The Bill Simmons Podcast
The Invincible OKC, Knicks Nirvana, and Acceptable Giannis Trades With Zach Lowe, Ariel Helwani, Sean Fennessey, and Ben Thompson
21 May 2025
Bill Simmons is joined by Zach Lowe to react to Game 1 of the WCF between the Thunder and Timberwolves (5:23). Then, Bill talks with Ariel Helwani and Sean Fennessey about the Knicks’ playoff run and their excitement for the new MMA film ‘The Smashing Machine,’ directed by Benny Safdie and starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (54:35). Finally, Ben Thompson joins to talk Giannis trade scenarios (01:38:53). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Zach Lowe, Ariel Helwani, Sean Fennessey, and Ben Thompson Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is brought to you by Degree Deodorant. Grab the original Cool Rush at Walmart or Target today. 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
Full Episode
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Coming up, a ton of basketball, a whiff of UFC, a whiff of Giannis trades. Action Pack Pod next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables for you on Monday night. We did Close Encounters of the Third Kind as part of Big Ass 70s Week. It couldn't have gone better. I had a great time. You can watch it on the Ringer Moves YouTube channel.
You can watch it as a video podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, on FanDuel, on FanDuel Sportsbook, I am going to be doing another episode of tail or fade, which I have won the last two weeks in a row. We're going to be doing Carl Anthony towns under 24 and a half points. Uh, and you get a little 50% profit boost on that, all kinds of good stuff.
So go check out Fando sports book on Wednesday, coming up on this podcast, going to talk to Zach Lowe about game one. Okay. See Minnesota at the top. Going to talk to Aro Hawani and Sean Fennessy, two long-suffering Knicks fans who always come on this podcast to talk about the Knicks when things are going bad. So I thought it was only fair to bring them on when things are going good.
But we had to balance that out with a guy whose team is going bad, Ben Thompson. who is going to yell at me about my Giannis Moby trade idea and tell me where Giannis should actually go. So we got a lot going on in this podcast. Wanted to say RIP to George Wendt, who played Norm Peterson on Cheers and did a whole bunch of other good stuff too. He was a great SNL host.
He was in a bunch of movies, but Norm became, I think, a big part of his legacy. Cheers was one of my favorite shows ever. I was almost ready to say it was my favorite show ever, but I don't even know. Now that I'm older, it's really hard to have a favorite show ever. But you definitely have that top, top list of most favorites, most shows you'd love the most. And I love Cheers so much.
And, uh, I just thought Norm, when you talk about like the great supporting characters, which I think is a little different than a star of a show, you know, like you think Seinfeld, Seinfeld was the star of Seinfeld, but I think George and Elaine were also stars. And then Kramer was like the, at least for the first few years, like the kind of supporting character sidekick.
And he was awesome, but there's, it's so hard to pull that off to thread the needle when you're not like one of the biggest stars of the show. Yeah. But you're still awesome. And Norm is like, I think the number one example of it. There's some other one. Everybody has if it's generational. You know, the shows you like for me, it's the shows that I grew up watching in the 70s and the 80s.
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