The Bill Simmons Podcast
The Feel-Good Knicks, Award Movies, Week 18 Picks, and a Boston Sports Report With Sean Fennessey, Joe House, and Bill’s Dad
Thu, 02 Jan 2025
The Ringer's Bill Simmons talks with Joe House about the updated NBA title odds, win totals, MVP, ROY, DPOY, Most Improved, and more (1:54), before trying to decipher the NFL's final regular-season slate and making the Million-Dollar Picks for Week 18 (22:50). Then, Bill is joined by Sean Fennessey to discuss the Knicks having real title-contender buzz, the 2024-25 Jets and what's next for Aaron Rodgers (54:34), before discussing the best movies of 2024 (1:08:53). Finally, Bill is joined by his dad for a Boston sports check-in, including the Patriots' Week 18 matchup against the Bills, first-year head coach Jerod Mayo's rocky year, the Celtics' midseason struggles, Boston's no. 1 athlete right now, and more (1:04:26). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Sean Fennessey, Joe House, and Bill's Dad Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the latest NBA title odds?
who have the most yards, tons of same-game parlays, offensive titties in the next drive, so much more. It's the most fun thing about the Super Bowl for me, other than watching the game. I love the Super Bowl props. You can also check out their Super Bowl squares, pick your own numbers, and... Make your pick for a kick of Destiny 3 between the Manning brothers.
I'm picking Peyton Manning every time because Eli Manning took two Super Bowls from me, so he can screw off. When you win, you'll get paid instantly. Download the app today and bet the big game with FanDuel, an official sportsbook partner of Super Bowl 59. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming.
Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of this episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. This episode is brought to you by Vrbo Private Vacation Rentals.
With Vrbo, you always get the whole house so you and your fellow fans can cheer on your team In peace. What's worse than watching a game with somebody who's not rooting for the same team you're rooting for? Nothing. But that's why if you book a vacation house with Vrbo, you know all the people in your house. They'll be friends. They'll be family. Ideally.
They'll be the ones who also root for my teams. Plan a winning vacation. Make it a Verbo. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did Friday Night Lights, the movie, me and Mallory Rubin. We did it as a video podcast on Spotify, but you can listen to it anywhere. You can also watch it on YouTube on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel.
You can watch all the clips and videos from this podcast. on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can watch Sal and I do our Sunday podcast live right after Vikings Lions on Sunday night on that YouTube channel. Don't forget about FanDuel Sportsbook as well. We're doing 30 on 30 every Friday, trying to figure out who the 30-point scorers are going to be. They put odds on all of it.
I tweet out my favorite picks. on Friday. So stay tuned for that as well. Coming up on this podcast, I'm going to talk to Sean Fennessey about the end of the Rogers era, the rise of the Knicks, and whether I should see a certain Oscar contender before the Oscars. So there's that. I have Joe House coming out. We're going to talk about NBA futures heading into 2025.
Stuff that jumped out to us with title odds and win totals, MVP, all kinds of stuff. And then Million Dollar Picks Week 18. We've been smoking hot. Can we keep it going? We'll find out. Last but not least, my dad. talking about the state of Boston sports. He's kind of a wreck these days. So we're just going to give him a platform and he can do his thing. So that is all next.
First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Joe House is here. We're taping this late morning Pacific time. So there's some sports that are going to happen after we put this up. There's college football that will happen. There's a lot of basketball. There's some good basketball games as well. We're doing the Billion Dollar Picks. We've been doing really well.
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Chapter 2: How do the Knicks compare to other teams?
Now he's on this weird Minnesota team and he just didn't play well and he didn't look like he was happy. Reinvested himself and now he's added a little something. I'm interested to see with Dillingham what they get out of him too. If he, if he's just, you know, him and Reed Shepard are kind of the two X factors of these rookies on good teams that don't really play. Right.
And Reed Shepard hasn't been good either. I think Dillingham has been good in spots, but I'm just wondering what happens with those guys down the stretch. So the Rockets are another one at 44 to one that just like, if you're just factoring in a trade and you can, can they turn Van Vliet or Jalen Green into into a much better version of those guys, then maybe those odds go up.
But I don't sense the appetite from them this year making a major move. So we'll see. And then Orlando at 43-1 is the only other one, just because they'll have their guys back at some point. The infrastructure they have with the defense and the coaching and the reps that they've been getting for dudes like Da Silva and Anthony Black and people like that. So, you know...
To me, the best odds are Cleveland, 11-1. I'll go along with that. I don't have any argument with that. I think they're favored in the first two rounds. It's probably going to be... I don't know. Whoever it is in round three, and it might not be my team, but game seven will be in Cleveland. That's not nothing. So a couple over-unders really quick. Celtics, 59 and a half just seems way too high.
They're 24 and nine. That 59 and a half basically is 23 losses. That's 14 more the rest of the way. They can't seem to get anybody healthy. I also don't really think they care about the one seed. Golden State is still 45 and a half, and they're 16 and 16 heading into tonight. What world are they winning 46 games unless there's a major trade coming that I can't anticipate?
It's that there is some possibility, I guess, that the market thinks that there's a trade for them yet to come. It's going to be really hard. It is a hard under for me.
Yeah, that's a hard under for me. Go ahead. Well, just Clippers 46 and a half. That would make me blink just because of the injury potential. The miles are putting on hard and I don't know what they're getting from Kawhi when he comes back, but the golden state line, I, I don't see that we're already in on Indy 43 and a half.
We did the over, even though there's 16, 18, they're minus two 50 to make the playoffs. Um, Minnesota, you mentioned, They're minus 340 to make the playoffs right now, even though they're 17 and 15. So I think people are agreeing with the way you saw big picture what's happening with them. But their over-under is 47 and a half now, which seems too high to me. It's high. That's high.
That's a tough stretch. Yeah, that means they'd have to go 31 and... like 19, rest of the way, something like that, 31 and 18. I don't see it. OKC, 62 and a half is the over-under now. They're 27 and five. I think they get it. I would still be bullish on that. Wouldn't you? Sure, it's fine. I feel like it's shocking every time they lose.
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Chapter 3: What are the Million-Dollar Picks for Week 18?
And the problem is, you know, it's kind of the same problem as last year when they were a great underplay. Durant can't really play night to night and it really doesn't make sense for him to play night to night. And they just rotate two out of the three guys. Yeah. And, you know, Beal doesn't move the needle. He doesn't help them win basketball games.
He's actually been putting up stats lately and it doesn't seem to. He's perfectly fine. Right. Exactly. They're three and seven over the last 10. And he's in all of those games. So, you know.
You know what? The big picture front office mistake they made was they tried to put together this big three model, which had been so successful in the late 2000s and the 2010s because the league wasn't as deep. Now the league is deep and you need depth. You need the ability to weather an injury for 10 games. You need random guys stepping up night to night.
And I just don't know if that big three model works. Great, cool. You have three really good players. It doesn't matter. Like you're competing against other teams that have seven, eight, nine players that have real depth. That was something the Clippers figured out when they miraculously didn't offer Paul George that fourth year and landed all these other dudes.
And now they have depth and they have the ability to, you know, whether Kawhi not playing for two and a half months because they have enough guys. So that's a hard under for me. And I think we're going to lose our bet. And I'm bummed because that was one of my favorite streaks that we had going. The other one, San Antonio is 39 and a half.
And that's up four wins from where we were at the start of the season. They're 17 and 16. They're plus 360 to make the playoffs. And what we've seen from Wemby, Goldspire and I talked about it a little on Tuesday. Like he's basically 29 and 12 every night now with four blocks, whatever it is, and is turning into this crunch time dude. And they have trades to make potentially if they want.
They want to add another guy. I kind of like the plus 360 for the playoffs for them as a flyer. Oh, okay. I don't know if they're going to make the playoffs. I just like the odds.
Let's look at this real quick. So where they're sitting right now is they're in the nine hole. Yeah. And so let's see who they have to climb over.
So the Lakers would have to drop, which I think, I really think I could see that happening. That's not crazy talk. And then now it'd be the team. They'd have to jump the Lakers basically. And then you'd have to assume Phoenix, Sacramento, Golden State, those teams, they had to beat those teams as well. I'm not saying it's going to happen. Plus 360 though.
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Chapter 4: What is the state of Boston sports?
Castle 701, I like too. He had a little bit of a while the last couple of weeks, but I still like him long-term. But yeah, Edie, everything we thought before the draft of, if he goes here, he's this really interesting piece in a nine-man rotation that you can... And he's been everything... The glass half full side of the Zach Eady argument? Yes. He's hit all of it.
Defensive player of the year, Wemby's minus 270. For me, it's like if he's below minus 500 on that, just grab it. Go ahead and lay it. Most improved, the two guys that jumped out were Jalen Johnson, 3-1 is the favorite. But Dyson Daniels, a 10-1, who is probably the best perimeter defensive player we have. I was surprised 10-1 was... as high as it was.
And then, um, coach of the year, Kenny Atkins, his favorite minus one 80, mostly a plus nine 50 jumped out to me because that the fact that that team is five, six games over 500 with all the injuries they've had is, is, uh, is crazy to me. So anyway, that is, uh, that is my way out of all those bets we just talked about. What was your favorite?
Uh, the Oklahoma city over 62 and a half.
Yeah, I think I'm with you. It's like we already have more than enough on them. Anyway, that is our little NBA check-in. All right, we're going to take a break and come back. The Red Hot Million Dollar Picks. This episode is brought to you by Paramount+. Ridley Scott's return to ancient Rome in Gladiator 2 is nothing short of awesome. And now you can stream it at home on Paramount+.
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Chapter 5: What are the best movies of 2024?
Fastest way to do that is by doing the thing you're sitting and looking at right this second, which is to lose the mother effing game and get as much as you can in terms of capital. This is like very basic business building proposition shit right here.
Yeah, we only have two good players and Gonzalez had a concussion last week, so he shouldn't play. May's been banged up, took a big shot last week. You sit those two guys and they just don't have enough talent to beat even the Bills second string. So I like the Bills minus two and a half. And I really like the Texans minus one half against the Titans. I think the Titans are terrible.
The stretch that they've just been on recently is just a rollercoaster ride of shit. And, you know, the Texans have lost their last two, right? They've locked up the four seed for a while, but they kind of need to play well for a game. You could say like, oh, they don't need the game. They're already in. It's like, nah, they kind of need to look good for three hours.
And I just find it hard to believe they're going to toss away the game and go into the playoffs, finishing nine and eight for the season, hosting somebody good, either the Chargers or the Steelers, and just not feel good about anything that's happened for a month.
I totally agree.
I want to bet both of these. And I think we split at least one. If the Pats and Titans both win, That means the Browns are going to have the first pick in the draft. When do things ever work out for the Browns?
Oh, I feel bad. Sorry, Browns fans, you know it's true. Yeah, I mean, Cleveland writ large did get LeBron, so we can't, you know, Cleveland's had some good fortune over the last 30 years. 21 years ago, and he left. I'm just saying, but, you know, he brought him a title. Over the last 30 years, we don't have to say that Cleveland's, you know. Well, then they got the Kyrie.
They won the Kyrie lottery because the league felt bad for them. That's one of my top five. Are we sure this lottery was on the level?
In any event, the guys on the Action Network that call the Titans the point shavers, which I think is fantastic and I totally agree with. What are they, 2-14 against the spread? Yes, the worst. They have locked in the worst.
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Chapter 6: How does Aaron Rodgers influence the Jets?
I agree.
It's not like, you know, T Higgins missed a few weeks, right? Other than that, this is who they are. They have a couple of good players and a lot of shitty ones. It's the defense.
The defense has been bad all season. You can't count on that defense. The defense doesn't get stops when they need to. That's not who this team is.
So do you like the Steelers plus one and a half or do you just like the Steelers plus one 10? Um, I like the money line.
I think they're going to win.
It's a little more appetizing. And then the other one is Vikings-Lions. And I feel like now every Thursday I'm just talking about the Vikings, how I don't understand why people don't realize they're good. They came through again last week. And the best possible thing happened in that game last week They dominated their kicker, missed a couple of field goals.
The Packers really got it going with eight minutes left when the Vikings were way up. They stopped blitzing as much and doing some of the stuff that got them the spot there in the first three quarters, laid back a little bit. Love started to look good. And all of a sudden it was, you know, a two point game as the final score. It was not a two point game. The Vikings are awesome.
That's been the tale for the Vikings all season long. You look at their resume, you're going to see a slew of one score games. They are one score games because they were beating the crap out of teams and then teams came back on them. I mean, Jordan loved these nuts, did it twice. He came back, you know, and made the game inside of a one score game. Uh, and you know, this was very quick aside.
Jordan loved these nuts. They need to handle their business against Chicago. Um, cause I think Washington, this game will be going on simultaneously. I like Washington, but Washington Dallas is always. Oh, it's a walker. Yes, you do not, like, say, oh, yeah, Washington should walk over. So I think – and the Packers need to, like, you know, show something. They got their ass beat.
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