NBA Lie Detectors, Duren’s Future, Tomlin’s TV Splash, and a 2026 Sports Media Check With Kirk Goldsberry and Bryan Curtis

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The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by The Ringer Podcast. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did 13 going on 30 We also premiered a hockey podcast. We've never had a hockey podcast, not at Grantland, not at The Ringer. Now we have one. It's the What Chaos Show. It's been around for a couple of years. It is the best NHL podcast. Please go check it out. The season started this week. These guys are great. They feel very ringery. And I mean that as the highest compliment I can give. I'm hopefully going on there next week or at some point this month to talk a little bit about the NBA. We have a lot of luck because we now have an 84 game regular season. Somebody decided the NHL season needed to be longer, apparently. WNBA playoffs in full swing. You can follow The Ringer WNBA show as well. We'll be covering all the stuff, including the links are already out. Miles got hurt. The Liberty got healthy for a brief second. I think the fact that the league stopped for three weeks probably helped, but they knocked out the links. So they're out. Fever beat the Aces tonight, and we have a Fever Aces pivotal game three coming up.

Let's see what happens. So baseball, playoff started today.

You heard me talk to Sal on Sunday about how I was not optimistic about the Red Sox. I think he thought I was doing like a reverse jinx thing. The Red Sox offense died at some point in August. This team peaked in July and August that incredible win streak. They won the city back. They ended up getting the manager. He had the interim manager removed. He became the full manager, Chad Tracy. The GM Breslow somehow got an extension through, he was supposed to go through 28 Now it's through 29 and 30 Still unclear why he got an extension. Because if you watch tonight, this team, Raffaella barely played in September. Contreras, who was hurt off and on and for different reasons the second half of the year and got hit in the hand two weeks ago. And he hasn't been the same. Trevor Story died five years ago.

Gasper carried the offense for two, three weeks there. And then got hurt, of course, right before the playoffs. So he's nowhere to be seen. Roman Anthony, who was hurt all year, came back, was a house fire for a week. Didn't look terrible. Started to show signs of life here, down the stretch this final week. And apparently got hurt again because he left halfway through the game symbolically. But the game was already over because the Yankees had already scored two runs and there was no way the Red Sox were going to score three against Schiltler and the Yankee bullpen.

Look, this was a pretty limited Red Sox team that couldn't score. And their only chance in this series were one nothing, two to one, those type of games. And once the Yankees were able to put more runs than that, that was it. I did not agree with the Peyton Tully decision to take him out in the fifth inning and bring in Miller, who has not pitched well all month.

I don't know why they did that. I thought Tully, especially in Yankee Stadium in a big spot, I just trusted him to come through. I thought he was going to come through and pitch at least six innings tonight. But Schiltler was amazing. The two best pitchers that I saw this year were him and Cease on the Blue Jays. But Schiltler did everything he had to do. Ben Rice, who has turned into a Red Sox killer, they talked about it during the game, is from Cohasset, somehow is a Yankee fan. Seems like he hits the hell out of the Red Sox all the time. So anyway, they won game one. They were supposed to win game one. I have no idea why they were only, I think, like minus 170 favorites for the series because, again, the Red Sox offense is effectively dead, especially Abreu, who I didn't even mention, who hasn't hit for a month either. So I don't know where the runs are supposed to come from. I said to Sal on Sunday, I probably trusted Anthony and Sogard the most, if anyone in the lineup, and Anthony is now gone. And I do not have high hopes for the rest of this. But the good news is the Patriots are a disaster.