The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Derek Thompson for another edition of The Future of Everything, during which they discuss Derek and Ezra Klein’s new book ‘Abundance,’ before sharing their predictions for the future of politics, tech, sports, and culture. Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Derek Thompson Producers: Kyle Crichton and Chia Hao Tat This episode is sponsored by State Farm®. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.® 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 is 'The Future of Everything' podcast about?
And then the obvious answer is when I was graduating from college in Northwestern, Barack Obama was an absolute sensation. And so I would say that Obama might have, at least at the moment for me, felt like the most... movementy president of the post JFK era. All right.
So that's so for the right now, other people could say, no, no, Jimmy Carter in 76. That was more of a Gerald Ford. Nobody wanted to vote for him again. Ted Kennedy was supposed to be the guy and then it wasn't going to happen. And Carter, by the way, I love Carter. Carter was probably my favorite president, but I don't think it was a Carter movement by any means.
You're a Carter guy. I just, I just pause there.
It's just, I just think after the fact, I think you look back at Carter. I'm like, Oh yeah. Like the Malay speech. I I've talked about this before. I just, I, he just probably shouldn't have been president, but I liked how he stayed authentic to himself to the bitter end, even to the point that he was going to lose in 1980.
Um, Sanders had a little momentum too, but you know, it was definitely niche momentum. Um, you can't say Biden, uh, Biden was more like the anecdote. This is the only way this side can beat this side. So, all right, we got to go this. But I guess the point I'm trying to make is two people in 62 years. is not a good batting average.
So when people say, well, all we need is we need to find somebody who can come in and whatever. It's like the batting average says you're probably not. That's probably not going to happen. So what's plan B? And I wonder when we start talking about that, because even I saw Josh Shapiro was on Bill Marshall last week. And I think he's, you know, he presents very well.
He's very well liked in Pennsylvania and checks a lot of boxes. And maybe he could be the third guy. It's just interesting to me that the batting average is so bad. 63 years is a long time, 62 years. And it's going to be 65 since JFK when we do the 2028 election. And you've had two guys that have inspired a party. So maybe that says more about the party.
I think you put your finger on something pretty important. And tell me if you agree with this interpretation. We have a story in the book about how in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a legal revolution on the liberal side where you had an amazing growth of lawyers, the 1960s, 1970s, who went into law in order to be progressives. They were like, I'm going into law for the Civil Rights Act.
I'm going into law for environmentalism. Since then, Bill, Think about all the lawyers that have run for president or won the presidency on the Democratic side. Kamala Harris, lawyer. Bill Clinton, lawyer. Barack Obama, constitutional law professor. I think since Jimmy Carter, it's just basically been a very long line of lawyers or people who you basically associate with lawyers.
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Chapter 2: How did the book 'Abundance' by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein come about?
Not just body language doctoring. I should have mentioned this too. Running style. Trying to guess like how somebody's frame is, how they move, whether it's football, basketball, baseball. Do they move in a way that could be susceptible to injury later? And then the AI program has all this stuff from like, there's Mookie Betts. He never gets hurt. Why does he get hurt?
What is different about his body than like Giancarlo Stanton? I think we're going to have all this stuff and I think they're working on it now. That is not my sports thing though. I agree with you. Math, math, we're moving towards something new and maybe it's a hybrid of 19 things.
So, and I don't even know if I'm right on this a hundred percent, but I feel like I'm 90% and maybe I'm five years early, but I've been thinking about the NBA. I'm going to call it a labor glut just because you like when you like phrases like memorable phrases. The NBA is getting older. in a way that is having an interesting effect now on rosters and talent and how young talent can break through.
The league is just really deep. And I've talked about this a bunch, but I actually went and I looked at it trying to figure out, are we deeper and are older guys staying longer? And could this actually like fuck up the league a little bit? Like we're too deep. One of the reasons I was thinking about it is there's like this really good six man of the year race this year.
usually there's like two six men. I'm like, ah, Jamal Crawford. Like, ah, Lou Williams. This year, there are like these game-changing six men all over the place, right? You have like Nas Reed. You have Ty Jerome. You have Peyton Pritchard. You have Beasley on the Pistons. Every team kind of has somebody awesome. And then if you look at the bench, there would be these games where
Like Denver yesterday, two guys, Jokic and Murray didn't play. They beat the Warriors anyway. These other guys stepped up. They have Russell Westbrook, who's just kind of, all right, Russell, just have an old school, crazy triple-double where you have seven turnovers. Like, sure. So I went back and I looked up how many guys who have been in the league 11 plus years are still relevant.
And the number was 50.
Wow.
This is 11 years or more. Now, LeBron is obviously the most. He's 22. CP3 is 20. KD, Horford, and Conley. KD's not on a playoff team. The other two guys are. They're in their 18th year. Russ, Brooke Lopez, Batum, DeAndre, 17th year. Curry, Harden, DeRozan, Drew, 16th year. And you go on down. And it's just a shitload of guys. The Kawhi draft.
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Chapter 3: What are the current challenges facing the Democratic Party?
in an NBA where it's just not that hard to build the Houston Rockets, which is to say where it's not that hard to build a team that's exceptional and eight players deep and probably gonna get the third or second seed in the Western Conference. There's just enough, there's enough talent for maybe 20 teams to be the Houston Rockets. Where does value flow in that world?
And it makes me think like, you know, it's a total cliche to be like, you know, coaching matters. But is it possible that like coaching matters more in a world where there's, as you put it, a labor glut around the B plus, A minus player? Like, for example, in a parallel universe where every NBA basketball player was Quinton Grimes, right? Every player was just a clone of Grimes.
Where would value flow in that league? There'd be no value in being Quentin Grimes. Literally everyone is the exact same player. The value would entirely be at the level of the coaching quality. And so in a world where you have just so many very, very good, but maybe not super duper star, you know, Gildas Alexander stars, but just a bunch of like top 50 style players.
Is that a world where actually coaching is incredibly valuable? Where owners should be paying 20, 30, 50 million dollars to grab Spolstra and bring it to their team. Because it's just that game changing to have a coordinating genius at that level rather than just accumulate a bunch of really talented athletic 6'6 guys.
Quinn Grimes is a great example. Yeah, because I was thinking... Well, like I used to do the trade value column when I wrote for ESPN and it was always, you know, I had trouble getting past 30. I tried to get a 40 or, you know, and the 30 to 40 guys, I was like, ah. And then when I did the exercise this year, I'd like easily got to 75 and had a bunch of honorable mentions.
But you think about how the league works. Like you mentioned Grimes, who was buried on Dallas. goes to Philly, some guys get hurt, and now all of a sudden he's turning himself into a $50 million guy. Or you look at Austin Reeves on the Lakers, where LeBron goes out of the lineup for a couple games, and all of a sudden he's averaging 30.
The Celtics have Pritchard, who if a couple guys get hurt, he could just come in and be awesome. And it just seems... the deepest it's ever been. And there's also the LeBron piece of it too, whether he's an outlier or not, because the stuff, you know, he's breaking every record.
Is this just like a Brady situation where you almost have to put them over here because he was so devoted to the conditioning and everything else just to get his body ready. That's all he cared about for 365 days a year. Some rules maybe went toward his way a little bit like it did with Brady. And you can't replicate that? Or is that the sign of where we might be going?
Because Durant's in year 18 and people are going to try to trade for him this summer. But then the flip side would be Paul George, who's in 2011 draft, whose body is now breaking down, which is a little more traditional of what we're used to. So I mean, it's just one of those things like if Giannis is a free agent in a year, Giannis was in the 2013 draft. He's got some miles on him.
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