Derek Thompson on the American Sports Plutocracy, the NBA’s 2016 Black Swan Event, and the WNBA’s Growing Pains

**Bill Simmons** (0:06)
The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we put up the ReSpeed on Monday, includes maybe the hardest I've ever laughed during a rewatchable. It was me and Sean Finison, Chris Ryan. Great podcast.
Another banger coming next week. Monday, Apollo 13 Yeah. It's been one of the more requested ones that we've had over the last few years. So Apollo 13 You have a few days to watch it. Go check it out. And then Monday, we'll have that. Next week, I'm all football next week, just so you know.
The fantasy guys are coming on Tuesday, Danny, Danny, and Craig. We're gonna do the My Guy fantasy thing. Cousin Sal, Thursday, we're doing, I think, NFC, Wintotal Over-Unders, which we've done every year since 1872 And then Sunday will be the other conference for Over-Unders and I can't wait. I've been doing a lot of prep. I'm super excited. So we're doing one more ever greenish type of podcast today. Derek Thompson, who's fantastic, who hosts the Plain English Podcast for us. We wanted to talk about everything that's going on with the billionaires Mark Walter and just what's happening in professional sports right now. The Black Swan event of the 2016 NBA cap spike, and then the WNBA, the growth of the WNBA and how fast it happened versus the discourse about the WNBA. But we had a lot of thoughts on this. This is a very fun podcast. I always love having Derek on. It's always great. So he's coming up next. We're going to take a break and then approach him.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:44)
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**Bill Simmons** (4:11)
All right. We're recording this on Thursday morning, Pacific time. Derek Thompson is here. It's been a while. It's my fault. I'm terrible at booking my own podcast, but he has the Plain English Podcast for us. He also has an excellent newsletter that has been very active this year. There's a lot of shit going on in 2026, but it seemed like a good time for us to connect because...
And look, I'm starting football next week. Next week is all football, all NFL. This is my last kind of big picture, what the fuck is going on in sports and money and owners. This has been one of the most interesting weeks we've ever had in Los Angeles. We have two NBA teams that are both in flux for different reasons. You wrote about this recently, about leagues and owners. I wanted to start there because I thought you had some interesting takes. But as you watch this from afar, what are you seeing?

**Derek Thompson** (5:05)
Well, look, first off, it's a huge honor to be your big picture what the fuck guy. I should probably begin there.
Second, I'm watching the Mark Walter story and I'm interested in it in so many ways. You had a great explanation the other day. Sam Coppleman talked a little bit about just how he seems, I don't want to be sued for defamation here, but Mark Walter certainly seems to have used people's life insurance payments to throw around money and illegally loan money to himself.