The Boston Celtics traded Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday night. In exchange they got Paul George and a couple draft picks. The initial reaction to this deal was not favorable for the Celtics who just a few days ago were considered to be in the running to land Giannis Antetokounmpo.
One initial reaction we did not get was that of Bill Simmons. More than 12 hours after the trade was announced and we still do not know whether Simmons likes the trade or not. We can assume he’s against the Celtics’ decision to trade an All-NBA performer in his prime for a 35-year-old coming off a season where he was suspended for violating the league’s drug policy, but until he goes live on Netflix on Thursday morning, you never really know.
Simmons mostly tweeted about soccer in the wake of the Brown-George trade. Though he did give a short explanation of why he wasn’t going live saying, “We have other Ringer pods in motion tonight.” Reading that you might think that there weren’t any producers or Ringer personalities available on Wednesday. Maybe no one was available to record a podcast about one of the biggest, most surprising moves of the NBA offseason.
The only problem is Zach Lowe recorded a podcast last night. And you know it was an emergency podcast because the title of the episode is literally, “Emergency Pod! The Celtics Trade Jaylen Brown to the 76ers!” Not to mention he opens the show by saying, “Didn’t expect to be doing another Zach Lowe Show this week!”
This seems like the kind of story where Lowe could have jumped on Simmons’s pod. At the very least he could have recorded last night and released the episode this morning. Instead someone decided he should save it for a live show on Netflix on Thursday morning. The fans were not happy.
Fan reaction
While some people are patiently waiting, others think Simmons is hiding. You can find people calling the decision to not record an emergency pod cowardly on both Reddit and X.
At least one person has wondered if this was a Netflix decision saying, “if Netflix is not up for an emergency pod at this moment then Netflix simply should not be in the podcast game.”
Maybe Simmons will have a good reason for delaying his podcast until well after every other notable NBA voice has weighed in. And maybe he’ll share it when he finally goes live on Netflix this morning.
Otherwise, it seems like a Netflix decision, which is unfortunate. Simmons had a chance to go for a brisk walk around Los Angeles, take some time in the sauna, sleep on it and process the move. People want to see Simmons react to bad Boston news. Instead, The Ringer only gave us a brief clip of Philadelphia fan Chris Ryan finding out the good news.
That’s not how you win the 24-hour news cycle, which seems even more important after you’ve already lost a trade.
