NBA Over/Unders, Part 1: The West | with Zach Lowe and Joe House

Bill Simmons (0:00)

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The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the Zach Lowe Show with Zach Lowe, who's remote today, as well as Joe House, who you can find on Ringer Wise Guys, as well as Fairway Rollin. And House and I have been doing over-unders.

I don't even remember the first time my podcast started ESPN in 2007 And I think we started to do an NBA over-under at least that decade, and we've been doing it ever since. And we're about to do the West first, and then the East. Wanted to mention new re-watchables went up yesterday. We did Friday the 13th. Zach has never seen it, because it doesn't like horror movies.

Zach Lowe (2:10)

Stop it, stop it. I have seen it, and I look forward to the re-watchables about it. It's been a while, though. Not a Jason movie. I don't know what Jason does in that movie, but I know it involves kids at a campsite somewhere.

Bill Simmons (2:22)

Yep, it sure does. And we should also mention, speaking of kids at a campsite, Zach Lowe is writing again.

He's got content for kids on a campsite.

Joe House (2:30)

Look at that, the fingers work.

Bill Simmons (2:31)

It's back. The Low Post newsletter, blog, filings, what do you want to call it?

Zach Lowe (2:37)

It's a newsletter. And do I regret it already? Maybe a little bit, but it's too late now. We're going. We're going to give it a shot. The League Pass rankings are coming up in five parts in the next week or so. So we're off and running, baby. Let's go.

Bill Simmons (2:49)

I love that you're going to take it easy on yourself, but then just decide to do the opposite.

Zach Lowe (2:53)

Well, we're going to spam it early and then we're going to settle into the season. Both spam it early, get people a little taste and then off and running.

Bill Simmons (3:02)

Well, usually Zach would have come here, but he couldn't come here this week. He had family obligations. But thanks to modern technology. Look at this.

Zach Lowe (3:09)

We're here. We're in HD. House and I are here.

Bill Simmons (3:12)

Zach's on a TV.

Joe House (3:13)

He missed some stew. We had stew this week.

Zach Lowe (3:16)

I don't want to hear about the... Yeah, we had some stew.

My wife is away, so we're just ordering in. So I had nothing as good as the homemade stew that you had.

Bill Simmons (3:26)

So we're doing the West first. The East is more fun. We're going to save that for a second. The East includes a lot of drama, too many playoff teams, and House's Wizards, along with my Celtics and the NBA Champion Knicks. The West, which we'll get into in a second, is part of a bigger theme I want to talk about really quickly. It's something House mentioned earlier about this next title and what this means for the season itself.

So I wrote back, like going back to 84, 84 Finals, Celtics, Lakers, and then that next season, there was just a lot of energy around it, right? Jordan was in the league, Magic versus Bird, the Sixers were still around, and just like, where are we going? Where are we going? 1991, MJ wins the title, beats Magic, and then that next year, same thing. How far, where's this Jordan thing going? What do we have in store? The Pistons are there, the Knicks are there. 2000 Finals, Shaq Kobe, they win.