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🎙️ Kon Knueppel: "We're playing our brand of basketball. We want to play fast, unselfishly, and together. We're a good rebounding team and we can hang our hat on that... it's a fun brand of basketball to play." 🎙️ Bill Simmons: "Yeah, everybody seems like they give a crap. Likable team, good future."
Erik Slater: Tim Legler says Michael Porter Jr. has "completely changed" his trade value: “I really believe in just conversations that I’m having, I think the guy’s completely changed his trade status. In terms of attractiveness to teams. I think people thought, ok, you kind of knew what Michael Porter was. The fact that he can do this offensively... I do think now there’s probably more teams that would look at him that are sort of those middle-of-the-road playoff teams, and go, man, that would be nice to add that kind of scoring punch.” (Via The Bill Simmons Podcast)
Tim Legler says Michael Porter Jr. has "completely changed" his trade value:
— Erik Slater (@erikslater_) December 27, 2025
“I really believe in just conversations that I’m having, I think the guy’s completely changed his trade status. In terms of attractiveness to teams. I think people thought, ok, you kind of knew what… pic.twitter.com/xWFESnm1QW
Mat Ishbia: I'm putting myself out there. I'm going to stand up for our guys. What we're going to do differently in Phoenix is, I'm going to stand up. You talk bad about Dillon Brooks, or Devin Booker, or Jordan Goodwin — I will stand up for them. I'm the owner. I'm supposed to be... No, no. I'm here. I'm here with it. "If you say we’re going to have the worst defense in the league, I’ve got to say — everyone can... I feel like the national media sometimes doesn't really know what we’re doing. "By the way, we deserve to not be looked at highly. We didn’t have a good couple of years — I get it. I’ll take the blame. But you know, Bill (Simmons) made a comment, and I thought it was way out of line. And I have no disrespect — all respect — for Bill. But he was wrong, and I told him that. And I have no problem putting that out in public. "And guess what? If I’m wrong, I promise — everyone will point it out, as you pointed out. And when we started 1–4, I think people thought it was fun to talk bad about me again. And I... I enjoy it. I relish in it. Because I know we’re doing the right things in Phoenix, and the results will show. It might not happen day one, but it will happen over time. And I’m excited for it."
Zach Lowe: I started at Sports Illustrated, then I went to Grantland. Bill [Simmons] was my boss for a long time. Made glorious fun of many people—including David Kahn. Some of those people took it well. Others did not. And some of those others liked to take out their rage against Bill… on Bill’s subordinates. At the Board of Governors meeting one year in New York, I was there. David Kahn was there representing the Timberwolves. Glenn Taylor was also there, but Kahn, I guess, was an alternate governor. I don’t know. I said, ‘You know what, there’s David Kahn. I’ve never met him before. I’m going to go introduce myself.’ Walk across the room. ‘Hey David, Zach Lowe, Grantland. Just wanted to put a face to a name, all that.’ I don’t know if I had made fun of him at some point, probably. He just looks me dead in the eyes and says: ‘Tell your boss he’s a f*ckin a**hole.’ And walks away. And I was like… ‘Okay. That’s how it’s going to be.’
“To be fair — this was from a Ringer piece called ‘Increasingly Bold Predictions.’ My only Suns pick was UNDER 31.5 wins just FYI. Happy to wager on that. But you’re an NBA owner and… um…. you’re not allowed to bet? Maybe we should just bet Aspiration stock.” —Bill Simmons clapping back at Suns owner Mat Ishbia, who had taken issue with a Ringer NBA preview that included a bold prediction that Phoenix would have the worst defense in the NBA.
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Mat Ishbia: . @BillSimmons , you and your crew have some good takes and some that are terrible. You’re the betting guru and even you know better than to actually take this bet. Tell you what, go put your money on this take. When you lose, I will donate the same amount to charity of your choice. Different culture and different team in PHX this year. Let’s go!
Bill Simmons on Kawhi Leonard no-show job: This is basically the OJ Simpson civil trial versus the OJ trial. You only need to kind of think something happened and have enough evidence to be like, I think that happened, so we're doing this. The question isn't an actual trial where like we are proving this indisputably that you did this. I don't think they have to do that for the league to crack down and be like, dude, something smells with this. You gave 50 million to these guys. He's getting 28 million to do nothing. Like you can say there's no smoking gun, but something happened here and we're punishing you. And I think that's how this plays out.
Bill Simmons on NBA Europe: I think this goes London, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Berlin and a Greek team as your definite seven better in this. I think Adam Silver has those seven in his pocket and I don’t know who the Greek team is yet. Maybe you could add Tony Parker's French team. You could add the Istanbul team. You could add Manchester City. All sudden, I'm at 10. Maybe there's an Israeli team down the road. Maybe there's a third Spain team. Who knows? But they could take this right away. And if you look at the way the Euroleague is, where you basically have this ownership. It's called Euroleague Commercial Assets. That's the company that runs the League of voting rights on league rules, financials, TV deals, etc. And then there's a B license that that's a one year thing that you got to play your way in based on results, and then a C license that's like, basically a wild card. They could challenge this. They could offer the sponsorship expertise better, TV deals. They could shoehorn some of the TV stuff into their things. They could do the schedule so that it complements the NBA schedule correctly and I think this is going to be like, I honestly wouldn't be surprised that this was going in the 26-27 season.
Bill Simmons: And what's really interesting about this, and I mentioned this a couple weeks ago that I felt like the NBA is drifting against expansion, which was a lock forever, until they got $76 billion from the media deal. Then suddenly, you know, the media money and the teams that, I mean, the owners don't need to give up the media money for expansion fees because they made so much. I think this is the apple of their eye right now, and I think that's why the reports are coming out this week. That's why Adam Silver is very publicly meeting with all these people, even though it's private, but it's not stuff's leaking out and and I think this is going to happen in a real way.
Bill Simmons: So what's the NBA offering? Well, from what I've heard and from what's been reported, it's probably a 10 team league, but they could get away with eight. Maybe you grow it to 12. You get a guaranteed spot in the league. You get the voting rights, get better TV distribution, better sponsorship. You're not relegated. You don't to worry about, like, you know that I think there's 12 teams in the Euro league that are in there, but there's another six that you could get bounced out or if you don't have a good season, and there would be some sort of link to the NBA, which I think is the key here, their exhibition games, which I've already announced, A bunch of them, Manchester City, Paris, London. Maybe a tournament. And I've heard a couple different ideas for this, and I don't even know if they've decided on what they want to do yet, but you can have, maybe in October, you have the two best, three best NBA teams and the three best teams from this NBA early, they have little round robin. Maybe it's just champ versus champ Best of three. Maybe it's something. In February, with all the best teams, there's some sort of synergy thing. And it goes beyond just we're going to have some regular season games over there and some exhibition games, I think, big picture, 20 years from now. What does this look like? The leagues are probably a little more intertwined, not too intertwined, but a little intertwined.
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Bill Simmons: And what's cool about it, I remember watching a bunch of Luka Doncic games when he was playing over there as a 17 year old. I can't remember what team he was on [Real Madrid], and the quality play was good. The crowds were great, but it was FIBA, so the style of it was pretty neat, and it was a good enough product. It was just the players weren't quite good enough, it just definitely felt second class. I think if you can move that up, where it's somewhere between first class and second class, and then you could also be a place. This could be a place where you park some of your retiring players. It's like, Oh, your last year, you're going to play for this team. And maybe, you go there, maybe they change the rules, where you could get a little bit of an ownership stake. If you go over for here, they could do some things with this league that they can't do with the NBA. They could bend the rules and make a little more European.
Zach Lowe: Why is there like no buzz about who's going to buy the Portland Trail Blazers? So I ask you, you have a lot of ownership sources. You're always good on this stuff. There's even people within the Blazers that I talked to are like ‘we haven't heard anything’. Like what's going on? This team is like allegedly in the beginning processes of being for sale. It's an NBA team. What's happening? Bill Simmons: I heard there's a guy and I heard it's going to go over four, those are the only two things I've heard. Lowe: Who's not going over three and a half or four at this point? Simmons: Well, but I think the the consensus is it's going to be in the mid-3s, but I think it goes over four, just because there's not a lot of teams available. It's Portland. It's maybe make a power play for New Orleans, over overpay for New Orleans, and then move them to Seattle, Vegas, and then other than that, unless unless the Reinsdorfs shock everybody and just sell the team for seven billion.
Bill Simmons: I look at a situation like New Orleans. I don't know what that team is worth in its current state. I don't know what it's worth with that. Like playing in the Smoothie King, playing in a market that clearly has not responded to basketball in the same way these other markets. And it's like if somebody bought them and just moved them to Seattle and paid everybody relocation fees and then you didn't have to split your media rights, that seems like where this is headed. And I think there’s… I'm just gonna say it: I think there's some buzz starting that way that this New Orleans thing maybe is the situation.
Bill Simmons: I don't mean to start panic on New Orleans basketball. I'm also not sure there's enough of a fan base in place to even care that much. But um that lease at the Smoothie King lease expires I think in 2029. This is an experiment that has not worked for 50-plus years in New Orleans with professional basketball. And if like if you and I owned a team and they asked us what we thought and I like well we definitely have enough players to go to 32 teams that doesn't mean we should. We're making so much money from the media rights. I'm not even sure what you could give me back that would make it worth it.