The Mailbag Makes a Dramatic Return
Episode
89 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Science & Discovery, Economics & Policy, History
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Wins Above Raheem Morris (WARM): Replacing bad coaches with good ones generates five to eight additional wins based on historical data. Examples include Jim Harbaugh's Chargers transformation and Dan Quinn's Washington turnaround. Raheem Morris holds the twelfth worst coaching record at 32-54, making him the metric's namesake despite current Atlanta struggles.
- ✓Luka Trade Analysis: The Mavericks likely traded Doncic due to accumulated frustration with his conditioning and defense rather than conspiracy. Jason Kidd and GM Nico Harrison convinced themselves adding Anthony Davis could win the 2025 title against Oklahoma City, demonstrating irrational confidence after the successful Kyrie Irving trade worked unexpectedly well.
- ✓NBA Conference Realignment: For expansion with Seattle and Las Vegas, move Memphis and New Orleans east, Milwaukee west. Create four five-team divisions: East (Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Philly, Washington, Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland), South (Chicago, Indiana, Charlotte, Orlando, Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis), North (Milwaukee, Denver, Minnesota, Utah, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, OKC), West (Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Vegas, both LA teams, Sacramento, Golden State).
- ✓Nico Harrison Award: New rewatchables category for terrible decisions that made no sense while happening. Best examples include Neil McCauley pursuing Wayne Grow in Heat, Amity mayor keeping beaches open in Jaws, and Fredo lying about knowing Johnny Ola in Godfather II. The Luka trade epitomizes this category perfectly.
- ✓Celtics Trade Strategy: Portland's Anthony Simons ($27.5 million) could move to Clippers who desperately need scoring after Bradley Beal injury. Three-team trade proposal: Clippers get Simons and Sadiq Bey, Pelicans get Bogdanovic and Derrick Jones, Celtics acquire Trey Murphy plus multiple future picks to rebuild around Tatum, Brown, and Murphy's forty percent three-point shooting.
What It Covers
Bill Simmons revives his mailbag format after years away, answering listener questions about NBA trades, sports conspiracies, movie deaths, coaching metrics, and the Luka Doncic trade to the Lakers while introducing new rewatchables categories.
Key Questions Answered
- •Wins Above Raheem Morris (WARM): Replacing bad coaches with good ones generates five to eight additional wins based on historical data. Examples include Jim Harbaugh's Chargers transformation and Dan Quinn's Washington turnaround. Raheem Morris holds the twelfth worst coaching record at 32-54, making him the metric's namesake despite current Atlanta struggles.
- •Luka Trade Analysis: The Mavericks likely traded Doncic due to accumulated frustration with his conditioning and defense rather than conspiracy. Jason Kidd and GM Nico Harrison convinced themselves adding Anthony Davis could win the 2025 title against Oklahoma City, demonstrating irrational confidence after the successful Kyrie Irving trade worked unexpectedly well.
- •NBA Conference Realignment: For expansion with Seattle and Las Vegas, move Memphis and New Orleans east, Milwaukee west. Create four five-team divisions: East (Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Philly, Washington, Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland), South (Chicago, Indiana, Charlotte, Orlando, Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis), North (Milwaukee, Denver, Minnesota, Utah, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, OKC), West (Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Vegas, both LA teams, Sacramento, Golden State).
- •Nico Harrison Award: New rewatchables category for terrible decisions that made no sense while happening. Best examples include Neil McCauley pursuing Wayne Grow in Heat, Amity mayor keeping beaches open in Jaws, and Fredo lying about knowing Johnny Ola in Godfather II. The Luka trade epitomizes this category perfectly.
- •Celtics Trade Strategy: Portland's Anthony Simons ($27.5 million) could move to Clippers who desperately need scoring after Bradley Beal injury. Three-team trade proposal: Clippers get Simons and Sadiq Bey, Pelicans get Bogdanovic and Derrick Jones, Celtics acquire Trey Murphy plus multiple future picks to rebuild around Tatum, Brown, and Murphy's forty percent three-point shooting.
Notable Moment
Simmons ranks Steven Weber's death in Single White Female as the funniest movie death ever. Weber receives oral sex from Jennifer Jason Leigh disguised as Bridget Fonda, realizes the deception mid-act, decides to finish anyway, then gets killed by a high heel shoe thrown directly into his eye.
Episode Transcript
This episode is sponsored by Uber Eats. Every time I sit down and watch the game, I find myself getting a little hungry. Football and food just go together, especially on Sundays. Good thing. Uber Eats has game day deals all season long. We're talking savings on all your favorite eats and snacks, wings, pizza, chips, drinks, you name it. Whether it's from your favorite restaurant or straight from the grocery store, Uber Eats has deals on everything you need for game day. Get game day deals on Uber Eats order now. The bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by the ringer podcast network, where we put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. I did weird science with Kyle Brandt. It is a 1985 movie, John Hughes. It's both unbelievable that it happened, but also kind of delightful that it happened. It straddles both worlds. 1985, very weird year in general. I put up a tweet a couple days ago of, the the Billy Ocean song from it's either Jewel of the Nile or a Manzanian Stone where he does, he sings it with Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas, and they're in the background. And then at some point, Danny DeVito grab grabs a trumpet or a sax and starts the sax and starts, pretending to play the sax, and it's just bonkers. And I put it up, and, for some reason it became a really popular tweet because I think everybody was like, what was going on in 1985? What was going on in 1985 was things like word science. So, check out that rewatch was, I'm not sure what we're doing next week yet. I am recording this mailbag on a Monday. So if anything crazy happens, we're running it on Tuesday, but if anything bonkers happens, don't blame me. But, I asked for mailbag questions at bspodcast33@gmail.com. People send a lot of questions and we're going to tackle them right after this break. And right after Pearl Jam, the listener mailbag is back. This episode of the bill Simmons podcast is presented by state farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like needing the protection of offensive guard on the football field, but getting an elementary school crossing guard. Sure. They're both guards, but you can only trust one to keep your quarterback safe when the game is on the line. So don't settle for just any insurance when you can have State Farm, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Alright. The mailbag. Here's the history of the mailbag because, it started in 1997, and now it's 2025. I can't believe this is still going. But when I started, I had the old Boston sports guy website, and I was looking for things that would you know, little gimmicks that would make me feel different than the newspaper columnist. So the easy one was a mailbag that, readers could email on questions. It was modeled after …
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