Didn’t know about that one. Wild stuff

Legitimately the worst media member in the league

https://okcthunderwire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/thunder/2026/03/20/if-sonics-want-history-back-seattle-owes-okc-thunder-an-apology/89247171007/

Probably the most braindead take from a beat writer that doesn’t represent any of the organizations/fans thinking. There’s no Sonics banners hanging in our arena. We’ve not unretired any jersey numbers, and we did honor the already retired ones by the Sonics but we don’t display them. I personally want Seattle to have its history back when they get a team and don’t need a fucking apology.

https://okcthunderwire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/thunder/2026/03/20/if-sonics-want-history-back-seattle-owes-okc-thunder-an-apology/89247171007/

Based on listening to Simmons, I don’t think the owners care is the problem. He hasn’t outright said as much, but there have been a couple times where he made it seem like there isn’t much traction with the owners themselves to actually punish Balmer, not to mention Cuban going to bat for him. 

I think the GM’s and other FO members care more, but they also realise that if their owners don’t press it, nothing will be done. That, and they still have to worry about the season at hand. Remember, it’s all a big club, and we aint in it. 

That’s an actual scandal, and as such probably not gonna be talked about much until there’s a verdict (is Bill still a Clippers season ticket holder? He was at one point, I think). At that point there’ll be a bit of tut-tutting about how horrible it all is, then everyone will move on. Similarly, gambling is a huge problem – Chauncey Billups, Malik Beasley, Damon Jones, Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier can attest to that. Bill Simmons is probably not going to make a big deal out of that, though, on his podcast Brought To You By FanDuel.

Also ignoring the gambling scandals, which included a head coach of the league too.

I feel like this scandal holds far more importance to Redditors.

The investigation either isn’t completed, or the results have not been released. Everyone is acting like what Pablo has released is the only information that exists about the whole situation. No one seems to question how much Torre has gained from presenting his findings in the way he has.

One thing I will say is this was a 2 hour podcast where each award has 5 to 10 nominees for each that they talked about and then tried to come up with a consensus decision for the award.

When they didn’t, I put both answers.

I recommend giving it a listen. It’s probably the best pod from Simmons of the NBA season for sure.

It’s because they weren’t trying to give out 2 awards. It’s kinda weird OP wrote it that way.

Did Bill even tell Lowe what the awards were before they did the podcast? I feel like it’s a very Simmons move to spring them on him and unless he had another name off the top of his head he would just agree with Bill’s take.

I feel like they were probably talking over these when they should’ve filled them out separately then talked

Yeah kind of boring when you have the same answers to basically all the topics you made up.

Congratulations J-Dub, you are now Sacramento’s Jesus

Yeah this is Simmons wishcasting

Granted he’s missed the bulk of the season but he’s On track to be the first Celtics to average 10 rebounds a game since ‘07

Clippers definitely won the trade. Cavs have been better with Harden and Clippers have been better with Garland, but Garland’s 10 years younger and the only draft compensation was a second round pick.

If you want some numerical net rating stuff Cavs were -2.6 with Garland on the floor and are +6.1 with Harden. Clippers were -0.1 with Harden on the floor and are +11.6 with Garland.

If Cavs would have received a couple first rounders, I think you could say it was a great trade for both sides.

Don’t know about Simmons/Lowe but it’s was a bit ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ in the Cavs sub. I would say they overrated Garland a bit there, can’t blame them because this is what all fanbase do. You draft a guy, he is young, he is an AS.

Clips fans were happy, most of them were bittersweet because Harden did a great job this season there. However the FO didn’t want to pay and Harden wanted to leave. They were okay to have a young lad, an AS level player for Harden.

The Cavs won over the Cavs sub tho, he had an instant impact. There are still some dumbass Cavs fans.

People broke down impact already, but I want to add the award was for pure entertainment value.

It sounds like the award was for spectacle/buzz? This was a surprise trade with 2 stars so that makes sense. It feels good for the Clippers, Garland is a bit worse than Harden but has a better future and more synergy with Kawhi. Harden wanted to leave anyways so this was a great return for him. Very calm exit by Harden’s standards. The Cavs are in win-now mode so I think they’re just waiting for the playoffs. They need a deep run to make the trade worth it. The fans are rightly concerned about Harden’s chokes in the playoffs but he’s still good and this is one of the best squads he’s ever been on.

Or the gambling scandals.

It’s a good pod just a really dumb post by OP. They talk about a bunch of candidates for each award and then try to settle on one together, and just disagreed sometimes at the end. There’s lots of good discussion.

It was a bit of that, but on a lot of these they had different answers, and then one convinced the other. 

It’s worth a listen. There are multiple candidates for each award. The enjoyment for me was hearing them discuss the different candidates and their reasoning. The ‘winners’ don’t really matter. It is made up after all.

I think you’ll enjoy hearing the candidates. There’s a Celtic in every category almost lol

They talked about it a good bit, but the reality is other distractions lasted longer. Until more news occurs on that front, I don’t think they can keep rehashing it in the same way that they could with tanking. Also, I think journos still want to maintain connections to a certain degree and don’t want to seem as if they have an agenda rather than reporting on stories.

The award for for most entertaining trade, not most beneficial.

They said it was for both sides and if things go wrong this year the cavs instantly have to blow it up, it wasn’t really a ringing endorsement of the trade.

I listened to this one— their logic was they both completely wrote off the hawks in december… pistons didnt have the wild variance to their season, just steadily beat expectations 

I think a lot of folks thought that the Pistons would be good, and nobody expected anything out of the Hawks after Trae Young got injured and then traded. I know I personally am way more surprised at the Hawks

It’s under the category of “goofy but could happen” lol, and I can’t remember exactly but I think he had some pretty hot takes about Brown too a few years ago as well.

Edit: not even, man proposed a Brown trade to get under the second apron just a year ago lol

Yeah don’t take this personal, this is Bill’s thing and mostly a second apron thing. Allows him to create even wilder trade ideas than usual.

These were all extremely low probability things, which was the point. His logic was if the Thunder have a bad playoff exit and then are looking ahead and decide they can’t pay everyone, they might end up in a situation where they think they need to choose between J-Dub vs Cason Wallace + Ajay Mitchell, and they could decide to make that decision early. 

They will eventually need to make some tough decisions about who they’re willing to keep, and having 3 max guys makes that tough. 

Trading Jaylen Brown was one of the other nominees. You should listen to the pod. It was the most shocking trade that wasn’t completely unrealistic due to cap etc.

this would be like saying the celtics should have

No, it would be like saying it was a realistic possibility that they could have traded Jaylen Brown, and it was. The only person that said “should” is you.

Jalen Williams is one of those players that’s just good enough to qualify for (and get) a supermax, but can a cripple a team financially long term unless he becomes a superstar.

The fact that he’s capped at 25% is a blessing for the Thunder and the main reason I think any trade would be unrealistic tbh