I’ve been listening to Bill Simmons pods for years and I generally enjoy them but this latest NBA pod felt like I was being assaulted by insane takes and it made me want to scream so I decided to write out my arguments to try to achieve some closure.
“You can always count on the Wizards to get the number 1 pick in a year where nobody wants it” (Using John Wall as an example)
John Wall is one of the best number 1 picks in the last 25 years. Also it’s not that he was good but nobody expected it people were super hyped in DC when the Wizards drafted John Wall. I lived in the DMV area at the time and people were dougieing all over the place. He paid off that hype with 5 all star appearances, an All NBA team and won the team 3 playoff series by far the best era of Wizards basketball since the late 70s.
As far as production for THE TEAM THAT DRAFTED THEM, here is how John Wall stacks up with the last 25 number 1 picks when it comes to combined all star appearances and playoff series wins. Wall has 8 compared to:
Victor Wembanyama (0) – lol not fair for these first few guys I know
Paolo Banchero (0)
Cade Cunningham (0)
Anthony Edwards (1)
Zion Williamson (2)
Deandre Ayton (5) – close but not that close since DA was like the 4th best player on those teams and was a super disappointing #1 pick
Markelle Fultz (0)
Ben Simmons (6)
Karl-Anthony Towns (3)
Andrew Wiggins (0) he got some playoff wins and and all star in GSW but that does nothing for the Timberwolves
Anthony Bennett (0)
Anthony Davis (7) close! But remember it’s for the team that drafted them
Kyrie Irving (14) boom! that makes 1 so far!
Blake Griffin (7)
Derrick Rose (7) You could argue that winning MVP should be worth another point here but I’m proving a point
Greg Oden (0)
Andrea Bargnani (0)
Andrew Bogut (0) tough stretch of #1s here
Dwight Howard (12) anotha one
Lebron James (14) I’m only counting the first stretch him coming back as a free agent years later has nothing to do with his draft position
Yao Ming (9)
Kwame Brown (0)
Kenyon Martin (8)
Elton Brand (0)
Now this is pretty specific criteria but I feel like it should be common knowledge that John Wall was a good number 1 pick. I think Simmons is clearly weighing the last few years of John Wall’s career after his injury (that were not kind to him) and allowing that to cloud his opinion.
“I’m voting for Chet to win rookie of the year I don’t care what Wemby’s stats are if OKC is a top 3 seed in the west”
This take is funny because I also think Chet should win the rookie of the year but the process by which Bill decides this is ridiculous to me. I just don’t understand why team success should have anything to do with awards like rookie of the year but it seems like every year Simmons and other voters want to weigh team success. I think in part because looking at a teams record and the box score is a lot easier than watching and keeping tabs on a bunch of different rookies across the league. As far as your workload as an NBA awards voter watching analyzing a bunch of rookies on the worst teams in the league is a lot more work than seeing what rookie is playing real minutes on a contender and saying “He’s contributing to winning” (NBA writers talk about how the season is too long way more than the players do and it is because they literally get bored of watching the games)
It makes some sense for the MVP because having the best player in the league should be reflected in lots of wins but for rookie of the year the best players are usually drafted onto the worst teams and teams that are not trying to win so how much the team wins really should really be secondary to how well the rookies play in their situation.
Chet has a massive advantage over Wemby because his team was very intentionally tanking for years before he was drafted and then got to build up for another year while he was hurt. Wemby was drafted in the Spurs first year of truly bottoming out and the team around him is much worse.
Chet’s team has Shai who is going to be in the conversation for the MVP of the league, Jalen Williams who might be all star if not this year then next year along with some great role players like Lu Dort, Isaiah Joe and Carson Wallace.
Wemby on the other hand is surrounded by very little talent and the team is very transparently not trying to win by starting someone who’s destiny is to be a change of pace backup power forward at starting point guard.
Winning bias for rookie of the year is a pretty new thing. In 2003/2004 Lebron comfortably won rookie of the year despite the fact that his team was 35-47 and missed the playoffs and Carmelo Anthony had similarly great numbers and actually got his team to the playoffs with a 43-39 record. Lebron won the award comfortably but I feel if this situation was to play out again there would be a lot of Carmelo voters because of the “winnnin” even though everyone knew then and now that Lebron was the better player.
In 2008 Kevin Durant won the Rookie of the Year award despite playing for a Sonics team that won just 20 games. In 2011 Kyrie Irving won Rookie of the Year on a Cavs team that won just 21 games Andrew Wiggins won the award on a 16 win Timberwolves team but for some reason the idea that the rookie of the year should impact winning on a contender is growing stronger and stronger.
Anyway I still think Chet does deserve the award because he has played better than any of the other rookies but please please keep winning bias away from awards like rookie of the year.
On a slightly different note some of this “I’m voting for Chet because of winning” stuff that Bill is on about is because he thought that the Spurs could be a playoff team this year and he said that on multiple pods leading up to the season and he is mad that the Spurs are so so so bad and making him look wrong. And he was very wrong, I don’t hold it against sports commentators who make hours of content a week when they make prediction about a team and it’s wrong that is normal but Bill was saying that the Spurs would be good AND they should go ahead and make an all in trade to build a contender around Wembanyama immediately. Which is ridiculous because having a good rookie and then immediately making a big trade to microwave a contender has been disastrous for teams like the Mavericks and the Pelicans in recent years and I can’t think of a single example where a team had a good rookie player then made a big trade to get good really fast and then won a championship because of that team building strategy. Anyway Bill is salty about being wrong about the Spurs so he’s not going to give Wemby a shot at Rookie of the Year similar to how he is mad at Embiid for “tricking him” into voting for him for MVP and then being the same playoff stinker as ever.
Belichick is not that good take
I’ll be quick about this one because I’m not a football blogger and I do agree with his overall point that maybe Popovich and San Antonio are not a bunch of basketball geniuses and that a lot of their “Dynasty” was due to the fact that a top 10 player of all time was happy to spend his entire career there. (hint hint Warriors front office that clearly think they are reinventing how basketball teams are run)
Anyway I just find it hilarious that it only took 4 years for Patriots fans to start turning on the greatest coach of all time and the Patriots even made the playoffs in one of those years!
Belichick’s former fans and newfound skeptics including Bill love to bring up his record in Cleveland and then combine that with his record after Tom Brady left to paint a picture of incompetence even though the first 3 championship teams were won while Brady was still developing as a star QB and the Patriots success leaned heavily on their defense. And then again in their last championship, 17 years after Belichick stuck a fork in the Greatest Show on Turf Rams, he put Sean McVay’s genius offense in a pretzel and the Patriots won a defensive slog of a Super Bowl.
As far Belichick’s issues as a GM he was the de facto GM through the whole dynasty he knows how to build a team but without a good QB it is almost impossible to contend and the QBs he’s had since have been perhaps the worst in the league (I know Belichick is the GM and that’s kind of his fault but being in QB hell after the franchise QB leaves is hardly unique)
Belichick can still coach if the Patriots draft a franchise QB, we’ll all watch as they spring back into contention and suddenly the brooding press conference and weird draft picks will be cool again and Bill will be on the pod saying stuff like “these teams are evenly matched but I just trust Belichick to do some coaching stuff and take away what the other team does well, you know make them play with one arm behind their back”
“The Derrick White trade was a disaster”
This is just classic playing the result revisionist history. And Bill tries to make it seem much much worse than it really is by ignoring the context at the time of the trade as well as exaggerating how good Derrick White is currently.
“Derrick White is probably an All Star” – No he is not probably an All Star he might be an injury replacement all star if Tatum, Brown and maybe even Porzingis are already on the team.
“Derrick White is the second most important player on the Celtics” – No he is not. Aside from this being blatant Jaylen Brown disrespect (that comes from Bill blaming Brown for losing to the Heat) but also what Porzingis does for the Celtics is much more irreplaceable than what Derrick White does for the Celtics. Also Jrue Holiday is on the team and has played the Derrick White role on a championship team.
When the Celtics traded for White he was in his 5th season putting up 14.4 – 5.6 – 3.5 shooting 42% from the field and 31% from 3. The Celtics gave up Josh Richardson, Romeo Langford a first round pick and a pick swap.
Now Richardson has moved on Langford hasn’t broken out and the 2022 pick conveyed and doesn’t seem like a home run yet so with hindsight the haul doesn’t seem that great but 2 players and 2 picks for an inefficient role player on a 34 – 48 team whose contract was coming to an end.
Good for Brad Stevens for identifying a talent that has now broken out and is playing a major role on one of the best teams in the league but trading a middling guard for 2 players and 2 picks is not bad process by San Antonio.
He went on the nitpick all their other moves and draft picks and it’s true not everything they have done has been awesome but the Dejounte Murray and Jakob Poeltl trades were masterpieces and fleece jobs.
Also Bill is still super pissed that the Spurs didn’t offer Austin Reaves 100 million dollars but nobody else did either, the league clearly did not value him like that and the Spurs clearly liked the guys they already had on the team and spent the money on extending their own guys. The whole reason he’s mad isn’t because Reaves would save the Spurs, it’s because the Lakers would have matched and would now be in a worse cap situation.
All these takes happened like 10 minutes into the pod so for the sake of time I’ll be very brief about everything he said for the next 30 minutes partially because nothing he said was especially egregious and partially because I don’t want to write a whole novel about this pod.
“There’s a Draymond Green and Austin Reaves trade out there”
This take is so out of left field and makes so little sense it almost makes me feel like Bill must have a source telling him that the Lakers and Warriors are working on this trade because Draymond is so important to the Warriors and his skill set as an offensive director/distributor and defensive stud would be pretty redundant next to Lebron and AD and Reaves is important to the Lakers because they desperately need shooters and players who can create shots off the dribble.
“The Pelicans should trade Jordan Hawkins, Kira Lewis and 2 first round picks for Dejounte Murray”
The Dejounte Murray trade is viewed as a disaster by everyone around the league and Bill is suggesting that the Pelicans should trade more than what the Hawks did for him to get him now???
“I think Jonathan Kuminga could be a guy if you gave him his own team”
This is the kind of take that is hard to exactly prove as a bad take because no team is ever going to give Jonathan Kuminga a chance to be their franchise guy. So Bill put himself in a good spot here takewise but Kuminga is in his 3rd year and has progressed very little.
“Jalen Green needs to go to a bad team and make his mistakes”
What has he been doing for the past 3 years???
“Sabonis is definitely not making the All Star team I’m just telling you now”
I guess it’s possible and Bill counts out all the front court guys he’d be competing with but every year there’s like 3 injury replacements. Anyway it just seems weird to decide that one of the best power forwards in the league definitely won’t on the All Star team. (I do love that part of the reason the reason is that Bill has Gobert as the second best Center in the west. Good take.)
“Luka is not a guard”
He literally is lol. Bill says he isn’t because he’s 6’7 but I bet he has Magic Johnson as the greatest point guard of all time (6’9). Bill says “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen him on a basketball court” and my response is have you ever watched him play basketball he dribbles the ball up every single possession and runs the offense like a guard.
“Kevin Durant’s legacy changes” (if he doesn’t make this Phoenix situation work)
This is hard for me because the emotional fan brain in me that is still salty about KD joining the Warriors loves hearing talking heads dunk on Kevin Durant and Bill makes a lot of really good points about KD’s career and the decisions he’s made. However I think when it comes to a player’s legacy I think it is unfair to change how you see a player’s legacy based on who they are in their late 30’s. In this situation guys like KD, Lebron and Steph are victims of their own success. Where most NBA stars fall off and either retire or become role players in their late 30’s these guys through hard work and dedication have fought off father time and remained at an All Star level even if they are not the guys they used to be. All of these guys are playing so well some people argue that Steph is better now than he ever was, Lebron said a few years ago when that at 36 he would dominate his 26 year old self and Bill said during this monologe that KD was at his best in Brooklyn but it really is not fair to hold late 30’s failures against these stars when other all time greats were long past their prime at that point and don’t have it held against them that they fell off. I think once you’ve extended your prime into your late 30’s everything you accomplish from there on out is gravy.
I do agree with Bill though that it would be super lame for KD to force his way out of Phoenix.
“Jaquez goes 3rd or 4th in a 2023 redraft”
Jaquez has been really good so far this year and Bill should be upset that the Heat got him at 18 but c’mon half the guys drafted in the lottery are super projects and I think that the only teams that would rather have Jaime Jaquez than the guy they drafted are the Raptors (Gradey Dick) the Hawks (Kobe Bufkin) and the Laker (Jalen Hood Schifino).
Jaquez is a great piece to add to a Heat team that just went to the Finals as a 4th or 5th option who can step up on a night that Jimmy or Bam are out or off but teams are not looking for that in the lottery they want a guy who can be a franchise player.
“I think Embiid is the best offensive Center since Kareem in 1972” follow up by “Embiid is a better player than Shaq”
This is the take that was so bad I decided to write this whole thing. I want to believe that when Bill says offensive center he just means I looking up ppg by a center and saw Embiid’s name at the top because if he came to the conclusion by watching the NBA since the early 80’s and deciding that Joel Embiid is the best offensive center he’s ever seen then it is truly a crime he runs one of the biggest NBA media outlets in the country. I’m coping by telling myself he doesn’t mean it because if he really thought Embiid was the best offensive center since 72 Kareem he would have the Sixers as contenders and he clearly thinks the Bucks the Celtics and maybe even the Heat are better than them.
I literally had to sit down when I heard Bill bring up the fact that Shaq was a first 44 minutes player but against certain teams in the playoffs he needed Kobe to carry him. Shaq was the best player on a team that 3peated. Three championships in a row!!! Thats 12 straight playoff series wins (13 actually) Embiid has never won 2 playoff series in a row. To hold it against Shaq that CERTAIN teams were difficult matchups for him when Embiid has struggled against EVERY team in the playoffs is insane.
In the playoffs is when your actual offensive game gets tested. The teams in the playoffs are actually good and serious teams, the teams in the playoffs have time to study and prepare for you to try to take away your top tendencies, the teams in the playoffs see you several times in a row and are able to adjust to defend you better and Joel Embiid has shown no ability to perform on offense in the playoffs.
Over the past 3 seasons here are Embiid’s regular season numbers vs his playoff numbers ages 27-29
2020-2021
28.5 pts – 2.8 ast – 10.6 rbs on 51/38/86 vs. 28.1 pts – 1.5 ast – 10.5 rbs on 51/39/84
2021-2022
30.6 pts – 4.2 ast – 11.7 rbs on 50/37/81 vs. 23.6 pts – 2.1 ast – 10.7 rbs on 48/21/82
2022-2023
33.1 pts – 4.2 ast – 10.7 rbs on 55/33/86 vs. 23.7 pts – 2.7 ast – 9.8 rbs on 43/18/90
3-3 in playoff series
Here is Shaq’s numbers during his 27-29 years
1999-2000
29.7 pts – 3.8 ast 13.6 rbs on 57/0/52 vs. 30.7 pts – 3.1 ast – 15.4 rbs on 56/0/46
2000-2001
29.7 pts – 3.7 ast – 12.7 rbs on 57/0/51 vs. 30.4 pts – 3.1 ast – 15.4rbs on 55/0/52
2001-2002
27.2 pts – 3 ast – 10.7 rbs on 58/0/55 vs. 28.5 pts – 2.8 ast – 12.6 rbs on 53/0/65
12-0 in playoff series
Shaq is so so so much better as a playoff performer it’s not even close. Also keep in mind that Shaq was playing in an era where there was less scoring in general and pace of play was way lower so his numbers are deflated by his era.
I think Bill’s opinion comes from a combination of scanning box scores and watching highlights on TikTok because Embiid’s box scores against the Pistons and Wizards in December are awesome and the highlights where he’s doing nasty crossovers and hitting stepback fadeaways are incredible but in the playoffs you don’t get to play the Pistons and people only watch playoff highlights if you win.
Bill talked about how Embiid being able to make free throws makes him a weapon in the playoffs and the thing is that yes Embiid can make his free throws but that doesn’t matter if you play tentatively in the big moments and you don’t draw actual fouls and instead you rely on refs to bail you out on when you flail into the air because a defender put his hand in your airspace.
I’ve seen Embiid supporters say things along the lines of “If you don’t want Embiid to shoot so many free throws then don’t foul him” and this is good point except in the playoffs the refs don’t call those fouls which leads me to believe that Embiid is not drawing fouls by being an unstoppable force and that he is relying on foul grifting too much and that it isn’t translating to the playoffs. Drawing cheap fouls is a skill but it isn’t a skill that wins championships which is why Darryl Morey saying that James Harden is the greatest offensive player ever was never true and it is why even though Embiid’s numbers are great he is not the best offensive center since Kareem.
Also here is another note that comes from me being a bit of hater but Embiid refuses to play good teams on the road and that is a part of his number being so sky high.This season he has missed:
At Minnesota
At Boston
At New Orleans
He then recovered from his injuries in time to play the Wizards twice, the Pistons twice, the Hawks, the Hornets, the Bulls, The Raptors and the Timberwolves (at home) and he looked incredible.
He then proceeded to sit out
At Miami
At Orlando
At Houston
At Chicago
The Sixers will play 6 of their next 7 at home so I expect Embiid to be very healthy for the next few weeks before a 5 game road trip where I’m certain something will flare up.
I could spend some time talking about how much better Nikola Jokic is as an offensive engine but I think that’s been run into the ground as a debate and I think if you asked Bill who is teh better offensive center better he’d pick Nikola Jokic. Afterall he has the Nuggets ahead of the Sixers in the power rankings and I don’t think it is because of Jokic’s deflections when guarding the pick and roll.
Anyway Embiid is a very good player but calling him the best offensive center since Kareem is incredible insulting to all the centers who have led teams to championships in the last 50 years and name dropping Shaq in particular is egregious. Bill had better hope nobody close to Shaq shows him that clip because I wouldn’t want to run into Shaq if he knew I’d been telling thousands of people that Embiid is better than him.
The Dishwasher 
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