouls, but somehow goded us into the red card. You guys were 100 times more physical than us, and we were the ones that lost our cool.

Same last night. Same with Uruguay. Two yellow cards at the half, but I think they doubled us up on fouls. And the doubling up on fouls is really interesting. That was the theme throughout the course of the tournament when you add the totals of fouls committed to foul suffered. The US had half as many fouls committed as the opposition. So there's something to that. There's some of that bite, some of that grit, some of that nastiness, or at least maybe there's some of the be smart when you foul. These other teams are clearly being intelligent with their fouls because they're getting so many fouls.

They're getting away with it. They're like these boxers that just know in the ring all this little dirty, sneaky stuff to do. And we never have any idea what to do.

No, you're right.

It's the way a red card, which killed I actually don't think maybe even got enough attention because there's no way you should ever lose to paying them a million years. So we talk about Berhalter, and he's been coaching the team six years, and they're in a worse place now than they were six years ago. So at some point, you got to change the coach. Whether it's his fault or not, you need a new voice, need to do something. But you're going to that Panama game. I don't even care what the formation is. I don't even care what the pregame talk is, the strategy, anything. Really, the only job he has before they go out is, Hey, guys, these guys are going to do a bunch of dirty shit. Don't do anything dumb. Don't retaliate. Don't lose your cool. You're better than them. They're going to try to go doing this stuff for two hours. Don't fall for it. If that's the only thing he says when they go out on the field, he doesn't need to do anything else. I don't even care if it's 4-3-3. Pick any number formation. I don't care. But just make sure that message gets across within 18 minutes and falls apart.

I'm with you, but here's the point. Greg Berhalter, he made a point to bring that up in the postgame conference almost right away. Hey, we knew who this rep was. We knew how he officiates things. We know what Panama is. We told these guys, be careful because he will call these type of things. Don't fall into that type of trap. And again, sometimes it's like, you got to blame the player. And I know it's easy to fire the coach because you can't fire the player that old BS line. But at some point, it's like, hey, guys, you need to be better than that. And This is the way I will tell you, I needed to be better in that moment. It made no sense. We kept rewinding the tape like, What triggered this? What was going on? If it's just a shoulder bump, there's no reason to go to the head. Can we go big picture, though? Yeah.

You made a key point. You're talking about how good some of the players that we had in the '90s and the 2000s when we were like, Oh, wait till we get really good players, and maybe we underrated some of the we had. Now I feel like it's the reverse because I thought they played really well in the first 30 minutes yesterday against Uruguay. Balgan was a big part of it, and then he got hurt. But I thought just seeing the potential of him and him in the previous game, it's like, Well, we've never had that in a while. It's been a long time since we had that. They're playing really well, and yet didn't have a goal. I think they had one shot. You're watching it going, Man, I like how we're playing. Man, we look fast. Oh, we look good. But there's a lack of danger with this team that I think you just see over and over again. I keep thinking of that Euros game with England when England scores in the last second a couple of days ago, right? On that penalty kick.

That goal was amazing, right?

I mean, ultimately, that's not a goal anyone should score. You really have to pull it out of your ass and be crazy talented. And there's just a myriad of factors why somebody would be able to get that goal. Who's getting that goal on our team? And that's fundamentally the issue. And we see this with the NBA. It's a 30-team league. And ultimately, it's like, why did the Celtics win the title? Well, they had Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown, and they had a bunch of good role players. But ultimately, they had real talent when it matters. And I think, is it possible we're overrating some of these guys that we felt like were this good?

A hundred %. We have to be overrating them. And we, as an American sports society, get trapped in trying to find these stars and creating these stars. We push it upon the soccer players. Christian Polisic was not a willing acceptor of this star treatment. He's a reclusive type dude. He's starting to come out of his shell. When things weren't going well at Chelsea, he really shut down. We dumped it on Landon Donovan, and I love Landon, but he's not totally made for that. He did his best to accept that role. And it's probably because we're just so damn hungry and thirsty for a soccer savior. Where is our Deion Sanders? Where is our- Where's our Caitlin Clark? Where's our Caitlin in the car. It's something to rally around and get excited about. And we've been forced to rally around Christian Polisic, who I think is the tip of the spirit, who I think is the best player on the US team. I think you almost pull him out of the conversation and say, All right, it doesn't involve Christian. We need to talk about the other guys.

After that Bolivian- Wait, hold on on him for a second. If he's your best player, what are you? Because think about the other countries and who their best player is. It's like, yeah, it's almost like in basketball where It's like, Hey, the Orlando Magic, Sourouh is producing, so I can use this analogy. It's like, Aaron Gordon is our best player. It's like, Cool, you're a lottery team. But if he's your third best player, oh, cool. We have Aaron Gordon.

On a similar parallel, and I said this after the Bolivian game, Polisic with a goal and assist, He clearly was the man for the US in that game. And I said, It's a lot like the NBA. You can't just have one star. You need a Batman and a Robin, or you need two Batmans, and then you need other dudes. So who was going to step up next to Polisic? You could argue that Balgan did a great goal against Panama down the man.

The signs are there with him, at least.

I agree. And I was saying, just lean in. Let him start every game. Let him get these reps. Let him get these minutes. But the Tim Wey red card in game two shattered this tournament for the US. The Balgan injury having to be subbed off in the first half was a huge blow to the US. These things happen, oh, by the way, right? That's life in the big league. But really unfortunate If you're Greg Berhalter in his contract, really unfortunate timing that these things happened on the biggest stage for him prior to the World Cup. That's why this Copa America was so big, Bill, is because US was not going to have a more sterner set of tests in a short period of time than they were this summer. And if they weren't up to it this summer, they're not going to be up for it in two years. And that was the fear and the worry like, okay, we're going in the wrong direction. They had to get out of the group stage. They had to. That's a bare minimum. That's not a big That's not a big ask. Panama and Bolivia are in your group.

You got gifted in an easy group. Uruguay, arguably, maybe the best team in this tournament. But the other teams, you should take care of. And if this was a World Cup, you should have taken care of them and you should have gotten out of your group, and you didn't.

Well, it was even sadder than that because I had the two TVs going. Panama's up 1-0. You're rooting for Bolivia to score. It's like, Man, this is dark. It's like, Well, then USA is going to have to score a goal. And it's like, I don't think they can score a goal. They're showing no signs of anything. So then it's tied and it's like, oh, cool, maybe they get the draw. Then all of a sudden, Uruguay scores. Then we go back to the other game and now it's up. Panama is up. Okay, now the USA, they have to score two goals. And it's like, I don't think they're getting one goal. And there's 65 minutes in the game and you're locking out.

We had both games up as well. And I found it interesting that my eye kept wandering to the Bolivia game because I was saying to myself, At this juncture, what is needed, I have more faith in Bolivia somehow upsetting Panama than I do in the US getting a goal or getting the result against Uruguay.

Especially when Baligan went out. But it's not like they didn't have chances in the second half. To me, the typical Team USA play that we've been watching forever was Najee Ray in the middle with the ball. Two guys collapse on him. He shoots it anyway, gets deflected. Pepe is right there on the holding his hand up and then his body just sags. They show the replay and the announcers were like, Well, that would have been... He definitely could have spotted him, but that's tough to see. It's like the top 10 countries, nine of the countries probably see the guy on the right who's wide open.

It's DNA. I think it's just this soccer DNA that it takes a while to develop, and they clearly have it in Europe. They clearly have it in South America. I mean, these kids come out of the womb and they just know what to do. I know that sounds odd, but- They're inherently dangerous. It's there, man. They just have this mentality, whether it's the households they grew up in or playing with their brothers and cousins and dad. I don't know what it is, but it's different, and it's not there yet. I think America has it with the football and the baseball. We know what to do with the glove and the bat. We know how to run a free flipper. We know how to shoot the three-point. These are things that are inherent in the soccer because of whatever it is in this country, it's just not there. Yet. I think it is changing, and I thought I saw pivot. And the pivot was when guys like you and me became dads. And we were soccer fans and people who knew enough about the sport that we would share the gospel with our kids. And we have.

But the gospel is more, I think, buying the jerseys right now and going to games and being excited to watch copas and euros rather than elevating the game to a next level. We're getting past on the women's side as well.

Well, we'll see if that stays the case. But Because US women is in a little bit of a transition, too. But you just made the key point. I need a transition. This was one of the big picture because it's so easy to get lost in the small picture. Usa, they don't have the point guard. They don't have the guy who's setting up everybody. I don't think they're back three, four, however they're going to play. They don't have that absolute stud who just cleans everything up. You can see the big picture stuff they're missing. But big, big, big picture. They've lost this opportunity that I think was sitting here for 10 years as America got more sophisticated as a soccer country because of the Premier League. Think about the Euros this summer. People give a shit about it because of the gambling, the ability to gamble on basically any soccer event, no matter what it is, the Premier League, growing up with people like Messi and Ronaldo and watching the mage and then watching the next group come in. They're sitting there with this incredible chance. They don't make the World Cup in 2018. They're getting knocked out of this.

There's nothing going on right now in the summer, them making a run in Copa America, actually, it would have been a big deal. Nothing else is happening. This is a dead two weeks. And so they had this Saturday game that would have been a knockout game with no sports on, and they fucking whiff on it, and they're not even playing in it. But it's those little moments that I think are really hard to recover from.

They're not little. They're big moments. Our programming department right now is head and hands. Are you kidding me? What we could have done for you, the promotion and the marketing that we at Fox has done for this national team. The Summer of Stars, Christian Pulisic space is on this huge billboard when you pull in to the Fox lot. And that's the disappointing thing is it's an opportunity loss.

You don't get a whole lot of opportunities. And Balaga, nobody even knows who that dude is. This could have been his month to break out.

Another week to sell him, and then he could be a household name in this country. Instead, we're still left saying that Christian Pulisic guy, if they can even pronounce his last name. They're probably remembering the whole Reina debacle just because that was like TMZ, and that scratch is an itch that people want in the United States. Outside of that, I don't think there's a whole lot of names that they're triggered by or excited about. And you're right, now that they're out, they're like, Well, back to the euros, where it's done correctly, where the camera angles aren't off of a blimp. And all of these players are playing at next level, and the officials will actually shake your hand and not do play-ons while they're giving you a yellow card. I mean, just all of these really questionable, sketchy moments and opportunities lost. I think that's a big thing for the US. I'm not out. I'm not selling all my stock right now for the US. Two years still can become a long time. I wish I had more hope with that Olympic roster like, oh, great. Person A, B, and C is going to get some minutes in Paris.

They're the next stars. They wouldn't get minutes with the national team. They'll get minutes with the Olympic team, and then they break up. But there's no World Cup qualifying. There's no real pressure until two years from now, in June of 2026, That's when the World Cup starts. So that pressure has to be built internally of, how do you want to represent this country? What do you want to do on this, the biggest sporting stage our world has ever created?

Yeah, you're going to have the best crowds you've ever had. It will never be a bigger sporting event.

And by the way, you had home field advantage at Copa America. You had home field advantage. You weren't in Panama. You weren't even playing Mexico, where it would be like 70, 30 Mexico, USA, and that might be generous. You had home field advantage for three games, and you couldn't get it done. I found it interesting that US Soccer put out a statement. They're not ones to put out a whole lot of statements unless they're getting sued. They put out a statement last night saying, The results weren't good enough. There will be an extensive, exhaustive reflection on what transpired, which to me is just greasing the wheel to saying, There's going to be a change, and we're going to start reaching out to people right now.

There has to be a change. You have two years to do it, and this World Cup is the most important moment for US soccer in the century.

10,000%, not even close. It's 94, it's 99, everything that the women have accomplished. It coupled that together and then add a couple of Super Bowl's on top of it. It's going to be a frigging monster.

It's Colgate Basketball. It's Colgate Basketball. It's like Colgate basketball in the Patriot League.

Well, it's not like Colgate basketball gets fully crossed because that hasn't been much of a match these days. No, that's been great. But that's the way it goes.

Wait, so your prediction, I'm guessing they're going to have a new coach. Before we go, though, working backwards, how many unquestionable keepers are there on this team for you? You go Balgan and Pluisek. Who else? Is there three other guys that you're like, this guy will definitely be starting in '26?

I think McKinney, if he gets If he gets everything back correctly, whatever that is, I think he's got it. Reina, I'm not giving up on yet. I like Reina. Reneus Musa. I do, too, but it needs more. He disappeared. Tyler Adams is an absolute stud. He was the captain at the last World Cup. This guy is a leader, and he's going to get more and more healthy. He's been hampered by a hamstring injury. He's going to be a face and a voice that people are going to be hearing from.

But does it matter, though, when these guys aren't succeeding in the same way overseas? Because he's a good example of that.

Well, I think he was succeeding until the ham string injury took him down. I think he was a big commodity. I think he's a personality to rally around. Younis Moussa is an absolute force. I don't know why he wasn't playing as much this tournament. I had him as a no-brainer starter, and he only came on in the second half of game one, didn't play game two, particularly when you're down a man. So I find that questionable. But the management thing is interesting. I said this last night, And I don't know if we've done this enough in our American soccer culture, go big or go home. We've done it on the club level, but it's been going overseas and going big and get Beckham, go big and get Messi, go big and get Zlatan. But here in America, we need to go big for our country to be better. And I said, let's go. Let's dream. Let's go after Jürgen Klopp. Let's go after Pep Guardiola, because I'm going to tell you, coaching a host nation in a World Cup is something special. It's something unique, and it is an absolute hook. And I guarantee you, those two human beings, if those are choices that people want to go for, will sit down and will listen and will take a look at what the structure is and what the players are.

It's not a dismissive, I'm not even going to take a meeting. It's, Oh, really? Okay, let's chat. Let's talk about it. Let's look into it. I think those two names are as big as they get. Would make sense to at least start there and knock on the doors and do a meet and greet if it hasn't been done already.

What about Clint Dempsey, Liam Neeson, The Rock? What if we just go all tough guys and just try to change the tough guy culture? The Panama game, I just never... It's one thing to lose. It's another thing to just get the piss beat out of you and then be the team that lost. That was so embarrassing. Over and over again, it seems like that's the book on the US. It's just Beat them up, trip them from behind, do stuff, agitate them. It's going to work.

They were almost there versus Panama. We forget that. That goal came late. They were holding on. They were just X minutes away from getting that point. And the narrative would have been so different. What a gritty-gutty US performance. Down a man for three quarters of the game. They're able to salvage a point. They're in great position to move on. Instead, the whole narrative completely changes of, you didn't do it. Here we go again. What were the problems? Why did you do this? Why didn't you bring him in? And from there, it just softly snowballed. And last night, it was a shit show between the officiating, between that stupid camera angle.

Just The injury- Then you guys have to come on and talk about it after. That was awful. I feel like you and I have been in the same conversation. We have, unfortunately. We've known each other forever, but really for the last 15 years of like, Is this going to happen? It's not going to happen. This is worse than we thought.

When it does happen, you and I are going to have some fun.

We're going to be in bunk beds in a fucking nursing home. Hopefully, our kids will come visit.

That's the bottle down.

All right, Sonr, good to see you. Say hi to everyone at work. Say hi to pregnant Carly Lloyd for me.

I will. I will. See you, buddy.

All right, Van Lathen is here. We're going summer hodgepodge style. You tell me where you want to start. We can start at Lakers. We can start the bear. We can start Axel Foley. We can start Joe Biden. We can start rat beefs. We can start with the Hawk to you, girl, whatever you want.

Let's start with you, the clean, shaven Bill situation. Don't you feel like you should Let people know when you're going to do that?

Yeah, I just screwed up with the shaving a couple of times. Sometimes there's no going back. You take out a piece of the chin and you're like, Well, okay, got to shave Coming back for a second.

Let's start with the Lakers.

Okay.

I'm concerned.

I would hope so.

Yeah, but I'm more concerned in an existential way. I'm concerned that we are on the precipice of something, a return to the Lakers ineptitude persisting in a way. I think the LeBron AD era was more of a blip. It's like a momentary interruption in the Lakers struggles as a franchise and not an indication that they're trending in the right way and that they know what they're doing because everything now feels disastrous to me as a Lakers fan.

Yeah, we should mention you actually like the Lakers and care about them.

I do. I like the Lakers and I care about them. I'm watching something that I didn't expect to happen. I'm watching Guys Not Want to be Lakers. Since when was that a thing? Why did you smile? You're such a fucking scamp. I say Guys not want to be Lakers.

You brought up the Lakers. I let you- You light up like this Christmas.

I hope everybody is watching. Bill gets so much joy in this. It's underhand, it's devious, it's sinister.

Well, I think when You've had this many different teammates for the best two guys in the team over the last 4-5 years, and every time it doesn't work out, everyone else gets blamed. At some point, don't you notice that if you're playing for other teams? Like, Oh, if this doesn't work out, I'm the fall guy. All the guys they signed last year are all now available in trades. Dianjil Russell, Gabe Vincent, Rui, you can have any of them. Last year, they were like, Oh, we like this. We're building around these dudes. It just seems like they built this team. I talked about at the top about the Clay Thompson signing. It's exactly what they don't need. Klay Thompson is not what they need. They need defense. They need to be able to defend and get stops. Big picture, what you said, though, I think is the right take because you go back to Kobe tearing his Achilles and you look at the whole run of what happened with the Lakers, where basically they hit rock bottom. They made a bunch of draft picks. They had a really young team. You go back and look at the draft picks.

They took Brandon Ingram, too, which everybody agreed with, and they took Alonso Ball, too, in 2017. Those guys didn't really turn out into what we were hoping. But trade everything for Davis once LeBron decides to sign. Then it's just been this uneasy balance of how do you build around these two guys that make two max contracts. It's really hard to do. You need to be super smart as a franchise. You need to draft well. You need to have some luck with free agent signings. What you pointed out, I think, is the big fear. If you're not getting Clay Thompson, if you're not getting Derozen to take less to sign with you, you're just going to be shopping in that Christian Wood Bargain aisle. That's where you are. You're with Christian Wood and Jackson Hayes and Kam Redish. Yeah, Kam Redish. That's where you are.

Yeah. It's funny. You said you got two max guys. You can't build around it. Meanwhile, your Celtics must have the money that Jim and them robbed from Fenway in the town because they're paying everyone. They're going to sign pretty soon is going to come through the ticket that they've signed Pritchard for 40 million a year, seven years.

That's low. No, but this is what happens with the big teams. The warriors are paying out their noses forever when you have a chance to win a title with a core. I guess my question is, do you honestly in your heart think that the Lakers could actually compete for another title with LeBron at the age that he's in in Davis and then a bunch of different parts and JJ Redick as the coach and all the good teams that are in the West, and then the Celtics and Knicks and Giannis and Abid in the other conference. At what point do you just give up the ghost and say it's not happening? Maybe they know that it's not happening.

I don't. I don't think that they can. I think that the Lakers are, at this point, winning conversation piece championships. You stay relevant enough in LA and in sports media culture to keep the brand strong in hopes that in five or six years or some way after LeBron is gone, because he's a relevance piece now. He's still a great player, but building around LeBron James, I'm not sure wins you a championship now. You have never really been able to build around Anthony Davis to win a championship, and those guys still command not just so much money when we're talking about actual money towards the cap and stuff. But there's also a reputation salary cap. There's a cultural salary cap. Guys take up space in that way as well. Now, normally when you have players that can take up that much space, you get it back on the court. But one of the worst situations you can be in in any sport is to have a guy take up a lot of your cultural salary cap, your reputational salary cap, and he is not great on the basketball court, not one of the five best guys or one of the three best guys.

Don't get me wrong, AD had a fantastic season. He really did. He had a fantastic season. He played great. Maybe one of his best years. But when you don't have that guy and he still demands that type of gravitas, he still has that type of gravitas in the lead, it weighs everything down and it makes it hard for you to build around him and win.

I thought the Bronnie thing was actually smart for them. It's the thing you do when you know you're not going to win a title anymore. I thought it was smart for LeBron to say he would take less to get a free agent because the reality is those free agents probably weren't coming them. It looks like he's sacrificing, but who's he sacrificing for? Because he's not going to take less money to get Najee Marshall. He's thinking Derozen, he's thinking Clay, people like that. But ultimately this next season, and I think the next couple are going to be about the father-son angle, which is pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Whether Bronnie can play at this level or not, we don't have a lot of evidence yet that he's going to be able to. I would say we have very little, but it's going to be cool. I think it's the thing you need to do. It's like those last two Kobe years where it was like, Hey, man, we're not winning the title. This is the Kobe Farewell Tour. This is how it's going to play out. Kobe is going to take a bunch of shots and people get to come and they get to see him in the home games.

I don't know if LeBron is at that stage mentally, but I think you're going to lose enough games to realize that's the stage you're hitting. You're like, Yeah, you're an eight seed. Yeah, you're a nine seed. That's where you are.

Yeah. Those last couple of years, Kobe was really dragging it. Kobe, his body was banged up. He couldn't do it anymore, especially at the level that we were used to seeing him doing. You never were going to see... Kobe wasn't going to bounce around to a bunch of teams. Kobe wasn't going to come off the bench. You weren't going to ever see that era of Kobe Bryant's career. That was not going to happen. It's not going to happen for LeBron James either. The thing with LeBron is he's a lesser version of LeBron, but it's still so good that you're flirting with it. You're getting your hopes up. You're thinking, Well, maybe. But any other player that played that his game resembled LeBron's game He wouldn't be such a big deal, so you wouldn't have to think about him constantly like this. The thing with Bronnie is interesting because I watched this clip a couple of days ago, and it made me smile so big. It was a clip of a pop fly being hit to center in, I think, the Kingdom. Yeah. And King Griffy Senior is under it. He's got a beat on it.

I'm sure you've seen this clip before. Yeah. And out of nowhere, Junior flashes in front of him and grabs it, and then he laughs. And I'm thinking, oh, my God. If you're both guys in that situation, and if you're watching, how awesome is that, right? How fantastic is that to watch? Obviously, the difference is that King Murphy Jr. Was probably the best baseball prospect in the world and one of the greatest players of his generation. So there's a difference there. So you see stuff like that and it's part of the story of sports and you want to see it. But if I'm being all the way honest, just someone that comes from humble beginnings, there's something about the Bronnie thing that just bothers me. And I talked about it on higher learning. You guys can go listen to it there. But I'm not somebody who has selective views on nepotism based upon who it's favoring. Now, let me make a distinction real quick, and then we can get off this because I know it's a topic that makes everybody pissed off. It's one thing if I have a business, me handing that business to my children and training them is one thing.

Sure, that's nepotism, but that's also getting them ready to navigate their inheritance. When people say, Hey, the Jerry Jones gave the Cowboys to his kids. Well, they're going to get the Cowboys. The Bust family is going to get the Lakers. So you're essentially teaching them how to run the team that you already own. Is that nepotism? Sure. But they're going to get the team, right? It's his team. This is different. And it just is. This is somebody utilizing their power to get their kid drafted I get this to 55th's pick, but in a spot that somebody else might have gotten drafted, that somebody else is going to have a harder road. That's not to say that Bronnie is not going to be a good pro. That's not to say that Bronnie wouldn't have figured it out in college if he was at a different school and made it to the NBA. I saw some video of him not too long ago. He looks strong, athletic. The jumper looks good. He might end up being a decent pro. But what I'm saying, I'm sorry, but this was wrong. As far as the ideals and the values that I live by, I didn't like it.

That somehow makes me anticultural or I'm heading on LeBron. I'm happy for them and happy for him. He's been through a lot. His body is recovering through a lot. Who knows how his season at USC would have been had he not had the issue that he had. But if I'm taking a step back and keeping it real, that rich boy Shit, that's not the type of shit that I'm on. I've never been like, those are the guys that we used to be like, Coach's son that's starting in front of somebody. There's a cost to that. I'm not talking about, I've never fucked with that before, so why would I start fucking with it now just because it's LeBron's kid?

The only thing I didn't get is it seems like he should have played one more year in college and had a proper college year at a certain level of competition to try to do really well at that level before he moved to the NBA. I don't understand how you go from high school basketball in LA to not really playing that much for one year in college to all of a sudden you're basically on the Lakers, but not really. Everything I know about the NBA is there's never practice time. It's a long schedule. You don't have a lot of time to work with the younger guys in the roster, and the G League becomes more important. So if the case is he's going to play in the G League and that'll be his experience, I get it. But I think It just would have been better for him to go to a college for one more year and just try to be an awesome guy in college first and then go to the pros. We watched this happen with Brandon Boston, who played at Sarah Canyon with him, where he just all of a sudden was on the Clippers.

I thought he was talented, and they just let him go a couple of years later because he skipped a step that he shouldn't have skipped.

I will say this is the last thing I say. It's like, I am really rooting for him, though, seriously. I'm rooting for him for a lot of reasons. I'm never not rooted for him. He's been around and on people's brains since he was in the sixth or seventh grade, which how positive that is, how that must affect the kid. I'm sure that can be great for a kid's psyche. We're growing up in front of everyone and stuff. But I desperately want him to succeed now and like super duper hope that he succeeds because not only do I want him to validate where he was picked, but watching him, how emotionally he was when he was selected, everything he's been through. People say what they want to say about LeBron James. He's an insanely dedicated father and family man. I do want him to work out. I wanted to work out for him, but I've never been that type of... I've never been a fan of stepping over somebody who was scrapping for it because of who your pops is. I'm not going to start now.

Axel Foley?

Oh, my God.

We're taping this on a Tuesday. It comes out tomorrow on Netflix. I choose my life to... I choose to pretend that Beverly Hills Cop 3 never happened. For me, this is the actual sequel to Beverly Hills Cop 2 because Beverly Hills Cop 3, it's just out there, over there. It didn't exist. There's been some buzz that this movie is not bad. As a lifelong Eddie Murphy, one of the most important celebrities, athletes in my life growing up, I really want movie to be good or at least decent. I know I'm going to watch it, and I was bracing for it to be awful. But if it's a B minus, that's like such a win. That's a win. That makes up for Team USA choking against freaking Panama.

Yeah, it was terrible, right? I can't believe I can't believe Jomi got me to watch soccer just for them to fail.

Yeah. Well, that's welcome to Team USA.

It's like, Oh, you got to watch Team USA. You got to watch Team USA. And then I soccer. I don't have any problem watching soccer, but I don't watch it, right? But I watch it just for them to disappoint me? Yeah. That's ridiculously stupid. You know what I mean? Anyway.

Well, Beverly Hills' cop four will hopefully not disappoint us. At least it will have enough in there.

When does it drop?

Wednesday. I thought it was going to- Tagrid and Rosewood. I'm more excited to see Tagrid and Rosewood than anything.

I was surprised as hell that Tagrid was still alive. But Tagrid was old in the first one, in '84.

But I think he was one of those. It's like where Chris Ryan always talks about the '70s, '80s, the guys in those movies seemed super old. And Tagrid was 39, and Beverly Hills got blown. It seemed like he was 58. I think I'm the same age as Wilfred Brimley in the Firm right now.

Wilfred Brimley was super young for a long time.

Him and the Firm and me are the same age. You got to throw the '70s and '80s.

Right. Okay. Look, this is my thing about this. I wanted to ask you this. Have we ever been in this situation in movies before, or is this the first era to where there's a whole group of stars that are essentially playing the hits? Because I can't think of this.

Star karaoke era?

Yeah. You got Top Gun Maverick.

Who are Cruise through an Ethan Hunt and Maverick.

You got Ethan Hunt and Maverick. You got Will and a version of Martin Lawrence doing Bad Boys. You got Eddie Murphy. You got all of this stuff, even Ghostbusters.

Yeah.

I mean, he got the Ghostbusters crew back.

So I don't know what to- You got Draken Kendrick beefing.

Draken Kendrick beefing, we'll talk about that later.

It was 15 years ago.

Right. That's been going on for a while. But look, I don't know what to expect from the movie But honestly, I just want to see the movie and see some version of the Axel Foley that we got in Beverly Hills, cop one and 2. If he can at all make me believe that that's Axel Foley, the movie works.

Don't matter what else happens. Instead of Eddie Murphy.

Instead of Eddie Murphy. If I look at it, because, man, the original was on not too long ago, and that's like the Will Chamberlain 50-point season. He's in almost every scene. He didn't Almost every scene, he is ridiculously... Just the star is oozing off of him. It's one of those ones where you go, God, how could this guy is ridiculously born for the moment. If that's at all in there, I'm down with it. I will say that I thought I would be more excited for the movie, but if the movie goes off and if the credits roll and it was good, I think I'll be more relieved than anything else.

That's a good way to put it. That would be a good blurb from you on the poster. I just feel relieved. Van Lath in the Ringer.

I am super relieved. Van Lath in the Ringer.

Thumbs up. I just feel relieved. What happens with Biden? Just quickly. I know you talk about this in higher learning.

I don't know. It's a four-along fire in the party. I don't know what happens with him. Obviously, people that are listening to this probably know the fact of the matter is he's raised $230 million or something like that. That money can't be transferred. So if people are wondering what anchors Joe Biden to the race right now, it's the same thing that anchors everything in American politics. It's money. Now, I mean, we might be past the point some polls dropped today that show him El Strugglesville. So that might scare the piss out of people enough to make them change and move on from them. Because let's face it, we were texting during that debate performance. It took three Three minutes for us to know it wasn't his night. It wasn't. So now they're- Wasn't his night.

It's an understatement.

Yeah, now they're in trouble. But here's the thing, though. This is where hubris gets you. Hubris gets you to this point. Anyone with eyes saw that this was going to be a long race for President Biden months and months ago. If he was able to run on his record and effectively mess message it, it would be easy. Where we were, crime is coming down, the economy is strong, people are still paying too much at the gas pump and in the grocery store, but everything's trending in the right direction. He has the perfect case to say, Hey, four more years, and I can do an even better job. But he can't say it. And so because of that, it looks bad, and the party is eating itself right now. I'm glad I'm not a Democrat.

Well, the move would have been nine months ago to be like, You know what? I ride in the ship. Now it's time for me to help somebody else get elected and turn this over. And obviously, as you said, hubris. Yeah, hubris, man. Dangerous animal. And the other piece is the people around him, they're all getting something out of this, too. His wife is like, I love being the first lady. Let's run this back four more years. She's not going to be like, Joe, I'm worried about your legacy. She's It's like, No, no, no, no, listen to these people. You just had a bad night. You start talking to whatever reality you want to talk yourself into.

See, this is the part of it that I never understand. I think maybe I need to be more ambitious. I watch drug dealer movies. And when I watch drug dealer movies, I see these drug dealers and they're talking about... Because they always have the part of the movie in the middle of the movie where they weigh up and everything's going good. You know what I'm talking about? The montage and stuff like that.

Oh, yeah, the montage scene. I love the montage scene.

In blow.

They show the top us ladies, like counting the money with some Rolling Stones song. The whole nine. Yeah.

Right. In blow is a part where George is up like 60 million. Yeah. I always think, and maybe you can't, I don't know anything about it. I always think, Okay, you made 60 million. It's 81. Just stop.

Right. Close shop.

Right. You made 60 million. I guess George did try, but just stop. My thing is, if you were the President for four years, if you were the President of the United States of America for four years, you ride at the ship, you were the first lady for four years. You're good, bro. You came in. Your things were as bad as we can remember them, at least in our lifetime, right? And you did your thing, dog. Go play golf, cocoon, grumpy old men, all of these movies about older guys. They look happy to me. Go do your thing. What is Joe Biden going to do with four more years being President until he's 86? That's the thing that starts to bother me because that's the same thing, problem I had with Ruth Baira Gainsberg and the fact that she wouldn't retire when Obama asked her to. She died and it cost a seat on the Supreme Court. Anyway, all of that stuff. I'm just like, You are the President, man. It would take me... I could be President for three months.

Three. People always want to leave a year too late or two years too late, not a year too early. Then you leave and then you're like, Oh, man, I actually could have done that. I shouldn't have left. But he should have... I always thought in 2020, I always thought it was going to be, he was doing this for one term, ride the ship, pass the torch, keep it going. But you get that job. You just don't want to... All right, we're going to take a quick break, and then we got to talk rat beefs, and we really have to talk about the bear. Rap beefs. This is what I grew up with in the 1990s and 2024. It's just going and going and going. Kendrick feels like he's the biggest artist in the world other than Taylor Swift at this point. It just never ends. How much of this to you is internet, social media, and just the culture we have now that just feeds on this and loves it and loves the clips and pass this stuff along? And how much of it is the DNA of why we love this stuff?

Look, here's the thing. It's interesting. We talk about boxing a lot. In boxing, you need a foil to make you great. You need a foil like Ali. He had Listage at first, then he had Frazier, then he had Foreman.

Sugar Ray had Tommy Ernst.

Sugar Ray had Tommy Ernst. Sugar Ray had Riberto Durán, Haggler, the whole Four Kings era. I think that this was interesting in that Drake had achieved as much Commercial success as a rapper could achieve. Kendrick had basically achieved as much critical success as a rapper could achieve. Pulled Surprise, many Grammys, all of that stuff. They still needed each other to really decide who the number one rapper of their generation actually is. That's what was on the It's Kendrick Lamar. It just is.

Didn't we feel that way before the beef, though?

It was hard to assert it, though. If you're talking about what you care about, if you're talking about what you care about in music, you care about impact, you care about artistry, you care about all of those types of things. Then Kendrick Lamar was probably already the biggest artistic rapper of his generation. But Drake is just so unbelievably successful. He's so successful that it's like, It's almost like a LeBron type of career from Drake, right? Yeah. You could look at some of LeBron's work.

Just to point it to the all MBAs and the finals appearances.

All the finals appearances, all the points scored, all the rebounds, all it is, just the longevity and the sheer dominance of the stats makes you go, would you rather have the Michael Jordan career where the greatness is measured in all of these moments, you never really take a loss, and at your peak, you look unbeatable? Or would you rather be the guy that starts at 18 and basically scores 27 a game till you set a scoring record that nobody else will ever touch, which is greater. The only difference between Jordan and LeBron is they never got to play each other. They never got to play against each other and go head up. Well, this Jordan and LeBron did, and Michael Jordan went. Kendrick Lamar just showed a couple of things, a mastery, a cultural mastery, an understanding of Drake's weaknesses, an understanding of how to play a home game in a situation like this, because essentially not like us, that's a home game. That's making Drake and all of hip hop play on your home court. That's LA stuff for LA people, giving That's an LA bop. It makes us think '93, '94, '95, '96, the whole nine.

Then you cut them and make them a meme, something that Drake has done to himself and also done to other people, and he can't recover from it. He othered him in the same way Drake has already felt other. It was a master class. And now I think that Kendrick has done... Drake will be fine. Drake is a massively important and talented artist. He'll be fine. But I do think his career, it will be forever changed from what just happened.

What you just laid out, the basketball analogy was incorrect because it was actually Russell versus Chamberlain. Oh, my God. Because they got to play each other. What are you oh, my God-ing? Mount Rushmore, he won 11 titles in 13 years. He's the greatest defensive player ever. He's the greatest teammate ever. Over and over again, he would go against Wilt, who put up all these stats, who was this overpowering force, and he would just beat him year after year. By the time we got to the '69 Finals, he broke him completely. Wilt sat out the last four or five minutes of their last game against each other. He was like, had some injury that we didn't even know if it was a real injury.

I'm not saying that it's not a good analogy.

I'm just saying- That had to bring Boston into it. I get it.

The Celtic propaganda is I get that you're right high.

It's Russell Chamberlain is the two greatest centers of all time other than Kareem.

You don't think Shaq is better than Russell or Chamberlain?

No. You don't think Shaq- No. What are you talking about?

You don't think Shaq- No. If you're starting a basketball team- I don't have Shaq over Hakeem.

How about that?

Actually, that's a tough one. Let me ask you this then. If you have Hakeem Olajuwon or Shaquille O'Neill, and you have Bill Russell sitting right there, you would draft Bill Russell over Olajuwon.

You can't do it this way. Why? The way to evaluate players is when they were playing, who they were playing against, and how they stood out compared to the guys they're playing. That's the only fair way to do it.

Then that means you would take Bob Pettit over Bob Pettit was really good. That's LSU, baby. Dominated.

Bob Pettit is right there with Barkley and Malone. I had them all next to each other when I did my book. They were all three great power for us.

Can you imagine Bob Pettit watching I just come down the court?

Oh, my God. Bob Pettit had chest hair and back hair. Bob Pettit could play.

That's LSU. You know I'll never diss.

Hey, Bob Pettit beat Russell. Russell was injured. He had sprained ankle, but he beat him in the finals and had 50 points in the championship game, the whole thing. All right. This isn't the real reason you're on because I want to talk to you about a bunch of stuff, but we got to talk about the bear. This is the backlash season you knew it was coming. This always happens with television. You and Charles Holmes are breaking this down in the Prestige TV podcast, two episodes at a time. I think the general feeling that I'm getting in the backlash season 3, which, again, we could have predicted, is people are disappointed. People think it's a little too much the show smelling its own farts. It's not fun enough. It's lost some of the spirit, especially the first season that people really responded to with some of the dialog and some of the back and forth. It was just a little more personable and fun in season one, and now that's been drained out of it. I have my thoughts, but give me your big picture thoughts because I don't want to step on Prestige too much because you just finished it.

Yeah, big picture. I think those people that feel that way are more right than they are wrong. But the season in its totality, I actually just finished it today. The season in its totality ends in a way that makes you excited for the next season. That's essentially how you judge the last few episodes of a television season and a season period. They were able to build up to something that made you go, Oh, my God, now I want to see what happens. Now, if the show had gone off and you'd have been like, I don't really care about where these people are or what's going on with them, then I think some of the criticisms that I'm hearing right now would hit a little harder. But they were able to scrape together, pun intended, a pretty decent dish. I will say that one episode in this season is just so hard to watch and it's so bad to me. That's already up on Prestige. There's an episode called Ice Chips, which is Sugar Having Her Baby.

It's just terrible. The eighth episode.

It's terrible.

I didn't think it worked either.

No. But yeah, the thing is with the bear is it's the same thing that every show goes through. We weren't expecting it to be as good as it was in season one and season two. When we have expectations, we judge the show in a different way.

All right, here's my defense of the bear.

Oh, go for it. Oh, wow.

I thought season three was a little uneven because it was... I think he was filming season three, Chris Dore, season three and season four, simultaneously as one giant 20-episode season. I think season three is basically serves as a device to get to season four. You could argue it could have been eight episodes instead of 10. You could have trimmed some fat. You could argue you could just watch episode one, three, five, six, and 10, and probably get a gist for everything he wanted you to know happened in there. But there's two things working against this show that I think have to be I think it was on Slate, somebody wrote a piece about The Bear is a Bad Show. That was scathing. That was scathing, which, by the way, I completely disagreed with the take, but I'm glad that people are still writing criticism like that, that it's not just Charles Holmes on a mountain by himself, just throwing crazy takes out. This show isn't meant to be consumed in the way that I think people consume TV in 2024. I want to start with that. This is a show nobody should watch more than two episodes in a row of.

You should definitely not binge it. It's not meant to be binged. I don't know why Hulu/FX drops all of these at once. It's the night agent on Netflix because it's not that show. There's so much care and thought put into every episode. I think it really does the show a disservice. This isn't a show that you watch while you're on Hoopsyp, seeing if there's been a new signing or you're on or you're also looking at Instagram reels. These shows are like mini movies. Some of them work, some of them don't work as well. But the first episode, which whatever he tried to do in that, I thought it was just an incredible episode of television. But the real episode, and this is where I'll defend the bear to the death, whether they have uneven seasons or whatever, and he's pulled this off a couple of times. That six episode, Built Around Tina, and the flashback going backwards. I thought that was one of the best episodes of TV I've ever seen. Yeah. Like, ever. That's in the all-time pantheon for me with best pick episodes from The Wire, pick episodes from Sopranos. That's how good I thought that episode was.

If a show can do that, you got to give it more leeway than be like, Oh, backlash. Oh, it wasn't as good. That show was fucking incredible. Even if you just gave me one, six, and 10 from this season, it's a win. They brought in It got a little cameo friendly. I'm not sure we needed John Cina.

An abomination.

I think it got a little too flashback, flash forward, but that's the first thing I'll say. That episode 6, and for people who haven't heard it yet, I don't feel like... Well, most people who are listening at this point would have seen the bear, but Tina, it's a backstory of how she ended up working for these guys. She's basically hit rock bottom. She's lost her job after 15 years, and she's her mid-fourties, and she's seen, as she explains to Jon Bernthal's character who's dead, and they're talking about their lives, and they just connect in the restaurant. They had this 11-minute scene that's fucking incredible. She's talking about these young people that are basically replacing her, and they have a hope and a spirit to her that she's jealous of. She's like, I don't think that way anymore. I'm not hungry. I just want a job because I'm trying to feed my kids. I miss having that hunger like that. She's talking to Bertha. We know the whole backstory with him that he's going to kill himself. Then he goes into his whole thing about, he says, I knew I was getting skipped. That dream shit, it wasn't going to happen to me.

Basically, he always knew that his brother was more special than he was, and he's going through the day-to-day. But the thing that drives him, he has this thing about food. He talks about, if you think about the special moments in your life, you look back, food's always a part of it, and that's why I love being around food. They just connect in this way. I don't know of another show that does connections like that. That's why I'm going to always defend the bear. It might miss, and it might get to Smelling Your Own Fardy, but to have an episode like that, I thought was really special.

So Ayo directed that one?

I know. I should have mentioned that because that episode was impeccably directed.

Impeccably directed. You can tell that she has a feel for The thing that I really enjoyed about it is this. It's the story of one character in the show. For the most part of it, we don't see anybody else that we recognize. They come in at the end of it.

It's the classic TV trope of they have to do a season. Sometimes they have to have the episode where Karm's not really in it, and they build it around somebody else who's not around.

Right. But that show, that episode, still answers fundamental questions about the show itself, not just about Tina, not just about Mikey, not just about Richie, about the show itself. By taking us back into the restaurant, and we talked about this on the Prestige TV podcast, me and Charles. You guys should probably go listen to it. But by taking us back into that restaurant in times past, it answers questions about the restaurant. Because when the first time you see the place, you go, Why would anybody want to work You know what I mean? Who would want to work in this place? Seeing how she got there, you're then so happy for her. You're so happy for the fact that she landed with this group of people. You're even happy that she got fired. Because sometimes in life, we don't understand that things that happen to us that seem bad in the moment are actually the best things It takes a whole bunch of reflection. In the show, you never really get to see that because things are happening to the characters as you're perceiving them. But for her, you look at her and where she is now.

She's got a job, not just that where she's making good money and she can take care of things, but she takes pride in her job. She cares about it. She's met lifelong friends in it. She suffers some tragedy. Obviously, Mikey kills himself, but her job now is a part of who she is as a person, and that's something that she says in that episode was not a part of her before. Her job in the past was just something that she was doing. To see how life happens to someone and they end up in a good spot, when you leave the episode, it makes you hopeful, you feel inspired, you feel good for the characters, and you think that is how stuff happens. That's what the show does better than anything else. It creates value for the dramatic situations that the characters find themselves Yeah, she says, I don't want to be inspired.

I don't want to be impassioned. I don't want to make magic. I don't need to save the world. I just want to feed my kids. As she's talking in Berthaul's character, and Berthaul is amazing in this episode, too, and he's sizing her up and he's telling her stuff about his life. One of the things I liked about the connection was, sometimes when you watch his shows, it's rapid fire back and forth. There's long pauses. They're really listening to each other, thinking about it, reflecting. By the end of it, you're like, Oh, offer a job, Mike. Just offer a job. Then he does it. I thought it was a really special episode. That's one thing I'll defend. Then the other thing, and I think it's hard to see when you're just watching all these at once, but this season is really about Karm deciding, do I want to be really good or do I want to be great? I'm I'm not uncovering big mystery because that's obviously what it's about. But they're sprinkling this all the way through, and they're trying too hard to do it at some points. But ultimately, that Joel McKeel character who fucks with him in the first episode, his mentor, and then it all circles around to this incredible showdown in the last episode in front of the bathroom when he's like, I got to fucking say something to this guy.

I actually thought it paid off. I thought it was really smart. But just the concept of somebody being like, I know I'm an A minus, can I get to an A plus? Because a lot of people, including our friend Tommy, it was like, Karm's been such a downer this year. Karm's the worst character on the show. It's like, Karm's not supposed to be your favorite character. Karm's on some journey to see if he could be great or not. He's got his brother who fucking killed himself, and that's hanging over his head. He's got all these people he's in charge of. He's so obsessed with it. He can't even see Sid, who is basically halfway out the door with It's like a purse. It doesn't even see it. He's so blinded by his change of the menu every day and all these other and just trying to get these reviews that haven't come yet. He can't even see this, that he might lose his best person. I don't know. I thought it was... I've never seen That concept in a show before hit as hard as it was. And honestly, I felt like the showrunner, the creator, Chris Stohr, it's a little about him.

It's like he created this show that people loved, and it's like, Well, how great can the show be? And Karen becomes the proxy of that. I thought it was cool.

When you say Tommy, are you talking about Tommy Alter, future video coordinator of the Los Angeles Lakers?

Yeah, I'm talking about the lead assistant coach of the Lakers, Tommy Alter.

He'll be there pretty soon. Lead Scout. Here's the thing about that scene, and we're going to go deep into it on Prestige.

Yeah, I don't want to step on Prestige too much.

We're going to go deep into it on Prestige. It saved the season. It did. Has it did. It hasn't been the strongest season of the bear to me? No, it hasn't been. It hasn't been. It's had ridiculously high highs, though, and a couple of low lows, one low low in particular. I'll say two things. Number one, the two biggest mistakes. Number one, I didn't like the Ice Ships episode in the casting of John cena. John cena just does not belong in this world. It just doesn't. So we agree. Yeah. John cena, great for Peacemaker. Other stuff, he just doesn't belong in this world. And it threw off the whole episode. That That pays that scene off. I mean, that scene pays off the season, should I say, because there's emotional ambiguity to it. You don't know who's right. You know Carmy. You know that he wants to be as good as he possibly can be. You know that's what he wants. You know deep down, you see him drawing everything, sketching it out. You see him putting in the work. You see everything about his character is about diligence and sacrifice.

How much he's willing to work- Sacrificing his relationship because it was getting in the way of the restaurant.

How hard he's willing to work, how much he's willing to sacrifice. And the guy is standing there talking to him. It's almost like you're talking to the devil after you sold your soul. And he's looking at you and he's going, wait a minute, you got what you want. You wanted to be better. You got what you wanted. You might have not liked the way that I did it, but you got what you wanted. And you know what, man? Not to sound like the old guy in the room, but I also think that that is a good scene just for us to the gate how we look at that now. That...

Couldn't agree more.

How we look at that now. We used to look up to guys like Michael Jordan or people that weren't shiny and perfect and all of that, but they drug themselves through the broken glass to be great, and they came out with all of these scars. But we'd say, Okay, the trade-off for that greatness is this, and we appreciate the trade-off. That's not how we are anymore. Really, that scene is a negotiation about whether or not it's worth it for Karm. He's probably negotiated, and he's negotiated it himself as well.

But isn't that the point of the whole show is all these people are committed to basically Karm's dream to be great, not very good, right? To go down as one of the great. Even with the way they did the last episode where he's just looking at all the different pictures of the great chefs and he's like, Can I get there? Can I get there? But the other people that he's with have to share the dream of them. That's his fatal flaw. Is he doesn't realize how to bring those people along on the dream unless they're related to him or they don't really have a better option. And he's going to lose Sid because he did not figure out that emotional your shit piece.

The thing is this. That's definitely true. Why are all of these people so anchored to him? Because he's so fucking good.

Because that's what happens.

If he was any less amazing at being a chef, he just would not have the gravitas to ask from them what he's asking from them.

People want to be in the orbit of greatness, and They either stay or they take what they can take, and then they move on to the next place.

Oftentimes, when you get too close to greatness, really the overwhelming majority of times, when you get too close to greatness, right next it, the thing you start to ask yourself is not whether I'm talented enough to do that. That's not what you ask yourself. You ask yourself whether or not I'm willing to be that person. When they're not doing what they're doing. Obviously, Michael Jordan and all these other... They're fantastically talented. I'm not saying that they're really smart people, but you're asking yourself, am I willing to be hated, reviled, have this many people have an opinion on me, work this hard? I read somewhere that most billionaires only sleep four and a half hours a night.

I was going to say this is the buy buy, getting up to use the VersaClimber at 4:30 in the morning. I'll be honest with you. So you can stay on top. It's like 74.

I'll be honest with you. Here's the thing. I am going to make a lot of money for my family, have a lot of success. I'm going to get eight hours of sleep. I'm going to sleep, okay? I'm going to sleep I'm going to take me. My talent is going to... I'm going to go as far as my talent will take me. I'm going to work hard. I'm a hard worker. Hold nine. I'm going to sleep.

But there's two things with the Calm Dream. What? One, the price you pay to become great, which he's painfully aware from, and that's what season three is about. But then there's the other piece is, what if you pay that price, you're still not great?

It doesn't happen.

And that's season 4.

Yeah.

Look, people can... Obviously, one of the great things about TV shows when they're really good, and I'm glad this show exists, and anybody, whether you're mad at this season or whatever, it's still important that this show exists. There's been very few shows that just make you think about shit beyond the show anymore. I really miss Louis. I thought Louis was... And there's reasons that show went away. Oh, Bill. To say the least, But that show was appointment viewing. That Dane Cook episode, I still remember watching that, and I don't think I've ever been more locked into a conversation knowing all the backstories. There's just not a lot of these half-hour shows that can do a lot of the stuff the show is trying to do.

You were able to get Louis CK and Dane Cook in there. Do you want to tell the people how much you miss Chris Delia?

See, now you're taking my... You're twisting my plate. Was Louis a transcendent half-hour show for you? It was.

It was great. He was great. But he had two different awesome shows. I don't want to get to the Louis C.

No, I don't either.

But it is what it is. When stuff like that happens, when you get a show like that, you wonder, why are you watching TV life for me? Like the Sopranos, I watch the The Sopranos, it just became... The show became... The fucked up thing about the show was the more grotesque Tony got, the more I rooted for him. It started to make me ask myself questions. Me and Charles were talking about this on the Prestige TV podcast. You guys go listen to it about the Sopranos. It's like, there's a scene where Tony is talking to Meno's boyfriend, who's half Black, who's a Black kid, and Tony's saying stuff to him.

Yeah, he's trying to drive him away.

It's funny. I said it's on Prestige. I said, It's funny. It's not that I gave Tony a pass for it, but by that time, I was so deep into Tony Soprano, then I started to ask myself, Well, they've made you love this character over the course of four or five years. How much does morality and all of the stuff that you say. There was one scene, I've talked about this before, where Dr. Murphy was assaulted, and she's sitting in front of Tony, and you don't know whether or not she's going to tell him about it.

To try to get him to get revenge.

Because you know that if she tells him that guy's dead, Tony will find him and Tony will kill him. And you want her to tell him. You want his brand of justice. You You've been indoctrinated. And then you go, damn, and you start to think about yourself. It's just not a lot of shows that can pull it out. Some shows are good to watch for the moment, but not very many of them really look into something or litigate something to a deeper degree to where you're thinking about it.

Yeah, and That's where we are in 2024, is there's so much content and people will watch stuff while they're... And I'm guilty of it as much as anybody, watching stuff while you're also doing something else or while your attention is 25% over here. And I just don't think the bear is constructed that way. I don't know. Everybody's going to... I thought the last episode of Season 2 was unbelievable. I still don't totally understand the ex-girlfriend and That was back here. They were missing three scenes with her that made me really believe in the connection to them. No one cares about it. Yeah, you can pick apart a million flaws, but I just think this show is one of a kind.

Let me ask you, did you watch Shogun?

I didn't.

Okay.

It's on my list for this summer.

You'll like it. One thing you'll like about Shogun is you will pay attention to every sentence in every scene because you have to.

Because you have to. Right. That's why I haven't watched it yet. I was waiting I'm not a basketball fan. All right, Van Lathen, you can listen to him on Prestige TV, Breaking Down the Bear. You can hear him on Higher Learning and on Midnight Boys Ringerverse. What's the Midnight Boys movie of the summer?

Deadpool versus Wolverine. Excuse me. Deadpool and Wolverine, for sure. July 16th.

Those are characters?

Okay. You got to be respectful. Is Jason Tatum a basketball player? Because I know one thing, he's not the Finals MVP.

Is Deadpool the name of the guy or it's the movie?

I don't want to talk about it anymore. It's both his name and the movie.

His name's Deadpool?

Bill, the Celtics won in the most lackluster Championship run ever. Did I give you any grief about it? I said, congrats to Bill.

Is it Deadpool Is it one word or is it two words? Is it dead pool? Like, lowercase P, how does it go?

Yeah, it's going to be great. You're going to love it.

Well, you just wait. I'm going to end up watching all these movies and then just fire and takes driving you and Charles crazy. Van Lathen, good to see you.

Peace.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Van Lathen. Thanks to Rob Stone. Thanks to Jesse Lopez for producing today, along with our guy Steve Cerruti. I am not coming back for another podcast this week. I'm going to be back on Sunday. Don't forget, Rewatchables, Naked Gun went up on Monday, and we have Austin Power, the Spy, who shag me going up on Thursday as well on the rewatchables feed. Check out the Ringer Movies YouTube feed as well as the Bill Simmons YouTube feed. Enjoy July fourth. I will see you on Sunday.