2026 NBA Draft Winners and Losers With Joe House and J. Kyle Mann

**Bill Simmons** (0:00)
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The Bill Simmons Podcast, live on Netflix for my favorite day of the year. It's pretty sad that this is my favorite day of the year, but it's the NBA draft. I'm with J. Kyle Mann from The Ringer. I'm with the deliriously happy and possibly drunk Joe House, whose team had the number one pick and took AJ DeBonsa. We'll talk about that later. We have a little gimmick. It's just for the live Netflix show only. We're gonna have some voting. They started this poll thing that they did during Star Search, and we have borrowed the technology. And we're gonna be able, if you're watching this live on Netflix, you're gonna be able to vote on stuff, including House's blood alcohol level. Wanted to mention we put up a new rewatchables. On Monday night, we did Domestic Disturbance, the funniest From Hell movie of all the From Hell movies. Had a great time with Sean Fennessy and Chris Ryan. We have another one coming on Thursday, The Good Son. You can hear House's golf podcast, Faireway Rollin, and you can listen and watch Kyle Mann on the Ringer NBA show. Okay, guys.
Winners and losers, and I have mostly winners. And I'm going to start here, J. Kyle Mann, as a guy who works on our Ringer NBA Draft Guide and does lots of YouTube clips and studies and obsesses over the draft. The drafts become less and less fun over the course of the decade, as everybody just makes logical, smart decisions, and nobody messes up, and we have no monkey wrenches, and no wild cards, and no great players falling. I had the first 12 picks, regardless of the order. I thought we're the 12 best guys in the draft. There were no stumbles at all. Is this just where we are now? We have too much intelligence. How do you explain this?

**J. Kyle Mann** (3:27)
It seems like the nerds have taken over in the math, has crept into the point where even, I just feel like it's created these little guardrails for if you have a wild take. I just feel like we have so much more numbers justification.
Scouting is improved. The information is improved across the board.
I feel like we have fewer and fewer just like good old boy network, GM, front office people out there. There's maybe one or two left, but they're dwindling by the day. But I went through and I was doing my grades on this and I was like, it was hard to really ding anybody hard for anything. I was like, I don't really have any Ds or Fs. There aren't any like Kintel Woods or what was the Juco guy that you guys took, Keegan Brown or not Keegan, or what was his name? No, Kendrick Brown. Kendrick Brown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't get those.

**Bill Simmons** (4:17)
How about the 20 guys House's team took? Yeah, I mean, 20 years ago, I just feel like the Kings would have taken Nate Ament and we would have been like, what are they doing?
And now they just take Darius A. Cuff House. You don't care. Cause your team ended up with the number one pick. And by the way, my team is about to kick the pick at number 27, the Celtics. So about a tumultuous week. I don't know if we're taking the team psychiatrist or an actual player, but we're going to experience my reaction live. House, your reaction. We had a lot of little birdies telling us that AJ was going to DC for the last month. And that's what happened. But were you scared in the moment of truth that that wasn't going to happen?